Quote of the week…

“…[The Left’s] First Amendment would read ‘Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, etc. … providing such speech or activities do not offend. If any offense is taken, citizen whiners, being necessary to the security of a politically correct state, shall from time to time suppress the offender’s free speech rights by any means necessary, including, but not limited to, required sensitivity training, re-education, and loss of income’.” –Edwin Feulner

EDITOR’S NOTE: We extend our congratulations to friends of The Federalist – Heritage Foundation’s president Edwin Feulner, and executive vice president Philip Truluck – who both marked their 25th anniversary with the Foundation this week.

On cross-examination…

“And what would a much maligned and dreaded Israeli political victory over the current terrorist war look like? First and foremost, it would see Arafat’s physical disappearance from the scene and the dismantling of his Palestinian Authority as a political and military organization. …[A] new Palestinian government, committed to coexistence with Israel and the provision of political and economic freedom to the Palestinian people … [could] develop democratic institutions and economic prosperity.” –Caroline B. Glick

Open Query…

“We oppose the skin trade, and of course we oppose Third World parents selling their children into slavery. So where is the outrage when the Saudis and Saddam reward Palestinian families whose children commit homicidal suicide? Is it more acceptable to sell one’s daughter into suicide than into slavery?” –R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

The BIG lie…

“The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth.” –Bill Clinton. (Should we term this instead “The BIG Laugh”? You may recall, this is the fellow who debated what the meaning of “is” is!)

News from the Swamp…

In the Executive Branch, dodging a bullet – for now…. The Bush administration has given notice the U.S. is “unsigning” from the Rome Treaty authorizing an International Criminal Court, slated to begin operations this July. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld observed of the ICC, “that our men and women in uniform – as well as current and former U.S. officials – could be at risk of prosecution. We want to make clear that the United States rejects the purported jurisdictional claims and the United States will regard as illegitimate any attempt by the court, or state parties to the treaty, to assert jurisdiction over American citizens.” You will recall that Bill Clinton signed this bad international treaty at the last possible moment, on December 31, 2000, on his way out of the Oval Office door. The treaty purports to legitimately usurp self-government in the form of consent of the governed by claiming sovereignty to try any individual in the world. There is no more poisonous recipe for tyranny than courts not under control of the people whose alleged crimes they judge.

Speaking of bad judicial recipes…. As this week’s Federalist Brief noted, Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of President Bush’s first judicial nominations to alleviate the federal bench vacancy crisis. But Senate Demo Tom Daschle and Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy put “justice at risk in America” by refusing to provide hearings for many nominees. To date only about half of the President’s nominees, and only 9 of the President’s 30 circuit court nominees, have been confirmed. (Of those confirmed, in almost every case those confirmations were ransomed for advancement of items on the Leftist agenda.) Chief Justice William Rehnquist calls the situation “alarming,” as that thirty-eight of the judicial vacancies are “emergencies” as defined by the Judicial Conference of the United States. It is worth noting that all pending nominees thus far have received either a well-qualified or qualified rating from the American Bar Association, the clearing house declared by Senate Leftists as the “Gold Standard.”

President Bush knows a little closely-held secret the Left has been guarding – the real seat of government is now the activist Leftjudiciary – those scoundrels who regularly take it upon themselves to amend our constitution by judicial decree rather than by the method prescribed by that venerable document. For that reason, he is pulling many punches in an effort to give Republicans a shot at retaking the Senate this fall.

And one for the Constitution! Reversing decades of Justice Department policy, the Bush administration has notified the Supreme Court that it believes the Constitution protects an individual’s right to possess firearms. “The current position of the United States … is that the Second Amendment more broadly protects the rights of individuals, including persons who are not members of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to possess and bear their own firearms,” Solicitor General Theodore Olson wrote in two court filings this week. This assertion by the administration marks a significant departure from the “collective” interpretation held by every administration since that of Dwight Eisenhower.

The Federalist applauds Mr. Bush’s revitalization of the Second Amendment’s prohibition on government regulation of the right to keep and bear arms. In the words of Justice Joseph Story: “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.” As declared by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” And as noted by our favorite Founder, Samuel Adams, at Massachusetts’s Convention to Ratify the Constitution: “The said Constitution be never construed…to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”

In the House of Commons, the Senate’s version of Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act bill was approved, 411-0. The law provides for better tracking of foreign students, higher bars for entrants from terror-sponsoring nations, visa information linked for law enforcement, intelligence and immigration agencies, and more money and technology for border control purposes.

And the House vote was 306-117 in favor of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage proposal – over the objections of Nevada Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn. The plan calls for storing underground at the site tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and other waste from around the nation. (The plan raises serious federalist concerns; we note that the Constitution specifies Congress exercises authority over national security facilities purchased “by the consent of the legislature of the state in which same shall be.”) From a practical standpoint, storing this waste underground at one facility is far better than storing it at hundreds of local facilities around the countryside – a prime target for domestic terrorists.

In the House of Lords, as expected, the Lords passed the porked-up farm bill, which reverses the wise 1996 move to wean agriculture enterprises off government subsidies. President Bush has indicated he will sign the law nonetheless. “We are seeing the beginnings of big-government conservatism,” pronounced Hudson Institute’s Marshall Wittmann. (Big-government conservatism is still an oxymoron around our shop!)

Judicial Benchmarks…

The Republican National Committee joined those suing to overturn the new campaign-finance law, despite that fact that President Bush, de facto head of the Republican Party, signed the measure into law. The California Republican and Democratic Parties also joined the suit. Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, stalwart defender against the “incumbent protection” law, summed up, “The RNC and the various state and local parties who join our efforts today demonstrate the dramatic way in which this new federal law encroaches upon the rights of Americans – both Democrat and Republican – to fully participate in our democracy.”

In the halls of justice on the right, a federal appeals court affirmed President Bush’s prerogative to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. As previously reported in The Federalist, the nomination of Peter Kirsanow drew heavy fire from Commission Chairman Mary Frances Berry and her Leftist cadre, who have used the Commission as a vehicle of attack against political enemies; the Commission’s new 4-4 makeup should prove an impediment to the Left’s bogus civil rights shenanigans.

In the halls of injustice on the left, U.S. District Judge Katharine S. Hayden dismissed a lawsuit brought by the parents of a kindergarten student in East Brunswick against the Sayreville, New Jersey, School District after their son and three classmates were suspended for playing cops and robbers using their fingers as guns.

From the Left…

An Internal Revenue Service official has confessed that political opponents of Bill Clinton were indeed targeted for politically motivated audits by the Clintonized IRS. “What do you expect when you sue the president?” admitted senior IRS official Paul Breslan. (We should note that our friends at Heritage were among groups handpicked for these “special attention” IRS reviews. You can often tell the good guys by their enemies.)

And speaking of the IRS, Je$$e Ja¢k$on finally released a 2000 tax return for the so-called “Citizenship Education Fund,” an extortion racket targeting corporate America that would make mother proud. (Did somebody say “RICO”?) Ja¢k$on received more than $9 million in tax-exempt donations – almost all of which came from corporations or individuals for whom the Reverend had turned a favor – such as supporting a merger or withdrawing racial discrimination charges. Ja¢k$on’s CEF received $475,000 from Verizon, $300,000 from GTE, $500,000 from SBC Communications, $200,000 from the NYSE, and a whopping $750,000 from AT&T, to name a few. Jackson also received $50,000 from model citizen Kevin Ingram, a convicted illegal arms dealer presently serving a prison term. Even with some $9.2 million in the bank, CEF has been laying off employees in droves – but we can all take comfort in the knowledge that 3 of 4 board members at the helm are members of the Ja¢k$on family. (To make your tax-deductible donation to the Citizenship Education Fund… just kidding.)

The Commissars…

Jazzercise Inc. will no longer require that its San Francisco aerobic instructors look fit after 240-pound Jennifer Portnick challenged the policy under that city’s “gravitationally challenged” ordinance barring discrimination on the basis of weight and height.

Regarding the redistribution of your income…

The Federalist has reported before about abuse of government credit cards. But the entire picture is worse than even we imagined. Inspectors general at the Departments of Commerce, Energy and Health and Human Resources have now testified that they cannot estimate or put any price tag on misuses of government-issued plastic. Credit cards were put in use for savings by eliminating paperwork and “red tape.” But how much “red ink” is there in the nearly $20 billion charged last year? Nobody knows….

From the department of military readiness…

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld announced plans Wednesday to scrap the Army’s proposed next-generation Crusader self-propelled howitzer artillery piece. The decision came from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in the face of strong opposition from Army Secretary Thomas White – and, more importantly, from several members of Congress. The change involves moving defense money from “threat” assessment to “capability” assessment spending, and will serve as a test of wills between DOD and Congress. Over last weekend, the Leftmedia jumped the gun to declare White would be fired for lobbying Congress to save the Crusader program (but evidently the culprit was somebody else). This one definitely bears watching!

From the states…

This week’s “PC (Politically Challenged)” Award goes to California, where Los Angeles Demo Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg declared: “…[T]he continued use of Native American images and nicknames in school sports is a barrier to equality and understanding, and … all residents of the United States would benefit from the discontinuance of their use. …Nobody is pointing a finger saying, ‘You racist dog.’ We understand this was not meant to be offensive. But it is.” Her proposed legislation would “vet” school mascots through education commissions for offensive names and imagery and bar such logos by 2003. The usual suspects are giving it raves, such as Lori Nelson, director of the Alliance Against Racial Mascots: “I’ve talked to a great number of Native American youth who are just embarrassed when they do the tomahawk chop or play the stereotypical Hollywood drumbeat. There is real harm and real damage. This is denigrating to many people.” “Denigrating”? Can you still say that?

In other lunacy from that Left Coast bastion – you know, California ought to have the SUV as its state mascot, as it’s crisscrossed by freeways – the Assembly is near approving AB 1058, a very bad piece of legislation that would require reduced “greenhouse gas” emissions, including carbon dioxide, and is projected to raise gas prices by $.50 a gallon. The Left loonies out there are expelling hot air in exasperation that Team Bush has not signed the Kyoto Treaty on “global warming.” Sources tell The Federalist that Arizona Sen. John McCain is phoning around to Republicans in the Assembly, urging they vote for the bill. We guess that would give Arizona an advantage over California.

The “Non Compos Mentis” Department…

At the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoo, after the death of Ryma, a beloved giraffe, a reporter’s request for the animal’s medical records was turned down. “One reason is privacy,” Zoo Director Lucy Spelman wrote back, explaining the denial. “Certainly, the privacy rules that apply to human medical records, and the physician-patient relationship, do not apply in precisely the same way to animal medicine at a public institution like the National Zoo. But we believe they do in principle.” A deceased giraffe has privacy and medical confidentiality rights?

Court Jesters…

Well, according to Leftists, maybe they do. Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe took to the front page of the Wall Street Journal last week, arguing the novel stance that the Constitution indeed includes “nonhuman animals” such as chimpanzees as “persons” having rights. Tribe is especially interested in applying the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of slavery and the 8th Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishments to this expanded class of “persons.” How does he explain that the Constitution covers apes? Because “nowhere does it state that only humans are covered.” But apes are covered and preborn humans aren’t?

Culture comment…

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is making significant inroads into public school systems with its new campaign to normalize homosexuality among children. This includes pro-homosexual dramas for elementary students featuring homosexual children, and a classroom curriculum supported by the NEA. This curriculum designates religious beliefs against homosexuality as “homophobia” and “false.” Another example of this perversity contends that middle schoolers “should have the freedom to explore our sexual orientation and find our own unique expression of lesbian, bisexual, gay, straight, or any combination of these.” GLSEN’s aim of introducing and normalizing deviant sexuality to children at an increasingly younger age seems to know no bounds, as strategies are in place to “set the tone for nontraditional gender role play” for preschoolers.

Faith Matters…

Extradited from California, former Boston-area Catholic priest Paul Shanley was formally arraigned Tuesday on three counts of child rape, pleading not guilty. The Archdiocese of Boston has already turned over some 1,600 documents regarding the Shanley case but discovered more documents on Monday, declining to turn them over until today. Shanley’s own files confirm his promotion of and personal commitment to man-boy sexual relations (AKA homosexual pedophilia). William Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, notes that Shanley – already openly homosexual in the 1970’s in defiance of Catholic teaching – “got the green light (in 1970) from Cardinal Humberto Medeiros,” then the Archbishop of Boston, appointing Shanley to a “bizarre [new] ministry” in the Archdiocese – the Cardinal’s official “representative for sexual minorities [read: representative for homosexuals].” When in 1979 Medeiros formally admonished Catholic homosexuals to abstain from homosexual activity, Shanley denounced the Cardinal’s words as “virtually useless advice.” One cannot fathom why this man was tolerated, facilitated and protected for so many years.

Footnote: Concerned that Cardinal Law would skip town for the Vatican before he could be deposed, the presiding judge ordered Law deposed this past Wednesday. And speaking of depositions, as for Law’s archdiocese communicant Teddy Kennedy (D-NAMBLA), other than his public comment that Law should not resign, he is running silent on his old political crony.

In other “fruit and nut” institutional news, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Leftwing of the PC, announced this week a $2 million cut in its national budget along with a layoff of 43 national staff members. In addition to the recession, lagging tithes were attributed to conservative holdouts in response to the church’s drift toward ordination of homosexuals.

On the frontiers of science…

The Food and Drug Administration is mulling over faster testing of bioterror antidotes. The FDA may approve animal testing of the effectiveness of drugs for treating bioweapons agents, added to human tests of safety. Ethical testing could not intentionally expose humans to such bioagents as anthrax, smallpox, the plague and the Ebola virus, although substituting animal testing for disease prevention means there are few real guarantees the drugs would work in large-scale responses to terrorist attacks.

Around the world…

In Karachi, Pakistan, a Jihadi detonated a car bomb next to a bus carrying French submarine technicians, killing 10 of them and their bus driver.

Jewish World Review reports: “An Israeli drone flying over Jenin on Monday, April 28 caught a modern-day resurrection. Well, sort of. As Arab propaganda cameras rolled, pallbearers repeatedly tried to carry a ‘dead’ man wrapped in a green blanket. The only problem is that he couldn’t keep his balance and kept falling…. At 1:35 on the film, a crowd of onlookers quickly breaks up, when the ‘corpse’ picks himself off the floor and gets back up on the stretcher. If the purpose of this video were not so EVIL, it would belong on one of those Dick Clark TV specials.”

And closer to home, the State Department announced Monday that Cuba is developing capabilities with offensive biological weapons. Undersecretary of State John Bolton says that the U.S. has “broad and deep” evidence that Cuba is not only developing these weapons, but exporting the technology to other rogue states. While visiting Iran, Syria and Libya last year, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro gave a speech at Tehran University in which he said, “Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees.”

Elsewhere in this hemisphere, in Bojaya, Colombia, a guerrilla mortar killed 117 people – including 38 children – and wounded approximately 100 others when fired on a church where noncombatants were seeking refuge. The Leftist forces of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia were responsible for the massacre; FARC, you will recall, is a group that has received training and support from the international terrorists of the Irish Republican Army recently, and is on the U.S. list of international terrorist organizations.

And last…

A note from our publisher: To Moms everywhere…. Happy Mother’s Day, and thanks for choosing life! “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” (Exodus 20:12)