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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | May 8, 2002 | Vol. III - No. 9 | ||
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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | May 8, 2002 | Vol. III - No. 9 | ||
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In April, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, led by Chairman Ted Kennedy (D-MA), approved the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA),SB1284, which is now headed to a full Senate vote. The bill, sponsored by Kennedy, specifically gives federally recognized job protection to homosexuals based solely on their admission of participating in unnatural and immoral sexual acts.
"This makes no sense at all," said Don Wildmon, president of American Family Association. "In a nutshell, the United States government is saying people who have a distorted bedroom behavioral pattern deserve special recognition, simply because of a personal activity they choose to engage in."
Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, says faith-based groups like the Boy Scouts of America are on the 'hit list' of ENDA's homosexual agenda. He says former vice-president Al Gore, a supporter of ENDA admits it would be the federal legal tool used to destroy the current scout policy.
Wildmon says the issue has nothing to do with civil rights. "It is the avenue chosen by homosexuals to gain access into jobs for the sole purpose of recruiting children into an extremely dangerous and unhealthy lifestyles. Because the majority of Americans oppose their tactics, they need the government's endorsement and muscle to get to our kids."
Wildmon says ENDA is a threat to Christian organizations. "Churches or parishes that reject homosexual job applicants will find themselves in courtrooms all across America." Although ENDA currently exempts religious organizations, Wildmon says it just a matter of time before the radical homosexual agenda perverts the law. "This is only the first phase of a long-term plan to normalize homosexuality."
Dear Senator (name),
I am opposed to granting special rights and protection to Americans based on bedroom behavior. Homosexuality is a dangerous and unhealthy lifestyle and does not warrant government's endorsement. Please vote against Senate Bill 1284.
Sincerely,
Dear Congressman (name),
I am opposed to granting special rights and protection to Americans based on bedroom behavior. Homosexuality is a dangerous and unhealthy lifestyle and does not warrant government's endorsement. Please vote against House Resolution 2692.
Sincerely,
"President Bush says he'll sign one of the porkiest farm bills in history, but it's worth noting the way many Congressional Republicans are holding their noses at the prospect. At least some of the GOP leadership has reasserted its small-government principles by quietly repudiating last week's House-Senate $173 billion farm spending spree. ... These votes were meant to send a message to the public, and we can only hope the President heard it too. The Administration seems singlemindedly focused on shoveling enough money at farm states to win back Republican control of the Senate. ... But in the process Mr. Bush is often ignoring his natural philosophical supporters in the House; he did it last year on education and so far this year on campaign finance and now on the farm bill. Someone might want to tell Karl Rove that a Senate victory will be pyrrhic if President Bush manages to alienate his GOP base, voter turnout falls as a result and Republicans lose the House in the process." --Wall Street Journal
California's ultra-liberal state legislators don't practice what they legislate.
Last week, in another fit of environmental political correctness, a state Senate committee passed a bill mandating that tailpipe emissions be reduced after 2009 despite the California Motor Car Dealers Association's compelling argument that the legislation will price bigger vehicles such as SUVs out of the reach of the average Californian.
But the legislators needn't be concerned that such laws might drive them out of the SUV market - nearly half of them drive big, gas-guzzling, low-fuel-efficient vehicles, such as SUVs or large sedans, which they can afford thanks to the taxpayer subsidies they pocket. The most popular mode of transportation among the lawmakers, by the way, is the jumbo-sized Ford Expedition.
The environmentalist-crazed lawmakers, it seems, get as much as $500 a month in state subsidies, which goes a long way toward helping them meet their monthly auto payments. And with their state credit cards handy, paying for gas presents no great obstacle to the enjoyment of their jumbo-sized vehicles.
It's their unique way of telling their subjects back home, "Don't do as we do, do as we say."
Reversing the four-decade-long federal interpretation of the Second Amendment, the Bush administration has told the Supreme Court that it believes the Constitution protects an individual's right to bear arms.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice said the high court need not test that principle now.
"The current position of the United States ... is that the Second Amendment more broadly protects the rights of individuals, including persons who are not members of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to possess and bear their own firearms," Solicitor General Theodore Olson wrote in two court filings this week.
That right, however, is "subject to reasonable restrictions designed to prevent possession by unfit persons or to restrict the possession of types of firearms that are particularly suited to criminal misuse."
Olson, the administration's top Supreme Court lawyer, was reflecting the view of Attorney General John Ashcroft that the Second Amendment applies to private citizens, not merely to militias, the Associated Press reported today.
Ashcroft angered anti-gun-rights leftists when he expressed a similar statement in a letter to the National Rifle Association last year.
"While some have argued that the Second Amendment guarantees only a 'collective' right of the states to maintain militias, I believe the amendment's plain meaning and original intent prove otherwise," Ashcroft wrote.
In November, the attorney general sent a letter to federal prosecutors praising an appeals court decision that found "the Second Amendment does protect individual rights," but noting that those rights could be subject to "limited, narrowly tailored specific exceptions."
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals went on to reject arguments from Texas physician Timothy Emerson that a 1994 federal gun law was unconstitutional. The law was intended to deny guns to people under restraining orders.
"In my view, the Emerson opinion, and the balance it strikes, generally reflect the correct understanding of the Second Amendment," Ashcroft told prosecutors.
Olson's court filing Monday urged the high court not to get involved and acknowledged the policy change in a lengthy footnote. Olson attached Ashcroft's letter to prosecutors.
In the second case, a man was convicted of owning two machine guns in violation of federal law. The government also won a lower-court decision endorsing a federal gun control law.
The cases are Emerson vs. United States, 01-8780 and Haney vs. United States, 01-8272.
Here is the text of the Second Amendment: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The Supreme Court last ruled on the scope of the Second Amendment in 1939, according to AP. The amendment protects only those rights that have "some reasonable relationship to the preservation of efficiency of a well regulated militia," the court opined then.
"This action is proof positive that the worst fears about Attorney General Ashcroft have come true - his extreme ideology on guns has now become government policy," fumed Michael D. Barnes, president of Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the anti-gun-rights group associated with famous gun buyer Sarah Brady.
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