PHILIPPICS

Battle of the Sexists

2005-12-19T14:18:00.000-05:00

Wow . . . it's been a long time. The last several months have been crazy, and have included everything from getting a brand new wonderful job, to a brand new, even more wonderful fiancee'. Life has been great, but has left little time for blogging.

That changed today, when I read something that almost broke my heart. I had no choice but to write about it.

Those of you who know me best - along with any of you who have read my contributions over at Heidi's (the aforementioned fiancee's) blog - know that I am somewhat of a crusader for a more balanced (and to my mind, more Christian) approach toward women than that for which many of my fellow evangelical conservatives are known. In short, I am somebody who believes that the term "feminist" is not a term to be run from, but a term to be recaptured for what it once meant . . . advocating that men and women are, and of right ought to be, equal in the eyes of the law as they are in the eyes of God.

That said, articles like this one tend to make me a bit . . . angry.

Articles like this one, on the other hand, bring me to tears.

It seems to me that the Gospel of Christ, so simply laid out in the first- and second-hand accounts of the first four New Testament Books, and so eloquently explained in further detail through the personal correspondences of Paul and others, was hijacked by the likes of Augustine (who was prone to overreaction on the issue of women, due to a rather . . . colorful . . . lifestyle before his conversion) and others who honestly and fervently believed in the inferiority of the fairer sex. In the modern era, this has become a politically incorrect hot potato, so modern evangelicals have had to come up with another explanation besides the one commonly accepted for nearly two millenia - that women were less than their male counterparts.

The church seems to have been at a loss as far as what to do, and has ended up arriving, for the most part, at the rationally unintelligible position that women are "equal in being, but unequal in role." (if they're unequal in roles, simply due to who and what they are, doesn't that make them unequal in being??) The trial faced by modern evangelicals is that Augustine & Co., rather than merely being content to observe that women were held as inferior by tradition, had to assert that they were also held as inferior by divine command.

Having no such divine authority behind it, secular psychology has simply resorted to shifting the blame. For thousands of years, women were seen as the cause of the world's moral problems. Secular psychology has simply transferred that blame to men, without exception or qualification.

This country is facing a hidden cultural crisis - and according to the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) messages with which you are being bombarded every day, if you are male, it is all my fault . . .

. . . well . . . mine, along with any of you readers who also happen to be male.

More and more, studies are showing that the way boys and girls learn, even at the very youngest ages, is completely different. Given the grip that the fringes of the feminist movement (as opposed to individual feminists - I count myself among the latter, but wouldn't go near the former for fear of my life) have gained on the public school system in this country, does anybody doubt the veracity of studies supporting the conclusion that classes are structured in a way in which most boys simply find it impossible to learn?? Does anybody wonder if there might be a connection between this assertion and the fact that 90% of our public school students doped up on ritalin happen to be boys??

The whole thing reminds me of the observation made by an article in my local paper several years ago about the ethnicity classes taught at the community college I attended at the time. It pointed out that classes about African-American culture were a celebration of the unique things that culture had to offer (all well and good). Classes on Hispanic culture were a celebration of the unique things that culture had to offer (wonderful). Classes on Asian culture were a celebration of the unique things that culture had to offer (great). Classes on "White" culture (whatever that means) were all about how we Caucasians were to blame for all the problems suffered by all the other cultures (what the heck is a "caucasian" anyway? My ancestors didn't come from anywhere near the Caucasus, unless you're tracking all the way back to Noah.)

Similarly, when the term "women's studies" is bandied about, it is heralded as a means of celebrating the unique achievements and perspective of women in society - and there are a lot of them, to be sure.

However, as these articles point out, a study of male behavior - even for children for crying out loud! - has to be about the way these young boys are at fault for the whole of society's problems simply by virtue of the fact that they are male.

It makes me want to cry. It makes me want to curse. It makes me want to hit somebody . . . (oops, that would be an act of male rage, wouldn't it?)

For [censored], people! These are children! They might be called "naive" or "innocent," except for the tragic fact that the 13-year-old boy in the second article I posted has suffered more than I have at age 25 - indeed, more than I hope I ever suffer in my entire life. Innocence has already been stolen from him, and now he's told that he's to blame.

No wonder there's so little understanding between advocates of gender equality on both sides. Like so many US Senators, the people out of power at any given time aren't interested in sharing it, just getting it. Similarly, the ones in power are interested neither in sharing, nor using it well - just in using it as much as possible.

It seems appropriate here to steal a line made famous by another radically liberal cause celbre. Thus, as Walt Kelly said on the first Earth Day in 1970, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

[Hat tip to instapundit for the links.]

Thoughts on a Book that has Changed My Life

2005-08-29T09:25:00.000-05:00

Recently, I attended a retreat in Colorado, hosted by Ransomed Heart Ministries, that was based on John Eldredge's book, Wild at Heart. Mr. Eldredge served as the main speaker far the conference, aimed at helping men rediscover themselves - helping them cut through the daily grind, the "male image," and all of the pressures that come with . . . well . . . life in general, and just exist as God initially intended.

Upon coming home, I discussed this conference and the book on which it was based with one of the elders at my church, who expressed some vague unease about Mr. Eldredge and about some of his teachings. In the course of our discussion of the book, he emailed me an article produced by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, reviewing Wild at Heart. Given the impact this book had on my life, I felt compelled to author a "review of the review" - a response to this article, outlining what I believe to be its shortcomings in the areas of logic and scripture. The review of Eldredge is here, and my response is here. It's a discussion well worth reading, but be patient - there's a lot there. The initial review is four pages, and my review is . . . well . . . let's just say, I got into what I was writing. When I finished, there were eleven pages of response.

Read it if you like, hopefully, it'll be some decent food for thought.

The Science of Design . . . ?

2005-08-05T12:23:00.000-05:00

Of late, due to comments made by our President, the old debate over the science taught in public schools is flaring up again in earnest.

At issue is the newly repackaged version of creationism being pushed as an areligious alternative able to pass muster with those who believe in the somewhat fanciful notion of a "wall of separation between church and state."

The ins, outs, ups, downs, and every-which-ways of such a wall are the subject for another conversation. This conversation is about the public furor over the notion of "Intelligent Design."

I woke up this morning firmly ensconced in the camp of those who wish to see Intelligent Design taught in schools. Now, I am not so certain of that position.

Intelligent Design is quite simple in premise. Its major tenet holds that the universe and all that is therein are too complex to have developed by chance. It posits no religious tenet, and owes allegiance to no creed or divine text. It simply holds that the complexity of the system in which we exist is proof, in and of itself, of its own creator.

That's it - pretty straightforward. There are other ins and outs, but the essential element of the political debate is that Intelligent Design is being pushed forward as something that should be given equal time in science classes in publich schools, as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

As I said, this morning I believed that.

Then I came across a series of arguments that started me thinking more in-depth about the issue. The most influential of these on my thinking was found at what is normally a somewhat sarcastic, often superficial political weblog, the Ace of Spades

All of this got me wondering exactly how Intelligent Design relates to science, a question answered by some careful examination.

. . . To put it simply, it doesn't.

Let me say that again, as I know many of my readers will probably be a bit startled to see that.

Intelligent Design is not science.

Science is, "The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena."

Science is propogated by study, via the scientific method. This is most simply described in the following sequence:

Observe some aspect of the Universe.
Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.
Use the hypothesis to make predictions
Test those predictions by experiments or further observations
Modify the hypothesis in light of your results
Repeat until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment/observation

Intelligent Design stops short of the burdens of true science. Proponents of evolution often do as well, but that is not the point. Evolution itself is scientific. It is based in the physical world, and is premised upon a set of hypotheses that can be tested, at least in a limited way, and subsequently verified or discarded. Because of its very nature, Intelligent design on the other hand is not only not scientific, it is anti-scientific.

Proponents of intelligent design have made an observation about our universe: namely, that it is complex. They have formulated a hypothesis based on that observation: that it could not have happened by chance. There are, then, a variety of ways theorized as to how it might have happened - they include Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Theistic Evolution, and a wide variety of more localized belief systems.

That I happen to agree with their hypothesis does not change the fact that it cannot be tested. Herein lies the basic burden of science. In order to be sceintific, a hypothesis must be able to be tested and replicated repeatedly.

Until the supreme Creator decides in his wisdom to create another universe and invite a couple of creationists along to observe, that's not going to happen. Thus, intelligent design does not meet with the requirements of even a scientific theory. Evolution can at least be tested microcosmically, as new stars are born, new crust is created at the edge of continental plates, and new animal and human life comes into existence. Intelligent Design could only truly be tested microcosmically in this way if every prayer by every follower of a given religion were always answered affirmatively. That would go quite a way toward proving the existence of a divine being (although not necessarily an intelligent one) but that's not going to happen either.

Ace of Spades thus concludes his article with the comment, "Religion and science do not need to be in conflict. But if some of the religious continue insisting on pushing them into conflict, I'm afraid I'm going to have to side with science."

I'm afraid I have to disagree.

What, after all, is religion? To answer that question in full would take several posts, but to put it simply, religion is, "Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe." It is also "A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship."

Could somebody explain to me where, exactly, that leaves room for verification?

The problem is that in the modern world, "anti-scientific" has become a perjorative term. It shouldn't be. It has come to be almost synonymous with "anti-truth," which is simply not . . . well . . . true. For truth has many levels, and not all of them can be experienced with the senses - the realm of science.

This all comes down, then, to faith - which Scripture defines for us in Hebrews 11:1 as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Again, not too much room there for rigorous experimentation and replication.

It seems to me, then, that the problem is not so much that science is being taught wrongly in schools. It seems rather that modern man has become altogether too dependent on science. One can, after all, only get so far by utilization of the five senses. Poetry cannot be felt with the fingertips. Love cannot be seen with the eyes. Joy cannot be heard with the ears. Victory and success can neither be tasted with the tongue nor smelled with the nose.

Yet modern man wishes a scientific answer for everything:

Success? Well that's easily measured through a battery of statistics.

Victory? Well, you can see with your own eyes whether your opponent still stands, can you not?

Joy? Well, what is your net worth? Do you have the job you want? The house you want? The life you want?

Love? . . . ah, love. Do you have a regular companion with whom you desire, and are able, to spend the bulk of your time and your life? Well, you must be in love, right?

Poetry? It's all a matter of mathematics and meter and rhythm, isn't it?

If all of this is beginning to sound shallow, it is because when one holds science up as all-important, one cannot help but be shallow. Science is a necessary process for understanding some aspects of the physical world in which we live - but it is only good insofar that it can provide the answers to various questions.

As the recently produced 125th Anniversary Edition of Science Magazine illustrates, though, those who have given their lives to the sciences are good at coming up with answers, but they have a long way yet to go. For their anniversary, the magazine published a list of 125 questions science simply has not answered - and the list contains some doozies:

There are practical questions such as what the limit will eventually be on how much data can be squeezed onto a conventional computer chip.

There are philosophical questions such as what the precise genetic difference is that makes us distinct from animals.

And at the top of the list is this doozy: "What is the universe made of?"

One would think that question to be key to the evolution/intelligent design debate, would one not?

So it seems that while evolution is hardly the proven fact that some claim it to be, intelligent design does not even meet the criterion required of a theory - and more importantly can never meet them. Theoretically speaking, evolution could one day be proven true (though I don't believe it will be.)

The same cannot be said of intelligent design - and it is therefore unscientific.

Thus, the conflict here is not between competing theories. Rather, it is between the preeminence of science and soul.

With apologies to those who have given their lives to empirical pursuits, I'm sorry, but I want to know more than what makes my fingers bend, move, and register sensations. I want to experience the bliss that comes when they touch the cheek of the woman I love.

I want to know more than how many people live in my city, their average age, their ethnic backgrounds, their preferences of politics, and their favorite foods. I want to get to know individuals among them, to become a part of their lives, and to experience the joy that comes with sharing a small piece of other people's stories.

I want to know more than how many grains of dust in the atmosphere it takes to turn a sunset from soft blue, to flaming orange, to deep indigo. I want to know why my heart thrills to watch it happening.

It seems to me, then, that as long as individuals look to science to discover all the answers, religion and science do have to be in conflict.

And in this particular conflict, I'm afraid science just doesn't cut it.

A New Direction . . .

2005-08-05T12:10:00.000-05:00

Greetings after a long absence. My apologies for the extended silence.

It seems thatI have once again grown weary of commenting on things political. This has been happening a lot, lately. I sit down to think about things, and find as I peruse the pages of my fellow bloggers, that somewhere, somebody has already thought up and fully expounded upon precisely the topic about which I wish to write.

I hate that. When I am writing, the one thing I loathe more than anything else is to be unoriginal.

Nevertheless, the issues I was covering when I was engaging in political writing are more than capably handled by others - which has led me in a new direction.

Of late, I have had a hard time writing just about anything. The one exception, I have found, is when my girlfriend asked me to do a series of posts on her own weblog about the role of women, in the dual contexts of scripture and history. History being a passion of mine, I agreed.

I loved it. My writing felt alive for the first time in a long time.

So I have decided to take up my virtual pen on more topics at the crossroads of philosophy, politics, and religion. Those who know me best know that here, of all places, I will be anything but conventional.

So join me as I take up residence here for a while. I apologize for any disappointment of any who found this site hoping to discover intense political discourse (assuming there is anybody out there who still realizes this site exists after having not been updated in the last few months.) I assure you, the discussion here will be intense. At times it will even be political. That will not, however, be its focus any longer.

What will its focus then be? I am not sure. Only time can tell that for certain. All I know is that I am going to war. My weapon is the keyboard. My enemy, conventional wisdom - not because it is or is not wisdom, but because it is conventional.

. . . let us see what comes of this battle.

What the Left Really Hates

2005-05-02T10:10:00.000-05:00

It is interesting to note that every issue coming under public scrutiny of late, from the Terri Schiavo case, to Social Security, to Media Bias, to Judicial Filibusters, to the Iraq War, to the Succession in the Vatican, to . . . well . . . everything . . . has thrown back the curtain of the Left and revealed what it is they truly hate.

In the Terri Schiavo case, what we were told is that the "bad guys" were those with "deep seated beliefs in extreme religious ideals," because they were getting in the way of a woman's right to determine her own fate.

In the case of Social Security, the "bad guys" are those with a deep conviction in the notion that we the people are in the best position to decide how our own money should be spent.

In the debate over media bias, the villains are those with firmly rooted ideas about how best to distribute facts in an objective and truthful manner.

In the case of Judicial Filibusters, the left's bogeymen (and women) are the judicial nominees themselves, who are "conservative activists" (which as I noted in my last post is an oxymoron) and are guilty of having deepseated religious convictions.

In the Iraq war, of course, the archvillain of them all is President Bush, who went to war from the start with the firm conviction that Saddam Hussein was a danger to international security, and that a democratic Iraq could be a catalyst for unprecedented change in the Middle East.

And remember what it was, with which the few who criticized John Paul II, and the many who have criticized Benedict XVI took issue?

It seems that the liberal left doesn't so much have a problem with any particular deeply-held belief . . .

. . . they just seem to have a problem with the notion of deeply-held beliefs.

the former Cardinal Ratzinger was widly criticized not because he's a bad person (he's not) nor because he's demonstrated that as pope he will trample certain cherished leftist mantras underfoot (he hasn't). He was critiqued because of his relentless assault on moral relativism.

I'm not Catholic, and I don't acknowledge the Pope as my spiritual authority in any way. John Paul II was a personal hero of mine because of his accomplishments in international affairs.

I admire his successor for precisely the reason the Left hates him. Benedict is a believer. He may not be a believer in the same religion I am, but he has the courage to have a conviction.

This is a notion completely foreign to liberals - which is why they are falling all over themselves trying to stop these judicial nominations . . . it seems these judges - most vocally Judge Janice Rogers Brown - have the same courage exhibited by Joseph Ratzinger.

That our leftist leading lights do not have this same moral fortitude is exhibited everywhere we look: from Kerry's flip-flops, to Hillary's March to the Center, to the filibuster fiasco. Instead of following their hearts, liberals follow their noses whichever way the wind tells them the scent of political opinion is blowing.

What is dividing America today? It is conviction. The Right views conviction as a virtue, to be altered only when proven wrong. The left views it as a danger - a perilous exercise fraught with the hazardous possibility of being mistaken.

So the left, of course, is never mistaken - for how can one be wrong when one doesn't believe in anything. To the left, virtue is found in flexibility. If the views I espouse turn out to be unpopular, why, I'll just trade them for a more widely acceptable set.

Thus it is that the Democrat party finds itself in trouble, and where the Republican party follows suit it is to the extent that they have bought into the same flawed premise: that deeply held beliefs - whatever they are, are the problem.

True conservatives know that, far from being the problem, deeply held convictions displayed in a commitment to truth, no matter how unpopular or unlikely that truth might turn out to be - are the solution.

Judicial Activism and Left-Wing Ire

2005-04-29T14:13:00.000-05:00

The 2004 election cycle, and its aftermath (in the midst of which we still squarely sit as a nation) have been incredibly insightful on any number of levels, but the most entertaining to watch, for me at least, has been the depth to which left-wing hypocrisy has been well and truly aired.

It began with the left-wing's appointed national spokesperson, Senator John Kerry. I'm not sure if, as a Senator from dark-blue Massachusetts, he simply wasn't used to having to find a message that resonated with a broader audience than his fellow New Englanders, but it seemed that Senator Kerry simply wasn't accustomed to having his words broadcast across the nation within moments of their utterance. He wasn't accustomed to being caught claiming to be in favor of protectionism in the manufacturing states of the Great Lakes area, while claiming to be a staunch free-trader in the export-happy climes of Washington State. He simply looked as though he expected to give a message to a certain crowd of people, and have it stay there.

Then it progressed to the favorite cheerleaders of the left: the news anchors, reporters, columnists, editors, and other yes-heads of liberalism who spin the daily news to mean whatever they want it to mean. Their longstanding claims of objectivity while virtually (or in cases like Mary Mapes, literally) campaigning for the defeat of President Bush, were finally laid to rest with the fall of Dan Rather, and the later capitulation of Eason Jordan.

After the election it was seen in the anguished soul-searching in which those on the left engaged . . . where they repeatedly asked themselves not the logical question, "How do we appeal to those who disagree with our belief system?" but the far more nonsensical, "How do we make it look to those who disagree with us like we're coming around to their point of view?"

Such introspection has led to the hilarious appropriation of "religious-ish" language by the denizens of the DNC, which have led most recently to the outlandish comparison, by Senator Ken Salazar, of Dr. James Dobson to the anti-Christ, and to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's pinning his hopes for a Democratic majority in 2006 on "a miracle."

Now, we see this hypocrisy, like every other political tool and trend in existence, drawn into play in the Senate filibuster battle.

Of what, you may ask, do I speak?

Of none other than the Democratic Party's new-found ire, in the wake of the Terri Schiavo case, directed against "activist" judges.

Like their religious tomes, however, these new indignant incantations are unpracticed, and therefore, a bit rusty. To a liberal, activism means carrying a deepseated passion for a certain cause, and acting on that passion to push that cause forward. Judicial activism then, (again, to a liberal) would mean acting on that passion as a member of the judiciary.

One wonders though, for example, in the case of Judge Janice Rogers Brown, how it is even possible to be, as one Democratic senator termed her, a "conservative judicial activist," given the fact that judicial activism is by its very definition unconservative.

What Senator Durbin means, of course, is not that she is a conservative judicial activist, but that she is a conservative activist within the judiciary. What the senator, and liberals in general, fail to realize is that judicial activism is a very specific term, connoting activism (as earlier defined) by means of using one's power as a member of the judiciary to re-interpret law.

This, Judge Janice Rogers Brown has certainly not done, and indeed she has been held up by her colleagues as "a jurist who applies the law without favor and without bias."

All of which is bad enough, but it is most galling because it comes from the very same Democrats who applauded Supreme Court Justice Kennedy for his opinion in Lawrence v. Texas that invalidated a Texas state homosexuality law because it did not conform to "international norms" . . . a standard never even considered within the Constitution.

Such a manipulation of the law renders the term "judicial activism" positively lethargic by comparison, and yet these same liberals applaud such an action, while simultaneously co-opting the language of the right once again, and manufacturing obviously false claims of judicial activism against a highly qualified jurist like Judge Janice Rogers Brown.

Were it not tearing at the very fabric of the Constitution that holds this country together, it would almost be amusing.

Instead, it's nothing short of tragic.

In the Battle for the Heart of America, Republicans are the French.

2005-04-26T14:19:00.000-05:00

I am a Republican . . . it says so on my voter registration card, after all. However, I cannot help but get the feeling that my party is conducting a broad-based, and successful, assault on its own justification for existence.

In fact, the 21st Century Republican Leadership reminds me of nothing quite so much as it does the 20th Century history of the nation-state of France.

That said, there are many valuable lessons in that history, from which the Republican Party might stand to benefit if it cared to examine them.

Consider:

The French entered the 20th Century embittered by defeat in a war they undertook for the sake of partisan pride, and for which they were not quite equipped to fight.

Republicans entered the 21st Century embittered from a similar defeat, in a similar war - the impeachment of President Clinton.

The French fought back to win a very slim victory over their arch-rivals for European power, the Germans, in World War I - just as President Bush's Republican Party pulled out the slimmest of victories in the election of 2000.

The French suffered some embarrassing setbacks during World War II, including the loss of their own country for five years. But ultimately a remnant of them hung on and, with the help of allies, regained their footing atop their country and dealt Germany an even firmer ultimate defeat in 1945.

Similarly, the Republicans suffered major embarrassments in the aftermath of the Iraq war, Abu Ghraib being the lowest of low points. However, we hung on and, with the help of Tony Blair, John Howard, and Aleksander Kwasniewski (we must not, after all, forget Poland), were able to keep the country stable enough to hold a national election two months after President Bush's reelection.

Since World War II, the French have been . . . erratic . . . to say the least. During the Cold War, they pulled control of their strategic weapons out of NATO, and yet still demanded a voice at the negotiating table. Since losing their colonies in Indochina they have repeatedly engaged in adventurism in various parts of Africa, as well as in distant regions like Haiti, while simultaneously criticising any others who did so. Their hypocrisy has largely been motivated by the fact that the actions they criticized were likely to come at a high cost to their own partisan interests.

If some of this sounds vaguely familiar, all one must do is look to the Republican Party once again. After forging broad-based alliances with Democrats (Medicare Bill, No Child Left Behind), the Republicans proceeded to undercut those alliances and give their colleagues a handful of sticks with which to beat them.

The formerly isolationist party, which stood in times past for the firm standard of only involving itself in foreign conflicts for the sake of its own national interest, proceeded to justify a war not on those grounds, but on the far more dubious grounds of "top-down" democracy-building.

Finally, many of its leaders have allowed themselves to be embroiled in the same sort of economically-based hypocrisy at which the French have become such experts. Whether financing an anti-gambling campaign with casino money; paying exorbitant salaries to relatives and watching your colleagues justify it by claiming to have "saved money" on consulting fees; or financing a gargantuan tax cut not with decreases in spending, but with a spate of borrowing that brings doubt to the notion that it even is a cut in taxes in the long run, the Republicans certainly have succumbed to their own hubris.

What is the point of this long-winded analogy?

For that, we have to bring ourselves up to the present.

France entered the 20th Century as one of the world's superpowers. It left that century as a third-rate country with strained vocal chords trying in vain to assure the world that it was still important. France spent the better part of a half-century forging an ever-stronger alliance between the nations of Europe, and now looks to be on the cusp of watching that broad-based alliance fail not because of dissent from the fringes, but because the French government has so thoroughly alienated its own people.

The Republican Party entered the 21st Century at the top of its game. Over the course of the last four years, it has taken back the Senate, made historic gains in both houses of Congress, fought back from a damaging media campaign against a sitting President to win the 2004 election, and unseated a sitting Democratic Senate Leader with charges of "obstruction."

It has, in the process, seemingly done its dead-level best to eviscerate any position it ever stood for.

Instead of being the party of limited government it has become a collection of "BIG $PENDER$."

Instead of being the party of localized decision-making, it has become the party that brought education, medical, legal, and moral decisionmaking more thorougly inside the beltway than any administration before it.

Instead of being the party that staunchly stood in favor of judicial restraint, it has become the party of "selective activism," . . . that is, "activism is all right, if it's in my favor."

Instead of being the party of personal freedom, it has become the party of "freedom for those who agree with me."

Instead of being the party that appoints conservative judges who will not monkey with the Constitution, it has become the party that lets a minority of Senators make its appointments instead.

Like the French government, the Republican party needs to do some serious rethinking of its positions in terms of how it relates to the people who put it in power. If not, it will end up, like Jacques Chirac, a group of small men with big megaphones, pleading with their constituents to give them one last chance to show that they matter.

. . . and speaking of letters to Congress . . .

2005-04-22T13:17:00.000-05:00

. . . I just mailed one off to my Senator, on an entirely different subject.

It took me a long time to figure out exactly where I stood on the issue of changing the Senate rules on filibusters for judicial nominations. A lot of the problem, for me, was the incredibly hyperbolic rhetoric that has characterized both sides of the debate. Democrats are certainly wrong when they say that filibustering such nominations is a "time-honored" tradition, and claims that the filibuster is "an integral part of the system of checks and balances" makes one wonder if they have ever read the Constitution.

However, one is forced to wonder the same thing about Republicans who claim that such a filibuster is unconstitutional. Our nation's founding document says precisely nothing about the rules for debate in either house of Congress, except that the two houses can set their own rules - which both have done, and re-done, numerous times throughout their history.

So lay off the Constitution, already! You're not going to find anything in it to support your position - whatever that position is - without engaging in feats of verbal gymnastics that border on the miraculous. It's just not there.

That being the case, it is doubtless that both sides view this as a proxy-war for future Supreme Court Nomination battles - which is why the stakes are so high here.

It is equally doubtless, though, that we are dealing with the lives and reputations of real people - people who have devoted their careers to service of this country. Such people, whatever their political affiliation, deserve a hearing. They have now been in limbo for month after painful month, and it cannot be doubted that this position is an incredible strain on them and their families. If there is some doubt as to their qualifications to fulfill the offices to which they have been nominated, then by all means, let those doubts be aired! Thus far, however, no such doubts have been raised. Those who oppose their nominations have merely turned them into pawn in a complicated political game. Those who support their nominations are little better.

Thus, my position is that the Senate can do whatever the heck it wants with its rules and procedures. If the Majority can invoke a change in parliamentary procedure to force a vote, so be it. The nominees deserve it. If the minority can block them, so be it. They're doing their job as a minority party. Thus, as I support and sympathize with the expressed views of the judges in question, and of the President who nominated them, I support anything within the bounds of legality that will get them the promotions they deserve - busting the filibuster included.

Will it come back to haunt the GOP? Probably, but is there any doubt that if it was a Democratic president with a Democratic Senate majority of 55, they would do the same thing regardless of whether or not Bill Frist blinks on this one? There is no such doubt in my mind. If we do nothing, we gain nothing.

Barring another event on the world-shattering magnitude of September 11, 2001, President Bush's judicial appointments will be the single most important (and enduring) action of his second term.

With that in mind, I wrote a letter to my senior Senator, John Warner - one of the collection of moderate Republicans whose names have been bounced about as possibly voting with the Democrats against any proposed rule change. I suggest any of you who read this, and live in Maine, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Nebraska or Arizona do likewise. "Squishy" Republicans like these are notorious for their lack of backbone, and a letter or email might help their spinal fortitude on this vitally important issue.

The Internet Unchained . . . (we hope)

2005-04-22T12:29:00.000-05:00

Big update over at RedState.org - Mike Krempasky reports that both S. 678, Senator Reid's internet protection bill, and Representative Jeb Hensarling's house equivalent have gone bipartisan. In the house, Tim Ryan (D-OH) has signed on as a cosponsor to what has now become HR 1606. In the Senate, Reid's bill now has arch-conservative Senator Tom Coburn on board. Things don't get much more bipartisan than that!

Krempasky also points out Downsize DC, a place you can go to easily make your voice heard on the matter. Alternatively, you're welcome to copy and paste my letters (in sidebar), insert the names of your senators and representative, and email, fax, or mail them in.

Letter to Representatives re: Harry Reid's Bill

2005-04-15T12:18:00.000-05:00

UPDATE and BUMP:

Considering the facts that Senator Reid's bill has been introduced and given a bill number (S. 678), and that Representative Jeb Hensarling has introduced a corresponding House bill, I've decided to edit my letters to Congress accordingly, and bump them here to the top of my blog for the use of anybody who wishes to copy and send them to his or her legislators.

*****INITIAL POST FOR LETTER TO REPRESENTATIVES BEGINS*****

As promised, the following is a letter to members of the House of Representatives, asking them to introduce a House version of Senator Reid's bill to exempt Internet communications from the Federal Election Campaign Act.

Header: (Contact Name, Congressional Office Address, and Zip Code)

Dear Representative [Insert Name Here]:
Your colleague, Representative Hensarling, recently introduced HR 1606, "The Online Freedom of Speech Act," which would exempt Internet communications from regulation under the Federal Election Campaign Act. This bill corresponds with S.678, introduced last month in the Senate by Minority Leader Harry Reid. I ask that you support this bill, and that you encourage your colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and in both houses of Congress, to support this action as enthusiastically as possible.

This issue is one of those rare topics not touched by partisan politics. Both bills, in fact, have bipartisan cosponsors. This issue is one of freedom, and is important to those who engage in political commentary over the Internet, regardless of their political affiliation. It is your duty as a member of the House of Representatives to protect the Constitution of the United States, and the freedoms it protects for your constituents. One of those freedoms is the right to free speech.

Regulation of Internet communications cuts to the very heart of this freedom, because so much of the political speech that is transmitted through this particular medium is not controlled by either party, but is made up of individuals or groups expressing their thoughts on political issues.
This is not something the FEC should have any power to control, particularly in the manner they have proposed to do so, which places the onus on bloggers to prove that they are not in violation of any such regulations. The only justification the FEC has for acting on this issue is the argument that Congress has not made its will explicitly clear on the issue of Internet communications.

This being the case, I respectfully request that you support the Online Freedom of Speech Act. Only by taking a stand against this encroachment on our freedoms can you help to ensure that the Internet remains a bastion of free speech.

Sincerely,

[Your Name Here]

Once again, the most effective method of communicating this message is by printing this letter off, signing it by hand, and sending it via regular mail. This and other methods of communicating with your Representative are available, as always, at Congress.org.

Letter to Senators re: Harry Reid's bill

2005-04-15T12:10:00.000-05:00

UPDATE and BUMP:

Considering the facts that Senator Reid's bill has been introduced and given a bill number (S. 678), and that Representative Jeb Hensarling has introduced a corresponding House bill, I've decided to edit my letters to Congress accordingly, and bump them here to the top of my blog for the use of anybody who wishes to copy and send them to his or her legislators.

**********INITIAL POST FOR LETTER TO SENATORS BEGINS**********

In light of the introduction of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's bill to exempt Internet communications from the Federal Election Campaign Act, I've decided to post two more letters here, for the use of any who happen to come across this site. Below you will find a letter to Senators, asking them to co-sponsor Senator Reid's bill. My next post will feature a similar bill to members of the House of Representatives, asking them to introduce a corresponding House version.

Header: (Contact name, Senate Office, Zip Code)

Dear Senator [Insert Name Here]:

It has recently come to my attention that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has proposed a bill that would exempt Internet communications from the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. Simultaneously, Senator Reid also wrote a letter to Scott Thomas, Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, expressing his concern about the possibility of FEC regulation of Internet activities.

I would ask that you sign on as a co-sponsor of this legislation, S. 678, and encourage your colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do likewise. This is not a partisan issue, as both this bill and its House equivalent, HR 1606, have bipartisan cosponsors. Rather, this is an issue of freedom. It is of vital importance that something be done to forestall any possibility that those who use the Internet should be silenced. As Senator Reid's letter to Chairman Thomas pointed out, "The Internet has provided a new and exciting medium for political speech." As a member of the United States Senate, it is your duty to ensure that this speech is protected as our Constitution demands.
Since the introduction of this bill, the FEC has proposed regulations that profoundly threaten these protections, and do so in a way that places the onus on bloggers to prove that they are not in violation of these regulations. Their only justification for taking any action at all is the fact that Congress has not made its will explicitly clear with regards to Internet regulation. Please take this step to solve that problem, and to support the freedoms upon which this country was built, and which are highlighted all the more by the explosion of Internet communication in recent years. Please co-sponsor this bill.

Sincerely,

[Your Name Here]

As always, the most effective means of communicating this message is to print this letter off, sign it, and send it via regular mail. However, if you wish to send it via email or fax, contact information for your Senators is, as before, available at Congress.org.

Update: The State of My Life

2005-04-15T11:41:00.000-05:00

Just to let those of you who have faithfully continued to visit my blog, I want to assure you that I am still here. I am currently in preparations for my comprehensive exams to obtain my Master's Degree, and thus have been too busy to post regularly. I will, however, be making updates to my letters to congress about the bill crafted by Senator Harry Reid, and bumping them to the top of my blog sometime today. Thanks again for staying tuned, and I'll try not to be so long again until my next post

FEC Comments

2005-03-25T11:20:00.000-05:00

Bob Bauer, at More Soft Money Hard Law, has excerpts from the actual comments of individual FEC Commissioners on the draft rules proposed on internet regulation. They are quite instructive, as they provide insight into exactly what each commissioner who shared his or her thoughts on the matter truly believes, published rhetoric notwithstanding. With the exception of Commissioner Weintraub (she of "chill out!" infamy), most of the commission seem, at least publicly, to be sympathetic to the plight of bloggers, if undecided as to what extent they should or should not to act on their sympathies.

Reading this has also convinced me still more of one thing. Brad Smith is a hero who deserves the gratitude of everybody who values free speech. The guy is implacable, and rightly so.

This is far from over. Stay tuned.

Brad Smith was right

2005-03-25T09:32:00.000-05:00

Mike Krempasky over at RedState has been absolutely heroic when it comes to keeping the spotlight squarely on the FEC's recent advances in the quest to regulate bloggers. This morning he provides for us the first draft of the FEC's proposed rule, to compare side by side with its eventual proposed rule.

Both have their frightening parts, but in reading the former, there is only one thing I can think to say, "Thank you, Brad Smith, for raising the alarm!" Frankly, as Krempasky says, it seems that Brad Smith underestimated the threat. Ed Morrissey says that Krempasky is speaking on bloggers' behalf at an event on Capitol Hill next week, together with Congressman Chris Shays' (as in Shays-Meehan) general counsel, and FEC Chairman Scott Thomas. Now that should be an interesting event.

Hasen's Take

2005-03-24T12:18:00.000-05:00

Rick Hasen (he of Election Law Blog fame) has written a detailed analysis of the proposed rulemaking released yesterday by the FEC in anticipation of its meeting today. His analysis is posted at the Personal Democracy Forum. Lots of links to various related things in the post. [Hat tip: Instapundit]

FEC Proposed Rulemaking

2005-03-24T09:18:00.000-05:00

The FEC has made available its thoughts on the issues of Shays-Meehan v. FEC, in light of its preparations to create a new regulation on the subject of campaign activities and the Internet. Redstate has the notice in HTML format for quick perusal, as well as commentary here and here. Captain's Quarters and More Soft Money Hard Law also have some valuable thoughts to share.

The Obligatory Terri Schiavo Post . . .

2005-03-23T15:52:00.000-05:00

My heart is heavy as I write this post - a post on a subject I never wanted to think, speak, or write about. A post I had hoped to avoid ever writing.

I can't anymore. I must say something about all of this. I have taken the last forty-eight hours or so off from blogging, while trying to figure out how to share the thoughts of my heart on this matter. As with most of my posts, this one will disturb some of those who read it, and will probably upset those on both sides of the various political issues swirling around the hospital bed in which this poor woman lies.

And therein lies much of the problem. The way this whole thing has become so highly politicized reflects incredibly poorly on everybody involved - from the family, to the courts, to the press, to those on both sides of the issue in the assembly in Tallahassee and the Congress here in Washington.

It should never have come to this.

What saddens me most about this is that both sides are claiming the moral high ground - from positions so rife with hypocrisy that any ground they have taken is not worth holding anyhow.

Let us examine the issues in their turns.

In the first place is the issue of life. Conservatives have managed to entangle the life of Terri Schiavo with the lives of the millions of unborn babies slaughtered every year in this country in the name of "choice." They have successfully captured the ground in defense of "life."

Liberals, on the other hand, have for their part successfully enmeshed this issue with one of their own pet terms - "dignity" . . . as in the right to die with dignity. If the conservatives have captured the ground of the debate on under what conditions life can begin, the liberals have captured that same ground in terms of the conditions under which it can end.

Both arguments, and both positions, seem to me to be a reprehensible method of using this poor woman's story for political gain. If you wish to debate the merits of a defense of life for those who have no say in the matter, then debate it for those who unambiguously have never had the opportunity to make their wishes known! If you wish to debate the merits of a dignified end for those who are incapable of living without artificial means of assistance, then debate a case where someone is truly living only by artificial means! Terri Schiavo is neither, and to place her in either category when the facts of the case are not truly known, is dishonest.

But that is only one issue in the maelstrom surrounding Terri's bed.

Another is the issue of government purview. It is the question, "when does the government have the right to step in and mandate or legislate my life?"

This question cuts to the heart of several tragedies in this case - for while Terri Schiavo herself is the biggest tragedy in this story, it is far from the only one.

It is a tragedy that the same conservatives who argue that Congress should author legislation relegating Ms. Schiavo to her current condition indefinitely would undoubtedly be the first to oppose a similar Congressional mandate that forced parents to give what they believed to be harmful vaccines to their children, or to educate them solely based on standards set by the government, or to refrain from corporal punishment even when they deemed it appropriate.

It is a tragedy that the same liberals who argue that Congress has no business intervening on Ms. Schiavo's behalf would see no problem at all if they intervened to restrain a child who wished to pray over his or her school lunch, or an abortion protestor who wished to dissuade someone entering a Planned Parenthood clinic, or a corporate executive who wished to donate a large sum of money to the candidate of his or her choice.

It is a tragedy that the same conservatives who argue vociferously against judicial activism at every turn are now advocating that the federal judiciary step into an issue that has no standing under federal jurisdiction whatsoever.

It is a tragedy that the same liberals who laud the achievements of activist judges on issue after issue have suddenly discovered in themselves a distaste for judicial tyranny.

It is a tragedy, most of all, that the people most emotionally involved in, and tied to, this case, will have their reputations stained forever by it.

Michael Schiavo has testified in court after court that his wife would not want to live like this. His motives have been questioned because of the life he has apart from his wife, and because of the monetary benefits he would receive in the event of her death.

What is not being addressed is the truth or falsehood of his claim, for if that is indeed the desire Terri Schiavo expressed, then what difference does it make what he gets out of it?? And until there is evidence to the contrary, his sworn court testimony must, by all of our legal and constitutional standards, be assumed true.

Conversely, Terri's parents will not emerge from this unstained either. They have been accused of deluding themselves into thinking there is hope where none exists. They have been accused of selective video editing, removing hours of non-responsiveness on Terri's part to show a few minutes where she seems to be responding to voices and other stimuli.

What they are is trying to love their daughter as best they know how, in an environment where they must seem so very alone.

And that is really what this comes down to. It is not, at its heart, a national media frenzy. At its heart it is a tightly-knit set of personal stories - Terri's story, that of her husband, and those of her parents. While each can claim many advocates and adversaries, each of them must be in a lonely position indeed.

For I can testify that stories such as these can only be understood from within.

This month, I mark the anniversary of the closest thing I know to Terri's story. I mark the anniversary of the day I got a call that sent me scrambling to catch a flight from Washington DC to Sacramento, California, to enter a hospital room in which my mother lay, alternating between moments of what looked like near-lucidity and moments of utter nonresponsiveness. It was that day that my father, my sister, and I gathered together around a hospital cafeteria table to listen as the oncology doctor told us of our options. None were pleasant to contemplate.

three short months before, my mother had been diagnosed with a particularly virulent strain of bone cancer. By the time I arrived her own body was poisoning her, and the alternatives we had were to continue funneling chemicals into her which would keep her alive for a time, but unable to respond to or recognize anything taking place around her. The other alternative was, as in Terri Schiavo's case, to stop the flow of nutrients to her and just let her die.

After much agonizing over the very same questions that confront the Schiavo and Schindler families, we turned off the flow.

As it turned out, my mother's case was different in that the unexpected occurred. Once the chemicals were no longer coursing through her, she recovered to the point where she could recognize me and my father and sister. Her very first lucid sentence after coming out of her non-responsive state was, "no more chemo." Even though chemotherapy might have prolonged her life for a few more short weeks or months, she did not want a life like that.

Three weeks later, without the chemicals preventing the rise in calcium in her bloodstream that had been poisoning her before, she died.

It was what she wanted, and what she would have wanted even if it had meant I never got to speak to her again. I thank God that isn't what happened.

It is not a perfect parallel to Terri Schiavo's case, but then I never claimed that it was. I cannot claim to understand what is going through the minds of Terri's husband and parents. The reason I feel I must write this post is that so many are claiming to know their minds and hearts. That is not our place. It is not our right. Terri Schiavo is not a political debate. She is an individual - one with a terribly tragic story that has yet to have its final chapter written. Please accord her and all those who love her the respect and sympathy they deserve.

FEC Gearing Up

2005-03-21T09:06:00.001-05:00

RedState.org tells us that the FEC appears to be gearing up to examine Internet regulations as early as this week. The legally required announcement is here.

The meeting is Thursday, March 24, at 10 AM. For those of us here in the DC area, it will be held at 999 E Street NW, 9th floor - and is open to the public. This meeting will discuss 2005 Legislative Recommendations; Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the Internet: Definitions of "Public Communication" and "Generic Campaign Activity," and Disclaimers; and "Routine Administrative Matters." The contact for information purposes is Press Officer Robert Biersack, at (202) 694-1220.

One RedState.org reader, Mark Kilmer, left an idea in a comment that is worth mentioning here. Since this meeting is open to the public, and is something that impacts all of us, Kilmer's idea was to get in touch with C-Span and request that they cover the meeting. You can do so by emailing events@cspan.org.

Hugh Hewitt Weighs In

2005-03-20T13:05:00.000-05:00

Hugh Hewitt, from the beginning a skeptic as to the level of actual threat FEC regulation of the internet poses to bloggers, has nonetheless weighed in on the matter in the wake of reading Glenn Reynolds' keynote speech at last week's Politics Online Conference. Hewitt is great to have behind any movement of this sort that has the goal of swaying federal regulations and government policy because he, well, knows how to get stuff done.

While still no less skeptical about actual FEC regulation of blogs, he provides several practical tips to keep ourselves aware of any impending action against us. He provides a link to this page of FEC regulations currently underway, and suggests regular checks of its contents to see if anything is happening in regards to the blogosphere or the Internet more broadly. I'll be posting this link in the sidebar. Keep an eye on this page!

Hewitt also makes several suggestions as to the level of organization needed to combat this thing, if it ever does threaten to come about. Hewitt recognizes the same thing I've been trying to communicate with this page - the fact that a one- or two-week blogstorm over some comments by one FEC commissioner is not enough to stop the FEC if it truly decides to regulate us. Hewitt says he still doesn't believe the FEC is that stupid, but promises a lot more if they prove that they are. Check out his post.

Transcript of Glenn Reynolds at Politics Online Conference

2005-03-20T12:56:00.000-05:00

Redstate.org has posted a transcript of Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds giving the keynote speech opposite FEC Chairman Scott Thomas (already in sidebar) at last week's Politics Online Conference. They expect to have video footage available soon. When they do, I'll let you know. All of it will, of course, go into the sidebar as soon as I can make it available. All of us here in blog-land owe the guys at RedState a huge "thank you" for their efforts on this issue - one that has the potential to directly affect each and every one of us.

Full-Length Treglia Video Available

2005-03-19T14:05:00.000-05:00

Ryan Sager has posted the full video of Sean Treglia's startling admissions in regards to Pew and other liberal foundations' succesfful subterfuge to fool Congress into passing the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act on his blog, "Miscellaneous Objections." He also lists and addresses Treglia's and Pew's responses to his column here.

Sager on Rightalk

2005-03-18T17:20:00.000-05:00

Ryan Sager will be on Rightalk.com streaming radio today at 3 PM EST to talk in more detail about his campaign finance reform exposé in yesterday's New York Post. [Hat Tip: LGF]

Sadly, I will miss it, but if there's anywhere I can get ahold of a transcript, I'll post it.

UPDATE: The following is Rightalk's response to my request for a transcript.

We don't do transcripts. However, you can listen to Paul [Rodriguez, who hosted the segment in which Ryan Sager was a guest] every hour on the hour at our website. His show will be on one of our four channels for the next 23 hours. His show will also be replayed during the weekend, check out schedules page to see when you can catch him that way

I'm going to check it out, as I missed it the first time around. You should too. Their weekend replay schedule is here.

Harry Reid Gets it Right

2005-03-18T15:36:00.000-05:00

If even a stopped clock is right twice a day, this hour belongs to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. Apparently while he hasn't been busy obstructing President Bush's judicial picks or lambasting the President's ideas for social security reform, the Senator has had his people working up a bill exempting Internet communications from the 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act - thus reversing Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's ruling in Shays-Meehan v. FEC that mandated some sort of regulation from the FEC on internet-based activities. Reid has also written his own letter to FEC Chairman Scott Thomas. Both are brought to us by the folks at More Soft Money Hard Law, and both are going into the sidebar.

Now the next step, as Mike Krempasky over at RedState.org says, is to get some Republican cosponsors for this thing and get it moving.

UPDATE: It seems that Senator Reid has NOT introduced this bill yet. As of now it is simply being circulated among his colleagues in the Senate [hat tip: Krempasky]. Silly me, I should have noticed that the bill hasn't been assigned a number yet. Letters to Senators and Representatives have been edited accordingly.

Greetings, Captain's Quarters Readers!

2005-03-18T12:23:00.000-05:00

A hearty welcome to any readers who find their way here via the link from Captain's Quarters. I'm a great fan of Cap'n Ed, and am happy to have you here. I'm honored that he's decided to link to me from his blog.

More on the Money Trail

2005-03-17T15:01:00.000-05:00

Redstate.org has a piece from Mark Tapscott, Director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Media and Public Policy, with further commentary on Sean Treglia's startling revelations about the process by which Campaign Finance Reform was passed. Tapscott's piece originally appeared on his blog, Tapscott's Copy Desk.

Following the Money

2005-03-17T11:13:00.000-05:00

Ryan Sager does it again. In another excellent and eerily insightful column - this time in the New York Post - Sager continues to track the financing behind Campaign Finance Reform.

In this column he exposes the roots of the movement that got us here in the first place. As it turns out, those roots are buried in quite a bit of dirt.

Sager cites Sean Treglia, formerly of the Pew Charitable Trusts, as the chief architect of what can be described in no better terms than a mass scam perpetrated against the government to convince them of a groundswelling of support for campaign finance reform. Treglia's "three-pronged strategy" was as follows:

First, "Pursue an expansive agenda through incremental reforms

Then, "Pay for a handful of 'experts' all over the country with foundation money."

Finally, "Create fake business, minority and religious groups to pound the table for reform."

You certainly have to give Treglia credit for one thing. It worked. But what I find most disturbing about Sager's column is the explanation of just why it worked.

Treglia's view? A press that was either lazy, or purchased, or both.

Sager writes:

Here, the story — as laid out in the Political Money Line report — gets really ugly. Some highlights:

* In September of 2000, less than two years before the passage of McCain-Feingold, the liberal magazine The American Prospect put out a special issue devoted to campaign-finance reform. With incredible hypocrisy, the magazine failed to tell its readers that the "Checkbook Democracy" issue was paid for with a $132,000 check from the Carnegie Corporation — which, again, has spent $14 million promoting the regulation of political speech in the last decade.
* Since 1994, National Public Radio has accepted more than $1.2 million from liberal foundations promoting campaign-finance reform for items such as (to quote the official disclosure statements) "news coverage of financial influence in political decision-making." About $400,000 of that directly funded a program called, "Money, Power and Influence."
NPR claims that there has never been any contact between the funders and the reporters. NPR also claims that some of the $1.2 million went to non-campaign-finance-related coverage. But at least $860,000 can be tied directly to coverage of money in politics.
* Lastly, the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation accepted $935,000 between 1995 and 2001 from liberal foundations promoting campaign-finance reform for things like a "training initiative to help television, radio and print journalists provide better news coverage of the influence of private money on electoral, legislative and regulatory processes." The president of RTNDF, Barbara Cochran, assured me that "We did not receive money to promote campaign-finance reform." Cochran also made clear that RTNDF does not provide news coverage, it only trains journalists. But she wouldn't provide The Post with any of the training materials it produced with the foundation money.
The press as a whole, of course, wasn't bought off. But most journalists were either too ill-informed or too unconcerned to figure out the fraud.
Back to the videotape, where an unidentified (but apparently sympathetic) individual asks Treglia: "What would have happened had a major news organization gotten a hold of this at the wrong time?"
"We had a scare," Treglia says. "As the debate was progressing and getting pretty close, George Will stumbled across a report that we had done and attacked it in his column. And a lot of his partisans were becoming aware of Pew's role and were feeding him information. And he started to reference the fact that Pew had played a large role in this — that this was a liberal attempt to hoodwink Congress."
"But you know what the good news is from my perspective?" Treglia says to the stunned crowd. "Journalists didn't care . . . So no one followed up on the story. And so there was a panic there for a couple of weeks because we thought the story was going to begin to gather steam, and no one picked it up." Treglia's right. While he admits Pew specifically instructed groups receiving its grants "never to mention Pew," all these connections were disclosed (as legally required) in various tax forms and annual reports. "If any reporter wanted to know, they could have sat down and connected the dots," he said. "But they didn't."

And we wonder why these people are so hot to have their regulations expanded to blogs. Can you imagine the blogosphere sitting on a story like this the way the MSM did? Charles Johnson, or Glenn Reynolds, or Ed Morrissey, or the guys at Powerline would have done their homework.

So those whose power and control they threaten would like nothing better than to shut them up.

Thanks to Powerline for the link.

UPDATE: Ryan Sager has a partial transcript and sections of the video posted in his blog. [Hat tip: Instapundit]

Video Footage of FEC Chairman Scott Thomas

2005-03-16T13:28:00.000-05:00

. . . giving a speech intended to reassure bloggers of the FEC's good intentions with regard to regulating the Internet. What it should really do is scare us all to death.

Thanks to Wizbang for hosting the video. Link is in the sidebar. So is transcript (thanks to RedState.org)

Campaign Finance Redux

2005-03-16T09:20:00.000-05:00

Krempasky over at Redstate.org has a summary of FEC Chairman Thomas' speech from last week's Politics Online Conference (transcript in the sidebar) provided yesterday by Bob Bauer at More Soft Money Hard Law. Among other things, Bauer points out that all of the justifications Thomas used for extending FEC regulations to the internet are already prohibited by law.

Click the link for more from Bauer's summary. I'm putting a link to this group's main page in the sidebar.

Another Call for Increased Blogulation

2005-03-15T17:28:00.000-05:00

. . . This time from the latest issue of Newsweek. [hat tip: Right Wing News]

In this little gem, Steven Levy opines that the population of Blogistan is entirely too white, and altogether too male. He has the support of several bloggers. Predictably, they are the ones who are somewhat . . . um . . . absent . . . from the majority of blogrolls around the most popular blogs on the web. Their general consensus, though, is that "something should be done

My question is, "why?"

What is wrong with the system as it is? Why should I, as one blogger in the article suggested, search around for ten bloggers who are not white, not male, or not english-speaking, and link to them? I find bloggers that I like, and recommend them to my readers. I'm not a big fan of gay rights, but I link to Andrew Sullivan because I like much of what he says. I'm no left-wing liberal, but I have quoted Markos Moulitsas Zuniga in some of my posts, because every once in a while he says something that makes sense. I've got Michelle Malkin on my "favorites" list because she's a smart cookie, and a great writer. Frankly, I have no idea what ethnicity Glenn Reynolds, Charles Johnson, or Hugh Hewitt are (though I assume from the fact that this article was even written that they're all white). I don't link to them because of their race. I link to them because I like what they have to say! Who is some Newsweek reporter to suggest that I do otherwise?

And who is he to suggest that something needs to be done because I don't link to people I don't enjoy reading??

And now, a Domestic Test . . .

2005-03-15T16:32:00.000-05:00

P.J. O'Rourke has a great article in this week's National Review [hat tip, LGF], detailing Senator John F. Kerry's latest flirtation with political suicide. While this is not directly related to the campaign finance kick I've been on over the past several days, it is tangental at the very least.

Apparently, the Junior Senator from Massachusetts believes that we the people are too dumb to be trusted with the First Amendment.

O'Rourke quotes the senator, speaking as the honoree at an awards ceremony at the JFK Memorial library on the last day of February, as saying,

"There has been . . . a profound and negative change in the relationship of America's media with the American people. . . . If 77 percent of the people who voted for George Bush on Election Day believed weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq--as they did--and 77 percent of the people who voted for him believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11--as they did--then something has happened in the way in which we are talking to each other and who is arbitrating the truth in American politics. . . . When fear is dominating the discussion and when there are false choices presented and there is no arbitrator, we have a problem."

The Senator went on to say,

"We learned . . . that the mainstream media, over the course of the last year, did a pretty good job of discerning. But there's a subculture and a sub-media that talks and keeps things going for entertainment purposes rather than for the flow of information. And that has a profound impact and undermines what we call the mainstream media of the country. And so the decision-making ability of the American electorate has been profoundly impacted as a consequence of that. The question is, what are we going to do about it?"

I have an idea . . .

how about . . . nothing??

How about realizing that media figures, like everybody else, are biased one way or the other. How about realizing that the entertainment focus of media is not a "sub-media" or a "sub-culture" . . . it just happens to be the way the mainstream media conducts business in a product-driven environment.

How about realizing that the vast majority of non-mainstream news outlets from which most Americans get their news these days . . . and O'Rourke lists them - talk shows, MTV, Comedy Central - are hardly the Bush-supporting demogogues Kerry is accusing of distorting the truth and feeding it to the public as fact. That this practice occurs is undeniable . . . but that it is the sole purview of the conservative right is somewhat laughable, and what role it had in the senator's recent failure to gain a promotion is questionable at best.

But don't try telling that to Senator Kerry. He believes that we can't be trusted to see through the load that is being shoveled at us. He believes that when truth doesn't quite make it out into the open air, that the government has to . . . well . . . help it a little.

The senator spoke at great length of the travesty that had more than seventy percent of Americans holding Saddam Hussein responsible for the attacks of September 11th . . . but for some odd reason didn't seem to mention the far greater travesty of holding our heroic servicemen and women in Iraq responsible for the deliberate targeting of media members, an accusation levelled in the not-to-distant past by the former head of CNN.

And where were these vaunted arbitrators - the allegedly impartial denizens of truth and light - while conservative . . . proudly partial . . . bloggers were seeking out the truth and holding Mr. Jordan responsible for what he was alleged to have said?

Oh, that's right . . . they were nowhere to be found.

Senator Kerry seems to be saying, in implying that regular Americans cannot be trusted to find the truth on their own, that somehow regular Americans who have jobs in government or the media can be so trusted.

Senator Kerry seems, to me, to be a bit out of touch with reality.

Letter to Congress on Campaign Finance Reform

2005-03-15T09:53:00.000-05:00

As promised, this post contains an open letter to members of Congress which my readers may, if they wish, copy and send to their members of congress urging them to pressure the FEC not to restrict bloggers under the guise of campaign finance reform

Header: (Contact name, DC office address, and zip code)

Dear [insert name of senator or representative]:

Not long ago, a member of the Federal Election Commission stated that in the near future the Commission would be forced to extend its purview to campaign activities carried out online. While the ruling of US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Shays-Meehan v. FEC demands this, the potential impacts on the newly expansive world of "blogging" - the activity of maintaining an online web log - are of great concern. Blogging, like its more traditional journalistic cousins, is of vital importance to the twenty-first century notion of a free press, and FEC regulation of the Internet carries with it the possibility of drastically curtailing this activity.

In recent months, bloggers on both sides of the political spectrum have shown themselves quite adept at picking up and running with stories that the mainstream media has, for one reason or another, been more hesitant to introduce or to sustain. Without the freedom bloggers have to cover these stories, many might never know of their existence. This is not a partisan issue, it is an issue of freedom - a freedom explicitly protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution

Any proposed regulation is of particular importance as regards blogging, because most of the regulations proposed hit squarely at the very structure of the system of blogging. One of the key accountability methods bloggers use to "police" themselves and others is the hyperlink - a link to the websites from which they obtain source material. However, in the future, such links might be viewed as a "contribution" of sorts, even if the link was to a page from a candidate opposed by a particular blogger. Furthermore, most of those who blog do so for free, and would be very hard-pressed to hire the legions of accountants and lawyers necessary to ensure their compliance with any regulations the FEC might impose. Most of those who have diligently built up their popularity, and would thus be in danger of running up against contribution limits, would simply have to stop blogging all together. This has the potential of simply laying waste to the entire notion of blogging as a form of political commentary.

Already, fourteen of your colleagues in the US House of Representatives have authored an open letter to the Federal Election Commission urging them to exempt bloggers from any future regulation of internet activities. I ask that you would add your own efforts to these, in the interest of ensuring against any restriction of this newfound voice in American politics. It is a voice that needs to be heard, and it is in your power to help make that happen.

Sincerely,

[Your Name Here]

Again, if you copy and paste this into your own letter, please do your best to make sure that it fits on one page. It will be most effective if you print it out, hand sign it, and send it via regular mail, but you can also fax or email it. Contact information for your members of congress can be obtained by going here and entering your zip code.

Show Me the Money

2005-03-11T18:43:00.000-05:00

Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters does a great job of following the money trail behind the so-called "campaign finance reform" movement, and here he links to an excellent article by Ryan Sager at TechCentralStation, who does more of the same.

Letter to FEC on Campaign Finance Reform

2005-03-11T17:58:00.000-05:00

Well, I decided that I might as well throw my hat into this particular ring. After all, writing letters to government officials is what I do for a living, so why not do it on an issue about which I actually care

The following is my letter to the Federal Election Commission. Anybody reading this is more than welcome to copy it, and send it under their own name as well. In fact, please do.

The members of the FEC are . . .

The Honorable Scott E. Thomas, Chairman
The Honorable Michael E. Toner, Vice Chairman
The Honorable David M. Mason, Commissioner
The Honorable Bradley A. Smith, Commissioner
The Honorable Danny L. McDonald, Commissioner
The Honorable Ellen L. Weintraub, Commissioner

[Insert Name here, as written above]
Federal Election Commission
999 E Street, Northwest
Washington, D.C. 20463

Dear [Name]:

I am sure that you are aware of the recent controversy over potential FEC regulation of politically-oriented web logs (blogs) by virtue of US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s decision in Shays-Meehan v. FEC late last year. In light of the fact that this ruling forces the FEC to act in some regard to regulate internet-based campaign activities, it is vital that in so doing, the freedoms guaranteed by the first amendment of the US Constitution are preserved.

The events of this past year have proven that web logs play just as much a key role in shaping public opinion as do other, more longstanding media outlets. Given this fact, it is vital that the FEC preserve the freedom of the press by forgoing restrictions on political activity in blogs.

Some have said that only if money is involved can the FEC act, but non-monetary support has been regulated in the past, and it is vital that this not occur in respect to weblogs. It is not least so because one such type of hypothesized regulation in particular – a restriction on web links to candidates’ campaign sites – would restrict a key method by which bloggers hold ourselves (and each other) accountable for the accuracy and context of our statements. Undermining this key accountability mechanism would be tantamount to destroying the means bloggers have to fact-check one another.

It is certain that any undue restriction on blogging activities would open the floodgates for litigation as well. Blogging has opened up a vast new world of the dissemination of information, and it is a door that cannot and will not be easily shut. Please avoid this costly and time-consuming legal battle by ensuring that any restriction of internet campaign activity respects the rights of bloggers to speak out as they wish.

Thank you for your time and your consideration in this matter.

Sincerely,

[Your Name Here]

For best impact make sure it fits on a single page, and send separate, hand-signed copies to each member of the Commission by regular mail. You can also address it to all six members, and of course, there are other ways of getting it to them as well. The FEC's official contact page is here.

COMING SOON: Open letter to members of US Senate and House of Representatives. Both letters will eventually go in the sidebar.

Campaign Finance Reform: Blogistan Speaks!

2005-03-11T12:04:00.000-05:00

As promised, today is blog-wrap day. With this post, I will attempt as best I can to get a finger on the pulse of the blogosphere regarding the level of concern with the notion of regulating blogs under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), better known as McCain-Feingold.

As I noted yesterday, two of my favorites, Hugh Hewitt and Beldar, are the skeptics in the group. Hewitt believes that any any such regulation doesn't have a chance of standing up to the scrutiny of the First Amendment. Beldar agrees, and offers his blog as a test case for any such regulation.

Several other luminaries in the world of blog disagree. The most diligent on the subject of campaign finance reform thus far has been Cap'n Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters. He has long been an activist on this issue, did much to steer it through the recent (and as yet unabated) blog-storm perpetrated by FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith's recent warning on the topic, and has continued to cover it since, even authoring an open letter to the members of the US Senate for the perusal of all.

Also very much on top of the issue is Michelle Malkin. She has written a great deal on the subject, and is superb, as always.

Further coverage is offered by the folks at Redstate.org. In their latest input, Michael Krempasky has posted an announcement of the formulation of the Online Coalition, whose first project is a letter to FEC Chairman Scott Thomas. Go here and sign the letter. Redstate also has a transcript of an NRA News interview with FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith.

These three, as I said, have been the most vocally active on this issue from the right side of the political spectrum. There have been many others too numerous to analyze, but here are some links to their posts on the matter: Powerline's input is here and here, Instapundit's is here, and here, Little Green Footballs has theirs here and here. They are joined by The Corner and Kerry Spot over at National Review Online.

I'm sure there are plenty of folks I've missed. Let me know.

Moreover, this issue has managed to do something no other has accomplished before it. It has united conservative and liberal bloggers in a common cause - the protection of their freedom to blog.

Thus, a look at Left-Blogistan is warranted as well.

On the liberal side, it is Daily Kos who is doing the lion's share of the footwork. He has been tracking down the responses of FEC Commissioners, and believes that there is great cause for concern.

Also active is MyDD, who hosts a diary entry by Senator Russ Feingold on the topic of FEC regulation for blogs (That would be Senator Feingold, of McCain-Feingold fame . . . or infamy, depending on how you look at it.)

Others, like Atrios, have weighed in on the subject. I'm sure that given the sheer volume of blogs out there, I've missed some, but these are the big guns for the left.

I'm sure that there are many, many more out there, and if there are any particularly unique or insightful posts that I've missed, please let me know. I'll be posting several of the contributions mentioned here in the sidebar.

A word of caution. While most of this has remained largely objective, some of those on both ends of the spectrum are engaging in finger-pointing. Some on the left are pointing out that it is the Republicans on the FEC raising the hue and cry on this issue. Some on the right are highlighting the fact that the Democrats on the FEC were the ones who blocked an appeal of the court case that got us here in the first place.

None of this is helpful. Neither side has a monopoly on the respect of Freedom of Speech, and neither should claim such a monopoly. It is in the best interests of all to kill this thing once and for all. To do so more efficiently and effectively, let's take a break from potshots across the aisle.

Stay tuned for updates!

UPDATE: The Stakeholder, the offical blog of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has posted a letter to the FEC signed by 14 members of Congress. Thanks to Kos for the link. As he points out, the signatures on the letter constitute, "a nice cross-section of the [Democratic] party's left and center, with a socialist [Bernie Sanders of VT] and (libertarian) Republican [Ron Paul of TX] thrown in for good measure." Letter is going into the sidebar as well.

A New Direction: The Experiment . . .

2005-03-10T15:40:00.000-05:00

As of today, I've decided to take this blog in a new direction. Oh, I'm not going to stop commenting on any and every political event that strikes my fancy, but I'm noticing something about the blogosphere that concerns me.

Last week, FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith warned that the internet, thus far exempt from regulation under campaign finance laws, might well be faced with such regulation in the future. Smith warned that the law, as currently structured by acts of congress and judicial opinion, in no way prevents the theoretical regulation of blogs.

Predictably, this announcement prompted a flurry of online activity. After all, the more heavily trafficked blogs could be drastically impacted by any such redrawing of the regulations. Any hyperlink to a candidate website could be considered a contribution, as could any quotation of campaign materials.

The truth is, nobody knows how, exactly, it would impact the world of blogging.

Which is why it's kind of surprising to see, over the last couple days, that the furor has died down somewhat. Some bloggers (most notably, Hugh Hewitt and Beldar) have said there is no cause for alarm, pointing out that this would constitute a blatant and direct violation of free speech, and could not possibly be tolerated any more than, say, the regulation of the Wall Street Journal's "Online Journal," or the online pages of Slate Magazine or National Review.

I respectfully disagree. The authors of these blogs, though they might be more knowledgable than I am about the law, are to my mind a bit too quick to believe in the rationality of the average US District Judge - who after all, apparently gets to interpret (as Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly did in Shays-Meehan v. FEC) such regulations to mean whatever they choose. Even the Supreme Court has already demonstrated (by majority opinion in McConnell v. FEC) a lack of respect for the First Amendment when it comes to the issue of campaign contributions as political speech. Furthermore, Hugh Hewitt might be convinced that his blog is an outlet well worthy of an exemption under the notion of a "free press," (and he would be right, of course) but Congress has yet to catch up to the 21st Century in that regard. Until they do, the First Amendment is but a thin shield against any regulation the FEC (or the courts) decide is necessary.

So . . . I have decided to dedicate this blog to keeping the "blogstorm" going. Government action - be it a law of congress, a judicial opinion, or an FEC regulation - once undertaken is extremely difficult to reverse. This one must not be allowed to advance any further than it has thus far, and must be forced into retreat wherever we can. My goal is to inform whoever will listen about the actions and statements coming from all three branches of government, as well as from other organizations, the media, and "we the people." I have included the previously mentioned judicial opinions, as well as other documents, laws, statements, and websites of general interest on the topic, in the sidebar. Check them out! Inform yourself

Please leave me a comment if there is anything else of interest on the topic that you think I should include. The list at the left is not exhaustive, and I will be adding to it in days to come.

Stay tuned to see how the battle is going . . .

NEXT: Where the Blogosphere stands . . .

The Coming Energy Crisis . . .

2005-03-09T17:20:00.000-05:00

. . . no, not the wild-eyed assertion that the world's oil is going to start running out in the near future. Predictions like this have been made for decades, and technological advances allowing us to dig deeper for previously inaccessible oil have always outpaced the rate at which it is hauled out of the earth.

No, I'm talking about a more immediate energy crisis, one directly related to the fact that I have to get gas on the way home.

And the fact that there's very little chance of my finding it for less than two dollars a gallon. My father, who is reading this from California, would likely call me lucky for being able to find it at that price. Now we hear that it's only supposed to get worse over the next couple weeks, and our "friends" the Saudis are telling us now that we should get used to oil prices we previously thought of as exhorbitant.

Good.

Say what??

Good!

It is a simple fact that one of our biggest security vulnerabilities lies in our reliance on foreign sources of energy. We rely on foreign countries for much of our oil - roughly 60% of it, in fact. Of these countries, nearly all of our major suppliers (with the exception of Canada and Mexico, which are both among our top three sources) either hate us, or are constantly in danger of having their supplies disrupted. Among our top five suppliers, for example, Canada and Mexico are rounded out by Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Nigeria. Furthermore, even of the oil that we pump here, much has to be sent overseas because this country's stringent environmental regulations have prevented us from adding to our refining capacity for the last couple decades or so - so even much of our "domestic" oil ends up being a "foreign import" by the time it's finally ready to heat our homes or run our cars.

In short, we need an alternative - an alternative to relying on the goodwill strategic rivals for our economy's life-blood . . . an alternative to depending on tenuous shipping lanes like the South Pacific's Straits of Malacca (where piracy is rampant) and the Bab el Mandab at the southern end of the Red Sea (the area in which the USS Cole was bombed in a pre-9/11 attack by al Qaeda.)

There are alternatives which, while not quite viable at present, are close to becoming so. The problem is that in our economy there is no incentive to switch to a different source - particularly for transportation, which eats up about 70% of our oil consumption.

The liberal solution? Subsidize like crazy! So those who engage in exploration of new energy sources receive government funding out the wazoo to assist in their efforts.

The irony is that they are competing against a heavily subsidized oil industry.

That's right, in the interest of preventing total dependence on foreign oil (which is, of course, produced much more inexpensively due to less stringent environmental regulations and less worker-friendly conditions) the US petroleum industry receives billions of dollars of government subsidies itself.

The solution is one at which no libertarian would bat an eyelash - higher oil prices.

Only when the price of oil becomes unbearable will the market be forced to look for a solution. Only when this occurs will the research and technological advancement necessary to develop an alternative to gasoline ever occur.

So the next time you hear some government leader talk about a way to bring down prices at the pump, consider the fact that China's burgeoning economy recently propelled it became the second-largest importer of foreign oil. Consider the fact that over the past few years the country has already taken steps to directly compete with the United States for the finite world oil supply, crafting agreements with Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, as well as attempting to expand its influence over certain world oil chokepoints like the Straits of Malacca and the Panama Canal.

Consider the fact that, even if technology does advance (as I postulated at the beginning of this post) to the point where we can dig deeper and pull more of it out, we can only pump so much at a time - and the US does not control the spigot.

So unless we want to live in a world where the US is compelled to invade every major oil-producing country for its own national security interests (and no, the rantings of Maureen Dowd and Robert Kuttner notwithstanding, that time has not yet arrived), we'd better get used to paying a bit more at the pump.

And that's a good thing.

Dominoes . . .

2005-03-04T11:38:00.000-05:00

Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon . . . and now, perhaps . . .

here . . . ?

or here . . . ?

or here . . . ?

or maybe here . . . ?

Coincidences all, I'm certain.

RELATED: In the UK Guardian earlier this week (you know, the paper that engaged in that badly misguided attempt to swing Ohio for Kerry?) Iraq War opponent Jonathan Freedland wrote a word of warning liberals around the globe should heed, and which many media figures on both the North American and European continents are beginning to sound. Though still filled with reservations about the war and the course it has taken, he writes, "Put starkly, we cannot let ourselves fall into the trap of opposing democracy in the Middle East simply because Bush and Blair are calling for it. Sometimes your enemy's enemy is not your friend."

Worth it?

2005-03-01T10:15:00.000-05:00

One of my new favorite columnists, Mark Steyn, writes in this morning's Daily Telegraph of his take on the article I quoted in my last post - where David Ignatius of the Washington Post referred to the crumbling of the Arabs' Berlin Wall.

He begins by quoting himself, in April of 2002. His remarkably prescient statement at the time reads,

The stability junkies in the EU, UN and elsewhere have, as usual, missed the point. The Middle East is too stable. So, if you had to pick only one regime to topple, why not Iraq? Once you've got rid of the ruling gang, it's the West's best shot at incubating a reasonably non-insane polity. That's why the unravelling of the Middle East has to start not in the West Bank but in Baghdad."

Was he right?

For the answer to that question, one has only to look to recent events. I have examined in brief, the events in Lebanon that directly stem from the war in Iraq, but Steyn examines others as well. For instance, he says, In Syria itself, the Assad government has "discovered" several Iraqi Baathists - including Saddam Hussein's brother, in hiding. The Saudi government has announced that women will for the first time participate in the next Saudi elections. Hosni Mubarak has changed the Egyptian Constitution to allow for the first multi-party elections the country has ever known.

Then there is perhaps the most notable instance to which Steyn refers. He quotes a rather odd couple - the Associated Press, and Charles Johnson of the blog Little Green Footballs - in noting that the reaction among Palestinians to the latest suicide bombing attack in Israel was - exhultation? delerious joy? dancing in the streets?

How about anger? Indeed, after the latest attack, Steyn notes that Johnson went roaming around the internet seeking out the usual "party-pictures" and headlines of rejoicing Palestinians, and found . . . nothing.

Who would have thought that simply looking at their neighbors to the east might, as Steyn puts it, "question whether being a delivery system for plastic explosives is really all life has to offer, even on the West Bank."

Are we, perhaps, once again seeing history in the making?

[Thanks to RealClearPolitics for the story, and INDCJournal for the pictures.]

A Quick Post . . .

2005-02-24T15:21:00.000-05:00

. . . because this man says it better and more authoritatively than I ever could. "This man," is Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon's Druze Muslims, who along with many of his countrymen has had his fill of mastry by their Syrian overlords. Lebanon has been Syria's vassal state for years now . . . so why are the Lebanese people choosing this moment in history to take their stand for their own freedom and representation?

Jumblatt, as quoted in this morning's Washington Post, explains . . .

"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

The Arab world, where so many left-wing scholars argued, in the wake of the decision to oust Saddam Hussein, democracy was incapable of taking root, can see the parallels between the day we live in, and the day that brought a new life to Eastern Europe a decade and a half ago. They can see the parallels between one man standing up against what others refused to call an "Empire of Evil," and another man presenting an ultimatim to what others refused to call an "Axis of Evil."

They can see that our efforts, our struggles, our sacrifices are bearing fruit . . . can we?

Xenopolitics

2005-02-23T10:45:00.000-05:00

It has been absolutely fascinating to observe both our newly-reelected president and his newly-appointed Secretary of State on their respective "Make Nice with Europe" tours. Perhaps the largest reason I have been so captivated by watching this is the reactions from a country that finds itself caught between these two bickering entities - the British. These reactions make me wonder, as the President and the Europeans talk of their "mutual strategic and geopolitical aims" and the fact that they are "vital partners" in acheiving those goals, what on earth they are talking about.

Mark Steyn of the London Telegraph wrote yesterday of President Bush's recent interactions with his European counterparts, that, "World leaders are always most expansive when there is least at stake." He calls the post-9/11 dialogue between the US and Europe, "all airy assertions about common values, ties of history, all meaningless." He calls the trans-Atlantic conversation "Commonwealth-esque."

His words are perhaps harsh-sounding, at least to those who believe that our highest international priority in the second Bush term should be fence-mending. This does not, however, mean that his point is a poor one.

And what is that point? The point is that Europe and the United States do not share a set of common goals and ideals any longer. That may have once (albeit arguably) been true, but it certainly is so no longer. Steyn renews a prediction he made late on the fateful day of September 11, 2001, that the next decade or two will see the end of the vaunted North Atlantic Treaty Organization, that alliance constructed as a wall against westward Soviet expansion.

When that communist empire fell, NATO's reason for existence, along with any shred of common goals between the United States and Europe, fell with it. It is certainly true that Europe remains a major economic partner of the United States, but economic ties do not automatically engender common strategic goals.

Consider the new threat - the new ideology that threatens both Europe and the United States (indeed, that grows steadily into a worldwide threat) - the ideology of radical, anachronistic, and suicidal Islamism

Indeed, both "nations" (for Europe is indeed just as much a nation as the United States, if not so much of a political state) face the same threat, but they face it in far different ways.

During the Cold War, this was sometimes the case. While the Soviet Union could threaten any spot on the globe with its nuclear-tipped missiles, it could never realistically threaten the United States with all-out invasion by conventional forces - a threat NATO countries like West Germany faced nervously every single minute of their existences.

Still, the threat was the same - large-scale military assault from the outside.

Now though, that threat is all together different. For the US, the threat of Islamism is again an external one. But for Europe, this is far from true. Whereas the United States primarily worries about how to prevent Islamist terrorists from entering the country, Europe must worry of what to do with the ones already there.

The United States faces an immigration problem of restless fugitives from poverty flooding over its southern border, and bringing the odd terrorist with them, concealed in the mix. Europe faces an immigration problem of Muslims flooding into it from Northern Africa, and from Southwestern Asia, never knowing which of these muslims might be a radical in moderates' clothing.

The United States faces the knowledge that radical Islamism has penetrated the highest levels of intellectual academia, and is slowly permeating that sphere of thought.

Europe faces the knowledge that radical Islamism has penetrated society itself, to the point where, in terms of European Muslims, radical Islamism isn't as radical as it once was.

In terms of "national" strategy, how can our two nations have similar outlooks on life? When one understands this dichotomy of views, it is very easy to see that, in Iraq for example, the United States is doing precisely what is in its best interest (hitting terrorists at home in their own region, cutting off their support from sympathetic nations, and forcing them to battle on their own turf, rather than on ours.)

Similarly, it is easy to see that Europe is doing precisely what is in its best interest - trying to avert anything that could remotely affect its cultural and economic ties with the Middle East.

And that's just National Security.

The environment is another example. In the summer of 2001, I had the privilege to visit the 6th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change - the convention that wrote the vaunted (or maligned, depending on your eco-proclivities) Kyoto Protocol.

While I went there to defend the opposition of the Bush administration to the Protocol, as that position that is truly in the best interests of the United States, what I realized is that the Europeans (and others) were clinging staunchly to positions that were in their own best interests as well.

Of course, given the competing nature of the Euro and the Dollar, anything that weakens the latter is in the best interests of those whose daily economic interactions revolve around the former - and meeting the goals of the Kyoto Protocol would weaken the US economy tremendously . . . which is probably a large part of the reason President Clinton signed his name to that ridiculous document, and then refused to send it to the Senate for ratification - that Senate which had, in a 98-2 vote, categorically declared that they would never sign any environmental treaty that undermined the economy of the United States.

But wouldn't such a piece of legislation hurt the European economies just as much?

No, not particularly. Let us look, for example, at the two largest economies on the continent. Germany is a particularly interesting case. Germany has set for itself some rather ambitious-sounding goals in the Protocol . . . but in reality, cleaning up the old, horribly inefficient manufacturing sector of the formerly Soviet-controlled eastern half of the country would take the nation as a whole a long way toward meeting its environmental goals.

Then there is France. France, whose power grid runs almost exclusively on nuclear energy. While most environmentalists have all kinds of problems with nuclear energy for a variety of mostly inexplicable reasons, they must admit one thing . . . it doesn't emit hydrocarbons. And hydrocarbons are precisely what the Kyoto Protocol targets.

So of course these two nations are going to be in favor of a measure that weakens the United States, at little cost to themselves. And of course as the two most loudly braying voices on the continent, they're going to drag most of the rest of it along with them.

So much for common interests.

But what about common culture?

Another article, this one by Janet Daley in this morning's Telegraph, takes aim at that notion. She writes of listening to President Bush as he pleads the case of the United States in Europe. She writes of his bewildered-sounding rhetoric, which to her mind sounds most clearly like an indignantly confused, "Hey! this whole 'freedom and democracy for all' thing was your idea in the first place!"

And it is difficult to argue with her. The great movements that so profoundly impacted our nation's birth: the Reformation, the Rennaissance, the Enlightenment, were not world-wide movements . . . they were European.

Which is why, Daley writes, when European leaders refer to President Bush's call for a democratic example to non-democratic countries as "gauche," what they really are is ashamed. They are ashamed that the United States, for all its faults, is largely a free and democratic society, while Europe, for all its virtues, is ever-increasingly not. They are ashamed that when President Bush calls for democratic reforms, he is not speaking in code for paternalism, or xenophobia, or even US interests at another nation's expense - all hallmarks of a European approach to spreading "freedom" (as the movie "Hotel Rwanda" portrays quite graphically and effectively).

No, President Bush may be speaking the same words as Jaques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, but when he talks of democratic reform, he fervently believes that such reforms are not only in the best interests of this nation, but in the bests interests of the nations in which those reforms take place, as well.

This is perhaps what makes President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair such good working partners. While Blair is profoundly European in that he is not in favor of free trade or laissez faire economics, he is, like President Bush, a genuine "small 'd' democrat" . . . and a liberal in the classical sense of the word in the belief that nations are most prosperous when they are most free, and that such freedom can only come when the people of that nation are able to participate in it.

'Tis a far cry indeed from the European notion - expressed in the paternalism I (and Daley) mentioned earlier - that reforms are best made from the top down . . . that the head of a nation can steer the rest of that nation aright.

Indeed, it seems odd to say, but sadly true, that President Bush is, philosophically speaking at least, more European than most Europeans.

Perhaps that's why they hate him so much. What they like to think they are, he is.

Changing Times . . .

2005-02-02T10:50:00.000-05:00

Liberal columnist Ariana Huffington asks, in her column this morning, an appropriate (if rhetorical) question: Her column references this past weekend's elections in Iraq, and revolves around the question that doubles as her headline, "So, Exactly What's Changed?"

It's a question that begs to be asked . . . but it's a question which Ms. Huffington seems to believe should be answered with a bizarrely succinct, "absolutely nothing."

Ms. Huffington has several very valid concerns, but one thing she wrote interested me. She apologized for quoting the oft-repeated Santyana, saying, "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. She then rattled off a litany of "Mission Accomplished" moments spanning the course of our war in Iraq, and derided the joy with which news of Iraq's tentative experimentation with nascent democracy has been greeted in this country as just another exercise in wishful thinking.

It would seem that Ms Huffington herself is the one forgetting history.

Iraq is undergoing what will likely become a defining moment in its "future history."

For a parallel, let us look at an equally definitive moment in our long, sometimes tenuous, love affair with self-government . . . a moment that Iraq may yet be able to avoid as it courts that same elusive mistress. Let us look at the historic moment of our Civil War.

Huffington's critiques - all of them - are factually correct. She begins by criticizing a number of actions our president took out of a blatant concern for political expedience - actions such as distancing himself from Ahmed Chalabi (who had been intimately connected with the flawed intelligence that got us into so many of the messes that have marred our efforts there), and scheduling general elections reluctantly, and only after the election that resulted in ensuring that he would continue to lead our efforts there, rather than watching from the sidelines.

Ms. Huffington should be an astute enough observer of political behavior to know that the business of foreign affairs is often - nay, we might generalize to the point of saying "always" - conducted with an eye toward the political consequences. Especially during transitions such as this, it is only wise of a President who has begun such an historic progression to believe himself best suited for seeing it through. What kind of President would any man, Republican or Democrat, be if he felt that once he had started something, another man would be better suited to finish it? It is this same political expedience (read: desire to be reelected) that drove Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Roundly hailed as one of the most significant steps ever taken in the cause of American freedom, at the time, the Proclamation directly accomplished . . . absolutely nothing. It freed no slaves in Southern States, as they did not acknowledge the President's right to govern them. It never even purported to free any slave in any state that was a member of the Union at that time.

Indirectly, though, it had tremendous implications. It helped to secure Lincoln's reelection, and helped to secure England's and France's neutrality at a time they were on the cusp of providing material assistance to the South.

Never underestimate the value of a politically expedient move.

Ms. Huffington then sneers at the legitimacy of the recent election. While there are a number of valid reasons to question its legitimacy, the one she picks is almost an absurdity. She questions the legitimacy of the election based on the candidates' name recognition - apparently no election is legitimate unless the people are able to see their chosen candidate live and in the flesh, to hear him speak at least several times, and to intimately know every detail of his personal life.

Regardless of the implications of this paradigm for the legitimacy of the vast majority of US elections, let us look again to the Civil War.

After the war was over, the government was faced with the difficult task of incorporating the Confederate states back into the Union. While one may definitely question the wisdom of some of their actions throughout this process, one thing that is hard to argue with is the mandate that no individual who had served in the Confederate armed forces or government could be eligible to hold office. This negated the ability of popular figures like Robert E. Lee to serve in any position of government after the war. Instead, the South was forced to settle with the "carpetbaggers" . . . Northern politicians who migrated south-ward to hold office in places where no natives were legally able to do so.

Did this engender hostility? Sure it did . . . wars do that sort of thing, after all.

Did it make for illegitimate elections? No, not really.

Did it create enough animosity to lead to another Civil War? Hardly.

Ms. Huffington then goes on to make the (largely irrelevant) point that the Iraqis were not only voting to send a message to the insurgents, but were also voting to send a message to America . . . the message, "We want to do this ourselves, thank you very much."

Good!

Despite the questionable validity of her statistics (she quotes a poll from June of last year, in which 92% of Iraqis view American forces as occupiers, where much more recent polls are readily available, where that figure is much lower) the simple fact is that Iraqis are trying to make this work . . . more power to them. In the Civil War, American forces were viewed as occupiers, in some senses, all the way up through the heyday of the Civil Rights movement, when such forces were needed to enforce the integration of the school system.

So what??

She then says that the war has made the United States "less safe." She cites a CIA report that tells of foreign terrorists cutting their teeth against US forces, and preparing to be put into action elsewhere (including in this country) with their newly-trained skills.

Again, my answer is, "Good!"

After all, we've seen what largely untrained terrorists are perfectly capable of doing here. Frankly, our forces are better prepared to do battle with those whose way of thinking is more bent toward conventional warfare . . . and furthermore, I think even Ms. Huffington would have to agree that no foreign terrorist who is killed or captured by US forces doing battle in Iraq is going to be able to perpetrate an act of terror here. Would she rather this were not the case? I hardly think so.

But let us look again to history. The names "Jesse James" and "Cole Younger" leap out at us from the pages of US history. These men, professionally trained by some of the most ruthless characters of their day, wreaked havoc on US business, financial, and government institutions not only in their own "occupied" reconstruction-era South, but in states to their north as well.

Would Ms. Huffington, then, argue that fighting the Civil War made the US "less safe"?

The list goes on . . . issues raised both by Ms. Huffington and other like-minded liberals:

Iraq has been an incredible drain on US resources . . . so was the Civil War. Can you honestly put a price on human freedom?
Iraq was conducted as much for economic self-interest as for anything else . . . And how much did the North stand to lose if its agricultural base just disappeared? Anybody who honestly believes that the Civil War came about solely because of a desire to see the slaves go free is fooling themselves.
The war in Iraq has resulted in a restriction of freedoms for US citizens . . . yes, based on legal precedents established by Lincoln during the Civil War.
The US has entered the war with no valid exit strategy . . . check.
Our troops are spread to thin, and there aren't enough men for the job . . . check.
The war has resulted in massive and widespread fraud and government waste . . . check.

The parallels really are somewhat startling when you actually sit back and look at them. Not perfect, to be sure, but enough to give somebody pause, if they dare to poke their heads out of their respective "liberal" or "conservative" boxes and look at the history that stares them in the face.

So what does it all come down to? What is the point of this little historical excursion?

The point is that asking "What has changed?" is asking the wrong question. The right question is, "after all the changing is complete, will it have been worth it?"

Presumably Ms. Huffington's answer would be "no," for if one arrives at that answer, one cannot possibly support this war, this vote, or the thoughts and actions behind either.

If one's answer, though, is "yes," how can one possibly do otherwise?

A Man who Bears Watching

2005-01-25T17:23:00.000-05:00

Today was an instructive day in the United States Senate. Some of you may have caught it. Most probably missed it. I know I did - only realizing just how telling the days events were in retrospect.

Today, the US Senate debated for nine hours over the confirmation of Dr. Rice to the post of Secretary of State.

"So what?" you might ask . . .

Of course, the Senators (being senators, after all) had to get up and say their piece. Most of the Republicans used the opportunity to get up and tell us what a good job the President and his friends (Condi included) have been doing. Most of the Democrats used the opportunity to get up and accuse the Bush administration of lying to us through their collective pearly whites.

Oh sure, there was Joe Liebermann, who got up and defended the Bush administration - when it comes to foreign policy, though, Joe is almost always on the side of those who actually care about the security of the country first, and place it higher than the security of their own jobs. Senator Liebermann is a real class act - one of the few senators of either party for whom I genuitely have the utmost respect, whether or not I agree with what he says on any given issue.

But who was that other guy who got up and defended Condi and her crowd? That other guy with the "D" beside his name . . . ?

Oh yeah, he's that new guy from Colorado, right? That Salazar guy?

How many times did we hear on election night that, whatever else the President's Party won, the Senatorial election in Colorado - where Ken Salazar (who ran as a conservative Democrat) beat out Pete Coors (who ran as a not so conservative Republican) - proved that the Democrats were not as out of touch with reality . . . or with we the people . . . as some chose to think?

How many times since election night have we heard that democratic victories at every level in Colorado prove that the heartland of America is not as red as electoral maps show it to be?

. . . now here's another question . . .

How many times have we heard, from these same liberal talking heads, that the Republican party is doomed to more deadlock in the Senate, because all they've done is replace old conservative Democrats like Zell Miller and John Breaux with a new generation of almost Nazi-like (to hear the mainstream media tell it) conservative Republicans like Norm Coleman? How many times have we heard them crow that the Republican party has doomed itself, because now the likes of so-called "RINO's" (Republicans In Name Only) Lincoln Chaffee and Olympia Snowe will be free to cross the aisle and vote with the Democrats, with no quid pro quo from conservatives on the other side of the room?

Well guess what, folks? For once I agree wholeheartedly with the talking heads (at least with what they're saying out of one side of their mouths.) I agree that the election of Ken Salazar is indeed very telling. If the tendency he has shown here today continues - if he does indeed become one of the Joe Liebermann's, or Zell Miller's, who is willing to stand up for what he believes in spite of whatever line his political party is taking at that particular moment - then he will be far more invaluable to the Bush administration, the Senate, and the nation as a whole than would another RINO in the house.

All in all (notwithstanding the MSM's seeming ignorance of the fact that President Bush probably prefers a certain "yes" vote for his proposals from a conservative Republican, over a possible "yes" vote for the same proposal from a conservative Democrat) it seems to me very revealing indeed that the only Democrat to win a hotly contested Senate race on November 3rd chose, as his very first attention-grabbing act on the Senate floor, to buck his party and support the President.

So remind me . . . what did the Democrats win on election night, again . . . ?

Keep an eye on Ken Salazar. He's already managed to take the first step toward alienating himself from his party. Ask Zell Miller if he thinks that's something they take lightly. If Salazar keeps this up, he may just manage to send the talking heads scrambling once again, in their endless search for a perspective on this country that actually . . . well . . . reflects some aspect of the perspective of this country.

Remember, "conventional wisdom" can only be proven wrong so many times before it is obvious to all that it is neither conventional, nor yet particularly wise.

Commentary on a Comment

2005-01-04T14:25:00.000-05:00

I began writing this post more than a month ago, and simply couldn't finish it. There was too much there to write. This, more than anything else, is the reason for my extended absence from blogging over the past six weeks or so. My apologies to my loyal readers (yes, I have discovered during this interim period that I do have one or two loyal readers). Now, though, I will attempt to address what I see as perhaps the most vital cultural issue of our day.

The following was left as an anonymous comment not long after my last post here, by someone who came upon this website. As I don't get much in the way of comments, it stood out to me, and it stood out still further for the issues and mindset it exhibited. In fact, it stood out enough that I felt I needed to respond to it.

That response, I warn my readers, will be both lengthy and offensive - probably to nearly everybody who reads it, to one extent or another. It is neither the standard response you might expect to hear from someone who calls himself a conservative, nor is it a response which attempts to mollify liberals. If you are in the mood for a quick read, you will not find it here. If you are in the mood to have your own political views parroted back to you, search elsewhere.

The issue is one which this last election showed to be a core political and philosophical issue in 21st Century America - the issue of homosexual marriage.

The comment I received read exactly as follows:

"hannity (from hannity and colms) claims that we democrats have lost our sense of humanity. How can we loose our sense of humanity if what were trying to maintain is a sense of seperation of church and state? Whatever happened to equal rights? Don't people have a choice to marry who they love anymore?! god Bush sucks...when did he choose?"

This is both a very good question, and a very bad one. It is very good in that it touches on all four of the main issues in the debate: the "moral" question, the "political" question, the "judicial" question, and the "emotional" question. It is very bad in that it has no sense of history, or even of what exactly the question is supposed to be getting at.

Having not seen the episode of Hannity and Colmes the comment refers to, I cannot speak to what Mr. Hannity intended by his claim that democrats have lost their sense of humanity. That is not the intent of this post.

I will, however, take each of the previously mentioned issues that is at stake in this debate, in turn.

First, there is the moral question of homosexual marriage. Those on the political right side of the spectrum tend to see the issue as a fundamental dissolution of longstanding government support for a religious principle - that of heterosexual marriage. An adherence to the separation of church and state.

On the other side of the spectrum are those who see a fundamental tolerance for the intolerable - an open acceptance (and tacit approval) by the government of what they view to be sin.

Both are wrong.

For those on the political left, it is time to give up on the tired argument that heterosexual marriage is a religious principle. It is not. It is a core tenet of many religions, but sole property of none. In its current form, at the forefront of the political debate, it is a matter not of religion, but of culture.

For those on the right, the time has come to realize that the government already allows the sin they so decry. Homosexuality is not illegal. It is also time - nay, far past time - for them to take an intellectually honest position on the issue. It is not intellectually dishonest to believe that homosexuality is a sin. What is dishonest is advocating a ban on this sin, while at the same time tolerating the legality of adultery and no-fault divorce. These behaviors fall into the very same category, scripturally, as homosexuality, yet they are openly tolerated as acceptable under the law - even by Christian conservatives - without word, almost without thought.

So much for the moral argument.

Next we move on to the political debate. The question here is an extension of two aged debates, the "separation of church and state," and the civil rights debate. It is here that the question asked in my anonymous comment takes a turn for the worse. In regards to both debates, the author of this comment defends democrats' attempts to "maintain the separation of church and state" and "defend equal rights."

This is what I meant when I said the question has no sense of history. The author is speaking from a liberal perspective, but he (or she) is speaking like a conservative. That is, they are speaking out of a fundamental defense of the status quo . . . maintain the separation of church and state," . . . "whatever happened to equal rights?" . . .

In short, they are talking as though homosexual marriage was always tolerated in this country, and that it is only with President Bush that people are starting to line up against it.

I am sure any practicing homosexual could tell you that this is far from the truth.

That the issues are raised badly, however, does not mean that the questions themselves are bad questions to ask. However, to these questions, I would ask two of my own in response. When did homosexual marriage become a matter of the separation of church and state? When did it become a matter of civil rights? It was not always thus.

On the first issue, all I need do is point back to my previous remark - heterosexual marriage is NOT a religious principle, but a cultural one. Thus, homosexual marriage lives or dies by American culture, and when Americans as a people are ready to accept it, they undoubtedly will, the protests of the Christian right notwithstanding.

On the second issue - that of civil rights - I would point out, once again, that both sides are quite wrong in their defense of their respective positions on the issue.

Those on the left decry a ban on homosexual marriage as a denial of civil rights. I would ask them, though, which rights they are being denied? Are they being denied the "right" to visit loved ones in the hospital? Since when is this a "right?" Hospitals have various and sundry rules for who is allowed to visit, and when, and yes, most of those rules are less restrictive for one's spouse than for any other party. But is that a RIGHT?

Hardly.

What then, of tax breaks? Since when does anybody have a fundamental right to be taxed at thus and such a level? If one is going to make taxes a question of fundamental rights, then the question must inevitably be whether the government has the fundamental right to tax individuals at all, and by what means, and to what level. The debate should center over whether - assuming the government has the right to levy direct taxes at all - it has the right to make case-by-case adjustments to the level at which it does so, without violating the equal protection of its citizens.

For if the government may institute any given form of tax, then it must necesarrily be able to do so on whomever it wishes, at whatever level voters will permit before throwing its members out of office. Taxes are not a matter of individual rights, but a matter of how much of our rights we are willing to surrender.

What about inheritance? I ask you, is it any of the government's business who leaves what to whom? Why is this an issue at all?

Child custody? Again, the government has various rules and regulations relating to this issue, and in some cases the government has been known to take a child away from its parents. This is once again not a question of whether homosexuals have equal rights, but whether the government should have any leeway AT ALL in the area. The conservative would argue that such an environment is unhealthy for an impressionable young child who would be forced to grow up without the influence of one gender or the other. This argument may have some scientific merit, but what does that say about children raised by divorced parents, or single parents, or older siblings, or grandparents? Indeed, what does it say about "normal" nuclear families who raise children in an environment where both parents work and leave the child at home to be babysat by the television set? or where one parent sits and watches TV all day to the exclusion of everything else? or where the parents are involved in drugs or alcohol abuse?

Is it really all that shocking to imagine that a child might be better nurtured in a homosexual household than living under an abusive father whose wife is cowed by his behavior? or under a mother who rides roughshod over her husband and everybody else in her family? Are not these unhealthy as well?

No, the real question here is not what constitutes a "healthy" environment for a child . . . the real question is who gets to define the word "healthy."

I could go on and on, but the point is that each of the issues that presents itself as a justification for considering homosexual marriage as a matter of equal rights is not a matter of equal rights at all, but a matter of whether the government has injected itself too far into everybody's rights. Those (like taxation) which do hinge to an extent on the issue of equal rights, are not a matter of equal rights for homosexuals versus heterosexuals, but a matter of equal rights for all Americans.

"But wait!" says the homosexual, "I am being denied a fundamental right taken for granted by my heterosexual counterparts. I am being denied the right to marry the one I love!"

I will deal more with this under the "emotional" argument, but let me pause here long enough to say this. Those on the political right have attempted to turn this issue into a gross oversimplification. Unwilling to take on the government's role in our lives directly, they reply with the catchphrase, "homosexuals have equal rights too! They can marry any member of the opposite sex they choose, just like the rest of us!"

For shame. This not only trivializes the issue to a point well beneath the importance any conservative actually accords it, but by doing so, it strengthens the other side's argument by rendering their own untenable.

Next is the judicial question - one that has remarkably come much into the public eye lately due to all the talk about President Bush's potential judicial appointments. The issue here is the driving force behind conservatives' push to enact a homosexual marriage ban - but it is a force which seems sadly misguided.

On the left, the only judicial question seems to be that of the previously mentioned separation of church and state. For them, the judicial concerns of the other side are largely a non-issue.

On the right, however, sits perhaps the biggest thorn in the side of conservatism that exists today - the thorn of judicial activism. The only reason this is an issue for the right at all is the fact that such activism has been a hallmark of liberalism for decades. When an issue comes to the forefront of the political debate, and the legislative process either refuses to deal with it, or does so too slowly, liberals turn to the court to write new laws - and the courts unfailingly oblige. We have had much in the way of good that has come about by means of this process, but it has ignored the fundamental question that such deviations from strictly legal behavior bring up. The fundamental question liberals must ask themselves is, "do we want to be a democratic republic or don't we?"

By their actions, it would seem that they would vastly prefer a judicial oligarchy.

But that is not what we have.

While this may give the right the philosophical high ground on the issue, it does not mean they must take this ground and sow it with the seeds of further abuse - but that is exactly what a constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage does.

Their arguments are couched in the language of original intent of the US Constitution, but the Constitution, quite simply, was never meant for actions such as this.

The constitution is not, fundamentally, a body of law. It is a system of government. It was never intended to tell individuals how they should or must act. It was intended to tell government how it must not. There have been two deviations from this in the past.

The first was the thirteenth amendment, which said that individuals could no longer legally own one another. This was a fundamental repair made to a flaw that had been in the constitution from the day it was drafted - a repair which, quite frankly, could have been made better, and more in keeping with the spirit of the document itself, but was probably rushed simply due to the fact that people wanted to get the issue settled after arguing, bleeding, and dying over it for eighty years. Remember, while every american is subject to the government created by the constitution, those who are responsible for its upkeep are still human - and thus, still fallible.

The second was the eighteenth amendment, which outlawed alcaholic beverages. The success of this measure can be measured by its longevity - as it was overturned some three amendments later.

Let us not add another ill-advised number to that list. Let us not create another problematic amendment that attempts to turn the Constitution into something it is not. If there is a problem with the status quo, by all means let us fix it - but not like this.

More though, than the mere wording of such an amendment, though, is the effect of that amendment. It was this aspect of the entire debate with which I have wrestled most vigorously over the past month and a half. I have had close friends, whose knowledge of the law exceeds my own, and who have done a great deal of study on the matter, assure me that such an amendment would do one thing, and one thing only. It would ensure that the decision on whether to allow homosexual marriage would be left to the states.

However, as Andrew Sullivan (with whom I unfortunately find myself disagreeing more and more of late) points out brilliantly in an article printed a month ago in The New Republic, which I nevertheless failed to discover until today, That's not precisely what the amendment does.

Conservatives need, in order to truly claim the philosophical high ground in this whole morass, to admit that what their amendment really does is impose a definition of marriage upon the states. In order to do what its proponents claim, it would have to not only allow the states to freely define marriage heterosexually, but homosexually as well. The freedom to choose from a list with one option is no freedom at all. An important point of federalism, and an important distinction. What, one might ask, of a state that decided its definition of marriage should include those conducted between homosexuals? Would they be protected under the rubric of federalism as well?

Not according to this amendment, at least not in any proposed iteration I have personally read.

Federalism is a vital founding principle of this nation's government . . . but to extend that protection only to one side of an issue - any issue - is to make a mockery of it.

Finally, this leaves the emotional argument, the question of "love."

Why, says the homosexual, are homosexuals denied the right heterosexuals take for granted - the right to marry the one they love?

Says the average Christian heterosexual, "they have exactly the same rights as the rest of us. Any man - regardless of his sexual preference - has the right to marry any woman. Any woman - regardless of her preference - may marry any man."

This argument by the Christian right contains a fatal flaw.

It assumes that the tendency to be attracted to someone not of your gender is "abnormal" and can somehow be "cured" in all cases.

As a Christian, I know the logic of the belief system pretty well . . . and frankly, it seems to me that Christians are all too willing to hide from what their beliefs dictate. This is just one example.

While the argument that homosexuality is "unnatural" is an easy one to make from the Christian viewpoint - what is impossible to dispute is the fact that many, many behaviors that are commonplace in the world today are "unnatural" in the same way - that is, they are what the Bible would call "sin."

If, then, you believe that homosexuality is such a sin, the answer becomes far more simple than saying that it can be cured, or some such thing . . .

. . . if it's sin, then it must simply be avoided - regardless of how strongly one desires to engage in a particular act. That such desires strike different people at different levels and in different ways is hardly difficult to acknowledge.

The difficulty only arises when one attempts to justify proscribing such behavior for others. I may use the commands of scripture to dictate my own behavior to as great or as small an extent as I wish - and I may believe that I will face whatever consequences are written in its pages as a result of my actions. But scripture is not designed (and has not been designed since the drafting of the Pentateuch) as a system of government. It is designed as a guide to one's personal life and beliefs - a journal, if you will, of an individual's relationship with God.

That being the case, I cannot in good conscience force someone to act a certain way simply because that way adheres to what I believe. I can exhort, encourage, even admonish, those I care about enough to take an active interest in their lives, that "thus and such" is what I believe to be true. I can even push for laws that mandate behavior I view as "moral," within a system that is designed to implement such laws.

Our system, however, is only designed thus to a very, very specific point. It is designed to mandate moral behavior only in cases where the immoral behavior being proscribed would violate the freedoms of others within that system. Hence, the system we live in is quite conductive to a ban on thievery - because such is a violation of my personal property rights.

But I ask you . . . whose rights are violated when two people - of whatever gender - decide to marry? Do I believe that their behavior is immoral? Yes, I do.

Do I believe that I have any right at all to tell them they cannot do so?

Absolutely not.

And of course, it is possible to pass laws against certain behaviors based solely on the belief that those behaviors are sinful . . . but doing so brings back the intellectual cowardice and dishonesty I spoke of earlier, where a nation is willing to outlaw homosexual marriage, but not the equally sinful (according to scripture), and arguably more socially degenerative practices of adultery and no-fault divorce.

And what's more - that's not what our nation's legal system was designed to do! It was designed solely to give communities - be they townships, cities, or states, the ability to set their laws precisely as they see fit.

Who are we to deny them that, and still call ourselves a free nation?

There is one more aspect to all this that I ask you to consider.

Either you believe in federalism, or you don't. Either you believe that power in this nation should be centralized in the Federal government - or you don't.

This point of view has traditionally been held by conservatives . . . in every area except moral issues. It has traditionally been held by liberals exclusively in regards to moral issues.

In other words, both sides trust the government with as much power as it is willing to use to enforce "their" issues. Liberals are simply more willing to trust centralization of power because liberals, by definition, believe that the government should do more than conservatives believe it has the right or the ability to do.

This is the height of intellectual dishonesty. Either you trust the government - or you don't. If you do, then it should be able to make laws in all areas of your life - including your sexual life. If you don't, then its role should be kept to a minimum of functions - such as safeguarding your national security, should be given those areas only because the alternative is anarchy, and should be monitored carefully.

I am sure that nearly anybody who reads this post will find something to disagree with. However, if you have been willing to read this far, I beg you to take what you have read, and think about it. If, after you have considered it long and well, we still disagree - so be it. But please do not do yourself the disservice of simply disagreeing because what is found in these paragraphs does not conform to what you thought before you began reading.

Thank you for your time.

Thoughts on Representation

2004-11-15T17:05:00.000-05:00

I find all of this debate about how much of a role certain issues played in the election of two weeks ago fascinating. I find it so not because of the extraordinary perceptiveness on both sides of any given issue, or because of the intensely defended (or criticized) positions certain members of the punditry have staked out. I find it fascinating because of the one thing everybody - on both sides - seems to have missed.

The big question that seems to be popping up everywhere is "did moral values win this election for the Republicans?" This leads, of course, to ancillary questions like the introspection the Democrats are putting themselves through, asking themselves "how can we convince 'morals' voters to like us?"

Of course, the average "morals voter" could probably explain the answer to that question with relative ease. Such an explanation would look something like, "Well, for starters, you have to actually believe what you're saying." Amazingly enough, in light of an election that should have proven to Democrats beyond all doubt the futility of looking like they believe something they don't, most of the introspection through which they have been putting themselves has centered around how to create a more convincing facade.

But that's not the worst part. Naturally, as they do every time their favorite sons suffer a crushing loss, the intelligensia of the country has been shrilly harping on the "ignorance of the masses." They have lamented bitterly about how stupid the average American voter is, to let an ignoramus like George W. Bush have not one, but two full terms in office.

Should any liberals read what I am about to write, they will think me overly harsh, judgemental, uncompromising, and strident - and should they describe me as such to my face, I will thank them for the compliment.

Those who criticize the people who voted for George W. Bush, and who claim the intellectual high ground while belittling their political opponents, stand by definition against everything upon which this nation was founded. That is, a criticism of the capability of the American people for picking their candidate of choice is inherently Anti-American.

And now, to shock my conservative friends.

The same would be true of those of us on the conservative side, if Senator Kerry had won election and we had belittled those who (legally) voted for him, as unqualified and undeserving of that privilege.

This nation, my friends, depends for its very life on representation. Right now, it would seem, we have an ever so slightly conservative-leaning country. The Republican party is the party those conservatives have chosen to represent them. Thus, we have a number of republican members in the House of Representatives, and a slightly smaller number of Democrats. Thus, we have a number of republican senators, and a (very) slightly smaller number of Democrats. Thus we have a conservative Republican as our Chief Executive.

When Ronald Reagan was a leading voice in what was, at the time, the minority Republican Party, did he speak of the ignorance of Democrats? Did he speak of the usurpers who were attempting to steal his country away from him and turn it in a direction other than that in which he wanted it to go?

No, he very memorably spoke of a moral majority which needed but to be mobilized, in order to express its will in order to turn the country in the way the people - not he - wanted the country to go.

Well folks, the country seems to have turned, if slightly. Who knows what the next several years or decades might hold? I certainly make no claim to that knowledge. What I do claim, though, is that as long as this country endures, I will never besmirch the name, judgment, intelligence, or character of a fellow American, simply for voting in a way with which I disagree. That he or she has the right to do so is not something to be criticized, but something to be celebrated while we have it, fought for when we need it, and died for when we lose it.

A Tale of Two Murders

2004-11-12T16:28:00.000-05:00

Half an hour ago, a jury found Scott Peterson guilty of one count of first-degree murder for killing his wife, Laci, and one count of second-degree murder for killing their unborn son Connor.

If this verdict stands, it has the potential to finally give some resolution to the question of what constitutes a life. These deaths are tragedies, as is any murder, but perhaps some good can be salvaged from this case if it injects into the American legal realm the conclusion that all innocent life - be it inside or outside the womb - is something worthy of the legal protections of the US Constitution and its accompanying laws.

What is a Vet?

2004-11-11T14:49:00.000-05:00

Normally I'm not one to share a lot of the things that come through my email in-box. This one, though, was decidedly worth it. Please remember to honor those who have sacrificed for our country - and not just on Veteran's Day, but every day.

What is a Vet?
~Father Denis Edward O'Brien USMC

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service:
a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye.

Others may carry the evidence inside them:
a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg -
or perhaps another sort of inner steel:
the soul's ally forged in the refinery of adversity.

Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem.
You can't tell a vet just by looking. What is a vet?

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.

He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.

She - or he - is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another --
or didn't come back AT ALL.

He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat -- but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other's backs.

He is the parade-riding Legionnaire
who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.
He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor died unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket -- palsied now and aggravatingly slow -- who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being -- a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.

He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness,and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say Thank You. That's all most people need, and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.

Two little words that mean a lot: "THANK YOU"

Harvard Professor "discovers" the Bush Doctrine

2004-11-09T17:12:00.000-05:00

Liberals everywhere would be shocked to read, in the November 4th issue of the Harvard Gazette, what President Bush has been trying to tell anybody who will listen for more than three years now. Terrorism is not, as is widely believed, linked to poverty level. Instead, according to a new study from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, it is directly related to a nation's political freedom.

This is me not being surprised.

To summarize, Associate Professor of Public Policy Alberto Abadie is the author of this study, of which he says, "In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty, but in fact when you look at the data, it's not there. This is true not only for events of international terrorism, as previous studies have shown, but perhaps more surprisingly also for the overall level of terrorism, both of domestic and of foreign origin."

Instead, Abadie noticed something very interesting. If you place all nations on a spectrum of political freedom, you find that those who are on either end - the most free nations, or the most oppressed ones - are relatively free of terrorism. The troubled ones are the ones in the middle of the spectrum . . . with nations that are currently undergoing transformation from autocracy to democracy being particularly at risk. (Sound familiar . . . anyone . . . ?)

Maybe now the liberals will be forced to agree that there is more going on in Iraq than Presidential incompetence . . .

. . . then again, that's probably too much to hope for.

(Hat Tip: Little Green Footballs)

Ohhhhhh, that had to hurt . . .

2004-11-09T16:03:00.000-05:00

Jacques Chirac calls to congratulate President Bush on his reelection . . .

He'll be back . . . No, not him . . . that other guy.

2004-11-09T10:44:00.000-05:00

You know, the one who got more votes than anybody ever did prior to last week, for President of the United States, and still lost?

That's right. The Washington Post has it that Senator John F. Kerry seems to be seriously considering another run for it.

Of course, who could possibly blame the man who seems to think he's been entitled to the Presidency since childhood.

To do so, he will have to overcome a longstanding tendency the Democratic Party has for treating its losers quite harshly. Generally, they seem to simply fade into oblivion, only to pop their heads out every once in a while in desperate, albeit ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to prove that they are still relevant (e.g. Jimmy Carter and Al Gore).

Who knows, of course, what will really happen. I think, though, that what we are seeing is a protracted battle royale over the soul of the Democratic Party - the "Clintonites" against the "Old Guard." Hopefully, they'll continue fighting each other for years to come. The more ammunition they expend on each other, the less they'll have to use on the rest of the country.

And while they're at it, the rest of us can do our best to try to make this country work right, free of anything resembling effective interference.

Why they lost . . .

2004-11-05T16:07:00.000-05:00

Join me, if you will, in a front-row seat, to watch - paraphrasing Josh Hartnett from Blackhawk Down - as a national party destroys itself on CNN . . .

. . . or Slate . . . Slate will work just as well . . .

. . . Isn't this fun??

My favorite moment: She says that thoughtful men have given honorable ideas thus far, on what needs fixing . . . but that it's time to try something else . . .

. . . Less honorable ideas from less thoughtful men, perhaps?

Makes one wonder . . . especially since it was my impression that this had been the centerpiece of their strategy for quite some time now . . .

Want to Help?

2004-11-05T15:31:00.000-05:00

Do your part to help ensure that the President is able to do what he couldn't do this past term - appoint federal judges as is his constitutional responsibility. Senator Arlen Specter, the presumptive heir to the chair of the Judiciary Committee, has already warned the President (who campaigned tirelessly to help Specter beat off a more conservative opponent in a hard-fought primary) not to send up any judges Specter might decide to consider unfit.

The last thing we need is another obstructionist gumming up the works in the Senate - particularly one from the President's own party - on what is likely to be the single most important domestic issue this country will face in the next four years. There are those who feel Senator Specter shouldn't be given the chance to carry out his threats, and that someone else should have the chairmanship of this vitally important committee. Check out this site to see how you can help them.

Well heck, if it's good enough for Kerry Spot . . .

2004-11-05T01:11:00.000-05:00

I was perusing National Review's "Kerry Spot" earlier today, and came across a post wherein Jim Geraghty muses about the comparisons between this election and the one in 1980 which ushered in the Reagan administration. As he was too young to remember it, he poses the question of how similar the two were as a hypothetical.

I too, am unable to recall that election (having been a month and a half old at the time). However, when I read his post, I had just received the following email from my dad, who remembers it quite well. I forwarded the email to Kerry Spot, where Geraghty featured it as his favorite response. Given how much it meant to me (and apparently to others, as well) I figured I would post it here too. It says . . .

It occurred to me a few minutes ago that I haven't felt this good on the first Wednesday of November since you were about a month and a half old. Reagan '84 was a foregone conclusion, Bush '88 was uninspiring and also more or less a given, '92 and '96 just plain sucked, and Bush 2000 was too painful, besides lasting a lot longer than the first Wednesday.

I remember rocking you ... telling you we just started making you a better world.

We missed (mostly) ... so now it's your turn ... and you're off to a pretty good start.

As Geraghty said, nobody who voted in the man who won the cold war should sell themselves short. Thanks, Dad, for giving me a healthy respect for conservative principles, and the laws on which they are founded. As I go through life, and even as I maintain this blog, I'll try my best to live up to what you've helped prepare me to do.

Folks, this election has given us as conservatives an historic opportunity. Do let's make the most of it, shall we?

Savoring the Moment . . .

2004-11-04T16:54:00.000-05:00

Peggy Noonan says it best. I could never hope to compete, so I won't even try . . .

Winners and Losers

2004-11-03T18:24:00.000-05:00

Well, on the day after the blogosphere erupted with talk of exit polls showing a massive Kerry advantage, it looks like the election has gone to his opponent. President George W. Bush was elected for a second term yesterday - a decision finalized by Senator Kerry's concession this afternoon.

Now that I'm done with the part you already knew, let's get on to analyzing exactly what the last twenty four hours have to teach us. Every media prognosticator - mainstream or otherwise - is going to be listing the "winners and losers" of this election within the next few weeks . . . after all . . . now that it's over they need something to talk about. I'm going to do the same, but for vastly different reasons. My winners and losers are probably going to be somewhat different from those you're likely to read in most other places. They are as follows:

The Winners: The Constitution, Future Generations of Voters, and the American People.

Frankly, when it came down to it, I certainly cared about who won the election, but what mattered far, far more was how they won it. My biggest fear going into last night was that I was going to watch as my country ripped itself apart over an election by savaging the election process and dragging the whole sorry mess through a court system that wasn't built to handle them. Bush vs. Gore (the case) set a nasty precedent - the precedent of letting the courts have a hand in a decision that should be ours, and ours alone. I have a feeling we aren't through with it . . . that we'll see this ugly case rear its uglier head again . . . but we dodged that bullet this time - and it was a big bullet. The Constitution won because the process for deciding elections was followed - and followed splendidly. This election was decided by the American people, in exactly the way the Constitution sets out.

Americans, present and future, won surprisingly enough because of Senator Kerry. The man, I must admit, is made of sterner stuff than I gave him credit for. He had the integrity, unlike Al Gore four years ago, to know when he was beaten. He had the poise to be gracious about it. Thank you so very much, Senator Kerry, for that concession speech. It means more to me, as an American voter, than anything else you have ever said. Senator Kerry's action today means a weakening of the precedent set by Bush vs. Gore. It means that future courts will not have the election of 2004 to look to as a precedent for future interference into our election process. America owes you a debt of gratitude for that.

The Losers: Conventional Wisdom, the Mainstream Media, The Numbers Guys

This election will go down in history as the upsetting of the applecart of "conventional wisdom." It began, symbolically, with the defeat of the Washington Redskins on Sunday. In every year that the Redskins have won their last game before a Presidential election, the party in power has retained the White House. In every year they have lost, power has been transferred to the other party.

Every time - until this year.

That, however, was just the beginning. How many times before this election did you hear that it was going to be decided sometime in December? How many times did you hear that it was going to include a massive groundswelling of young, first-time voters? How many times did you hear that Karl Rove's "Christian Conservative Voting Bloc" that supposedly stayed home in 2000 was only a figment of Rove's imagination? How many times did you hear that record turnouts were expected to produce a surprisingly high number of votes for Kerry, possibly swinging the election his way? How many times did you hear that the exit polls early in the day would, while not being entirely reliable, give us a good idea of which direction this race was headed?

Conventional wisdom was wrong. Badly wrong.

As for the media, I quite literally almost had tears rolling down my eyes, I was laughing so hard at the verbal antics and slips of the tongue made by the likes of Peter Jennings, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, and Dan Rather. These guys - particularly Rather - were just plain comical in their respective quests to sound rational, reasonable, objective, and composed . . . while simultaneously trying desperately to explain that, "No, contrary to what you see on the board behind me (or the infamous whiteboard, in Russert's case) our guy isn't really losing as badly as it looks."

Eventually, as the night wore on and nerves started to become frayed, Rather and Matthews especially seemed to give up on trying to look objective and composed, and just started . . . blathering . . . there really isn't any better word for it. Even the folks at Fox News (who, as a disclaimer, I genuinely do admire as far as the MSM goes), while they were a bit more upbeat due to the fact that it was their guy who was winning, were hard-pressed to sound like "real media people." Brit Hume's desperate explanations as to why they were "justified in calling Ohio first, before anybody else did" were quite comical.

The Numbers Guys: How 'bout them exit polls, huh? I think this election has proven once and for all how very limited polls (of all types) really are in their usefulness. Props to Michael Barone of US News and World Reports, who did a masterful job in the spin rooms at both Fox and CNN, trying to make sense of all the facts and figures floating around. He managed to persevere where several others just sort of went into meltdown. Still, it doesn't matter where you look - from Zogby's indignant disclaimer this morning (which was ironically very reminiscent of Dan Rather in reverse . . . "our conclusions were wrong, but our methods were sound," instead of vice versa) - to RealClearPolitics' mountains and mountains of polling data.

I must admit, I love RCP. I think they're great . . . but I think they've got some fatal flaws that nobody seems to really recognize. The practice of averaging in all the major polls of a given race makes for a much clearer picture than most . . . but at the same time, it seems to eliminate the usefulness of polls in general, because older polls are averaged in with newer ones. This seems to me like it eliminates the ability to reliably track trends in polling data - and if you go back to the last few days before this election, things were trending Bush.

Then there's the exit polls. I said it all in my tongue-in-cheek "alert" yesterday. There's nothing more I can say. They're worthless . . . especially when composed of heavily weighted samples of populations that tend to vote democrat, from areas which tend to produce democratic voters. Whoever dreamed that one up, and then tried to sell it to all of the major networks as fact, should be given a medal for their ingenuity (the networks bought it after all) . . . and then stood up against a wall, medal and all, and summarily shot for trying to steal the election from you and me.

Not very diplomatic of me, I must admit. But then, I don't have to be, do I?

So there you have it . . . in the great, misunderstood, and often-ignored struggle between "us" and "them" . . . between you the American citizen and those who would try to take from you that which makes you an American . . . you won.

Congratulations.

Election Day Alert!

2004-11-02T14:55:00.000-05:00

This just in: Apparently every mainstream media outlet in existence is reporting that the first round of exit polls shows Kerry in the lead, at this point in the game. Drudge, for example is hyperventilating over this first set of numbers.

In other words, the headlines across the country should be reading, right about now, something along the lines of, "FLASH: First mass of meaningless data that nobody knows how to interpret shows Kerry ahead . . . this set of numbers to be replaced at irregular intervals throughout the day by a different mass of meaningless data that nobody knows how to interpret."

Folks, exit polls mean next to nothing - and that's in a normal election year. This year, given the millions of voters who have already cast their ballots well in advance of this historic day, an exit poll means less than nothing . . . and an exit poll taken before the polls close means even less than that!

Moral: If you see it before the polls in your state close, and it has anything to do with predicting the outcome, it's probably not trustworthy. Don't believe the polls - especially not today, of all days. GO VOTE!

UN or US - which is better at running elections?

2004-10-25T20:23:00.000-05:00

Hmmmmm . . . let's see . . .

On the one hand we have a peaceful, orderly election in Afghanistan, in which ten million people were registered to vote, and eight million of them did - an election where everything that could go wrong didn't, and which every certifying organization who has examined it has approved . . .

. . . on the other hand we have this weekend's elections in Kosovo - under UN jurisdiction for the past half-decade. The Serbs boycotted the whole thing virtually en masse, and are making claims that the whole thing is illegitimate. Just over half the ethnic Albanian voting population turned up.

Which do you prefer?

October Surpri . . . hmm, maybe not . . .

2004-10-25T14:42:00.000-05:00

So it seems that the big story that was supposed to break this weekend is the fact that Senator Kerry has claimed, repeatedly, to have met with the UN Security Council before everything went down in Iraq.

According to this morning's Washington Times, four separate security council members are saying, "Hmmm . . . nobody told us . . . or anybody else from our country, for that matter." In fact, only UN ambassadors from Singapore, the Cameroon, and France (hmmmm . . . is anybody really surprised?) are saying that they met with Senator Kerry privately - rather than in a meeting of the Security Council as Senator Kerry's statements imply. Second-hand accounts also confirm that Kerry met privately with the ambassador from England.

Ok, so Kerry lied . . . repeatedly . . . again.

Is anybody shocked? I for one certainly am not. The two Senators John have both demonstrated a remarkable willingness to say whatever it takes to get elected, whether it's true, false, kind, meanspirited, helpful, hurtful, or otherwise. If it will help them win . . . or even if one or the other of them thinks it will help them win, even for a moment, you can bet one of them will say it.

This isn't the big story I'd hoped to be able to report for you here. This isn't an October Surprise. This is just John Kerry behaving like . . . well . . . like John Kerry.

Undue Influence . . .

2004-10-23T19:42:00.000-05:00

Well, it seems like the UK Guardian, which, as I mentioned yesterday had their attempt to influence the outcome of the US Presidential go over like a ton of . . . well, of something very heavy . . . is a bit frustrated at their abject failure to do anything other than garner support for the President.

So now they're calling for his assassination.

Nope, not kidding. An article today by columnist Charlie Brooker says, in its closing paragraph "On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's (sic) law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?"

Here's a thought, Mr. Brooker, how's about you let us worry about who we elect as President, and you worry about whether your social welfare will come from London or Brussels. That ok with you?

Hmmmmmm . . .

2004-10-23T13:12:00.000-05:00

At least three of the major conservative blogs - INDC Journal, Redstate.org, and Powerline - are reporting that something big is going to hit the news on Monday morning. They don't say what it is, but reportedly it's going to be on the front page of the Washington Times, it's going to be about foreign policy, and it's going to be "something the Kerry campaign will have to respond to." Reportedly, it's going to call into question Kerry's truthfullness - a prospect at which I, for one, must say I'm absolutely shocked . . . who would'a thought the guy would have a problem with truthfulness???

Can we say, "October surprise?"

. . . keep your eyes peeled on this one.

UPDATE: Turns out Powerline and INDC Journal are saying they got this story from Redstate, whose contributors seem to be personally involved in breaking this story, whatever it may be. My attempts to investigate are turning up nothing but a whole lot of conjecture - it's all over the blogosphere by now. Guess we'll have to wait 'til Monday to find out.

Watch this. Now.

2004-10-22T16:00:00.000-05:00

Witness Fellowship 9/11 - An absolute must-see . . . particularly for anybody who has ever seen Michael Moore's comedy . . . er, I mean, documentary . . . Fahrenheit 9/11.

Even if you were one of the ones who didn't want to bother sitting through an hour and a half of watching Michael Moore demostrate a complete lack of basic logic skills though, it's still worth a look. Thanks to The Scrutinator for the link to this one.

Thank you, Guardian!

2004-10-22T14:25:00.002-05:00

A big thank you goes out to the UK Guardian today. It seems that they have finally realized that their stupid idea to attempt to influence the US election was . . . well . . . a stupid idea.

In case you hadn't heard about this, some bright light at the Guardian decided that they were tired of sitting and watching Americans do their . . . America thang . . . you know, the one that goes, "have a government over which the Brits don't have any power or influence." After a couple centuries in which their superior wisdom was lacking (you know, when we decided that they could have their say on their side of the Atlantic, and we'd have ours) they wanted back in the game. So, the Guardian started a letter-writing campaign.

They got ahold of voter rolls in Clark County, Ohio - sort of the "swing county" in this very important swing state. They then made available the names of individual voters in Clark County, to anybody who chose to email them and request such a name.

The idea was that British citizens would write letters to these Ohio voters begging them to vote for Senator John Kerry. A couple things happened.

First, predictably, the conservative online community got into the fun and gummed up the works.

Second, even more predictably, the folks in Ohio that started getting letters from British John Kerry fans got . . . well . . . a mite peeved. All of which came crashing down around the Guardian's head, as they realized that they were accomplishing the exact opposite of what they had hoped - that is, scaring people into voting for Bush.

That, my friends, is what I love about America. We aren't afraid to be Americans. We aren't afraid to let the rest of the world know that they have no business telling us how to run our country.

In fact, we love to do it - and Global Test be hanged!

Thank you, Guardian, for doing your part to make sure President Bush wins in Ohio.

Voter Intimidation? H*&# Yeah!

2004-10-22T12:39:00.000-05:00

It would seem that, since early voting has commenced in several states, the accusations, threats, and invective have already been pouring forth from both sides over the issue of vote fraud.

Thus far, the claims made by each side can be summed up thus:

The Republicans have charged that Democrats are manipulating the system to ensure that provisional ballots (ballots cast in precincts where the voter's name is not registered); overvotes; undervotes; write-ins; pregnant, dimpled, and downright bedridden chads; and ballots that have been examined by a psychic who can read aura of the voter who cast it - thus divining his or her intention upon doing so, should all be counted for John Kerry.

The Democrats, conversely, have accused their opponents of intimidation, suppression, suffocation, extermination, and probably a cross-burning or two, in order to keep minorities from voting against President Bush.

Essentially, the general attitude from both sides seems to be, "your fraud is worse than my fraud!"

All of which drowns out the question that should be on the forefront of every legitimate voter's mind.

How is this affecting my right to have a say in my government?

The answer is this:

Certainly, voter suppression has a long and notorious history in this country. It's been relatively common practice by different groups in different places during different elections, since well before the right to vote was open to as many people as it is now. Certainly the crime of preventing a person who is legally entitled to vote is terrible, and should be eradicated at all costs.

That is not, however, what Democrats are accusing Republicans of doing.

Oh, no . . . it's not the legitimate voters the Democrats are worried about . . . or rather, it is those legitimate voters that concern them - because for some reason they seem to need a literal army of illegitimate voters to counterbalance those of us who plan to obey the law and go vote . . . once . . . in the right polling place . . . on November 2nd.

Here's a statement that would shock most of my democratic friends. Do I believe in voter intimidation as a legitimate election-day tool?

Absolutely!

I believe that felons should be intimidated from voting in states where they are legally prohibited from doing so.

I believe that voters who wish to cast multiple votes at different precincts using provisional ballots should be intimidated from doing so.

I believe that those who sign up to vote multiple times under fictitious names should be intimidated from doing so.

I believe that those who sign up unwitting voters who have no intention of going to the polls, and then go and vote in their names, should be intimidated from doing so.

I believe that anybody who attempts to vote on November 2nd under the names Mary Poppins or Donald Duck should be intimidated from doing so.

It's not the "intimidating Republicans and their goon squads" (of poll watchers and attorneys) who are trying to steal this election - it's those who have a good reason to be afraid of them.

Calling the WMD Bluff

2004-10-22T10:11:00.000-05:00

Kenneth Adelman, a UN Ambassador and arms control director for Ronald Reagan, has an insightful op-ed in this morning's LA Times, entitled "The Nuclear Bluffers"

In this piece he contends that Saddam Hussein ushered in a new era of strategic deterrence. While any number of would-be nuclear powers have feigned compliance with non-proliferation regulations while clandestinely violating those regulations left and right, Saddam for the first time (according to the recently released Duelfer Report) brazenly asserted his violation of those same regulations, while secretly complying with them.

Adelman illustrates quite well the advantages gained by the Iraqi dictator through this policy. This way he could gain all the advantages that come with possessing weapons of mass destruction - intimidating neighbors, gaining respect (albeit grudging) on the world stage, and bribing other nations with promises to "disarm" in exchange for monetary aid - without the disadvantages of actually having to spend money on weapons or handle dagngerous materials.

Saddam, of course, did very well at this juggling act for a decade - until the day he fatally "misunderestimated" President Bush's resolve to disarm him of the weapons he claimed to have.

Adelman, though, asks another important question. Is it possible that we are still being deceived - by the likes of other proliferators? Is it possible that the mullahs of Iran, or North Korea's Kim Jong-Il - the master bluffer - is engaging in a massive nuclear facade?

He points out just how weird this all gets, when it comes to how we deal diplomatically with someone who is bullying his neighbors around, and attempting to blackmail the US and our allies, with nonexistent weapons. But the question he only touches on, that is for me at least the most important one raised by his whole line of reasoning is this:

Can we ever afford not to assume they are telling the truth?

Clinton Back in the Game?

2004-10-21T12:43:00.000-05:00

Word has it that our 42nd President wants to get back on the national payroll - not to mention back into the limelight. Once you've been President of the United States, though, where else is there to go? John Quincy Adams went to the House of Representatives. William Howard Taft went to the Supreme Court. Far be it from William Jefferson Clinton, however, to accept a "demotion" - even a perceived one.

Nope, he'd rather be Secretary General of the United Nations.

And no, I'm not kidding.

According to this UPI Alert, the system for picking the Secretary General usually works the same way membership on the various commissions works - global locales simply take turns (which is how you end up with Sudan on the Human Rights Commission, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq on the Anti-Proliferation Commission). All of which means that right now, when it comes time to replace Kofi Annan in 2006, it's Asia's turn. The analysis from Roland Flamini, UPI's Chief International Correspondent, is that China has been pushing heavily for its favored candidate - the current Thai foreign minister, who also seems to enjoy marginal US support - but that if Clinton ran for the job, they'd probably back him (what a shock . . .)

The big hurdle Clinton would have to get over, Flamini opines, is US support. A second Bush administration, he says, would probably be quite unlikely to lend that support - while a Kerry administration would do so only reluctantly.

I'm a conservative. I came of age during Clinton's presidency, and loathed much of what he did during his time in office (both in his public and private lives.) However, I have to admit, there are tremendous pros and cons to the notion of a Clinton tenure as Secretary-General, and the Bush White House (if it still exists in 2006, as I believe it will) should think twice before opposing any attempt he makes to gain that position.

First, let's look at the cons:

1. We'd be guaranteed of replacing one crook in the chair with another one.

2. We'd be forced to wonder once again how much leverage China was exerting on our foreign policy leaders.

3. We'd be stuck with a liberal in the chair, representing the United States to the world.

4. President Clinton could use the chair for leverage in domestic political issues, threatening to withhold support from Republican-backed resolutions for partisan reasons.

But, there are pros, as well:

1. This could well be the only chance in the forseeable future to get an American in that seat (and he'd be the first American ever to occupy it. A couple years ago I might've thought that someday the world could be convinced to support Colin Powell for the position - but those days are long gone. The only other American who would ever be considered for the spot would perhaps be Jimmy Carter . . . heaven forbid!

2. Bush backing would return to the Bush administration much of the credibility it has lost in recent years, and as tragic as it is for President Bush (or anyone, for that matter) to have to count on Bill Clinton to give them credibility, in the international arena, it's fact. Whereas a "President Kerry" probably couldn't muster any more international support for US efforts in Iraq than President Bush has, a Secretary-General Clinton might stand a chance to do so.

3. Lest anybody think that by that last point I'm buying into the whole "UN as the savior of the world" philosophy . . . President Clinton in the chair would increase US prestige and favorability in the world, while at the same time putting Billy Jeff in a position where he really couldn't do that much damage. It's not as though the UN actually has any power, anyway.

4. President Clinton - unlike Kofi Annan, does know his way around terrorism. Granted, his solution to terrorism against the US was largely to sit on his hands and do nothing, but he does know how it works, and he did lend support for at least the theoretical idea of removing Saddam Hussein. Also unlike Kofi Annan, he has at least tried to mediate in the Israel/Palestine conflict - failed miserably, yes - but at least he tried.

5. By and large, it seems difficult to see how Clinton could do any worse as secretary general than Kofi Annan has. And if the alternative is China's guy? To me, that's a no brainer. For me, the make-or-break question is this: "What would Secretary-General Clinton mean for a Hillary '08 campaign?" At this point, I'm not ashamed to say I just don't know.

He could be a huge asset to her, or a huge detriment. He could be her best campaign tool. Or, he could be her biggest anchor. It could be seen as a massive conflict of interest for the Secretary-General to be married to the President of the United States.

In a Kerry administration, it wouldn't be a problem, because she wouldn't be running. In a Bush administration, I don't really know how that one would play out.

Still, barring the assertion that it would lend massive assistance to a "Hillary for President" campaign, is there really any serious harm it could do to our country. . . worse harm, that is, than anybody else would do in that position? I don't really think so - and it might just help a little.

John Kerry: Disciple of the Bush Doctrine

2004-10-21T12:41:00.001-05:00

I got a deep sense of satisfaction from reading this article from Yahoo News this morning, because it confirmed for me that, regardless of who wins the upcoming election, at least we will have someone who, in his heart of hearts, believes in the "Bush Doctrine," that is, the notion of preemptive warfare.

President Bush, of course, made this key decision after September 11, 2001, to alter our foreign policy and confront threats to national security before they reach our shores.

Senator Kerry, however, has not been so decisive. He has waffled and wavered on whether he believes its a good policy, or a bad policy, or a good policy only if approved by the UN, or a bad policy only if conducted by a Republican, or . . . well . . . I could try to list all of his positions, but I only have so much space in which to write . . .

However, when we look at his actions on the campaign trail, I believe we can get some sense of the man behind the malcontent.

It seems to me that, his protestations (and concurrences) notwithstanding, Senator Kerry is a bona fide preemptive warrior.

After all, while he cannot claim to be Commander in Chief of the military - at least not yet, I am forced to admit to myself with a shudder - he does have an army of campaign workers at his disposal. And what have been their marching orders? Why - preemptive strikes, of course! On the day when battle will be joined in earnest . . . on that day of days . . . on November 2, 2004 . . . Senator Kerry's legions have been instructed to act precisely in accordance with the doctrine named after the man he hopes to unseat.

Of course, none of this is news. The ether has been abuzz with news of the DNC's "preemptive strikes" against voter fraud - that is, their policy to warn about fraud whether it exists or not - for more than a week now.

However, the decision has apparently been made that Senator Kerry himself should do likewise. The afore-linked article from Yahoo News states that if it looks like such is necessary to avoid a recount, Senator Kerry will declare victory - and begin naming cabinet members - before anybody really knows who won.

You have to give it to Al Gore. The guy may have screwed up the entire future of our electoral system, set a precedent for gross violation of the separation of powers, and forever changed the fate of US elections - but at least when the rest of the country agreed that he was beaten, he conceded graciously. Senator Kerry seems to have no such intention. If we the people decide not to elect him, he will go to court to contest our decision. If it looks like the court agrees with us, he will declare himself the winner anyway.

It would seem that a guy from the self-described "upper crust" of society would have some notion of class. I suppose, as my dad always says, "It's a good thing there's two kinds of class, otherwise the guy wouldn't have any."

So there you have it. Senator Kerry is just as strong a believer in preemptive warfare as is President Bush. The only difference is that the President advocates using preemptive warfare to protect the American people from those who would do us harm. Senator Kerry, on the other hand, uses preemptive warfare to protect himself from the will of the American people.

Mirror Imaging and the Election

2004-10-20T12:57:00.000-05:00

The concept of "mirror imaging" is understood by those in the business of intelligence, diplomacy, or national security to be a trap that analysts often fall into, of assuming that the individual, country, or group being analyzed thinks exactly like the analyst does. It's an easy mistake to make - predicting that an adversary or rival is going to do something because . . . well . . . "it's what I would do if I were in their shoes."

It is a classic blunder.

And it's a blunder the Democratic party is making in spades, in the run-up to Election 2004.

Witness, for example, this article in today's Boston Globe by Robert Kuttner, entitled, "The Art of Stealing Elections."

Kuttner asserts that Republicans are just itching to find some reason to throw this election into the courts, because, after all, the Supreme Court gave it to the Bush camp last time . . . why not try to go two-for-two?

All of this might possibly make a tiny bit of sense . . .

. . . if it were a movement the Republicans were spearheading.

But it was not the Republican party that advocated "pre-emptive strikes" to alert people to voter fraud even if none occurred. It was not the Republican party that steadfastly opposed measures such as stricter ID regulation at the polls, to cut down on voter fraud . . . It was not the Republican party, incidentally, that threw the last election into the courts. No, Al Gore and his pals took care of that.

Kuttner's lapse in logic would be astounding enough if he just stopped here. But like any good liberal, he doesn't know when to quit shoving his foot a bit further down his own throat.

Instead, he waxes nostalgic. He writes, "It was Richard Nixon, that scoundrel's scoundrel, who resisted the temptation to mount a court challenge to the Illinois result because he felt the country couldn't take it. Imagine longing for the days when we had Republican leadership as principled as Nixon's."

Yes, you read that right. A liberal wrote that. Praising Richard Nixon.

With one bold stroke, Kuttner lays open the whole, ugly, arrogant, hypocritical mess that is the Democratic Party's thought process. "Only Democrats are principled, so if something unprincipled is going on, it must be Republicans behind it - and we'll prove it, even if we have to fawn over one of the Democratic Party's favorite whipping boys to do it!"

That's right, folks. Let's follow Kuttner back in time, and look at the election of 1960. It was, until 2000, the election everybody pointed to as a benchmark when someone said "this is gonna be a close race." John F. Kennedy defeated Nixon narrowly, while, as Kuttner points out, openly bragging about the vote-fraud that won him the state of Illinois. If anybody ever had standing to take the results of a Presidential election to court (and I'm not saying that anybody ever should) . . . but if anybody ever had justification for doing so, it would be Richard Nixon in 1960.

He refused. He said that the country couldn't take the strain.

He was probably right.

Incidentally, Republicans have a history of doing that. Our current Attorney General, John Ashcroft, refused to take his own senatorial defeat to court when he was defeated by a deceased governor.

What Mr. Kuttner doesn't see . . . or is simply too dishonest to point out . . . is that when an election goes to court, as no election ever should in this system of separation of powers our Constitution sets up, it is always a Democrat who puts it there.

Just how does that kneecap taste, Mr. Kuttner?

Fairness and the Law

2004-10-18T12:02:00.000-05:00

I was writing a short essay about a particular point of law as it relates to my area of graduate study - intelligence and national security - earlier today, and took a break to check out the latest news headlines. I saw this column by one of the few members of the mainstream media for which I have a great deal of respect, George Will.

He's writing about Bush v. Gore . . . No, not the election - the US Supreme Court case that finally put a stop to the Florida Supreme Court's attempt to rewrite state law and hand Al Gore the election.

That's when it hit me. Will captures here, whether he realizes it or not, one of the keys to what made America great in the first place. It's something Alexis de Toqueville notes in his wonderful tome, Democracy in America, to this day perhaps the best book ever written about the American psyche.

It's also a key difference between liberals and conservatives.

If you were to ask a liberal what he or she thought was the key flaw with the way the Florida election occurred in 2000 (and the problems it and other states are likely to face this year), the answer you would most likely get is that it "wasn't fair."

The basis they have for this argument is a strong one - the US Constitution, after all, does guarantee all citizens equal protection under the laws of this country . . . and how better to illustrate that than by ensuring that each citizen has the equal right to express themselves through their vote?

However, what would you get if you asked a conservative the same question? You'd get frustration that the letter of the law was not followed. You'd get anger at the fact that the court attempted to rewrite state law in the middle of an election. You'd get an insistence on the primacy of the rule of law, at all costs.

And that's the difference. For a liberal, if a law is not fair, it should be ignored or broken. For a conservative, it should be rewritten or changed according to legal procedure.

Which procedure, though, is superior? Certainly a liberal would have a fair point if they simply reminded us that laws take time to change, and that fairness demands that inequities be remedied as quickly as possible.

The problem with this approach is that “fairness” is subjective. Certainly we can all agree that standing in the doorway of a polling booth and preventing someone to enter simply because of their race, for example, is unfair. However, what about those who were turned away from voting booths in 2000 because they were not at their legally mandated polling place. What about those whose ballots were cast out because they were overvotes – ballots marked for the candidate they intended to vote for, as well as for another candidate for the same office?

All of this is strictly according to the law. Such votes cannot be legally counted. But is that really unfair?

If so, where is that line drawn? Is it unfair that as a California resident – and a California conservative at that – during the 2000 election, my vote “didn’t count” as much as, say, an equally conservative voter in Wyoming? Could I claim that my “equal protection” was violated?

I could, but I would be wrong.

Folks, this hearkens back to the very convention that formed the US Constitution. It was a “small states versus large states” debate then, and it remains so, at least in part, today. It was at that convention that the decision was made to abandon the notion of “one man, one vote,” in favor of a system that would ensure representation of all regional and political interests. That, my friends, is the beauty of a republic. It is perhaps on this issue more than any other that the major political parties live up to their name. Democrats insist on the value of democracy (one man, one vote). Republicans recognize that true democracy is dangerous, and do their best to protect and maintain the republic . . . and a republic has, as its absolute bedrock principle, the idea of “Majority rule, but with protection for minority rights.”

Can any truly “fair” system ensure that? Can any truly “fair” system ensure two and a half centuries of peaceful transfers of power?

Apparently not, because it is this very debate over what is “fair” that led to Bush vs. Gore, and it is this debate that Will argues has set the stage for many more such arguments in the future. What will happen when the courts are unable to arbitrate all the disputes to the satisfaction of those involved?

Asking ourselves that question makes us inevitably ask another: “Given all this, even if it were truly possible in the real world, do we really want a system that is perfectly ‘fair’?”

The Case of the Vanishing Web Page

2004-10-16T12:15:00.000-05:00

Apparently I'm getting to this story a little late - at least by blogosphere standards - but it's especially pertinent right now because Senator Kerry has for the first time decided to step up and echo the lies his surrogates have been spreading for weeks about the assertion that President Bush would institute a draft during his second administration.

The claim itself is, of course, old news. The fact that it's coming directly from Senator Kerry, however, is not.

Which makes this little tidbit from Little Green Footballs a week ago all the more interesting.

It seems that there's only one major candidate campaign site that has featured a proposal for any kind of mandatory military serice.

. . . that would be Senator Kerry's.

Of course, that page is long gone . . . it now features this proposal that would give college students four years of tuition, in exchange for two years of service. but LGF has been kind enough to provide us with this archived version of what the page used to look like - presumably before Senator Kerry decided to make his lie about Bush and the draft a centerpiece of his campaign strategy.

One wonders where it ends . . . Senator Kerry's campaign of hypocrisy, disinformation, and outright lies, that is.

I Think I Sense a Pattern Here . . .

2004-10-15T15:27:00.000-05:00

Remember four years ago when Democrats in Missouri defeated then-Senator John Ashcroft by running a dead man - former Governor Mel Carnahan - for Senate, on the promise that his widow Jean would be appointed to serve his term?

Remember two years ago when Democrats in New Jersey defeated would-be Senator Douglas Forrester by replacing the woefully outclassed Robert Torricelli with "retired" Senator Frank Lautenberg, after it became clear in the weeks before the election that Torricelli would be soundly beaten?

Well, it seems that Democrats' willingness to bend . . . excuse me . . . break . . . the law while trying to win back control of the Senate knows no bounds. In fact, this time, it seems that their utter blindness to the rule of law extends all the way to the top.

A "thank you" to Powerline for bringing attention to an article published by Jeff Gannon of Talon News today. It would seem that Senator Tom Daschle, the senate minority leader, may not be a resident of the state in which he is running for office.

"What?" you exclaim . . . he's been a senator from South Dakota for years!

True, but according to the article, Daschle and his wife purchased a home in a ritzy neighborhood in Washington DC . . . and then the senator proceeded to delare it his primary residence in order to get a tax credit that saves him a thousand bucks a year.

Um . . . pardon me . . . but if your primary residency is in DC . . . how is it that you're a South Dakota resident? I remember when I moved to the DC area. As a student living in a dormitory I didn't have to give up my California residency (hung onto it for as long as I could . . . they need every conservative vote they can get out there).

After I got a residency out here, though, all that changed (turned out to be a good thing, too . . . taxes are a lot . . . um . . . kinder . . . here in Virginia than they are in California). Now that I live here, I can no longer claim California citizenship. I certainly can't go back home and run for office, despite the fact that a lot more people in my hometown of California know me a lot better than people out here in Virginia.

But enough about me . . . I'm not the one trying to flout the law here . . .

This is not the first time Senator Daschle has faced this issue. According to the Talon article, DC Mayor Anthony Williams explained last year that it was Daschle's wife who is a DC resident, and whose name is on the house here.

. . . fortunately, in this country, we have something called the Freedom of Information Act. Talon was able to procure a copy of the initial application the Daschle's made for the aforementioned tax break.

The signature on the application? . . . "Thomas A. Daschle."

The checkbox that asks whether Senator Daschle is subject to DC income tax (and thus, eligible for the tax credit? . . . marked "yes" of course.

According to Talon, it would also seem that a little FOIA sleight of hand has occurred as well. Since the FOIA Request was made at the end of September, the DC Tax & Revenue website has been altered to reflect that the Daschles are "Not Receiving the Homestead Deduction." Yet none of the additional paperwork that would have been required for such a change was provided under the FOIA Request.

So it would seem that Senator Daschle, has either lied on an affadavit and is subject to a $1000 fine or up to 180 days in jail (or both), or is no longer eligible to hold office in South Dakota. Which is it, Mr. Senator?

. . . and our would-be President Kerry thinks that Republicans are the ones who act like Tony Soprano trying to lecture on the rule of law??

Why This Election Terrifies Me

2004-10-14T10:47:00.000-05:00

I am not a man given to hyperbole. I am generally a somewhat cynical - yet a tad idealistic - realist with a touch of optimism thrown into the mix. If that sounds like a walking contradiction . . . so be it, I've been called worse.

Yet amid all the hype and hyperbole amid this campaign furor in which our nation finds itself . . . amid all the pundits on both sides saying they're "worried" about this election . . . I find myself with one response for all of them:

. . . Not nearly worried enough.

"What's this?" you ask, "some new scare tactic?"

Not at all. It's a simple reflection on the fact that this particular election has the potential - the realistic, perhaps even likely, potential - to change the way our nation's government works more than any election since that of 1860.

. . . no matter who wins.

"Surely you jest?" you might say. "Surely that, at least, must be a fantastical exaggeration!"

Really?

The election of 1860 was, of course, the one that elected the first Republican to the Presidency - Abraham Lincoln. It was this election that essentially legitimized the Confederacy by convincing states such as the one from which I am writing, Virginia, to join those states that had already seceded under the Buchannan administration. Their actions, and the newly elected President's response to them, forever altered the way this country's government works. It answered questions that had been in the balance since the formation of this country - among them the question of whether a President had the authority to order troops to force states back into the Union (as President Andrew Jackson had once threatened to do), and whether a President could order the arrest of US citizens without due process of law during wartime - as President Lincoln did, and as President Bush has now done.

These precedents, and others, fundamentally altered our nation's genetic makeup. We entered the Lincoln administration a nation divided and nearly at war with itself. The twilight of his presidency - for better or for worse - found a nation attempting to discover itself in the aftermath of Civil War, attempting to strike a new balance between state and federal power, and attempting to decide the role of thousands upon thousands of newly-enfranchised former slaves.

It was the single most momentous election in US history, and if it had turned out otherwise, much of what occurred may never have happened - and would almost certainly have happened differently if it had.

Why do I believe that the election of 2004 has the potential to be the second most momentous election in US history? The reasons are legion.

The campaign has been a campaign of firsts, and the election has the potential to follow suit.

For the first time, a candidate with a track record of not only avoiding service for his country (i.e. President Clinton) but a history of literally aiding and abetting the enemies of the country is within a whisker of becoming its chief executive.

For the first time, a supposedly non-partisan national media has by-and-large been not only alleged, but outright exposed as attempting to defraud the public into replacing the President. Certainly the media has been partisan in the past, but never has it done so while making such an obviously false claim of objectivity.

For the first time, as revealed by the Drudge Report today, one of the parties to an election has crafted a grand strategy of violating the separation of powers and stealing the election, if they are unable to win it legitimately.

For the first time, a major candidate for President has placed at the core of his strategy an effort to demoralize troops in the field, and undermine US security at home, in order to win office.

All of this, of course, immediately paints me as a Bush supporter - and I am . . . I believe that the nation will be in grave danger if Senator Kerry is elected to the Presidency.

But hang on a minute . . . I said earlier, "no matter who wins."

That's because, even if President Bush is reelected, the very course of our nation's future depends on the manner of his reelection.

Consider these possible scenarios:

According to the Drudge Report, as linked earlier, the Democratic Party's grand strategy is to create the impression of Republican tampering with the ballot box, whether or not such tampering actually takes place in any given precinct. This is only one of many conceivable scenarios under which the election could literally be decided by the Judicial system, as was the election of 2000. This was a bad precedent to set, then, and the prospect of its broadening is certainly cause for concern. The Constitution clearly states, in Article 2 and Amendment 12, that the President is elected by a majority of electors, and that in the absence of such a majority, the election goes to the House of Representatives, voting as state delegations. Nowhere is the Judicial Branch mentioned - the implication being (from reading the writings of those who authored the Constitution) that unelected judges should have no part in picking the President. However, Mr. Gore's decision to take the Florida results to court resulted in precisely that. Regardless of who eventually gained those 21 electors from Florida, the way our President was ultimately decided was forever fundamentally altered.

This election has the vast potential to expand upon that precedent. It is easily plausible to imagine the same scenario playing out in a dozen swing states.

That is not, however, the only worrisome scenario. This article from Tech Central Station presents two others.

What happens if there is no clear winner in the electoral college? The election is then thrown to the House of Representatives. Presumably that means that President Bush wins, since the Republican Party controls 30 of the state delegations, and only 26 are needed to win.

What, though, if there is a revolt, either among the conservative or moderate wings of the party, and the President is unable to obtain those 26 state delegations? Improbable at best, but certainly possible. What then? Well, those voting in the House are required to pick between the top three candidates up for a vote. The first two would no doubt be the President and Senator Kerry, but who would the third be? Ralph Nader? Perhaps, but what if that third candidate were a compromise candidate like, say, Senator John McCain? He could certainly throw his support to the President, as he has throughout this campaign . . . but would he, if the alternative was his own seat in the Oval Office?

The other scenario raised by Tech Central Station is that of faithless electors - those committed to one candidate who vote for the other, or more often, for a third-party candidate. Certainly there have been a fair share of these in the past, but they have never before decided an election. This year, the potential for exactly that is virtually unlimited. Certainly it is limited in that roughly half of the states have laws on the books requiring that electors vote for the person to whom they are committed . . . but the enforcement for these laws range in scope from no penalty at all, to fines, to jail time. What if an elector - or set of electors - is willing to brook such penalties in his or her state, in order to make his or her mark on history?

Yet another set of scenarios is raised by Richard Hasen of the LA Times. These scenarios center around what he feels could be "this year's Florida," namely, Colorado.

You see, there is a ballot initiative in the form of a state constitutional amendment up for decision on November 2nd in Colorado, along with everything else. This ballot initiative would split Colorado's 9 electoral votes proportionally, ensuring a closer adherence to the supposedly ideal "one man one vote" concept . . . and the amendment is retroactive to include this election.

Aside from making the possibility of no clear winner much more likely, Hansen points out several additional problems. The simplest problem, he says, would occur if a recount were needed on this ballot initiative, and its results threw the whole national election up for debate. Things just get more hairy from there.

In the decision four years ago on the Florida elections, the courts left open the question of whether or not such lawsuits denied to the state legislatures their constitutional right to decide how the elections in their respective states are held. In 2000, this didn't become as big an issue because the US Supreme Court determined that it had to prevent the Florida Supreme Court from denying the legislature that right. However, as I stated earlier, this Colorado amendment is in the form of a ballot initiative . . . meaning that any challenge to its legitimacy will inevitably force the courts to decide whether such an initiative is taking away the legislature's right to decide on the method of elections.

But wait, as implausible as it seems, it does get worse. Hasen's blog quotes Pepperdine Law Professor Mark Scarberry points out that, according to the wording of Colorado proposed amendment 36, the amendment is retroactive - to November 3rd, the day after the election. However, the US Constitution states that Congress - the Congress of the United States, that is - has the right to decide when a state may choose its electors . . . and Congress has chosen November 2nd. To put it simply, the Colorado amendment is retroactive, all right - but is it quite retroactive enough??

Again, a question that, if the amendment passes, the courts will inevitably end up deciding.

All of which seems to indicate that the next several years will only see the debate the merits of the Electoral College become more and more virulent. I, for one, happen to be a fan of the system itself - though perhaps not of the method in which it operates. I believe that the actual names of electors should be open to full, public scrutiny, and that much more emphasis should be placed on who I'm actually voting for (the electors) than on whom they will be voting for. I don't believe that they should be bound to vote for the candidate to whom they are committed, and I believe it should be up to me to decide whether or not I trust them to do so. I am not a fan of the "one man, one vote" theory. I think that by and large the public of this country is far too apathetic to be trusted with deciding who gets to be my President. If you don't care enough to get to know what George Bush or John Kerry stands for, beyond listening to a couple soundbites culled from three 90-minute debates, the get out of the way and let me vote!

Oh well, in a perfect world, perhaps . . .

And don't even get me started on the issue of judicial appointments (an issue which, I thought, President Bush handled masterfully during the third debate last night.) After all, if the President had been allowed to do his constitutional duty, who knows what the courts who will probably be actually deciding this election would have looked like . . .

In short, folks, the question of who is to be inaugurated next year is perhaps the simplest question up for a vote on November 2nd. After all, that question is only going to take a month or two at worst to be decided. The actual impact of this election, though, could be felt for years to come.

2004-10-09T14:41:00.000-05:00

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service:
a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye.

One Down: Ruminations of a Monday Night Quarterback

2004-10-01T13:55:00.000-05:00

In trying to unravel the question, "What did last night's debate mean for the two campaigns involved?" one can, with relative ease, dig up any number of talking heads who opine that the President won by a landslide - or a little . . . that the challenger, Senator Kerry trounced the incumbent - or barely eked out a win . . . or that the two performed relatively evenly - or won on different issues or criterion, or whatever.

The problem with deciding who won is that there is no such thing as an unbiased observer . . . even oft-pursued "undecideds" are biased - in favor of their own preferences and prejudices when judging either candidate.

As a partisan, I am not here to try to tell you who "won the debate." I - unlike most of the allegedly "objective" mass media - will readily admit that I cannot do so without giving way to my biases.

I am, however, as a student of national security policy, going to tell you which of the two - based on the content of their speeches last night - better answers the question at the forefront of every American's mind, "Which of you will keep me safer?"

On the one hand, you have the glib, suave, poised, and polished junior senator from Massachusetts, John Forbes Kerry. His presentation last night - his style, his mannerisms, were some of the best I've ever seen from him. He was firm, forceful, and looked like a leader.

He also did his best to cram his foot into his mouth to the point where he could have been gnawing on his own kneecaps . . .

To wit, Senator Kerry says that he will give no foreign leader veto power over our foreign policy - yet believes that to justify any action abroad we must "pass the global test." One wonders who would administer such a test.

Senator Kerry believes that we absolutely must conduct our foreign policy backed with the threat of force if international laws are not followed - but woebetide the President who uses such force . . . even after the violation of seventeen United Nations resolutions.

Senator Kerry believes that the single greatest threat to our security is nuclear proliferation - yet has repeatedly voted against missile defense systems designed to defend us against one such means of delivering nuclear weapons to our shores.

Senator Kerry believes that we are "in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time," and is firmly convinced that he - and he alone - can coax the French and Germans to join us there.

Senator Kerry believes that the single biggest mistake President Bush has made thus far during his Presidency is to rush to war in Iraq, without exhausting all avenues of diplomacy - yet feels a burning desire to do exactly that in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Senator Kerry believes that President Bush is a cowboy who eschews multilateralism at every opportunity, and that such multilateralism is vital to preserve peace in the world - unless it's peace with Iran or North Korea.

Senator Kerry believes that invading Iraq after September 11th would have been like invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor . . . prompting one to ask "did Germany have anything to do with Pearl Harbor? . . . and if not, why did Franklin Roosevelt adopt such a hardline 'Germany First' strategy toward fighting that war?

On the other hand you have the colloquial, laid-back, plain-spoken, somewhat inarticulate President Bush. Certainly, the President looked visibly annoyed at times last night - I know precisely how he felt! I was a debater in four years of undergraduate school, and still participate in formal debates whenever I get the chance. I know how frustrating it is to have one's opponent completely deny, dodge, obfuscate, or otherwise ignore plain fact. It is incredibly annoying, and the President let that annoyance get to him on camera. However, such actions, which the mainstream media are already calling "un-Presidential," do not detract from the fact that on every point of substance, the President had the superior position.

In Sudan, he is against running into what would certainly be another quagmire, in which there would be no friendly Prime Minister Allawi to welcome us.

In Korea, he is dead-set against the failed policies of President Clinton, which cut all parties out of talks except for those from Washington and Pyongyang - and gave the North Koreans an excuse to walk away from the negotiating table.

In Iran, Senator Kerry is frighteningly in favor of bribing them away from their ambitions of nuclear armament with promises of the nuclear fuel they must have to manufacture that armament! The President flatly rejects this position - and thank God for that!

In Afghanistan, Senator Kerry says we have outsourced our national security, relying on others to capture Bin Laden while we go after a "grand diversion" in Iraq. The President rightly points out that we still have thousands of troops on the ground in Afghanistan, and that Kerry's denigration of our allies' efforts there are hardly the stuff of "solid alliances."

And the big one: In Iraq, Senator Kerry took so many positions over the course of ninety minutes that I lost track - and I was trying desperately to figure out what he believed. In the course of a single, two-minute speech, he began by saying that Iraq was not a mistake, but that we shouldn't be there, but that we had to be there, but that it was a tragic error on the part of the President to get us there in the first place. And that's the Senator's definition of one, firm position on the issue. The President - well, we all know exactly where he stands. We're there, we're trying to protect ourselves by fighting terrorists and those who support them, and we're not going to stop just because the terrorists reinforce their position.

So when you're reading all the post-debate coverage of this, try not to think in terms of who won, or lost. It's way too early in the "spin-cycle" to figure that out, anyway. Instead, try to decide who will best protect you, and those you love.

On that question, there's no question at all.

Volunteered? . . . The Story Dan Rather Won't Tell You

2004-09-27T20:15:00.000-05:00

One of the main thrusts against the reelection of President Bush has been that he is unfit to order men into combat when he himself allegedly dodged any and all attempts (and potential attempts) by the US Government to place him into harm's way during Vietnam.

As it turns out, this may be the furthest thing from the truth.

As Bill Ardolino of the blog In DC Journal shares, WVLT-TV (Ironically enough, the CBS affiliate for Eastern Tennessee) is reporting that Retired Colonel Ed Morrisey - who swore then-Lieutenant Bush into the Texas Air National Guard - has come out and said that, despite the fact that Lieutenant Bush never failed to fulfill his minimum requirements in the Guard (exceeding them several times over in some years), when the Air Force established a group of F-102 pilots to go to Vietnam and help prepare, he didn't have enough hours to qualify - despite the fact that he volunteered to go. Morrisey says, "The Air Force, in their ultimate wisdom, assembled a group of 102's and took them to Southeast Asia. Bush volunteered to go. But he needed to have 500 [flight] hours, but he only had just over 300 hours so he wasn't eligible to go." Instead, Morrisey says, "He flew in active air defense missions, training missions. Day, night, regardless of inclement weather."

One wonders why that story is being played on a CBS affiliate, but not by its parent company.

Those stubborn numbers . . .

2004-09-27T15:18:00.000-05:00

It is a well-acknowledged realization from most of the talking heads in politics today that this election's poll numbers have been anything but steady. What is amusing to observe, though, is the way the numbers tend to be so . . . "anti-spin," for lack of a better term.

In short, every time the mainstream media comes up with some sort of analysis based on the latest set of polls, the next set of polls comes along and blows their analysis completely out of the water.

This tendency was perhaps at its most pronounced during convention season. Immediately after the Democratic Convention utterly failed to generate any groundswelling of support for its annointed candidate, reams of paper were expended by opinion-editorialists nationwide in an attempt to explain that "the electorate has already decided . . . of course the conventions are not going to produce a 'bounce'!"

Then the Republican Convention did just that.

The legions sallied forth once again, explaining that such bounces were normal (forgetting their analysis of the previous couple of weeks) and assuring their faithful readers that this one was naturally going to be short-lived.

It wasn't. Oh sure, after a week or two it looked a lot less like a trouncing, and a lot more like a simple, solid lead . . . but evaporate it most certainly did not.

So the minions of the media came out with their latest diatribe. They excoriated pollsters for adhering to the "likely voter" model - discounting those who, while registered to vote, have a spotty history of actually having done so. It was their assertion (see the last several renditions of Mark Mellman's column in The Hill) that the "likely voter" model tended to exclude certain constituencies - such as newly registered young voters - who would tend to vote Democratic. Thus, they asserted, a survey of all registered voters would be a much more reliable test . . . a religion they clung to steadfastly, since the split between Senator Kerry and President Bush tended to be in the double digits among "likely voters," while hovering around five percent with all registered voters.

Well, Mr. Mellman (and friends) . . . how do you feel now?

According to the latest USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, the President's numbers are down. The split has gone from thirteen points to a mere eight . . . among likely voters.

However, those extra points have not disappeared . . . they've simply moved. While the split among likely voters has dropped, the split among registered voters has actually risen . . . to eleven points.

While even the yappier among the talking heads will probably ignore the "registered voter" column at this point, I for one would love to see the spin doctors try to spin this latest set of numbers.

Here's a clue, folks . . . maybe the President might just possibly happen to perhaps be . . . ahead? . . . as in people like him more? . . . as in people think he makes a better leader than would Senator Kerry?

Face it, folks, the Democratic candidate isn't "breaking even." He isn't "holding on to a dead heat."

He's losing.

And if he (and his proxies in the papers) don't face up to that fact, he's going to keep losing . . . all the way to November 2nd.

Mainstream Media Sets Out to Negate its Justification for Existence

2004-09-17T10:51:00.000-05:00

Ask any representative of the mainstream news media what they think of bloggers, and the response you receive will likely be something like this: "They are a threat to truth and the spread of accurate information, because there is no accountability. There is nothing stopping this crowd of people from sitting down in their pajamas at home and dashing off whatever nonsense strikes their fancy, in between spoonsful of their morning cheerios."

I have seen a number of comments like this - particularly in all the hullabaloo about "Rathergate" - directed at those of us who think of ourselves not as a cheap substitute for mainstream media, but as the antidote to it.

The problem is that mainstream media seems, between levelling such barbs, to be utterly obsessed with refuting their own words through their actions.

Was it bloggers who were taken in by what appear more and more to have been clumsy forgeries, as was CBS?

Was it bloggers who directed an obviously partisan venom at the President, chastizing him for failing to answer questions raised by a bunch of fake documents, as did Dan Rather?

Was it bloggers who did their best to minimize the damage CBS inflicted upon itself by defending its every move, as did USA Today?

Was it bloggers who misstated some of the arguments used to justify why the material in the memos was accurate (even if they were forged), in order to make the President look bad in spite of the fact that the evidence confronting him was probably fabricated, as did the New York Times?

. . . in case you were wondering, the answer to each of these questions is "no."

Have those at Power Line Blog, Little Green Footballs, Allahpundit.com, IN DC Journal, and other high-profile blogging sites been urged to author retractions of their recent writings, because of serious and obvious flaws in their factual information?

. . . have those at CBS and the New York Times?

So who is really in need of accountability? . . . and for that matter, what good are they even though they supposedly have it?

Oops, He Did it Again . . .

2004-09-15T12:20:00.000-05:00

In a rather remarkable reminiscence, Anne Morse of National Review reveals something most folks don't realize about the "Rathergate" scandal that is setting the ether abuzz.

Mr. Rather has been here before.

If indeed the Killian memos turn out to be forged, it will be Mr. Rather's second time being fooled by frauds.

Let us rewind to June 2, 1988. On that date, CBS aired what it referred to as "the rebirth of the TV documentary," a piece called The Wall Within.

Hosting said piece was none other than Dan Rather.

Ms. Morse relates the story of how Mr. Rather interviewed four Vietnam veterans about their experiences with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Each gave accounts of their gruesome and grueling combat experiences - experiences that left each of them forever scarred. Morse recounts the glowing reviews the piece received, and quotes Tom Shales of the Washington Post calling the documentary "extremely powerful."

It might not have been quite as powerful if the true stories of the individuals involved had been told.

That's right. Of the four veterans featured, not one ever saw combat. Each of their stories was almost entirely fabricated.

Author and Vietnam Vet B.G. Burkett (apparently the late 80's equivalent of Power Line and other conservative bloggers) tracked down the true stories of these vets, and exposed them as frauds. He also tracked down Sarah Lee Pilley, who operated the restaurant that played host to the CBS crew filming the documentary. Ms. Pilley was the wife of a retired Marine officer who actually was a combat veteran in Vietnam. Her take on those she hosted and observed was, according to Burkett, that she "got the distinct feeling that CBS had a story they had decided on before they left New York."

Sound familiar?

Mr. Rather, either you are a very naive individual (which given your prestigious and influential position, I highly doubt) or you are simply very adept at allowing your personal bias or desire for a "scoop" to get in the way of your professionalism. Either way, the American people you purport to serve, deserve better.

Predators

2004-09-15T08:22:00.000-05:00

You know, it's an interesting thing about predators. They're usually just as eager to attack one of their own kind when it is weak, as they are to attack those who are their normal prey.

Which seems to be exactly what we are seeing right now in the world of network news. While the big networks generally gobble up stories for breakfast - spinning them in whatever manner suits their fancy - the big story of the moment has become . . . network news.

So for a change, rather than circling the wagons, the networks are beginning to turn on the weakest among them - in this case, the much-maligned CBS.

And CBS appears to be quite deserving of such treatment. We have heard the name "Marcel Matley" a great deal of late. Less prominent have been the names "Emily Will," and "Linda James."

That's because, according to an ABC News report this morning, both of them - also document experts hired by CBS to look over the dubious Killian memos - warned the network, before the infamous episode of Sixty Minutes II, that the documents were probably forged. Even Matley himself has come out, since the controversy erupted, and said that his authentication extended only to the signatures on the documents, and not to their content, format, or any other characteristics.

Furthermore, ABC News reached Marian Carr Knox - formerly Lt. Col. Killian's personal secretary - who says that while some of the memos' content reflects accurately on what Killian felt, the memos themselves are fakes.

Where is CBS? Apparently still prepared to defend its position, warns anonymous blogger "Allah" of Allahpundit.com, one of the sites that helped break this story into the mainstream in the first place.

One can only hope they continue to do so - this story is giving the networks a chance to practice their reporting skills long since laid aside in preference to the ubiquitous "spin."

You know . . . come to think of it . . . thank you, CBS! Your ineptitude is an inspiration to us all.

Latest from the Front of the News Revolution

2004-09-14T20:12:00.000-05:00

Apparently the news media is being forced by the events of the past several days to conduct some self-analysis and realize that its vaunted impartiality is largely mythical. While that is hardly news to those of us who write outside the realms of "mainstream media," they seem to have largely missed it themselves until now.

Just as apparently, the Kerry campaign seems to have no intention of following President Clinton's advice to get away from the Vietnamization of this election, and seems to have just as little intention of ever coming to grips with the fact that Senator Kerry's stances . . . both of them . . . are at their most hypocritical when referring to his and President Bush's respective behaviors during the duration of that war (and when we realize that this is Senator Kerry we're talking about, saying that's him at his most hypocritical is saying quite a lot.)

Those two apparent facts came together today, in the Democratic National Committee's latest attack on the President - a Michael Moore-esque video montage of Vietnam-era footage. (By "Moore-esque," we mean of course that it's out of context, and filled with lies and half-truths.) This video, entitled Fortunate Son, can be seen here.

What the DNC could hardly have anticipated was the mainstream media's reaction to their new attack on the President. Within a matter of a few hours, NBC has demanded that the party pull the ad because, they claim, it uses their footage without their approval, according to the Daily Standard.

Who would'a thunk? one of the big networks, is actually doing its dead-level best to prevent the DNC from criticising the President. Sure, if the DNC is using footage improperly, that's exactly what the networks should do, but that's rarely seemed to matter in the past.

The Daily Standard article further speculates whether CBS will follow NBC's lead - as their footage is also used in the ad - and postulates that with all the furor surrounding "Rather-gate" it will virtually have to do so. The eye can't afford to be any further blackened at this juncture.

Good morning, it's a bright new day in the world of news reporting . . . as in, perhaps we're beginning to see the dawning of an era where those who are tasked with reporting the news actually report the news, instead of inventing it out of whole cloth.

. . . ironic that they had to be forced to do so by a bunch of guys in pajamas, puttering away on their collective web logs, eh?

Here it Comes

2004-09-13T15:42:00.000-05:00

One wonders just exactly how desperate the Kerry Camp is going to get, in their quest to unseat a President Bush whose popularity seems to be rising by the day. As I predicted yesterday, based on a Drudge Report Exclusive, the latest attack is yet again focused on the President's service in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam years.

Kerry's people went one better, though.

Not only did they dredge up an accusation based on a campaign handout from the President's abortive run for Congress in 1978 . . .

. . . they managed to get it wrong, too.

The accusation, as reported again by web sleuth Matt Drudge, is that President Bush made a false claim, during that campaign, to have served in the United States Air Force (of which the Texas Air National Guard is not a part).

However, Drudge has obtained this form, signed by the President, that shows he was indeed on active duty for a total of 120 days. Once again, the Democrats, already reeling from the revelation that some of their most recent attacks against President Bush may have been based on forged documents, have managed to land face-first in a plate full of egg.

Who Makes a Better Sheriff?

2004-09-13T12:58:00.000-05:00

The big news today (Aside from "Rather's Last Stand") is that the President and Congress have allowed the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban to lapse. Of course, the Kerry Campaign is seizing on this to claim that the President is not doing enough to stop violent crimes (a tough position for even someone as nuanced as Senator Kerry to take only days after reports revealed that such crimes are at 30-year lows). What, though, is the position of those responsible for battling said crimes?

ABC News was, of course, very quick to point out that Senator Kerry has garnered the endorsement of the National Association of Police Organizations, "A coalition of more than 2,000 Police Unions and Associations.

What is far less well-reported, though, is the endorsement of what the conservative Cybernet News Service says refers to itself as the "largest law enforcement labor organization in the United States," the Fraternal Order of Police. Go ahead, Google it yourself . . . I did, and the only reports of this endorsement that I could find were from conservative sites like CNS News, campaign websites, and internal announcements from chapters of the FOP itself.

CNS News reports that in order to receive this endorsement, one must be supported by two-thirds of the FOP's national board members. In the President's case, however, the endorsement was unanimous. While Senator Kerry is referring to President Bush as "turning his back on police officers and families," those very same police officers - or at least the largest of their unions, are calling him, "one of the very best friends that rank-and-file law enforcement officers have ever had."

And lest the reader think that the FOP is simply a rank-and-file supporter of the GOP, CNS News further reports that in 1996 they endorsed President Clinton for reelection, and in 2000 their board endorsed then-candidate Bush over the unanimous objections of its executive committee, which favored a recommendation of Vice President Gore.

No, it would seem that Senator Kerry is, once again, simply and completely out of step with the people he wishes to govern.

Same Song, Next Verse

2004-09-12T21:18:00.000-05:00

It would seem that the Democratic National Committee is not content to let CBS muddle around wondering whether or not they were duped by fistfuls of forged documents. Oh heavens no, they can't be caught without some new accusation against the Bush camp, otherwise those claims that the President is conducting the more negative of the two campaigns might actually develop some merit for a change.

The trouble is, they can't seem to decide on a new accusation, so they're recycling an old one again.

and again . . .

and again . . .

As a Drudge Report Exclusive tells it, Senator Kerry is apparently turning his back on the counsel of the only Democratic President to serve two full terms since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and is allowing his campaign to continue hashing out the issues of thirty years past.

The DNC is prepared once again to trot out a series of new attacks against President Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War. A yet-to-be-issued Democratic Press Release reads, ""George W. Bush's campaign literature claimed that he 'served in the U.S. Air Force.' The only problem? He didn't."

Senator Kerry once again shows how enamored he is with the past - the campaign literature referred to here is from President Bush's failed run for a Texas Congressional seat in 1978. One has to wonder who, exactly, Senator Kerry thinks he is attempting to defeat . . . Gerald Ford, perhaps?

Senator, I don't know about you, but I have very little desire to entrust my country to a man so insistent that his qualifications for office - however dubious they might be - thirty years in the past, are more important than all of his actions since. Or could it be that you're simply afraid to trot out your real record, and run on that?

When in Doubt, Resort to the Race Card

2004-09-12T15:40:00.000-05:00

The apparently foundering Democratic candidate for President seems to be falling back to an old stronghold - African-American voters, who tend to vote Democratic in overwhelming numbers. As reported by the Washington Post this morning, Senator Kerry is accusing the President of "hanging a 'do not enter' sign on the White House doors for many African Americans."

According to ABC News, Senator Kerry also hinted yesterday that the White House may attempt to stifle the turnout of African American voters in battleground states "As they did in Florida," come November.

Aside from this being especially tactless while the rest of the nation was mourning the third anniversary of the day we lost three thousand of our own, the accusation itself was particularly disingenuous given the fact that it is based on speculation and hearsay, rather than on actual evidence that any such vote-stifling ever occurred.

But aside from all that, one has to wonder why the African American community still puts up with the likes of Senator Kerry.

When, exactly, did the Democratic Party become the champion of the African American community?

Let's review for a minute:

How many African-Americans have ever been appointed Secretary of State? For those who don't know, that would be one, Colin Powell. How many have ever served as National Security Advisor? . . . That would be two - Colin Powell again, as well as Condoleeza Rice, also the first woman to hold the post.

And who appointed them? Not Bill Clinton, the man who was hailed by many African Americans as the "First Black president." Nor was it Lyndon Johnson, who holds the distinction of having appointed the first African American to the Supreme Court.

No, Ronald Reagan was the first two appoint Colin Powell to the post of National Security Advisor, and of course it was our current President Bush who promoted him to Secretary of State, and asked Dr. Rice to become his National Security Advisor.

Certainly President Bush has had his share of conflicts with the NAACP and other liberal organizations representing large portions of the African American community. I would be deeply upset as well if an organization painted me as supportive of those who committed the horrible atrocity of dragging a man to his death behind their pickup in my home state. That is exactly what the NAACP did to President Bush when he was campaigning in 2000 - exploited the murder of James Byrd in Texas to paint him as unsympathetic toward African Americans.

But does that make him racist, as Senator Kerry seems to imply? For that matter, do his policies make him racist? He has opposed affirmative action policies in publicly funded institutions. Very well, why don't we look at the merits of such affirmative action policies, rather than castigating their critics as racists? Even the Supreme Court opinion upholding affirmative action programs in general pointed out the deep flaws in the system that begets them, and held out the hope that one day they will no longer be "necessary."

What, exactly, has President Bush done that is so bad for African Americans? He has promoted school vouchers - which the African American community overwhelmingly supports. He has attempted to better the quality of struggling schools all across the country.

What has John Kerry done for them? Supported affirmative action programs that immediately subject each African American who deservingly garnishes a spot at a top school with the stigma of assumption that they got that position by preference?

One wonders how long the African American community will continue to let anybody within their ranks who becomes successful be painted as a "Race Traitor" rather than someone to be admired and emulated. One wonders how long they will continue to support those whose very livelihood depends on the existence of an oppressed minority. After all, without the gap in quality of life between the African American and Caucasian communities in this country, where would Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton be? Where would the Democratic Party be?

One wonders how long it will take for all of this country's ethnic groups to stop allowing their so-called leaders to pit them against one another for personal profit.

Wake up, America!

Three Years Later

2004-09-11T15:59:00.000-05:00

As though it was yesterday, I recall the Academic Dean of my small college breaking into our morning assembly and telling us that an aircraft had hit the World Trade Center. The first thought that crossed my mind was, "what a terrible accident!" As the morning wore on, however, that initial horror deepened and worsened as I realized that my country was under attack - that the blood of American civilians had been spilled on American soil by a foreign power for the first time since the Civil War.

In three years, how far have we come? We have eliminated the regime that comforted and aided the man who, more than any other, was responsible for orchestrating this attack. We have - during both that war and the one quickly following it in Iraq - captured or killed many of those involved in the planning of this strike. We have taken tremendous steps toward containing the threat posed by those who would use the religion of Islam as a weapon against those who disagree with them.

Nevertheless, we have a long, long way yet to go. We have failed miserably in our interactions with those who share a religion with our attackers. We have driven many of them to outright sympathy with those who did this. We have politicized the process of fixing the flaws that rendered us vulnerable in the first place. For the first time since our nation was nearly split in half, we have turned national security into a political game. We have lost a thousand of our own in a well-intentioned, but poorly-conducted war in Iraq. We have taken countless thousands of bystanders with us in that war.

Somehow, in all of this, we have managed to avoid another attack on our own soil. Our allies and our own people overseas have not been so fortunate. People of many nationalities: Korean, Japanese, Turkish, French, Polish, Italian, and American alike, have been kidnapped and their governments threatened with their public and gruesome death in attempts at blackmail. Spain has been attacked in a blatant (and successful) attempt to sway its national elections. More recently, Russia has become the target of terrorists cooperating with those who attacked the United States - first engaging in the same sort of suicide hijackings with which they struck us, and more recently slaughtering women and children by the hundreds in order to make a political statement.

And yet some in this country still believe that negotiation is an option. Some believe that we can still talk our way out of this confrontation. Fortunately for us, none of our major political leaders take this stance - but even among their ranks are those who believe in a "kinder, gentler" war on terror.

I live ten minutes from the Pentagon, and I remember that morning when terror was not just an enigmatic synonym for "enemy." I remember when it was an emotion so strong, so overpowering, that it humbled - if for only a moment in time - the most powerful nation on earth.

No, my dear friends . . . do not believe that we have reached any point so very different than that which we occupied as a nation three years ago today. We may have rebuilt. We may have awoken to the fact that there are people out there with whom our national ideals are irreconcilable . . . but it is only as long as we are willing, ourselves, to defend those ideals, that we have any realistic hope for our own survival.

The history of western civilization is dotted with many great powers in the past who viewed themselves as invincible - and each has one thing in common. They survived only as long as they held to the ideals that made them great in the first place: Greece (both in its individual city-states and its empire), Rome (both as a Republic and an Empire), Britain - which began its decline from Empire by failing to apply the laws that made it great, to the colonies it ruled.

What makes us believe ourselves to be any different? We are a country based on the rule of law, as set down by the founders in the form of a Democratic Republic. However, as each day passes, as each new government program, each new departmental regulation, and each new activist court case proceed to chip a little bit more off of our founding principles, we draw ever closer to that precipice. Three years ago, we received a wake-up call. We were given a warning, written in the blood of thousands of our loved ones, about the course we have set for ourselves. We have slowed our course in the years since - but have we really turned our backs on it?

Be careful, America.

Beginnings

2004-09-10T22:34:00.000-05:00

This blog was created with one goal in mind - the protection of the things and people I love. Its roots lie in many different places, but its conception lies in the last twenty-four hours.

Born the son of a sword-maker, Demosthenes was orphaned at age seven. Those responsible for his inheritance squandered it, leaving him with nothing but his lifelong dream of being an orator.

His first attempt at public speaking was disastrous, so he diligently set out to improve his skills . . . with success of historic proportions. He eventually became one of the official orators of Athens, and gave a series of speeches aganst Philip of Macedon's invasion - and eventual conquest - of his beloved Athens that were so vitriolic, and so memorable, that a public denunciation is still known as a philippic today.

This blog is the direct result of a series of such modern-day philippics. I have blogged casually in the past, but over the past twenty-four hours I watched as a collection of bloggers was able to successfully influence the leading stories on every major media outlet in the country by exposing a major news story as a potential fraud within mere hours of its breaking. As of the establishment of this blog, the issue has still not been resolved, but whatever the outcome, this episode is certain to help establish the role of blogging in redefining forever the concept of "mainstream." This collection of bloggers was able to call into question the veracity and reliability of one of the most venerated news programs in the country, "60 Minutes." Their example, and their influence, is what drove me to finally take the step of creating this blog.

Blogging is the new oration - perhaps the only forum left where honest and open discussion truly takes place. This blog is intended to provoke such though and discussion. Its contents will include political discourses, philosophical musings, and thoughts on life in general. It will, however, always adhere to two things: It will always confront tyranny, will always seek truth.

However, I implore you, do not take for granted anything you read here - or anywhere else for that matter. Always be suspicious of anybody who claims to have a grasp of absolute truth. Investigate, verify, discover for yourself. Truth is out there for you to unearth - never content yourself with a mere description of it by another. This blog will never lay an exclusive claim to the truth . . . it is merely a tool to assist you, the reader, in your own search for it.