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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 6 April 2001 | Vol. II #48 | ||
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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 6 April 2001 | Vol. II #48 | ||
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On Sunday, April 1st our U. S. Navy EP-3E surveillance plane carrying 24 American servicemen and women ACCIDENTALLY collided with a Chinese fighter jet in international airspace -- 60 miles off the coast of the nearest Chinese territory. The pilot of the badly damaged EP-3E issued a "mayday" call on an international frequency before heading for the closest airfield on Hainan island in the South China Sea, STRICTLY IN ACCORDANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL LAW. The Chinese pilot ejected from his jet, which then crashed into the sea but still has not been located.
Shortly after their harrowing emergency landing, the American plane was ILLEGALLY boarded by your Chinese soldiers and the crew of 21 men and 3 women were taken into custody and have been repeatedly interrogated. So far your Chinese government has given no indication as to when our ILLEGALLY detained Americans AND our aircraft will be released. CHINA IS IN NOW VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW.
The London Times reported that your government hinted that it might be planning legal proceedings against the 24 Americans. This is absolutely RIDICULOUS on the part of your government, in VIOLATION of international law. CHINA is the OUTLAW here.
Our satellite images have shown that your Chinese officials have begun dismantling our high tech American plane in order to inspect and collect the advanced reconnaissance and eavesdropping equipment. THIS, TOO, is a direct violation of the "safe harbor" rule for foreign vessels in distress according to international law. CHINA is THE OUTLAW here.
And now Chinese leaders are demanding that the U. S. issue an official apology for the incident. China is saying that the much larger and less maneuverable -- four propeller driven -- American EP-3E CAUSED the accident by intentionally ramming the Chinese F-8 jet fighter. Again, AN utterly RIDICULOUS CLAIM. Your Chinese government is also claiming that the damaged U.S. plane unlawfully intruded into Chinese airspace and sovereign territory by landing at the Hainan airport without permission. More NONSENSE. PURE PROPAGANDA!!! ANY unlearned person of ANY nationality CAN QUICKLY DETECT this.
Frankly, both of these arguments are FALSE. OBVIOUSLY, neither the American nor the Chinese pilot intentionally caused the mid-air ACCIDENT. To do so would be outright SUICIDAL. And regarding the SO-CALLED "unlawful" landing on Hainan island, it is NOT a violation of international law for a crippled aircraft to make an emergency landing. JUST MORE CHINESE PROPAGANDA!!! ANYONE can detect this.
The American government owes NO apology -- and we should make NO apology. CHINA should apologize AND be penalized FOR BREAKING INTERNATIONAL LAW in this situation.
Furthermore, we shall not allow your Chinese government to use American "hostages" as political bargaining chips.
Your Chinese government should set the Americans free AND return our aircraft IMMEDIATELY. This should have been done IMMEDIATELY. Now China is BREAKING INTERNATIONAL LAW. CHINA is the OUTLAW in this situation.
I, my family, friends, and the hundreds on my email mailing lists, and their lists, including most American news organizations, WILL make things VERY UNPROFITABLE and DIFFICULT for China if they refuse to release our people and plane.
We are consumers who WILL STOP buying ALL Chinese products.
We are business owners that WILL REFUSE to conduct business with ANY person or business with Chinese interests.
And, we are voters who WILL VOTE FOR AND ELECT members of our Congress who WILL PROVIDE more military aid to your Chinese Taiwanese rivals AND REDUCE trade with China.
SINCERELY,
Charles-&-Frances: Rice
We turn to one of the most outspoken lawmakers on Capitol Hill for his take on the ongoing Chinese-American standoff.
"I say the dragon is going too far," says Rep. James A. Traficant, Ohio Democrat.
"We need to tell it like it is. China is trying to determine what Congress and Uncle Sam will do when China attacks Taiwan. That is the way it is, folks."
[ Inside the Beltway, Washington Times ]
Forget about apologizing to China.
"President Bush should . . . demand an apology from the dictators in Beijing," says Rep. Joseph R. Pitts, Pennsylvania Republican, one lawmaker who is being far more vocal than the White House wishes.
"China is at fault on this one," says Mr. Pitts, calling the 24 American servicemen and women being held by the Chinese military "hostages."
[ Inside the Beltway, Washington Times ]
A suburban Detroit county has decided it has had enough of high telephone bills. As a result it's dumping Ameritech, stringing its own lines and signing up for phone service with Iowa upstart McLeod USA.
Ameritech has run afoul of regulators in Michigan, Illinois and other Midwestern states because of lapses in service and other problems. Since complaints in Michigan peaked at 2,000 last August, the company has reduced waits for new installations from weeks to 36 hours.
Thursday's Detroit News said Oakland County estimated it could save $600,000 annually on phone bills and $150,000 by extending the service to jail inmates. The $2.5 million telephone system is expected to pay for itself in four years or less.
"Everything after that is just gravy," said Robert Daddow, assistant deputy county executive.
The decision involves 4,000 phone lines and 380 miles of fiber optic cable. A few Ameritech lines will be kept for emergency backup.
The county began laying its fiber optic network in 1999 and will begin switching its phone service April 20. The full switch is expected to be completed May 28.
[ UPI ]
A judge has ruled that former White House aide Linda Tripp, who played a key part in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, could sue former Clinton administration officials for alleged harassment.
District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan rejected the government's request to dismiss Tripp's lawsuit.
The judge dismissed a move by Tripp against the Office of the President - but allowed identical claims against the Department of Defence and former members of the Clinton administration to proceed.
"The decision that individual officials can be held accountable under the Civil Rights Act for intimidating witnesses is a significant victory," said lawyer Stephen Kohn.
Mrs Tripp, whose tape recordings of conversations with Lewinsky sparked the sex scandal involving former President Bill Clinton, was transferred from the White House to the Pentagon after news of the recordings became public.
Mrs Tripp secretly taped hours of phone conversations with Lewinsky in late 1997, recording details of the White House intern's affair with Clinton.
The tapes formed the basis of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation of Clinton, which led to his impeachment.
Mrs Tripp alleges that high level Clinton appointees conspired to discredit and malign her after she provided evidence in Starr's investigation.
"Mrs Tripp's ability to hold officials accountable who improperly maligned her is an important first step in setting the record straight, in addressing the harassment that she suffered," said Mr Kohn.
A legal battle against the Office of the President and the Pentagon was started in September, 1999, over the release of information from Mrs Tripp's personnel record to the media.
She filed an additional lawsuit against the Pentagon seeking reinstatement to the job from which she was dismissed on Clinton's last day in office.
[ WND ]
In a new gifts twist, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat reportedly showered Bill and Hillary Clinton in gold and diamond necklaces, bracelets and earrings - $12,000 in gifts in all.
In addition, Arafat gave former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright jewelry worth $17,400, according to this week's New York Observer, which also reports the gifts to the Clintons.
The Clintons didn't take the gifts with them, so they were sent to the National Archives with other offerings from world leaders, said aides to the former president and Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.).
State Department spokesman Nick Griffith said he didn't know what happened to Arafat's gifts to Albright.
The Clintons were required to disclose all the gifts they kept when they left the White House - and the revelation that they tried to walk off with some gifts that were meant for the White House, not them personally, sparked a gifts-grab controversy that prompted them to return some gifts.
On their disclosure forms, there weren't any gifts listed as having come from Arafat, the Palestinian leader who has been strongly criticized - nearly to the point of being ostracized - by President Bush for Mideast violence.
[ NY Post ]
Add Yasser Arafat to the list of big shots who have bought, or tried to buy, Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The Jerusalem Post reports today that the Palestinian leader gave the couple more than $12,000 in gifts. Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made off with $17,400 worth of jewelry from Arafat.
Says today's New York Observer: "It's no longer any secret that Bill and Hillary Clinton, whatever ideals they may have held in their younger days, now feel entitled to any extra money, jewelry or furniture that comes their way, no matter how tainted the source. And they are quite willing to exchange favors in return: witness the pardoning of Marc Rich. ..."
Continues the Observer: "One would like to assume that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton did not keep every piece of jewelry: Federal employees are forbidden to keep gifts worth more than $960. But given the fact that the former First Couple fled the White House with more than a few questionable items - which they were forced to return - would anyone be surprised if Mrs. Clinton was wearing some of Mr. Arafat's baubles in the Senate? ...
"No one can know what influence, if any, Mr. Arafat's gifts had on Mr. Clinton's Middle East policy. But the pardons have shown that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton are chillingly good at rewarding those who reward them."
[ NewsMax ]
Hillary Clinton's denial yesterday that she would even run for president has media wags capitvated. After all, they reason, how can she seek the White House now after issuing such a blanket statement?
But apparently reporters have forgotten that a just a few short years ago, Mrs. Clinton denied she had any ambitions whatsoever for elective office, which would have presumably included the Senate seat she now occupies.
"So, Sen. Clinton, are you ruling out a run for president not just in 2004, but in 2008 and beyond?" the New York Post asked her Thursday.
"Yes," Hillary replied, without equivocation.
The exchange was almost a re-run from a scene just seven years ago, when Hillary sat down with four New York gossip columnists who grilled the then-new first lady on a variety of topics.
Among the myriad of questions for New York's future U.S. Senator was this one from Liz Smith.
"Would she ever run for office herself? She gave a very definite 'No!.'" Smith reported Hillary's "definitive" denial in a column carried by Newsday on March 2, 1994.
In 1990, then-Gov. Bill Clinton assured Arkansans that he'd serve out the six year term to which they'd just elected him -- before announcing he was running for president the following September.
[ NewsMax ]
TCN Comment: If Hillary were to admit, or fail to deny, that she plans a presidential run, she would have conservatives fighting her from now until election day. She has an agenda to try to get through the Senate and cannot manage a fight at the same time.
If she manages to get even parts of her agenda passed into law, then she has a political basis of her own upon which she can make a legitimate(?) presidential bid.
If she should become tangled in a constant battle with conservative forces and not get her agenda passed, she would have nothing, but Bill's stained coat-tails to run on… That may not be enough to get through the primaries on, let along the general election.
We can expect to see Hillary making many gestures toward conservatives as she tries to convince them she is not an enemy. She has already showed up at conservative prayer breakfasts and meetings of "conservative" Dems in her effort to clam the Clinton scandal storm. It isn't a shift in her political position, just part of the plan.
Hillary will deny a presidential run, until the day she announces her candidacy.
The Travis County Republican Party of Texas isn't that upset that CBS newsman Dan Rather was the star attraction of a Travis County Democratic Party fund-raiser in Austin.
"We're going to see if he can come down and raise some money for us," quips Alan Sager, chairman of the Travis County Republican Party, speaking by telephone with Inside the Beltway.
It so happens that several days after Mr. Rather appeared at the Democratic Party event, the Travis County Republicans held a "Salute to Karl Rove," Republican political strategist-turned-senior White House adviser to President Bush.
"The Democrats raised $20,000 with Dan Rather. Our Karl Rove dinner raised $250,000," notes Mr. Sager, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas. "We're going to invite Dan Rather down to see if he can beat that."
Mr. Sager, of course, is making light of whatever controversy surrounds Mr. Rather's Austin appearance, for which the network anchor has made no public apology.
In all seriousness, Mr. Sager says he's quite surprised that "more people aren't concentrating on [Mr. Rather] compromising journalism ethics" by agreeing to appear at the Democratic fund-raiser.
[ Washington Times, Inside the Beltway ]
Seeking to raise a leftist voice in the national debate over values and faith, a newly formed Progressive Religious Partnership is meeting.
"We looked around only to see an absence of the progressive voice in the dialogue on family values and in politics," said the Rev. George Regas, executive director of Regas Institute, which studies "progressive" religion.
The Washington conference is sponsored by People For the American Way, a left-wing organization led by attorney Ralph Neas.
The rally kicked off Wednesday night, the 33rd anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., at Metropolitan AME Zion Church, a mostly black church attended by Bill Clinton on the morning of his two presidential inaugurations. The rally then moved to the Washington Hilton Hotel.
Among those expected before the conference ends today are Children's Defense Fund Founder Marian Wright Edelman; the Rev. John Buehrens, president of Unitarian Universalist Association; and longtime Clinton adviser Paul Begala.
Peter Montgomery, a senior policy analyst with People for the American Way, said participants representing religious and lay activists from 25 states were getting tips on how to organize around such issues as the death penalty and same-sex unions.
The conference comes as debate escalates over Bush administration actions that some see as favoring political and cultural conservatives. Two days after the election, Bush raised the ire of left-wing and pro-abortion groups when he restored a ban on U.S. aid to pro-abortion international groups.
"Religion for the last 20 years has been defined by conservatives," Regas said. "We need to show that religion is more than that."
[ UPI ]
TCN Comment: Religion has ALWAYS been defined by liberals. God's Word has always defined Christianity.
The liberal Bible denying crowd that want to feel religious without any obligation or responsibility cloud the true view of Christianity and cause great confusion. The Scriptures are clear on sodomy and murder, but not all of those who support these issues are willing to admit their disobedience (sin) on the matter. As a result we have what the media terms "the religious left."
They are "religious", and they certainly are "left" but until they repent of their sin and espouse the Truth of the Scriptures, they are anything but Christian.
It makes no difference what they call themselves or what right and privilege they claim. Christianity is defined as followers of Christ. You cannot follow Christ and deny His Word.
"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
[Matthew 7:21-23 KJV ]
What is almost never said about the kind of campaign finance "reform" embodied by the modified McCain-Feingold bill passed by the Senate earlier this week is that it is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse.
Do you find it distasteful or even scandalous that wealthy people or connected (and superficially generous) special interests tend to dominate government and use it to advance their own narrow interests at the taxpayers' expense? Does it disgust you that businesses can buy favorable treatment or subsidies so they don't have to rely on pleasing customers in a nasty old competitive marketplace to pad their bottom lines?
The real answer to the problem is to reduce the size and scope of government, perhaps even to the dimensions envisioned by our limited-government Constitution (or even more?) so that it won't have as much influence to sell.
So long as government is entwined in almost every part of our lives, so long as it is enmeshed in the marketplace to the point that it can dictate who succeeds and who fails, businesses and interest groups will find ways to influence its decisions. And money, while not the only method of influencing decisions, is inevitably going to be part of the picture. Lobbyists don't work for free.
The inevitability of such scrambles for influence is seldom acknowledged, but it is perfectly rational. If the government has enough power to decide whether your company lives or dies -- or even to affect its bottom line to a significant degree -- you would be crazy or irresponsible not to try to figure out what it's up to and influence its deliberations. If you shut off one channel of relatively direct and open influence-buying, then back channels will be found.
Regulations on political contributions without serious reductions in the size of government will only change the shape of the game, not its major rules. It will be a bit like the three-point shot in basketball; the games have a slightly different character since the three-point shot was installed, but the basic goal of having more points at the end of the game as the result of putting the ball through the basket more times is unchanged.
If influence-buying really offends you, then, the most logical thing to do is to reduce the size and scope of government so it doesn't have enough influence to be worth buying. That's what our founders tried to do. But the growth of government and its use to benefit private interests began pretty much from the day the Constitution was adopted (see Albert Jay Nock's marvelous biography of Jefferson for a discussion of how offended the third president was by the graft). If you're not serious about reducing the size and scope of government then you have no right to shed crocodile tears over corruption and influence peddling.
The other aspect of "reform" as the Senate passed it is the blatant inversion of the democratic ideal it represents. The myth still taught (I think) in civics class is that this is a country where the people, through the political process, which involves some variances from a pure plebiscite on every issue, tell the government what they want it to do. But regulation-oriented form amounts to the government telling the people how they may use the political process. You can't escape the fact either that any such regulation involves an expansion of state power, the very antithesis of the proper goal for those whose loathing of corrupt politics is sincere and informed.
In a way, it's amazing that a majority of senators could vote for a bill whose major purpose is to limit and regulate political speech and action, something clearly forbidden by a plain-English reading of the First Amendment. What part of "Congress shall make no law" don't they understand?
The fact that the target is specifically political speech and action should be the occasion of outrage, but most of the Washington establishment and most of the kept media seem to have no qualms at all. It is true that there is room for some doubt as to whether the First Amendment is designed to protect nude dancing in public as an aspect of free expression. But whenever such a case receives publicity, those who want to regulate the conduct in question argue that the real purpose of the First Amendment was to protect political speech specifically, not necessarily every utterance or expression imaginable. And our traditions and most federal court decisions affirm that.
The First Amendment might or might not be designed to protect the freedom to say any offensive thing one might imagine. But at the very least it was designed to protect the freedom of vigorous political speech and activity. Yet here are a majority of the Senate and most of the media gleefully charging to undermine what in their better moments they would say is the heart and soul of any functioning democratic or republican system. And they want us to see them as good-government reformers who are cleaning up the system while they do their dirty work! A pretty good trick.
It's not hard to detect the short-term interest of many of the "reformers." Any further regulation of the political and campaign processes can only benefit incumbents, who have not just the intangible benefits of being the horse you might not want to change in the middle of the stream but entire taxpayer-paid staffs who work assiduously to keep the incumbent's name in front of voters in connection with positive news. Not to mention the power to bend legislation or regulatory decisions to serve the interests of possible large contributors.
The power of the media would also be strengthened by McCain-Feingold-style reform. When you make it more difficult or more expensive to make your opinion known or publicized, those in the media who have opinions and are immune from regulation gain power and influence. Maybe it's not a conspiracy to silence grassroots groups or Internet sites the media don't like, exactly, but it's difficult to imagine that this angle has escaped the attention of canny media analysts.
But the most egregious aspect of such added regulations is the cart-before-the-horse angle. You can't have more powerful and less corrupt government simultaneously. For hundreds of reasons having to do with the way people really are -- rather than the way we might fondly imagine them to be -- corruption and power go together.
If you really want less corruption, rather than corruption whose benefits are pointed your way, then you have to work for a smaller, less powerful government. To do otherwise is to acquiesce in and approve corruption rather than try to control it.
[ Alan Bock, WND ]
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