GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

News from the Swamp: A helping hand?

In the Executive Branch: The Bush administration reached an agreement Wednesday with the mortgage industry regarding adjustable interest rates on sub-prime mortgages. The deal will insulate more than one million homeowners who financed using sub-prime loans from rising interest rates for the next five years. Democrats are, of course, assaulting the President for not going far enough—the voluntary plan excludes those whose loans are delinquent, whose introductory rates expire before 1 January, and those that lenders determine make enough money to afford higher payments. Conservatives, on the other hand, are hitting the President from the other side: Why the interference? As we argued last week, the market is already punishing those who made unwise loans; government meddling, however well intentioned, often ends up making things worse. Then again, this is not a government bail out, a significant fact to be thankful for.

Judicial Benchmarks: Boehner v. McDermott

The U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal this week to review the case between House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) brought an end to the 11-year legal battle between the two congressmen. This farce began in 1996 when McDermott, one of Congress’s most liberal members, leaked to the press contents of a tape-recorded meeting among House Republicans over then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s alleged “ethics violations.” McDermott desperately clung to his First Amendment rights in violating the meeting’s confidentiality, but the DC Circuit Court of Appeals saw things differently. McDermott refused to admit wrongdoing and took the case to the nation’s highest court, which was apparently confident enough in the DC court’s opinion to decline a review. Now McDermott must pay Boehner $60,000 in damages and his $800,000 legal tab. McDermott still contends that he made the right decision, albeit an expensive one.

New & notable legislation

In the House: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has gathered congressional Democrats into consensus on a 40-percent increase in federal fuel-efficiency requirement to 35 miles per gallon for all cars and light trucks (SUVs included) by 2020. Even Rep. John Dingell, Michigan Democrat and defender of his state’s auto industry, agreed, saying, “We have achieved consensus on several provisions that provide critical environmental safeguards without jeopardizing American jobs.” In order to get the measure through the Senate—and a signature from President George W. Bush—Democrats are expected to drop their proposed $16 billion in new taxes on the oil industry.

The House passed 409-2 the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act, or SAFE Act, which is the latest effort to crack down on sex offenders. Sponsored by Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX), it will require businesses offering an open Wi-Fi connection to report illegal images (such as explicit images of children), or face a fine of up to $300,000.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) introduced the Securing Medicare and Retirement for Tomorrow Act (SMART Act, H.R. 4181). The bill targets Social Security and Medicare insolvency by shifting over the next 42 years to a system of personal retirement and healthcare accounts.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) plans to introduce the Consumer Freedom of Choice in Cable Act to repeal the current “70/70” provision that allows the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to further regulate cable television when certain triggers are met.

Mercifully, House and Senate negotiators have dropped Ted Kennedy’s “hate-crimes” legislation from the defense bill, acknowledging that if it passed, it would never get President Bush’s signature.

In the Senate: The Environment and Public Works Committee passed a bill to the floor to combat global warming by imposing greenhouse-gas caps, which The Washington Times estimates will cost Americans $4 trillion to $6 trillion over 40 years. Incidentally, during that debate in Washington, DC, it was snowing.

The Senate passed 88-5 an AMT patch for next year, waiving PAYGO rules that require the $50-million “cost” of the relief to be offset by another tax hike, or (cue laughter) spending cuts. The five “No” votes for tax relief were, of course, Democrats.

Sen. John Kyl won election to Trent Lott’s former post as minority whip; moving into the slot Kyl left as Republican Conference chairman will be Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, who bested the more stalwart conservative newcomer from North Carolina, Sen. Richard Burr.

From the Left: Hillary’s hostage drama

Thankfully, last week’s brief hostage drama at the Clinton campaign office in Rochester, New Hampshire, ended peacefully. As it turns out, the perpetrator was no stranger to run-ins with the law and had a documented history of mental illness, criminal mischief and alcoholism. However, to hear the Associated (with the Left) Press tell the story, if it weren’t for Hillary, this event could have ended tragically.

Clinton was in Virginia for a DNC event when the story broke. According to the AP, she spent the entire time the crisis was unfolding on the phone with local, state and federal authorities and trying to comfort the families of the hostages. The reporter gushed, “When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis. The image, broadcast just as the network news began, conveyed the message a thousand town hall meetings and campaign commercials strive for—namely, that the Democratic [sic] presidential contender can face disorder in a most orderly manner.” Come now—“regal-looking?” And then the starry-eyed reporter asked Hillary for her autograph.

There can be no humor in events such as this, but the idea that Clinton had any hand whatsoever in its peaceful unfolding is ridiculous. She played no role in the negotiations with the suspect, had no part in the deployment of law enforcement to the scene, and made no decisions about how to bring the drama to an end. On the other hand, the real heroes of this event, the law-enforcement officers and the hostages themselves, received scant attention in the media.

Another crooked Clinton donor

Bill Clinton had to cancel a fundraiser for his wife’s presidential campaign at the Mississippi home of Super Heavyweight litigator Dickie Scruggs after Scruggs was indicted for conspiring to bribe a judge for $50,000. Scruggs, a longtime supporter of all causes Clinton (a red flag in itself), has been linked to some of the largest class action settlements in American history, including the shakedown of Big Tobacco and the asbestos litigation wave, some of which was based on utterly dubious evidence. Scruggs’s target as of late has been insurance companies involved in Hurricane Katrina payouts. Looking back at Scruggs’s methodology—which includes rewarding people for stealing documents from their employers to aid him in his cases—it’s no surprise that he’s a Friend of Bill and Hillary. If Scruggs manages to slip away from this bribery charge, it’s likely he will slide back into the Clinton fold.

Campaign watch: Romney on Mormonism

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave a speech Thursday at the George Bush Library in Texas called “Faith in America,” a la John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on his Catholicism. Romney argued that his own Mormon beliefs shouldn’t deter voters from supporting him. Echoing Kennedy, he said, “No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith.” Until now, Romney has tried to avoid a discussion of his religious beliefs, and the press and his opponents have been more interested in his flip-flops on key conservative issues. However, fellow Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, has been moving up in the polls and is forcing Romney to face the religion issue.

Huckabee’s plain-talking style and his openness about being a Christian leader has played a role in his recent surge in Iowa, where conservatives are likely to feel more comfortable with him than a Massachusetts Mormon who has been on both sides of important issues like same-sex marriage and abortion. Recent nationwide polling indicates that a large minority of Americans would not vote for a Mormon for president, and with Thursday’s address Romney confronted the issue—the current mainstream views of Mormonism—head-on, hoping to convert skeptical voters. We will know in a few weeks if his speech made any difference.

NATIONAL SECURITY

The NIE on Iran’s nuclear program

The U.S. intelligence community on Monday released the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, finding that although Iran did have a nuclear-weapons program in the past, it was halted in 2003, not long after the U.S. offensive in Iraq commenced. Coincidence? Readers might have come away from the various newspaper and Internet articles believing that the problem of Iran’s nuclear program has ended (it hasn’t) and that Iran is now in the clear as far as the U.S. and the UN Security Council are concerned (it isn’t). This conclusion immediately drew calls, especially from President Bush’s detractors, for the U.S. to change its Iran policy, which has been to isolate Tehran and push for international sanctions. For their part, the Bush administration said they planned to maintain the current policy and demanded that Tehran detail its previous weapons program, but there is growing concern that the NIE will indeed weaken resolve to deal with Iran.

Iran’s President Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad, naturally called the report a “victory” for Iran, which continues to enrich uranium (how is that not related to nuclear-weapons development?), while not allowing international access to its nuclear sites. Furthermore, Israel rejected the NIE, contending that Iran has resumed its weapons program with the intention of building a nuclear bomb.

As The Patriot has noted before, once Iran masters centrifuge enrichment, it is a small and simple step to go from five-percent enriched to 95-percent enriched, the only difference being the greater time required to produce a given amount of 95-percent-enriched uranium. Iran could amass low-enriched uranium—perfectly legal within the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty—until it has a stockpile sufficient to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for several warheads. At the same time, Iran could resume covert weapons development, or acquire a warhead design from abroad. China has special relevance in this scenario. Once enough low-enriched uranium is on hand, Iran could either circumvent international monitoring or withdraw from the NPT altogether and rush to produce weapons-grade uranium.

This “breakout” capability will remain a threat as long as Iran continues to obstruct the IAEA in its efforts to monitor Iran’s nuclear program. This has always been at the heart of the dispute between Iran and the UN. Note that we didn’t say “between Iran and the United States.” Almost entirely absent from the media reports is the fact that the U.S. is not alone in confronting Iran’s nuclear program, no matter how much The New York Times (“A Blow To Bush’s Iran Policy”) might wish it were so. The other permanent members of the UN Security Council—Britain, France, China and Russia, as well as Germany—all at some point in the last four years have supported the effort to coerce Iran into NPT compliance.

We do not make light of the NIE’s judgment. It is indeed a highly significant finding, based on newly acquired intelligence. But intelligence is always an art involving known unknowns (we know that we don’t have certain information) and unknown unknowns (we don’t know that an issue exists at all). Given how much we have learned in the last seven years regarding what we didn’t know about Iran’s nuclear program, how much might we not know today? Keep your eyes on this issue in the coming weeks as the Left asserts that Iran is no longer a problem.

Warfront with Jihadistan: The moving target

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been counting on support from her man on the case, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), when it comes to thwarting the U.S. war effort in Iraq. It was Fightin’ John, after all, who blustered recently, “We can’t win militarily.” Unfortunately for Pelosi, however, Murtha seems to have changed his tune. “I think the surge is working,” he declared last weekend, adding that it’s “a window of opportunity.” Before we give Murtha too much credit, though, he then insisted on qualifying his support with the latest Democrat talking points: “Unfortunately, the sacrifice of our troops has not been met by the Iraqi government and they have failed to capitalize on the political and diplomatic steps that the surge was designed to provide.” In other words, the Democrats have decided that the only measure of success in Iraq is Iraqi politics. It’s Whack-a-Mole, folks—the classic case of the moving target. We’re sure that if all Iraqi politicians agreed to get along beginning tomorrow, success soon would be defined in another way by American leftists.

It is worth noting here, the words of General Vo Nguyen Giap, supreme leader of the North Vietnamese Army, from a CBS in a 1989 interview: “We paid a high price [during the Tet offensive] but so did you [Americans] … not only in lives and materiel. Do not forget the war was brought into the living rooms of the American people. … The most important result of the Tet offensive was it made you de-escalate the bombing, and it brought you to the negotiation table. It was, therefore, a victory…. The war was fought on many fronts. At that time the most important one was American public opinion. ”

More to the point, in a 1995 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Bui Tin, a communist contemporary of Giap and Ho Chi Minh, who was serving as an NVA colonel assigned to the general staff at the time Saigon fell, had this to say about the Leftmedia and Soviet puppets like “Hanoi” Jane Fonda and John Kerry: “[They were] essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses.”

Bui stated further, “Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.”

Remembering Pearl Harbor, 66 years later

“December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan… Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory… With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounded determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat far removed from today’s crop of defeatists

Profiles of valor: Senior Airman Worthington

Air Force Senior Airman Nicholas Worthington is an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) technician with the 377th Civil Engineer Division. During his tour of duty in Iraq in 2006 with the 447th Air Expeditionary Group, Airman Worthington took part in 95 EOD emergency response missions, neutralizing 70 IEDs, 2,151 ordnance items and 43,042 rounds of ammunition.

During one mission, the last vehicle in his convoy hit an IED. Assessing the damage, Worthington and his team discovered a wire running to a nearby house. They began to investigate, but another IED was detonated, wounding Worthington and others. Despite his wounds, Worthington went to the aid of his wounded team leader and another soldier, while firing at insurgents in the house. His team regrouped and eliminated the jihadi fighters. Worthington then helped evacuate the wounded.

In a separate incident, Worthington was working to clear a weapons cache located between two IEDs when a sniper hit his team leader. Worthington returned fire and was able to defuse the second IED, successfully navigating his team to safety. And in a third skirmish, Worthington neutralized four IEDs using a Talon robot while under fire from RPGs, mortars and small arms. There were no casualties in the operation. For his outstanding service, Airman Worthington was awarded the Bronze Star.

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“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.” —Thomas Paine

Immigration front: Appeal of injustice

U.S. Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who shot a drug smuggler in the rear end, are probably guilty. The question is, guilty of what? Charged with assault, violation of civil rights, use of a firearm during a crime of violence and obstruction of justice, the two former agents are, in our opinion, victims of overzealous prosecution. The punishment should fit the crime as the old saw goes, but in this instance their “crime” was likely nothing more than flubbing a narcotics stop, failing to understand what actually transpired, and like all cops, hating to write up the paperwork. Their punishment—11 and 12 years in prison, respectively—did not fit the crime.

The agents are seeking to have the conviction overturned. A U.S. Circuit Court panel is questioning the prosecution, saying U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton “overreacted,” though no word on when a decision may be reached. Presidential pardons all around would be the best ending to this border nightmare.

BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Income Redistribution: Ballooning debt

In a refreshing bit of unscripted honesty, liberal politico Hillary Clinton recently remarked that the country cannot afford her ideas. Her timing came at an awkward moment amid reports that the national debt is expanding by about $1.4 billion every day, while she is proposing unprecedented government takeovers of the private-healthcare system and trillions in new spending on Social Security.

Due to the free-lunch mentality of liberals, the government must divert an escalating allocation of taxpayer resources for interest payments on the $9.13 trillion national debt. Interest payments of $430 billion now constitute the third largest liability of the federal budget, behind only Medicare/Social Security and defense.

While a balanced-budget amendment may be the only tool that can force the federal government to rein in its addiction to deficit spending, the idea will remain out of favor with politicians until the debt service, in concert with the impending fiscal Armageddon of an overpriced entitlements system, forces Congress to adopt it. Until then, expect more promises from politicians who think government socialization is the answer to everything.

Regulatory Commissars: Living too long

In another triumph of government healthcare over accepted clinical treatment standards and the Hippocratic Oath, the federal government is demanding repayment of hundreds of millions of dollars from hospices that exceeded arbitrary Medicare reimbursement limits because they enabled residents to live longer than permitted by the government. Possessing no sense of humanity, the federal government’s retroactively assessed reverse charges are being sent to hospices that already spent the funds delivering care for the terminally ill in prior years.

The result of this retroactive Medicare reimbursement diktat is that many hospice providers will be put out of business. Perversely, the unintended consequences of this bureaucratic meddling will reduce the number of hospice facilities and encourage the remainder to withhold care while simultaneously demanding premium increases. It is rarely clearer that government healthcare and its cost-control rationing is a prescription for an early grave.

Democrats: Party of the ‘rich’

For years, Democrats have labeled Republicans the “party of the rich.” But as it turns out—and as is often the case with the Left—their rhetoric doesn’t match the reality. A study done by the Heritage Foundation using IRS data found that (a) more than half of the nation’s richest households are in states where Democrats hold both Senate seats, and (b) Democrats control most of the nation’s richest congressional districts.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California district, for example, boasts 43,700 “rich” households, while House Republican Leader John Boehner’s Ohio district has only 7,000 households with equivalent wealth. What’s more, even in Republican states, Democrats tend to control the wealthier areas.

This may explain the conundrum that’s hit the Democrat presidential candidates in defining who is “rich” and, by Democrat default, “taxable.” Senators Clinton and Obama squabbled over this during the recent Democrat debate in Las Vegas. Obama suggested he might support raising the $97,500 “upper-class” income limit on the Social Security payroll tax, but Clinton argued she is unwilling to “fix the problems of Social Security on the backs of middle-class families.” Of course, in Clinton’s New York, some typically middle-class jobs pay more than $100,000—to families that would not consider themselves “rich.” The “rich Democrat” demographics could also explain Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s sudden tabling of a recent proposal to tax multi-millionaire hedge-fund managers.

With the Demos’ talk of taxing the rich, the prospect apparently is less appealing when the “rich” are in their own backyard. Which raises the question: Are Democrats truly after the “equality” that they claim? Or are they simply after votes?

CULTURE

Frontiers of Science: Stem-cell breakthrough

American and Japanese scientists, in two separate peer-reviewed studies, created human embryonic stem cells by returning mature human cells to a primordial, embryonic like state. Heart, nerve or other transplant tissue developed from these embryonic cells should not be rejected by the cell donor’s immune system, meaning one gets the stability of adult stem cells with the flexibility of embryonic ones. Problems still exist, however. Viruses are used as the mechanism to transport genes into the cell. Unwanted side effects can result if the viruses’ DNA becomes incorporated into the cell’s genetic structure. Researchers are now working to find benign viruses that will not trigger those problems.

In 2001, President Bush limited federal funding for human embryonic research to some 60 stem-cell lines existing at that time. The Leftmedia and the scientific establishment saw this as a smoke screen to cover his fundamentalist, anti-scientific tracks, but this ethical line in the sand provided the incentive scientists needed to develop innovative and morally acceptable research methods. In the last six years, adult-stem-cell research has produced cures and treatments for more than 80 diseases and ailments.

Facing enormous popular and scientific opposition, President Bush insisted on requiring that moral consideration balance scientific imperative. Six years later, the President, so vilified for this stance, has been thoroughly vindicated.

Frontiers of Junk Science: Art and warming

The culture of global warming is getting a little out of hand. The Greek National Observatory in Athens is planning to make use of works of art to assess the impact of climate change through the years. A splash of red might mean one temperature, whereas a touch of blue means something different. Art by definition is the quality, production, expression or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing or of more than ordinary significance. It is not the precise recording of data to permit a duplication of efforts that will yield identical results, as required in peer reviewed science. While both disciplines are beneficial to society, they are hardly interchangeable.

Meanwhile, as Al Gore is basking in the glow of the incandescent lights reflecting off his ig-Nobel Prize, we note that one man is honoring the spirit of Peer Review in a unique way. Dr. John Brignell, a British Professor of Engineering, has compiled a collection of more than 600 links to media stories citing global warming as a root cause—everything from agricultural land increase to yellow fever. There is even one story blaming global warming for childhood insomnia. A cursory review of selected articles confirms our suspicion that global warming is, among other things, a talisman capable of garnering funding from a variety of governmental entities.

Faith and family: Hypocrites abound

Sen. Chuck Grassley, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, recently inquired of several large ministries around the country asking about lavish expenditures. “Evangelists” Joyce Meyer, Paula White, Benny Hinn, Bishop Eddie Long, Creflo Dollar and Kenneth Copeland are all under the congressional microscope. While we certainly understand the reason for Grassley’s inquiry into the highly-questionable expenditures of these tax-exempt “ministries,” such as Meyers’ $23,000 “commode with a marble top,” we find it ironic, to say the least, that the inquiry comes from the Senate, where lavish lifestyles set the standard for the rich and famous, and gross extra-constitutional appropriation of taxpayer revenue is the custom. At least the folks who support televangelists do so voluntarily…

Village Academic Curriculum: Forget Christmas

Christmas in America remains under attack. In a Spokane [Washington] Public Schools December newsletter to parents including “important dates,” Christmas was not mentioned. Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha were mentioned, but not Christmas. “It was absolutely an error of omission,” said a district spokeswoman. “In our efforts to be inclusive, we missed the obvious.” What is obvious is that school employees won’t be showing up to work on December 25th. On the contrary, this is yet another example of the liberal agenda that seeks to take the “Christ” out of Christmas (and take God out of every other aspect of American life), thus reducing it to nothing more than a jumbled celebration of the winter solstice. Notably, MSNBC’s headline read “Santa snubbed! School forgets about Christmas.” Just who was snubbed again?

And last…

Good news from Gallup: “Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls.” The report continues, “Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43 percent of independents and 38 percent of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance and education.” To be sure, there are many reasons for this disparity. While Republicans generally emulate the optimism of Ronald Reagan, Democrats are busy running around telling everyone how terrible things are. Republicans believe that their fellow Americans can do things themselves, while Democrats believe that we’re all too stupid to do anything without gubmint assistance. And as Gallup notes, “[O]ne cannot say whether something about being a Republican causes a person to be more mentally healthy, or whether something about being mentally healthy causes a person to choose to become a Republican.” On the other hand, what we can be reasonably sure of is that voting for Democrats calls into question one’s mental health.

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 granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)