 | ||||
| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 20 February 2001 | Vol. II #26 | ||
|
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 20 February 2001 | Vol. II #26 | ||
|
| ||||
| ||||
"Racial charges by many black politicians, civil-rights spokesmen, self-appointed black leaders and guilt-ridden whites are just plain nonsense. [Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Kweisi Mfume, the Black Caucus, et al.] get away with them because we're ill-informed or are too timid to question their assumptions and assertions. ... At one time, black Americans didn't enjoy constitutional protections. Today, we do. As such, the civil-rights struggle is over and won. That doesn't mean that there aren't other problems, but they are not civil-rights problems. If we diagnose them incorrectly as civil-rights problems, however, their solutions will remain illusive." --Walter Williams
** Hip-hip-hooray for Bill Clinton.
The guy just won't leave the stage ... keeping the spotlight off all the other Democrats around the nation. On Sunday, he kept the pardon story alive ... and actually fueled it further ... by publishing an op/ed in the New York Times defending his decision to let fugitive tax-cheat Marc Rich off the hook. And he did it in typical Clinton style.
First, he laid out the legal case that the Constitution granted him the right to make such a pardon. But of course, this is just a diversion. NO ONE is saying the president didn't have the *authority* to make the pardon ... only that it was, well, stupid.
Bubba then falls back on the old "everybody does it defense," listing a number of controversial pardons granted by previous presidents ... as though that somehow makes his stinkeroo OK. He then tries to cloud the argument with statistics, rattling off how many pardons had been issued in the past by Presidents Reagan, Carter, Bush and Ford. But again, this has absolutely no relevance to the Rich pardon itself.
Next the "Lyin' King" tries to cloak himself in GOP armor by claiming ... falsely, of course ... that the case for the Rich pardon was reviewed and advocated "by three distinguished Republican attorneys." That claim was exposed as 100% USDA-prime BS within a mere 24 hours. This guy will say anything.
We're then treated to one of his patented denials. "The suggestion that I granted the pardons because Mr. Rich's former wife, Denise, made political contributions and contributed to the Clinton library foundation is utterly false," the ex-president's ghost-writer writes. "There was absolutely no quid pro quo." Right. And he didn't have sex with "that woman," either. Maybe it all depends on your definition of "quid pro quo."
Finally, what Clinton scandal would be complete without poor old Bill casting himself as the victim? "I am accustomed to the rough and tumble of politics," he concludes, "but the accusations made against me in this case have been particularly painful because for eight years I worked hard to make good decisions for the American people." How pathetic.
I'm with Newt Gingrich on this one. I hope Bill Clinton never leaves the stage. He's a magnet for sleaze and scandal ... and every day he's in the spotlight is good for our side and bad for their side. He's truly an American embarrassment ... only now, the Democrats and the media are finally being forced to admit it. Glad he's on their side.
[ Chuck Muth, Editor, GOP N&V ]
Chief House Pardongate prober Dan Burton, R-Ind., has subpoenaed the donor list to the Clinton Library Foundation, which is known to include Denise Rich. But he thinks that list may contain key evidence about an even more explosive Clinton scandal.
In a comment missed by most of the press, the tenacious Republican said Sunday that he'll be keeping an eye out for other Clinton library donors with ties to the Chinagate scandal.
"When I subpoenaed those documents from the president's library board we didn't intend to go public with them unless there was a need to do so," Burton told CBS's "Face the Nation" host Bob Scheiffer.
"Now if we find out that the Lippo Group in Indonesia, James Riady, or Mochtar Riady gave a huge sum of money - anybody connected with John Huang or some of these others, including Marc Rich - then of course that's something we'll take a look at," he explained.
"Because we want to find out why some of these people got light sentences and breaks from the previous Justice Department and some of these pardons from the president."
James Riady, for instance, took a sweetheart plea bargain from the Clinton Justice Department that had him paying $8 million in fines but doing no jail time.
Huang and Clinton donor Charlie Trie got off with similar slaps on the wrist.
Their political donations had to be returned when the light of public scrutiny showed them to be illegal. But since the Clinton Library is tax exempt it's not subject to disclosure laws. What an excellent place for any friend of Bill to hide oodles of cash contributions.
And so Burton may be on to something.
Even though the Washington Post went public with a list of 20 megabuck Clinton Library donors in 1999, the ex-president's lawyer David Kendall has vowed to fight hammer and tong to keep other names secret.
And then there's the much-overlooked report in the Far Eastern Economic Review last September that claimed the Riadys expected Clinton to join Lippo's board of directors after he left the White House.
If true, that means they intend to keep bankrolling Bill and Hillary - and just about the only way they could keep that secret is to donate to the Clinton Library.
Burton's committee has given Kendall till Thursday to come clean on the library list. After that, he'll be subject to contempt proceedings, a committee spokesman said Monday.
[ NewsMax ]
Sen. Barbara Boxer last week introduced the "Global Democracy Promotion Act of 2001," a bill that would permanently reverse what she describes as a gag rule recently imposed on international family planning groups by President Bush, according to a statement published on Boxer's website. According to Senator Baby-Killer not paying an NGO to speak is the same as gagging them.
At least two Republicans (RINO's) have so-sponsored the bill, Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. The bill claims to have 40 sponsors altogether, but we have not yet seen the entire list. It will be published here when it becomes available.
It may not surprise our readers to know that Planned Parenthood who loses millions of tax dollars due to the reinstated Reagan-era Mexico City policy, supports Senator Baby-Killer's bill.
[ TCN ]
Excerpts from Official Opinion 2000-9
To: State School Superintendents
From: Georgia Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker
"You have asked for my opinion whether [Georgia law 50-3-4.1] allowing the display of the motto 'In God We Trust' in public school classrooms, is in violation of the Georgia or United States Constitution. You have also asked whether the 'respect for the creator' portion of the character education program authorized by [Georgia Law 20-2-145] and the Georgia Board of Education's curriculum violates either the state or federal constitutional principles of [religious freedom]. It is my opinion that neither [Georgia law 50-3-4.1] nor [Georgia Law 20-2-145] on its face violates [religious freedom] provisions of either the Georgia or the United States Constitution. ...
"Addressing first the issue of whether a poster may be displayed in the classroom with the motto 'In God We Trust,' I note that the motto appears on United States coins and currency and is recognized by federal statute as our national motto. See 36 U.S.C. -- 186. It has been upheld as constitutional in that context. ...
"The more difficult question is whether the character curriculum is constitutional. Official Code of Georgia Section 20-2-145 requires the State Board of Education to develop a 'comprehensive character education program' for levels K-12 focusing on the students' development of 27 character traits including 'respect for the creator.' In August of 1997, shortly after the statute took effect, the State Board of Education developed a policy implementing this statutory requirement. This policy, entitled 'Values and Character Education Implementation Guide,' explains the character trait as follows:
"Respect for the creator: our most basic freedoms and rights are not granted to us from the government but they are intrinsically ours; i.e., the Constitution does not grant Americans the right of freedom of speech, it simply recognizes that each of us is born with that right. This is to say that the founders of the republic recognized a higher authority, a power greater than themselves that endowed every human being with certain unalienable rights that no government or legal document could ever revoke or take away. In the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson names this life force that permeates the universe and from which our unalienable rights stem the 'creator', 'nature's God', and the 'supreme judge of the world'. If we are to respect life, the natural rights of all people and the authority which the founders based their legal opinions on concerning our separation from Great Britain then there must be a respect for that creator from which all our rights flow. This cannot be interpreted as a promotion of religion or even as a promotion of the belief in a personal God, but only as an acknowledgment that the intrinsic worth of every individual derives from no government, person or group of persons, but is something that each of us is born with and which no thing and no one can ever deprive us of.
"Although inclusion of the trait 'respect for the creator' in the character curriculum does not have the historic acceptance accorded to the national motto, it appears not to have a religious effect, especially as interpreted by the State Board's 'Values and Character Education Implementation Guide.' It does not endorse any particular theory of creation, nor does it disparage those who do not hold a belief in creation. ...
"In addition, 'respect for the creator' is not misplaced in ethics or character education. In the study of comparative religion, the 'myths, stories or theories regarding the birth or creation of the universe' are termed 'cosmogony.' Eliade, The Encyclopedia of Religion, Macmillan, 1987, Vol. 4, p. 94. Cosmogonic or creation myths, stories and theories serve as a 'background and context for thinking about' ethics or the 'proper, appropriate and right conduct of a community.' Id. at 99. Thus, although beliefs may differ about creation, the subject itself supports character principles and ethics.
"Based on the above discussion and analysis, it is my official opinion that neither [Georgia law 50-3-4.1] nor [Georgia Law 20-2-145] on its face, is in violation of the principles of [religious freedom] in either the Georgia or the United States Constitution."
[ The Federalist ]
** TCN Comment: Amen!
I can see the problem though. Liberal educators have a big problem with the word "ethics," a word with which Attorney General Baker seems very familiar.
For several years the Democratic Party's new national chairman, Terry McAuliffe, has maintained he knew little about a Teamsters money-laundering scandal that resulted in the indictment of former union president Ron Carey.
Sworn statements from at least four Democratic Party officials and Carey campaign consultants tell a different story.
These officials, in little-noticed testimony before a Senate committee and in a continuing criminal probe in New York, portray McAuliffe as a prime mover in a plan to find Democratic contributors for Carey's faltering 1996 re-election campaign in exchange for Teamsters contributions to Democratic Party accounts.
The testimony depicts McAuliffe, a close friend of former President Bill Clinton and one of the party's most prolific fund-raisers, as one of the main intermediaries between Carey's campaign and the Democratic Party.
In the end, the Democrats apparently never found a donor for the Carey campaign, but it was not for lack of trying. According to trial testimony and statements given to Senate investigators, the effort began in April 1996 and continued through much of the general election campaign that year.
So far, in addition to the Carey indictment, federal prosecutors have obtained convictions of four former Carey aides on charges that they sought to launder union funds through outside organizations into the Carey campaign. Under federal law, it is illegal to use union funds to pay union campaign expenses.
Given testimony suggesting McAuliffe's repeated efforts to find a donor for Carey's campaign, McAuliffe's statements may take on new importance as he assumes the reins of the party and as federal prosecutors in New York intensify their probe of the 1996 Teamsters election.
[ NewsMax ]
It is supposed that the 16th amendment to the US Constitution authorizes the federal income tax, but was the 16th amendment legally added to the Constitution? Consider the following facts.
Did You Know?
A brief report printed by the Congressional Research Service in 1985 states up front that, "The report does not attempt to rebut specific factual allegations?." It then goes on to make the astonishing assertion that the actions of a government official must be presumed to be correct and cannot be judged or overturned by the courts! (John Ripy, "Ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment." CRS, 1985.)
An attorney speaking for Senator Orin Hatch in 1984 offered to pay former tax investigator William Benson a fortune not to publish his research proving that the 16th amendment did not even come close to being legally ratified by the required number of states in 1913.
Philander Knox, Secretary of State from 1909 to 1913 during the Taft administration, proclaimed the 16th amendment to be ratified just a few days before he left office in 1913, to make way for the Wilson administration, even though he knew it had not been legally ratified.
Philander Knox had for many years been the primary attorney for the richest men in America, including Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan and the Vanderbilts. He had created for them the largest cartel in the world, then was appointed, at their request, as Attorney General in the McKinley/Roosevelt administrations, where he refused to enforce the Sherman anti-trust laws against the cartel he had just created.
The income tax amendment was pushed through Congress in 1909 by Sen. Nelson Aldrich, father-in-law of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and grandfather and namesake of Nelson A. Rockefeller, and would not have been ratified if Knox had not fraudulently proclaimed it so.
Example: Kentucky's legislature rejected the amendment, but Knox counted Kentucky as having approved it.
Example: Oklahoma's legislature changed the amendment's wording so that it meant just the opposite of what was submitted to the states by Congress, but Knox counted Oklahoma as approving the amendment.
Example: Minnesota did not submit any results or copy of their vote to Knox, yet he counted Minnesota as approving the amendment.
Legal scholars have agreed that if any state violated provisions of its own state constitution in the ratification process, its approval would be null and void. At least 20 states were guilty of serious violations of their constitutions. For example, Tennessee's constitution provided that the state legislature could not act upon any proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution submitted by Congress until after the next state legislative elections. Yet the Tennessee legislature acted on the proposed 16th amendment the same month it was received and before any elections.
Judges have been extraordinarily unwilling to allow defendants in "failure to file" cases to present evidence or testimony of expert researchers regarding the constitutionality of the 16th amendment.
There is actually no law requiring most US citizens to pay a federal income tax.
An increasing number of employers have stopped withholding taxes from their workers, and stopped filing W-2s and 1099s for the same reason.
Unless one is a foreigner working in the U.S., or a U.S. citizen earning money abroad, one is not liable for the federal income tax.
The OMB Number on Form 1040 is cross-referenced in the Code of Federal Regulations to the section covering taxes by resident aliens, which, therefore, doesn't apply to most Americans.
Responding to an inquiry by a constituent who was a tax consultant, Sen. Daniel Inouye told him that based on research performed by the Congressional Research Service, no provision of the Internal Revenue Code requires an individual to pay income taxes. He then went on to warn that Section 7201 sets forth numerous penalties for not paying income taxes owed. However –
The failure-to-file law applies to alcohol-tobacco-firearms taxes, (Section 7201), not to income taxes, and convictions are based on the mis-application of the alcohol-tobacco- firearm regulations.
No law requires employees to provide a Social Security Number to an employer, nor for an employer to demand one from an employee.
In fact:
"The [5th Amendment] privilege protects against compelled testimonial communications?." U.S. v Conklin (1994), WL 504211 (10th Cir. Colo.)
No one has been able to collect the $50,000 reward offered by William Conklin (www.anti-irs.com) to anyone who can
2) identify what statute in the Internal Revenue Code makes a typical worker liable to pay an income tax.
The federal income tax is actually a voluntary tax. The IRS never treats it that way and failure to pay the tax results in severe punishment, but as we have seen, the punishment is illegal because do laws are broken by not paying the voluntary tax.
Can you imagine the chaos if a class action suit were to be filed, US Tax Payers v. US Treasury, IRS, et al, demanding that all monies collected since 1913 be refunded… I guess that would be one way for the people to get their government back, win it in a law suit.
[ TCN with data from www.givemeliberty.org ]
China is building a fiber-optic communications system for Iraq's new air-defense network that was targeted by U.S. and British bombing last week, Pentagon officials confirmed yesterday.
"The Chinese are in the process of helping to construct a fiber-optic connection network to better integrate the air-defense system of Iraq," said a senior defense official. "These are largely buried fiber-optic cables that would protect them from a variety of things like weather — or coalition air attacks."
The Chinese fiber-optic program in Iraq, part of a new integrated air-defense network that was nearly finished before the raid Friday, was first reported by The Washington Post yesterday.
The air-defense network will greatly increase Iraq's ability to target and shoot down patrolling U.S. aircraft with anti-aircraft missiles, defense analysts said.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered a reward to any air-defense unit that succeeds in downing a U.S. or allied jet patrolling the two air-exclusion zones over northern and southern Iraq.
The officials said the bombing raid by some two dozen warplanes was conducted on a Muslim holiday to avoid killing people — including Chinese military officials and civilians working on the fiber-optic network.
"We wanted to take out the system and hardware and not the people," the senior official said.
TCN Comment: We certainly wouldn't want to kill anyone. After all, they are just trying to shoot down our planes, not kill our pilots.
Conservative compassion aside, it would set the project back a little farther if every Chinese or Iraqi technician, engineer or operator that came near one of these sites was vaporized.
Rep. Ciro D. Rodriguez, D-Texas, has embraced the program, and in a Jan. 25 statement called on eligible district constituents to consider applying for the program.
"The Latin American School of Medical Sciences is recognized throughout Latin America as a leading school in general medicine," Rodriguez said. "For many of South Texas' brightest, the prohibitive cost of higher education rules out advanced studies -- especially in medicine.
"The Latin American School is an excellent tuition-free alternative and I encourage those who are interested to seriously consider this great opportunity," he said. "The Cuban embargo should not stop humanitarian efforts to ease pain and suffering at home and abroad.
"I am excited about this outstanding educational opportunity. It's a program that, at the very least, will benefit our students and the communities they will later serve," he added. Also, Luis Mariano Fernandez, first secretary of the Cuban Interests Section at the Cuban embassy in Washington, D.C., met with local upstate New York officials last Wednesday to push the program.
Fernandez met with Amsterdam, N.Y., Mayor John M. Duchessi, Jr. "for a breakfast at Centro Civico of Amsterdam, Inc. to discuss the offer being made to high school students in disadvantaged neighborhoods across the United States," the local newpaper, The Recorder, said.
"The idea of the scholarship came out of a visit from the Congressional Black Caucus to Cuba," Fernandez confirmed to the New York paper.
The Caucus, which has no Republican members and is currently chaired by Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., is supportive of lifting most trade sanctions against Cuba.
Fernandez said Castro's offer is being promoted by the Caucus and another group, Pastors for Peace, a group of churches that have provided medicine, medical supplies and other related gear through humanitarian efforts to Cuba for years, the Recorder said.
"The only condition is that after they finish their study in Cuba after six years, that [graduating students] go back to the community and work with the community," Fernandez said. "This is basically the philosophy that we've followed with students from other Latin American countries."
[ WND ]
TCN Comment: It all sounds real nice if you don't tell the whole story.
According to a report on the "doctor diplomacy" program, written by former Cuban medical program attendees and published by the Medical Sentinel, the official journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, "in addition to ideological and political conflicts, there are compelling public health reasons for rejecting" Cuba's claims.
The authors of the report, AAPS said, "cite public documents that reveal that Cuban medical schools require that a physician 'must become a communist and he or she must pledge to improve his or her skills as a communist.' Cuban medical school graduates must also 'swear to be like [Cuban communist revolutionary] Che Guevara.'"
Also, the physician's group said, Castro's program is "based on false medical claims," and that despite glowing reports, "Cuban medical training is poor in comparison to the U.S."
While the Cuban government's offer of free medical training scholarships to "low-income Americans" may provide training to those who might otherwise not be able to afford it. The program is based on "false medical claims" and worst of all it requires the students' dedication to communism. How can anyone that has taken an oath to protect and defend the US Constitution endorse this program? Oh, we forgot, he's a Democrat… the oath is just a traditional ceremony without contemporary meaning.
A man goes to the White House and asks to see President Clinton. The Marine on duty tells the guy that Clinton isn't President, and to please leave. The man goes away.
The next day he comes back to the White House and asks to see President Clinton. The marine on duty reminds him that Clinton is not President, and to please go away. The man goes away.
The next day, he comes back again, and again the same Marine is on duty. The man asks to see President Clinton, and the Marine, his patience worn out, screams: "WHY DO YOU KEEP COMING HERE ASKING FOR HIM? CLINTON IS NOT PRESIDENT ANYMORE!!!"
The man smiles and says, "I know, I just like hearing it!"
The homepage and archives for The Conservative Newsletter are located on the WWW at http://www.wilderness-cry.net/tcn/
This newsletter is sent by subscription only. If you do not wish to be on the mailing list, please let us know and you will be removed immediately. To be removed from this mailing list, simply reply to this newsletter with the word REMOVE in the body of your reply. You may also send your request to tcn@wilderness-cry.net .
Thank you.