Quote of the week…

“It is normal for a country, even the most generous country, to be committed to self-preservation. The 1960s introduced a slow but unstoppable decomposition of that basic human instinct. National self-preservation requires border controls. National self-preservation requires competent and reliable people in important jobs, especially in jobs to do with our security. We can hire people either for ‘social justice,’ or for competence, not both. National self-preservation requires that the government provides for the safety of Americans before it worries about a sense of comfort for everyone who comes here, whether legally or illegally, whether with legitimate intentions or employing flagrant deception. Our concern with everybody’s ‘comfort’ has acquired proportions bordering on insanity.” –Balint Vazsonyi

On cross-examination…

“…[W]e have ceded Washington the right to control our lives in the name of safety, health-care costs and protecting children. There is no logical end to what Washington can do in the name of those goals.” –Walter E. Williams

Open Query…

“Terrorists can endanger some of us, but the war on terror endangers us all. How much more can the Constitution be diminished before it is completely replaced by arbitrary government power?” –Paul Craig Roberts

The HomSec Front…

Responding to the Left’s distracting efforts to make political hay of last week’s revelation that an intelligence report, given to President Bush last August, based on “unconfirmed, unsubstantiated, uncorroborated and unspecified” threats, constituted “advance knowledge” that al-Qa'ida operatives planned to hijack airlines in the U.S. and use them as missiles against high-profile targets, Mr. Bush rebuffed: “My most important job is to protect America – to protect the homeland. The American people know that, had I known an the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people.”

Indeed, Americans do trust Mr. Bush. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who led the Leftmedia charge asking, “What did Bush know and when did he know it?” attempted to soften his rhetoric this week, saying, “Let me be clear: No one has said that the president could have prevented the tragedy of September 11th.” Of course, Daschle-Gephardt, et al. clearly implied that the president could have prevented the tragedy, though, in Clintonesque finger-wagging style, they did not actually say those words. For his part, Gephardt was reminded that, despite his assertions to the contrary, the House Intelligence Committee DID receive the much heralded “FBI Phoenix Memo,” which, as we noted last week – hindsight being 20/20 – was a clue to the 9-11 attack.

Daschle has proposed a full press inquiry into the matter, but handing off the legislative branch’s constitutional oversight duty to an “independent commission,” when the intelligence oversight committees have already heard testimony from 184 officials and reviewed 15,000 documents, serves only one objective – to undermine public support for President Bush going into the fall elections. President Bush has rightly rejected Daschle’s folly.

Daschle’s asinine political charade notwithstanding, the dangers facing our nation are real and lethal, as Mr. Bush made clear this week: “The al-Qa'ida still exists, they still hate America and any other country which loves freedom, and they want to hurt us. They’re nothing but a bunch of cold-blooded killers. [Americans] must have the will and the determination to chase these killers down one by one and bring them to justice, and that is exactly what is going to happen as long as I am the president of the United States of America.”

Vice President Dick Cheney noted ominously: “I think that the prospects of a future attack on the U.S. are almost a certainty. It could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next year. … Terrorism is an evil, pernicious thing, and it is one of the biggest challenges we’ve ever faced as a nation.” Secretary of State Colin Powell added, “Terrorists respect no limits, geographic or moral. The front lines are everywhere, and the stakes are high.” And SecDef Rumsfeld summarized, “[The threat] is not something that’s going to end. It’s something we’re going to have to learn to live with, and we’re going to have to learn to get better at it.”

And, there was an additional warning issued this week: “The United States Government has received unsubstantiated and uncorroborated information that terrorists are considering attacks against landmarks in New York City. While the FBI has no information as to time, date or method of attack; out of an abundance of caution, information has been transmitted to law enforcement in New York. The threat level for the city, state and nation remains unchanged.”

As The Federalist has previously noted, the al-Qa'ida modus operandi to disable continuity of government and commerce is based on the “Jihad model” – tactics utilizing minimal resources and personnel that have maximum psychological impact, including the use of small aircraft or vehicles loaded with high explosives used against significant infrastructure nodes or high profile targets, radiological contamination devices, biological agents used against humans or livestock and crops and homicide bombers. Indeed, on that last count, FBI Director Robert Mueller confirmed, “I think we will see [homicide bombers] in the future, I think it’s inevitable…. We will not be able to stop it.”

Regarding the question of the effectiveness of warnings, the administration is charged with the judicious issuance of alerts even though they are based on unconfirmed, unsubstantiated, uncorroborated and unspecified threats. (If the threats were confirmed, substantiated, corroborated and specific, there would likely be no need to issue an alert because there would be enough information about the threat vector to countervail it.) The reason for issuing warnings is twofold: First, millions of alert citizens are a far more effective deterrent against a general threat than a few thousand counterterrorism agents. And second, if a warning is issued only through state and local law enforcement networks, it would take about one nanosecond for that information to find its way into Leftmedia news breaks – thus giving control of the message to TV talkingheads, creating confusion and panic.

The risk of issuing warnings regarding general threats is that the public can become desensitized to the threat, which defeats the first objective of issuing alerts. But desensitization also serves the purpose of preparing the nation to psychologically process future attacks. It is a cold irony that because the grotesque images of 9-11 are etched into the memory of virtually every American, we are better prepared to manage the horror of the next attack.

(Memo to Ari Fleischer who has yet to produce a lucid talking point rebutting the Left’s criticism – here is one: Last week, the Left was criticizing the Bush administration for not telling the public about a pre-9-11 unconfirmed, unsubstantiated, uncorroborated and unspecified threat (see Federalist No. 02-20). This week, the Left is criticizing the Bush administration for telling the public about a post-9-11 unconfirmed, unsubstantiated, uncorroborated and unspecified threat. (But of course, the criticism is not politically motivated….)

In other HomSec news, the INS admitted that thousands of immigrants from terror states have bypassed normal scrutiny by claiming “refugee” status. In 2000, over 100,000 of 1.2 million Social Security numbers given foreigners were based on fraudulent documents. And in early 2001, head 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta was improperly allowed back into the U.S. because his student visa had not yet been approved.

News from the Swamp…

In the House of Commons, on Wednesday the Commoners passed, 425-1, a $4.6 billion bill for anti-bioweapons preparedness, saying they tried “to think as evilly as [they] could” to assess threats. Major funds will go for improving vaccine stocks and increasing inspections of imported foods. States, of course the “primary responders” to such assaults, are slated to receive $1.6 billion for preparations. (The bill was also passed in the Senate and Mr. Bush plans to sign it on his return.)

In the House of Lords, in an effort to end-run Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta’s prohibition against pilots arming themselves to protect their flights against hijackers, Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH) and Sen. Zell Miller (D-GA) introduced S. 2554 to deputize trained pilots to carry firearms. The bill also has the support of the 62,000-member Airline Pilots Association.

The Senate issued subpoenas to executive staffers in the offices of the president and vice president, to obtain information about contacts with Enron as the energy trading firm was entering a financial meltdown as its duplicitous dealings unwound.

In other Swamp news, The Federalist offers simultaneous congratulations and condolences to our colleague Chuck Muth, head of the Republican Liberty Caucus – congratulations because he will assume new duties as executive director of the American Conservative Union – condolences because he’ll have to move from freedom-friendly Nevada to DC in order to take the new job.

Judicial Benchmarks…

In the halls of justice on the right, the Bloomberg family of Israel filed a 100 million shekel ($20.7 million) lawsuit against the European Union, contending that the EU facilitated a murderous attack on the family last August, by financial grants to the Palestinian Authority that were funneled their terrorist attackers. The West Bank shooting killed two: Techiya Blumberg (who was five months pregnant) and seriously injured her husband and daughter, both of whom are now paralyzed.

In the halls of injustice on the left, graduating students at Iowa’s Woodbine High School were the first class to graduate without singing the Lord’s Prayer, after a federal judge declared the song unconstitutional because two atheists in the school choir disapproved. The only mention of God in the ceremony came as senior Brice Farley closed his speech with a sneeze eliciting a shout from a member of the audience, “God bless you!” – drawing applause from the 800-person crowd.

The BIG lie…

“The Bush and Castro administrations are more alike than they are different.” –Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Havana)

From the Left…

The National Education Association, busy promoting its pro-promiscuity, pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality, pro-Leftist and pro-dumb-and-dumber agenda, complains that the 1.7% of students who have been pulled out of government schools by parents choosing to home-school, create budget problems because the lower student census means fewer dollars. The NEA’s criticism aside, almost 25% of the student finalists in this year’s National Geographic Bee are home-schoolers. “This is an all-time high,” said NGB spokesperson Ellen Siskind. “Home schoolers tend to be in a lot of these contests, and we have found that they are very bright.” And Wednesday, 10-year-old Calvin McCarter became the youngest winner of the National Geographic Bee after correctly identifying China as home to the Lop Nor nuclear test site. Calvin joins the growing ranks of home-schoolers who have won the National Geographic and National Spelling Bees.

Speaking of NEA’s agenda, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is preparing a suit against the NEA and its state affiliates to force them to stop harassing members who disagree with the NEA’s Leftist agenda. In most states, teachers are forced to join the NEA, and their dues are then used to support Leftist candidates and causes. Those teachers who categorized themselves as “religious objectors” in order to withhold the use of their dues for purposes contrary to their faith have been the subject of various procedural forms of harassment. “The NEA union’s illegal scheme is intended to force teachers of faith to shut up and pay up,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “The EEOC’s action further underscores that the nation’s largest teacher union is systematically persecuting people of faith.”

The Commissars…

You may recall, as reported in Federalist No. 02-11, six months to the day after 9/11, “suspected 9-11 Jihadi attackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi received written confirmation from the INS of their student visa approvals to attend flight school in Florida.” This “lapse” prompted much talk of “change” in visa applications. Well, we checked visa application form OMB 1405-0018 this week and found this information on page 2, section 33: “Have you ever been refused admission to the U.S., or been the subject of a deportation hearing…? Do you seek to enter the United States to engage in … subversive or terrorist activities, or any other unlawful purpose? Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization as currently designated by the Secretary of State?” Under the questions in this section is the notice: “A YES answer does not automatically signify ineligibility for a visa….”

Regarding the redistribution of your income…

University of Rochester Professor Bob Poreda has some worrisome words about the U.S. education of Chinese graduate students in the “hard sciences” – who may someday soon invent weapons and systems for a military confrontation with us: “I have never seen a single case of the Chinese government paying the tuition (or a stipend) for their citizens. In fact, the Immigration and Naturalization Service will not allow a Chinese student to begin his studies unless there is sufficient financial support (tuition plus stipend). Do you know who picks up the tab for these students? It is the U.S. government through Department of Energy and National Science Foundation grants given to university professors. So it was probably bad enough to think that we were welcoming People’s Republic of China students to our universities, but now you know that it is one more example of your hard-earned tax dollars at work.”

From the department of military readiness…

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testified in defense of President Bush’s DOD budget requests before the Senate’s Defense Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee. But Mr. Rumsfeld expressed a serious concern The Federalist shares: “…I’m concerned about the Senate Armed Services Committee’s decision to cut more than $800 million from the president’s request for missile defense. …Not only were the funds reduced, but the funds were reduced in a micro way … that go directly to the … our efforts to have a broad based research and development program across a range of possibilities, and they are particularly harmful because not only of the total amount, which is significant in and of itself, but the way that it’s been done.” There is not much point in an agreement with Russia to allow missile defense if the Senate guts the program in order to kill it.

From the states…

Choose Life Inc. announced this week that sales of the “Choose Life” license plates broke the $1 million mark in Florida. Currently, over 30,000 vehicles proudly display the pro-life message with $20 from every purchase going to state crisis pregnancy centers.

Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura vetoed a bill requiring state school students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at least once weekly, claiming concerns over freedom of speech and freedom of conscience for schoolchildren.

And a follow-up on California Demo Gov. Gray Davis’s “money magic” in turning state policies into campaign cash: Disclosures this week linked state decisions related to companies with suspiciously close timing for Davis donations from Enron, California’s prison guards union, Northrop Grumman’s Logicon and management consulting firm Accenture, which gave Davis $50,000 then received a $450 million state contract.

In economic news…

The Department of Commerce announced that the economy grew by 5.8% in the first quarter of 2002. President Bush hailed the news: “This report is strong evidence, however, that our tax relief plan is working … the more money people have in their pockets, the more likely it is they’re going to spend. And tax relief is an incredibly important part of this recovery.”

The “Non Compos Mentis” Department…

“The Couric Effect”: University of Michigan researchers have revealed a decisive link between colonoscopies and NBC’s Katie Couric – after Couric underwent the procedure on the Today Show, colonoscopies have increased by 19% overall. America’s proctologists thank you, Katie!

Court Jesters…

Convicted rapist Edward Brewer of Sandusky, Ohio, is suing the hospital where the rape occurred for $2 million, claiming nursing staff negligence; he says the Providence Hospital provided “inadequate security in protecting visitors as well as their patients,” which caused him pain and suffering from the 1998 incident. He is also suing his attorney in the case for $250,000, citing an appeals court statement that because his victim died of cancer four months after the rape, the lawyer should have recognized the case against Brewer was weak. (Brewer was originally sentenced to 5 years for sexual battery, appealed, then was sentenced to 10 years in his second trial.)

Culture comment…

On not so subtle messages from “Star Wars: Attack of the Clones,” National Review’s Jonah Goldberg notes: “We all know that Obi-Wan Kenobi is wise. But now we know he basically agrees with John McCain on the corrupting influence of big money. … Obi-Wan pauses for a brief anti-smoking message about ‘death sticks’.”

Faith Matters…

As the Catholic Church hierarchy’s troubles with homosexual priests multiplied, Catholic scholar, Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, noted, “Their statement in Rome was lucid and straightforward. Faithfulness to the morals and teachings of the church is the key. Whether this will lead to genuine renewal, we’ll have to see.” And we will….

On the frontiers of junk science…

The UN Environment Program reported on prospects for the globe in coming years, and does not think much of them. Klaus Toepfer, the program’s executive director, charged that human development is the culprit and “across more and more areas of the planet is not sustainable. Unless we alter our course, we will be left with very little.” Claiming that in 30 years one-quarter of the world’s mammal population will face extinction, the study identifies a total of 11,046 plants and animals that are endangered, which should leave quite a bit more room for the rest of us. But the analysis relied on now familiar faulty global warming models, and favored solutions to reduce “overconsumption” of resources. Underlying the report is Albert Gore’s thesis that the “best” plan to end global warming is centralized global planning under control of (guess who?) the UN….

Around the world…

Tensions ramped up as battles continue over Kashmir between India and Pakistan, with cross-border mortar and machine gun exchanges. About 1 million soldiers are bristling in that frontier area, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee told his troops to ready themselves for a “decisive battle,” and the Pakistanis also declared themselves ready for a conclusive fight. U.S. and British foreign affairs officers will visit soon, attempting to defuse the conflict before it erupts into full-blown war. (Full-blown war between two Third World nuclear powers that don’t share even the West’s diminished ethics regarding the value of human life could get ugly, and very hot!)

Two more homicide bombings murdered innocent Israelis this week. Wendesday’s attack near Tel Aviv claimed two Israelis’ lives and wounded over 40 others; the Sunday bomb attack in Netanya murdered three. However, two other attempted homicide bombings were thwarted this week, including one by a security guard and IDF veteran at a Tel Aviv disco, who noticed a car speeding directly for the disco and opened fire, blowing up the car (and driver) and saving countless lives. This isn’t the only car to explode in recent days, as Israeli defenders have responded to this new wave of terrorist threats – in Beirut, the son of Ahmed Jabril, chief of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who headed the terror group’s operations died a mysterious car-bombing death. Also, Mahmoud al Titi, leader of the al Aqua Martyrs’ Brigade, was killed by IDF tank fire in the West Bank. Those who live by the sword….

Palestinian chief terrorist Yasser Arafat promptly refused the resignations of some 20 senior Palestinian Authority officials this week. Whether the ministers tendered their resignations in a genuine effort to promote the restructuring of the PA, or if this is simply another staged move by Arafat to bolster support for himself, who can say? In either case, real reform and long-term regional stability are not likely apart from the resignation (or removal) of Arafat himself. The Nobel Peace laureate has promised free elections this winter, but this commitment may be as dependable as his past proffers.

And Red China announced plans to have astronauts visit the moon by 2010 and ultimately build a lunar base for exploitation of the moon’s resources. But the aggressive launch and research program will assuredly provide excellent cover for military adverturism here on earth – most especially for multipurpose satellites useful in possible strikes against Taiwan.

And last…

In time for Monday’s Memorial Day commemorations, the names of three more who served our country and died in the Vietnam War were inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial – with meticulous care to match the engraving of the originals inscribed there. Added to the wall as now confirmed KIA were: U.S. Army PFC William E. Johnson Sr., of Cleveland; Army Sgt. Richard E. Toney, of Bogalusa, La.; and Army PFC Paul P. Zylko, of Passaic, N.J.; joining 58,229 killed or still missing in Vietnam. This weekend we remember – and honor – their service and sacrifice, together with our other fallen defenders.