1. First Black Woman President? Could Happen. (1/10/05)
2. CLINTON'S RESPECTABILITY (1/24/05)
3. UNITED NATIONS (1/24/05)
4. SOCIAL SECURITY (2/9/14)
5. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION (3/17/05)
6. A NEW POPE (4/20/05)
7. ABDICATION OF POWER
8. TAGGING YOU (5/23/05)
9. A PEACEFUL RELIGION? (6/14/05)
10. GOP CAVES IN AGAIN
11. NO MORE CLINTONS (7/11/05)
12. ROBERTS AND THE POPE (8/8/05)
14. FIGHTING THE ACLU (10/24/05)
15. MIERS AND LAW SCHOOL FLAP (11/16/05)

First black national security advisor; First woman national security adviser; First black woman secretary of state; First woman vice president; First black woman vice president; First woman president; First black woman president.

For Condoleezza Rice it’s three down and four to go, and she has more than a reasonable chance to attain all.

For the greatest prize she may be just a heart beat and a skip away considering Dick Cheney’s irregular heart and history of heart attacks. She is a shoo-in to be approved by the Senate for Secretary of State, which puts her third in line to succeed to the presidency.

Other scenarios: If something should happen to President Bush, such as assassination, accident or unexpected natural death, Cheney, of course, would succeed to the high office. Rice is highly regarded by Bush and Cheney so she very likely could be chosen for the vice presidency by Cheney and approved by Congress. That would put her a heart skip away from the oval office.

Or suppose something happened to Cheney. Then Bush might name her vice president, and that would put hear a heart beat away from the oval office in these perilous and terrorist times.

If Rice should become vice president, she will arguably not become the first Negro to hold that office. That distinction probably goes go Hannibal Hamlin, the first vice president under Abraham Lincoln, who quietly working behind the scenes, dumped him for his second term in favor of Andrew Johnson. It was a political move by Lincoln to try and gain southern support.

Hamlin was ‘’arguably’’ the first Negro vice president because, while southerners insisted he was a Negro, his son wrote a book denying that he or his family were of that ethnic origin. Historical novelist Gore Vidal refers to him as such in his book, Lincoln.

And, of course, Madeleine Albright gets the distinction of being the first woman secretary of state as well as the first Jewish woman to hold the post – and Colin Powell is the first Negro to ascend the office.

IS SHE QUALIFIED

From an educational and academic background she is. But as Woodrow Wilson proved academicians don’t necessarily make good presidents. Wilson, you will recall, gave us the Federal Reserve Board which unconstitutionally (it has never been legally tested) took over the people money and credit; the unconstitutional income tax and an unworkable World War I peace plan, plus a lame duck inefficient presidency run by his wife.

Rice would be the first president from academia since Wilson. (Clinton doesn’t count even though he briefly taught constitutional law at the University of Arkansas). Rice’s academic background does not necessarily qualify her for the presidency even if she is smarter than most presidents including Bush I and II.

Does she have an intellect superior to other cabinet-level political appointees, or even her colleagues in academia for that matter? We’ll leave the question open. But it calls to mind something Winston Churchill said when reminded that one of his opponents was a child prodigy. His answer was that he continued to be a child long after he ceased to be a prodigy. Let’s hope we don’t have to use that description of Condi as she becomes even more visible ascending the political latter.

Bill Clinton should have taught us, and maybe the last election proved it, that character is more important than intellect in the high office. Selflessness instead of personal interest also should be a qualification, but where you find a politician like that, even if they are not all as bad as Clinton? Most of our top-rated universities are short on teaching ethics in favor of teaching specialists.

JUSTICES

All presidents try to appoint Supreme Court justices to try and mold the court to their way of thinking. In Bush’s case he appears -- especially during his second term -- to be doing that with members of his cabinet. Rice is a prime example. For all of her accomplishments, her greatest triumph on the rung of career success appears to be ingratiating her self with the powerful Bush clan.

In his book, Justices, Presidents and Senators, Henry J. Abraham lists 11 qualifications for justices of the High Court. They include; absolute personal, moral and professional integrity; professional expertise and competence; an able, agile, lucid mind; appropriate professional educational background or training and resolute fair-mindedness and impartiality.

Presidents do not necessarily have to have these qualifications and few do. Their only qualifications as spelled out in the Constitution is to be born in the United States, be 35 years of age and a resident within the United States for 14 years. Maybe some of the Supreme Court justice qualifications should be added.

The main qualification to gain the office of president now seems to be connections and the ability to raise money such as demonstrated by the Bush clan. Rice, being under the Bush wing, will have connections if she should try a presidential bid of her own provided, of course, that Jeb Bush doesn’t seek the office.

BLUNDERS

Whatever she does in the future, we know Rice has made foreign policy blunders in the past, even though it looks as if Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is being set up to take the fall. He only deserves a part of it along with Paul Wolfowitz, his deputy, and other of the so-called Vulcans.

As the president’s security adviser, Rice misjudged the terrorist threat leading up to 9/11, and she also misled the nation and allies about the case for invading Iraq. And as a leading voice among the Vulcans, she is as guilty about Iraq and the mess we are now in as Rumsfeld et al.

She admitted before the 9/11 Commission that she didn’t know much about many security issues. In a column carried by WorldNetDaily.com, Jane Chastain includes a long list of questions to Rice by John Lehman, Navy Secretary under President Ronald Reagan, about security matters she knew nothing about.

They included Arab males in flight training; the dropping of U.S. marshals on domestic flights; FAA low airport security system ratings; that Saudi citizens could get visas without interviews; that Saudi Arabia refused the U.S. direct access to the closest confidant of Osama bin Laden, or that airlines couldn’t question more than two young Arab males.

Chastain points out that the lapses were not made headlines from the hearings. But without knowledge of them how could Rice offer pertinent and valuable security advice to the president?

Former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke also charged that the Bush Administration did not make counterterrorism an urgent priority before the 9/11 attacks. Rice’s answer to Lehman’s questions appears to confirm it.

MENTOR

It was former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s father, Josef Korbel that stirred Rice to switch her direction to international studies at Stanford University where she later served as provost. Having the same mentor as her friend Albright, who didn’t even know she was Jewish until she entered the government shouldn’t be cause for emphasis in her resume.

We all are aware of Madam Albright’s poor record as Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, particularly policies that led to the North Korean mess.

‘’Condoleeza Rice was not a China expert,’’ James Mann states flatly in his book, Rise of the Vulcans. He said she wanted to more or less put China on hold until the crisis arose when a U.S. reconnaissance plane crashed into a Chinese jet fighter and landed on Hainan Island. Relations were so bad that Rice was even unable to get through to Chinese officials about the release of 24 crew members.

She was introduced to business by former Secretary of State George Schultz of Bechtel Co. fame. That organization also gave us Casper Weinberger as Defense Secretary in the Reagan administration. He was convicted but pardoned by Gorge H. Bush for his Iran Contra involvement.

Schultz got her a job at Chevron Oil Co. where she shortly became a board member and at the end of the 1990’s according to Mann, owned $250,000 in Chevron stock plus an annual director’s fee of $60,000. Rice also served on the boards of Transamerica, Hewlett-Packard and Charles Schwab and the advisory council of J. P. Morgan. She’s has business, and particularly oil, connections.

She first came to Washington on a fellowship to work at the Defense Department and was sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which has been running U.S. foreign policy since before World War I and stacked the government with its members. Her deputy who replaced her as national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, also belongs to CFR. (For more on the CFR see the front of this site)

In addition, Rice is reported to be planning to name Robert B. Zoellick, the present U.S. trade representative, as her deputy. Zoellick is a one-worlder and CFR member who once called those who opposed belonging to U.S. sovereignty usurping trade organizations ‘’unpatroitic.’’

DOWNSIDE

The downside to Rice’s being secretary of state, according to some critics, is that it may lead to a closed policy in creating foreign policy. Rice is very loyal to the president and the dissenters are now gone as the Vulcans, or neo-coms as they are sometimes referred to, stay on.

Another thing that is seldom mentioned is the disadvantage of having a women negotiating in the Middle East which is the world’s present most troubled spot. That also was a puzzle with Albright. How sincerely will Islamic leaders deal with a woman? But then Henry Kissinger was a Jew, so the problem existed with him, too.

The net effect of both Albright and Kissinger has been zero progress in diplomatic success in dealing with that area of the world. Would it have been different otherwise? It would maybe take a change to find out, but none seems forthcoming.

Rice is to be commended for her accomplishments. Whether she is ready for these high offices or to lead the country is another matter. She surely couldn’t do worse than most of our recent presidents. But memorizing members of the Politburo does not a foreign policy expert make.

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An Essay
By Richard C. Sizemore

During the impeachment hearings of sex predator Bill Clinton -- who desecrated the presidency and showed disdain for the constitutional oath he swore to uphold -- the Republican leadership proved to be the best defensive aid he had.

And now President Bush is giving him support as he tries to regain respectability and rebuild his image. Bush is doing this despite Clinton’s sorry record of abusing presidential power, obstructing justice, alleged rape, lying under oath, pimping out the White House to the highest bidder and giving representatives of the Chinese military access to U.S. technology for political donations.

Clinton did all of this for personal gain without caring a damn about U.S. security or the sanctity of the presidency or the principles that most Americans people hold dear.

So, why should he deserve this cozy treatment from Bush and his father Bush I? Is it because they are all members of the exclusive ex-president’s club? That couldn’t be it alone because Jimmy Carter is not getting the same treatment. Maybe it goes deeper and that Clinton knows of some of the alleged Bush misdeeds.

Hillary Clinton is being touted as the next Democratic nominee. Should she gain the presidency, she is reputed not to take prisoners. So, could the Bush’s be lenient on Clinton lest they be maltreated in the future.

In any event, Bush has befriended Clinton, a felon who can’t even practice law in his home state where he used to teach it because he was found guilty of perjury and disbarred.

One recent effort to restore credibility to Clinton was tapping him along with Bush I to solicit contributions for aiding tsunami victims. The move was considered by some critics as an effort to blunt criticism of the meager initial U.S. aid response. Does Bush need Clinton for that purpose?

In any event, Bush II and Bush I, who rightfully once said Clinton was unfit to be president, and Clinton lunched together and exchanged pleasantries about the Oval Office rug, Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, and other light conversational matters, according to published reports.

A short time later Clinton was in town for Bush’s inaugural festivities, and lunched at the Capitol with his right hand political promoter, Karl Rove.

In May, 2002, five months after taking office and stating one of his priorities would be to give the Oval office ‘’one heck of a scrubbing’’ Bush chose Clinton to head a U.S. delegation to East Timor’s independence celebration. That also afforded Clinton national exposure in a good light.

Then later to prevent historians from examining details of presidential papers, President Bush issued an executive order overturning a Congressional Act passed specifically to permit such examination. This, too, was a reckless disregard for a law enacted by Congress.

The order served to protect the Bush’s papers along with those of Clinton and Ronald Reagan. Clinton said he didn’t care if his papers were released. But since Bush had already signed the order and he was protected anyway, what did Clinton have to lose by such a statement? Who could believe him anyway, since he lied in a civil deposition, lied to a criminal grand jury, lied to the people, lied to his cabinet and top aides and also lied to Congress?

If Clinton was not concerned about his papers, why did he request his former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, to review documents that would be turned over to the 9-11 Commission? They must have been incriminating because Berger ‘’inadvertently’’ pocketed 40 or 50 of the highly classified terrorism documents and lost some of them.

The criminal investigation of Berger is now before a federal grand jury. Bruce Lindsey has testified in the grand jury hearing, according to The New York Post. Berger saying he inadvertently took the documents is like a criminal saying ‘’I shot him (the victim) five times accidentally.’’

The executive order by Bush raised a firestorm of protest from archivists, historians and journalists who questioned what he was trying to hide. Protection of Bush’s inner circle who worked in former administrations or the involvement of Bush I in the Iran Contra scam were questions raised.

The whole Bush clan was up to its ears in Iran Contra schemes, according to Al Martin, a retired US Navy Lt. Commander and former officer in the Office of Naval intelligence who wrote The Conspirators Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider. Bush I is as handy with writing or overturning laws with executive orders as was Clinton who did it without compunction. There are other skeletons in the Bushes closet that maybe Clinton knows about.

Another courtesy extended to Clinton was when the two Bushes in November, 2004, visited Little Rock and delivered praise for him when his presidential library was opened. Clinton reveled in it. Pictures implied the impeached Clinton deserved the same respect as all former presidents.

IMPEACHMENT

The Republican leadership in both the House and Senate aided Clinton in wiggling off the hook by reining in the House Judiciary Committee investigators and later the House managers who presented the impeachment findings to the Senate.

David P. Schippers, chief investigative counsel for the Clinton impeachment, wrote that the GOP leadership did not want Clinton impeached. The Republicans had 55 votes and if they had held fast and voted in bloc as the Democrats did they could have set the rules and gained the day since it only took 51 votes.

But they didn’t. And they and the Democrats that voted not to convict Clinton were just as guilty for his sorry last four years in office as Clinton was. Voters should hold them responsible. The Senate did not allow any live witnesses and relied on old published depositions of witnesses to decide their case. The deck was stacked from the beginning.

Schippers notes that not one single senator took time to read the evidence he offered to have at their disposal. In other words, the Senate trial was a farce, and then Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott boasted after the Senate vote that he knew the outcome all along.

Even before the House managers presented their case he told Rep. Henry Hyde ‘’You’re not going to dump this garbage on us,’’ and proceeded to tie the prosecutor’s hands with limited time, limited witnesses, and rules that put the House managers in a straight jacket.

The Democrats were out to protect Clinton at all costs. As an example, Sen. Joe Biden showing disrespect for the House told Hyde -- who was pleading for time to present witnesses and evidence according to the rules -- ‘’We make our own rules,’’ according to Schippers.

They also hassled over what constituted high crimes and misdemeanors and whether lying about sex was a grave enough offense to call for impeachment. As Schippers emphasized ‘’A lie is a lie is a lie.’’

Former Congressman Bob Barr, one of the House managers, in his book, The Meaning of Is, noted that Clinton’s undermining national security should have formed the heart of the Judiciary Committee inquiry into impeachment and not his philandering which he lied under oath about.

Barr claims it would have been if Attorney General Janet Reno had not kept secret memos from FBI Director Louis Freeh and Charles LaBella, federal prosecutor. Both memos concluded there was enough evidence of illegal behavior by Clinton to require the appointment of an independent counsel to look into it. Reno rejected the request and kept the memos secret.

They dealt with conspiring to violate campaign finance laws, selling access to the White House and illegal campaign contributions by China and other countries to gain foreign policy influence. How John Huang and Charlie Trie were involved in efforts to steal U.S. military technology has been well publicized.

In his book, Barr describes the damage Clinton did to national security, the office of the presidency and the civil liberties of the American people. Bush also is guilty of the latter with his USA PATROIT Act and other restrictions.

Schippers was also investigating the White House plan for trying to naturalize more than a million aliens in time for the 1996 presidential election by pressuring the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to lower the standards on English and other requirements. Thousands of these illegal aliens had criminal records.

But these and other Clinton misdeeds were never used in the impeachment efforts because the Republican and Democrat leadership narrowed the scope of the investigation in an effort to save Clinton’s neck.

In fairness it should be noted that Bush learned Spanish to influence Mexican voters and then mocked a tv reporter for asking a question in French. Bush also is supporting a guest-worker program for about 8 million illegal aliens that critics say amounts to amnesty.

The House was not restricted to the referral made by Kenneth Star, special counsel, and the broader charges of Chinagate, terrorism, immigration policy and other abuses of presidential powers could and should have been included. The restrictions came from the Republican leadership that teamed with adamant Democrats.

PRECEDENT OF IMPEACHMENT

The precedent of impeachment should be established when there is opportunity to do so with a president who deserves it. The reason is that it would put manners on future presidents and serve to make them operate within the Constitution rather than abuse the powers they swore to uphold.

The country lost two golden opportunities to do this with Richard Nixon and Clinton, both of whom were guilty and both of whom had life-time careers of supping at the public trough.

Spineless House leaders who felt the people couldn’t handle an impeachment arranged for Nixon to resign, of course. The people lost.

In the case of Clinton, the Republicans and Democrats who supported him and the appalling tactics and illegal rules they used set the possibility of impeachment process back if, indeed, it did not make it impossible in the future. Other presidents may rely on the same tactics which are not in the Constitution. The people lost again, and the presidency was made more powerful.

In his book Schippers includes some letters written to him about his efforts in the impeachment. One from a third grader illustrates some of the damage Clinton has done as well as his legacy: ‘’It is important to believe the President…If you cannot believe the President who can you believe? I do not believe the President tells the truth any more…’’

How many gullible people will use Clinton as a role model in their moral conduct? It’s depressing to see the White House even now tending to condone Clinton’s despicable behavior by abetting his efforts to restore his probity.

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An Essay
By Richard C. Sizemore

Although President Bush lacks the obfuscatory skills of Alan Greenspan, the flim-flam man, he still is managing to befuddle everyone about his grandiose ‘’crisis’’ plan for fixing an alleged broken Social Security System.

He is unconvincing to his critics that the system is broke. That being the case, as the old saying goes, it shouldn’t be fixed. In any event, Democrats, some influential Republicans and others contend the President’s privatization plan is not the answer.

Bush has left as many questions unanswered about his plan as he has labored to answer in general terms. He has given no details on benefit cuts, or how personal accounts would shore up Social Security’s finances. He hasn’t assuaged concerns about market swings, the fee problem or the difficulty in predicting the economy.

The government can’t adequately predict budgets two to five years in advance, so how can it predict future inflation and stock market gyrations? As the President was touting more income earnings from Wall Street investments than in Treasury bonds, one noted analyst was predicting the biggest stock market crash since the Great Depression.

Another economic pundit – Scott Burns in The Dallas Morning News – claimed Bush was proposing a major but hidden tax increase. This was so, he reasoned, since those under 55 years of age, would pay the same employment tax as those over 55 but receive less benefits.

Everybody, including Burns, seems to have a plan now that the President, prematurely, some think, has put Social Security tampering on the front burner. And it’s like their watches, as the poet Pope said, none runs quite the same but each believes his own. President’s Bush’s plan, of course, will get the most attention and partisan battle in Congress.

There is disagreement as to when the Social Security trust fund will begin to run a cash deficit. The administration says 2018, the Congressional Budget Office says ten years later. So, we’re not sure how broke it is. But the program is not in crisis even if the formula for paying retirees might need changing for the future.

President Bush’s proposal would replace part of the traditional Social Security program with a system of personal savings accounts. Although details on how to finance the program are lacking, critics are convinced there will be a sharp reduction in benefits for future retirees.

The government also would have to borrow probably a couple of trillion dollars to cover transition costs, some observers estimate, although administration figures seem to differ. The administration says this money will be made up in future savings.

Some critics even charge that Bush’s privatization plan is designed ultimately to transfer the $5 trillion plus of Social Security debt from the Treasury Department to the people. They contend that the partial privatization of SS accounts is just a first step toward total privatization.

Since 1983 when the Social Security System was reformed and payroll taxes were increased, the tax revenue that exceeded Social security benefit payments has been invested in U.S. Treasury obligations.

Now the Bush administration claims U.S. citizens would get a better return on their money by gambling in the stock market. Historical figures they quote from returns on New York Stock Exchange issues are questioned by some economists when taxes and inflation are factored in. Even if the figures are correct, it still is a gamble that the historical figures will be met in the future.

SECURITIES INDUSTRY

Since a lot of Bush’s campaign money came from the securities industry, the question arises about profits it would receive from the privatized program. In December, 2004, the Securities industries Association (SIA) issued a report purporting to show the Social Security privatization plan would not be a windfall for Wall Street.

Rob Mills, director of industry research at SIA, was quoted as saying: ‘’If individual Social Security accounts are indeed introduced, the impact on Wall Street will be limited. Investment managers hungry for fees will need to look elsewhere…’’

If that is so it is interesting to note that one observer – Al Martin who wrote The Conspirators -- claims the securities industry ‘’has poured $10 million into Republican political and interest-group coffers in the past year ‘’to support the Bush proposal.

Martin also points out the Social Security accounts would be so-called ‘’captured accounts’’ such as IRA’s or 401(k)’s. For these accounts there is no incentive to offer reduced commission fees.

PROPAGANDA

Propaganda is also associated with plans of the administration in power, and it is used from the White House bully pulpit on down for whatever program the president is pushing. It is no different with Social Security.

There has been a flap over the Social Security Administration (SSA) trying to conscript employees to publicize the alleged benefits of the president’s plan. The complaint by some employees was that trust fund dollars should not be used to promote a political agenda.

The White house denied that the SSA would be asked to advocate ‘’any special prescription’’ for the program’s financial problems. But it defended the government’s efforts to convince people the problems are severe.

The public relations efforts of the Clinton and Bush Administrations were highlighted during their push for trade programs – Clinton for promotion of NAFTA and WTO, and Bush for the Central American plan. Both programs intrude on U.S. sovereignty.

Most recently the Education Department was exposed for giving a conservative commentator $240,000 to promote its No Child Left Behind Act, which it admitted.

Using taxpayer money to promote its agenda is the ultimate insult to we the people by the administration in power. It already has the White House bully pulpit, cabinet members, party leaders and department heads on its side. And that doesn’t take into account juggling budget and economic figures and putting its spin on taxpayer-funded studies. Enron critics called similar activities cooking the books.

Following his State-of-the-Union speech, which Democrats rudely denounced, Bush boarded Air Force Once for a multi-state road show to promote his plan. He’s still at it.

If investments in stocks, bonds, and the money market are the panacea for Social Security’s problems, then why doesn’t the government invest the surplus SS funds in them? Better yet why doesn’t it start paying back its I.O.U.’s by periodically investing so much of the owed SS money into such securities?

Is the President downplaying investments in Treasury bonds at a time when it needs to cover growing deficits by borrowing?

The President talks about an ‘’ownership society’’ but investors won’t have control over their money under his plan. The government will. They must invest in government-approved funds, although they get a narrow choice of which ones.

The government also takes the personal accounts at retirement age and requires the investors to put enough into an annuity to meet the poverty level. What’s left, a mere pittance if any, they get to keep. Some ownership society.

EVERYONE A MILLIONAIRE

So much for the administration’s privatization plan and the promotional efforts behind it. As noted, there is no dearth of plans to fix Social Security which originated in the depression days of FDR’s New Deal Administration. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill has even proposed a savings plan that would eventually make everyone a millionaire.

The problem with Social Security exists because of the formula under which it operates that resulted in too many people collecting and two few workers supporting. This, of course, was brought about by several factors including the length of life expectancy, higher birth rates, and losing jobs to illegal aliens and trade agreements.

O’Neill’s plan, revealed in an op-ed column for The New York Times( 1/16/05), calls for establishment of a process to produce an annuity for everyone at retirement age. It envisions enough money in retirement to meet all needs –food, clothing and shelter, in addition to medical needs and prescription drugs.

The plan would retain the current program for everyone 35 years of age. People would be required to start saving when they enter the work force and continue to do so. Their contributions would be a saving, and not a tax as under the present system. It would use the process already in place that requires 12.4 percent of income to be paid for Social Security.

The government would make supplemental deposits to the accounts of those who could not meet the $1 million annuity from their 12.4 contributions. That is estimated to cost $1 trillion.

Some influential Republicans, including Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), chairman of the powerful house Ways and Means Committee, have cast doubt about the president’s proposal. He will consider changes.

As an example, he will consider replacing the payroll tax as the financial mechanism for Social Security and add a savings plan for long-term chronic care to augment Social Security payments.

Thomas also wants a broader program. He even suggested a debate as to whether benefits should differ for men and women since women live longer. He also told the Washington Post that the system might take into account the need of blue collar workers retiring younger than office workers.

Even House Speaker Dennis Hastert has called for a slower approach. In a Chicago Tribune interview, Hastert called for a national discourse or educational campaign on the current state of Social Security before an effort is made to fix it.

Rep. Jim McCrery ( La.), chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security, commended Thomas for his position. He endorsed exploring other ways to finance any new system other than the 12.4 per cent payroll tax.

Another Republican on the Senate Finance Committee – Sen. Olympia J. Snowe – also has expressed reservations about the White House plans. She is not convinced a Social Security crisis is upon us and said there are other scenarios and interpretations about that (Busy) urgency.

OTHER SCHEMES

Another plan by economist Laurence J. Kotlikof and Dallas Morning News personal finance writer Scott Burns has a three-pronged proposal.

One, it would have the government recognize the unfunded Social Securities liabilities as ‘’real’’ obligations; two, institute a national sales tax on consumption, and three, kill the payroll tax. It would be replaced ‘’with a compulsory program of real private accounts so that every worker would build substantial assets.’’

But these plans cited are by no means all. As noted everyone has a plan. Most call for some kind of privatization or savings.

One by Gene Sperling, former national economic adviser to President Clinton, proposed a new universal 401(k) that would offer all Americans a private retirement account, in addition to Social Security. It uses government funds to match contributions by moderate and low-income earners.

James K. Glassman of the American Enterprise institute, a Washington think tank, also endorses a 401(k)-style personal account. It would guarantee current benefits for retirees and let other Americans take half of their present payroll taxes and put them in a 401(k).

A professor at Swarthmore College, Barry Schwartz, thinks any money put into equities should be done by the government itself and not by individuals.

Others suggest ending the disparity between what lower and higher income Americans pay and would end the so-called ‘’free ride’’ those making more than $90,000 annually get. As an example, a person making $90,000 would pay the same amount as Bill Gates pays. Critics say either raise the cutoff of eliminate it.

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An Essay
By Richard C. Sizemore

Bleeding hearts and spineless, greedy politicians are undermining the rights of we the people by mollycoddling, under the rubric of political correctness and multi-culturalism, criminal aliens who are invading our borders at will.

Our elected officials are catering to the growing clout of foreign bloc voters, especially Mexicans, legal or illegal. And the aliens are taking full advantage of U.S. laws and meek politicians who are more interested in eating at the public trough than protecting the public welfare.

There is a growing resentment against the do-nothing politicians, but nothing is likely to reverse the immigrant flow until it threatens the tenure of the elected officials.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R. Wis.) has introduced a bill that would address some of the problems. His Real ID Act would deny driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, tighten the political asylum system used by terrorists and strengthen deportation laws for quicker eviction of foreign terrorists living here. The Congressman also wants to plug a hole in the border fence between California and Mexico.

That, of course, brought quick response from Mexican officials and migrants’ rights advocates. Environmental groups also opposed the wall claiming it would destroy an ecologically sensitive area.

Another sign of growing resentment with government officials for not doing their job is citizens groups now volunteering to patrol the borders, especially the western border with Mexico.

One group, the Minuteman Project, plans a month-long watch by its members from 44 states along the Arizona-Mexico border. They will inform the Border Patrol of what they see. But as long as the politicians remain sensitive about action because of the Mexican (legal or illegal) vote, don’t expect any earth-shaking reaction.

OTHER ACTIONS

Other actions include a bill by a Texas state congressman that would require potential voters to provide proof of citizenship. Another, proposition 200 passed in Arizona, will restrict public benefits to illegal immigrants. The latter calls for municipal, county and state employees to report anyone suspected to be an illegal alien applying for public benefits.

And in Arizona and Oklahoma lawmakers are proposing laws that would allow fired U.S. workers to sue companies that hire illegal aliens.

President Bush is not much help on this threatening problem. He has catered to the Mexican vote by learning Spanish and using it on his Saturday morning broadcasts even though he put down a television reporter for asking a question in French. Bush is supporting a guest worker program that some critics characterize as an amnesty plan for about millions of illegal aliens.

The President supports his position by arguing that Mexicans are crossing the Rio Grande to do jobs Americans won’t do in order to feed their families. Why can’t legal immigrants do those jobs? Or pay Americans the price to have it done.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discussed the President’s plan with Mexican officials on a visit to Mexico in mid-March. Fortunately, opposition to the plan is growing in Congress, even among Republicans.

Here’s some suggestions of ways to reverse the trend:

• Vote against any politician who won’t take a stand against the nearly unrestricted invasion of our borders; who fail to support eviction of illegal aliens already here; or who pamper them with citizenship rights they neither have nor deserve.

• Secure our borders, coasts and air space and start doing our own menial work or pay the American price for having it done. Remember what happened when the South didn’t pick its cotton?

• Purify all mosques and check them for arms, gathering of money to aid terrorists or preaching hatred toward America and other religions. Shut them down for violations, just as Americans who offend Muslims are charged with hate crimes.

HISPANIC IMMIGRATION TREND

In his book, Who Are We? The Challenge to America’s National Identity, Samuel P. Huntington calls the Hispanic immigration trend since 1965 ’’unprecedented in American history.’’

He points out how it differs from past immigration and most other contemporary immigration. One outstanding difference is the failure to assimilate as past immigrants have done.

‘’The criteria that can be used to gauge assimilation,’’ Huntington writes, ‘’include language, education, occupation and income, citizenship, intermarriage, and identity.’’ On almost all of these indices, he concludes, Mexican assimilation is lagging.

Mexicans apparently don’t want to assimilate. They congregate regionally, maintain their language and culture, want dual citizenship and have the lowest rate of naturalization of any immigrant group.

The Mexican Government encourages this trend and why not? It takes people out of their work force, provides the second largest foreign source of income -- $15 billion sent home by millions of illegal Mexican immigrants last year.

In addition to the economic and job losses to Americans, the bulging illegal alien invasion is exacerbating the drug, crime, medical and terrorist problems as well as leading to dual citizenship, and two languages and cultures. It has to be stopped, but President Bush’s plan is not the answer.

CRIME AND TERRORISM

Despite the sentiment in it, the ‘’amnesty’’ plan won’t work, and making the people who enter the country illegally, legal is an invitation for more to come here with impunity. And there is no sense in arresting them and not detaining them. They don’t show up for deportation proceedings.

The Justice Department estimates that in Texas alone four out of 10 have failed to appear in court, and this also poses a security threat. An agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement told Congress in March that more illegal immigrants are being released because of budgetary problems.

Thousands of undocumented migrants from Central America slip illegally into Mexico across the Guatemala-Mexican border each year en route to the United States.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress about the problem on 3/8/05 and declared: ‘’We are concerned.’’ He said people with ties to al-Qaeda have come in from Mexico with false identities. One route, Mueller said, takes people to Brazil, where they gain false identities, and then to Mexico where they are smuggled across the U.S. border.

Drug violence along Mexico’s northern border is a problem that is getting out of control and spreading across the border. Mexican authorities cannot control it, and at least 25 U.S. citizens have been abducted. The Mexican government sent 600 agents to help Nuevo Laredo’s local police combat the town’s drug lords.

But this is unlikely to help since the drug traffickers simply cross the border into south Texas until the federales leave, the town’s newspaper observed, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Another crime problem is that illegal aliens bilk border states out of money with false claims for workman’s compensation. Two such immigrants are being held in Texas in a scheme that cost the state at least $325,000, according to the News. The scam promises jobs in exchange for social security and other personal information.

Then there’s the medical problem. WorldNetDaily in a copyrighted story cites a report from the The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons that said 84 California hospitals are closing as a result of the growing number of illegal aliens and their non-reimbursed tax on the system.

The report also said, according to WND, that ‘’many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought (and eliminated) long also, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio and dengue.

BORDER SHOWDOWN

There may be a border showdown brewing when the Minutemen group starts its search for illegal aliens along the Arizona border in May. A leader involved in cross-border drug and arms smuggling is reported set to challenge the group, according to WorldNetDaily.

Rivera-Paz, leader of a criminal organization call Mara Salvatruchas (MS13) ‘’has reportedly issued orders from prison’’ to his international criminal organization to teach the Minutemen a lesson, according to WND. This violent gang is believed to be cooperating with Islamic terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda.

M13 may not be as openly aggressive as advertised because of a recent sting that rounded up 103 of its members nationwide. One immigration official was quoted by The Dallas Morning News as saying the Central American gang is ‘’a vicious and intimidating presence in our streets and our communities.’’

MS13 ‘’has been linked to gruesome crimes…in the Washington, D. C. area and Charlotte, n. C., ‘’ according to the News.

The plot gets thicker. The Tucson Citizen reports that the Arizona chapter of the ACLU is planning to send observers to observe the Minuteman to see that the illegal aliens’ rights are not abused, according to WND. The anti-religious ACLU, usually the voluntary protector of ‘’selective’’ first amendment rights, apparently is extending its ‘’selective’’ domain.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her trip to Mexico said the U.S. government does not support vigilante groups such as the Minutemen patrol. She didn’t say whether she supports the ACLU intrusion or not.

Rice was to announce ‘’a $10 million grant to support the expansion of Mexico’s micro-financing program that provides Mexicans with banking services and small business loans,’’ according to the Associated Press. Border states such as Texas, Arizona and California probably would like to have some of this money as compensation for their outlays to the illegal immigrants that Washington does little about.

In addition to the do-gooder ACLU involvement, other immigrant rights advocates include task forces composed of the Catholic Charities, the Mexican Consulate and other voluntary groups and even a branch of the U.S. government –OSHA.

The illegal immigrants are entitled to the same federal minimum wage and overtime protections and safe working conditions as U.S. citizens. With all this aid and open arm treatment, why should the immigrants be deterred from crossing the border illegally?

JOSE vs. MICHAEL

Los Angeles is becoming as Mexicanized as Miami has become Cubanized and labeled ‘’the capital of Latin America.’’ By 2010, just five years from now, some estimates predict that Hispanics will total 60 percent of the Los Angeles population.

Huntington notes that in 1998 Jose replaced Michael as the most popular name for newborn boys in both California and Texas. He also observed that the United States is the only First World country that has a border (2000 miles) with a Third World country.

The Mexican government, as noted, encourages Mexicans in the United States to maintain their ties to Mexico and to gain political power. Legislation is pending in the Mexican Congress that would permit up to 10 million Mexicans, both legal and illegal, to be eligible to vote in their native country from booths set up in the United States.

This, however, is not the worst of it. The immigration influx could conceivably lead to reuniting territories in the Southwest with Mexico. Although Huntington thinks this unlikely he notes that professor Charles Truxillo of the University of New Mexico predicts:

‘’…by 2080 the Southwestern states of the United States and the northern states of Mexico will come together to form a new country.’’

If that doesn’t sound a warning for our sleeping government to do something, nothing will.

For all the bleeding hearts and do-gooders ready to welcome and offer a protective shield for these criminals already here and those to come just remember the Republic has had an alien problem almost from its founding.

The difference is, the leadership then did something about it. Not long after the United States became a nation, President John Adams signed the Alien Act. Then retired George Washington vigorously endorsed it. So much so in fact that he recruited men such as John Marshall to run for Congress to support Adams.

The Alien Act authorized the president to deport summarily any aliens that he deemed dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States without jury trial.

The nation desperately needs a leader of the stature of Adams or Washington. It doesn’t need someone accepting the criminal aliens and trying to accommodate them.

Nothing less than our national identity, economic welfare, sovereignty and security are at stake.

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An Essay
By Richard C. Sizemore

Top

An Essay
By Richard C. Sizemore

Top

An Essay
By Richard C. Sizemore

They tried unsuccessfully to get a national ID card in the 1996 illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibilities Act during the Clinton Administration. Now they have succeeded. The effort has been going on long before 9-11 which underscored the terrorist threat, so that is a lame excuse for it.

Congress has overwhelmingly passed the so-called Real ID Act which establishes uniform driver’s license information and verification of citizenship.

Congressman Ron Paul, who has fought such legislation for more than a decade, noted that the Act ‘’establishes a massive, centrally-coordinated database of highly personal information about American citizens’’ such as name, birth date, residence, Social Security number, and physical characteristics.

But that’s not all. The legislation, which was included in an $82 billion emergency spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, also grants open-ended authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security to require more information in the future, such as fingerprints, DNA or even a retina scan, according to Paul.

It is one more giant step along the road to complete loss of privacy for all Americans. While it is supposed to stop terrorism and illegal immigration, it is directed at all Americans as if we are the enemy.

At least we are better off than Zimbabweans where citizens face jail terms if they don’t carry identity documents.

All we will face is not being able to get a job, receive Social Security, or travel by plane, Paul points out. The legislation transforms state motor vehicle departments into agents of the federal government in creating national ID cards.

This, of course, ignores the 10th amendment (which reserves to the states all powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution) and usurps or transfers more power to the ever-encroaching national government.

While the Bush Administration has done little to protect our borders and offers a plan that critics contend amounts to amnesty for millions of illegal aliens already in this country, it pounces on the opportunity to tag Americans.

But is it needed? Most states already require Social Security identification or other verification of legal status. They also share information on drunk-driving convictions or other license suspensions.

But this act establishes another giant database at the federal level, and critics point out that no government database has ever been immune from misuse, not even the one at the Internal Revenue Service, the collection agency for the Federal Reserve Board.

Then there are computer hackers, who can change database information, and other identity thieves, forgers and counterfeiters.

WAR AND EMERGENCIES

War and emergencies are the most propitious times for presidents and Congress to usurp power from vulnerable citizens caught up in patriotic sentiment.

Look what indispensable, would-be dictator (3+terms) Franklin Roosevelt did during a peacetime emergency – the Great Depression of the ‘30s. He expanded the World War I Trading with the Enemy Act, which excluded Americans, to redefine the ‘’enemy’’ as including all American people, as noted by Dr. Eugene Schroder in his Constitution:: Fact or Fiction.

Roosevelt also, during peacetime under these war emergency powers, seized all gold and silver, which was never paid back, took the country off the gold standard, established a banking system on the debts of the people, and shifted the constitutional power of Congress to coin money and regulate its value from Congress to the president, among other things.

Since March 9, 1933 Americans have not lived under a constitutional form of government because no president has asked Congress to rescind the emergency powers. There was a bit of legerdemain by Congress in 1976 which gave the false impression the emergency powers were ended, but they weren’t.

The 1976 National Emergency Termination Act simply continued the emergency powers in the U.S. Code as permanent everyday powers, Dr. Schroder points out.

What this means is the enemy is us. We are still living under emergency powers with the Constitution suspended. Presidents can do about what they want but have to be cautious they don’t go too far and arouse public indignation.

Being marked literally or via some other way such as an ID card is not new. Remember before 9/11 when the Taliban in Afghanistan decreed that Hindus wear a yellow patch to distinguish them from Muslins? Or when the Nazis required Jews to wear yellow Stars of David? Throughout history, slaves or ethnic or other undesirable groups have been marked by tattoos or other means.

Now, they will have all of our information on a card. What the elite planners want ultimately, according to several accounts, is for non-elites to carry a debit card for all transactions since there would be no cash or coinage in their ideal one-world government. Infringe the rules and you loose the card.

BIGGEST DAMAGE TO PRIVACY

The ID card will not stop criminals no more than gun control laws do. Criminals will obtain the cards illegaly or simply operate without them as did the 9/11 hijackers. The ID cards will be used more often to track law-abiding citizens than criminals, some critics contend.

And don’t leave out the bleeding heart judges like New York Supreme Court Justice Karen Smith. She ruled in May 2005 that the New York Department of Motor Vehicles can’t revoke the driver’s license of thousands of illegal immigrants because they don’t have Social Security cards.

The judge said the DMV lacks authority to use immigration status to deny licenses. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, which won the case, claimed the immigrants needed a driver’s license to be able to work, to get to medical care and drive their kids to school.

So do American citizens whose drivers licenses are taken for offenses like drunken driving or the accumulation of traffic violations and other infractions. It doesn’t make sense that someone who breaks the law and therefore becomes a criminal alien should be given all the benefits of U.S. citizenship while Americans who break the law have to pay dearly.

Scripps Howard news Service on 5/12/05 reported that U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators uncovered a scheme where thousands of illegal immigrants obtained valid identification documents by paying off three DMV license examiners in Florida and three in Maryland. A ring in Michigan that was allegedly producing phony driver’s licenses, passports and other government documents also was uncovered.

The story quoted a security firm operator as saying that putting the state-run database together will provide one-stop shopping to identity thieves.

OTHER CRITICISMS

The Real ID Act also has drawn criticism from states and federal other critics on several fronts.

Some critics are faulting Republicans for including it in the supplemental $82 billion spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. They contend the immigrant issue was much too important to be handled as a secondary matter in a critical military spending bill.

The Real ID Act, the critics contend, does not address the total impact of immigration which should have been handled separately with adequate debate. The Bush Administration is still dragging its feet on this one while volunteers are trying to handle the problem because the government won’t.

Another complaint from the states is that this is another one of those mandated but unfunded programs from the federal government. The legislation requires states in issuing driver’s licenses to verify the citizenship or legal status of recipients. Those costly requirements are causing some state officials to threaten to disobey the new federal orders or to challenge them in court.

‘’If more than half of the governors agree we’re not going down without a fight on this,’’ said Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, according to the Associated Press. Huckabee is vice chairman of the National Governors Association.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) joined Democrats in criticizing the new ID rules, according to USA Today. ‘’It’s possible that some governor may look at this and say, ‘Wait a minute. Who are these people in Washington telling us what to do with our driver’s licenses and making us pay for them too?’’

Several states also are threatening to go to court over the administration’s ‘’no child left behind’’ education program which they claim is another mandated, under-funded program that leaves them with the tab.

State officials also are complaining about the government not protecting the borders from illegal immigrants and not paying for the costs of jailing them or providing for health care, education and other services.

While the states are shelling out taxpayer money for illegal aliens the Catholic Church is promoting a national campaign to educate Americans about the so-called ‘’value’’ to society of the immigrants. Nearly 40 percent of Catholics living in the U.S. are Hispanic – an important constituency for the Church, according the The Dallas Morning News.

The Church provides and promotes social and legal services through Catholic organizations. The anti-religious ACLU and other groups and individuals also provide aid and comfort to the aliens.

Sens. John McCain and Ted Kennedy have introduced a plan to create a guest-worker program as a preliminary step toward permanent residence for millions of illegal residents. The plan is similar to what critics call the Bush plan which has not been revealed in detail.

MORE LOST FREEDOMS

· The Bush administration is pushing hard to get permanent extension of the Patriot Act because 16 provisions of it are set to expire at the end of 2005. According to The New York Times ‘’380 government bodies including seven states, have adopted formal resolutions voicing concerns about the broad reach of the law.’’

· The administration also is trying to enlarge the FBI’s antiterrorism powers by expanding its power to demand business records, according to The Times story. It’s a power grab by the FBI to secretly demand all sorts of records, according to one critic.

· Activists who oppose the war in Iraq, the USA Patriot Act and other government policies have complained of alleged FBI spying on them because of their politics, according to a story by The Boston Globe.

· In Washington a library complained that the FBI requested a list of the people who had checked out a biography of Osama bin Laden, according to USA Today. The story quoted a librarian as saying the experience ‘’drove home for us the dangers that the USA Patriot Act poses to reader privacy.’’

· Arizona residents are faced with less hospital efficiency because not only illegal aliens but Mexican nationals are coming to them for emergency treatment without paying. Hospitals are required to treat all emergency patients, regardless of nationality or legal status. Hospital losses have caused layoffs and elimination of some services, according to a story by USA Today.

· And a suburban Chicago library plans to use fingerprint scans to verify the identity of its computer users. It claims the data will be kept confidential, but a critic notes it will create another database of personal information and be subject to abuse.

The winners in all of this activity are the illegal aliens and the losers are us. We are not only picking up the tab and facing the possibility of terrorist attack for lax or inefficient government policies, but we are also losing our freedoms, and especially privacy, in the process.

Do you think all this usurpation of rights under emergency powers will be rescinded when, and if, the crisis is ever over? The tracks record says, NO!

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An Essay
By Richard C. Sizemore

The Bush administration in an obvious effort to ­­­­­defuse militant Islamists and skeptical Americans proclaims Islam as a peaceful religion.

A Michigan congressman, Rep. John Conyers, whose district includes a large Muslim community in the Detroit area, introduced a resolution that would have Congress recognize Islam as a religion of peace.

It is obvious that neither Bush nor Conyers understands the origin or designs of the Islamic religion or the Quran, which Jimmy Carter tried pitifully to catch up on after many mistakes in dealing with Iran.

The Bush administration goes further. His Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Defense Department, and White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, unequivocally refer to the Quran as ‘’holy’’ or divinely inspired.

Despite Rice, who hails from academia and who was formerly a provost at Stanford University, which downgraded the importance of teaching the great thinkers of Western Civilization, scholars at the University of Chicago contest the Quran as divinely inspired.

In Vol. II p. 589 The Great Books of the Western World states: ‘’In the tradition of the great books, only one book (the Bible) is set apart as sacred. None of the writers in this set regard the Koran as sacred scripture…’’ These books were published in 1952 and have stirred no visible protests from the Islamic world.

Whether the Quran is ‘’holy’’, meaning sacred or divinely inspired, or not, Muslims believe it is, and many of them are eager to die by its teaching, which is the only sure way for them to get to heaven. Otherwise, they have to be judged.

It doesn’t appear that President Bush, Condoleezza Rice or Conyers know any more about Islam than Jimmy Carter did in his dealing with the Ayatollah Khomeini during the siege of American hostages in Iran in 1980. But that doesn’t stop their authoritative pronouncements, which the American people are expected to accept.

Incidentally Carter is now calling for the closing of Guantanamo Bay because, he claims, the nation ‘’continues to suffer terrible embarrassment and a blow to our reputation…’’

If there is anyone who knows about embarrassments and blows to our reputation, it has to be jimmy Carter on whose watch we witnessed the Iran hostage crisis as well as the feeble military effort and getting bogged down in desert sands. Carter himself was not only an embarrassment, but also a joke.

Evidence, scholars and events demonstrate that Islam is not a peaceful religion. Dr. Mark A. Gabriel, former professor of Islamic history at Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt, states flatly in is book Islam and Terrorism:

‘’Islam is full of discrimination—against women, against non-Muslims, against Christians and most especially against Jews. Hatred is built into the religion.’’ Killing, Gabriel wrote, ‘’is the big difference between Islam and all other religions.’’

Gabriel is not the former professor’s real name. He adopted it for fear of his life when he switched to Christianity. He points out that 60 percent of the Quranic verses talk about jihad (holy war; fighting those who resist Islam). Jihad, established in the Quran, ‘’involves world domination,’’ he adds.

America is a special target, according to Dr. Gabriel, because it represents Jews and Christians, supports Israel, has secular lifestyles and has a man-made (heathen) government in Muslim thinking ‘’because Allah is to be the head of all government.’’

That’s why democracy is such a hard sell in the Islamic world by the Bush administration. So far all they’ve done is establish a Shiite dominated government in Iraq that is closely aligned with the militant regime in Iran. But even as insurgency in Iraq is on a deadly comeback and killings increase, President Bush touts Iraq’s new democracy and his neo-com policy makers try to promote it all over the Middle East.

The underlying Muslim goal of world domination and the teaching of the killing of infidels in the Quran is no invitation for man-made democracies in the Islamic world. It will be just as hard to do so as it was for Harry Truman and succeeding presidents to establish and promote a Jewish state on alleged Islamic soil.

PEACEFUL BEGINNING

Some of the confusion about whether Islam is a peaceful religion or not stems from its origin. In the beginning, it was a peaceful religion but changed ‘’from a spiritual religion to a political revolution,’’ according to Dr. Gabriel.

So when the administration tries to placate Islam as it did after the Newsweek fiasco, it was not supporting a spiritual religion as its pronouncements were intended to convey. Islam cannot be appeased no matter how many carrots are offered.

Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, said the angel Gabriel revealed the words of Allah to him over a period of about 20 years starting in A.D. 610. New revelations override previous ones, and the verses in the Quran that speak of jihad override the verses that speak of love and kindness, Dr. Gabriel claims.

That leads to some of the confusion. Al-Azhar University where Dr. Gabriel lectured, is the most prestigious Islamic university in the world and is often consulted by Mullahs for interpretations of conflicting or unclear passages in the Quran.

NEWSWEEK FLAP

Muslims may be sensitive and overprotective about the Quran, which is holy in their eyes, but was the retracted Newsweek short periscope item, which was admittedly wrong, responsible for the violent protests in Pakistan, Indonesia and Gaza City, which left several dead?

Afghan president Hamid Karzai said no. ‘’They were more against the elections in Afghanistan, they were more against the progress in Afghanistan, they were more against the strategic partnership with the United States,’’ Karzai told the press in Washington.

Despite the White House eagerness to make Newsweek the scapegoat, in addition to Karzai, the top commander in Afghanistan said the riots were not tied to the magazine’s article, according to Gen. Richard B. Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But the White House overruled.

WorldNetDaily in a copyrighted story quoted ‘’a senior Israeli security source’’ as saying Jihadists had been looking for an excuse to revolt against what they see as Western imposed governments for some time. The Newsweek story was the trigger, he said.

Some sources are even questioning the number of alleged dead from the magazine’s short item that said U.S. investigators had found evidence that U.S. interrogators placed copies of the Quran in washrooms at Guantanamo Bay and had flushed one down the toilet to provoke inmates into talking. At least the prisoners get Qurans. Do the Muslims hand out Bibles to Christians while they are prisoners or before they behead them?

Newsweek retracted its story after two weeks of pressure from the White House and reported deaths in the Middle East, particularly in Afghanistan. The magazine also established new policies for the use of anonymous sources. But it didn’t quell the militants.

PRIOR CENSORSHIP

One facet of the story that received little attention was the fact that reporters provided the story to a senior Defense Department official who asked for a change of some wording but did not question the details of the story.

Does this mean that the free press is now getting prior approval from government sources before printing the news? It wasn’t very long ago that newspapers were arguing against prior censorship by the government in the Pentagon Papers controversy.

And as for anonymous sources, how about Newsweek’s owner, The Washington Post, which kept the identity of ‘’Deep Throat’’ -- who helped depose a president the Post had no love for -- secret until the source revealed himself? And consider the ‘’deep background’’ stories given by government officials to the press on condition of anonymity so they can test the waters without being held accountable.

Many sources will not talk if revelation is required for fear of retribution by their employers or their lives in some cases. So, taking this privilege away from the press deprives it from revealing the news and prevents the public from getting facts it should have.

This is not a defense of Newsweek, which has committed other offenses such as printing anti-American stories in its overseas editions while hiding these efforts from the American people. It is also guilty of sloppy journalism and a liberal bias.

But that doesn’t mean it should loose its free press rights under the first amendment. There are other ways to hold it accountable such as libel, the loyalty of subscribers and professional condemnation. The administration has no right to control the magazine or to try to dictate what it should print or detract.

The administration should have its hands full getting its own party line right and telling the truth instead of using the bully pulpit and taxpayer money to promote its agenda and go to war under questionable circumstances.

There are many stories floating around that speculate on who the source of the Newsweek story was. They range from a disgruntled former CIA operative ousted by Peter Goss to a plant by the administration to arouse the ire of Muslims to retain public support for the war in Iraq which Americans are cooling toward.

There is never a legitimate reason in our democratic society for being disrespectful of other religions. When one religion is disrespectful or harmful to other religions, however, we should be concerned.

Christianity has taken its licks over the past 50 years or more from left-wing organizations such as the anti-religious ACLU and the liberal courts, which have misinterpreted the first amendment, according to some scholars, and run religion underground.

Even the art world got into the act with the 1980s sculpture Piss Christ – a crucifix placed in a jar with urine and lamb’s blood. And an art guild in Florida featured a painting of an Arab sodomizing President Bush. The painting was by a homosexual who drew a recognition ribbon from a homosexual judge of the exhibit. No protests so far from the ACLU or other left wing, anti-religious organizations who want to drive religion underground.

In addition, Muslims in New York desecrated the flag and declared dominance over America.

When American pastors, such as Franklin Graham or Pat Robertson, criticize Islam for prosecuting Christians around the world, the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) – a Washington-based Islamic advocacy group – is quick to retaliate. CAIR enlists politicians and expresses outrage about being mistreated.

But as Graham asked: ‘’Why haven’t Muslim clerics…prayed to Allah for forgiveness (about 9/11) and told the American people this is not Islam? Because they believe it was right. This is a just cause – their Jihad.’’

While Muslims cry foul for the desecration of the Quran and are calling for an investigation of the alleged Guantanamo incident, they take little note of the desecration of the Bible and mistreatment of Christians in Islamic nations. Their Golden Rule appears to be: do unto others that don’t see things their way.

Concerning the alleged abuses of suspected terrorist prisoners the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, an al Qaeda handbook seized by British authorities instructs its members to level charges of torture once captured, according to The Washington Times. The Quran toilet story that was told by a detainee who did not witness the event could be part of the campaign to spread misinformation, some critics contend.

Islam can hardly be called a peaceful religion no matter who the disseminator is or for whatever end result he is trying to attain.

--30—

A PEACEFUL RELIGION (PART II 6/61405)

An Essay By Richard C. Sizemore

Congress has before it a resolution that would recognize Islam as a religion of ‘’peace.’’

President Bush and members of his administration also refer to Islam as a religion of peace and the Quran as ‘’holy’’ or divinely inspired book contrary to some noted scholars who disagree.

The congressional resolution was introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr. who has a large Islamic constituency in his Michigan district. If Congress passes the resolution, will it be misleading the American public from the true nature and threat of Islam and its objectives?

Dr. Mark A. Gabriel, a former professor of Islamic history at Al-Azhar University in Egypt, the most prestigious Islamic university in the world, indicates that’s exactly what Congress will be doing.

Here are some examples of recent events that back Dr. Gabriel’s assertion that hatred is built into the Islamic religion which is the only major one that sanctions killing.

**The Saudi Arabian Government bans the Bible, which is confiscated and destroyed, according the Saudi Institute, a U.S. think tank. CNSNews.com said Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the institute, wrote that ‘’Saudi Arabia bans the importation or the display of crosses, the Star of David or other religious symbols not approved by the Wahhabi establishment.’’ Its religious police recently arrested eight Christians and confiscated a Bible and other religious items, according to a Washington-based human rights group.

**Muslims desecrated the Tomb of Joseph, the biblical patriarch, in 2000 when Isralei troops evacuated as a peacemaking gesture, WorldNetDaily noted in a copyrighted story. It quoted Rabi Zevulum Lieberman, whose son, Hillel, died trying to save the tomb, as saying: ‘’They (Muslims) lost the right to protest about disrespect for religion and holy objects a long time ago.’’

**Palestinians tore up some Bibles for toilet paper and removed valuable sacramental objects, according to a Washington Times item quoted in another copyrighted WND story. The incidents occurred when Islamic terrorists were holed up in Betheleham’s Church of the Nativity, the spot where Jesus is believed to have been born.

**In Italy, an Italian journalist who lives in New York faces trial on charges of insulting the Muslim faith in a recent book. Oriana Fallaci claims there is a cultural or religious war ongoing between Islam and the West. The charges she faces are insulting a religious faith and possibly inciting religious hatred, an attorney in the case was quoted as saying.

**In a corroboration of Dr. Gabriel’s report that Islam is to be advanced at any cost, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi recently justified killing innocent Muslims while fighting ‘’infidels,’’ according to a Reuters dispatch. ‘’Protecting Islam is more important than protecting (Muslim) lives…’’he said. Al-Zarqawi, who is reported to be wounded from U.S. shrapnel, added: ‘’The shredding of Muslim blood…is allowed in order to avoid the greater evil of disrupting jihad.’’ Muslims killed by friendly fire become ‘’martyrs who died for Islam,’’ al-Zarqwi said.

**Militant Islamists and supporters of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, already looking for a reason for anti-American demonstrations, used the Quran-in-the-toilet excuse to parade in more than six countries. Even though the Pentagon, after an investigation, denied the retracted Newsweek story that a Quran had been flushed down a toilet. The protests and burning of American symbols continued. The Pentagon admitted five incidents of mishandling of the Quran but termed them ‘’minor.’’ The marches occurred in Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere, according to the Associated Press. After further investigation, the Pentagon confirmed several incidents in which the Quran had been mishandled, in some cases inadvertently, but it could not confirm the toilet flushing story.

**An al Qaeda handbook preaches to members that, once captured, they are to spread disinformation about abuses, according to The Washington Times. The story said British authorities seized the al Qaeda manual on how to wage war. Scott McClellan, White House press secretary, said: ‘’We know that members of al Qaeda are trained to mislead and to provide false reports.’’ This could explain some of the charges of abuse and Quran desecration at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

**Beheadings and attacks on Christians are sanctioned by Mullahs. Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are given sanctity for their atrocities. Bin Laden himself holds the title of Emir – ‘’A religious-military leader whose legitimacy and power as a leader are derived from his success on the battlefield rather than his formal religious stature,’’ according to Yossef Bodansky, who wrote bin Laden, the Man who Declared War on America.

 **In Bangladesh, a Baptist lay leader was beheaded, according to a U.S.-based news service, WorldNetDaily reported. He was the second Christian leader killed in Bangladesh in the past year, WND reported.

**The killing of the leader of the Council of Clerics of Kandahar – Maulavi Abdullah Fayaz – in Kabul, Afghanistan, on 5/29/05 demonstrates what happens to peaceful Islamic clerics. He had termed the Taliban’s call for jihad against American forces and the Afghan government illegal and against Islamic precepts. He also asked Islamic clerics to divest a militant Taliban chief from the title of ‘’leader of the faithful.’’

Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai, acknowledging America’s request for freedom of religion, said even the clergy in Afghanistan’s mosques were dumfounded by the rioters there. Muslims pray daily in more than a thousand mosques throughout the United States. Contrast this to what Dr. Gabriel wrote: ’’Islamic nations…will never allow Christianity to be practiced in their countries.’’

Dr. Gabriel notes that from Muhammad’s time the mosque has been used as headquarters for all wars, and that the Islamic world is ruled from the mosque. It is not just a place of worship like a church or synagogue. ‘’Throughout Islamic history…all movements of jihad have come from the mosque,’’ he wrote.

While mosques are supposed to be holy and inviolable from U.S. troops in war, Muslims blow them up in sectarian feuds. Sunni leaders, for example, ordered the closing of places of worship to protest sectarian violence against them. But a Sunni is suspected of blowing up a Shiite mosque on 5/31/05 in Karachi, Pakistan, during evening prayers. About 20 worshipers were reported killed.

STAGES OF JIHAD

In assuaging Islamic sensitivities by claiming the religion is peaceful, politicians should be aware of the warning of Dr. Gabriel about the three states of jihad.

The first is the ‘’weakened stage’’ when Muslims are a weak minority living in a foreign country. Here they submit but work to increase their numbers. The second is the ‘’preparation stage’’ where they are an influential minority (like in Conyers’ Michigan district) and make preparations for later direct confrontation. The last stage is jihad. Dr. Gabriel says ‘’at this stage every Muslim’s duty is to actively fight the enemy, overturning the system of the non-Muslim country and establishing Islamic authority.’’

Journalist Paul Sperry tends to corroborate this scenario in a new book titled Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington.’’ In this expose Sperry claims Islamic extremists are gaining footholds in the nation’s government, military and other vital institutions to destroy America’s constitutional government.

And near the capital in Alexandria, Va., the Saudi Arabian-sponsored Islamic Saudi Academy is suspected of questionable subversive activities. So much so, in fact, that Sen. Charles Schumer of New York has asked for an FBI investigation. One critic of the academy notes that the school’s 1999 valedictorian is charged with joining al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President Bush. According to the Associated Press, ‘’two other persons connected to the academy also have been linked to terrorism-related cases.’’’

In short, the Newsweek story was not the first of reports of abuses against the Quran. Muslims used it as an excuse to protest against America. The Bush administration had no business trying to control or manipulate the press, even if the magazine story was wrong. Who is going to control the administration for its false and misleading reports?

Politicians should not advance their agendas and promote their political ambitions by trying to appease Muslims with statements and resolutions that have no basis in fact.

Congressman Conyers’ resolution should have been about the tolerance of all religions, and especially Christianity on which the nation has its underpinnings, rather than singling out Muslins because of their bogus sensitivities and growing presence in his district.

Bush, his cabinet members and congressmen should contact scholars and writers such as Dr. Gabriel, Yossef Bodansky and others to learn more about Islam before making misleading statements to the public.

One thing they would learn is, ISLAM IS NOT A PEACEFUL RELIGION. Whether the Quran is holy or not, would better be left to scholars to decide and not politicians.

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An Essay
By Richard C. Sizemore

President Bush has pledged to consult with Senate leaders on his appointments to the Supreme Court. If he does and lets them help select Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s replacement, he will complete the total surrender to minority Democrats in the judicial nominating and approval process.

That would give the minority Democrats, who want to control the court, the means to do so. They already have won in a compromise on ending filibusters, thanks to their brainwashing of seven maverick Republicans.

The President gave no details as to when he would consult the Senate on his appointments other than to say at the ‘’appropriate time.’’

Senate Democrats left no doubt, however, about what they think the ‘’appropriate time’’ is when they stated in the agreement not to filibuster certain of the president’s nominees:

‘’We believe that under Article II, Section 2, of the United States Constitution, the word ‘advice’ speaks to consultation between the Senate and the President with regard to use of the president’s power to make nominations.’’ It does no such thing.

Democrats have long wanted to get in on the nomination process, a constitutional power reserved to the President. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, urged President Bush more than two years ago to consult with him and other leading Democrats before choosing a nominee.

In a renewed effort for consultation, 43 of 44 Democrats and Republican turncoat Jim Jeffords, Vermont, sent a letter to the President in mid-June, 05, again urging him to let them participate in the selection of any Supreme Court Justices.

Shortly thereafter Justice O’Connor suddenly and surprisingly resigned from the Court, and special interest groups of all stripes swung into action to try and control the new justice appointment. Even conservative groups have criticized newly-appointed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a possible choice of President Bush, and asked that he not be appointed because of his alleged views on abortion, affirmative action and possibly other issues.

Left – wing groups such as People for the American Way that with questionable tactics helped defeat the nomination of Judge Robert Bork are at it again. Their tv ads are promoting the liberal agenda and calling on Bush to appoint their kind of justice who would not be bound by a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Even Hillary Clinton -- who wants to be president and who was reportedly instrumental in her husband’s appointment of left-wing, international Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – has called on Bush to consult with Senators on his new nomination. Ted Kennedy whom Judge Bork said lied about him also wants prior consultation. Bork calls Kennedy the Joe McCarthy of the far left.

Bush has defended Gonzales and asked special interest groups to ‘’tone down the heated rhetoric.’’ He said he would not rush his decision but shed no more light on his statement to consult with Senate leaders.

Senators as well as judges and others with an agenda are wont to interpret the Constitution to fit their needs just as they did in the recent filibuster argument. But let a scholar – Henry J. Abraham – who wrote Justices, Presidents and Senators, speak:

‘’No mystery, confusion, or double entendre obtains with respect to the intention of the Founding Fathers regarding the agreed-on language of the Constitution’s Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2 (which) states crisply that the president

shall nominate, and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate,

shall appoint…Judges of the supreme Court.

The provision means exactly what it says: it is the president’s duty and responsibility to find and nominate candidates for the Supreme Court…and that of a simple majority of the Senate to consent to such nominations (presumably, but not necessarily, having tendered advice along the way)…’’

In other words there is nothing in the Constitution that calls for prior consultation with Congress before the President submits his nominees. There also is no obligation for the President to consult with other groups, including the American Bar Association, and Richard Nixon discontinued that practice after information was leaked. Judge Robert Bork claimed that the ABA had become more political than professional.

Abraham, who was so emphatic on the ‘’advice’’ and ‘’consent’’ phrase in the Constitution is a former Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia.

Judicial Watch, a government watch-dog group, has filed suit in a federal court to stop what it calls ‘’the misapplication of the filibuster rule to the judicial confirmation process.’’ Republicans and Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, are opposing the suit.

Judicial Watch points out that there are only six exceptions specified by the Founding Fathers as to when supermajorities are permissible. Judicial confirmation is not one of them, although the Senate minority would require 60 votes instead of a single majority up-or-down vote. This, of course, would be minority and not majority rule.

GOP NEEDS SPINE

The GOP needs a spine in dealing with Democrats who stick together and lure wavering Republicans like the spineless seven who gave them a victory in the filibuster fiasco. They must have been taken in by the likes of Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia who long has been masquerading as a constitutional wizzard.

Recall that, as Ann Coulter pointed out in a recent column, Trent Lott, following the 200 election won by Republicans, granted Democrats an equal number of committee chairmanships. When old Jim Jeffords bolted to the other aisle the Democrats were in the catbird seat thanks to Lott.

Lott also played a pivotal role in the impeachment episode of one Bill Clinton. Incidentally, the former president now says he lied when he admitted he lied under oath about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. And ‘’is’’ we take it does not always mean ‘’is’’ and, as the poet Swinburne said, ‘’diddle we take is dee.’’

Clinton on NBC’s Brian Williams tonight telecast claimed the charges brought against him by the House were false and that this contradicted the plea bargain deal he made with the Independent counsel’s office.

Just because he was acquitted does not mean the charges against him were false. They weren’t, and he, an alleged rapist and sexual predator, knows it.

In fact, if the Republican leadership had not caved in and obstructed the House investigation, Clinton, as he should have been, would have been impeached. When will we ever get enough of the lying, thieving, conniving Clintons?

The Senate trial to impeach Clinton was a farce, and David P. Schippers, chief investigative counsel, wrote that the GOP did not want Clinton impeached. They had the 55 votes necessary to do so if they had voted in bloc as the Democrats did.

But the Republican leadership in both the House and the Senate aided Clinton in wiggling off the hook by reining in the House Judiciary Committee investigators and later the House managers who presented the impeachment findings to the Senate.

Even before the House managers presented their case, Senator Lott told Rep. Henry Hyde ‘’You’re not going to dump this garbage on us,’’ and proceeded to tie the prosecutor’s hands with limited time, limited witnesses, and rules that put the House managers in a straight jacket.

Former Congressman Bob Barr, one of the House managers noted in his book The Meaning of Is that Clinton’s undermining of national security should have formed the heart of the judiciary Committee inquiry. It would have if then Attorney General Janet Reno had not kept secret memos from the FBI director and federal prosecutor and failed to appoint an independent counsel to look into the matter.

The bottom line is the Republicans caved in and the Democrats and Clinton won and the public lost with two more years of Clinton misdeeds.

WHICH SIDE ARE THEY ON?

It is hard to determine which side some of the so-called Republicans are on. For example, three of the seven Republicans who voted for allowing Democrats to filibuster judicial nominees under ‘’extraordinary circumstances’’ also voted against convicting Clinton of perjury in his Senate trial.

They were Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Susan Collins (R-ME) and John Warner (R-VA). Collins and Snowe also voted against convicting Clinton of obstruction of justice. Their votes alone would have convicted Clinton.

In addition, Sen. Lincoln Chaffee who succeeded his late father, John Chaffee, voted for the filibuster compromise. His father had voted against the two articles of impeachment against Clinton.

Sens. Mike DeWine (R-OH), John McCain (R.Ariz) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) were the others voting for the filibuster compromise.

Graham, you will recall, was the only Republican of the House Judiciary Committee who voted against one of the three Articles of Impeachment against Clinton. The rest was a straight party-line vote.

Who knows where McCain is coming from? He recently joined Ted Kennedy in sponsoring an amnesty arrangement for illegal aliens. We can only hope the former Vietnam War hero didn’t suffer any brain damage while in a Vietnam prison. As for DeWine, who knows why he turned traitor to Republicans? Maybe voters will answer for him and the others as well in the next election. One can only hope.

FILIBUSTER DEAL

To rehash, this is what 14 senator, including seven Republican turncoats, agreed upon to end the threat of a ‘’nuclear option’’ or rule change to end filibusters:

Democrats agreed not to use the filibuster against presidential judicial nominees, except in ‘’extraordinary circumstances,’’ whatever that means. Republicans agreed not to vote in favor of rules changes to prevent filibusters.

Democrats agreed to allow up-or-down votes on three nominees they previously opposed. The fate of the other nominees remains uncertain. So, 14 so-called ‘’centrist’’ senators called the shots and the cross-over seven Republicans nullified the votes of the other 48 Republican senators, who would have had a majority.

The big question is what does ‘’extraordinary circumstances’’ mean? For instance, would Judge Robert Bork, Autonin Scalia, or Clarence Thomas be filibustered under that clause? The answer appears to be yes.

Democrats will decide the issue and filibuster when they see fit. Senate Majority leader Bill Frist (R-TENN) says the Constitutional, or nuclear option, is still on the table. Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NEV) disagrees.

A DISASTER

Judge Robert Bork called the deal a ‘’disaster.’’ ‘’They (Republicans) gained three judges and gave up four,’’ he said during a Fox News television appearance. ‘’And then there are others to come who will be filibustered,’’ he added.

The Democrats ‘’want a liberal, activist Supreme Court, which they have now…which is enacting the liberal agenda without anything in the Constitution to support it,’’ the constitutional expert said.

He thinks President Bush can get his nominee on the Court if he launches a campaign to fight the left wing of the Democratic Party and special interest groups. But he must hold Republicans in line. In other words, Republicans have to match the leftist fervor.

As for what the filibuster agreement did to political careers, especially those of Frist and McCain and the other six Republicans that voted for it, we will, of course, have to wait and see. Some argue Frist was hurt by it for not providing strong leadership to prevent it. But would they have fared better with Trent Lott? The record doesn’t indicate it.

McCain won the battle but may have lost the war, some critics contend. The fate of the others is more questionable. It will depend on how conservative their constituencies are. Lindsey Graham, for example, already is drawing flak from GOP conservatives in South Carolina and has rekindled the aspirations of Charleston businessman Thomas Ravenel to consider a primary challenge to him in 2008.

Overall, it looks as if the Democrats have won again and the spineless seven have given the minority control when the majority should have it under our form of government.

Democrats stick together and Republicans waver, vacillate and cross the aisle.

They gave in when they had the majority to control the chairmanships of all Senate Committees. They gave in when they had Bill Clinton ‘’where the hair was short,’’ to borrow a phrase from Lyndon Johnson. They gave in on the filibuster deal. And now President Bush appears to have given in on the issue of consulting Democrats on his nominations to the judiciary. He will have to come up with inferior nominees to get them approved.

Those voting Republican have no assurance they win even if they win. Maybe they should start giving the Senate candidates a gut check before voting for them.

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An Essay
By Richard C. Sizemore

‘’You have sat too long for any good you have been doing, depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!’’

‘’This is what Oliver Cromwell said to the Long Parliament when he thought it was no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation,’’ according to Graham Stewart in his book, Burying Caesar.

The quote is apropos today for the still ambitious Clintons, and especially to Hillary, the New York carpetbagger who wants to be president.

It seems inconceivable that anyone with the baggage that Hillary Clinton is carrying could even be considered for President of the United States. It is even more astounding that she could be supported by a major political party, much less be the front runner of that party.

When are Democrats going to wake up and offer a viable candidate for voters to consider? Is there an ideal candidate in this current list: John Kerry, over-the-top Howard Dean, ambulance-chasing John Edwards, Democratic mouth-piece Harry Reid and plagiarist Joe Biden, or, and especially, Hillary?

Here’s some of the baggage, or garbage, she would carry back to the stately old mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue:

Filegate, Travelgate, Watergate, White House theft or attempted theft, harassment of Bill’s whistle-blowing sex victims; the missing Vince Foster papers and cover-up; her zillion dollar socialist health plan fiasco; questionable financing and her quick-profit stock deal, and dubious association with lesbians and unfit Clinton appointees.

She also would bring Bill, who would presumably be given space under the White House roof from whence he could wheel and deal and maybe sneak in an occasional bimbo or campaign contributor and further desecrate the national shrine and further undermine national security.

GOP CRITICISM

Remember the old adage about the pot calling the kettle black? Well, Hillary did that and more in a tirade against the Bush administration in her first major fund-raising speech. It sounded as if she were trying to recall the abuses of the Clinton administration. Maybe if you accuse the other side of doing what you are on record of doing it will sound like you didn’t do what you did.

It gets complicated. Let’s look at Hillary’s first major presidential campaign speech that castigated President Bush and other Republicans and netted $250,000, according to The New York Times. In doing so, this is not meant to be a defense of the Bush administration but a condemnation of the Clintons and their tactics.

 ‘’There has never been an administration…more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further their own agenda,’’ Hillary said. After a hearty laugh, that one sent me to the shelf for the late Barbara Olson’s book The Final Days, The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House.

Ms. Olson wrote:

‘’They (Bill and Hillary Clinton) reprised the lowlights of their two terms in office by taking public property, soliciting gifts and favors, selling the powers of the presidency to friends, cronies, family members, and supporters, and otherwise trashing the noble office… All the old familiar tacky memories were revived: girlfriends, sleazy relatives, political favors, tawdry second-rate acts of avarice, and disdain for their country and even their own party.’’

Hillary also said: ‘’It’s very hard to stop people who have no shame about what they’re doing…’’ When did Bill or Hillary Clinton ever have any shame? Trying to steal the show from a sick and aging Billy Graham on his last crusade for political reasons is their latest no-shame performance.

The aging Graham heaped praise on the Clintons and gave a veiled endorsement to Hillary for president. The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson asked: ‘’how can a man of God endorse a godless woman…? The Rev. Rob Schenck, who also heads the national Clergy Council, walked out when Graham gave his microphone to Bill Clinton and said, ‘’This was a deliberate, cunning, purely political move by the Clintons…’’ Shame. What shame?

Graham later responded to all the criticism by saying he was joking and didn’t mean his remarks as an endorsement of Hillary. Thank God!

Both of the Clintons are liars and have convenient lapses into fits of aphasia when the occasion calls for it.

Example: Hillary, a Yale law student graduate (they obviously don’t teach ethics at Yale) with an office in the White House, told the press she didn’t know anything about the scandalous pardons for sale in which her husband and brother, Hugh Rodham, were involved.

Bill’s lying has been well documented. He now claims he lied when he lied under oath about his relationship with Monika Lewinsky.

‘’I was acquitted’’ (by the Senate after being impeached by the House) he told NBC’s Brian Williams. ‘’The charges in the House sent to the Senate were false.’’ Clinton had admitted he gave false testimony under oath in a plea bargain with independent Counsel Robert Ray. After the fact, Clinton now says ‘’I made a mistake.’’

The fact that he was acquitted by partisan Democrats and a few turn-coat Republicans in the Senate wrangling over what constituted high crimes and misdemeanors does not mean he was innocent. He was guilty, and he knows it.

He should have been found guilty on the House charges as well as other charges that were not brought because the Republican leadership in both House and Senate handcuffed the investigators.

NATIONAL SECURITY

Former Congressman Bob Barr, one of the house managers, noted in his book, The Meaning of Is that Clinton’s undermining of national security should have formed the heart of the Judiciary Committee inquiry. It would have been if then Attorney General Janet Reno had not kept secret memos from the FBI director and federal prosecutor and failed to appoint an independent counsel to look into the matter.

In his book China, the Gathering Threat’’ Constantine C. Menges goes into detail as to how Clinton undermined the nation’s security by approving the sale of the latest U.S. technology to China for political contributions from the Communist Chinese Government and U.S. corporations.

This included shifting approval of such sales from the State Department, which objected, to the Commerce Department and not revealing it until more than a year later after he been re-elected.

Thanks to the Clintons, China is now a nuclear threat to the United States all because they had no principles about raising money for themselves at any cost to the nation.

The Washington Times reported ( 6/26/05) that government intelligence analysts now expect China to attack Taiwan within two years. The Times quoted one analyst as saying: ‘’The post-Cold War peace is over. We are now in an arms race with a new superpower whose goal is to contain and overtake the United States.’’

Thanks again Bill and Hill.

CRITICIZES JUDICIAL NOMINEES

Hillary also criticized President Bush’s judicial nominees. Never mind that she is reported to have had a hand in Bill Clinton’s nominations of Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court. They both are far-left liberals and members of the Council on Foreign Relations, which advocates denuding U.S. sovereignty in favor of one-world government.

Hillary now wants President Bush to consult with her and other senators on the Supreme Court vacancy created by the resignation of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The Constitution gives the right to select Supreme Court nominees exclusively to the President. Liberals want control of the court.

The latest contributions from the two staunchly liberal and internationally-oriented justices that the Clintons appointed were votes to further undermine the Constitution by permitting government entities to seize homeowners’ property for private use. This erases a key clause in the Fifth Amendment that clearly states private property can be taken for public (not private) use but not without just compensation.

Private land ownership has always been the cornerstone of free societies, despite a United Nations recommendation in 1976 to the contrary.

Henry Lamb, writing for WorldNetDaily ( 6/25/05) stated that property control is a U.N. dream and that a program for it was underway in the United States. But, he said, proponents are careful to deny that the U.N. has any influence or involvement in it.

In any event, the activist justices have now taken away a sacred right of homeowners and erased a key clause from the Constitution.

HILLARY WHEELS AND DEALS

From parlaying $1,000 into $100,000 in a rapid series of cattle futures trades to dubious financial maneuvering, Hillary has displayed her unethical legerdemain at wheeling and dealing on a par with husband, Bill.

But she is not out of the woods in a Hollywood fund-raising gala that involved questionable expense fees and false reporting to the Federal Elections Commission.

Her former campaign finance chairman, David Rosen, was acquitted in a federal court. But her chief accuser, Peter Paul, said he plans to file a civil suit against the Clintons. He will try to show that Hillary was more involved in planning the event than she claims.

Judicial Watch, a government watch-dog group, claims the Bush Justice Department failed to present key evidence in the Rosen case in order to keep the Clintons out of the trial.

Judicial Watch said it ‘’will continue its pursuit of justice in this matter.’’ It has filed a complaint against Hillary with the U.S. Select Committee on Ethics.

A recent book by Candice E. Jackson, Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine examines the accounts of seven women whom the Clintons allegedly tried to destroy or discredit because of Bill’s attacks or involvement with them. Except for political ambition, Hillary could have blown the whistle on Bill instead of supporting him at the expense of the victims.

Hillary also used a private Los Angeles detective for help in trying to debunk Bill’s bimbo encounters in the early 90’s. That detective has been criminally charged in connection with threats to a Los Angeles Times reporter – Anita Busch.

Anthony Pellicano, the private eye, helped to defray the impact of the Monica Lewinsky scandal by digging up one of her old boy friends who said Monica had designs on Bill. Several of Bill’s victims have complained they also were threatened. Pellicano is currently serving a 30-month jail sentence for possession of explosives.

BUSH FRIENDSHIP

About the Hillary senate fund-raising case, it is puzzling how the Bush administration continues to protect and seek friendship with the Clintons. Remember this backfired with Teddy Kennedy and seems the same with the Clintons.

President Bush tapped Clinton to be involved in the fund raising campaign for Tsunami victims which later led to a U.N. appointment. Bush also welcomed him for his inaugural festivities and issued an executive order that overturned a Congressional act to prevent historians and others from examining details of presidential papers.

Both Bush and his father attended the opening of the Clinton presidential library, and on 6/29/05 major newspapers carried a picture of Clinton and George W. Bush playing golf at Kennebunkport, ME. Incidentally, even as they chased the pellet, Bill was proclaiming in a fundraising e-mail letter that poor Hillary is now the #1 target of Republicans. Sounds like those old conservative conspirators are after poor, innocent Hillary again.

All this favoritism and befriending of the Clintons makes one wonder if the Bushes have too many skeletons in their own closets to condemn the Clintons for their known wrong doings. Maybe the involvement of both Bushes as well as the Clintons in the Iran Contra guns and drug deals has something to do with it.

ANOTHER BLOT

One other serious blot on Hillary’s catalogue of misdeeds and machinations includes her role in the presidential selection process. In addition to the judicial appointments already mentioned, she and her ally, Webster Hubbell, chose Jamie Gorelick for Deputy Attorney General.

Gorelick, you will recall, constructed the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents, according to John Ashcroft, former attorney general. That wall prevented the CIA from warning the FBI about the presence in San Diego of two al Qaeda members involved in the 9/11 attacks. Gorelick’s directives also prevented questioning more than two Arabs boarding the same plane.

Hillary, always the victim, tried to act shocked and betrayed at the Monica Lewinski affair, but she knew about Bill’s philandering from the start and, as noted, even was involved in damage control to blunt public outrage. She stayed with Clinton because of her political aspirations.

She refused to take the Clinton name until politics made it necessary in Arkansas, according to Peter and Timothy Flaherty in The First Lady. They pointed out that the main beneficiaries of her ill-conceived mandatory health plan would have been the largest health insurance and drug companies. It would have put one-seventh of the national economy under control of federal bureaucrats. Her hearings were held in secret.

DANGEROUS POLITICIAN

Hillary has been called a ‘’dangerous politician’’ by Benjamin Shapiro of Creators Syndicate, Inc. He also wrote she is ‘’power-hungry’’ and ‘’a regulatory-minded, higher-taxes, higher-spending liberal.’’ Olson describes her as ‘’ambitious, cold, ruthless, and willing to evade, stonewall, or even lie when it serves her purpose.’’

And let’s not forget that she was the first co-president with an office in the West Wing of the White House. While there Bill’s mis- and malfeasance deeds in office included:

Cover-ups such as the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal building; the TWA Flight 100, failure to capture Osama bin Laden when he had the chance, wagging the dog bombing to detract from the Monica troubles, registering illegals to vote in the 1996 election, getting evicted from the African Horn, which emboldened bin Laden to be more aggressive against the United States; granting of 140 pardons and commuting 36 sentences on his last days in office, looting of White House furniture and the Clintons failure to list all their gifts or devaluing them, and on and on.

No wonder Dick Morris, former Clinton White House aid, thinks history will judge Bill Clinton as ‘’one of the most corrupt U.S. presidents.’’ Morris should have used the superlative ‘’the most’’ instead of ‘’one of the most.’’

In addition to making bin Laden think of the U.S. as a paper tiger through his appeasement and inactions in Africa. Clinton also was ridiculed by the Chinese when he told them they risked a reaction from the United States if they attacked Taiwan, according to Menges.

Lt. General Xiong Guangkai, deputy chief of China’s general staff, responded to this threat: ‘’No you won’t. We’ve watched you in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia, and you don’t have the will…’’ Clinton’s reaction was to appease and invite Chinese President Jiang to Washington. The Chinese continued to deploy missiles opposite Taiwan.

MENTAL QUESTIONS, CHARACTER

Questions have been raised from time to time about Clinton’s mental fitness to serve as president. Ms. Olson quoted New York Times columnist Bob Herbert as writing that Clinton ‘’is a psychologically sick man.’’ If he is then there is no one better to know that than Hillary.

One recent book about him is by Former FBI Director Louis Freeh. The book describes Freeh’s frustration over Clinton’s refusal to seriously consider his warnings about the terrorist threat.

Another book by Edward Klein, The Truth About Hillary, delves deeply into Hillary’s private and political life. The book sheds some new light on her machinations but also goes over ground already covered by other writers. Klein calls the Clintons ‘’evil’’ and questions Hillary’s feminism.

He claims the Clinton public relations machine has pressured radio and TV outlets to cancel interviews with him. Recall that Hillary in her New York speech berated the Washington Press Corp for not going after the Bush administration. Had the liberal press gone after the Clintons, they both might be serving time.

Talk show host Sean Hannity ignored pressure that he said was brought on him and allowed Klein to appear on his show. But the conservative Hannity said he was concerned the book might backfire on conservatives since it deals with sensational personal and sexual allegations against Hillary that might not ‘’be worthy of political debate.’’

Why not? Character is very important for White House occupants as we learned in the sorry Clinton administration. We probably twice elected a rapist to the office. We have proof we elected a liar. Surely, we should consider character in choosing the next president.

And if we do consider character, as we should, then it would be presumptuous of us to think Hillary would ‘’assume a virtue if she has it not’’ to paraphrase the bard.

There is still another new book about Hillary. This one by Sen. Rick Santorum advocates family over the big government village in Hillary’s 1996 book, It Takes a Village. Santorum’s book is being promoted as an alternative to the big government, liberal views of Hillary.

The country faces too many grave threats from China, the terrorists, a possible Chinese-Russian alliance, huge trade and budget deficits, border security and a host of other problems to have to abide another Clinton president.

Women’s groups should also remember that if Hillary became the first woman president she very well could be the last for a while. Her performance probably would not advance but set back the long-awaited goal of making females equal with males in being considered for the high office.

It would be wise if women and the entire country said: Hillary, ‘’in the name of God, go!’’ and saw to it that she did.

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An Essay
By Richard C. Sizemore

In the history of the Supreme Court there have been only nine justices who were Roman Catholics. If Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. is confirmed by the Senate, the court will have four such justices, almost half with alleged allegiance to Rome.

Does that matter? It depends on whether the bulls (papal edicts), encyclicals (circulars on church policy to the Bishops) and admonitions and threats to the Catholic flock by Pope Benedict XVI carry any weight with American Catholics politicians, or whether he’s just blowing smoke.

If it’s the former then Roberts’ Catholicism matters as much or more than that of John Kennedy and John Kerry or any other Catholic running for political office who has to take an oath or affirmation to uphold the Constitution. They must either be faithful to their church or to the Constitution.

They can’t have it both ways, although some Catholics like Ted Kennedy and Kerry try to do so.

If they are not faithful to the church and simply cherry pick what they want out of church doctrine then how can they be trusted to not cherry pick what they want to endorse or ignore out of the Constitution?

Because the pope is infallible and his words on morals are not negotiable when he speaks ex cathedra – that is when he uses the authority of his office to define the doctrine concerning faith and morals -- the religion of Catholics seeking office does matter very much. In other words Catholics have to differentiate between faith and dogma.

As an example, suppose a Muslim was running for office. Would it be fair to ask him what part of the Quran he believes in or rejects? After all 60 per cent of the verses in the Quran endorse jihad (holly war and killing to advance Islam), and they are the latest verses and supercede earlier verses about peace and tolerance. If the candidate just states he believes the Quran without explanation of which parts of it he embraces and which he doesn’t, it would be risky to elect him to anything.

Americans are a fair people and usually don’t let religion interfere with their choice of candidates for office and that’s fine up to a point. No one should care what his fellowman believes or practices in an effort to get to the Promised Land with these exceptions: When his beliefs challenge the beliefs of others, or undermine the government and laws of his fellow citizens.

POPE BENEDICT XVI

Pope Benedict XVI, like Pope John Paul II, is a strict defender of Catholic orthodoxy. Under John Paul II, Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was once called the Holy Inquisition, and wrote a letter to American bishops in 2004 advising them to deny communion to U. S. politicians who supported abortion rights.

One can believe Roe v. Wade was a good or bad decision (I personally think it was very bad) but it is the law of the land until it is repealed by the Supreme Court or is overridden by legislation from Congress. Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter was a blatant interference in American politics. Catholic politicians were faced with obedience to their faith or to their oath to uphold the Constitution.

At the time of his election, Reuters reported ‘’Ratzinger disciplined Latin American ‘liberation theology’ theologians, denounced homosexuality and gay marriage and pressured Asian priests who saw non-Christian religions as part of God’s plan for humanity.’’ It added that the document ‘’…branded other Christian churches as deficient…’’

Judge John Roberts is a devout Catholic. Should he be questioned about his loyalty to his church or the Constitution? In view of the infallibility of the pope when he speaks on faith and morals and his admonition to American politicians, the answer should be yes. That doesn’t infringe on what Roberts believes it takes to get to Heaven, but whether he will be faithful to Catholic dogma in interpreting the Constitution.

This would not be putting Roberts to a religious test or bashing Catholicism. It would simply be trying to find out where his loyalties lie. If they are devoutly to Catholic teaching and following the pope’s edicts then Roberts could not be a true Catholic and render unbiased opinions based on the Constitution.

John Kennedy, the first and only Catholic president, renounced his religion by stating the church didn’t speak for him and he didn’t speak for the church. He made the statement under one of the most liberal popes in the history of the church.

John Kerry, who supported abortion, homosexual unions and stem cell research – all opposed by his church – in essence, took the same position as Kennedy. The difference was that in Kennedy’s time abortion was not the law and other issues explicitly forbidden by the church were not items of contention.

In addition, cardinals and bishops were under orders from an ailing pope, as a result of Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter, to prohibit politicians supporting these issues from taking communion. Kerry took it anyway and got away with it.

At the same time 48 House Democrats signed a letter warning the church against punishing Catholic lawmakers who had sworn to uphold the Constitution. So, who’s running the show, politicians or the pope? With Ratzinger now in full control and healthy there may be a showdown if politicians continue to defy church dogma.

And remember the former Bavarian cardinal is no pushover. In 1987 Father Charles E. Curran was deprived of his teaching license at the Catholic University of Washington by Ratzinger for his independent thinking. He defied the edict that theologians and bishops could only serve truth by obeying the pope.

Catholics, of course, cannot be barred from office under Article VI of the Constitution that states no religious test is required for public office. In other words, Catholic politicians can obey their church and still hold office, but they can’t obey the Constitution, if it conflicts with church doctrine, and still be true Catholics.

The pope still has the power to excommunicate and to refuse communion to recalcitrant politicians even if the church has lost some moral credibility because of the sexual scandal of priests and the anemic effort of Rome in punishing the guilty.

In his book, Vicars of Christ, Peter de Rosa explains how popes from St. Peter to the present ‘’have created the papacy from scratch – with more than a measure of scandal, murder, genocide, and doctrinal confusion.’’ The latter still exists today.

CATHOLIC LOYALTY

Although Catholics are technically required to follow the pope’s moral directions, there is no guarantee they will. In fact most liberal Catholics on the Senate Judiciary Committee and leaders in Congress have defied Rome.

For example, Justice William J. Brennan Jr., a Catholic, voted for Roe v. Wade and abortion on demand. There are four liberal Democrats on the Senate Judiciary committee – Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Joe Biden and Richard Durbin. The Catholic members have been charged with insisting that Supreme and Appellate Court nominees, such as Judge William Pryor, renounce the church’s position on abortion.

Senator Durbin already is accused of bringing the question up with Roberts, and Senator Leahy said he doubts that Judge Roberts can be confirmed unless he agrees that Roe v. Wade is ‘’settled law.” Roberts says he believes in settled law but did not mention abortion specifically. That begs the question of whether liberal Catholics should be punished by the pope for opposing other Catholics who oppose abortion.

There also are four liberal, Jewish Democrats on the judiciary Committee -- Herbert Kohl, Diane Feinstein, Russell D. Feingold and Charles Schumer, who has been very outspoken about questioning Roberts in detail. Rest assured that some of this demand for detailed questioning is for grandstanding and a chance by windbag senators to get their face on television.

We have seen it in recent hearings on nominees. It doesn’t amount to much substance but makes a good show. Liberal senators, as in the case of Judge Robert Bork, usually have their minds made up going in. The questions are mostly for show.

At present there are three Catholic Suprmee Court justices – Anthony Kennedy, a liberal, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, both conservatives. Roberts would make a fourth and make the court membership almost half Catholic. Other Catholics on the court through history include:

Roger Taney, Chief Justice 1836-1921; Edward White, 1894-1921 & Chief Justice 1910-1921; Joseph McKenna 1898-1925; Pierce Butler 1923-1939; Frank Murphy, 1940-1949 and William Brennan Jr., 1956-1990.

The Catholic seat on the court was established by Chief Justice Taney of Dred Scott fame in 1836 but it wasn’t until 1916 that a Jew – Louis D. Brandeis – established a seat on the court for his religion.

In his book Justices, Presidents, and Senators Henry J. Abraham writes:

The religious factor is based on the notion of a Roman Catholic seat and a Jewish

seat on the Supreme Court, a development of arguably dubious communal wisdom.

The concept of religious-group representation has become one of the facts of

American political and judicial life – although it has been less of an emotional

problem in the courts than in the makeup of election slates in minority-conscious

Cities…

Another question that appears to be appropriate to ask Judge Roberts is whether he is a member of Opus Dei. There is no reason to suspect that he is, but if he is, he should be asked about it and to explain it. All court nominees should be asked about the organizations they belong to.

As an example, does justice Ginsburg belong to the ACLU, a liberal anti-religious organization for whom she once worked? She, Justice Breyer and former Justice O’Connor all belonged to the Council on Foreign Relations, which advocates one-world government and supports other world organizations that deplete U.S. sovereignty.

OPUS DEI

Opus Dei (God’s Work) is, according to novelist Gore Vidal, ‘’a secretive international Roman Catholic order dedicated to getting its membership into high political, corporate, and religious offices…in various lands to various ends.’’

Gore wrote that two members of the Supreme Court belonged to Opus Dei and noted that Newsweek Magazine ruled out Justice Scalia. Since there are only three Catholic justices on the court grade school math ought to get you the answer as to their identity.

The New York Times reported ( 10/7/02) that some Catholics complained that Opus Dei was ‘’…an elitist organization with a secret agenda. Others describe it as cultlike.’’ Vidal writes it ‘’tends to Facism.’’

It was founded in 1928 by Jose-Maria Escriva. ‘’Its lay godfather, in early years, was Spanish dictator Francisco Franco,’’ according to Vidal.

In October, 2002, Pope John Paul II made Escriva, who died in 1975, a saint. Opus Dei has about 85,000 members worldwide, including about 1800 priests. Since President Bush is reaching out to Catholics and they are increasing in government, it is appropriate to try to find out more about this organization and those who belong to it.

At least since the time he catered to fundamental Protestants by visiting Bob Jones University during his first campaign for the White House, President Bush has been courting the Catholic Far Right. His nomination of Judge Roberts may be another manifestation of that trend. The first was shortly after the Bob Jones visit when he wrote a personal apology letter to the late Cardinal John O’Connor to cover his flank.

Bush also learned Spanish and uses it in his broadcasts to cater to the Latino vote, although he has done little to stem the flow of aliens across the Mexican border.

The Bushes try to cover all political bases when it comes to religion. The President is a converted Methodist, his father is Episcopalian and his brother, Jeb, is a converted Catholic.

Is Bush courting Catholicism because of any ambitions Jeb may have?

President Bush and his father, along with the Bible-toting hypocrite, Bill Clinton, attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II. It was the first time a sitting president had attended the funeral of a pope to pay homage to Roman Catholicism. This raised the question among some observers as to whether this was an endorsement and possibly favoritism of Catholicism over other religions.

This nation, of course, had its underpinnings as Protestant. Several of its early founders and presidents, such as John Adams, who was devoutly religious, and Thomas Jefferson, a Deist, even opposed the presence here of the Jesuits who spearheaded the Catholic counter-reformation and were active in converting new members for the church.

Mark R. Levin in his book, Men in Black notes that before American independence, most of the colonies had laws in place to discourage Roman Catholic immigrants. That was one reason most of the early immigrants came from Protestant England and Germany.

Bush also ordered the flag at half mast when the Pope died. It will be interesting to see if this honor will be accorded other religious leaders when they die.

As noted, Pope Benedict XVI;, the Cardinal Ratzinger, and John Paul II were very much into politics when they admonished U.S. Catholic politicians that they had a moral duty to oppose laws that are a part of our Constitution or may become so.

The Catholic Church has always been into politics. It is the only religious body that is both church and a political organization. It exchanges diplomatic representatives and claims recognition as an independent member of the community of nations.

REPUBLICAN MISFIRES

Although President Bush assures us that Judge Roberts will be a strict constructionist and not an activist judge, we got similar assurances from his father who nominated Justice David Souter, who turned out the opposite. Remember President Eisenhower’s admitted worst mistake, Earl Warren? Other duds picked by Republican President’s include:

William Brennan (Ike), Harry Blackmun (Nixon), John Paul Stevens (Ford), Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy (Reagan). We got the latter when the liberals trashed the able Judge Robert Bork. So, we have no assurance of what we’re getting, although it appears that Judge Roberts is an able, intelligent jurist who can’t be any worse than the Republican picks mentioned.

Although there are more than 150 Catholics, more than a third, in Congress, there is no concrete evidence that their religion seriously affected the outcome of important legislation, although the same can’t be said of liberal Catholics or liberal Jews or liberals of other religious persuasions.

Those running for president are not likely to chance it without claiming some religious affiliation, even though some turn out to be obvious hypocrites. Only three presidents did not claim religious affiliation – Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.

While it is justified to ask Catholics or Muslims about religious matters, the former because of church dogma and the latter because of the Quran verses that call for jihad, fundamental Christians and others could be legitimately questioned about their belief in certain passages in the Bible. That is, whether they believe in a literal interpretation of the Holy Book, or not.

The difference between Catholics, Muslins and Protestants, as an example, is that Protestants have a right to interpret the Bible for themselves. Catholics on the other hand have to leave moral matters to an infallible pope, and Imams and Mullahs interpret the Quran.

WIVES

There is one other question that Senators are trying to pronounce as taboo, and that is the beliefs, endorsements and affiliations of the wives of Supreme Court nominees. The late Richard Nixon was very much interested in the character of the wives of Supreme Court nominees.

In his book Men in Black Mark R. Levin relates how Nixon, when considering Blackmun for the court asked him, ‘’what kind of a woman is Mrs. Blackmun? Nixon explained that she would be wooed by the Georgetown crowd’’ and wanted to know if she could withstand it. Nixon was disgusted that some justices had been ‘’overwhelmed by the Georgetown social set’’ and had turned out to be ‘’weak’’ and ‘’dumb’’, Levin writes. He adds:

‘’Nixon was quite insightful about how conservatives are continually seduced by the liberal establishment once they move inside the Beltway.’’

Whether Blackmun’s wife, Dorothy, succumbed or not she told one of his clerks that she was encouraging Blackmun to support abortion. ‘’You and I are working on the same thing. Me at home and you at work,’’ she said, according to Levin.

While Newsweek reported that Justice Scalia was not a member of Opus Dei, it said his wife, Maureen, ‘’’…has attended Opus Dei’s spiritual functions.’’ The magazine also reported that her son, Father Paul Scalia, helped convert Clarence Thomas to Catholicism.

Judge Roberts’ wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, an attorney herself, is ardently against abortion and has been deeply involved in the anti-abortion movement. She supports with money and legal advice a Washington-based organization called Feminists for Life of America, Inc. that offers counseling and educational programs to women and challenges the Constitutionality of abortion.

The question is will she, like Blackmun’s wife, be working on Judge Roberts at home while Rome exerts pressure on him as to how to rule on abortion and other moral issues?

The confirmation process has become so politicized in the last quarter century that it has been turned into a circus and spectacle for liberal, flamboyant senators to grandstand for votes. The questions to nominees has become so far out and beyond subjects relating to their character and judicial philosophy that they almost have to adopt a stealthy position to be approved for the court.

Judge Robert Bork was prophetic when he wrote this 15 years ago in his book The Tempting of America: ‘’A president who wants to avoid a battle like mine…is likely to nominate men and women who have not written much, and certainly nothing that could be regarded as controversial by left-leaning senators and groups.’’ Bork added ‘’The tendency, therefore, will be to nominate and confirm persons whose performance once on the bench cannot be accurately, or perhaps even roughly, predicted either by the President or by the Senate.’’

hat appears to be true with President Bush’s nomination of Judge Roberts. The questions to Roberts almost assuredly will pass the point of relevancy and propriety. But if any question matters, a nominee’s allegiance to the Constitution should take priority. And that is not bigotry.

Top

An Essay
By Richard C. Sizemore

More opposition is forming to fight the anti-religious, homosexual-coddling, undermining-America American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). That’s the self-appointed so-called guardian of everybody’s First Amendment rights so long as they coincide with its far-out agenda.

The ACLU has gotten away with intimidating local school boards, town officials and other low-budget entities because of its large (estimated at nearly $50 million) budget and a law that permits it to collect attorney fees when it wins cases against such practices as school prayer, religious displays and Christmas programs in schools, homosexual acceptance, pornography and so on.

The local groups often cave in rather than fight a costly battle they can’t afford and may lose anyway to activist judges in the ACLU camp. One group, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which has fought the giant organization on several fronts with a much smaller budget, is expanding its fight.

ADF is now taking its challenge to college campuses and representing students forced to take oaths against their religious beliefs and for not cow-towing to the political correct codes of most colleges. The ADF is the opposite of the secularist ACLU and is an advocate for the rights of Christians.

ADF is also offering free assistance to Great Falls, S. C., and two South Carolina counties that have been threatened by the ACLU for opening meetings with prayers that refer to Jesus, according to WoldNetDaily.

Another organization – the Center for Reclaiming America, a grass-roots group – is circulating a petition to gather more than 100,000 signatures to urge Congress to hit the ACLU in the pocketbook, according to WND reports.

That’s the place to hurt them the most as William Donohue, who made one of the first definitive studies of the ACLU, suggested. Donohue pointed out that the ACLU has a partisan agenda and questioned its tax exempt status. The ACLU ‘’…is no more free from partisanship than the Republican or Democratic Parties,’’ wrote Donohue who also claimed it was anti-religious from its inception.

The Center for Reclaiming America (CRA) wants Congress to deny ACLU attorneys the right to collect fees in lawsuits that challenge religion in public. The legislation would amend the Civil rights Attorney’s Fees Act that allows prevailing parties to be awarded attorney fees in religious establishment cases. Other civil rights filings would not be affected.

If this legislation were to pass and the ACLU’s tax exempt status was also denied it might help stop some of the lawsuits the group files every year to undermine the traditional values on which this nation was built.

NEW ANTI-ACLU BOOKS

There have been several recent books detailing the homosexual-led organization’s seemingly anti-American litigation. They include The ACLU vs. America by Alan Sears and Craig Osten, The Marketing of Evil by David Kupelian and Liberalism is a Mental Disorder By Michael Savage. Then there is, of course, the continued criticisms of Donohue and others.

These books list the positions as well as abuses of the ACLU, many of which are well known as well as some others that are not. They also go into detail of what is happening in the cultural war between left-wing extremists and those who believe in the traditional values of America. Growing awareness of the ACLU’s agenda and its encroachments into the everyday life of Americans is leading to opposition against the gigantic legal organization and its agenda.

Briefly, here are some far-out positions of the irreverent left-wing organization: It supports gay marriage; polygamy; sodomy; homosexuality; polyamory (multiple marriages); abortion on demand; man-boy sex; location of pornographic outlets anywhere; abolishing the observance of religious holidays; abolishment of all publicly paid chaplains; and consulting international law to interpret the U. S. Constitution. This doesn’t cover the waterfront, but along with what it opposes below, it should suffice to show the ALCU’s true colors.

It opposes restricting children’s access to pornography at tax-funded libraries; reciting the Pledge of Allegiance; singing of Christmas carols such as ‘’Silent Night’’ or other Christmas activities; parental rights in their children’s moral instruction; Boy Scouts for their banning of homosexuals; infanticide; euthanasia and just about any traditional American value.

Sounds like the ACLU’s motto should be, ‘’We support sleaze,’’ doesn’t it?

SCHOOL ENCROACHMENT

Of all the ACLU’s activities against established morality none is probably more disturbing than its encroachment into public school to vie for the minds of impressionable youth. It has brought several cases against school districts to provide mandatory training sessions to force acceptance of homosexual behavior. This is against parents’ wishes and the moral teaching of their children.

One recent case cited by WorldNetDaily in a copyrighted story on its web site involved an activity in Pikeville, Md., which aroused the ire of parents, although it is not clear whether the ACLU was involved, even though it has supported similar cases.

The school in Pikesville supported ‘’National Coming out Week’’, according to WND, which was organized by Gay/Straight Alliance on Campus. The observance encouraged homosexuals to admit their sexual preference to others and encouraged heterosexuals to show support.

This raises the question of what has homosexuality got to do with education? The aggressive, militant, gay rights movement is simply promoting and marketing a dysfunction as being normal.

David Kupleian points out in his book, The Marketing of Evil, that the political gay movement persuaded ‘’many say intimidated,’’ the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 ‘’into removing homosexuality from the official list of mental disorders.’’ If this was done under duress then it has no meaning.

But is homosexuality a congenital condition as it is promoted to be by gay activists like Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen? No, they do it deliberately to evade the moral question of choice, says Kupleian.

They stated, according to Kuplleian, that sexual orientation, for most humans, ‘’seems to be the product of a complex interaction between innate predispositions and environmental factors during childhood and early adolescence.’’ If that’s so then it seems that the disease is curable if the afflicted want to be cured. Nevertheless, as Kupleian emphasizes, ‘’it is unnatural and self-destructive.’’

The fact that it is unnatural is self-evident, and all of the promotions and bleeding heart liberals can’t alter that fact. It is either to be pitied or despised, depending on the circumstances that brought it about and the effort the afflicted person takes to seek help.

The most recent case (October, ’05) to draw headlines from the liberal press was the acknowledgement by Sheryl Swoopes of the Houston Comets basketball team that she is a lesbian. That was front page news as well as fodder for an apologetic and supportive sports column in The Dallas Morning News, which often supports homosexual causes.

One would have thought from the coverage that Swoopes was on a par with Rosa Parks. According to the News, Swoopes said she thought she was ‘’straight’’ but added, ‘’I don’t know if I was born this way, but that’s the way I am now.’’ Swoopes needs help, not praise and adulation for coming out of the closet. There is nothing noble about admitting homosexuality or accepting it without seeking professional help to correct it. Celebrities who flaunt it could do great harm to their young fans.

Homosexuals certainly do not deserve the right to be categorized with civil rights groups as oppressed minorities with special rights.

ACLU AND THE COURTS

The ACLU with its sordid agenda tries to obtain through the courts what it can’t get through the legislatures. It has been able to foist its agenda on the American public largely through an army of lawyers and activist judges.

It even has one of its own, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well as several obvious sympathizers, on the Supreme Court. That begs the question of whether judges should recuse themselves from certain cases, such as ones brought by organizations to which they formerly belonged or still do, and where they have spoken out or written about their general ideologies.

Ginsburg was formerly chief counsel of the ACLU. She also was a women’s rights activist. She has defended her relationship with the NOW Legal Defense Education Fund and said justices are reluctant to recuse themselves because it could lead to a tie vote.

That logic would appear to support a prejudiced majority rather than an impartial tie. In the later situation people would at least break even.

The question of recusal is left to the individual justice since there are no rules concerning the subject either by the court or the Constitution. Justice Antonin Scalia recently recused himself from a much publicized case involving the Pledge of Allegiance for public remarks he made about the subject.

Scalia is outspoken as is Ginsburg and other justices such as Sandra Day O’Connor, who won’t go away, and Stephen Breyer. All have been unnecessarily verbal in public. Until prospective justices get on the court they are stealthy and often meek during congressional hearings. Once on the court, however, they become vocal because they can’t be removed except by impeachment, which is almost impossible.

MIERS

Of all the reams of criticism written about the qualifications of Harriet Miers to be a justice on the court, one Washington Post pundit, Charles Krauthammer, objected to her for, among other things, her involvement in White House war-and-peace issues. This could have become a liability and force Miers in years to come ‘’to recuse herself from judging the constitutionality of these decisions (in the war on terrorism) because she will (would) have been a party to having made them in the first place,’’ opined Krauthammer.

As stated the decisions on recusal are left up to the individual justices, and Miers would have had the right not to recuse. She would not have been the only one faced with this problem had pressure not forced her to withdraw her nomination.

Ginsburg appears to be carrying more baggage in this area than any other justice. Not only will she be faced with cases brought by the ACLU and women’s groups, but also those in foreign matters because she has been outspoken in advocating more reliance on foreign court decisions in deciding cases in this country.

Justices O’Connor and Breyer also have spoken out in support of more dependence on foreign court decisions, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy referred to a 1981 gay rights opinion by the European Court of Human Rights in writing the majority opinion in overruling a Texas sodomy law.

Breyer, O’Connor, who has resigned but is still serving on the court, and Ginsburg also are members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which supports a globalist world at the expense of U.S. sovereignty. (For more on the CFR, see ‘’Terms and Organizations’’at the heading of this site.)

MORE ON GINSBURG

Anyone who watched the confirmation hearings of Chief Justice John Roberts before the Senate Judiciary Committee must have been appalled at the ideology of Justice Ginsburg as stated by Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Graham said Ginsburg in her writings:

Supported the age consent for a woman to be 12.
The legalization of prostitution.
Coed prisons for men and women
Polygamy as a possible constitutionally protected right
Federal funding for abortion.

On some internet web sites it is argued that Graham never stated his sources, and that some of Ginsburg’s positions were misrepresented. Ginsburg hasn’t addressed the charges as of this writing. Graham emphasized that Ginsburg’s positions were stated in her writings and not as a lawyer representing clients.

Anyway, she did get 96 votes for confirmation, which goes to show that Republicans don’t challenge the nominees of Democrat presidents the way Democrats do in trying to control the court with their challenges of nominees by Republican presidents. They also have tried to alter the nominating process from what is stated in the Constitution, and President Bush has caved in to their demands for prior consultation.

Miers was put in a situation of almost having to fill out a job application for the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is preposterous on the face of it – not to mention that it is not required by the Constitution. The President should stand up to power-usurping senators by appointing his choices and letting the chips fall where they may.

Ginsburg’s decisions and alleged ideology makes one wonder if Thomas Jefferson didn’t have a good idea when he suggested (in a letter to Gov. James Pleasants of Virginia) that the terms of Supreme Court justices should be limited. According to James F. Simon in What Kind of Nation, Jefferson suggested the Constitution should be amended ‘’…so that justices would serve six-year terms, renewable by the president and both houses of Congress.’’

Now that the nomination process has become so politicized wonder how many of the justices on the court today could hold their jobs if Jefferson’s proposed amendment were in force? Justices were given life tenure to shield them from politics. But some like those mentioned become mouthy after they get on the court and speak out to the point of becoming advocates.

Such an amendment would also serve to gag the outspoken justices who hide behind their robes and are not subject to questioning by the press or Congress about what they say or do. If they want to enter the arena of public discourse except in their opinions they should resign and take up another profession.

Miers, who earned her law degree from Southern Methodist University, may not be as legally brilliant as other justices on the court which include six from Harvard Law School, and one from Yale, but the performances of most of those justices don’t speak well for their alma maters. I refer specifically to Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter and Kennedy, although all are not exempt.

If this scribe had to choose between Miers and Ginsburg, it wouldn’t be a contest. That by no means implies that Miers was the best candidate President Bush could have chosen. It just means that she or anybody else would be better than Ginsburg.

Top

An Essay
By Richard C. Sizemore

There was much ado about the qualifications of Harriet Miers to serve as a justice on the Supreme Court before she withdrew her nomination. One of the criticisms was that she didn’t attend one of the prestigious law schools.

From the votes and reasoning of some of the court members who graduated from those schools of renown, it doesn’t appear that attending one assures the public of rational decisions based on an honest interpretation of the Constitution. In fact, some of them are way out activists.

So, does it really matter which law school one attends? After all some of the justices are deciding social issues on preconceived notions of what the result ought to be. That doesn’t take a brilliant jurist. Instead of brilliant lawyers why not have butchers, bakers and candlestick makers on the court?

If, however, the decisions are based on law and an honest interpretation of the Constitution, then legal backgrounds and credentials should be of prime consideration. No legal or constitutional requirements are necessary, however, for a federal judgeship. Although no non-lawyer has ever served on the court and, as Henry J.Abraham states in Justices, Presidents and Senators, ‘’…it is all but certain that none ever will.’’

Abraham explains that ‘’There does exist…an unwritten prerequisite for a place on the federal bench---a bachelor of laws or Juris Doctor degree. No one can become a member of the Supreme Court today without one of these degrees, although it is not necessarily mandatory either to have practiced law or to have been a member of the bar.’’

If Chief Justice John Marshall were nominated for the court today under the assumed qualifications and powers usurped by liberals on the Senate Judiciary Committee, it might be questionable whether his background would qualify him for confirmation. He attended the College of William and Mary for only six weeks during 1780 for the lectures of George Wythe.

Wythe (pronounced with) was the nation’s first college law professor and a classical scholar who taught both John Marshall and Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Henry Clay and other prominent men of the day.

Marshall had read Blackstone’s ‘’Commentaries,’’ and is rated by far the greatest Supreme Court justice by ‘’experts’’ listed by Abraham in his book. Miers had more formal education, even though her law school – Southern Methodist University – is ranked 52nd in a survey done by U.S. News & World Report. At least she had more formal education.

Incidentally, William and Mary is ranked 27th in the magazine’s report.

The top 10 law schools, according to that report, are Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, New York University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia and Michigan tied for 8th, and Northwestern University.

All nine members of the present Supreme Court attended one of those top 10 law schools. Six (Scalia, Breyer, Roberts, Stephens, Kennedy and Souter) of them attended Harvard, one (Thomas) Yale, one (Ginsburg) Columbia, and one (O’Connor) Stanford. If newly nominated Judge Samuel Alito makes it to the High Court he will keep the string going since he graduated from Yale Law School.

Alito would also make the Catholic Religion dominant on the court for the first time in history with a total of five members. The others are: Chief Justice John Roberts, and justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia.

So, if the Pope’s bulls and encyclicles are taken literally by the Catholic justices, Rome could have more influence in American culture and politics than at any time in its history.

HARVARD INFLUENCE

Since Harvard plays such a critical role, in the court’s makeup as well as its direction the faculty there is important. Its members not only instruct future jurists but some also advise such important senators as Ted Kennedy in questioning, or harassing, court nominees.

Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard, probably has more influence there than anyone else on the law school’s faculty as well as the academic world and the press. He is anything but an originalist and appears to be out in left field in his views on the Constitution.

Robert Bork, the able jurist that leftists like Ted Kennedy smeared and defeated for a seat on the court, has much to say about Tribe. Bork claims that Tribe’s ‘’…writings are almost entirely an attempt to convert the Constitution to his political views.’’ (p200) The Tempting of America.

Judge Bork, a former law professor at Yale, also quotes Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, as saying Tribe’s views are that ‘’the Constitution is what we want it to be…and what we should want it to be is the charter of a radically egalitarian society.’’

Bork also charges (p206) that ‘’Tribe is in fact a constitutional revolutionary who would overturn the Constitution we have.’’ He added that Prof. Stanley Brubaker, professor of political science at Colgate University, concluded in a treatise that Tribe thinks the people should accord the Court authority to do whatever it thinks is right.

It appears that Tribe supports judicial rule over democratic rule. He also defends Roe v. Wade; supports unconventional sexual behavior and condemns laws that suppress obscenity.

When it comes to Harvard there’s an old joke about an alumnus of the school flaunting that status as a great accomplishment. The victim said ‘’I knew you were from Harvard because I saw your ring when you were picking your nose.’’

BREYER ET AL

And that brings us to another liberal from Harvard who has just written a book, Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution in which he disagrees with ‘’originalists’’ or ‘’constructionists,’’ such as Bork and Justice Antonin Scalia.

Breyer, a former Harvard professor himself who was appointed to his post by Bill Clinton, drew a hardy endorsement from Tribe whose views often coincide. Both apparently want to make their own constitution and have justices legislate from the bench.

In his book Breyer claims that the Constitution’s overreaching goal is to create a participatory democratic society. He said democracy only works if the average citizen participates. He doesn’t explain how the average citizen can participate if the Supreme Court usurps states rights to decide moral issues best left at the local level, such as it did in Roe v Wade and Lawrence v. Texas.

Breyer, one of the most liberal judges on the court, supports both the above decisions and voted in the Lawrence case upholding the constitutionality of sodomy. It was one of the most culture-altering cases in the legal history of the United States.

In a chapter on privacy, Breyer does not mention either Rove v. Wade or Lawrence v. Texas.

A new book by Texas Judge Janice Law claims the Lawrence case was staged by activist homosexuals. She pointed out that there had been no trial or stipulations to facts by the state or the defendants and that the police were invited into a house where the door was open on the pretext of a man firing a gun inside the house. No gun was found. No case of privacy was apparently involved. The man who called police was charged with calling in a false report. He was later killed.

Yet the case was called up by the High Court from Texas on a write of certiorari – a writ of a superior court to call up the records of an inferior court. It is the quickest way for the Supreme Court to receive a case from a lower court. What was so important about calling up a class C misdemeanor case involving two homosexuals participating in sodomy anyway?

The inference is that homosexuals wanted a test case before the Supreme Court, and they deceived to get one.

The case triggered the same-sex movement and opened the door for all other forms of illicit sexual practices. The learned judges apparently were duped by the activist homos. It makes one wonder how many other cases the aggressive gays and liberal groups such as the ACLU may have trumped up.

BREYER’S VIEWS

In his book, Breyer poses the question: ‘’Why should courts try to answer difficult federalism questions on the basis of logical deduction from text or precedent alone? Why not ask about the consequences of decision-making on the active liberty that federalism seeks to further?’’

Sounds like Rep. Tom Feeney (R.Fl.) was right when he stated, according to Jess Bravin in The Wall Street Journal, ‘’Nobody but a subjective, biased judge can determine what active liberty means.’’ Feeney, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said ‘’jurisprudential mysticism’’ would be a better title for Breyer’s book.

In a recent television appearance, Breyer again defended his reliance on foreign court decisions to interpret the U.S. Constitution. But he kept emphasizing that his consideration of foreign court decisions was not binding.

When he refers to getting constitutional guidance from decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, a Canadian court and even the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe, which Judge Bork calls ‘’risible,’’ it seems that he is getting more than academic and closer to strong reliance.

In the Texas sodomy case, which Breyer supported, Justice Anthony Kennedy cited the Europen Court of Human Rights as well as a committee that advised the British Parliament to repeal laws punishing homosexual conduct. Again, that sounds more than academic.

Breyer is a globalist or one-worlder who along with Justices O’Connor and Ginsburg belongs to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an offshoot of a British round Table elite group that one noted American historian claimed almost destroyed Western civilization as we know it.

Justice Ginsburg also has spoken out about the so-called Lone Ranger mentality of American judges and advocated more reliance on foreign courts. Her left-wing credentials have been flown in her position in various cases and her former positions as chief counsel for the ACLU and an activist for women’s rights.

Sen. Lindsey Graham attacked her in the confirmation hearings of Chief Justice John Roberts for allegedly supporting in her writings: the age consent for a woman to be 12; the legalization of prostitution; coed prisons for men and women; federal funding for abortion and polygamy as a possible constitutionally protected right.

Some far left newspapers such as the Washington Post try to defend Ginsburg’s positions as the Post did in a column by Ruth Marcus on 11/15/05. But trying to make her anything other than an anti-mainstream, activist is like the Clinton’s trying to make themselves centrists.

It takes more than just academic standing to make a good or outstanding jurist. What good is it to memorize the Encyclopedia Britannica if you reason like an adolescent or try to make the result fit preconceived ideas?

Then there is also the problem of over-education -- one educated beyond his or her capacity to comprehend resulting in a short circuit. Wonder if Breyer and Ginsburg are not candidates for this category?

Reminds one of the response of Winston Churchill when told one of his opponents was a child prodigy. ‘’He continued to be a child long after he ceased to be a prodigy,’’ said the cigar-chomping World War II leader.

Breyer didn’t break much new ground in his book as far as his judicial philosophy is concerned. He continues to think the Constitution is largely passé and does not need to be interpreted literally or for its original intent, except in a general overall sense of democratic direction. Judges are to determine what that is with some vague input from citizens.

In addition to Breyer and Kennedy, there also is another Harvard alumnus, David Souter, who turned out to be liberal and a disappointment to George H. Bush. We don’t know about Chief Justice John Roberts yet, but he appears to be a conservative and said he would not make law from the bench.

Souter and John Paul Stevens, a Northwestern University graduate, see themselves as moderates and clash often with their more conservative colleagues on key social issues.

THE RECUSAL QUESTION

The outspokenness of some of justices may be cause for them to recuse themselves from cases involving foreign and other matters or in cases in which the organizations they belong makes their impartiality questionable.

The positions of some justices, who have graduated from so-called top-rated law schools, makes one wonder if more representation is not needed from schools in the hinterland. Why should Harvard, Yale and some of the other big schools dominate the court anymore than others with different ethnic, geographic, religious, economic or academic backgrounds?

If we can’t get more reliance on the U. S. Constitution, less legislating from the bench and less catering to the left-wing elites, what does it matter which law school justices come from? They all study the same cases and the same history and development of the law, don’t they?

As in Chief justice Marshall’s case, it appears that the innate ability of the person and his desire to learn and apply himself is more important than the school he attends.

There’s another problem with the highly rated schools that turn out such products as bill and Hillary Clinton, the justices referred to and others whose reasoning is questionable. And that is ethics. Apparently the prestigious schools don’t teach or require courses in it in their win-at-all-costs curricula.

Miers’ attendance at SMU is now a mute matter since she has withdrawn her nomination, but it never should have been an issue in the first place. She couldn’t have done worse than Souter, Breyer, Kennedy, O’Connor, or Ginsburg.

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