GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

Ducking real ethics reform

Democrats are peacock proud over HR 6, the ethics-reform package recently passed by the House. Providing transparency and accountability in the application of earmarks is a key part of this bill, and it is essential to controlling spending. The Democrats assure us that they have hit upon the solution to the pork-spending problem, but, according to Citizens Against Government Waste’s Guide to Earmark Reform, there are a number of loopholes to be considered.

CAGW points out that “both the House and Senate definitions for ‘earmark’ fail to cover projects earmarked for more than one state.” In addition, “projects such as digitization of Department of Defense manuals, which helped land former Rep. Randy ”Duke“ Cunningham in jail, would not require sponsor identification because the funds were directed to DoD, not a specific company. In that situation, the company that eventually received funding for the project had bribed Cunningham.”

CAGW also notes that House rules “do not provide full public disclosure of all requests prior to consideration of legislation; such disclosure occurs after the legislation has passed and only on a limited basis.” Nor does the House bill identify lobbyists tied to particular earmarks, place limits on pork spending or require the listing of earmarks in the text of bills as well as the conference report. Until all these issues are addressed, ethics reform is far from a done deal.

Will pro-life Democrats hold the line?

Hot off the campaign trail, Congressional Democrats wasted no time taking legislative aim against human life. Directly after convening, Democrats introduced their latest attempt to increase federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research (SCR). Yet, as national debate swirls around HR 3, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, Democrats have found their enemies to be members of their own household.

Among Congressional newcomers are six Democrats who campaigned against SCR: Senator Bob Casey (PA) and Reps. Heath Shuler (NC), Joe Donnelly (IN), Brad Ellsworth (IN), Charlie Wilson (OH) and Chris Carney (PA). When the bill came to a vote yesterday, four of the five House Members stood their ground; only Carney yielded to party pressure. True to his promise, Donnelly “vot[ed his] conscience and the convictions of many of [his] constituents,” and Ellsworth unapologetically stated, “The destruction of human embryos, regardless of the noble goals of stem-cell researchers, is too high a price.” While the measure passed 253-174, it fell far short of the 290-vote threshold needed to override President Bush’s assured veto.

Will Democrat dissent prove the unforgivable sin of the 110th Congress? The Party of Five will undoubtedly face pressure from fellow Democrats for bucking politics in favor of life. Equally certain, however, is that in punishing their own, Democrats will expose their rhetorical mantra of tolerance for what it really is.

Hundred hours hoopla continues

Aside from ethics “reform” and a vote for the destruction of human embryos, two other major initiatives of San Fran Nan Pelosi’s “First Hundred Hours” agenda cleared the House floor this week.

The minimum-wage bill passed 315-116, calling for a $2.10 raise over the next two years. The Senate will consider its version later this month, which will include a series of tax breaks for small businesses to offset the cost of implementing the increase—in other words, a bone to get Senate moderates to play along. For their part, House Demos don’t feel the need to help small business, but the final bill is unlikely to survive without some form of relief.

Of note, the minimum-wage hike specifically exempts a major tuna company, StarKist Tuna, in San Fran Nan’s home district from implementing the pay increases—certainly nothing fishy about that in this, the most ethical of Congresses…

Then there is Pelosi’s PAYGO initiative, also introduced this week. In theory, PAYGO seems like a good way to control spending: Any increase in spending must be offset by a decrease in spending in another area, thus keeping overall government spending at a constant level. Unfortunately, the Nancy Pelosi version of PAYGO exempts any existing entitlement from budget cuts, which, coincidentally, is where the bulk of government spending is concentrated. What’s more, under Pelosi’s plan, any new tax cuts would have to be offset by tax hikes in other areas, but tax hikes do not need to be offset by tax cuts. How convenient. The reality of PAYGO, then, is that spending can continue to rise as long as taxes rise in tandem. Sounds like old-fashion governance from the Left.

Bush buckles on judgeships

President Bush pulled three nominees for the federal appeals court from consideration this week, avoiding a showdown with Senate Democrats who vowed to oppose them. William Haynes II, William Myers III and Terrence Boyle had been left in confirmation limbo by obstructionist Democrats in the last Congress, and, after the election, the President promised to resubmit their names this year. Why the change of heart? Perhaps the administration felt there was not sufficient political capital to spend on what would have been a bruising fight. Maybe the President wanted to send a signal of bipartisanship to the new rulers in the Senate. Either way, it’s a loss.

Before November’s elections, The Patriot argued that the President’s commitment to appointing constitutional constructionists to federal benches was the best case for keeping the Senate in Republican hands. The conservative base would have been reinvigorated by such a fight, and it would have been a great opportunity to prove once again just how off base liberals are when it comes to the judiciary and their philosophy of a “living Constitution”.

As it stands now, President Bush has squandered an opportunity to put qualified judges on the federal bench and protect the Constitution from further tampering. Arguably, placing conservative justices on federal benches is President Bush’s only lasting positive legacy, at least domestically. Now, even that seems to be in doubt.

So much for open and honest

Nancy Pelosi has been promising us for months that she will run “the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.” One might logically conclude that allowing C-Span better access would be part of the bargain. One would be wrong. Pelosi denied C-Span’s request to place more cameras in the House chamber for “reaction shots” during debates. C-Span argued that allowing only shots of lawmakers speaking on the floor or the presiding officer “does a disservice to the institution and to the public.” Pelosi pontificated in response, “I believe the dignity and decorum of the United States House of Representatives are best preserved by maintaining the current system of televised proceedings.” “Dignity and decorum”? At least Madame Speaker has a sense of humor.

NATIONAL SECURITY

House rushes 9/11 recommendations package

Eager to prove their homeland-security credentials, House Democrats by a vote of 299-128 passed a bill to beef up the recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission. Before they crack open the champagne and toast yet another 100-Hour political victory, Speaker Pelosi and her liberal friends ought to consider just how many problems their new bill will create.

The ambitious package calls for better targeting of Homeland Security funding to high-risk terrorist targets such as New York and Los Angeles and improved emergency communications. All well and good. However, the offhand suggestion of increased oversight of civil liberties and security spending threatens to create more bureaucracy in a system that needs much less. Even the busybody 9/11 Commission felt there were too many cooks in the kitchen.

The most brazenly unrealistic piece of this bill, though, is the demand that all U.S.-bound cargo be inspected and sealed at overseas ports before arriving on American shores. There are more than 700 ports worldwide that ship some 11-million pieces of cargo to the United States each year. Good luck. There’s simply no way that current screening and radiation-detection technology can handle such volume. Many billions of dollars would be required to fund such an initiative, and Speaker Pelosi expects the cost to be shared by the shippers and the companies that import and export these goods. Again, good luck. That cost will, of course, be passed on to the consumer. Higher-priced goods will lead to lower sales and fewer jobs, and before you know it, America’s economy, as well as the economies of our international trading partners, will likely go into a tailspin.

The 9/11 Commission report, the guidebook for the Democrats’ initiative, doesn’t go as far as recommending the inspection of all inbound cargo. What it does state is that any new security measure must be carefully weighed against the cost and benefit of alternatives, which in this case would be bomb-proof shipping containers and targeted inspections. The irony of this legislation is that in an effort to appear tough on security issues, Democrats have proven that they are ignorant about the true nature of the threat. They may have scored some political points with their supporters, but their rhetoric won’t make us safer.

The White House has expressed displeasure with the House bill and was careful to note that Homeland Security is currently focusing its inspection efforts on cargo from countries with a history of terrorist infiltration or from companies which arouse suspicion. Let’s just hope that displeasure translates into a veto.

Al-Qa’ida hit hard in Somalia

Payback is… memorable, especially when it comes courtesy of American AC-130 gun ships. With Jihadis in Somalia on the run from Ethiopian forces, the U.S. military seized the opportunity to provide some long-delayed return fire. According to Ethiopian officials, a U.S. air strike on Monday killed Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a senior al-Qa’ida leader and mastermind of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, though U.S. intelligence reports later in the week denied this. Nevertheless, Monday’s air strike killed as many as a dozen al-Qa’ida fighters and was the first open U.S. military operation in Somalia since the 1993 “Blackhawk Down” incident.

The strikes continued during the week, with at least four attacks on Wednesday around the city of Ras Kamboni on the Somali coast. The Pentagon has moved the Eisenhower Carrier Task Force to the region, and Somalia’s deputy prime minister has asked for U.S. Special Forces to assist in capturing the last remaining Jihadis, although, reportedly, a small special-ops team in Somalia is already assisting the Ethiopians and guiding the air strikes. This operation offers an excellent lesson on how to deal with Jihadis: Attack them aggressively and relentlessly and kill them whenever and wherever they are found. Consider it a template for future action.

Illegal immigration plagues local communities

The Justice Department released audit data this week showing that some illegal aliens caught and released have been re-arrested as many as six times. A sampling of 100 illegals arrested by local or state authorities in 2004 revealed that 73 were collectively arrested 429 times on 878 charges—everything from traffic violations to drug charges to robbery and assault. The audit also indicated that 262,105 aliens were arrested, charged with a crime (other than entering the U.S. illegally) and released, but it gave no data on how many had been re-arrested. Enforcement policy differs among states and local jurisdictions with many having “sanctuary” policies that do not comport with the requirements of the State Criminal Assistance Program from which they receive federal dollars. San Francisco and the state of Oregon, despite receiving $1.1 million and $3.4 million respectively for the costs of dealing with illegals, both have sanctuary laws prohibiting authorities from enforcing immigration law.

The ACLU is also doing its best to exacerbate the problem, filing suit this week against the Rhode Island State Police, claiming that—horrors!—racial profiling was used against 14 Guatemalans during a traffic stop last July. According to the ACLU, Rhode Island State Troopers violated the constitutional rights of the Guatemalans, who are not even U.S. citizens. The troopers made a simple request: Show some identification. When only the driver could speak English, proof of citizenship was requested. That sounds like a reasonable request here in our humble shop, even if the Fourth Amendment applied.

The sad, silent case of Sandy Berger

Former national-security advisor and current common criminal Sandy Berger must be blessed. He deliberately stole classified documents, destroyed them, then lied to investigators about it, but received only a $50,000 fine and no jail time. The lefty media barely reported his story, and it’s almost as if his heinous acts never took place.

Berger smuggled documents out of the National Archives in his socks during the lead-up to the 9/11 Commission hearings in 2004, cut them up with a pair of scissors, then hid them under a trailer at a nearby construction site. Although there has been little discussion about what the documents were, they must have been compromising in some way to the Clinton administration’s record on terrorism. Why else destroy them? However, Berger’s defense, which basically amounted to “I didn’t know what I was doing,” was good enough for the judge and the liberal media. How can a national-security advisor not have a clue as to how classified documents should be handled?

To illustrate further the case of liberal bias and favoritism in the media, consider the amount of coverage Berger’s case received from the Washington Post and the New York Times, where all the news is printed to fit. Only one front-page story on Berger was ever published by either paper. Details of the inspector general’s report on Berger’s lame excuses for committing the crime (“fatigue and poor judgment”) only managed to find their way onto page seven of the Post. The Times was able to squeeze it in on page 36.

Apparently the editors felt that Bill Clinton’s national-security advisor stealing and destroying classified documents just prior to his testimony before the 9/11 Commission wasn’t terribly newsworthy. On the other hand, when it came to covering the ridiculous allegations of Lyin’ Joe Wilson and “secret agent” Valerie Plame, these newspapers barely had enough ink.

Murtha moves to close Gitmo prison

Rep. John Murtha announced that he will hold hearings to close the terrorist-detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No date has been set yet, but Murtha, the unindicted ABSCAM co-conspirator who heads the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee in Nancy Pelosi’s “most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history,” has threatened to cut funding to the facility. Apparently, Fightin’ Jack hasn’t thought far enough ahead about what to do with the 400 terrorist suspects that are already there. Perhaps they could be shipped to his Pennsylvania district where he can care for them personally, since he obviously believes the military’s treatment of these prisoners is more of a threat to their rights than they are a threat to our lives.

BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Feds raise royalty on Gulf oil

Crude-oil prices reached a high of $71.45 per barrel in August 2006 but as of this month have tapered off to around $52 per barrel—a drop of more than 30 percent. Over that same period, the nationwide average at the pump reached a high of $3.04 per gallon for regular in August 2006, and now comes in at an average of $2.31 per gallon—also a drop of better than 30 percent. So, instances of price gouging notwithstanding, the theory that prices at the pump don’t fall as quickly as crude-oil prices may not stand up to scrutiny after all.

Who knows if this will last, though, as the Bush administration has announced plans to raise royalty payments received by the federal government on oil and natural gas extracted from the Gulf of Mexico. Currently, the royalty extracted by the government is the monetary equivalent of one barrel out of every eight. Under the new rules, that royalty would increase to one barrel out of six—quite a jump.

According to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who announced the move, the new rate will boost federal royalties by $4.5 billion over the next 20 years. That remains to be seen, as oil companies are likely to respond with lower bids on drilling rights in the Gulf, which could result in a net loss for the government and higher prices at the pump for consumers. This sounds suspiciously like appeasement to congressional Democrats from an administration choosing ever fewer battles to fight. The administration did, however, throw a bone to producers, opening a five-million-acre tract in the Gulf and another in Bristol Bay, off Alaska, but that won’t offset the effect of the new royalty. Politics and bottom lines, not America’s energy security, is the message here.

California’s health-care nightmare

Socialism is alive and well in California with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new $12-billion healthcare plan to require health insurance for every state resident, including illegal aliens. Imitating Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s nationalization of certain industries, Schwarzenegger would require California insurers to cover all comers, regardless of occupation or medical condition, and allocate 85 percent of their profits to government-mandated spending.

Medical providers must also pay up to a four-percent “coverage dividend” to a state-insurance fund that sells coverage to the state’s uninsured patients (i.e., paying the state to cover Medicaid patients). Lastly, a measure likely to be forbidden by federal ERISA and HIPAA pre-emption would require employers with ten or more workers to provide health insurance or pay a four-percent tax on all wages covered by Social Security. (The governor was silent on whether the state will issue future diktats to industries requiring them to provide their products and services for free as well.) Only one thing is certain to be accomplished by the governor’s plan: Other states will benefit from the exodus of jobs fleeing California’s newly socialized business climate.

No Child Left Behind turns five

Five years ago, President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law. Today, as we look back, little progress can be seen despite billions of dollars spent. Now, the President is pushing for the Act’s renewal, though possibly not at the funding levels demanded by the likes of Teddy Kennedy, who claims the Act was under-funded by some $50 billion. Typical liberal solution: “Throw more money at the problem.”

We’re not at all surprised at the failure of NCLB. The Act did succeed in some reforms—namely in bringing more accountability to schools, though even that can be skirted. However, simply throwing more money at government schools has never returned the desired results. Furthermore, and most important, NCLB is patently unconstitutional. The Constitution does not empower the federal government to have any role whatsoever in education, no matter how well intentioned or funded. Real reform would entail dismantling the Department of Education and returning all control of education to the state level and/or private sector. Unfortunately, as Ronald Reagan once noted, “The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.”

CULTURE

Walking in a winter warmer land

“People should be concerned about what we are doing to the climate,” says Jay Lawrimore of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Burning of fossil fuels is causing an increase in greenhouse gases, and there’s a broad scientific consensus that [it] is producing climate change.” (The term “scientific consensus,” in this case, means that because the last nine years have been warmer than normal, Algore must be right.) Global warming is blamed for not only the warmer-than-average December we just experienced, but also a broken ice sheet in Canada, a decline in the Hudson Bay polar bear population and even snow in the Rockies!

Okay, everybody freeze. The folks over at AccuWeather, home to the largest number of forecast meteorologists in the world, are saying that the rest of our winter might be a little colder. “Those who think that winter 2006-2007 is going to remain mild are in for a shock,” said Chief Long-Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi. “There are indications that this winter could parallel severe winters of the past… [Y]ou can be sure that by the end of the month, when those in the Northeast are shoveling out their driveways and sidewalks, the mild weather we’re experiencing now will be a distant memory.” So, while it’s never a bad idea to prepare your soul for the end of the world, we predict that man won’t affect that end one way or the other.

Top ten conservative colleges

Young America’s Foundation recently released its annual rankings of the best conservative colleges in the country. Though not a college-rating organization, YAF analyzes which colleges and universities offer the best “conservative experience” to provide an alternative source of information for high-school students getting ready to choose a destination. These ten institutions “proclaim, through their mission and programs, a dedication to discovering, maintaining and strengthening the conservative values of their students.” These colleges do their best to repudiate the typical liberal drivel that one finds at state universities by returning to reason and logic. The list: Christendom College, College of the Ozarks, Franciscan University, Grove City College, Harding University, Hillsdale College, Indiana Wesleyan, Liberty University, St. Vincent College and Thomas Aquinas College. What, no Ivy League?

From the ‘village academic curriculum’

On the other side of the coin, Young America’s Foundation also released its “Dirty Dozen” of the “most bizarre and politically correct college courses” in the nation. With so many college students learning so little, what do universities come up with to teach? YAF points out that, “[a]s college costs soar through the roof—averaging above $31,000 a year for tuition, room and board—today’s college students study adultery, the male genitalia and Native American feminism.” Here are a few more examples: Amherst College in Massachusetts offers “Taking Marx Seriously: ‘Should Marx be Given Another Chance?”’ The obvious answer for students seeking an ‘A’ is “Yes,” since Uncle Joe, Mao and Fidel have simply “misapplied” Marxist theory. (We’re guessing that this misapplication accounts for the estimated 100-million people who died under Marxism during the previous century.) Moving on, Johns Hopkins University offers “Mail Order Brides: Understanding the Philippines in Southeast Asian Context,” which presumably includes a catalogue and a credit card for “teaching” purposes. Finally, Occidental College’s “The Phallus” took YAF’s top “award” for most bizarre. We’ll simply let the reader interpret that one.

And last…

In the much-anticipated BCS College Football Championship game Monday night, two key electoral states squared off: Ohio and Florida. We suppose that in order to stay “in touch” with the voting fans in those states, congressional Democrats decided to take the day off—which means they couldn’t even keep their promise of a five-day workweek for five whole days. Even veteran politico Dick Morris couldn’t believe it: “[This is] a blunt metaphor for how genuinely out of touch the members of Congress really are. How many other Americans do you suppose were given the same perk? A day off because of an evening football game?… What kind of message is the House leadership sending? Is it that they don’t get how bad it looks, or that they don’t care?” In short, yes.

Upon being questioned for their backtracking, one explanation floated by Demo aides was—you guessed it—to blame Republicans! They claim that House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio wanted to attend the game and requested the day off. Are we really supposed to believe that the Democrats would be so courteous to a Republican? In fact, we’re even beginning to doubt that Democrats will keep some of their other promises—they’ve always been SO trustworthy…

Lex et Libertas—Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for the editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families, especially those of our fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who have died in defense of American liberty while prosecuting the war with Jihadistan.)