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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 17 May 2001 | Vol. II, No. 57 | ||
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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 17 May 2001 | Vol. II, No. 57 | ||
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"Since I am one of the many little hayseed peons representing the ideological Right, please allow me the presumption to speak for what my fellow hayseed peons want. You could call it the 'Hayseed Manifesto':
* We want more freedom, and less watered-down socialism lobbed at us with phony labels like 'compassionate conservatism'.
* We want stricter adherence to the Bill of Rights; each and every Amendment--including the Tenth Amendment.
* We want a smaller government, not a Federal Leviathan.
* We demand the repeal of all federal gun laws passed since 1981.
* We demand an end to the misbegotten War On Drugs.
* We want a demilitarization of the police forces in this country, and federal reinforcement of the Posse Comitatus Act.
* We want a reversal of much of the damage done in the past decade involving Federal land grabs, national monuments, and Presidential executive orders.
* We demand the long-overdue--and long-promised--dissolution of the Departments of Energy and Education, and we want the taxpayer funds for National Endowment for the Arts cut off permanently.
* We have had enough of the GOP's judicial appointments, who vote on issue after issue like liberal Democrats. We want jurists who do not use the bench to make law, but instead protect the Bill of Rights.
* We demand that the 16th Amendment be repealed; effective immediately.
* We want a coherent foreign policy again; we do not trust Russia or China, or any of their Washington apologists. We demand an immediate embargo on trade with China until such time that they learn to behave like a civilized nation.
* We are sick to death of the dictates of the United Nations being shoved down our throats; we demand that this meaningless international organization trouble our country no more. The only flag our soldiers should ever salute
is the Stars and Stripes.
[ Columnist Kevin Tuma ]
Conservative political activist John Thoburn is still in jail in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Thoburn offended Fairfax County politicians by committing a terrible crime. He didn't hold up a bank or embezzle a pension fund. He didn't smuggle tons of cocaine into the United States. Nor did he commit arson or murder.
He refused to plant enough trees on his golf driving range.
And for that crime, Thoburn has been torn from his family and thrown in jail for 89 days.
Here are the highlights of the Thoburn case:
- To get his business permit, Thoburn planted over 700 trees on his property at a cost of $125,000 in 1994.
- Fairfax County politicians demanded that Thoburn move 98 trees at great expense, even though Thoburn's prior tree planting complied with county rules. Thoburn has been ordered to plant even more trees and shrubs beyond those he is supposed to move.
-The trees in question are supposed to protect neighbors' houses from golf ball damage. Thoburn's nearest neighbor is his own father, Bob Thoburn.
- Fairfax County runs its own golf driving range just a few miles from Thoburn's place. The Oak Marr golf range serves beer and pizza and has a generator, putt-putt golf and a nine-hole executive course. No one at Oak Marr has been arrested for failing to plant trees.
- Just a short distance away, Thoburn can't serve pizza or other hot food. Thoburn has been cited for pouring soda in a cup. He got in trouble for having the "wrong" kind of stereo. He was also forbidden to put in a generator, putt-putt golf and a nine-hole course.
Members of the Board of Supervisors in Fairfax County pushed for Thoburn to be jailed. What they are doing to Thoburn is an outrage. Petty bureaucrats want Thoburn to suffer loss of family, income, reputation and time because he won't bow to their whims and contradictory zoning rules.
Think about that for a moment. A man is in jail - in America - because he won't plant trees.
These strong arm tactics are the stuff of communist regimes. Third world thugs treat citizens like this.
It's no coincidence that Thoburn and his father Bob, a staunch conservative like John and a former state legislator, have had several run-ins with county politicians before. It's also worth noting that the county's golf driving range, the main competitor with Thoburn's golf establishment, has much to gain if Thoburn's business goes under.
Turn up the heat on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. Demand they release John Thoburn - now.
ACTION: Call, fax or write the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors with this demand - Free John Thoburn! If you call and get an answering machine, just leave a brief message.
We've made it easy for you to email the Fairfax County politicians in one easy step by sending email to fairfax@lists.elists.net
Two national groups providing estate-planning help announced today the filing of a $500 billion class-action lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and approximately 50 individual IRS agents, charging them with civil rights violations against thousands of its members, most of whom are senior citizens.
The suit stems from a raid on the offices of Heritage America and the Aegis Company conducted by the IRS March 31, 2000, says the groups' executive director, Michael Vallone. About 30 armed IRS agents reportedly entered the Palos Hills, Ill., offices of the two groups.
The IRS agent in charge, Robert Kuschel, served a search warrant for a company named "Aegis Financial Group." The suit alleges this company has no relationship whatsoever to either Heritage America or The Aegis Company.
Vallone claims that Aegis Financial Group was a corporation of which he was a partial owner from 1996 to 1998, and that it was an Indiana licensed mortgage brokerage firm which operated exclusively in Indiana and had no business dealings whatsoever with Heritage America or the Aegis Company.
The suit alleges that upon entering the offices of the companies, the agents proceeded at gunpoint to separate the staff into separate rooms and interrogated them for as long as two hours without ever reading them their rights or informing them they were not required to provide information.
The IRS then proceeded to carry off all the companies' records, including the paper and computer records of their members, says the suit. This material contained the names, addresses and phone numbers of all the past and present members of Heritage America and the Aegis Company. It also contained financial information and the private estate-planning information of these people, including copies of their wills, trusts and other estate-planning documents such as powers of attorney.
"Their (the IRS') absolute rape of the privacy rights of more than 5,000 Americans … is another example of the terrorist tactics of a government agency whose abuse of power demands severe retribution," said Vallone.
The suit also states that almost one year after the first raid, on March 29, 2001, the IRS performed a second raid in similar fashion on the offices of Homer Richardson, a representative of Heritage America and the Aegis Company. Once again, the search warrant served on Richardson stated it was to procure documents associated with "Aegis Financial Group." Richardson states he has never had any association whatsoever with Aegis Financial Group.
Vallone charges the attack on Heritage America and the Aegis Company is part of a four-year campaign the IRS has been waging against trusts. Both Heritage America and the Aegis Company have provided their members with services to set up trusts for estate planning, business planning and tax planning. The Aegis Company has provided educational material and services for its members regarding a type of trust that IRS regulations call a "Business Trust."
"These types of trusts are completely legitimate," says Vallone. "They are used by many of the major mutual funds in the United States, such as Fidelity Magellan, Kemper and Nuveen. However, they can also be used by small business owners. The IRS has recognized this in their own regulations. Unfortunately, many companies have improperly promoted the use of business trusts, and so the IRS has stepped in to crack down on the abuse of these trusts."
The class-action lawsuit contains 11 separate counts of violations of Title 42 of the United States Code for deprivation of civil rights, and an additional count under Title 18 which charges that the IRS and its agents violated federal racketeering laws.
The 56-page complaint was filed May 8 in the Southern District of Illinois
"The National Institute of Mental Health was created in 1946 to support research on severe psychiatric disorders. Instead, in a classic example of the way government programs tend to expand uncontrollably, the agency is now spending much of its billion-dollar-a-year in taxpayer funds on projects like 'Adolescent Romantic Relationships and Their Development' ($200,693), 'Coping with Change in Czechoslovakia,' and studying pigeons (14 research awards to study pigeons, which together total over $1.2 million per year). 'NIMH's portfolio is so broad that it qualifies as having delusions of grandeur,' psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey writes in The Washington Monthly. 'Indeed, if NIMH presented itself as a patient, it would be immediately started on lithium.'"
[ Best of the Web ]
Republican Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire is giving gun-haters fits once again.
Smith has filed an amendment allowing teachers and principals to use a gun on school grounds to "prevent a school massacre." Currently, federal law prohibits citizens from carrying a gun within a thousand feet of school property in virtually all circumstances.
The Smith provision would protect decent Americans like Assistant Principal Joel Myrick of Pearl, Mississippi, who circumvented federal law when he used a firearm in 1997 to stop a killer's rampage.
It is imperative that gun owners contact their Senators right away in support of the Smith amendment. The Senate is currently debating an education bill (S. 1) that has become something of a magnet, attracting all kinds of gun-related amendments dealing with kids and schools. Smith's amendment is the only one that would advance Second Amendment rights.
On the negative side, Senator Robert Byrd (D-VA) has introduced the most far-reaching anti-gun amendment, as it would impose a new tax upon gun buyers, who will have to purchase "lock up your safety" trigger locks with every retail handgun sale.
Moreover, the Byrd provision would impose lifetime gun bans for juvenile indiscretions and expand the arcane rules making it virtually impossible to teach your kids the safe use of firearms.
The Smith and Byrd amendments to S. 1 could be voted on this week.
ACTION: Please contact your U.S. Senators and urge them to support the Smith amendment to prevent further school massacres. [The provision is known as Senate Amendment 547, or SA 547.] Also, urge your Senators to vote against anti-gun provisions like the Byrd amendment (SA 410). Distribute this alert and encourage others to contact their Senators as well.
Please use the pre-written letter below to help direct your comments to Capitol Hill. You can call your Senators at 1-877-762-8762 (toll free) or at 202-224-3121. To identify your Senators, as well as to send a message via e-mail, see the Legislative Action Center at http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm on the GOA website.
----- Pre-written message -----
Dear Senator:
Please support the Bob Smith amendment (SA 547) to prevent further school massacres.
On at least three occasions, there have been school shootings that were halted by an armed security guard, assistant principal or catering manager. In all of these cases, an adult used a firearm to stop a student from killing more people.
The Smith amendment will save children's lives and will protect people like Assistant Principal Joel Myrick of Pearl, Mississippi, who used a firearm to stop a killer's rampage in 1997.
Unfortunately, I think that people sometimes want to use school tragedies to promote their own political agenda. There are not enough police to patrol every school in America. So it is imperative that Congress pass the Smith Amendment -- a public safety measure that will actually save lives.
Should Senator Smith offer his amendment, you will have a chance to vote on whether you prefer dead children or reasonable public safety measures. I hope you will vote for public safety measures.
Please vote for SA 547, the Smith amendment to prevent school massacres. Thank you.
Sincerely,
__________________________
[ GOA ]
The "Million" Mom March fell about 999,800 bodies short this year. Rosie O'Donnell, a leading anti-gun loudmouth who emceed last year's march and later sought armed security guards for her own children, was a no-show at the pathetically attended protest in Washington, D.C. Similar rallies across the country also fizzled, drawing sparse crowds of liberal activists still sullenly opposed to the Second Amendment.
The measly march's message rang loud and clear: Gun-control extremism is a dying movement. Unfortunately, the White House didn't hear it.
In Philadelphia this week, President Bush enthusiastically unveiled "Project Safe." It's a new gun-policy initiative that will involve gobs of new federal spending and an "unprecedented partnership between all levels of government." Unprecedented? Yikes. Gun owners, watch your wallets -- and your holsters.
The Bush package includes several pet causes of the gun-control lobby, including $75 million for gun locks; $15.3 million for 113 new federal attorneys to serve as full-time gun prosecutors; and $19.1 million to expand a program by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms aimed at preventing youths from obtaining guns. Although Bush stressed that he simply wants to "enforce existing laws," the fine print of Project Safe echoes the gun-grabbing Left's call to ban the importation of high-capacity ammunition clips.
There are already 30,000 gun laws on the books. Passing one more law banning ammo clips won't do diddly to reduce gun violence. And I'll bet my .38 that those 113 new federal bureaucrats, under pressure to justify their jobs, will spend most of their day chasing after gun owners guilty of technical violations -- not violent crimes.
Kinder Gentler Republicans like Bush who took up the compromise banner of "enforcing existing laws" have painted themselves into a rhetorical corner. Most of those laws are ineffective in the fight against crime. Instead, they are bureaucratic obstacles that make it unreasonably -- if not unconstitutionally -- difficult for law-abiding citizens to purchase, store and modify guns for protection. Those laws need to be repealed, not enforced.
Bush this week cited well-worn anti-gun statistics and condemned the "unacceptable" number of fatal shooting deaths in the United States. But like the liberal anti-gun lobby, the GOP president was silent about the untold number of gun shootings committed every year in self-defense. Just two weeks ago, a 12-year-old girl in Clarksdale, Miss., saved her mother's life when she shot and killed an abusive ex-boyfriend who had forced his way into the apartment and started choking her mom. Detective Danny Hill of the Clarksdale Police Department said the brave girl had "heard the commotion and she knew from past experience what was going on."
So did a Tacoma, Wash., woman who saved her own life in late April after shooting a former boyfriend who invaded her home in violation of two restraining orders. According to police reports, the man had two convictions for domestic violence against the woman over the past year. When he threatened to kill her after breaking into her home, she ran to her bedroom -- where she kept a handgun -- and fired one fatal shot at him.
And in Colorado this week, a trial date was finally set for a serial rapist whose terrorism against elderly women ended only after 72-year-old Jean Zamarripa shot him after he broke into her home last fall. When she heard a noise in the backyard, Zamarripa grabbed her loaded .38-caliber revolver. She fired four times when the intruder rammed his shoulder into her back door. "I'm just a little grandmother, and I mind my own business," Zamarripa, a retired medical assistant, told the Associated Press. "What would I have done if I hadn't had my gun? I would have been just another statistic."
What will it take for Beltway Republicans to stop their Clintonesque pandering to Hollywood soccer moms and start representing us gun-owning mammas who don't have Secret Service protection and can't afford to hire armed personal security guards? We refuse to be the statistics you ignore.
[ Michelle Malkin ]
"The ideological split in the Democratic Party is getting wider, as a band of centrists is poised to break with the party´s liberal leadership to back deeper tax cuts, a lower spending rate and other initiatives supported by President Bush and the Republicans. Led by Sen. John B. Breaux, Louisiana Democrat, who helped to found the conservative-leaning Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a group of about a dozen or so Senate Democrats appears ready to give Mr. Bush the bipartisan support he is seeking for his budget proposals, which call for a total of $1.35 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade.
"Not only is the Senate New Democrat Coalition group that Mr. Breaux leads embracing much higher tax cuts and less spending than House and Senate Democratic leaders support, it is working with Mr. Bush on a broad range of other parts of his conservative agenda --including Medicare and education reform, partial privatization of Social Security and higher defense spending. And this is making liberal Democrats very unhappy."
[ Washington Times ]
"Top House Democrat Dick Gephardt yesterday called for more conservation to help ease the energy crisis - after hitching a ride to his news conference in a gas-guzzling SUV. As Gephardt unveiled his own plan to stop soaring gas and power prices - including tapping into the nation's emergency oil reserve and enacting electricity price controls - aides shrugged off his own mode of transportation - a Chevy Suburban police car."
[ New York Post ]
An old, bearded shepherd with a crooked staff walked up to a stone pulpit and said, "And lo, it came to pass that the trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she had been called Amazon Dot Com. And she said unto Abraham, her husband, "Why doth thou travel far, from town to town, with thy goods when thou can trade without ever leaving thy tent?"
And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, "How, Dear?" And Dot replied, "I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale and they will reply telling you which hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah's Pony Stable (UPS)."
Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. And the drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had, at the top price, without ever moving from his tent. But this success did arouse envy.
A man named Maccabia did secret himself inside Abraham's drum and was accused of insider trading. And the young man did take to Dot Com's trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Siderites, or NERDS for short.
And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums, that no one noticed that the real riches were going to the drum maker, one Brother William of Gates, who bought up every drum company in the land. And indeed did insist on making drums that would work only if you bought Brother Gates' drumsticks.
And Dot did say, "Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others." And as Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel, or as it came to be known "eBay," he said, "we need a name that reflects what we are," and Dot replied, "Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators."
"Whoopee!", said Abraham. "No, YAHOO!" said Dot Com.. .and that is how it all began.
It wasn't Al Gore after all.
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