 | ||||
| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 13 January 2001 | Vol. II No.6 | ||
|
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 13 January 2001 | Vol. II No.6 | ||
|
| ||||
| ||||
Make no mistake. The Linda Chavez withdrawal sends a clear message to the media's loud-mouthed Bush haters as well as the more subtle Democratic power players on Capitol Hill: George W. Bush is willing to toss even his best people over the side at the first sign of unpleasantness.
Next to Bush's lightning-quick abandonment of Linda Chavez - just 48 hours after the Mercado story broke - Bill Clinton's 1993 retreat on Lani Guinier looks downright principled. (At least Clinton held out long enough to allow a real debate to emerge on Guinier's fitness for office.)
"Linda Chavez deserved better than this," observed the National Review Online, hours after her press conference. "This comes close to unconditional surrender."
Exactly. And unless additional information comes out showing that Bush had absolutely no other choice, that's precisely what it was.
[ NewsMax - Full article ]
By Greg Toppo, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON -- A conservative legal group that has fought for access to thousands of lost Clinton administration e-mails wants a judge to oversee the transfer of the restored files to the National Archives after Clinton leaves office.
Judicial Watch has dogged Clinton with lawsuits throughout his two terms, most recently taking the administration to court to force production of the e-mails. The group on Friday asked U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth to appoint a special master to oversee the transfer of the records to the archives. Such a transfer is required under the Presidential Records Act of 1978.
"We need to know how these materials are being dealt with," Larry Klayman, the group's general counsel, told the judge.
Lamberth said he would rule on Judicial Watch's request on Jan. 17.
A 1998 problem with the system prevented thousands of incoming e-mail messages from being archived. As a result, the e-mails were not reviewed by White House lawyers to determine whether they should have been turned over to investigators probing cases that included the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Whitewater and campaign fund raising.
Lamberth last spring ordered the Clinton administration to restore and produce the e-mails. Judicial Watch wanted access to the files before the 2000 presidential election, but administration officials last fall told the judge that few of the messages could be restored by Nov. 7.
Among the few e-mails reconstructed were messages showing that Vice President Al Gore's staff referred to a now-infamous event Gore attended at a Buddhist temple as a fund-raiser. The staff also referred to White House coffees - a few hosted by Gore - as fund-raisers. Gore has said he does not regard the temple event and the coffees as fund-raisers.
According to a contractor overseeing the e-mail reconstruction, 2,041 of 4,508 computer backup tapes containing the messages have been catalogued, with nearly 1.5 billion e-mails processed. Of those, about 2.6 million are now in a readable database.
The archives and the White House Office of Administration have agreed to a plan by which the Office of Administration will fund and oversee completion of the restoration after Clinton leaves office. White House lawyer Henry A. Azar Jr. told the judge the agreement ensures that the materials are preserved.
[ AP ]
"What is emerging in the Bush list of appointees is nothing less than a smorgasbord of pro-abortion Republicans who are well suited to a type of 'compassionate conservatism' that embraces the abortion of a child for the sake of political expediency.
"It is clear that when president-elect Bush describes himself as pro-life, he is deceiving the public. Sadly, pro-life Americans expected a pro-life president but elected a counterfeit." - Judie Brown, the president of American Life League
"In the face of massive evidence that Bill Clinton and his band of co-conspirators facilitated both the delivery and theft of hi-tech, nuclear weapons technology to the Communist Chinese government, well placed Republicans have declared that none of these criminals will face prosecution under a Bush administration.
"That would, after all, tend to burst Bush's bipartisanship nirvana. Too, a criminal prosecution of these "panda-huggers" (to quote Bill Gertz) violates Bush's stated belief that isolationism (not Communist China) is the greatest threat to America's security.
"This is why, even though China has broken every promise and treaty it has ever made, has murdered upwards of 70 million of its own people, has threatened to incinerate U.S. cities and continues to supply nuclear missile technology to rogue nations bent on destroying America, Bush (like Clinton and Gore) vociferously supported granting China permanent MFN and entrance into the World Trade Organization. Proving, once again, that there is no issue (or principle) that Bush would not yield in order to appease his detractors, or please his benefactors." - Chuck Baldwin
"When Mr. Lott, who trained for the rough-and-tumble of Washington politics as a cheerleader at Ole Miss, gave up his sword -- or at least his pom-poms -- to Tom Daschle the other day, he signaled that the Democrats could roll the Republicans in the Senate without popping a proper sweat." --Wes Pruden
"Whenever someone suggests cutting taxes, liberals like Al Gore call it 'a risky scheme.' In other words, it is risky to let people keep more of the money they worked for, but it is not risky to turn it over to politicians in Washington." --Thomas Sowell
"[Leftist special] interest groups vowed an even more aggressive campaign to derail Mr. Bush's nomination of conservative former Sen. John Ashcroft to be attorney general. [Chavez's] decision 'just frees more time, more energy and more resources' to defeat Mr. Ashcroft, said Kate Michelman of the National Abortion Rights Action League. ... Yes, some of Mr. Ashcroft's critics want to use his nomination to hyperventilate about abortion and the like. But there are also plenty of reasons Democrats do not want a vigorous Attorney General dedicated to the impartial pursuit of justice. The real threat to his nomination comes from those who seek to impede and obstruct justice." -Wall Street Journal
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." These are, perhaps, Martin Luther King's most remembered and most oft quoted words. That notwithstanding, black Americans in the years since Reverend King's assassination have increasingly abandoned his dream, and aligned themselves with a leftist political and social agenda obsessed with color at the expense of character. - The Federalist
"The Clintons are already buying a new home. This one is a three-story house. There's Hillary's story, Bill's story and that phony story they put out about living together as a married couple." --R.J. Johnson
The Clinton's had to establish residence in New York for Hillary to run for the Senate. So they bought that big house-BUT there was no place for Secret Service which has statutory responsibility to protect the First Family. So, a special 'safe area' was built.
NOW, the Clintons are charging them rent! Perfectly legal.......hmmmmmmmm.
BUT...! It just happens that their rent is about the same amount as the Clintons' mortgage payment!
In short, we taxpayers pay for the Secret Service addition, AND the Clinton's mortgage!
**Plans 750-mile trek to nation's capital wearing full pack, gear
A former Army Ranger is planning a 750-mile trek with full pack and gear to protest Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki's recent decision to allow all soldiers to begin wearing black berets in June.
Dave Scott, 42, a craftsman who spent four years in the Army, is currently training in sub-zero temperatures in Montana, where he lives. He said he plans to walk three 10-mile legs daily -- beginning in Ft. Benning, Ga., home to the Army's infantry schools -- until he reaches Washington, D.C.
The trip, he said, is expected to take about a month. He is tentatively scheduled to begin his journey Sunday, Jan. 21.
According to a report in the Fayetteville (North Carolina) Observer, Scott hopes the publicity will force military officials in the Pentagon to reconsider Shinseki's decision to allow all soldiers to wear the Rangers' coveted black beret.
Other services also wear specially-designated berets - airborne soldiers wear maroon berets, and Special Forces troops wear green - but Shinseki's decision affects only the black ones worn by Rangers.
Like other special units, Rangers value their beret as a sign of accomplishment, involving more difficult training and more specialized warfighting skill.
"The only possession that I have in my life that I value materially is that beret," Scott told the Observer.
Since Shinseki's Oct. 18 decision, soldiers, officers and others have groused about allowing regular troops to wear the beret. Those who currently wear one say they are entitled to because they "earned it."
One high-profile critic of Shinseki's decision is Gen. Charles C. Krulak, the revered former commandant of the United States Marine Corps, who thinks the Army chief of staff's decision was confusing.
"I really don't know why Eric did that. He's a good man, but I think this is one where he probably made a call that he is going to end up regretting -- and probably retracting," Krulak said in an interview with WND talk host and reporter Geoff Metcalf in October. "One of my dear friends spent three tours in Vietnam with Special Forces and, when he read that on the front page of the Washington Post, it was to him the ultimate slap in the face. I mean, that would be like our Marine War Memorial, taking one of those Marines off of that statue," Krulak said
By Jeff Jacoby
Linda Chavez has only herself to blame for the fact that she won't be the next secretary of labor. Frankly, she should have known better.
She should have known better than to open her heart to a stranger in need. Let alone a stranger who had just spent 10 days in a shelter for battered women. Let alone a battered woman who couldn't speak English, had very little money, and was fleeing a country racked by civil war and political murder.
What was Chavez thinking? Was she out of her right-wing mind? How could she and her husband have allowed Marta Mercado to share their home while trying to get her life in order and obtain a green card? How could she have driven Mercado to English classes? Or showed her how to get around on the subway? Or occasionally given her -- of all things! - spending money? She must have been deranged to think she could extend such compassion to another person and get away with it.
Anyone who's been around Washington as long as Chavez has knows that people who aspire to government power and influence don't do such things. You think Senator Ted Kennedy, who lost no time calling Chavez's extraordinary generosity "a very troubling new allegation," would let a homeless Central American refugee move in with *his* family? You think John J. Sweeney, the AFL-CIO boss who declared war on Chavez and pronounced her relationship with Mercado "really unfortunate," is going to drive some battered woman with no green card to her English classes?
Oh, no. Nosiree. It's all well and good to talk about helping the vulnerable and being kind to strangers and the-greatest-of-these-is-charity. But to actually live that way? To respond to the misfortune of another human being with genuine self-sacrifice? To show concern for the poor by reaching into your *own* pocket?
Real Washington players know that only a fanatic behaves like that. And that was just the point that Kennedy and Sweeney -- and People for the American Way's Ralph Neas and the National Council of La Raza and all those other leftist mouthpieces that joined in assailing Chavez -- were trying to make about her all along: She's a fanatic.
And she persists in her fanaticism! "Knowing everything that has happened over the last week," she said at her press conference on Tuesday, "if that woman showed up at my door, if I was asked . . . to do that again, I would do it in an instant, without hesitation."
She probably would. She and her husband have a history of bending over backward to help immigrants and others in difficulty. They opened their home to the Bui brothers, refugees from Vietnam. They paid for private school for the children of Ada Iturrino, a single mother from Puerto Rico. They aided Margarita Valladares in becoming a citizen and getting her first job. "They are a family who help anybody, no matter who the person is," Valladares said Tuesday afternoon. "No matter what the problem, they are always there."
And to think such a woman almost became secretary of labor.
Would-be future Cabinet secretaries, you're on notice: If you meet an undocumented immigrant whose life is a shambles, don't do what Chavez did. Call the Immigration and Naturalization Service instead. Get that foreigner deported. After all, "harboring an illegal alien" -- as the New York Times lectured in its editorial cheering Chavez's fall -- "is a felony."
So stifle any urge you may feel to do the decent thing. Remember: It isn't your job to help the luckless and forlorn. It's the federal government's job. That's why we have those Cabinet departments in the first place. What kind of society would we be if ordinary men and women started going out of their way to take care of each other without waiting for Senator Kennedy to introduce a bill making it legal?
And let's hope there will be no more flouting of the immigration laws in the name of a higher moral code. At her press conference Chavez said, "I don't check green cards when I see a woman who is battered and who has no place to live and nothing to eat." Man, this extremist just doesn't get it: In America we *do* check green cards, thanks to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) and the harsh sanctions it imposes on anyone caught employing an illegal immigrant.
That law isn't on Washington's radar screen anymore, but not long ago you could have heard some of the very voices that this week denounced Chavez denounce with equal passion the cruel provisions of the law she is accused of skirting. Kennedy called them "inherently unfair" and introduced a bill to repeal them. Neas found them "morally unacceptable." La Raza said they were "intolerable."
They were right. IRCA is a shameful law. It punishes Americans for giving immigrants jobs that other Americans don't want. It fosters discrimination against job-seekers whose dark skin or Hispanic names seem "foreign." It makes federal agents pursue scared immigrant workers who are harming no one.
It's the sort of law, in other words, that an ethical, thoughtful person might feel compelled to violate in an exigent case. But if Linda Chavez wants to live and ethical and thoughtful life, why on earth did she ever
come to Washington?
[The Boston Globe ]
By Ben Shari -
Here is why Sen. John Ashcroft of Missouri should and will be confirmed. Sen. Ashcroft is a man of integrity and incredible honor. He has a great history of public service. Mr. Ashcroft has served one term to the United States Senate, two terms as Governor of the state of Missouri, and two terms as Missouri Attorney General. There is no question of experience or qualifications -- Ashcroft takes the cake.
It is standard practice of the United States Senate to approve Cabinet nominees so long as there is no lack of experience, lack of qualifications, lack of knowledge about the nominee's past history, blatant inability to perform the duties of the Office, etc. Sen. Ashcroft has experience, he has the qualifications, and everyone knows his past history. John Ashcroft has a clean slate: no personal problems (such as alcohol addiction, for example), no criminal record and is widely known in Washington D.C. as well as in Missouri. Senator Ashcroft's record is clean - Sen. Ashcroft was a great pick.
What political party does Ashcroft belong to? Well, the Republican Party -- does this come as a surprise? Not at all -- why should it? The President-elect is a Republican. Is Mr. Ashcroft a conservative? Yes, so is George W. Bush.
Does everyone (especially Democrats) agree with Senator Ashcroft on every issue? Not exactly.
If everyone agreed with Senator Ashcroft, or President-elect Bush, and these two men with everyone else, we wouldn't have a Democratic Party or a Republican Party, liberal or conservative, recount or no count. People disagree with one another -- understood. Therefore, no, everyone may not agree with Mr. Ashcroft (50 state Senators for example), but he agrees with the President-elect, and America elected the President-elect (dropping all rhetoric related to counting "all" the votes). Our Senators must confirm Senator Ashcroft because he is whom the President-to-be chose -- there is no reason that our Senators should not appoint John Ashcroft. There is nothing in his way -- he is perfect for the job.
You cannot disallow a man or women, in this case Sen. Ashcroft, to be confirmed because you do not agree with him or her. Nothing stands in Ashcroft's way -- Oh, say what?
Oh that? Yes, somehow it always manages to come up. Yeah, uh-huh, that's it (again): race. You see, Senator John Ashcroft, while serving in the Senate, voted against a Clinton nominee, Mr. White, also an African-American, for a judicial post. Like the scoundrels they are, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have pounced on this one, and it's now an "issue" with Senator Ashcroft's confirmation hearing. Are you not allowed to make decisions anymore with a negative outcome toward members of another race? Have we come to a point where, because an individual is of another race, they are "more equal?" First and foremost, all African-Americans are just what their name implies: Americans. Equal with everyone -- not "more equal" because of their particular race.
Now, to get to my point, Mr. Ashcroft did not vote against Mr. White because of his race, but because some of White's past rulings showed judicial activism - Ashcroft didn't like that. To set the record straight, Ashcroft has voted to confirm 26 of the 28 judges whom he has cast a vote -- 23 of whom were African-Americans! Does this man sound racist to you? Robert George, professor of philosophy of law and constitutional interpretation at Princeton University, dismissed the claims of racial prejudice.
"If opposing a black nominee for a judicial position were indicative of racism, then virtually every Democrat in the Senate would be a racist, since almost all of them voted against Clarence Thomas' nomination," George said. "Ashcroft's concerns had to do with (White's) behavior as judge, and his philosophy of judging, and the way in which his political views (affected) his rulings from the bench."
The only possible thing in Ashcroft's way is partisan politics. An individual cannot be denied confirmation because of a difference of opinion or one past vote, which obviously, was not racist.
Can he do the job? Is he upright and honorable and rightstanding with his country? Does he have the background and experience? Is he whom the President-elect chose? Then he should be confirmed!
The incoming President has the privilege of appointing Cabinet members. Cabinet Secretaries come with the President. You elect a President; you also elect Cabinet members that share the incoming President's views and ideas. I urge our Senators to realize this point and confirm Sen. Ashcroft despite any differences of opinion, as there is nothing wrong with his past record. Differences of opinion do not make a person unable to perform a duty.
Ashcroft is qualified; he is experienced. He should be the next United States Attorney General.
[ Ben Shari is a 15-year-old homeschool student from Central Florida. He is currently in the 10th grade, and actively involved in politics on the Internet and in his hometown. You can reach Ben at Ben_Shari@hotmail.com. ]
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.