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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 14 March 2001 | Vol. II #38 | ||
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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 14 March 2001 | Vol. II #38 | ||
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"Because ours is a consistent philosophy of government, we can be very clear: We do not have a separate social agenda, a separate economic agenda, and a separate foreign agenda. We have one agenda. Just as surely as we seek to put our financial house in order and rebuild our nation's defenses, so too we seek to protect the unborn, to end the manipulation of schoolchildren by utopian planners, and permit the acknowledgment of a Supreme Being in our classrooms just as we allow such acknowledgments in other public institutions." --Ronald Reagan
"We need to ask ourselves why liberals have made gun confiscation such a priority. I think it is to distract us from the disastrous results of liberal social engineering. When high-school students shoot their classmates and workers open fire on their co-workers, the fault lies not in guns. It lies in the breakdown in self-control and moral integrity. The irrational shootings are due to the success of liberals in achieving their goals." --Paul Craig Roberts
"There will come a time, and I hope it is soon, when the people's patience is finally taxed to the limit, when they see what is happening to their freedom, how little by little it is being nibbled away by the very people they elect to represent them. When that time comes there will be a rebellion. And when it breaks out legislators and bureaucrats will be running for their lives. As they pass me by I fully intend to stick out my leg and trip them. That will be my contribution to the cause of liberty and justice for all." -Lyn Nofziger
"There is one proposition on which almost all economists and political analysts can agree: When Americans cannot rely on a Republican Congress and a Republican president to refrain from wasteful increases in spending, the metaphor of Tweedledum and Tweedledee is given new life." --Houston Chronicle
"As vice president of a large urban school board, here's a message for parents of every public school child in America: Private school choice is one of the best things that ever happened to my city's public schools. Many are surprised to hear that from an elected member of the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) Board of Directors. ... Milwaukee's experience with school choice flatly contradicts the claims of its opponents, who misled citizens to think that private school choice harms children 'left behind' in public schools. The exact opposite is true in Milwaukee, where we have the nation's oldest and largest program of tax-supported vouchers for low-income parents." -Ken Johnson, Vice President, Milwaukee Public Schools Board of Directors and member of IBEW Local 494, AFL-CIO, in an ad paid for by the Black Alliance for Educational Options.
In Kosovo, U.S. Army paratroopers are receiving and returning fire. Our guys are shooting made-in-the-USA M-16 rifles, and their opponents, Albanian extremists, are using ex-Soviet Union AK-47 assault rifles.
So what's new? M-16s and AK-47s have been blasting each other for decades, and anyone familiar with Albanians and Serbians and the bloody history of ex-Yugoslavia would say, "What do you expect? Those crazies have been going at it with hot lead longer than the Hatfields and McCoys."
What's new is that the AK-47s, the ammo and the wherewithal to field the Albanian army of insurgent thugs currently going up against our and other NATO troops were provided not by Russia or Red China or North Korea, but by the USA. Yes, American taxpayers paid for the bullets being used to shoot American soldiers!
For months our CIA has secretly trained, funded and supplied former Kosovo Liberation Army rebels conducting a guerrilla campaign into southern Serbia to undermine former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic -- exactly the same kind of operation our spooks supported before and during the war against Serbia over Kosovo.
European commanders in Kosovo are not only charging the CIA with playing footsie with the Albanian rebels. They're also claiming American commanders in Kosovo have deliberately looked the other way and allowed a steady flow of KLA rebels and CIA-provided arms and war-fighting material to slip across Kosovo's border.
Last Sunday, Britain's Observer newspaper reported a European commander in Kosovo as saying: "The CIA has been allowed to run riot in Kosovo with a private army designed to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic. Now he's gone (and) the U.S. State Department seems incapable of reining in its bastard army." The angry NATO commander added: "Most of last year, there was a growing frustration with U.S. support for the radical Albanians. U.S. policy was and still is out of step with the other NATO allies."
Now -- with CIA help -- the Kosovo Liberation Army rebels are attacking on two fronts: Southern Serbia and along the Macedonian border, where our paratroopers tangled with them last week.
The attacks into Serbia could bring the Belgrade army back with a vengeance and restart the war in Kosovo. The Macedonian border fighting also could explode into an ethnic civil war inside of that country, which could be even more destructive than the 1999 Kosovo shootout. And meanwhile -- right in the middle of the killing field -- American soldiers are caught in a cross fire of our own making.
Most military writers familiar with the centuries-old Albanian-Serb conflict predicted it would never go away when President Clinton first began talking about sticking our troops in those swamps. Many warned, "Don't go there."
But our government seldom listens -- and rarely learns from past hard lessons. In the 1930s, because it was good for business, we sold scrap metal to Japan. The Japanese shot it back at us from 1941 to 1945 at places like Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima.
We've trained, supplied and armed bad guys from Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam to Saddam Hussein in Iraq to the KLA in Kosovo. Young Americans always end up downrange getting hammered by the very stuff we provided, with the folks we trained out there happily pulling the trigger.
During the presidential campaign, George W. Bush questioned our operations in ex-Yugoslavia.
Now that he's getting the inside scoop, hopefully he's realized that it's a mass of endless running sores. Six years after we went to Bosnia for only one year, we're still there -- and Kosovo looks like an even more open-ended and far more dangerous commitment.
The president must put a muzzle on the CIA to stop it from supporting one of the most cutthroat gangs of terrorists in the world.
Next he should turn the Yugoslavian mission over to our European allies. We've already spent too many lives and too many dollars on a land that Otto von Bismarck declared was not worth the bones of one Prussian soldier. It's Europe's back yard, not ours. And the perfect time to exit that snake pit is now. Our allies are so furious with American duplicity and stupidity, they'd probably be glad to see us go.
Bill Clinton couldn't have staged a more typical exit strategy.
[ Col David Hackworth, WND ]
** Aims to stop military commitments ordered solely by president
A Texas lawmaker has introduced a measure in the House to "fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution" that only Congress -- and not the president -- has the power to commit U.S. military forces to battle.
The measure was introduced by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, last Tuesday, and is called the "Constitutional War Powers Resolution of 2001," or H.J.R. 27. It currently has no co-sponsors.
The bill, which has been referred to the House committees on Armed Services, Rules, and the Judiciary, seeks to "repeal the War Powers Resolution to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution that Congress and not the President has the power to declare war, and for other purposes."
The War Powers Resolution was first passed in 1973, following eight years of war in Southeast Asia. At the time, U.S. forces were still involved in a conflict between communist North Vietnam and democratic South Vietnam without a formal declaration of war, though by then the administration of President Richard M. Nixon had begun a substantial withdrawal of U.S. forces.
All U.S. forces were pulled out of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, in 1975, just hours before North Vietnamese forces invaded the city and collapsed the democratic regime. About 500,000 troops were "in-country" at the peak of the war, in 1968-69.
Before Vietnam, U.S. forces were committed to war against communist North Korea, from 1950 to 1953 -- also without a formal declaration by Congress. About 58,000 troops were lost in each of those conflicts and many thousands are still thought to be missing in action.
The last time Congress formally declared war was against Japan, Germany and Italy in 1941, the day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor Dec. 7.
The closest Congress came to formally declaring war in recent history was just prior to the start of operations against Iraq during the 1990-91 Gulf War, in response to Baghdad's invasion of Kuwait.
But even then, Congress simply passed a resolution supporting President George H. W. Bush's deployment of U.S. forces to the Gulf; those forces were already being deployed by the time the resolution was offered.
Paul's bill would forbid a president from sending armed forces abroad into hostilities or imminent hostilities without a congressional declaration of war, unless the U.S. was attacked, said a statement released by the War and Law League, or WALL, a non-partisan, San Francisco-based group opposed to presidential war-making authority.
Also, Paul's bill would ban funds for "unlawful war activity and facilitate lawsuits to enjoin unlawful actions."
And, according to the bill's language, if passed it would apply to "the deployment of elements of the Armed Forces before, on, or after the date of the enactment of this joint resolution."
WALL, a three-year-old advocacy group, said Paul is looking for bipartisan co-sponsors for his measure.
The group claims that nearly 113,000 Americans "and millions of others abroad" have been killed in "wars started illegally by U.S. presidents of both parties since 1950."
"Until President Truman began his three-year 'police action' in Korea without the authorization of Congress, nobody in government had ever suggested that a president had the legal right to initiate war," said information posted on WALL's website. "The Supreme Court has established that illegality does not become legal by its repetition."
U.S. forces in Korea fought under the command of the United Nations, but the action in Vietnam was not U.N.-related.
The group says the U.S. Constitution clearly defines Congress as the sole authority for deciding when and where U.S. forces will wage war.
Paul said unconstitutional wars were the "gravest of crimes" after former President Bill Clinton ordered a 1998 attack against Iraq -- an action critics suggest was launched to redirect attention away from his impeachment in the House for lying under oath about his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
"It is commonly, but incorrectly, assumed that a president has the authority to send troops into battle," Paul said. And until Congress reclaims its "sole authority over matters of war … more young men will die senseless deaths."
To support its position, WALL quoted one of America's earliest presidents, Thomas Jefferson, who said, "Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war. ..."
Also, WALL said that another founder, Alexander Hamilton, noted in writings that a president is the nation's military commander-in-chief and is "nothing more than … first General or Admiral" -- and only after Congress formally declares war.
Moreover, in a 1798 letter to Jefferson, James Madison wrote, in support of Congress' sole war-making powers: "The Constitution supposes, what the History of all governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war to the Legislature."
H.J.R. 27 is part of a four-bill "Constitutional Restoration Package" that Paul has introduced. The other bills would ban presidential use of executive orders to bypass congressional legislation; nullify any treaty that contradicts the Constitution; and would declare the U.S. "a constitutionally-limited republic."
[ WND ]
Several Kennesaw officials attribute a drop in crime in the city over the past two decades to a law that requires residents to have a gun in the house.
In 1982, the Kennesaw City Council unanimously passed a law requiring heads of households to own at least one firearm with ammunition.
The ordinance states the gun law is needed to "protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants."
Then-councilman J.O. Stephenson said after the ordinance was passed, everyone "went crazy."
"People all over the country said there would be shootings in the street and violence in homes," he said. "Of course, that wasn't the case." In fact, according to Stephenson, it caused the crime rate in the city to plunge.
Kennesaw Historical Society president Robert Jones said following the law's passage, the crime rate dropped 89 percent in the city, compared to the modest 10 percent drop statewide.
"It did drop after it was passed," he said. "After it initially dropped, it has stayed at the same low level for the past 16 years."
Mayor Leonard Church was not in office when the law was passed, but he said he is a staunch supporter of it.
"You can't argue with the fact that Kennesaw has the lowest crime rate of any city our size in the country," said Church, who owns a denture-making company in Kennesaw.
The author of the ordinance, local attorney Fred Bentley Sr., attributes at least some of the decrease in crime to the bill.
"I am definitely in favor of what we did," he said. "It may not be totally responsible for the decrease, [but] it is a part."
Although he is pleased with the outcome, Bentley said he was originally opposed to drafting the law.
"I didn't think it could be written in a constitutional fashion," he said. "Obviously, it was constitutional, because the American Civil Liberties Union challenged it in court and we won."
Jones said the ACLU challenged the law in a federal court just after it was passed. In response, the city added a clause adding conscientious objectors to the list of those exempt.
Although the law is now being credited with a drop in crime, Jones said that was not the law's original purpose. He also pointed out that Kennesaw did not have a big problem with crime before.
"The crime rate wasn't that high to start with. It was 11 burglaries per 1,000 residents in 1981," he said.
According to the Kennesaw Police Department, the city's most recent crime statistics show 243 property crimes per 100,000 residents in 1998, or .243 per 1,000.
The city's crime rate continues to be far below other metro Atlanta city's with similar populations, like Decatur. In 1998, Decatur recorded 4,049 property crimes per 100,000 residents.
[ Marietta Daily Journal ]
"Once again, a murderer has taken a gun into a so-called 'gun free zone' and encountered no resistance," said Larry Pratt, Executive Director of Gun Owners of America.
"The only thing the San Diego gunman was shot with was a video camera. School personnel with concealed carry permits need to be encouraged to have guns at work. Then school gunmen could be deprived of their fifteen minutes of glory.
"Would be school killers need to be put on notice that they are likely to end up in a body bag as soon as they start shooting.
"Notice where the gunman chose to act out his cowardly deed -- in a school zone where every adult is disarmed by law. The gunman did not break into a home to make his headline-grabbing news. Why not? Because in someone's home, he might get shot.
"Hopefully California legislators see the problem. California has more gun control than almost all other states. They have made it more likely that such a tragedy can be perpetrated in their state because of the restrictive gun laws on the books.
"England, an island with a gun ban, now has a higher violent crime rate than do we in the U.S. If a gun ban results in more crime, what makes anyone think that gun control laws short of a ban will work any better?
"California needs to get rid of gun control laws. Until they do, they are telling the law abiding of the state that they have no other choice than to be victims," concluded Pratt.
[ GOA ]
"I know you share my conviction that proud as we are of its progress, this nation's economy can and must do even better than it has done in the last five years. Our choice, therefore, boils down to one of doing nothing and thereby risking a widening gap between our actual and potential growth...or taking action at the federal level to raise our entire economy to a new and higher level of business activity....
"The most direct and significant kind of federal action aiding economic growth is to make possible an increase in private consumption and investment demand -- to cut the fetters which hold back private spending. In the past, this could be done...by increasing federal expenditures more rapidly than necessary -- but such a course would soon demoralize both the government and our economy. If government is to retain the confidence of the people, it must not spend more than can be justified on grounds of national need or spent with maximum efficiency, and I shall say more on this in a moment.
"The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system -- and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top to bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes....
"I am not talking about a 'quickie' or temporary tax cut. Nor am I talking about giving the economy a mere shot in the arm, to ease some temporary complaint. I am talking about the accumulated evidence of the last five years that our present tax system...exerts too heavy a drag on growth in peacetime -- that it siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power -- that it reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment and risk taking.
"[We should reduce taxes] by a sufficiently early date and a sufficiently large amount to do the job required. Early action could give us extra leverage, added results and important insurance against recession. Too large a tax cut, of course, could result in inflation and insufficient future revenues -- but the greater danger is a tax cut too little or too late to be effective.
"I do not underestimate the obstacles which the Congress will face in enacting such legislation. No one will be satisfied. Everyone will have his own approach, his own bill, his own reductions. A high order of restraint and determination will be required if the possible is not to wait on the perfect.
"This nation can afford to reduce taxes . . . but we cannot afford to do nothing. For on the strength of our free economy rests the hope of all free nations."
[ John F. Kennedy in a Dec. 14, 1962 address to the Economic Club of New York ]
TCN Comment: It's a sad day when the best support you can find for a tax cut comes from a Democrat from the past. These statements should be coming from Trent Lott and other so called Republican leadership, but instead they are busy trying to protect their pet spending projects and the pork they want to send home to insure re-election.
The truth is, JFK was probably more conservative in many areas than our current centrist RINO's.
The battle for energy security has begun. On February 26, Senator Frank Murkowski (R-AK) introduced the National Energy Security Act of 2001 (S.388), a broad-based strategy to wean this nation from its excessive dependence on imported oil and providing for, among other things, oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
The usual suspects are up in arms. Former President Jimmy Carter wonders, in effect, how anyone can dare to propose drilling on his land. Mr. Carter apparently thinks ANWR belongs to him. In an interview with the Associated Press, Carter claimed "I inherited the mantle of protecting ANWR from Eisenhower". Near the end of his presidency, Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and he now apparently feels that he owns ANWR. As do the media and environmental pressure groups now mobilizing to protect the "public lands" of the ANWR.
It has obviously never occurred to them that the "public" in "public lands" includes more than just tree-huggers and New York City subway strap-hangers. It includes people who drive their cars -- yes, even SUVs -- to work, people in the Northeast who want to be able to heat their homes without taking out a second mortgage to pay for the fuel, and people in California who actually want to be able to turn on their lights without facing rolling blackouts.
Environmentalists are trotting out the usual scare-mongering about how drilling in ANWR will harm the local wildlife, especially the caribou herds. This in the face of evidence from 25 years of oil drilling at Prudhoe Bay where, far from being harmed, caribou are thriving, with the herds more than quadrupling in size. The same extremists issued the same dire warnings of devastation to animal life before Prudhoe Bay was opened to drilling. But the hallmark of environmental fanaticism is that facts and evidence mean nothing.
Despite the apparent belief of environmental extremists, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The public cannot have the abundant energy and electricity that consumers want and that our economy needs without obtaining the necessary fuel. In the case of ANWR, that means drilling for oil and gas in 2000 out of 19 million acres of frozen tundra -- an area less than half the size of Kennedy Airport in a vast preserve nearly two-thirds the size of the entire state of New York.
It should also mean a revival of the nearly dead nuclear power industry, an industry and a technology that has been driven to the edge of extinction in this country by the "no nuke" extremists. In a related development, according to the BBC, buried in the latest catastrophic predictions of doom from global warming, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) observed that nuclear power can help to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And horror of horrors, the Los Angeles Times reports that even Californians have begun discussing nuclear power in polite company again. As far back as 1997, even the Washington Post opined that nuclear power might be one way to meet the Clean Air Act and Kyoto global warming treaty goals of reduced emissions. But the no-nuke Luddites can calm their fears -- now that nuclear power is again being discussed by serious scientists and policy makers, the sycophantic media will soon fall back into their rigid, politically correct orthodoxy of denouncing nuclear energy.
Nuclear power reactors are apparently just fine to help North Korea supply their energy needs, but Americans simply cannot be trusted to use nuclear power responsibly (recall Bill Clinton's 1994 deal to give North Korea two nuclear reactors in exchange for their promise to abandon their nuclear weapons program, a deal that North Korea eventually renounced, and a deal that raised hardly a murmur among the left-wing establishment at the time -- should we be so crass as to point out that North Korea is a Stalinist regime of the sort so beloved by the left?).
In his AP interview Carter went on to claim that there is no energy crisis today, and that supporters of ANWR drilling have exaggerated the energy problems that we face. Just don't think about the high technology companies thinking of moving out of California to other states that can actually supply them with electricity, where they won't be charged exorbitant rates for electricity to subsidize low rates for consumers who still think they are entitled to something for nothing at everyone else's expense. Forget that we have gone from depending on foreign sources for 40% of our energy needs, to 60% dependence, during Bill Clinton's tenure.
Carter, of course, knows a thing or two about energy crises -- those who remember his presidency also remember the federal mandates to turn down thermostats and put on a sweater, and the long lines at gas stations that had run out of gas, thanks at least in part to his own policies.
[ Congress Action ]
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s weekend fundraiser in Chicago was a big success, netting the congressman more than $40,000. Not a bad birthday present. Many of Jackson's guests came courtesy of his father's organizations, Rainbow Coalition and Operation PUSH, which had sent out invitations to many of their donors and corporate backers encouraging them to attend.
But it isn't just Jesse Jr., who is reaping the largesse and influence of the elder Jackson's organization. Former Clinton HUD chief Andrew Cuomo, fighting an uphill battle for the Democratic nomination for New York governor, has been fundraising in Chicago, and Rainbow and PUSH are said to have steered donors Cuomo's way. "It would be interesting if in the past couple of years HUD rammed through any grants to Jackson's organizations," says a New York Democratic operative working for Cuomo's main competition for the nomination, Carl McCall. "It just reeks of paybacks."
[ Washington Prowler ]
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