Notes on spinoff pages:
All the material about judicial vacancies, filibusters in the Senate, and lawyers in general, has been moved here.
All the material about The Minimum Wage and Organized Labor Issues now appear on their own pages. (Splitting up these larger pages makes it easier for you to get to the information you want without having to wait for an enormous page to load.)
Also there is a page about the 2004 election, its aftermath, and the lessons to be learned, and (obviously) a newer one about the 2006 election.
There is also a new page about The Great Wall Street Bailout of 2008.
There is a special subsection at the bottom of this page about Caroline Kennedy and her attempt to get a seat in the Senate based entirely on her family's wealth and influence.
There is also a subsection about MADD, which is an organization that apparently spends its time and effort on a lot of issues unrelated to drunk driving.
Note: All the material about domestic spying, normally seen in this spot, has been moved here.
Americans Deserve a Transparent Fed. For nearly a century the Federal Reserve has operated in the shadows, away from the prying eyes of Congress, journalists and the American people. Created in 1913, the Fed was given enormous responsibility to protect the value of our currency. Yet in the last 96 years the U.S. dollar has lost more than 95% of its purchasing power.
The Great Mystery. The country can return to the path of economic and social prosperity and relegate the Left to the background of the nation's politics, where they belong, once and for all. The key is time, and time is something we have little of. The 2010 elections will be the most important midterm election in our history.
They're ALL Communists. Back when people were tippy-toeing around the "s" word ("socialist"), and before he was elected, I called out Obama's basic political inclinations for what they are — communist. Though plenty pooh-poohed this, and called it extreme or unsubstantiated, there was ample proof in Obama's own writings, his interviews, and the political leanings of his mentors (Saul Alinsky, Frank Marshall Davis), his pastor (Jeremiah Wright) and his friends. It's absurd to hear people say now that Obama is governing differently than he campaigned. If you think that, you weren't listening. But those who still harbor any doubts need only look at his team of "advisors."
A Generation of Sociopaths. Glenn Beck gets it. ... He understands that the downfall of America will not come from the outside. It will come from the inside. It will happen because we failed to pass on to our children the values that made our nation great — and to remind them to pass those values on to their children.
A Tale of Two Community Organizers. Jim Jones could round up crowds of protesters and door to door campaign workers on demand. Admired and enabled by San Francisco Democrats and media moguls, Jones gathered emotionally and economically needy people around him, pretending to be a minister to their needs. He forced them to drain their bank accounts, sign over their homes and their welfare and social security checks. Jones gave their money generously to the Democrat liberal elite and stashed millions in illegal overseas accounts. When Democrats needed a crowd of thousands, Jones provided his willing flock.
Saving America: "What Can I Do?" How do we fight out-of-control spending, Green Fascists, and the Nagging Nazi Nanny State? ... How do we stop the destruction of America's middle class, the devaluation of the U.S. dollar, the insane government spending, and the ceding of America's sovereignty to a Global Elite via the U.N.? How do we stop the indoctrination of our children, and the "dumbing down" of America? How do we get God back into our government, culture, and lives?
Why the Federal Government Should Get Out of Education. Most Americans want less government, smaller government and lower taxes. The only way to accomplish this is by abolishing federal departments and bureaucracies. As far back as the Reagan administration, Republicans promised to abolish the Department of Education. They couldn't do it then because they lacked a majority in Congress. But whatever happened to the plan to abolish the Department of Education when Republicans became the majority?
Freedom is Hard Work. The Founders were endlessly concerned about giving ordinary Americans an unprecedented measure of liberty as offered by the Constitution they were drafting. They wondered if regular folk could muster the sophistication necessary to make rational, intelligent decisions at the polls... Fast forward to 2009 and it's easy to see why the Founders were so worried. In spite of various streams of round-the-clock news and data, most of our electorate is misinformed, blissfully ignorant or simply apathetic with respect to the means by which they are governed.
Why I Became A Conservative. In early 1992, I heard five words that were to drastically alter the course of my life. H. Ross Perot was on TV. He held up a toilet seat and said "The government paid $700.00 for this toilet seat." He then stated, "And this is public knowledge." Huh? Perot then went on to outline more fascinating nuggets of information for which I had absolutely no knowledge. He pulled out charts and graphs and proceeded to inform me of a world of facts to which I had never been exposed.
The Only Way to Beat Obamanism: Elect More Republicans. For those Americans who want to fight back against the menacing expansion of government and the insanely irresponsible spending of the Obama administration, there is only one way to succeed: electing more Republicans to high office. If the public fails to elect GOP candidates for the Senate, the House, governorships, state legislatures and, ultimately, the presidency there is simply no way to derail the leftist agenda that menaces liberty and prosperity.
Horsepower Sure Beats Horses! In New York City alone at the turn of the century, horses deposited on the streets every day an estimated 2.5 million pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine, accounting for about two-thirds of the filth that littered the city's streets. Excreta from horses in the form of dried dust irritated nasal passages and lungs, then became a syrupy mass to wade through and track into the home whenever it rained.
Michelle Obama is not immune to criticism because she does stuff like this:
Michelle Obama turns Breast Cancer Awareness Month into attack on insurance companies. First Lady Michelle Obama took part in a White House event this afternoon [10/23/2009] to mark National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. While such events have been mostly noncontroversial in the past, Mrs. Obama used the occasion to launch an extended attack on the insurance industry, the Obama administration's current target in the ongoing battle over national health care legislation.
We Need a Bigger House. Except for a brief effort to accommodate Alaska and Hawaii, the size of the House has been frozen at 435 members since 1911. A 1929 law, driven in part by a desire to keep immigrants underrepresented, has kept it that way. But there's nothing sacred about the 435 number. In fact, the Founders would be aghast at the idea that the "peoples' house" is filled with pols speaking for hundreds of thousands of citizens.
More Government Does Not Equal 'Reform'. The president and his followers may disseminate the buzz phrase that "the status quo is unsustainable," but the only thing life has taught us is that it is government programs that are unsustainable.
Honest Citizens Put in the Dock as Thugs Go Free. Britain continues its descent into a socialist hell, devoid of any justice or morality. We now live in a sub-Marxist world where the ultra-politicised institutions of the State wield arbitrary power, bullying the decent members of the public while dangerous criminals walk free.
Medical Care is a Successful and Growing Industry, not a Liability. There is still an industry that is growing and successful, that produces 17% of the Gross Domestic Product, and that employs over 10% of all American workers. The medical industry incorporates more than 820,000 businesses ... Suddenly, it seems that brisk industrial growth, creation of new technologies, expansion of employment, healing of once-fatal illnesses, prolongation of life, and prevention of pain are not even success, but a just terrible fiscal burden that our overlords deeply resent.
This Will Never Be A Euro-Socialist Country. The Obama Administration, the Democrats in Congress and the media are shocked and surprised by the depth of reaction to the proposed overhaul of the health care system and the tax and spend policies of this government. They had assumed that since the President had garnered over 69 million votes in the past election (53% of the votes cast), the American people had given him and his party a free hand to transform the country. Never mind that the votes Mr. Obama received only accounted for 30% of the voting age population in the country and that many voted for him thinking he was the moderate he proclaimed to be during his campaign for President.
Utopia Versus Freedom: The big question is whether we are prepared to follow any politician who claims to be able to "solve" our "problem." If we are, then there will be a never ending series of "solutions," each causing new problems calling for still more "solutions." That way lies a never-ending quest, costing ever increasing amounts of the taxpayers' money and — more important — ever greater losses of your freedom to live your own life as you see fit, rather than as presumptuous elites dictate.
Tell The Government: 'Out Of Our Light'. President Obama and his supplicants in Congress are offering the citizens of the United States, if not anything, then quite a lot. They are offering "affordable" health-care for all. They are offering a world without "climate change." All that they require in return for living in such an Eden? A little liberty, is all. The ghastly cap-and-trade legislation will tell you when and how much energy you can use to pursue your dreams; it will tax almost all productive human activity. The Obama-Pelosi health-care racket will slowly starve the private insurance market, leaving you with exactly one choice for your medical care — the government.
The Capitalist Manifesto. From the current economic crisis through third-world poverty to global warming, capitalism has been blamed for nearly every major problem of our day. Accused of fostering discrimination, exploitation, environmental destruction and a host of other ills, it looms as a popular villain in the contemporary western psyche. But this viewpoint could hardly be more unfair, argues Robert Murphy in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism.
Congratulations, President Ahmadinejad. The American administration is now wholly complicit in the brutal travesty that was June 12 in Iran. ... American exceptionalism, that concept Obama doesn't grasp, is founded upon the belief that all people have the right to freedom. It is a conviction consecrated in our founding documents and one that's been defended with American lives. When we authenticate the rule of freedom's enemies, we become the hollow jingoists they say we are.
Texas proves limited government works. After regular, 140-day legislative sessions every two years, Texas lawmakers go home to live under the laws they pass. Limited time at the Capitol not only requires state leaders to focus on the essentials, it also reduces the mischief unrestrained government can do. Limiting state government in Texas has led to balanced budgets, low taxes, a predictable regulatory climate and a fair legal system.
Obama-Care, Euthanasia, and The Boiled Frog Syndrome. A bloodless fascist coup has been successfully staged against the United States of America. It is our duty, our right, and our privilege, to stand up and deny our wanna-be Fascist overlords, the successful implementation of their plans for us. We must act, and we must act now. The time for being "asleep at the wheel" is over. We simply must get involved, or our precious freedoms are forfeit.
Avoiding the Next Obama. The move towards the Euro-style imperialist socialism that has taken over this country has been a long time coming. For decades, oblivious youth have been indoctrinated at American universities to sympathize with far-left values; the entertainment industry is filled with leftist blowhards who wear the mask of intellect; liberals of all stripes have become unselfconscious in mocking (Christian) religious customs, and the juggernaut that is the left-stream media has been sealing the deal for years, helping to make this Republic increasingly vulnerable to demagoguery and despotism.
Obama's best and brightest. There's a lesson here, and Barack Obama should heed it. The lesson was neatly summed up in a 1972 book, David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest," which told how President John F. Kennedy recruited some of the nation's top minds for his administration, people who then got us involved in a war in Vietnam we ended up losing at horrific cost.
'Fight them over there vs. over here' a false choice. Unfortunately, our foreign policy is undermining our security. We have more than 700 military installations in 135 countries around the globe. We have 50,000 troops in Germany, 30,000 in Japan, and 25,000 in South Korea. Worse, we have our brave men and women bogged down occupying Iraq and Afghanistan in the midst of ethnic strife and civil war. We spend more than $1 trillion per year on our foreign policy, and our military is stretched thin. We can no longer afford to be the world's policeman. We must bring our troops home from around the world, cut overseas spending and strengthen our national defense.
Behind Hugo's Harassment Of Honduras. The recent actions of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez say a lot about what's really at stake in the Honduras debacle. It's not about democracy or constitutionality. It's about preserving a tyrant's empire.
Let's Hear It for the Rainbow Tour. [Scroll down] So when my agent got a call from a major studio the other day, asking whether I was available to tackle an updated version of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Evita, you can bet I jumped at the chance. ... Act One. "Barry," a mysterious Community Organizer with multiple names and an indistinct past, suddenly appears in Chicago. His consummate mastery of the brown-nosing techniques he learned at Harvard (where the "Obamamometer" was invented to measure the audacity of taupe) quickly wins him the patronage of American patriots/guys in the neighborhood like William Ayers and his lovely wife, Bernardine Dohrn.
Obamanomics Supporters — Cracks in the Dike. President Obama and the Democratic Party's congressional supermajority represent nothing less than a grave and gathering threat to that which made America great — free enterprise, competition, allowing people to keep as much of their own money as possible, and the assumption that people know better how and on what to spend their money than does government. The Republicans — who, remember, supported the first bailout, under Bush — are only slightly better. The first President Bush signed into law the Americans With Disabilities Act, telling private employers under what circumstances they should hire and "accommodate" those with "special challenges." Republican Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency. The second Bush signed the prescription benefits bill for seniors. And on and on it goes.
Zelaya's Removal: Necessary and Proper. Yesterday [7/7/2009], Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met privately with former president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. Afterward, she announced that the crisis in that nation would now be mediated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, saying, "We hope at the end of this mediation there will be a return of democratic constitutional order that is agreed to by all concerned." It's time to take off the gloves: Mrs. Clinton is lying. "[D]emocratic constitutional order" has in fact already been returned to Honduras, no thanks to her boss, Barack Obama. And then only because Manuel Zelaya was impeached and removed from office by the Honduran Congress, and his attempt at rewriting the nation's Constitution halted by the Supreme Court.
62 Million Voiceless Americans. Is it still called debate when only one side controls the conversation? That's the question the 62 million Americans who didn't vote for Obama are asking themselves. ... Why hold a conversation? The left is in control and there is no need to consult with the people they were elected to govern. The politicians and the experts know best.
How long till Obama is booted? I'm wondering how long it will be before the word "impeachment" starts being bantered about? The list of reasons to expel Obama keeps getting longer and stronger, and this is only five months into his reign.
The Editor says...
I've been wondering how soon the I-word would came into play. It is entirely possible that Obama will be impeached, but only after the 2010 election rectifies the imbalance of power, of course.
A Cancer In The Capitol Is Killing Us. America, it's time to clean house in this government and throw all of the sanctimonious tyrants out. It's time to replace every single one of them and then demand that their successors legislate term limits on both the House and the Senate, just like they do for the president. Never again should anyone be allowed to make a lifetime career of public office in Congress. The temptation for corruption is just too compelling to resist over extended periods of time. The consequences of this tradition should now be painfully obvious to anyone.
Joint Strike Fighter Doesn't Need an Alternate Engine. The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps need Lockheed's F-35 joint strike fighters now, and in large numbers. What they don't need is an alternate engine for them. President Barack Obama singled out the alternate engine for the F-35 as an example of wasteful spending last month, but advocates are pushing their supporters to continue the funding.
Celebrating the End of American Independence. Even those who see what is happening live in a state of illusion, hoping against hope that it is all just a mirage. They believe that America will simply rebound, as it always has. But they overlook the reality that all of the founding principles and values that made it possible for our country to prosper and even dig itself out of tough times, have been systematically destroyed. The mechanisms needed to rebound, no longer exist...
Brother, Can You Spare a Decade? Not surprisingly, everyone from Wall Street to the halls of Congress is worried that the current recession will turn into the dreaded D, and has seized on desperate rescue measures. But was the Great Depression all bad? Did anything good come out of the 1930s? I started doing some research and was amazed to find a bright side to the gloomy '30s — a lower cost of living, great new inventions and other technological advances, new forms of entertainment, more sports and reading, and a return to sober social behavior.
The Slow Quicksand Of Corruption. Commencement speakers and their speechwriters strain during graduation season to find new ways to deliver the same message: Follow your passion, volunteer, seek joy in small things and recognize that fortune is an illusion. ... [But] No one will caution ambitious young men to stay out of politics. They should.
Keep Libel Laws out of Science. It has been a stressful and frustrating twelve months since I published my article on chiropractors and their attempts to treat children with conditions such as asthma. The British Chiropractic Association's decision to sue me for libel has been an enormous drain on my time and energy. ... [But] everyone agrees that there is something fundamentally wrong with the English libel laws, which have a chilling effect on journalists, whether they write about science or anything else, whether they live in Britain or anywhere else.
The Incredible Shrinking Clintons. [Scroll down] Both Clintons are effectively muzzled and cannot criticize Obama even as he reverses President Clinton's free market proclivities and budget balancing discipline. Hillary, the supposed friend of Israel, must sit by quietly and watch Iran get the bomb while trying all the while to stop Israel from preventing it.
Obama continues Bush's 2nd term — badly. Conservative foreign and national-security policies do not need remaking, rebranding or remessaging. They need not be escorted by prefixes or adjectives, nor do they need "moderating." Conservative foreign policy is unabashedly pro-American, unashamed of American exceptionalism, unwilling to bend its knee to international organizations, and unapologetic about the need for the fullest range of dominant military capabilities.
Where Else are the Castro Spies? Last week, the FBI arrested a well-born State Department intelligence analyst and his wife for conspiracy to commit espionage for the Castro regime. ... "Tip of the iceberg" is an oft-used phrase by Cuba-watchers whenever a Castro spy gets nabbed. In light of the motivations uncovered in Myers diary and the rampant Castrophilia among Beltway academic, media and Democratic circles, who can doubt it?
How Newt Gingrich Sabotaged The "Gingrich Revolution": [Scroll down] Reagan was no posturing follower. His "Big Tent" did not result from any pathetic attempts to pander his way into the hearts of the American people. Rather, he unabashedly offered starkly defined conservatism as the best course for the nation, and in so doing convinced many in the "middle" to dispense with their own petty differences, and join him as he sought to better the country. ... Reagan had no place in his plan for the double-minded treachery exhibited by Colin Powell, and was unafraid to alienate such people.
How America Lost Its Freedom. [Scroll down] The cycle of corruption must be broken and Americans must identify and attack the greatest offenders first. If they fail to go after the kingpins of government corruption, they will waste a lot of time and resources chasing their tails in pursuit of mere pawns, or even worse, the wrong guys. The cycle is simple, but not easy to break... Money is used to buy politicians who then — once in power — return taxpayer funds to those who got them elected.
White House and DOJ Silent on Shooting of Soldiers. Why haven't the President and Attorney General of the United States been as quick to condemn the murder of one U.S. soldier and the wounding of another as they were in condemning the murder of an abortionist?
The Religious Right Didn't Kill George Tiller. The organized antiabortion movement has always opposed violence against abortion providers. That has never stopped opportunistic prochoice activists, however, from conflating their passionate rhetoric with the behavior of individual criminals. True to form, on Sunday [5/31/2009], Mike Hendricks of the Kansas City Star accused anyone who had criticized Tiller as a murderer (Tiller aborted healthy, nine-month old fetuses) of being an "accomplice" to his death.
Here's a Story Idea that Will Be Ignored: Two Shootings. Shortly after the murder of George Tiller, pro-life groups put out statements denouncing the crime. These statements came from all over the pro-life camp. Some were more forthright than others, it it true, but most were admirable in their categorical rejection of vigilante killings. This morning, a U.S. Army recruiting station was attacked. One recruiter was killed, another hurt. Any statements from the antiwar Left deploring that violence?
Conservatives Aren't the Extremists. Conservatives are not the ones who sermonize about tolerance yet demonstrate intolerance toward conservative and Christian thought; support exterminating babies in the womb; apologize the world over for America; or gut the military and missile defense because of some dangerously egotistical notion that they have the magic to turn evil into goodness with their charisma and eloquence or, even worse, because they refuse to recognize evil in the world, except as emanating from the United States.
Dick Cheney: brutal, uncompromising, brilliant. The former vice president, who this time has been sent from the past to save the future rather than the other way round, has had an astonishing week. He's dominated much of the news with his barnstorming defence of the previous administration's counter-terrorism strategy, and completely overshadowed President Obama's weak-kneed and exceedingly dull speech at the National Archives.
Barack Obama's biggest critic: Charles Krauthammer. The dinner guest that night at George Will's house in Chevy Chase was intellectually nimble, personally formidable and completely baffling, recalled columnist Charles Krauthammer — who was getting his first up-close look at President-elect Barack Obama. "We sat around and said, 'Does anybody really know who he is and what he wants to do, now that we've had this?'" Krauthammer recalled of Obama's January sit-down with conservative columnists. "And the answer was no. We don't know."
Political correctness is torture. On college campuses, in newsrooms and now in the highest corridors of power, with Barack Obama in the Oval Office, the politically correct left is wielding its weaponry with the confidence that it can take down any group, anyone or anything. The thought police are now officially in charge. The real hate crime these days is the Orwellian intimidation wielded by the left against those that don't think the way they do. It's worse than waterboarding.
Obama's Plans May Be Doomed by Unchecked Spending. Dealing with the cosmetic stuff — curbing congressional pet projects or eliminating fraud and abuse in executive agencies — is fine, if insignificant. Obama needs to deliver on big-ticket luxuries like farm subsidies, tax breaks and a down payment on entitlement reform. There's little reason to think congressional Democrats or Republicans are serious about such sacrifices. This isn't so much about ideology or partisanship; it's about entrenched interests and habits.
It was not torture, but it saved lives. CIA agents once played rough with possibly 30 terrorists, and maybe they shouldn't have, but they saved American lives that way. And if you say no, no, a thousand times no to playing rough in the future, you may be saying yes to thousands of deaths.
The Apology Obama Should Have Given. America is a country founded on the principle that man has inalienable rights. At certain times in our history, we have not exemplified those principles, but the best part of America and her people is that stand as a beacon to the world that man can live in peace, and people, through their own efforts can improve their lot in life. For that, America will never apologize.
Socialism is really cannibalism. When I work, I use up hours of my life... my limited, mortal, human, physical life. The money I am paid represents the life I expended to earn it. My pay — my wealth — is my labor. It is the expenditure of some of my body's short, precious life on earth. So when someone takes my money, they steal my hours of labor. They consume not only the fruits of my labor, but my labor itself, that labor which is the very expenditure of my life. When someone loots and consumes the money I have earned, they consume the part of my life devoted to producing what hey have taken.
Senator John Cornyn — How Wrong Does He Get? As many of you know, I at one time supported John Cornyn. Not any longer. ... Today [5/29/2009], Senator Cornyn said: "I think it's terrible." What does he think is so terrible? I am glad you asked. Here it is. "A top Senate Republican is taking aim at recent statements from conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich suggesting Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a 'racist.'[...]" I suppose it would be a good idea, then, that whenever Sen Cornyn says the sky is blue we had all better go look for ourselves to be sure. I suppose calling a shovel a shovel just might be offensive to the shovel.
Give Navy Seals Credit on Somali Pirate Rescue, Not Obama. I think we are all grateful that Capt. Richard Phillips of the Maersk Line has been rescued after being held for five days by a group of pirates in a lifeboat off the coast of Africa. But I think the praise being heaped on President Obama for his handling of the situation is approaching excessive.
On the other hand...
How to Solve the Pirate Problem. President Obama didn't personally order the Navy SEALs to take out the Somali pirates holding Capt. Richard Phillips hostage. He left the decision up to the commanders on the scene, who made the right call. Obama should be congratulated for that, just as surely as he would have been criticized if things had gone south. For those of us who see the resurrection of Jimmy Carter in Barack Obama, this was a nice surprise.
Our Problem is Immorality. Most of our nation's great problems, including our economic problems, have as their root decaying moral values. Whether we have the stomach to own up to it or not, we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality.
World's most dangerous city? In a world growing more dangerous by the week in this dark spring of 2009, Washington may be the most dangerous city in the world. The city is safe enough for its residents — it is the rest of the country and world that is endangered by what Washington is capable of doing.
Seventy Years After Appeasement. Seventy years ago, Hitler made it very plain that he was going to transform Europe and that only those who resisted him with force could stop his plans. Today, while Iran moves closer to acquiring the means to plunge our world into a new dark age, while menacing nations like China and Russia nip at our drooping power, while Hugo Chavez schemes to turn Venezuela into a grim prison like Cuba, we can act. We seem to lack the stomach to do anything, though we have the means.
Why be a conservative? Why would I choose to be a conservative? Why would I choose the persecution? I am constantly ridiculed for my beliefs. I have been compared to Nazis. Liberals call me a sexist, racist, bigoted homophobe. My intentions are mischaracterized, and then I am judged by those mischaracterized intentions. For example, because I favor policies to help get everyone off of welfare to succeed on their own, my intentions are characterized as trying to keep blacks and minorities poor. These liberals then brand me a racist because they perceive my intentions are to keep blacks poor.
How I'm Praying for the President. Reasonable men are now beginning to question whether or not Barack Obama is intentionally acting to harm the interests of the American people. Can God's people stand idle and allow their elected leader to undermine righteousness? To do so is to be complicit in the unrighteous deeds of our elected leader. We have an obligation to hold him to account, and Barack Obama is ultimately accountable to the Judge of all the earth.
Michigan: Blueprint to crisis. Come to Michigan, America, to see where some of this could lead if a) it's not accompanied by plain recognition that business is the most effective creator of jobs and b) the boss slow-walks remedies to serious problems, as Obama is doing on the banking crisis. Here, we have the nation's highest unemployment rate, a dubious distinction that shows no sign of abating. We have an economic icon whose leaders need federal assistance because their industry is on the verge of collapse.
What the government worker unions know. What does the demand for public sector unions tell us? The purpose of a union is to interpose itself between the employer and the employee to the benefit of the employee. The existence of public sector unions tells us that the people most intimately familiar with government, those who experience it every moment of every work day, don't trust it! And yet the basis of liberalism in general and Obamanomics in particular is that we should turn over to government some of our most important, intimate and consequential activities, such as retirement, education and health care.
Love That Hate! [Scroll down] I'm tired of the populist nonsense from talk-radio on how Americans "deserve better than this." They do? Why? They voted for this. Obama is being Obama. Pelosi is being Pelosi. Schumer is being Schumer. The American people cast the ballots. You reap what you sow.
Economic Miracle. The average well-stocked supermarket carries over 60,000 different items. Because those items are so routinely available to us, the fact that it is a near miracle goes unnoticed and unappreciated. ... But what is the driving force that explains how millions of people manage to cooperate to get 60,000 different items to your supermarket? Most of them don't give a hoot about you and me, some of them might hate Americans, but they serve us well and they do so voluntarily. ... By the way, how many of you would be in favor of Congress running our supermarkets?
A Stock Market Thing. "Black Monday," October 19, 1987, was the biggest one-day drop in U.S. stock market history. Pressed for fast and decisive federal action, President Reagan responded: "This is purely a stock market thing." ... In response to Reagan's widely ridiculed "silence and inaction", the Dow Jones Industrial Average steadily increased. One year later, the Dow was approaching its pre-crash level. Five years later, it was up 40 percent. Ten years later, it was up 250 percent. Twenty years later, it was up 500 percent.
Capitalism is the Best Company You Ever Worked For. According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), 99.7% of all employers have less than 500 employees. They hire 58 million people, half the private sector work force, and pay 45 percent of the private payroll. If the U.S. were a business, these would be your average employees. But when it comes to performance many are anything but average. The SBA documents that they have generated about 2/3 of the new jobs in this country. They employ 40% of all high tech workers. Compared to large companies, they produce 13 times more patents per employee.
One of Us. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — selected to deliver the Republicans' Fat Tuesday response to President Obama — might also be voted the man least likely to let the good times role. (sic) Slight, earnest, deeply religious and supremely wonkish, Jindal resembles neither his flamboyant predecessors as governor, nor his reveling, 30-something contemporaries on Bourbon Street.
Letter Of Resignation To The RNC; I Quit! After wrestling with this decision for two years now, I have resigned from the Republican party. The party no longer represents my values and I see no hope for real change in the foreseeable future.
The GOP wants people to thrive, not socialism. [Rush Limbaugh] gave a speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee in Washington that many liberals protested was filled with hate and attacks on our dear president. Not that they listened to it. Had they been part of the more than 3.2 million people who watched it via cable television, they might have better understood what he said.
There'll Be No Debate. I'm just wildly speculating, of course, but I suspect that Mr. Obama would not be too keen on having to answer the following questions, among many others: How could you sign a bill to spend more than a trillion dollars this nation does not have, purportedly to stimulate the economy, and then immediately convene a fiscal responsibility summit? Why did you promise to end earmarks and then preside over a bill in your first month in office that includes some 8,500 earmarks? ... Seeing as the bill is not stimulative as advertised, why did you cram it through so fast that even those voting on it couldn't cursorily read through it? On what possible basis can you justify any federal money to street organizing groups, such as ACORN?
It's Time for American Freedom Fighters to Unite. For almost eighty years now, Washington DC has wasted the labors of the people under the false pretense of taking care of them. Over the last seventy years, America has gone from the most peaceful prosperous free nation on earth to an increasingly violent bankrupt example of world class political corruption. In the next two years, irreversible damage will be done. The people responsible for bringing the greatest nation on earth to the brink of third world status now control the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the federal government and they are using their unbridled power to ram pure global secular socialism down the throat of every American.
Our Keystone Cops Foreign Policy. It appears that Barack Obama's foreign policy team is going to make us pine for the days of the Bush Administration's competency by comparison very soon. I'm not sure what exactly this story illustrates except there doesn't seem to be anyone home at the White House yet. You may recall the hubbub over Senator Kerry being handed a letter that was from Hamas which he promptly turned over to the American consulate at his next stop which happened to be Jerusalem. Well now Kerry swears he didn't know it was from Hamas (who did he think it was from, Santa Claus?) ...
Secretary of What? Far be it from us to judge anyone else's career choices, but at first glance Judd Gregg's decision yesterday to leave the Senate to become Secretary of Commerce is a stumper. Mr. Gregg is an influential Republican in a party that is a single Senate vote away from irrelevance on any given issue. Meanwhile, Commerce is (to be generous) a lesser cabinet post that Mr. Gregg twice voted to abolish, and he joins an Administration whose policies aren't exactly simpatico with his voting record.
Remember The Cole. Charges against the mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole are dismissed. He will be retried, but not by a military commission that would have given him the death penalty he deserves.
Louie Gohmert is the voice of sanity in the face of insane government spending. Unlike Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who wants to toss the second installment of the $350 billion taxpayer dollar bailout at Wall Street and hope that this massive wad of cash sticks and does something positive for the economy, Gohmert, a Tyler Republican, instead wants to give Americans a two-month tax holiday. He also advocates that taxpayers should pay no federal income taxes for 2008. That's right, a two-month, $350 billion tax holiday and no income taxes for 2008.
Rich People Versus Politicians: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, with about $60 billion in assets each, are America's richest men. With all that money, what can they force us to do? Can they take our house to make room so that another person can build an auto dealership or a casino parking lot? Can they force us to pay money into the government-run retirement Ponzi scheme called Social Security? Can Buffett and Gates force us to bus our children to schools out of our neighborhood in the name of diversity? Unless they are granted power by politicians, rich people have little power to force us to do anything.
Drill, Arnold, Drill! California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is begging for a bailout to close an $11 billion budget gap. He should be pressing for an oil revenue-sharing deal instead.
Right Man, Right Job, Right Time. [Czech Republic President Vaclav] Klaus, a student of the great F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, is exactly the sort of leader that Europe has to have. The liberty-minded defender of free markets has the opportunity to rock the continent out of its self-inflicted economic malaise.
Giving Thanks for Self-Reliant Americans. In the Year of Bottomless Bailouts, I am most grateful this Thanksgiving for Americans who refuse to abandon thrift, personal responsibility and self-reliance. When the moochers and entitlement-mongers drive you mad, remember that our nation still serves as home to millions of citizens who do for themselves.
Stop and Think. Really. Stop and think. What does your government actually do for you? ... In short, nothing tangible in the room is a "gift" from the government. Not one thing. (This is true even if you happen to work for the government and are situated in a government owned building. All of the work on the building was subcontracted. All of the items in the building were privately produced.)
Conservatism: More Relevant Than Ever. The problem is that both political parties have failed Americans. In recent years the Republican Party, which in Reagan's hands carried the conservative standard to new heights, lost its way. Federal spending now tops $25,000 per household annually, and the coming Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid costs of 77 million retiring baby boomers threaten to add another $12,000 per household to the taxpayers' annual tab. Yet neither party offers a solution to the entitlement crisis or a real plan to cut spending.
More Polls Show Voters Weary Of DC Control Freaks As Party Loyalty Tanks. A record number of Americans say most members of Congress do not deserve to be re-elected, according to the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp poll. The survey shows voter disdain for those in power in both controlling parties has grown more widespread than ever before.
Nation could be heading for a train wreck. I couldn't stand it any longer. I voted last week. My choice finally came down to a simple decision. I didn't want to support a Democratic president when it is a certainty that both the Senate and the House will be controlled by the Democrats. I didn't want to endorse a runaway Democratic train, with absolutely no restraints on big spending and high taxation. The prospect of a triumvirate consisting of Obama, Pelosi and Reid was too much for me.
Why Guns Are Better Than Butter: Woodrow Wilson's colossal expansion of government power faded soon after the war was over, and the 1920s were a period of minimalist government, ushered in by Warren Harding's promise of a "return to normalcy." Harding was swept to office on a wave of national disgust at Wilson's excesses, and the country was anxious to leave those excesses behind. But when the next national crisis struck — the Depression, under FDR — the U.S. got a massive expansion of government that, unlike Wilson's, has remained with us to the present day.
A Perfect Storm. Some elections are routine, some are important and some are historic. If Senator John McCain wins this election, it will probably go down in history as routine. But if Senator Barack Obama wins, it is more likely to be historic — and catastrophic.
First They Came for the Toddlers... The FLDS raid in Texas looks more ludicrous every day. Writing in the Dallas Morning News, Scott Henson takes aim at Judge Barbara Walther: "Excuse me, Judge? You issued a sweeping, house-to-house search warrant based on a highly questionable anonymous call that turned out to be phony. You refused to allow individual hearings for children, grouping them together like cattle."
The Counterfeiters … and the Fed: Our own Federal Reserve System has for many years been inflating our currency, effectively accomplishing what the Nazis had hoped to accomplish, albeit more gradually. Thanks to the Fed, almost $12 would be needed today to equal the purchasing power of $1 in 1945.
Foreign policy 'experience': [Scroll down] A plain fact should be noted: No governor ever had foreign policy experience before becoming president — not Ronald Reagan, not Franklin D. Roosevelt, nor any other governor. It is hard to know how many people could possibly have had foreign policy experience before reaching the White House besides a secretary of state or a secretary of defense.
GW's War: About one third of the citizenry thought GW's War needed to be waged, one third did not think the war was necessary and were in fact vehemently against it, the other third were indifferent to the whole concept. GW was a lousy speaker and had trouble rallying the citizenry. Few nations supported GW's War as allies. Some in Congress who had voted for the war, later changed their minds. As GW's War dragged on, they began to withhold funding.
Stalinism Was Just as Bad as Nazism. There is really no big difference between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. When World War II began in September 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were allies; indeed Stalin and Hitler launched the war together.
Why Obama's Communist Connections Are Not Headlines: I have seen for quite some time that although we won the Cold War — and defeated the Soviet communist empire — America is vulnerable to varying degrees of collectivism, wealth redistribution, "creeping socialism" (Ronald Reagan's phrase), class-warfare rhetoric, and generally milder, more palatable (but still dangerous) forms of disguised Marxism. Why? How? The answer is simple: The history and truth about communism is not taught by our educators.
Biden's Financial History Disqualifies Him For High Office. If a candidate for high office does a spectacularly poor job in managing his own family's finances, why on earth should we trust him in a national leadership position at a time of acute economic crisis? Senator Joe Biden's recently disclosed tax returns display a consistent pattern of poor judgment and shabby values that ought to disqualify him for the vice presidency or any other post of significant responsibility.
Hillary's Growing Shadow: Everyone is puzzled why the Democratic candidate isn't at least 10 points ahead. It seems the more Americans get used to Barack Obama, the less they want him as president — and the more Democrats will soon regret not nominating Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton Will Not Go Quietly, Again. Hillary Clinton is suggesting that her supporters be allowed to enter her name for nomination at the Democratic Convention. It would supposedly be cathartic for them, while also recognizing Hillary's historic role of being the first woman to blow an almost-certain shot at being the party's standard-bearer.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn feeds the darkest temptation. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning writer who died this week, spotted the danger back when it was called communism. Mind you, it took no great brains to see evil in an ideology that was trying to destroy him. After all, this Russian war hero had been arrested on wild charges of slandering Stalin and sent to the Gulag, where millions had died.
Fields of Water. If the terrible Midwest floods have a silver lining, it is the grit and self-reliance that residents have shown in coping with the disaster. Iowans in particular haven't blamed everyone else for their version of Katrina. They've been following orders on when to evacuate, volunteering to lay sandbags to protect still-dry areas, and are already planning how they'll clean up the mess when the floodwaters subside.
The Editor says...
Notice that in Iowa there was no looting, nobody blaming the White House for the rain, nobody permanently evacuated to another state, and there will probably be nobody from Cedar Rapids spending the next two years in a hotel at FEMA's expense.
A Constitutional President in 2008. Super Tuesday is behind us, and for many there were no surprises. The GOP presidential candidates who stood for the Constitution, individual liberty, and a sound economy, were marginalized by the national media and the party machine. But the machine no longer has a monopoly, and the countless millions who share our passion for liberty and limited government don't need to play by its rules and choose between supporting John McCain or staying home on Election Day.
Help Wanted: Evil Minions. The energy industry is almost universally criticized and hated. And for some reason the number of people wanting to work in it are in short supply.
The Sweet Illusion Of Socialism: Will America hold to the principles of capitalism and free enterprise or will it embrace elements of socialism, Marxism and communism? Those are our choices.
In-Game Advertising: Yet Another Insult. Call me silly or naïve, or maybe just old-fashioned, but I thought commercials were a way for us to get content for free, as in "free TV" and "free radio." I've always considered that to be an acceptable trade-off: if I don't want commercials I can opt for premium services such as pay TV or satellite radio and if I'm too cheap or "fiscally challenged" to shell out for such stuff then I should just shut up and go to the bathroom when the ads come on. That isn't enough anymore, apparently.
When You Fill Up the Tank Thank Congress for High Gas Prices. The unpleasant fact is that a poorer world will be dirtier and less healthy for human beings, and not so great for nature either. Unless we want to concede that the earth would be better off completely without human beings — and just who would judge it so anyway? — then it is time to recognize that both human beings and the earth will be better off the wealthier we become. And for the foreseeable future, that wealthier future will depend upon drilling for oil.
Broadcasting Obama: With Obama's nomination a lock, there's been increasing discussion of what his Presidency might produce. Time and again, conversation comes back to this question of a black president and America's image abroad. Yet, no one can name a single country that isn't ages behind the U.S. in terms of diversity and integration. The notion that there's a soft and cuddly world just waiting for America to catch up is not "global consciousness" but the very opposite: it is an American fantasy born of prosperity and isolation.
America's Most Miserable Cities: Imagine living in a city with the country's highest rate for violent crime and the second-highest unemployment rate. As an added kicker you need more Superfund dollars allocated to your city to clean up contaminated toxic waste sites than just about any other metro. Unfortunately, this nightmare is a reality for the residents of Detroit.
McCain's Costly Tax on Energy: What do John McCain, Environmental Defense, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Pew Center on Climate Change have in common? They have united to support a massive new tax increase on energy — which will raise costs throughout the economy and threaten the vitality of, among others, the oil and automobile industries.
FARC's 'Human Rights' Friends. It may have taken years for army intelligence to infiltrate the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and it may have been tough to convincingly impersonate rebels. But what seems to have been a walk in the park was getting the FARC to believe that an NGO was providing resources to help it in the dirty work of ferrying captives to a new location.
A Myth Dies In Colombia Jungle. One of the most positive side effects of Colombia's rescue of 15 hostages from FARC communist terrorists was in dispelling the myth of revolutionary Che Guevara as a romantic hero. Che, after all, was with the bad guys last week. The Colombian soldiers who freed the hostages wore Che T-shirts to convince the FARC they were fellow terrorists, and it actually worked. Within minutes, the hostages were handed over.
Hell on Earth: "One day, I discovered three kernels of corn in a small pile of cow dung, picked them up and cleaned them with my sleeve before eating," says Shin In-kun at www.northkoreanrefugees.com. "As miserable as it may seem, that was my lucky day." You may be asking yourself in what twisted world could that revolting story be considered a lucky day? Welcome to North Korea.
When Will North Korea Collapse? An array of intelligence analysts, Asian and American scholars, specialists in think tanks, and workers in relief organizations have renewed speculation that the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il is in danger of collapsing because that nation is on the brink of mass starvation and mounting isolation.
What do Yucca Mountain and Guantanamo Bay have in common? Neither is a great spot for a family vacation. And each is under the control of the federal government. … Yucca Mountain is where the government wants to keep incredibly dangerous substances — nuclear waste — until we figure out a better way to handle it. And Guantanamo Bay is where the federal government keeps incredibly dangerous people — jihadi enemy combatants — until we figure out a better way to handle them.
Some Thoughts On A Hypothetical Constitutional Crisis: Strategists for both John McCain and Barack Obama are chewing over a hypothetical scenario wherein Barack Obama recieves millions more votes than John McCain, but, because of the distribution of votes in the electoral college, McCain would become the president. … One Republican who has advised the McCain campaign thinks the country "can stand that sort of thing once every 100 years, but not twice in 8 years — especially with the Republicans winning every time."
Give Me Back My Party. At one time, the GOP was the party that fought for open government, term limits, reductions in spending and less government intrusion. When I was involved in the Republican Party, we wanted the IRS disbanded and the Department of Education either reduced, made useful, or abolished. We believed in the goodness of an individual and the greatness of individualism.
A Party Turned Upside-Down. Without a large body of workers at the local level, a political party would be like an army with only generals and no privates. This is just plain common sense, but it seems to have escaped the notice of the Republican Party, a vast organization with lots of generals and colonels and [very] few privates. Nobody has focused on building the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan took on the job.
If GOP Runs a RINO for President, The Party Will Crash and Burn. Republicans in Name Only, or RINOs, are a great asset to the Democrat Party and the news media. … Democrats believe Iraq is another Vietnam? Well, so does Republican Senator Chuck Hagel. Democrats are fearful that a Justice Alito may overturn Roe v. Wade? Well, so does Republican Senators Arlen Specter, Olympia Snow and Lincoln Chaffee. The Democrats fear we might be "abusing" terrorists? Well so does Senator John McCain.
Phony Soldiers and Phony Senators: Recently, at least 41 Democratic Senators, joined by a howling mob including George Soros' Media Matters, sought to silence Rush Limbaugh because of his reference to "phony" anti war soldiers. Limbaugh's comments, taken in context, referred to Jesse Macbeth, a confessed and convicted phony, whose faked but graphic war crimes confessions received far wider media notice than his later confession. He had been discharged in boot camp after 40 days of service.
Where are the 'human shields' in Burma? As it becomes increasingly apparent that a blood bath against innocents is taking place in Burma, the disingenuous nature of the human shields who flew to Iraq to tie themselves to installations — civilain and military — in a vain effort to forestall the U.S. invasion and the eventual deposing of a ruthless dictator becomes even clearer. Not one of them is even speaking out against this outrage, let alone making any effort to prevent this butchery. Remember. They did not and will not stand with the civilians in any place where people are fighting for democracy.
James Dobson Interview: It's About Principle, not Pragmatism. "Here's why I cannot vote for Rudy Giuliani. He's pro-abortion. He's never repudiated gay marriage in New York City or at least the civil unions in New York City. He's called a champion of gay rights. Rudy is opposed to school choice. He's in favor of open borders. … He's been married three times. When his second wife got sick of it she threw him out and he went to live with two homosexuals."
The National Church of Socialism: The financially and demographically struggling National Council of Churches (NCC) is mulling over a new "Social Creed for the 21st Century" that will succinctly articulate its left-leaning political activism. Many of the NCC's heterodox officials and activist supporters could not affirm traditional Christian theological creeds. For them, political creeds are the desired alternative.
The Borking of American Politics: If you think American politics have gotten nastier, crueler and more symbolic over the last 20 years, blame Ted Kennedy. This month marks the 20th anniversary of the borking of Judge Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan's failed Supreme Court nominee. And it was Ted Kennedy's bilious bugle blast that brought the man down.
Veneration of evil. [Che Guevara] continues to be a symbol of freedom and revolutionary fervour and purity for people who can't read or think. Che was Fidel Castro's right-hand man. Despite the fact leftie morons from Pierre Trudeau to Michael Moore venerate the Cuban totalitarian state, it is just a prison masquerading as a nation. … Che was put in charge of turning Cuba into a modern industrial nation. He failed miserably, thus consigning Cuba to a future as a colony of the Soviet Union, exchanging sugar for fighter planes.
Columnist Ann Coulter Declares 'Jews Need to Be Perfected by Becoming Christians'. Slash-and-burn columnist Ann Coulter shocked a cable TV talk-show audience Monday when she declared that Jews need to be "perfected" by becoming Christians, and that America would be better off if everyone were Christian.
In Defense of Ann Coulter. Ann is promoting a book and in those circumstances she accepts all invitations, even into hostile territory. She came on Deutsch's CNBC show,The Big Idea, the interview appearing over a chiron (sic) reading: "Being Extreme Makes Millions." The host is a blow-dried pretty boy who wears half-glasses down on his nose to create a kind of Michael-Landon-meets-Erkel effect.
The Editor says...
Chyron is becoming a generic term for a superimposed television title, the kind that appears over every TV program to identify whoever's speaking. Practically every television station has a Chyron graphics system. Thirty years ago such a machine was called a "character generator" because it was just a typesetting machine for television. Now they also put up banners and backgrounds and all sorts of annoying "bugs" and logos all over the screen. You can't produce a competitive TV news show without one, and yet, graphics overload is one of TV's most annoying traits.
Why I Am A Conservative: I became a conservative because … I don't get upset that the federal government "doesn't care about me." In fact, I'd be pleased if it forgets that I exist. … Having a government that is too involved in our lives is far more of a threat than a government that isn't involved enough. … Life begins at the moment of conception and we have an obligation to speak up for the children that are being exterminated via abortion since they can't speak up for themselves.
LOST: The Law of the Sea Treaty
Now on a page of its own, located here.
Bush Amazes. At the trial, the prosecutor had conceded that there was no underlying crime and that Libby had not "outed" anyone. But then in the sentencing phase the prosecutor completely falsified himself and claimed Libby had done serious national security damage — by naming an employee of the CIA who was not covert and not overseas, contrary to his statements at trial. The judge, who must have been a real whiz in law school (yes, I know he was appointed by Bush), sentenced Libby, a first offender who will never be in court again, to two and a half years in prison. It was insane.
Nine Members of Congress Who Should Resign Right After Larry Craig. There has been a lot of talk about Larry Craig's on again/off again decision to resign from Congress. Like most Republicans, I'm of the opinion that Craig should resign, but wouldn't it be great if he could take a few people with him?
Genocide Nearly Forgotten by History. The past week saw the anniversary of one of the great tragedies of history overlooked by most of the US mainstream media. … We must remember what a "workers paradise" really means: The infliction of pain on the worker for the good of the government.
Smile: What all celebs can learn from O. J. Simpson. The mug shot is the ignominious I.D., captured at a moment when the subject is, all at once, shamed, humbled, frustrated, fearful, and usually at a record low of dishevelment. The mug shot is supposed to be just a bureaucratic record. In practice, however, it is punishment for being a suspect at all.
Hugo's 'utopia': Socialism's lie. Severe food shortages in Venezuela — milk, sugar, eggs and more — indicate supporters of Hugo Chavez, the country's slippery socialist strongman, are getting their just deserts. With Cuban dictator Fidel Castro as Mr. Chavez's role model, mentor and commie muse, no wonder so many suffer so much.
It's Time To Get Over Katrina Already. It's not as if hurricanes are a once a millennium event in the United States. ... People lose their homes in this country every day of the year. If it isn't a hurricane, it's an earthquake. If it isn't an earthquake, it's a tornado. If it isn't a tornado, it's a fire. If it isn't a fire, it's a flood. Yet nobody sits and frets about John Doe, age 58, who lost his house in a flash flood two years ago or Jane Doe, age 60, who had her house blown away by a twister back in 2005.
Did someone mention Hurricane Katrina?
You're Dead, I'm Healing. I believe that this early healing talk is both foolish and immoral. It is foolish because one does not speak about healing the same day (or week or perhaps even month) that one is traumatized — especially by evil. One must be allowed time for anger and grief. To speak of healing and "closure" before one goes through those other emotions is to speak not of healing but of suppression.
Read this.
Programmed to Kill: An interview with Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc. ... Pacepa's newest book is Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination.
It's Called the Constitution. It is important to remember that President Clinton fired all 93 U.S. attorneys when he took office in 1993, and gave them only ten days to vacate their offices. This was certainly within his authority as Chief Executive and did not raise a firestorm of protest like the one that has been leveled at the current administration.
The Impending Food Fight. While we worry about gas prices, the costs of milk, meat and fresh produce silently skyrockets. So like the end of cheap energy, is the era of cheap food also finally over?
Did someone mention High Gas Prices?
General Pace latest victim of homosexual agenda, says military monitor. The president of a conservative military watchdog group says she's dismayed over the recent sudden removal of General Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Marine general created controversy in March when he likened homosexuality to adultery, and said the military should not condone it by allowing homosexuals to serve in the military.
General Pace and the PC Police: Marine Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should not apologize for supporting the law excluding homosexuals from the military. That law, Section 654, Title 10, was passed with veto-proof bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress in 1993. Federal courts have declared it constitutional several times. Nor should Gen. Pace be intimidated by name-calling gay activists who are berating the general for expressing his personal opinions on immorality.
Failing To Keep The Pace: The pre-emptive announcement that General Peter Pace will not be nominated for another two-year term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is yet another recent example of Bush Administration backpedaling in the face of Congressional and media pressure.
Coulter's Inoffensive Remarks: The most recent offense took place on CNBC's Donnie Deutsch show. Interviewing Ann Coulter, Deutsch asked her what her ideal world would look like. Her response included a reference that everybody would be Christian, to which Deutsch, a practicing Jew, took offense. Probing further, he elicited from Coulter the remark that Christians believe Jews need to be "perfected." Deutsch claimed he was further offended, using the weapon of victimhood to near perfection.
Ann Coulter Wants Jews to Become Christian — So What? Those who label Ann Coulter an anti-Semite do damage to the battle against anti-Semitism. I say this as a committed Jew, a religious Jew, a Jewish writer and lecturer, a past college instructor in Jewish history, co-author of a widely read book on anti-Semitism, recipient of the American Jewish Press Association's Prize for Excellence in Jewish Commentary, instructor in Torah at the American Jewish University, and a man who has fought anti-Semitism all his life. There is nothing in what Ann Coulter said to a Jewish interviewer on CNBC that indicates she hates Jews or wishes them ill, or does damage to the Jewish people or the Jewish state.
Unnecessary Scandal. Alberto Gonzales has to go. I say this with no pleasure — he's a decent and honorable man — and without the slightest expectation that his departure will blunt the Democratic assault on the Bush administration over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. … Gonzales has allowed a scandal to be created where there was none. That is quite an achievement. He had a two-foot putt and he muffed it.
What's Wrong With Vocational School? The spread of wealth at the top of American society has created an explosive increase in the demand for craftsmen. Finding a good lawyer or physician is easy. Finding a good carpenter, painter, electrician, plumber, glazier, mason — the list goes on and on — is difficult, and it is a seller's market. Journeymen craftsmen routinely make incomes in the top half of the income distribution while master craftsmen can make six figures.
Why it's foolish to turn your back on tradition: In his brilliant essay "The Great Relearning," Tom Wolfe recounts a "curious footnote to the hippie movement." In 1968, at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, doctors found themselves treating diseases "no living doctor had ever encountered before, diseases that had disappeared so long ago they had never even picked up Latin names." These maladies had such names as the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the rot.
The President's Prosecutors: [Attorney General] Gonzales yesterday said he regretted the way Congress had been informed of the personnel changes. In the meantime, let the Democrats who had Webster Hubbell and Robert F. Kennedy running the Justice Department criticize the Bush administration for politicizing the Justice Department.
Cafeteria Constitutionalism: Appointees to Madison's boards and commissions must take an oath of office to uphold the U.S. and Wisconsin constitutions. But last month the city council approved a measure allowing them to refuse to swear to uphold a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage if they disagree with it. ... It's one thing to disagree with the amendment, quite another to rewrite the constitution.
Searching for the Gipper. Is there another Ronald Reagan on the horizon for 2008, a leader who can rally the coalitions that gave Reagan an eight-year mandate? Let's examine (in alphabetical order) some of the most frequently mentioned Republican presidential candidates. Just for fun, let's create a 1-to-10 "Gipper meter." Ten would be a Republican leader of Reagan's experience, stature, vision and charisma. One would be Lincoln Chaffee.
The Next Reagan? Republicans need someone like Ronald Reagan, someone everyone knows, someone everyone likes, someone who is conservative and — most importantly — someone who would hold the presidency for eight years. What qualifications would such a candidate need? He would have to be someone who is very articulate and convincing in front of the camera, someone who exudes confidence, someone who naturally appeals to women voters, someone familiar with the news media, someone who has kept very much in the public eye and yet someone who has been away from the mess in Washington for awhile. Is there such a man? Yes, there is: Fred Thompson.
How FDR Destroyed the Dollar: Until 1933, the U. S. dollar was the among the strongest and most stable currencies in the world. With the stroke of a pen, President Franklin Roosevelt torpedoed it. We are still plagued with the resulting inflation.
Saddam's just deserts. In a final blasphemy, Saddam Hussein, who spent most of his life as a murdering secularist, went to his justified death holding a Koran and offering his soul to God, if God would accept it. If God does, He will have to commute the sentences of Saddam's mass murdering predecessors, including Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.
Only stupid, sadistic dictators hang — and Saddam was both. Only a minority of modern dictators have been executed for their crimes. The most bloodthirsty of all, Stalin and Mao, died in full possession of their powers, if not their faculties. Franco pulled off the same trick. Hitler cheated the hangman with a bullet in the bunker. Pol Pot lost power, but was never brought to justice and died in his bed, as did Idi Amin.
The Charlie Brown Democrats. Like Charlie Brown always believing Lucy will hold the football, Clinton and Carter raced to the kick-off of peace with a murderous dictator — only to find out that they had (surprise!) been lied to. The Clinton legacy, already shredding because of his inability to deal with al Qaeda and terrorism, has just been dealt yet another — perhaps mortal — blow by Clinton and Carter's foolish trust in the North Korean father and son dictators.
Baked Alaska for North Korea. Lil' Kim has finally gotten around to detonating his first atomic bomb, thanks to Jimmy Carter's brokering of a quick American surrender and the immediate gift of two reactors, back on the early Clinton legacy watch, which allowed the short shake-down artist with that inveterate propensity for khaki to enrich the plutonium necessary to construct his recent radioactive surprise.
Chris Wallace, Card-Carrying Democrat? In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, reporter Deborah Solomon asked "Fox News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace what political party he belonged to. His answer: "None of your business." Oh, please. Ever heard of a little thing called public records? After five minutes of exhaustive research, we found that Wallace is a registered Democrat and has been for more than two decades.
The era of big-government conservatism must come to an end. The single-best thing the lame-duck GOP Congress can do is vote in a spending-limitation bill with balanced-budget targets for the next couple of years. This would be a spending-cap pay-as-you-go, which means that any increased spending must be offset by lower spending in other parts of the budget. Not higher taxes. Reduced spending.
Why we love government. The founders of our nation were suspicious, if not contemptuous, of government. … Today's Americans hold a different vision of government. It's one that says Congress has the right to do just about anything upon which it can secure a majority vote. Most of what Congress does fits the description of forcing one American to serve the purposes of another American. That description differs only in degree, but not in kind, from slavery.
Acts of God — or acts of reckless man? The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina last August will be documented once again in anniversary TV specials later this month. But it's still unclear whether the terrible storm cut into the what-me-worry attitude that has led many of us to build homes below sea level, on barrier islands, on hillsides with brush that annually burn, or over earthquake faults — and then be shocked when catastrophe comes.
Sweet land of liberty ... believe it or not. There is no doubt — and I would challenge you to prove otherwise — that we live in a place and time where individual liberties and civil liberties are more extensive and more valued than they have ever been before on the face of the earth. And yet a huge number of people take the time each day to complain about how dangerous the Bush administration is, or to worry about the "all-out assault" on our civil liberties.
Defending Ann Coulter From Jersey Girls. Defending Ann Coulter, who has come under attack by Senators Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.) and Frank Lautenberg (D.-N.J.), seems to be an oxymoron. She is the last person who needs to be defended, given the fact that she is a lawyer who presumably can defend herself and possesses a positively frightening intellect and wit.
They Shot the Wrong Lincoln. Apart from Bush, the only person who hasn't figured out that Lincoln Chafee is a Democrat is Lincoln Chafee. … It's hard to figure why Bush would support a half-wit like Lincoln Chafee. … When the farrier business proved too taxing for Chafee's intellect, he went into the family business — politics. His father died in office, and Lincoln was appointed by the governor to serve out the remainder of Pop's term in the U.S. Senate. In terms of qualifications for the job, Chafee makes Michael Brown look like Donald Rumsfeld.
McCain Declares War on the Constitution (Again). McCain's comment reveals his willingness to impose his view of what constitutes "clean government" even though it means setting aside a fundamental right clearly and explicitly defined in the Constitution.
Revelations of Joseph Smith. After two columns on the subject of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), I am getting lots of requests from Mormons to stop writing about "their" religion. … After I was asked to read about (and consider converting to) Mormonism, I came across some rather disturbing accusations against Joseph Smith, Jr.
The General Is a Spook: Get Over It. For the sake of argument, let's assume that those worrying loudly just didn't know that six of the 19 previous Directors [of the CIA] have been military men, and more than that if you count some who served their country in numerous different capacities, including the military (George H.W. Bush, for example).
Misery from companies. Americans should be the happiest people in history. We've got a booming economy, with 4.8 percent growth in the first quarter. Unemployment is down to 4.7 percent even as the population grows. The Dow Jones is near a historic high. But we're not happy. In a recent AP poll, 73 percent said the country is on the wrong track. Only 23 percent say we're heading in the right direction.
Owning your ideas: An essential tool for freedom. Thinking about going into business? Have an idea that you think will change the world? What if you were told that there was no way you could prevent someone from stealing your idea [especially important if your idea is successful] and exploiting it to make a profit?
Congress Should Impose Trade Sanctions on the Google-China Deal. Last week America's second largest technology company, Google, announced a program that would assist communist China's ongoing attempt to control the minds of its over 1.3 billion people. Simply put, Google will help make sure that when anyone in China looks up Tiananmen Square on the Chinese version Google is creating of its top rated search engine, that person will never see the famous picture of a student facing a Chinese Army tank.
Al Gore and the next 9-11. When Al Gore ran for president in 2000, he said, "Our Constitution is a living and breathing document" that changes its meaning over time. This week, we learned that among the things changing in Gore's Constitution is the war power. It meant one thing when Bill Clinton was president, but means another thing now.
With friends like Jack... Political Reality No. 1: The party in power gets corrupted. Political Reality No. 2: Indicted incumbents don't get re-elected.
Dr. Coburn, I Presume. Why does Barbara Boxer want to stop him from delivering babies?
The French way implodes. Socialism is an insidious poison. The vast majority of French voters seem wedded to their government-supplied goodies — failing to recognize that their economic and therefore social lives are unraveling because of that dependence.
Tortured reasoning: After decades of ignoring the fact that rights and responsibilities go together, it was perhaps inevitable that an under-educated and easily confused generation should include some who do not understand that the rights granted to captured troops by the Geneva Convention apply to those who have accepted the terms of the Geneva Convention. It does not apply to people who are not troops and who have blatantly violated the whole framework of that convention.
Republicanism in decline. The Republican Party in Washington is in trouble not because it's overrun by crooks, but because it's packed with cowards — and has degenerated into a caricature of the party that swept to power 11 years ago promising to take on the federal bureaucracy and liberate the creative genius of American society.
The Duke of Earle. [Tom] DeLay, who says he will be vindicated in court, is being targeted for doing his political job exceedingly well. That job, in part, has been to get more Republicans elected to office and to keep them there. When Democrats did it effectively for four decades, it was considered good politics. When DeLay and the Republicans do it, they are Satan's servants. [Ronnie] Earle apparently believes he has been "called" to stop them before they sin again.
The World According to J.C.: "Tedious" doesn't begin to describe the new book by America's worst ex-president. Jimmy Carter's 20th book is a tedious meditation about the appropriate uses of moral values in political life — as wisely and humbly exemplified by Himself — and of their misuses under the current Bush administration.
Privatize Fannie and Freddie. Two centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson argued that private property was the touchstone of American democracy. If he were alive today I am sure he would still be making that argument, because the idea is just as valuable now as it was then. And so I don't hesitate to argue, in the spirit of Jefferson, that Congress today is jeopardizing the American Dream.
The role of prices: What about the house that you might have purchased for $50,000 in 1970 that you're selling today? If you charged me $250,000 for it, today's price for its replacement, as opposed to what you paid for it, are you guilty of price-gouging? … Politicians would serve us better by focusing their energies on tax-gouging.
Dems' lurch to the left will hurt them in 2006. In a bizarre tactic that has left many Democrat strategists and centrist Democratic groups puzzled and disturbed, the Democratic leadership has jumped even further to the left since their last election defeats.
Will the GOP be Katrina's Biggest Casualty? Neither Tip O'Neill nor Jim Wright — two powerful former Democratic Speakers of the House famous for their big spending ways — could have said it better than Delay. The worst thing about Delay's comment is not its factual unreality, bad as that is, but what the remark says about the GOP congressional leadership's attitude about spending our tax dollars. "We've already cut it to the bone" or "there isn't any more fat to cut" or variations thereof were typical responses from O'Neill and Wright to critics of excessive federal spending.
Time to confront reality. Thanks to a series of natural disasters, unspeakable acts of terrorism and the responses to them, this country is headed beyond a mere budget crisis. We're drifting toward to a five-alarm financial fiasco.
Situational libertarianism: Liberties should be as unlimited as possible — unless and until there arises a real threat to the open society. Neo-Nazis are pathetic losers. Why curtail civil liberties to stop them? But when a real threat — such as jihadism — arises, a liberal democratic society must deploy every resource, including the repressive powers of the state, to deter and defeat those who would abolish liberal democracy.
Is it time for conservatives to dump the GOP? Thanks to the incredible expansion of federal entitlements, regulations and pork spending sanctioned by the GOP leadership in Congress since 2001, there is virtually no chance that Big Government is going to be shrunk even a little any time soon. And since there is no sign the folks running Congress are willing to change course, why shouldn't conservatives dump the GOP?
Judgment Day: President Bush should listen to his base, not his opponents. What's wrong with this picture? President Bush was quick to slap his conservative base, yet he has shown an inexhaustible supply of sensitivity to those who plot to derail his presidency. Early on, the president was solicitous of Senator Ted Kennedy, inviting him to the White House residence to watch a movie and share popcorn. He even named the main Department of Justice building after Robert Kennedy. In return, Kennedy has never missed an opportunity to stick a knife between the president's ribs.
What Happened at Chappaquiddick: In a sequence of events that instantly became famous, Senator Kennedy escaped from the submerged vehicle and swam to shore. By 2:30 a.m. he had made his way back to his hotel in Edgartown, where he was sighted in the lobby. He made 17 phone calls to family members and associates. But not until 10 hours after the accident did he call the police to tell them about the car crash — and the other person in the car, who had died.
See also Chappaquiddick: A Profile in Cowardice.
Congress and the Federal Reserve Erode Your Dollars. Texas Rep. Ron Paul does not blame the Chinese yuan for the drastic decline of the dollar. Rather, Dr. Paul attributes it to Congress – which spends more money than is brought in by taxes each year – and the Federal Reserve – which over the last 15 years has increased the money supply by trillions of dollars.
The Top 8 Reasons Not To Support Condi Rice For President In 2008: Among other things, she has never run for office before, she's pro-abortion, and she's pro-Affirmative Action. Most of her other domestic views are completely unknown.
A Libertarian President? Don't Laugh! Libertarian ideas, such as expanding individual liberty, re-limiting government, and protecting private property rights, have become much more respectable during the past two decades. Less progress, however, appears to be taking place in politics. Nevertheless, I predict the President of the United States elected in 2016 will be the candidate of the Libertarian Party.
Making intelligent errors. Since intelligence is always less than perfect, we're forced to decide which error is least costly. Leading up to our war with Iraq, the potential errors confronting us were: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and we incorrectly assumed he didn't. Or, he didn't have weapons of mass destruction and we incorrectly assumed he did. Both errors are costly, but which is more costly? It's my guess that it would have been more costly for us to make the first error: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and we incorrectly assumed he didn't.
What's In a Name? The folks who brought you "compassionate conservatism" now offer "The Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism." Perfect: A war that's not called a war for fear of making people think about war, which is waged against an enemy who is not identified for fear of offending mass-murderers and the people who coddle them, and which occurs everywhere on the planet so no one is left out, but nowhere specific so no one is put in.
Snuff out this silly suit. The ongoing federal lawsuit against tobacco companies is an outrage against the Rule of Law and against the very idea of limited federal government. This amount demanded in the suit, inherited by the Bush administration from the Clintonistas, was last week whittled down from its original $280 billion to a "mere" $10 billion. It is past time for the administration to administer the coup de grace to this lawsuit, for it makes a mockery of our tort system.
Memín pinguin: On the heels of Mexican President Vicente Fox insulting U.S. civil rights groups by opining that Mexican immigrants in the United States — legal or otherwise — are filling jobs "not even blacks" want to fill, along comes Memín Pinguin. And once again, the Mexicans don't know what all the fuss is about.
Cloning for dollars: Lost in all the hand-wringing are some inconvenient facts for advocates of embryonic stem-cell research: "Any potential therapy [using embryonic stem cells] is years away from being tested in humans." That statement is not my assessment. It's the assessment of that bastion of a secular business worldview: Investor's Business Daily.
Municipal Broadband Is Not a Public Utility. Broadband, we are told, is too important a resource to be left to the "vagaries of the marketplace." It apparently doesn't matter that as a group, telephone, cable, satellite, and wireless companies have succeeded in getting broadband to more than 90 percent of the zip codes in the U.S. It doesn't matter that the U.S. leads the world with 34 million wireline broadband connections, accounting for more than 20 percent of the worldwide total of 150 million broadband lines at the end of 2004.
Sovereignty hangs on in Europe. The European Union, which has a flag no one salutes and an anthem no one knows, now seeks ratification of a constitution few have read. Surely only its authors have read its turgid earnestness without laughing, which is one reason why the European project is foundering.
The Terri Schiavo Subsection
Protecting the lives of others is fundamental to civilization. Protecting family members and others who cannot defend themselves is fundamental to a civilized society. Terri Schiavo's family, and many others, tried to protect her because that is what wild animals and civilized humans do for their own kind. When a migrating goose is ill or injured, other geese stay with the downed goose until it can fly again or dies. They do not drown the disabled goose so they can conveniently resume their flight.
Schiavo case matters in symbol and substance. Terri Schiavo is a symbol in the battle over life-and-death issues that inconveniently, but necessarily, confront us.
There are No Excuses for Dehydrating the Disabled. "Terri Schiavo's autopsy results confirm what was feared — she was disabled, and her death was due to the deliberate denial of hydration," said Wendy Wright, CWA's senior policy director. "The autopsy report described Terri's medical history and condition in detail, but the cold reality of the truth is that her cause of death was 'dehydration.' Terri Schiavo died because the court ordered the removal of the instrument that provided her water.
Cruel and unusual: If the tragic case of Terri Schiavo shows nothing else, it shows how easily "the right to die" can become the right to kill. It is hard to believe that anyone, regardless of their position on euthanasia, would have chosen the agony of starvation and dehydration as the way to end someone's life.
Starved for justice. How about a Republican governor sending in the National Guard to stop an innocent American woman from being starved to death in Florida? Republicans like the military. Democrats get excited about the use of military force only when it's against Americans.
Orwell and Terri Schiavo: They say that Terri is being "allowed to die." No. She is being made to die. All across America, in hospitals, mental wards and institutions for the severely disabled, there are people who, if we withdrew our care for them, would die. We wouldn't call this "allowing" them to die. We would call it scandalous neglect.
Some final notes on the Terri Schiavo case: While conservative opinion was severely splintered, liberal opinion seemed monolithic: Let her die. Liberals usually rally to the side of vulnerable people, but not in this case. Democrats talked abstractly about procedures and rules, a reversal of familiar roles. I do not understand why liberal friends defined the issue almost solely in terms of government intruding into family matters. Liberals are famously willing to enter family affairs to defend individual rights, opposing parental-consent laws, for example. Why not here?
Thoughts of woman in 'waking coma' revealed. Neuroscientists have reignited the debate over whether patients in a vegetative state are conscious of their surroundings, by claiming that a woman in such a 'waking coma' can respond to verbal commands. … After years of studying the brains of vegetative patients, this is the first evidence, the researchers say, of awareness in such a patient.
Mother in coma laughs at her children's jokes. A mother of two who has spent two years in a coma has started chuckling at her children's jokes. It was the first sound Andrea Brushneen, 31, had made since suffering severe head injuries in a car crash.
Device wakes man with severe brain injuries. A man with severe brain injuries who spent six years in a near-vegetative state can now chew his food, watch a movie and talk with family thanks to a brain pacemaker that may change the way such patients are treated, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday [8/1/2007].
Implant boosts activity in injured brain. Brain function has been improved in a patient who was in a minimally conscious state, by electrically stimulating a specific brain region with implanted electrodes. The achievement raises questions about the treatment of other patients who have been in this condition for years, the researchers say.
Sleeping pill Zolpidem awakens girl from coma. A girl who has spent six years in a coma is showing signs of life after taking a sleeping pill. Amy Pickard, 23, had lain in her bed, unable to eat or breathe for herself since falling unconscious in 2001. … She is one of 360 people taking part in a worldwide trial of Zolpidem as a treatment for people in comas. Sixty per cent of patients taking part in the study have started showing signs of life.
Is "ethics" just another word for politics? If Tom DeLay was an incompetent and ineffective fool, Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi would be doing all they could to keep him around. … What Reid and Pelosi hate is that DeLay is a highly effective conservative partisan and thanks in large part to his work, and sympathy from a large part of the American electorate for the values he represents, Democrats are the minority party today.
Boycott Proctor & Gamble. Procter & Gamble, makers of Crest toothpaste, Tide detergent, and Pampers diapers, has publicly thrown their support and money behind the homosexual political agenda. The company recently wrote to all their Cincinnati employees urging them to support the overturning of a city law which forbids giving special rights to homosexuals. Procter & Gamble is believed to be the first company to support the political agenda of the homosexual movement.
The Disappearing Dollar: Since the last links between the dollar and gold were severed in 1971, the dollar essentially has operated as an article of faith. Christopher Mayer, writing for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, states: "Faith that paper money itself was of any lasting value would have struck our forebears as patently absurd."
There's No Glass Floor. When Carly Fiorina was recently terminated as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, the world's second-largest computer company, it renewed charges that a glass ceiling and gender gap keep women down. That is a strange response to this case, and more evidence that gender nonsense still holds sway.
Not yours to give. What about President Bush's $350 million commitment for earthquake and tsunami relief — is that just as praiseworthy? Let's look at it. Charity is reaching into one's own pockets to assist his fellow man in need. Reaching into someone else's pocket to assist one's fellow man hardly qualifies as charity. When done privately, we deem it theft, and the individual risks jail time.
Note: The article above alludes to this much earlier one:
"Not Yours to Give", an excerpt from The Life of Colonel David Crockett, compiled by Edward S. Ellis (1884).
Congress is Wrong to Defund Strategic Programs. This is not an arms race; it is prudence. The issue at hand is nothing more complicated than having a nuclear arsenal of the right size, flexibility, and quality and studying how such an arsenal should be developed. For the sake of ensuring that this vital capability remains at the forefront of defense planning, Congress should reinstate funding for these programs.
Hysteria: Vioxx — when taken in very high dosages and for a long period of time — is suspected of causing cardiovascular problems for a small number of patients. Two others, Celebrex and Aleve, might when taken in huge doses and for a long time cause similar problems. The makers of Vioxx imprudently hauled it off the market — an invitation for the trial lawyers to pounce. The makers of Celebrex and Aleve have acted more prudently.
Painkiller panic: Nobody claims [Vioxx] is dangerous if the normal 25 mg dose is taken for only a couple of weeks … The hullabaloo about questionable risks from chronic overuse of such beneficent drugs as Celebrex and Alleve may yet result in truly serious health risks if it ends up contributing to the FDA's terrifying bureaucratic urge to deny doctors and their patients timely access to vital drugs.
Better answers: The case for Judeo-Christian values. There is an epic battle taking place in the world over what value system humanity will embrace. There are essentially three competitors: European secularism, American Judeo-Christianity and Islam.
Humor: U.N. Money-for-Peace Scam May Force Annan to Resign. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan today vigorously denied allegations that he has overseen a complex, fraudulent scheme to pilfer billions of dollars from 191 nations under the guise of providing "global peace services."
Ten years after the "Contract With America". When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, it was widely hailed as a revolution. Now, 10 years later, it is looking more and more like a coup d'etat that only changed the leadership while leaving everything else unchanged. … It looks more and more like the Republicans have become the Democrats they overthrew in 1994.
"Mega Fix": The dazzling political deceit that led to 9/11. In a stunning and surprisingly entertaining new 90-minute DVD video documentary – titled "Mega Fix" – Emmy-award-winning filmmaker Jack Cashill leads the viewer from Oklahoma City to Dubrovnik, where Ron Brown's plane crashed, to the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia to the destruction of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island to the Olympic Park bombing. As Cashill proves beyond dispute in this DVD, these are not multiple conspiracies, but all part of one major political fix.
The Facts on Halliburton: Why do leftists demonize Halliburton? What proof exists of their claims of corruption? What exactly has Halliburton done to profit from American military casualties? Indeed, have they profited from military casualties? Is there a special relationship between the Bush administration and Halliburton so that the company receives contracts without observing the normal bidding process? It is certainly true that during a two year period Halliburton's revenue from Defense Department contracts doubled. However, that increase in revenue occurred from 1998 to 2000 - during the Clinton administration.
The Editor says...Halliburton wins contracts for oil field work in the Middle East for the same reason that AT&T won the classified contract to operate the AUTOVON system.* They have the specialized equipment and the trained, experienced people to do the job, and they can get started today, if necessary. It is a waste of time and effort to shop around for small, minority-owned, or "disadvantaged" businesses when there are huge, urgent and highly specialized projects at hand.
Kerry-Edwards and Halliburton's fallen. It's too bad that Mr. Edwards confined himself to merely scoring points against Mr. Cheney and neglected to acknowledge the supreme sacrifices some Halliburton employees and members of their families have made in the war effort. Forty-eight Halliburton employees have died in Iraq since the start of the war last year.
But why Dubai? It's closer to the action. Texas is the can-do state. But there's no denying that Dubai has become the can-do sheikdom and a potent rival to Houston's supremacy as the center of the oil business. The move of Halliburton's corporate base from Houston to Dubai is a stark example of the industry's shift in power from North America. The company is moving closer to the oil fields of the Middle East and Africa and its big national oil firms that control financing, exploration and production.
A secular-to-English dictionary. Secular speak is a way of making nasty things sound nice, rather like applying lipstick to a pig. After the application, the pig is still ugly and smells bad. So it is with secular principles supporting immorality and the culture of death.
Women and Politics: Reconsidering the 19th Amendment. They sit home waiting for their husbands to bring home the money, or toil away at little jobs dreamed up to assuage the egos of bourgeois women living in the suburbs. Consequently, the typical liberal woman's political calculus is based on budgeting, not earning. They have no idea how the money materializes. But they have lots of opinions on how to spend it. They claim to be Republicans, but they are no more Republican than Bill Clinton. In fact, they adore Bill Clinton.
Why the 9/11 Fund was a mistake. In many cases, the government ended up paying a fortune to people who had already collected a fortune from private donors. USA Today reported in 2002 that relatives of New York police officers received an average of $929,000 in charitable funds. The families of firefighters and ambulance crews got $1,037,000.
The problems at Treasury: I was working at Treasury in 1989 during its 200th anniversary. President George H.W. Bush got a big laugh from the crowd when he noted that George Washington had nominated Alexander Hamilton to be secretary in the morning, he was confirmed by the Senate the same afternoon and sworn into office that evening.
The coming fiscal civil war: Unless politicians in Washington, D.C., start cutting government today, Social Security and Medicare will eventually drive the United States into fiscal civil war. It will not be a shooting war, pitting brother against brother. It will be a taxing-and-spending war, pitting grandparents against grandchildren.
How 9-11 happened: We don't need a "commission" to find out how
Bush had no advance warning of 9/11 attacks. So what has all this "damaging" testimony at the 9/11 Commission told us so far? Contrary to what the conspiracy fans would have you believe, we've learned that the administration had no advance warning of the attacks.
The Triumph Of the 9/11 Commission: Finally, an official body of the American government has come out and said what needs to be said: that the enemy is "Islamist terrorism… not just 'terrorism…' some generic evil." The 9/11 commission in its final report even declares that Islamist terrorism is the "catastrophic threat" facing America.
Fact and farce in the romance of states' rights: Simply stated, states' rights in this case really means full power to state courts, which are being allowed to create (rather than interpret) laws in defiance of the democratic process and in contempt of the clear preference of a majority of Americans, including both presidential candidates and most elected officials.
Love America or love to hate America? Tell me, when was the last time you saw a rickety boat leave this country for the shores of Cuba? Or throngs of wayward Americans seeking haven — in Mexico?
The dumbing down of America: I wish to make an observation that I dare say most of you are going to find both offensive and insensitive. I really don't expect to make any friends here, but I may just cause a few people to think for a few minutes.
The Civilian Conservation Corps and the roots of the USA's police state. It is ironic that the first "C" in the CCC refers to the "Civilian" Conservation Corps because the program was actually run by the Army. CCC enrollees were organized and transported by the War Department. Usually, they were shipped far from home to the socialist labor camps. … Most enlistees began with a five-day boot camp at a military base where they got physical training and orientation. Discipline at most camps was military too, with marching, formations, KP duty and "lights out" orders at night. Photographs show that officers at the camps wore military uniforms and used military titles.
Editorial Comment: President Reagan was everything that Bill Clinton and John Kerry are not. So many editorials have been written since Reagan died, I could probably make another page just about Reagan, but I won't. This one article is enough:
So Now They Think He Was Charming. Reagan was a bulldog, completely, implacably right-wing on every issue. He was the right-wing Energizer Bunny. He never quit and he kept beating liberals. He cut taxes 25 percent across the board his first year in office; he walked away from Gorbachev at Reykjavik; he fired all those air traffic controllers — and wouldn't let them come back even when they wanted to; he gave speeches about "welfare queens" and polluting trees; he nominated Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork to the Supreme Court...
Well... maybe just one more.
Reagan changed the world. Few Americans realize that President Reagan's economic policy won the Cold War by rejuvenating capitalism. Members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, with whom I spoke in Moscow during the Soviet Union's final months, agreed that it was President Reagan's confidence in capitalism, not his defense buildup, that caused Soviet leaders to lose their confidence.
Cut the Spending, Stupid. Too few in Washington recognize that a sizeable majority of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts benefited millions of working families across the country by lowering their income tax rates, lifting the so-called marriage penalty, and raising the value of the child credit to $1,000 from $500. Repealing the tax cuts won't lower the deficit much, and neither party seems to want a balanced budget enough to cut spending.
Shooting for the stars: The Bush proposal has less to do with a vision of man's destiny than with a totally dysfunctional government agency. NASA gave us the glory of Apollo, then spent the next three decades twirling around in space in low earth orbit studying zero-G nausea. It's crazy and it might have gone on forever had it not been for the Columbia tragedy. Columbia made painfully clear what some of us have been saying for years: It is not only pointless to continue orbiting endlessly around the earth; it is ridiculously expensive and indefensibly risky.
Getting rid of Saddam was U.S. policy long before Bush. One day Saddam is crawling out of a spider hole, and shortly thereafter Libya's Col. Gadhafi is inviting inspectors over for tea. For a complete list of ripple effects, read William Safire's Jan. 12 column in The New York Times.
Editor's Note: The following article was written February 7, 2003, and is still very timely.
Michael Jackson descends. Nearly everyone loves the idea of fame and fortune, but at what cost? As the news headlines tell us almost every day, some of the richest and most famous people turn out to be the unhappiest, most demented people in the world.
Turning Back The Clock: It's Not A Bad Thing. How many of us wouldn't long for a simpler time in which a single breadwinner could afford to not only pay the mortgage but also raise a family and put a kid or two through college? Housing was cheap back in the '50s and '60s relative to wages. Teachers, bakers and candlestick makers could afford a home in any city.
How Clinton Kept Bin Laden Free: This is the last installment of a four-part excerpt from Richard Miniter's new book, Losing Bin Laden.
Keep Iraqi POWs off American dole: An estimated 6,000 enemy Iraqi soldiers have resettled in the U.S. at public expense since 1993. Their welcome gifts included air travel, Medicaid, job and language-training assistance, health care, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), food stamps, Refugee Cash Assistance, and other welfare and housing benefits worth about $7,000 per person.
Term Limits: An Idea Built on Solid Ground: Career politicians don't like the idea of a periodic stimulus to electoral competition. Advantages of incumbency that result in mere token (or even zero) electoral opposition in a district are just fine with them.
Coming to Terms With Term Limits. The issue is term limits. When people first began making a case for them, I was completely opposed. I felt that if the voters were happy with their elected officials, it was only right they be free to keep re-electing them. I have completely reversed my position. For one thing, I have come to believe that incumbents have far too great an advantage over their challengers. These days, I don't want any of them — even those few I actually approve of — staying in office for more than a few years.
If State Government Doesn't Do It, Who Will? Claiming that there would be no schools if the government didn't build them is as silly as claiming that there would be no homes or churches if the government didn't build them.
My name is Adolf: Among the patriotic lesson plans for 9-11 was one proposed by the National Council for Social Studies, which recommends a short story titled "My Name is Osama." Calculatedly inciting hatred toward white American boys, the story is about a nasty little boy, "Todd," who taunts an Iraqi immigrant named "Osama."
All the material about judicial vacancies, filibusters in the Senate, and lawyers in general, has been moved here.
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How Jesse Helms Made a Difference. Jesse Helms was an influential television commentator in North Carolina when he decided to leave the Democratic Party, winning a U.S. Senate seat as a Republican in 1972. He went on to win four more terms, with a reputation as the Senate's most principled warrior on behalf of social conservatism, anti-Communism, limits on union power, and an assertive foreign policy that rejected State Department caution. Like Reagan, many of his views appear to have been validated.
Jesse Helms: Republican Senator for North Carolina. A long-term member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later its chairman, at one time during Bill Clinton's administration he held up 400 promotions in the State Department, the passage of 12 foreign treaties and the approval of 30 ambassadors. Gaining worldwide notoriety for his extreme right-wing views, he voted against abortion, détente, labour unions, Medicare, social security and school desegregation, and for the return of the Panama Canal.
Jesse Helms: Helms was best known as the five-term North Carolina Senator who drove liberals crazy before his retirement in 2002. But his most important role in history arguably took place in 1976, when he and political ally Tom Ellis helped to resurrect Ronald Reagan's fading run for President.
Jesse Helms: American Hero. The institution of the United States Senate was not been quite the same without him and we in NC are proud of the role that this unique and special "Tarheel" played in the history of our country and on the world stage. He will be profoundly missed.
Died on the Fourth of July. It is easy to rattle off a long list of what Senator No opposed. First and foremost was Communism. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he was an aggressive and outspoken critic of the Soviet Union. … He was against many other things as well: federal funding of obscene art, ineffective aid to foreign governments, and the continual encroachments of Big Government on everyday life.
Dancing on the grave of Jesse Helms. [Scroll down] More than 16 years ago, the scholar Charles Horner observed in Commentary* that for many people Helms had become a "symbol of the evil against which all enlightened people are automatically ranged." As with the poisonous rhetoric of today's pathological George W. Bush-haters, the point of the virulence expressed toward Helms was typically character-assassination, not contention — it was aimed at demonizing the man rather than debating or disproving his ideas.
He quit rather than lower flag for Helms. L.F. Eason III gave up the only job he'd ever had rather than lower a flag to honor former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms. Eason, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday, defying a directive sent to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley. When a superior ordered the lab to follow the directive, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms.
A Lesson Even Liberals Can Learn from Jesse Helms: What a contrast Jesse Helms was to so many of the politicians today who work so hard for approval from the media. On a personal level, Helms was cordial to even his fiercest political opponents, but he did not care much about what others said about him.
Jesse Helms and Mangled Manners: When Helms announced his retirement from the Senate in 2001, the media elite made their own distaste very clear. "He was so wonderfully odious," declared top Newsweek editor Evan Thomas. "He was very comforting to the east coast media establishment to know that there was an evil guy out there that you could really fear."
War on Bloggers?
Apparently the FCC is attempting to strangle free speech on the internet using Campaign Finance Reform as leverage.
New: The coming crackdown on blogging. In just a few months, [FCC Commissioner Bradley Smith] warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.
Editorial Comment: FINES?? If I don't pay the fine, will the FCC suspend my Free Speech License? Let's clear this up right away — anything I say on this web site is an exercise of free speech, which is (supposed to be) protected by the Constitution. To prohibit the free exchange of information and opinion over the internet or in a newspaper is a clear violation of the First Amendment.
Update:
FEC Debates Blog Rules. The Federal Election Commission says Web logs just might be a threat to democracy and it's considering whether to police them. The issue, being discussed during FEC hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, is whether some Web sites actually provide unregulated benefits to specific political campaigns. The famously free-spirited Web community is fighting back.
Free speech under siege: The case of Kirby Wilbur. It is not easy to build a national television network. Most major newspapers enjoy near monopolies in their towns. On the other hand anyone can start a blog, and very many can and do start and manage radio stations. Podcasting and internet broadcasting will soon make that as easy as blogging — if it is still legal to do so.
Much more information is available from The FEC vs. Blogs by Michelle Malkin.
The plan to silence Internet journalists: The McCain-Feingold Act of 2002 empowers federal judges and Federal Election Commissioners to determine who is allowed to say what about political candidates in all electronic media. On Sept. 18, 2004, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered the FEC to extend its enforcement of McCain-Feingold to the Internet. In the face of a massive outcry from bloggers, the FEC backed down from fully implementing Judge Kollar-Kotelly's order. However, the order stands. Sooner or later, it will be enforced. Proposals are already on the table to require bloggers to register with the government and to report to the FEC any election-related blogging they undertake as "political contributions" subject to campaign finance law.
Update:
Who's afraid of the FEC? You can now blog to your heart's content on the Internet. The Federal Election Commission says so. Yippee! In a unanimous ruling, the FEC "gave" Internet bloggers the same "media exemption" from federal government regulation that newspapers enjoy. (You know, that "freedom of the press" loophole.) … Next thing you know, the Defense Department will announce, to much fanfare, that it won't be quartering soldiers in our homes.
The Barrett Report
The earliest report:
Frist to Press for Release of Clinton IRS Report. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Wednesday morning [4/27/2005] that he'll press for the release of findings by independent counsel David Barrett, whose probe into former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros reportedly concluded that Clinton officials at the Internal Revenue Service conducted politically motivated audits of White House enemies.
... and the latest:
Clinton cover-ups: Lost in the tumult over Islamic port deals and Katrina video capers is the recently released — and willfully ignored — Barrett Report. David Barrett, you'll recall, is the independent counsel appointed in 1995 to investigate allegations of impropriety against President Clinton's Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros.
The Final Report is available here, but parts of it have been redacted due to a court order.
Clinton hypocrisy: Abuse of power in pursuing opponents. Return with me now to January, 2006, when the 684-page Barrett Report was published minus 120 pages which held, by all insider accounts, enough evidence not only to sink Mrs. Clinton's presidential ship but to put her and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, in the courtroom dock. The pages were redacted in a desperate rider attached to an unrelated bill by Sen. John Kerry and two Democratic colleagues and buried in a congressional vault.
Independent Counsel's Press Release Concerning Release of the Final Report. After a thorough reading of the Report it would not be unreasonable to conclude as I have that there was a coverup at high levels of our government and, it appears to have been substantial and coordinated. The question is why? And that question regrettably will go unanswered. Unlike some other coverups, this one succeeded.
The public needs to see the Barrett report. [Sen. Byron Dorgan], along with several crafty Democrats, has been attempting to deny the public the contents of an Independent Counsel's report that is believed to contain evidence of serious corruption and misuse of the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department back in the Clinton Administration. In this cover-up the Democrats have had assistance from a few dubious Republicans. It is time to let the public see this report.
Publish the Barrett report now. At issue was the publication of a report by David Barrett, an independent counsel who has spent the better part of a decade looking into some of the most hair-raising allegations of presidential malfeasance in American history.
Protecting the IRS: The political significance is that the Barrett report's shocking allegations of high-level corruption in the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department are likely to be concealed from the public and from Congress. A recently passed appropriations bill, intended to permit release of this report, was altered behind closed doors to ensure that its politically combustible elements never saw the light of day.
Hiding Barrett. In a very clever year-end column the venerable William Safire writing in the New York Times asks whether "special prosecutor David Barrett's 400-page expose of political influence within the Internal Revenue Service and the Clinton Justice Department" will be the government report "most likely to resist investigative reporting" this year. I certainly hope not.
Report implicating Clinton: Will it be hidden for good? Though it has had scant attention from the mainstream media, a bipartisan effort to squelch an independent counsel's final report on Clinton-era abuse of the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department has gotten the attention of Web activists and commentators, causing a growing call for the release of the document that is said to including damning evidence against the 42nd president and his administration.
Uh-oh...
Imminent Independent Counsel Report Gets Sliced Up. [Independent counsel David] Barrett and others say, thanks to an amendment to the November judiciary appropriations bill, key elements in the final report, which was completed in August 2004 and has been sitting with a three-judge panel at the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. ever since, may be heavily redacted before its release.
The Barrett report: The long-awaited final report by Independent Counsel David Barrett, to be released today [Thursday 1/19/2006], was severely censored by court order but not enough to sufficiently obscure its importance. As long forecast, it alleges serious corruption in the Clinton administration's Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The question is what was contained in 120 pages removed by the judges.
If GOP Runs a RINO for President, The Party Will Crash and Burn. I know many fear the FBI, CIA, NSA and Homeland Security Department and they have concerns about surveillance and civil liberties. But I am more concerned about the Internal Revenue Service, an agency that can lock up an American for decades because he or she didn't fork over their hard earned money. If the President — any president — uses the IRS, which has more leeway than all the other agencies put together, to investigate, intimidate and perhaps incarcerate Americans, I for one want to know about it. But I'm not holding my breath for the Republicans to demand the full Barrett Report be released without redaction.
Criticism of MADD
I don't drink, and I would never encourage intoxicated people to drive, but I've recently found that the seemingly harmless organization MADD is apparently barking up the wrong tree, working on problems unrelated to drunk driving.
This Way Lies MADDness. It's becoming clearer, with each appointment President Obama makes, that his agenda is a simple one: control. The latest example is the naming of Chuck Hurley as the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Hurley is currently the CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. While it's encouraging that a group with "Mothers" in its name would allow a man to be its CEO, that brief amusement is dwarfed by the realization of just what MADD has become: a profound exemplar of the "nanny state" mentality.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving. MADD has managed to artificially enlarge the societal problem of drunk driving by continuously expanding the parameters of the "drinking driving problem." Even though the real drunk driving problem has been reduced to a relatively small group of incorrigible "hard-core" offenders, MADD continues to intensify its focus on responsible adults. The reason is simple: MADD has essentially become a public relations organization, and PR campaigns only work on responsible adults; product abusers are not affected by slogans and red ribbon campaigns. So MADD ignores the truly drunk drivers who cause an overwhelming majority of the deaths, and instead goes after social drinkers with massive PR scare campaigns.
MADD warns off foe of illegal aliens. Michelle Dallacroce was hopping mad when she received a letter from Mothers Against Drunk Driving demanding she change the name of her organization, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens. "I couldn't believe it," Mrs. Dallacroce said. "I don't know who would be confused by this. We don't even have the same acronym." Mrs. Dallacroce, ... received a certified letter Oct. 10 stating that MADD owns the rights to the name "Mothers Against" and giving her 10 days to stop using it.
The Caroline Kennedy subsection
The people who denigrated the Bush father-and-son team in the White House as a "dynasty" are bent on keeping someone from the Kennedy family in a prominent office permanently.
A Senate Seat Is Not a Kennedy Heirloom. Have New York Democrats lost all self-respect? Their excited talk of whether Caroline Kennedy is "interested" in Hillary Clinton's Senate seat makes you wonder. The late John F. Kennedy's daughter has made at least one feeler phone call to New York Gov. David Paterson. And Uncle Teddy, the Massachusetts senator, is busy pulling the levers to slip her in. The seat will be vacant upon Clinton's confirmation as secretary of state.
The magic name 'Kennedy' is not enough. For the past 55 years, with a brief hiatus while Ted Kennedy ran for the seat vacated by his brother, the president, there has been a member of the Kennedy family in the U.S. Senate. With Ted Kennedy, 76 and ailing from brain cancer, that particular dynasty seemed fated to come to an honorable end. But with Hillary Rodham Clinton's nomination to be secretary of State, there was the prospect of an open Senate seat that New York's Democratic governor, David Paterson, has sole authority to fill.
New York Deserves A Qualified Senator. Is Democratic New York Gov. David Paterson his own man? If he is, he'll appoint an accomplished leader as senator. If he isn't, he'll kowtow to the party bosses and pick ... a Kennedy.
The Kennedy Entitlement: Media reaction to news that Caroline Kennedy is actively seeking appointment to the U.S. Senate seat held by Hillary Clinton was certainly different from how the media responded to Sarah Palin's arrival on the national stage. Mrs. Palin may have been a mayor, chairwoman of a major state regulatory commission and a governor, but her entrance into big-time politics was widely ridiculed. In contrast, the 51-year-old Ms. Kennedy is a shy and private person who has never held a job in public life beyond her 22 months planning strategic partnerships for New York City's public schools.
Sweet Caroline. "She's not qualified," some say. Was Hillary Clinton qualified when she ran for the seat? Sen. Clinton had never served in elective office, either. And what "qualifies" one to be a member of Congress? Sweetheart deals on loans? Men like Ted Stevens of Alaska and the 91-year-old Robert Byrd are the twin peaks of pork. Has their behavior "qualified" them to be in the Senate?
The demise of the Republic? Caroline Kennedy has asked New York's Democratic Governor David Paterson to appoint her to the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Kennedy, who has never run for office, would have to run and win in 2010 to finish out the last two years of Clinton's term, and run again in 2012 to win a term of her own. David Corbin, associate professor of politics at The King's College in New York, says if Kennedy is appointed it would be a sign that "something's wrong with the Republic."
This isn't her father's Camelot. Don't expect other politicians to swoon just because she wants to be a senator. Hey, this is New York — and Cuomos and Clintons are in the mix.
Getting Beyond Camelot. Caroline Kennedy is, by all accounts, a smart, decent and very capable woman. There is no reason why she shouldn't enter politics and why she couldn't have a good shot at winning an election. That doesn't mean she should be handed Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be-vacated United States Senate seat.
Kennedy faces a bit of resentment in N.Y.. One thing didn't change this week during Kennedy's first day on the road. She gave a 30-second statement after pitching her credentials to Syracuse officials, then reporters asked what her credentials were. Before she could answer, an aide whisked her away. "Hopefully, I can come back and answer all those questions," she said. Then she sped away in an SUV.
Cinderella vs. the Barracuda: [Governor] Palin's selection triggered troughs of bile, vomited up from nearly every respectable liberal quarter. A Florida congressman, and Obama surrogate, insinuated that Palin was a "Nazi sympathizer" and anti-Semite (she's not, but Caroline Kennedy's grandfather was). Her by-the-bootstraps story was ridiculed by nearly every ex-debutante newsreader and avowed "feminist" in America. Meanwhile, Caroline, with a resume perfectly suited to being a Kennedy and little else, is a Cinderella who deserves a Senate seat because, well, she just does.
If Caroline's Last Name Was Palin: What has she done in her career? Does she have the experience to govern? Isn't she just a name and a pretty face in expensive clothes? All questions asked by Democrats (I'm being nice) regarding Sarah Palin as McCain's pick for Vice President. But Caroline Kennedy — similarly an intriguing, attractive outsider decked in designer duds and a thin resume — isn't put under the same kind of scrutiny.
Caroline Kennedy is no Sarah Palin. Suddenly, after a lifetime shunning publicity — one of her charms — Kennedy is a likely U.S. senator solely on the basis of having decided that she'd like that quite a lot. ... The real rub is that she hasn't earned it. The sense of entitlement implicit in Kennedy's plea for appointment mocks our national narrative. We honor rags-to-riches, but riches-to-riches animates our revolutionary spirit.
Desperately Seeking Caroline. The probable appointment of Caroline Kennedy, the 51-year-old daughter of former President John Kennedy, to fill Secretary-of-State nominee Hillary Clinton's New York Senate seat is both laughable and yet a parable for our bankrupt times. Consider aristocratic entitlement. Ms. Kennedy apparently spends a great deal of her time divided between her Park Avenue Upper-East-Side Manhattan townhouse and her hereditary estate on Martha's Vineyard. She has had no real experience with the ordinary lives of New Yorkers ... Ms. Kennedy has never run for, or held, public office. Her only prerequisites for Senator are her pedigree from her father and her purported celebrity mystique passed on from her mother Jackie.
Remember, Gov. Paterson, it's up to you, not the Kennedy PR machine. Al Sharpton strode out of Sylvia's Restaurant in Harlem on Thursday into a throng of breathless reporters. He had a big fat smile on his face and a slender, slightly startled Caroline Kennedy, heiress of Camelot, at his side. The reason for this most odd pairing was the quest for the U.S. Senate seat Hillary Clinton will soon vacate. Kennedy, a woman who has never held elected office in her life, has suddenly decided she wants the seat.
The Editor says...
Why not let Al Sharpton himself have the seat? Is "affirmative action" only for insignificant jobs?
Caroline Kennedy 'Dismayed' by Her Own Voting Record. Caroline Kennedy said she was "surprised and dismayed" by her own voting record, after failing to cast her pick for the very Senate seat she now hopes to take over.
Caroline Kennedy: Pampered wannabe pol plays the victim card. Forget the Profiles in Courage award. For this interview yesterday Caroline Kennedy deserves the Profiles in Chutzpah Award. See, JFK's only surviving child wants Hillary Clinton's seat in the U.S. Senate, although she has absolutely no qualifications for the position other than her last name, which by the way used to be Schlossberg until last summer.
Inherit the What? Seventy-six years ago, in 1932, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. gave a timely endorsement to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and, as a reward, was appointed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (and later ambassador to the Court of St. James), from which perch he launched the political careers of his sons. In 2008, his granddaughter Caroline gave a timely endorsement to Barack Obama, and now that he's elevated his rival Hillary Clinton from her Senate seat to his cabinet, Caroline is claiming that seat for herself in an effort to revive and extend her family's political presence, which in light of the age and illness of Uncle Ted seems to be fading away.
Say goodnight, Caroline. In the beginning, just three long weeks ago, the idea of Caroline Kennedy being a United States senator had a certain ring to it. The Camelot myth still has shelf life and a merger with the historic Obama presidency provided an intriguing story line. Kennedy would replace Hillary Clinton, one leading lady following another on a stage where name recognition often substitutes for merit. The narrative was tailor-made for the fever chambers of celebrity-obsessed media and the bandwagon quickly picked up speed. ... But a strange thing is happening on the way to the coronation. The wheels of the bandwagon are coming off. Fantasy is giving way to inescapable truth.
Caroline Kennedy's Fractured Fairytale. Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was the beautiful Princess Caroline who was part of one of the oldest royal families in the country — a family that built its fortune on Hollywood investments and possibly bootlegging, and was plagued with tragedy and scandal — but whose over-glorified name still held many in its hypnotic thrall. Yet Princess Caroline, despite her royal pedigree and family tradition of publicly serving themselves — er, tradition of public service — chose to live her life quietly, eschewing publicity.
Caroline Kennedy draws criticism after latest tour. Caroline Kennedy's second act as a Senate hopeful didn't get much better reviews from New York's press than her first. A New York Daily News columnist said "the wheels of the bandwagon are coming off." New York Post State Editor Fred Dicker already put her on his list of 2008 losers.
More money than brains.
Caroline Kennedy repeats 'you know' 142 times in interview. Explaining why she would be a good Senator, she said: "So I think in many ways, you know, we want to have all kinds of different voices, you know, representing us, and I think what I bring to it is, you know, my experience as a mother, as a woman, as a lawyer, you know, I've been an education activist for the last six years here, and, you know, I've written seven books — two on the Constitution, two on American politics. "So obviously, you know, we have different strengths and weaknesses."
Caroline's Crib. Forget Chappaqua. This amazing Martha's Vineyard spread will be the next home-away-from-the-Beltway for New York's junior senator if Caroline Kennedy is tapped to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton. The 366-acre estate — worth at least $50 million — just underwent a major renovation and rezoning that will keep it the exclusive province of Kennedy, 51.
Kennedy's 'you knows' become political fodder. Bloggers have torn into President John F. Kennedy's Harvard- and Columbia-educated daughter for such remarks as: "You know, I think, really, um, this is sort of a unique moment, both in our, you know, in our country's history and in, you know, my own life, and, um, you know, we are facing, you know, unbelievable challenges." The "you knows" have punctuated a rocky media rollout for the Democratic scion ... .
Caroline Kennedy botches debut interview with 'you know' attitude. During a series of meetings with the New York press, one of which was recorded and is now being admired on YouTube in all its ineloquent awkwardness, the daughter of President Kennedy was vague, unconvincing and displayed a potentially ruinous verbal tic. In one sequence, lasting 2 minutes and 27 seconds, Ms Kennedy, 51, revealed that she had inherited none of the eloquence, energy or charisma associated with other members of America's foremost political dynasty: she used the phrase "you know" no fewer than 30 times.
Caroline Kennedy fails to impress. Asked if President George W Bush's tax cuts on the wealthy should be repealed immediately, Ms Kennedy replied: "Well, you know, that's something, obviously, that, you know, in principle and in the campaign, you know, I think that, um, the tax cuts, you know, were expiring and needed to be repealed," the paper [New York Daily News] reported.
Caroline Kennedy: In theory senators represent the people of the state that sent them to Washington. It's not at all clear what that means. It has something to do with serving the interests of those people rather than the senator's own interests. But it's long been debated whether a representative should do what constituents want or what the representative thinks they should want. Either way we have a problem.
Kennedy hasn't earned N.Y. seat. Caroline Kennedy, a woman who has spent her entire life avoiding politics, has thrown her hat into the ring for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. But apart from being an outspoken advocate for Barack Obama, her credentials don't seem up to par. And "credentials" was certainly the magic word this year. Obama and Sarah Palin were pushed up against the ropes time and time again, defending their qualifications.
Kennedy Was Spared Financial Disclosure as a Top Aide at City Schools. Like it or not, roughly 7,000 employees of New York City file 32-page disclosure forms each year divulging personal information about their family finances in an effort to bolster confidence in open government. But when Caroline Kennedy was employed by the city Department of Education from 2002 to 2004, as the chief executive of the Office of Strategic Partnerships, she was not required to file, even though two people who worked for her had to disclose information about their finances.
Northeast Public Radio CEO Makes Unintentionally Hilarious Case for Caroline Kennedy. The most important thing to remember when reading this Berkshire Eagle article, "Making the case for Caroline Kennedy," by WAMC Northeast Public Radio CEO, Alan Chartock, is that it was not meant as satire. However, Chartock's reasons for appointing Caroline Kennedy as senator from New York come off as absolutely hilarious even though he is trying to be completely serious.
End of the Kennedy dynasty as Caroline's Senate bid fails. "Enough!" decided Governor David Paterson, according to "The New York Post". After a Palinesque series of train wreck interviews, Hillaryesque citations of a "lifetime of experience" and a Ted Kennedyesque failure to provide a rationale for being elected beyond the family name, the New York governor apparently concluded that Caroline was a no go for the Senate.
Caroline's Kaput. Caroline Kennedy last night [1/21/2009] withdrew from consideration to replace Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, just two months after rocking the New York political landscape by throwing her hat in the ring.
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