GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

News from the Swamp: Budget battles

On the Hill: President George W. Bush criticized Congress this week for not getting appropriations bills to his desk. “The House of Representatives has wasted valuable time on a constant stream of investigations, and the Senate has wasted valuable time on an endless series of failed votes to pull our troops out of Iraq,” the President said. The fiscal year began 1 October, and there are many spending bills still to be finished. President Bush also blasted Democrats’ propensity for adding new taxes to several bills, saying that Democrats “haven’t seen a bill they could not solve without shoving a tax hike into it.”

War funding continues to be a point of contention as well. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared, “The Iraq war has been a waste of money.” The President fired a return volley, saying, “When it comes to [war] funding, some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the requests of our commanders on the ground and less time responding to MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters.” Ooorah, Mr. President!

As for greatly expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Republicans, as is far too often the case, are still quibbling over who and how much, rather than whether or not. The House last week passed (by a less-than-veto-proof majority) a slightly revised version of the expansion President Bush vetoed. The revised version limits health coverage for “the poor” to families of four making $62,000 or less—300 percent of the poverty level and $14,000 a year above the median household income. Another sticking point is the 156-percent increase in the tobacco tax, which brings the federal tax on cigarettes to $1 per pack. Sounds like Congress should be recruiting smokers pretty aggressively or revenue might dry up. The Senate will take up the bill again next week.

In the Executive Branch: Nominees face Senate

President Bush’s nominee for Attorney General, Judge Michael Mukasey, is predictably under fire in his Senate confirmation hearings. Judiciary Committee Democrats are “concerned” that Mukasey has not denounced strongly enough the interrogation technique known as “waterboarding” —a tactic that creates the sensation of drowning and often produces great results (just ask Khalid Sheikh Mohammed). As a judge, Mukasey often ruled on terror cases but refuses to pretend to know enough about the use of waterboarding by the CIA to call it illegal torture. He noted that Congress had outlawed the practice for the military, but not the CIA. The Judiciary Committee plans a vote on the nomination next Tuesday, but it doesn’t look promising. The President is digging in, saying that if Mukasey is not confirmed, “That would guarantee that America would have no attorney general during this time of war” —Mukasey or no one.

Another cabinet nomination was submitted this week—former North Dakota governor Edward Schafer for the Department of Agriculture. Former agriculture secretary Mike Johanns resigned in September in order to run for Chuck Hagel’s Nebraska Senate seat. The Department oversees food safety, economic development in rural areas and the food-stamp program. President Bush said, “Ed Schafer is… a leader on agricultural issues during his eight years as governor of North Dakota.” We don’t expect that Schafer will be a leader in trying to cut farm subsidies, however. Congress is currently considering a $288-million farm bill.

New & notable legislation

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) introduced the REAL Supplemental Act (H.R. 3857), requiring that each supplemental appropriations bill represent a single emergency, authorize only emergency spending and contain no earmarks.

The House followed the Senate and passed the Internet Tax Freedom Act (H.R. 3678), a seven-year ban on Internet taxes, after having already approved a four-year ban. “Seven years is better than nothing,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI). True, but a House bill establishing a permanent ban has 238 co-sponsors, clearly a majority. For some reason the Democrat leadership is not allowing it to come to the floor.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed to the full Senate the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, more commonly known as the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). The committee vote was an appalling 17-4 in favor of this attempt to cede sovereignty to the UN. There is still hope for defeat, however. A two-thirds vote is required for ratification, meaning only 34 votes are needed to kill it.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) has called the lack of diversity in the representation of minorities in Capitol artwork a “disgrace,” and he has called on the Architect of the Capitol (AoC) to diversify its artwork. Rangel’s diatribe may have landed him in the news, along with other minority legislators who have made similar complaints, but the facts tell a different story. While the Capitol’s 100-piece Statuary Hall depicts only nine minority figures, it is up to the individual states to submit the statues, not the federal government. A recent law has given the states the right to submit new art pieces for the collection, but the AoC does not commission artwork and thus has no responsibility to diversify the collection to Rangel’s liking.

From the Left: Clinton fraud in new documentary

A new documentary detailing the long battle between Bill and Hillary Clinton and businessman Peter Paul received its first screenings this week at universities around the country and the Metropolitan Club in New York City. “Hillary Uncensored” is Paul’s answer to what he claims is a campaign by the Clintons to ruin his reputation and tie him up in unending legal proceedings.

Once a friend of the Clintons, Paul put together a million-dollar fundraiser for Hillary’s 2000 Senate campaign in exchange for Bill’s services as a rainmaker for a media concern put together by Paul and Marvel Comics founder Stan Lee. The fundraiser ran afoul of federal campaign-finance laws and led to the arrest of former Clinton fundraising chair David Rosen. Rosen was later cleared of the charges, but Paul lost millions when Bill reneged on the deal. Paul filed a suit against the Clintons for fraud, demanding that Hillary be deposed to detail her role in putting the fundraiser together. She claims that she played no part in organizing the event, despite Paul’s videotaped evidence of a conference call in which Hillary is heard discussing details of the event, a big no-no when it comes to campaign-finance regulations.

The California Court of Appeals upheld a lower-court ruling last week that Hillary did not have to appear as a defendant in the Paul suit, but now the court of public opinion will have an opportunity to view the evidence that the courts deemed as inadmissible in the new documentary. Since the MSM has no interest in reporting information detrimental to the Clintons, it’s now up to concerned citizens to spread the word about the film and the latest in a long line of questionable Clinton campaign tactics.

Campaign watch: Campaign cash for earmarks

Speaking of Hillary, she and fellow New York Senator Chuck Schumer received thousands of dollars in campaign cash from Nobel prize-winning scientist James Watson, while requesting a $900,000 earmark for his Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. According to federal filing reports, earlier this year Watson donated $70,000 to Demo candidates, Schumer and Clinton among them, just days before the earmark was submitted. Watson, who co-discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, recently retired after drawing public ire for telling the London Sunday Times that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really.” Amid the all-too-predictable firestorm that followed, the 79-year-old Watson was cowed into apologizing for his remarks. Still, those remarks are likely to kill the earmark.

Liberal infighting in the Obama camp

Homosexual activists’ ceaseless battle to impose their “standards” on the public has now landed the Barack Obama campaign in hot water. A recent fundraising tour of the South led by Grammy-winning gospel singer Donnie McClurkin was attacked as hypocritical by the Human (read: Homosexual) Rights Campaign (HRC). McClurkin’s view that homosexuality is a lifestyle that can be changed supposedly runs counter to Obama’s overall message of bringing people together around faith and family values. McClurkin, who suffered sexual abuse from adult-male relatives as a child, refers to himself as an “ex-gay” man who accepted Christ and became a changed person. HRC and other such groups have called upon Obama to sever his ties with McClurkin, even though the issue of lifestyle choice is not a part of McClurkin’s work for Obama or his campaign in general. So far, Obama has not buckled, which may have something to do with a recent poll that found 74 percent of blacks in South Carolina believe homosexuality is “unacceptable.”

This week’s ‘Tin Foil Hat’ award

During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Roswell) was asked about his recent UFO sighting. Kucinich indignantly responded, “It was an unidentified flying object, OK? It’s, like, it’s unidentified. I saw something.” He continued, “You have to keep in mind that… Jimmy Carter saw a UFO and also that more people in this country have seen UFOs than I think approve of George Bush’s presidency.” Jimmy also tried whacking a “rabid” rabbit with his canoe paddle once, which brings to mind “the most foul, cruel and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on” from the 1975 Monty Python flick, but we digress…

Earlier in the day, believe it or not, Kucinich said, “I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about [President Bush’s] mental health. There’s something wrong. He does not seem to understand his words have real impact.” Dennis, phone home.

A bad week for Colorado

In one week’s time, Colorado suffered the indignity of its home baseball team, the Rockies, being unceremoniously swept out of the World Series by the Boston Red Sox, followed by Rep. Tom Tancredo’s announcement that he will retire from the House next year after serving out his fifth term. Tancredo has been a champion for serious immigration reform, but he told reporters this week, “I really believe I have done all I can do in the House” to improve America’s immigration policy. Tancredo will continue to speak and write on immigration reform and he intends to remain in the presidential race, though the conservative stalwart remains quite a long shot for the nomination. His retirement adds to the uphill Republican task of winning back the House.

The Electoral College and California

Every few years or so, it seems someone (usually a Democrat) wants to make an issue of the Electoral College. Apparently, the American educational system is incapable of explaining that ours is a federal system, much less the value of such a system. So consider this: Think about the 2000 election. Think Florida and hanging chads. Now think Florida spread across the entire country, with lawyers running rampant across every precinct, trying to “find” votes. Does the Electoral College make the Founders seem omniscient?

Recently, some nice folks out in California, mostly Republicans, have sought to change the state’s Electoral College voting system to one that allocates votes by House district, with the state winner getting the two “Senate” votes. Now, under our federal system, Californians should be able to do whatever they wish (Maine and Nebraska already use this system), but is this really a good idea? Though this fight might demonstrate the hypocrisy of those power-mongering faux populists opposed to the Electoral College, won’t this just further demonstrate the Great and Holy Power of the Nearly Almighty Gerrymander?

Seems to us that if self-proclaimed populists are really concerned about power to the people, they should spend their time fighting gerrymandering, a state topic, rather than advocating the circumvention of the Electoral College.

NATIONAL SECURITY

Meso-stable Mesopotamia

Offering more evidence that lasting stability in Iraq will require deeply pondered solutions, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan flatly dissed Iraq’s proposal to use U.S. troops to broker peace along the Iraq-Turkey border, a region populated predominantly by Kurds. The proposal highlights Iraq’s eagerness to prevent Turkey from invading Northern Iraq to suppress raids by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.) into Turkey. The most recent of these raids resulted in 12 dead and eight captured Turkish soldiers. Notwithstanding Iraq’s offer, however, the U.S. is understandably gun-shy about poking its nose into this mess. Since both Turkey and Iraq are allies, siding with either would only exacerbate matters. Add to this tar baby the fact that neither country wants an independent Kurdistan carved from its topography (but each is more than happy to carve such a region out of its neighbor’s, of course), and the true magnitude of the problem begins to emerge.

The good news is that under the new Iraqi government, the Kurdistan Regional Government (K.R. G.) exercises near-autonomy over most of Northern Iraq, the first truly Kurdish rule in nearly 50 years. Even so, approximately half of all Kurds (15 million) live in Turkey, roughly 20 percent of its population (71 million). Evidently, some Kurds would like to annex part of Turkey in addition to Northern Iraq, hence, the P.K.K. raids. Prime Minister Erdogan has been under pressure to end P.K.K. violence in Turkey, going so far as to threaten sending Turkish troops into Iraq to fix the problem, if need be. He is expected to meet with President Bush next week. For his part, President Bush could help Erdogan at that meeting by reminding Kurdish separatists that near-autonomy over peaceful, largely uncontested governorates is far superior to continued war with Turkey, along with a likely loss of self-rule.

Profiles of valor: Marine Corps Staff Sgt Bogart

Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Daniel Bogart, leader of the 1st Explosive Ordnance Disposal Platoon serving in Iraq, had just completed the disposal of two IEDs while under enemy fire. A traveling Humvee suddenly detonated another IED mere feet away from Bogart and a fellow team member. The explosion left Bogart’s eardrums damaged, and his fellow Marine sustained shrapnel wounds. As medics attempted to assist the injured Marines, Bogart insisted they stay clear, knowing there was another live IED in the area. Bogart then located and dismantled the explosive device, evacuated his partner, and then came back to conduct post-blast analysis before finally allowing medics to treat him.

Bogart is credited with disposing of over 11,000 pounds of unexploded ordnance during a seven-month tour in which his team conducted 170 missions. The father of two was recently awarded the Bronze Star with combat “V” for valor. “I wish they could give this award to my whole team,” Bogart said. “Nobody gets anything done on their own. When your team sets you up for success like this, you can’t go wrong.”

Immigration front: New York sanctuary state

One of many federal dictates in the wake of 9/11 is the REAL ID Act, an effort by Washington to standardize state drivers’ licenses. Homeland Security’s aim is to add more stringent requirements to the process of obtaining these and similar forms of identification by requiring proof of citizenship or legal residency. Many civil libertarians have derided the program as an intrusion on states’ rights and yet another unfunded mandate, as Congress appropriated only a small portion of the estimated $23 billion needed for full implementation.

Despite the deal reached by the state of New York and the Bush administration on compliance with REAL ID, Governor Eliot Spitzer still angered federal Homeland Security officials by planning to maintain a three-tiered system for drivers’ licensing as part of his state’s compliance effort, with the third tier being a driver’s license tailored for “undocumented” (read: illegal) immigrants. Spitzer claims that this will bring illegals “out of the shadows,” but it is likely that folks will acquire this more legitimate form of identification using forged or stolen information. In other words, the shadows will grow.

The issue even worked its way into Tuesday night’s Democrat presidential debate, where frontrunner Hillary Clinton (D-NY) bobbed and weaved around the question of her support for the new provisions. She first praised Gov. Spitzer for “fill[ing] a vacuum” left by the Bush administration but then responded to criticism from other candidates, “I did not say that it should be done.” When moderator Tim Russert pointed out her waffling, she whined, “You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays ‘gotcha’.” Wednesday, Clinton’s campaign attempted to clean up the mess by taking a stand for Spitzer’s plan once again. Whatever, Hill.

BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Income Redistribution: AMT ‘relief’

Few would argue the faults of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Even Democrats—those of the same party that concocted this “tax-the-rich” ploy nearly 40 years ago—have come to grips with its detriments. But if the AMT is harmful to the American taxpayer, New York Demo Rep. Charlie Rangel’s alternative to the Alternative Minimum Tax is nothing short of disastrous.

On the surface, Rangel’s proposal, the “Tax Reduction and Reform Act,” seems acceptable: extend the current AMT relief provisions for one year and eliminate the AMT completely in 2008. However, as former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey notes, “the static price tag for this ‘relief’ is where the trouble starts.” Rangel’s proposal, more accurately labeled “the mother of all tax reform,” would offset the “reduction” in the AMT by imposing a four-percent tax increase on individuals earning more than $150,000 and on couples earning more than $200,000. According to Michael Shuyler, Senior Economist for the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation, taxpayers now in the 25-percent income-tax bracket would pay 29 percent; those in the 28-percent bracket would pay 32 percent; taxpayers in the 33-percent bracket would pay 37 percent, and those paying 35 percent would dish out a whopping 39 percent. Moreover, these hikes will come on top of the elimination of President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. “The combined result,” Armey notes, is “America’s top income-tax rate will skyrocket from the current 35-percent rate to a top rate of 44 percent. Let’s be clear—that’s a 25-percent hike.”

Twenty-five percent is big even by Democrats’ standards. It’s no wonder House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has begun to backtrack from her initial support for the great Rangel Reduction. After all, who can afford such a tax cut?

Regulatory Commissars: Emissions are bad

Greenhouse-gas emissions exceeded the worst-case scenarios peddled by the United Nations, according to a report appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The report claims that carbon-dioxide emissions have grown by 3.3 percent a year between 2000 and 2006, after the UN forecasted that the increase, at worst, would be 2.4 percent. “There’s even less reason to think we have time to fiddle around,” worried one of the report’s authors. Meanwhile, as the human race continues to live on, we’re left to wonder: Could it be that the UN scientists were overzealous in their predictions? Could it be that there’s a political agenda at stake here?

Meanwhile, back in Kansas, a permit for a coal-fired power plant was denied because of—surprise!—global warming. “I believe it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health if we do nothing,” said Roderick Bremby, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. While the proposed plant’s owners will file an appeal, alternatives include bringing electricity from a plant in Missouri. If the state’s trend of denying energy permits continues, we’ll know who’s to blame when the lights go out in Kansas.

Deficits and declining dollars

There has been much consternation of late regarding the declining value of the dollar. However, despite the negative economic consequences, many are welcoming the decline and are encouraging the federal government to weaken the dollar further via monetary policy. The question is: Why? Those arguing for such interference believe it will give domestic industry an edge over foreign competition by making American exports relatively cheaper. It’s a protectionist tactic designed to decrease the much-maligned trade deficit, in particular, that with China. The U.S. imports far more from China than it exports, creating a drastic bilateral-trade deficit and resulting in all manner of political scheming as to how this “problem” can be remedied. Virtually all leading politicians agree with the Bush administration’s push to weaken the dollar in order to reduce the deficit with China.

The problem with this policy is that such a deficit isn’t really a problem. All it indicates is that millions of consumers and businesses are freely doing business with one another. An increase in imports naturally follows from a healthy economy. Furthermore, U.S. exports have been growing at a faster pace than imports for two years now, and the U.S. has a sizable trade surplus in important sectors of the economy—most notably the fast-growing service industry. As counterintuitive as it often seems, the principles of the free market do apply at the global level. Indeed, trade with China is a good thing.

CULTURE

Around the nation: Nebraska blood testing

Controversy swirled this week over Nebraska’s law requiring mandatory blood testing of newborns for various diseases. Recently, a couple would not allow their infant boy to be tested, citing religious reasons, but because the law has no opt-out provision, the county obtained an order from a juvenile-court judge to test the baby anyway. This permitted sheriff’s deputies to take the nursing six-week-old baby from his parents. Additionally, the next day, the judge ordered that the baby remain in foster care until the preliminary results came back and confirmed further testing wasn’t needed.

This is an example of what may happen if the government should become the only provider of healthcare. If the state can take a nursing baby from its mother for (relatively) arbitrary reasons and then place him in foster care, what will limit the state when it controls all aspects of healthcare? It seems a silly question to even ask, but who has superior rights to a child—the parents or the state? In Cuba, it’s the state.

The parents are suing the health officials for violation of their constitutional due-process rights. The so-called protectors of our civil liberties should be very concerned if this proves to be a trend. Will the ACLU leap to the defense of the parents? Don’t bet on it.

Capital punishment challenged

As the U.S. Supreme Court stayed an execution this week in Mississippi, the third since it agreed to take a case challenging Kentucky’s lethal-injection procedures, the liberal American Bar Association (ABA) called for a nationwide moratorium on capital punishment. A three-year study conducted by the ABA concluded that the process by which states carry out executions is “deeply flawed.” According to Stephen Hanlon, chairman of the ABA’s Death Penalty Moratorium Product, “Capital-defense systems are being under-funded, and unqualified and under-resourced lawyers are defending death-row inmates.”

The study examined the death penalty in eight states—Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Arizona, Florida and Pennsylvania—and found problems ranging from improper DNA handling to politically influenced judicial decisions. Yet, while the ABA seeks a stay of executions nationwide, it is also abandoning the true victims of murder. William “Rusty” Hubbarth of Justice for All contends that the ABA is taking “political stances” and “worrying about the rights of the defendant, rather than the rights of the victims, or the rest of society.”

We believe in the societal efficacy, constitutional provision and biblical support of capital punishment and have long contended that it serves its objectives of deterrence, retribution and incapacitation. After all, the recidivism rate of executed inmates is zero.

Frontiers of Junk Science: AWOL hurricanes

The Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies issued a release this week saying, “Unless a dramatic and historical flurry of activity occurs in November and December, 2007 will rank as a historically inactive TC [tropical cyclone] year for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole. During past 30 years, only 1977 has had less activity to date Jan 1-Oct 31.” 2006 was also a below-average performer. Gasp! There have not been enough hurricanes! We thought global warming was supposed to cause more and more Hurricane Katrinas each year, bringing devastation, death and career advancement for alarmists. Now, as it turns out, the inactivity will contribute to global warming because hurricanes serve to cool ocean temperatures. Oh well. There’s always next year.

’Non Compos Mentis’: Fires and FEMA

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) held a press conference Tuesday to discuss the agency’s response to the California wildfires, touting it as better than its response to Hurricane Katrina—not a grand feat, to be sure. The problem was the only “reporters” who attended the conference were FEMA employees asking softball questions. Kind of like Chris Matthews interviewing Hillary Clinton on “Hardball.” Vice Adm. Harvey Johnson, Jr., FEMA’s deputy administrator, said that the agency will be “reviewing our press procedures.” John P. “Pat” Philbin, FEMA’s director of external affairs, apologized, saying, “It was absolutely a bad decision. I regret it happened.” We’re sure Philbin also regrets the fact that he will not now be the top public-information officer for Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell.

As for the fires, CBS trumpeted that they cause global warming: “Wildfires Spew Tons of Global Warming Gas—SoCal’s fires added as much CO2 to air in one week as state’s cars and power plants.” On the other hand, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Searchlight) says global warming caused the fires. We’re so confused! The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing yesterday “examining the scientific link between a changing climate and the frequency and intensity of wildfires.” Good luck with that. The Associated Press reports, “Officials blamed a wildfire that consumed more than 38,000 acres and destroyed 21 homes last week on a boy playing with matches.” At least one other fire was the result of arson, or “man-made global warming.” In a related tragedy, actor Sean Penn lost his trailer to the fire in Malibu.

And last…

“Eating Food Will Kill You.” So says conservative columnist Alan Caruba in a post at the National Anxiety Center. In a parody of the usual media reports on the latest disease- or death-causing food, Caruba simply makes the next logical leap: “No one who has eaten food in the past is alive today and everyone currently eating food will die.” He mocks the announcement this week by the World Cancer Research Fund International, based in the United Kingdom, and the American Institute for Cancer Research, that “eating meat will give you some form of cancer.” Just as a certain global-warming alarmist has staked his career on scaring the pants off of the gullible among us, so too do many publicly funded scientists rely on regular studies showing various links to cancer in order to put food on their tables—an unfortunate mistake, as we now know. Still, while the Psalms tell us that “the length of our days is seventy years—or eighty, if we have the strength,” Caruba says, “[T]hose noble people who seek to save us from eating every kind of food that the earth provides should be hailed and saluted for their efforts to keep us alive.”

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.)