THE FOUNDATION: CHARACTER

“In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate - look to his character.” —Noah Webster

INSIGHT

“Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office seeking.” —Rutherford B. Hayes

“There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts.” —Voltaire

“I should like to adopt political doctrines that would live longer than my dog.” —James Garfield

“A man to be a sound politician and in any degree useful to the country must be governed by higher and steadier considerations than those of personal sympathy and private regard.” —Martin Van Buren

EDITORIAL EXEGESIS

“Campaign doublespeak can sometimes be so perfectly inverse to the truth that it should not pass without marvel from at least somebody… [John Edwards], the onetime Democratic senator from North Carolina with the $400 haircut announced to fanfare that he is ‘suspending his campaign’ to conduct a poverty tour of rural America, with a stated aim of examining and calling attention to poverty in the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia and the Rust Belt. Mr. Edwards is not actually ‘suspending’ anything. It turns out that the ‘suspension’ is to last a mere three days, in which period Mr. Edwards will cover eight states and 12 cities in this purported ‘Road to One America.’… That sounds to us just like the torrid pace of a presidential campaign. Mr. Edwards won’t have much time to listen to the voices of poverty, that much is for sure. Also sure are the echoes of Robert F. Kennedy’s celebrated tour of earlier poverty. But no, there’s nothing here about a ‘campaign.’ The only thing suspended is Mr. Edwards’ willingness to answer questions about his personal wealth, given his fiery affection for populism. Surely it’s only coincidental that the tour sounds and smells like the leg of a campaign, that ‘tours’ work wonders for some campaigns and that Mr. Edwards now seeks something to cure a sincerity deficit. Mr. Edwards will be lucky if this tour doesn’t make that deficit worse.” —The Washington Times

UPRIGHT

“The Islamists believe we can’t win; so does The New York Times. But it falls to the American people to decide the issue.” —Victor Davis Hanson ++ “We are seeking to create order in Iraq, while al-Qa’ida seeks to create disorder. It is orders of magnitude easier to create chaos than it is to create order. That doesn’t mean it is impossible. But it will require patience and above all, will.” —Mona Charen ++ “How the threat of a resurgent al-Qa’ida is ameliorated by a hasty U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, no Democrat, liberal Republican or member of the media has yet explained.” —Oliver North

“No one knows in his gut that the guy he supports will do any good. But at least you can oppose with enthusiasm and passion the guy you feel in your gut will cause more trouble than is needed! This is what happens when the pickings are slim: The greatest passion gets funneled into opposition.” —Peggy Noonan

“[Michael Moore] is practically the Leni Riefenstahl of socialism. Anyone in a country with government-provided health insurance is portrayed as tripping through daisies to the hospital, where everything is free and the care is perfect. America, in contrast, is a vista of unrelieved gloom. Moore is adept at the propagandist’s art—keep it simple and keep it dishonest.” —Rich Lowry

“Before we panic about ‘global warming,’ we should take a look at six-day weather forecasts and see how much they change during those six days—quite aside from how much they differ from what the weather actually turns out to be.” —Thomas Sowell

“Our political leaders failed to grasp that we consider citizenship a privilege, not a political chip to curry favor with Hispanic voters.” —Dick Yarbrough

DEZINFORMATSIA

Extreme Bush hating: “It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.” —The New York Times ++ “Why doesn’t Nancy Pelosi see it her duty to take on at least the impeachment hearings that you say would educate the public?” —PBS’s Bill Moyers

Nailing it: “I’ve always really liked Katie’s work. I think she does a good job and she’s a good journalist, but I think, by trying to put her into a completely different format, she’s gone from being sort of an exuberant presence to someone who looks like they’ve been kidnapped and drugged and are making a hostage tape.” —former CBS News producer Mary “fraudulent documents” Mapes on Katie Couric

Who’s painting?: “O.K., it’s not news that Mr. Bush has no empathy for people less fortunate than himself. But his willful ignorance here is part of a larger picture: by and large, opponents of universal healthcare paint a glowing portrait of the American system that bears as little resemblance to reality as the scare stories they tell about health care in France, Britain, and Canada.” —former Enron advisor Paul Krugman in The New York Times

Oh please: “Agree with him or not, you have to respect [Jimmy Carter] for sticking to his principles.” —CBS’s Katie Couric

No wonder they laughed: “You know, I wanted to sit on a jury once and I was taken off the jury. And the judge said to me, ‘Can, you know, can you tell the truth and be fair?’ And I said, ‘That’s what journalists do.’ And everybody in the courtroom laughed. It was the most hurtful moment I think I’ve ever had.” —ABC’s Diane Sawyer

Newspulper Headlines: Good Luck With That: “Bush Aid Plan Pushes Peaceful, Democratic Palestine” —Boston Herald

Watergate Was Bush’s Fault Too!: “Rove Strategy Paper Found in Nixon Archive” —The New York Times

Never Bring a Knife to a Gunfight: “India Seen Sticking to Guns at U.S. Nuclear Talks” —Reuters

That’s a Pretty Good Job for a Fish: “Grouper to Serve as Online Talent Agency” —Associated Press

News You Can Use: “Automatic Toilet Tissue Dispenser Ready” —Associated Press

Bottom Story of the Day: “Palestinians Throw Rocks at Israeli Car” —The Jerusalem Post (Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

THE DEMO-GOGUES

This week’s “Gratuitous Nazi Reference” Award: “It’s almost like the Reichstag fire… After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.” —Rep. Keith Ellison comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler

The BIG Lie: “There’s no support for this war no matter where you go. It’s all over.” —Rep. Charlie Rangel ++ Re: Rangel: “The war is not lost in Iraq. In fact, now American and Iraqi security forces are winning. The enemy is on the run in Iraq. But here in Congress, in Washington, we seem to be or some members seem to be on the run, chased, I fear, by public opinion polls.” —Sen. Joe Lieberman ++ That’s the spirit: “We’re not going to be able to sustain 160,000 troops for another year there, number one. You’re going to see more than 10 Republicans—I said back in January, that you’re going to see 17 to 18 Republicans leaving the president by mid to late fall. We’re going to be able to override his veto… There’s going to be drawing down. The civil war is going to get worse. And Iraq is not going to split into three parts. It’s going to splinter into many parts.” —Joe Biden

This week’s “Non Compos Mentis” Award: “…Uh, because there is such respect for our troops now. Uh, that was not necessarily the case all the time back then when I was in the military. Certainly, all the intercourse that I had as a military officer, uh, was the best. But that was not the case for a lot of our returning soldiers.” —Sen. Bill Nelson

Purveyors of classism: “[N]ow that I’m a millionaire, I get more help from the federal government than anybody. I think it’s inconsistent with the common good to give me huge tax cuts.” —Bill Clinton, who might consider a donation to the government if he feels that bad about it

VILLAGE IDIOTS

Friendly fire: “[S]ometimes you feel you have to behave as a man and not talk about women’s issues. I’m sympathetic—[Hillary Clinton] wants to be commander in chief. But she’s just not as vocal a women’s advocate as I want to see. John is.” —Elizabeth Edwards

Peaceful protest?: “Right now, I could kill George Bush. No, I don’t mean that. How could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that.” —Nobel Peace Prize laureate Betty Williams

For the children: “In some ways, it gets to the fundamentals of the American society, namely what… are the shortcomings of that [American] ideology? I would argue that to take good care of its children is not part of that ideology.” —John Komlos, an economic historian at the University of Munich on why Americans are not the tallest people in the world any longer

Conspiracy theories: “Ask yourself: Would a government that has lied us into two wars and is working to lie us into an attack on Iran shrink from staging ‘terrorist’ attacks in order to remove opposition to its agenda?” —Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration

From the religion of warming: “Everything we need to do, the science on global warming is settled, 2,500 scientists and the IPPC report, the top meteorologists and climate scientists from around the world have announced the global consensus that global warming exists, that we are causing it, and that its impacts are going to be catastrophic. You don’t need that science, though. All you need to do is walk outside. I just came back from the Arctic. The Arctic is melting. It is catastrophic.”—Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who should have stayed in the Arctic

SHORT CUTS

“For all intents and purposes, McCain’s campaign is over. The physicians have pulled up the sheet; the executors of the estate are taking over.” —Charlie Cook

“Next month, the Democratic presidential candidates… will participate in the first ever debate focused entirely on gay issues. Yeah, apparently in the gay debate when one candidate disagrees with another, they’ll be required to begin their rebuttal with ‘Girlfriend, please!”’ —Conan O’Brien

“Congress’s latest move, reported by Reuters: ‘The U.S. Senate on Friday voted to double the bounty on Osama bin Laden to $50 million and require President George W. Bush to refocus on capturing him after reports al Qaeda is gaining strength.’ If $50 million isn’t enough, maybe they can pass legislation offering a million billion trillion zillion squillion dollars.” —James Taranto

“When a conservative appears on talk radio, liberals cry for the Fairness Doctrine. Seventy-five free hours for Archbishop Gore’s Church of Climate Change? Not a peep.” —Investor’s Business Daily ++ “For the brave few who stuck with all 174 hours of Live Al, there was something oddly touching about seeing rock gazillionaires who’d flown in by private jet tell Joe Schmoe all the stuff he doesn’t need. Your own car? A washer and dryer? Ha! Why can’t you take the bus and beat your underwear on the rocks down by the river with the native women all morning long?” —Mark Steyn

Jay Leno: Another scorching day. They say this heat is either due to global warming or because it’s July. They are not quite sure. … Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff said that he had a gut feeling that there would be another terrorist attack this summer. Now is that reliable? How do we know it’s not just bad clams? It’s like, “False alarm. It was Long John Silver, we’re gonna be fine.” … Former President Bill Clinton said he is backing his wife because she is the most qualified and not be cause of any spousal obligation. And believe me, if there’s one guy who’s not swayed by spousal obligation, it’s Bill Clinton. … Bill Clinton is about to publish a new book called “Giving.” “Giving?” Shouldn’t “Getting” be the name of his new book? … Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama have all agreed to appear at the first-ever gay debate. The whole debate will only deal with gay issues. Like gay marriage and things like that… Each candidate has an appeal for gay voters. I mean, Barack Obama knows what it’s like to face intolerance; John Edwards gets $400 haircuts; and Hillary is really in need of a makeover. … John Edwards said today that he has always supported gay rights. Edwards said the only problem he’s ever had with gays is that they charge too much for a haircut. … Senator Ted Kennedy reported for jury duty this week, but was dismissed because of a conflict of interest. Turns out all 15 trials that day involved other Kennedys.

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