GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

From the Left: Clinton’s big Hsu

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign returned $860,000 in contributions raised by con man Norman Hsu this week. When The Wall Street Journal first reported Hsu’s crooked past and his Clinton connection, the campaign $23,000 to charity—a pittance of the money Hsu truly raised by circumventing federal fundraising laws. However, the Hsu case did not go away as the Clintonistas hoped. Amidst this week’s uproar over Gen. Petraeus’s report and the sixth anniversary of 9/11, they returned to their donors the largest sum of money ever in the history of campaign fundraising. With the help of their accomplices in the Leftmedia, it was a smooth move.

Hsu was running from a 15-year-old arrest warrant in California for grand theft during his successful fundraising stint with the Clintons. He ran again after returning to California supposedly to face the music. The law caught up with him on a Chicago bound Amtrak train, stuck between his bed and the wall in a sleeper cabin littered with prescription medicine bottles; he had written a suicide note before fleeing.

There is enough about this case to entertain everyone. For instance, how did a man who was a fugitive from justice for 15 years become a top donor for the favored presidential candidate? And how did he coerce people to make donations to a candidate that some of them actually loathed?

To answer the first question, Clinton campaign spokesman, Howard Wolfson, said, “Mr. Hsu donated to numerous charities and more than two dozen candidates and committees. Despite conducting a thorough review of public records, our campaign like others were unaware of Mr. Hsu’s decade-plus old warrant. To help ensure against this type of situation in the future, our campaign will also institute vigorous additional vetting procedures on our bundlers, including criminal background checks. In any instances where a source of a bundler’s income is in question, the campaign will take affirmative steps to verify its origin.” We’re so relieved.

More fun with the Clinton campaign

If having to explain away Norman Hsu weren’t bad enough, Hillary Clinton may have to testify in the California Court of Appeals in a lawsuit filed by Hollywood producer Peter Paul. Paul filed a lawsuit against the Clintons and two of their associates claiming that the former President reneged on an agreement to be a rainmaker for Paul’s Internet venture if Paul produced a fundraiser for Hillary’s 2000 Senate campaign. Paul claims to have Mrs. Clinton on videotape agreeing to help plan the August 2000 event.

The Clinton Senate campaign has already paid a $35,000 fine to the FEC for not properly reporting the money raised at that event. Now, if Paul’s videotape holds up in court, Clinton could be in bigger trouble for having a direct hand in the planning. The fundraiser would then be defined as a hard-money donation that is more than a thousand times the legal limit for an individual donation.

In a 2006 written statement submitted to the California court, Clinton maintained that she did not recall having such a conversation with Paul. If she is called upon to testify during this appeal, it will be another historic first. No presidential candidate has ever had to appear in a criminal court during their campaign. Trailblazing, indeed.

In the Executive Branch: AG nomination looming

The word in the swamp is that President Bush will nominate an attorney-general candidate next week. Democrats are calling upon the President to nominate a “nonpartisan,” which really means they want someone who will roll over and allow them to claw through the Justice Department files like mice. President Bush seems to be looking forward to the fight, because his top pick may to be Ted Olson, former solicitor general and the Bush campaign’s top lawyer during the 2000 Florida recount.

Democrats are busy pre-rejecting Olson, with head partisan Harry Reid claiming that Olson is too partisan for the position. On the contrary, Olson may be just the man to take the reins at Justice, which is sorely in need of leadership. Morale is low and no one is minding the store there, which is just how the Demos like it. For months the liberals have claimed that the Justice Department applied the law in a manner that allowed Republicans to gain power across the country. If a weak AG is put in charge of the department, Democrats will continue rummaging through Justice Department files to fuel their witch hunt against Republicans, making up corruption where they can’t find it.

Democrats making up a case

Speaking of making up corruption, House Democrats are investigating the 2006 bribery conviction of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman with the belief that President Bush’s Justice Department had a hand in landing Siegelman in jail for political reasons. Karl Rove’s name has predictably popped up as the boogieman behind the whole mess because of political work he did in Alabama during the 1990s. That’s the best liberals can do at this point.

While serving as Governor, Siegelman took $500,000 from HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy in exchange for a seat on the state hospital board. The money went toward paying off a debt the Siegelman campaign owed to a state lottery. The liberal position is that Siegelman merely exchanged a favor, something that all politicians do to a certain extent. Seigelman’s actions may be common, but they were also illegal. That is why he is serving a 99-month prison sentence, not because he is a Democrat unlucky enough to be in the same state at the same time as Karl Rove.

On the Hill: Sen. Hagel announces retirement

One week after John Warner announced he would not seek reelection to the U.S. Senate in 2008, Nebraska “Republican” Chuck Hagel said that he will not seek reelection next year, nor will he run for President (were we holding our breath?). Hagel has been so adamantly against Bush administration policy, it’s easy to forget that he is actually a GOP Senator. He has been a longtime vocal opponent to America’s involvement in Iraq and was one of the first Republicans to call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s resignation. Unfortunately for Republicans, this means yet another congressional seat to defend in 2008, but all in all, losing Hagel won’t be so bad.

In the Senate: Pork and bridges

The Senate took up H.R. 3074, the Transportation/HUD Appropriations Act, passing that bill Wednesday by an 88-7 margin. The measure ladles out $106 billion, including over $2.5 billion in earmarks and $1 billion for bridge repair and replacement. Mixed in with the pork is $200 million for nonprofits and other groups that offer counseling and information to aid homeowners with sub-prime mortgages in avoiding foreclosure.

President Bush has threatened to veto the bill for overspending—but he’s pulled back from other such pledges recently. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has been fighting the good fight against earmarks, though deterring his esteemed colleagues from spending your money to ingratiate themselves back home is a tall order. Coburn’s amendment to strip out all the pork from the transportation bill and transfer that money to fixing bridges went down to defeat, 14-82. South Carolina GOP Sen. Jim DeMint’s proposal to waive Davis-Bacon wage mandates for repairing structurally deficient bridges was also voted down, 37-56.

New & notable legislation

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced the Charlie Norwood CLEAR Act (H.R. 3494), which would allow state law-enforcement authorities to assist in enforcing federal immigration laws with greater ease.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) introduced H.Res. 641, marking the 220th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution on Monday, 17 September.

The Senate approved last week Tom Coburn’s amendment to withhold all appropriations to the UN “until the secretary of state certifies that the United Nations [and subsidiaries] is fully and publicly transparent about all of its spending, including procurement purposes.” The U.S. currently sends about $5.3 billion per year to the UN.

Around the nation: Back-door gun control in CA

Gun-control advocates claimed victory in California as a “microstamping” bill passed the state’s assembly. The measure, known as the “Crime Gun Identification Act” (AB 1471), would require all new models of semiautomatic pistols sold in California after 2010 to be microscopically engraved with an identification number, which would be transferred onto the cartridge casing when fired. The Brady Campaign calls it an “important new tool in solving gun crimes” and Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke claimed it would “help cut off an important source of crime guns…by reducing the illegal flow of handguns into the black market.” Pro-Second Amendment groups countered that the bill would become a de facto gun ban by drastically increasing the cost of buying a new pistol. “Many manufacturers will choose to abandon the California market rather than incur substantial costs associated with complying with microstamping legislation,” argued Lawrence Keane of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Other flaws with the bill are that the technology is unproven and comes from a single source and it fails to address the possibility of stolen microstamped weapons implicating innocent persons.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has not announced whether he will sign the bill, but a similar bill failed in the assembly last year.

Photo IDiots

Striking another blow against Democrats’ best hope for victory in state elections—namely, rampant election fraud—U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy tossed out a lawsuit aimed at preventing Georgia from enforcing a statute requiring a valid photo ID to vote. The sham lawsuit claimed that elderly and poor voters were being unfairly discriminated against because they were the ones least likely to have such an ID. Sure… except of course, that they all do. Noting the claimants’ failure to produce even one “victim” unable to get a photo ID, Judge Murphy also commented, “Plaintiffs are hard-pressed to show that voters in Georgia, in general, are not aware of the photo ID requirement.”

Discontent with similar judicial epiphanies deriving from voter fraud, leftists have resorted to their next best tactic: labeling Republicans racists—how innovative. (Yawn.) The Demos’ propaganda machine churned out crowds chanting slave songs, wielding shackles and invoking images of resurgent Jim Crow laws. Responding to these histrionics, NPR correspondent Juan Williams—no stranger to liberalism—offered this to the would-be deprived: “I think you could say to people, ‘Go and get a legitimate ID.’ I don’t think that’s too much to ask.” We don’t think so, either.

NATIONAL SECURITY

Immigration front: San-ctuary Francisco

San Francisco has been a sanctuary city for illegal aliens since its board of supervisors proclaimed so in 1989. Mayor Gavin Newsome has also joined the fray, prohibiting city employees (that would include police) from inquiring about immigration status or cooperating with federal immigration efforts in any way. Now, city Supervisor Tom Ammiano wants to issue city ID cards to help further protect illegals from the long arm of the law (not exactly the legitimate ID required for voters in Georgia). Ammiano worries, for example, that illegal aliens who are victims of a crime or witness a crime (not to mention those who commit crime) don’t come forward for fear of being deported for not having proper identification.

According to the Government Accountability Office, 55,322 criminal aliens incarcerated in 2003 had been arrested a total of 459,614 times. If they had only had proper ID, perhaps they wouldn’t have turned to a life of crime—at least in the upside-down world of San Francisco.

Meanwhile, also in the city by the bay, U.S. District Court Judge Maxine Chesney ruled that the Department of Homeland Security couldn’t send “no match” letters to employers when an employee’s Social Security number doesn’t match Social Security Administration records. As Investor’s Business Daily muses, “We don’t see how proving you are who you say you are—something we all do on a routine basis—poses a hardship for citizens or legal residents. Nor do we see how giving IDs out like candy to illegal aliens makes us safer or benefits society.”

Profiles of valor: Marine Corps Res. Sgt. Hunter

Marine Corps Reserve Sergeant Jeff Hunter has twice faced death to save injured comrades. In May 2005, insurgents ambushed then-Corporal Hunter’s platoon as it embarked on a dawn assault in Haditha. When Hunter’s squad leader entered a nearby house to stop the insurgents who were attacking from within, he was shot in the chest. Seeing his fallen leader, Hunter rushed into the house under shield of his own M16, reached his squad leader, and, positioning his own body between the injured Marine and the enemy, carried his comrade out of the house. Hunter then led his troops in successfully clearing the house of insurgents, killing one and capturing three.

Two months later, in a long and intense battle, insurgents shot one of Hunter’s Marines. After shooting the two insurgents from the shelter of a low wall, Hunter attempted to rescue the fallen Marine. Heavy gunfire, however, stopped his two attempts. Hunter then sprinted directly through the line of fire to an M1A1 tank located across the street. He used the tank to fire upon and neutralize the enemy’s position, and his platoon was able to reach and recover the mortally wounded Marine.

For his valor, Sgt. Hunter was awarded the Silver Star. Although Hunter claims of his actions, “I honestly don’t believe I did anything all that heroic,” America believes differently.

Homeland Security front: Cargo inspection

Port security has long been a hotly debated homeland-security topic. The latest tiff over the issue involves exactly who should be inspecting incoming cargo on passenger planes. Currently, airlines are handling screening with Transportation Security Administration (TSA) oversight. Some congressional Democrats, however, no doubt posturing as national-security hawks, are pushing for government workers to inspect the cargo—and we all know how much better government workers do things than those in the private sector. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, opined, “We are convinced that responsibility for this should remain that of the government and not be pushed out to some other individual.”

The TSA argues that current law simply requires that government standards be met, regardless of who is doing the meeting. To wit, TSA’s administrator, Kip Hawley, said, “The clear intention of the legislation is to make sure packages that get onto passenger aircraft have to be physically inspected at some level. How can we do it in an operationally effective way so we don’t kill the industry or require massive increases in TSA resources? How do we do it in a way to add security to the existing freight process rather than force the freight process to conform to our security process?” An important quandary, to be sure. We’re not in any way claiming that current cargo inspections are perfectly thorough, 100-percent adequate or failsafe. We are saying that we don’t trust Democrats to establish the methods to be used.

BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Income Redistribution: Hillary to the rescue

On the campaign trail, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-Havana) promised that, if elected president, she would save Social Security. Thank goodness we have Democrats to “save” Social Security after every election. The catch to Hillary’s plan, though, is that she will not cut benefits, raise the retirement age or privatize. Absent those three good solutions, the only one left is the incredibly bad and irresponsible one: a massive tax hike, the prescription of every Democrat.

When looking at the staggering obligations of Social Security, it’s hard to imagine that a tax hike will fix anything. According to The Washington Times, “In present dollars, Social Security’s projected unfunded obligations over a 75-year horizon are $4.7 trillion. Considering that the U.S. Treasury must find $2 trillion to redeem the bonds presently in the Social Security trust funds, the total unfunded obligation is actually $2 trillion higher than this for a total of $6.7 trillion. Over an infinite horizon, Social Security’s present-dollar unfunded obligation is projected to be $15.6 trillion.” That’s a whole heap of confiscated income for younger Americans.

Oh yeah, and then there’s Medicare. The Times notes, “For Part A alone, the 75-year unfunded liability is $11.6 trillion.”

Gaming the uninsured statistics

We’ve all heard it: 47 million uninsured Americans, or nearly one in six of us. Obviously, the only solution to such a disease is socialized medicine.

However, before making such a huge change maybe we ought to take a look at the facts. For these purposes, we will pretend that 47 million is an accurate number, not just an inflation-adjusted one derived from an ancient, flawed study. Do you ever hear that, within four months, 45 percent of that 47 million (20 million) will have insurance? What about the fact that 17 million of the uninsured can afford insurance (i.e., they remain uninsured by choice)? Or that more than nine million are not even citizens?

No? When you add up all the numbers, dump out the duplicates and subtract the misinformation, fewer than nine million of our citizens go involuntarily without insurance—a troubling number, but no reason to panic. In health care, as in every other area of human endeavor, a freedom-based market approach works best to produce desired services at the lowest prices (unlike every socialized-medicine approach in history). On the other hand, if we do turn to the market, citizens would not be beholden to Congress for more crumbs. No, better to keep the problem big, so it is worthy of their lordships’ attention, and there is enough money and power available to bother grabbing.

Manufacturing stronger than media thinks

The demagogues and populists on the campaign trail are once again striking fear in the hearts of Americans by pointing out the great dangers of freedom—free trade, that is. We’re regularly told that, due to foreign competition, American manufacturing is dwindling and corporate outsourcing is destroying our labor market at home. These claims may please the unions and they may help cram protectionist trade laws through Congress, but they have the one weakness of being patently false. A mere glance at the data from 2006 shows that the manufacturing industry is doing as well as ever, achieving record output, sales and profits. Even the feared trade deficit is misleading, as over 55 percent of our imports were industrial components intended for American producers. The world economy is growing and that means increasing demands for American goods—or it does if we can keep the demagogues in Congress from creating greater barriers to trade.

If industry is doing fine, why all the fear? The fretting is due to the fact that manufacturing employment has declined over the past several years. But when manufacturing output is increasing to record-setting and world-leading levels, a decline in employment indicates that productivity has been increasing (more output per worker makes fewer workers required to produce the same total output). This often results in workers shifting employment from one sector of the economy to another as has happened as demand increases in the technology and service industries. This big-picture view often infuriates those individuals who have lost jobs—and we hear from them. We don’t take losing a job lightly, or flippantly cast it aside, but just as the buggy repairmen were unemployed by the invention of the automobile, our current economy raises living standards and creates wealth for everyone. Capitalism is, after all, a system of “creative destruction.”

CULTURE

Frontiers of Junk Science: Computer models

A new report indicates that global warming may be bad for your health. Physicians worry that anticipated rises in earth’s temperature are likely to be associated with increased heart problems. According to Dr. Karin Schenck-Gustafsson of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, “If it really is a few degrees warmer in the next 50 years, we could definitely have more cardiovascular disease.” The reason? Experts liken the hardening of the heart’s arteries to the formation of rust on an automobile. As Dr. Gordon Tomaselli, chief of cardiology at Johns Hopkins University, explains, “Rust develops much more quickly at warm temperatures.”

In addition to the doom and gloom predictions of human impact, the global-warming caravan is also concerned with the polar-bear population, as scientists forecast that by 2050, 42 percent of the Artic sea ice necessary for polar-bear survival will have melted. All they need as proof is this picture. Worse still, some scientists believe conditions are worsening more quickly than their computer models indicate.

Translation: Computer models may be wrong.

For a culture that worships at the altar of evolution, why the focused interest in interfering in the evolution of the polar-bear population? Wouldn’t this belie the very foundation of evolutionary survival? After all, if polar bears can’t survive, mustn’t that be evolutionary fate?

Indeed, global-warming groupies have a dilemma on their hands, but they have no time for that now. They are too busy fixing their computers to match their predictions and of course, computers are not the only things that predict future climate. The Old Farmer’s Almanac for 2008 predicts the hottest year in a century next year because, well, years that end in “8” have strange weather.

From the Leftjudiciary: Freedom from crosses

Last week the Ninth “Circus” Court was again operating in judicial-tyranny mode, refusing to obey laws enacted by Congress—all in order to dismember a veterans’ memorial incorporating a small cross. The property in question is California’s Mojave Desert Memorial that includes a small white cross as a monument to World War I veterans. It has stood for over three-quarters of a century. In 2004, Congress passed a law transferring five acres of federal land containing the memorial to private ownership to prevent precisely this type of anti-religious, anti-freedom judicial despotism. Yet the court still seems hell-bent on its mission of Judeo-Christian cleansing, demanding that the property must remain in federal-government ownership—for the sole purpose, it seems, of cutting down the cross and preventing veterans from honoring their comrades’ sacrifice as they and the veterans’ families choose.

Faith and Family: San Diego settlement

The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego agreed last week to pay $198 million to 144 victims of sexual abuse by clergy. It is the second largest settlement for sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, after $660 million was awarded to 508 people in Los Angeles in July and $85 million was award in Boston in 2003. The San Diego abuse cases began in 1938 and ended in 1993, though most occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. The San Diego Diocese and its insurance carrier will pay the bulk of the settlement. The Diocese of San Bernardino will also pay out $15 million for 11 cases there. Bishop Robert Brom said, “We pray that this settlement will bring some closure and healing to the years of suffering experienced by these victims.” Unfortunately for the victims, money alone cannot do that.

Village Academic Curriculum: No U.S. flags?

Students at Hobbton High School in Sampson County, North Carolina, were unable to remember 9/11 this year by displaying the American flag on their clothing. A new school rule banned such displays because of students wearing shirts with other countries’ flags as gang symbols. The obvious solution to a government educator, then, is to ban all flags. Equal opportunity, right? The superintendent equivocated that teachers shouldn’t be in a position to decide which flags are permissible. Unfortunately for the district, however, the story drew national attention. The outcry produced a white flag—the superintendent said the flag ban was lifted and that “from this point on, all dress code changes will be made at the school-board level.” The school board is set to meet with attorneys to comb over the issue. At least the district plans on observing Constitution Day on Monday. What they will teach, on the other hand, is anybody’s guess.

And last…

It had been a pressing question for centuries, a topic with such far-reaching implications that it inadvertently spawned inventions from fire to free-electron lasers. For decades, scholarly debate has been so intense in tone and tenor that the rest of the world has clamored for as many details as possible. At last there is resolution. In a study published in the journal Science, European scientists have once and for all nailed down the age-old question of whether two-year-old children are smarter than chimpanzees and orangutans. Scientists recently subjected hordes of chimpanzees, orangutans and human toddlers to “The Primate Cognition Test Battery,” a series of 16 tests relating to physical and social cognition. The result? Researchers said that while toddlers are marginally superior to apes for certain physical test aspects, they trounced their “evolutionary cousins” with superior social-learning skills. We would file this scientific data under “keen sense of the obvious” and note that it explains a whole lot about the Democrat surrender monkeys in Congress.

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.)