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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 04 December 2001 | Vol II, No. 82 | ||
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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 04 December 2001 | Vol II, No. 82 | ||
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By Mathew D. Staver, Esq.
[ Liberty Counsel - http://www.lc.org. ]
Prepared on October 23, 2001, "The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act" (hereafter "Act") is a chilling example of how we may quickly lose our liberties if we are not vigilant. The Act was prepared by the Center for Law and the Public's Health at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities. This organization was begun with a generous grant from the Center for Disease Control. In fact, the Act was prepared for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to the Act, it was also prepared in collaboration with the National Governor's Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the National Association of City and County Health Officers, and the National Association of Attorneys General.
According to the Preamble, the Act authorizes a collection of data and records, a control of property, the management of persons, and access to communications. It also grants access to individuals' health information. It imposes criminal penalties against any person, including any physician or pharmacist that violates the act. It provides for quarantine, confiscation of property and the taking over of private businesses to be run by the government.
This past Friday, I was the guest on a one hour radio program called "Cross Talk." This program was aired around the county on 90 radio stations. To listen to the program, you can go to http://vcyamerica.org/ct-archive.html. This program will be archived for two weeks on this site. After that time, you can go to http://www.lc.org.
"Why must we constantly repeat that we are not at war with Islam? We never declared war on Islam. It was Islamic fanatics who, killing 4,000 Americans in the name of God, declared war on us. Why then are we the ones required to continually demonstrate our religious tolerance and respect for others? Shouldn't that be the responsibility of the Islamic world, of those in whose name this crime was perpetrated? Imagine if 19 murderous Christian fundamentalists hijacked four airplanes over Saudi Arabia and, in the name of God, crashed them into the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, destroying the holy Kaaba and killing thousands of innocent Muslim pilgrims. Could anyone doubt that the entire Christian world -- clergy and theologians, leaders and lay folk -- would rise as one to denounce the act and declare it a sacrilege? And yet after September 11, where were the Muslim theologians and clergy, the imans and mullahs, rising around the world to declare that Sept. 11 was a crime against Islam? Where were the fatwas against Osama bin Laden? The voices of high religious authority have been scandalously still." --Charles Krauthammer
[ London Telegraph ]
President likens powers to Roosevelt action, reports Stephen Robinson
THE IMPERIAL presidency is back in Washington as the man who ran for the White House against the powers of centralized government assumes wider controls in his conduct of the campaign against terrorism.
With virtually no complaint from members of Congress, President Bush has taken new emergency powers while widening the scope of "big government", which previously he campaigned against.
In justifying stringent new powers to detain aliens and put them on trial in secret, Mr Bush has compared his position to that of Franklin D Roosevelt in meeting the Nazi and Japanese threats 60 years ago.
The actions against "alien suspects" are finding general favour as the national mood is now firmly behind the government and its workers - notably the police and firemen - who served bravely in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
The Gallup polling organization reports a sharp increase in popular support for the workings of the federal government. Some three quarters of Americans now approve of the job being done by Congress, the highest level since the question was first asked in 1974.
Earlier this week, Mr Bush signed into law an aviation security bill that took airport safety out of the hands of the airlines and at a stroke turned 28,000 luggage screeners into government employees, all of whom must now be US citizens.
However, these actions are relatively uncontroversial compared to the national security measures he has taken.
Mr Bush has signed an executive order giving him powers to determine that foreign terrorism suspects be tried and executed in secret by military tribunals, even if a third of the officers attending doubt the defendant's guilt.
Arab-Americans in the Detroit area are growing incensed by the use of overt "racial profiling" in a sweep to interview some 5,000 people of Arab descent.
"I need to have that extraordinary option at my fingertips," Mr Bush said, defending his new powers.
"I would remind those who don't understand the decision I made that Franklin Roosevelt made the same decision in World War Two. Those were extraordinary times as well."
In other areas, Mr Bush is taking decisions himself which previously would have been made by consensus with Congress or with other arms of the government.
On security grounds, Mr Bush has curtailed the briefings he formerly gave to senior members of Congress about the progress of the military campaign in Afghanistan. And the White House is no longer giving details of how many suspects have been arrested in connection with the terrorist attacks.
"It is not uncommon in times of war for a nation's eyes to focus on the executive branch and its ability to conduct the war with strength and speed," said Ari Fleischer, White House spokesman.
It is certainly true that US administrations tend to assume greater powers in times of crisis. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, while Japanese-Americans were interned after Pearl Harbor.
The term imperial presidency was used by Arthur Schlesinger to describe the powers assumed by Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon during the Vietnam war when the party structure fractured and the White House became more isolated and authoritarian.
Conservative eyebrows were raised this week when Mr Bush abruptly signed an executive order renaming the headquarters of the Justice Department in honour of Robert F Kennedy, a hero to American liberals. This was seen as a sop to the Democratic leadership in Congress in an effort to ensure easy passage of any further legislation.
However, Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, Robert Kennedy's daughter, used the occasion of the renaming ceremony to condemn Mr Bush's recent anti-terrorism initiatives, making the point that her father would have strongly disapproved of such illiberal measures.
One irony of the new security regime is that the FBI and CIA, the two agencies which so badly let down Americans by failing to foresee the September 11 atrocities, have been rewarded with a vast expansion of their authority.
With a personal approval rating of 87 per cent and public support for the campaign against terrorism still solid, Mr Bush seems to have calculated that he can afford to ignore the protests in the press and from civil liberties groups.
But his actions still represent a remarkable turnaround for a man who campaigned for the presidency by highlighting the dangers of a too-powerful executive, and who repeatedly cast the federal government as a problem rather than a solution.
by Edward H. Crane
[ Edward H. Crane is president and CEO of the Cato Institute. ]
Thomas Jefferson must be spinning in his grave. First, conservative columnist George Will names him Man of the Millennium because his call for a limited government protecting the individual's rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness defines America. The next thing you know, Will is celebrating what he perceives to be conservatives and liberals joining hands in support of Big Government in the wake of the terrorist attacks on America.
Will exults that "conservatism, redefined by a president eager to treat even education in grades K through 12 as a presidential responsibility, has shed its residual resentment of Washington's pervasive role in life here at home." As for the liberals, he writes, "Today the Democratic Party provides scant comfort" for those who think the United States shouldn't be the world's policeman. Hallelujah! We're all New Deal interventionists now.
And it's not just the Hamiltonian side of George Will's split personality getting the best of him. More predictable pundits are also taking advantage of the atrocities of September 11 to promote long-held support for expansive government. The New York Times writes, "Suddenly, the political language of a generation looks dated: Nobody wants to get the government off their backs." Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland argues that now Congress "will have to return government closer to the center of American life, not whittle away further at its powers and funding."
This is all utter nonsense. What happened on September 11 was an abject failure of Big Government. The federal agencies assigned the important task of protecting our homeland against terrorist attacks were clueless. And if, as some argue, they had some clues, they failed to act on them. So we should take this failure to provide a basic function of government as proof positive that we need more government in our lives? Please.
Put aside for the moment such silly notions as that in recent decades we've been "whittling away" at the size of government. It's bigger than ever, more intrusive than ever, and taxing us at historically high rates. What the attacks of September 11 (and whatever horrible events might transpire before you receive this) should do is make us focus more closely on what America is all about.
Those attacks were attacks on the essence of America. They were not attacks on the "mixed economy" or on the "Third Way." They were attacks on true liberalism -- the idea that individual human life is important and that social institutions should reflect that fact. America is a great nation because it was created with a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution designed to acknowledge and enhance the importance and dignity of human beings. Tens of millions of people from all over the globe often gave up everything just to come here to live in the land of the free. But over the past 70 years we've increasingly neglected the significance of America, and that has been reflected in our public policies.
Today, we have a national retirement program called Social Security that forces Americans to pay 12.4 percent of their income into a "system" that gives total control of their earnings to 535 politicians. We have no right to the money, we cannot leave it to our loved ones; and what we get back is entirely up to those politicians. Where is the respect for the dignity of human life in such a system?
We have more or less turned education -- not car manufacturing or computer technology, but the education of our children! -- over to the government. Bureaucrats tell most of us where our children must go to school. Never mind how safe the school is or whether it educates or even what it intends to teach the children. That's not your choice. Where is the American dignity in such a system?
Our tax code is an embarrassment to the American founding. It treats us like so many gerbils. Do this and you'll get some sugar water. Do that and you'll get an electric shock. Conservative and liberal politicians alike delight in using the tax code to make us behave as they think appropriate. Where is the human dignity in such social engineering?
Libertarians are not "anti-government." Perhaps we shouldn't go along with phrasing the debate as one between big government and small government. What we actually believe in is limited government as opposed to pervasive government. And the "limited" refers to the proper role of government. At a time of threats to our very existence as a nation, that role may properly require government to do more in defense of our liberties than it would in more peaceful times. But to suggest that these threats -- as many, many people have -- somehow argue for a more expansive role for government in our day-to-day lives is absurd. No, George Will, the New York Times, and the Washington Post are wrong. We' ve been attacked by pre-Enlightenment savages who have contempt for human life. We've been attacked precisely because our nation is seen as the symbol for respect for individual rights and human autonomy. That autonomy -- control over one's own life -- is the essence of the American experiment in respect for the dignity of humanity. As such, it calls for less government involvement in our lives, not more.
"For a tutorial in how the (Democrat Senate Majority Leader Tom) Daschle imperium operates, look no further than the farm bill, passed out of the Agriculture Committee a few weeks ago and headed for the Senate floor as early as this week. . . . the Senate bill allows Mr. Daschle to deliver his long-promised kiss to Vermont turncoat Jim Jeffords, who made him majority leader earlier this year.
"At the demand of Ag Committee Member and fellow Vermonter Patrick Leahy, the bill not only revives the Northeast Dairy Compact that mercifully expired in September, it massively increases its scope. The new 'national' dairy cartel would include all 48 contiguous states, imposing what is in effect a new tax on milk. The University of Missouri's Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute estimates the bill will raise milk prices by an average of 26 cents a gallon, costing consumers about $1.8 billion a year."
[ NewsMax ]
Al Gore's announcement that he's now personally running his own Tennessee restaurant has more than a few White House watchers speculating that he has now all but officially retired from politics, a decision that's sure to gladden the heart of at least one ambitious Democrat - New York Senator Hillary Clinton. "We have started a family restaurant in Tennessee and we are running it ourselves. It is a low-cost restaurant," Gore told a stunned audience in Africa this week.
With Gore waiting tables and slinging hash, it's Hillary who now occupies the head seat at the Democratic Party's 2004 presidential table.
In poll after poll Democrats say that if they can't have Gore in '04, they want Mrs. Clinton to head the ticket, preferring her to other likely contenders such as Sens. Joe Lieberman, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, John Edwards and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt.
In August, 34 percent of Democrats told Gallup/CNN/USA Today they'd nominate Gore again. Hillary came in a relatively close second, with 21 percent. The only other Democrat to break into double digits was former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, with 12 percent.
Former V.P. nominee Joe Lieberman was backed by just 9 percent.
A survey of Iowa Democrats in April also showed Mrs. Clinton running behind only Al Gore.
Hillary has repeatedly denied she wants to run for the White House in 2004 - but virtually no one believes her, since she said the same thing about running for Senate while she was first lady.
*** TCN Comment: Like everything Al Gore says, this should be taken with a grain of salt. Rumors already abound that Gore handlers are spinning this story as another "misunderstanding", in other words, it's a lie. Gore still says whatever sounds good to him at the time… maybe he is planning another run for the presidency.
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