-Caveat Lector- CONGRESS ACTION: August 12, 2001 ================= FEDERAL ELECTION REFORM: On August 1 the National Commission on Federal Election Reform issued its report, To Assure Pride and Confidence in the Electoral Process. The Commission issued thirteen Policy Recommendations because "Americans can and should expect their electoral system to be a source of national pride and a model to all the world." The recommendations are voluntary, but that approach was not good enough for some of the commissioners. One of them, Christopher Edley, wrote a Washington Post editorial dissenting from the voluntary approach, claiming that "certain reforms are fundamental enough to stand on their own as nationwide requirements that all states should abide by" (emphasis added). The irony of demanding the use of force, mandates from a heavy-handed federal government to enhance public confidence in the electoral process, apparently escaped Edley. What are the specific steps recommended by the National Commission, to "fix" future elections? Some of the Policy Recommendations (PR) are simple common sense, but many will make matters worse, will result in even more confused and contested elections, and many seem intentionally designed to increase vote fraud. Take, for example, PR # One, "Every state should adopt a system of statewide voter registration." Specifically, the Motor Voter technique of registering anyone and everyone should be computerized with various personal data, and should be available to every election jurisdiction. Those registering should be asked "if they are registered in another state, so that that state can be notified of the new registration." Fair enough. But there is no provision for that voter's previous state of residence to then immediately purge their voter rolls of that voter. The Commission, even though acknowledging the existence of "significantly inaccurate voter lists", specifically refused to ease Motor Voter's strict procedures to enhance the ability of states to purge inaccurate voter rolls of the deceased, the newly disqualified, or felons. On the contrary, PR # Five says that "Each state should allow for restoration of otherwise eligible citizens who have been convicted of a felony once they have fully served their sentence, including any term of probation or parole." Further, the Commission proposes (PR # Two) a system of "provisional voting by any voter who claims to be qualified to vote in that state", with those votes to be counted later "upon verification by election officials that the provisional voter is eligible and qualified to vote" -- following, no doubt, an avalanche of lawsuits over the qualifications of each and every "provisional" ballot. Article I, Section 4 of the United States Constitution states, "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.". So federal power to override state law does exist. But as Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist # 59, the power to regulate elections is "in the first instance, to the local administrations... but [the Constitutional Convention has] reserved to the national authority a right to interpose, whenever extraordinary circumstances might render that interposition necessary to its safety." Extraordinary circumstances, such as the chance that states might "annihilate [the national government] by neglecting to provide for the choice of persons to administer its affairs." Interestingly, Hamilton went on to postulate, "Suppose an article had been introduced into the Constitution empowering the United States to regulate the elections for the particular States, would any man have hesitated to condemn it, both as an unwarrantable transposition of power and as a premeditated engine for the destruction of the State governments?" Isn't that precisely what the National Commission on Federal Election Reform has proposed -- what at least one commissioner wants to mandate -- the creation of broad-ranging powers for "the United States to regulate the elections for the particular States"? And along with that power, the commissioners recommend (PR # Twelve) the creation of a brand new federal bureaucracy called the "Election Administration Commission", to develop and oversee the implementation of "federal voting system standards". Thus in one more area, federalism is to be overridden, and state laws are to fall before the all-consuming federal leviathan. LEFT-WING CENSORS: When the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issues its final report on the presidential election, don't be fooled into thinking that the Commission's conclusions were unanimous. Two commissioners strongly dissented from the Commission's findings, but that dissent cannot be found in the report posted on the Commission's website. It appears that those who run the Civil Rights Commission have a very narrow view of civil rights -- only those commissioners who agree with the majority deserve to be heard. Any other opinions are silenced. It appears that Chairman Berry doesn't want anything to interfere with the Commission's carefully constructed vision that blacks were victimized in the Florida voting. The concurring statement of one Commissioner reinforces that sense of victimology: "Was there a conspiracy in the 2000 presidential election in Florida? Not provable -- as of today." Not provable, but clearly implied by "an interesting confluence of circumstances" creating "an unsettling account" of events. But no evidence. Dissenting Commissioners Thernstrom and Redenbaugh are still protected by the Bill of Rights, and despite the attempts to silence their criticism of the majority report, their dissent can still be read (see link below). One wonders what the Civil Rights Commission is so afraid of, and why they are so intent on fostering victimhood and divisiveness. The conclusion of the Thernstrom and Redenbaugh dissent: "America's journey on the road to racial and ethnic equality is far from over. We have traveled far, and still have far to go. But the Commission's majority report positively sets us back. By crying "disfranchisement" where there was confusion, bureaucratic mistakes, and voter error, the report encourages public indifference. Real civil rights problems stir the moral conscience of Americans; inflated rhetoric depicting crimes for which there is no evidence undermines public confidence in civil rights advocates and the causes to which they devote themselves. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was once the moral conscience of the nation. Under the direction of the Chair, Mary Frances Berry, it has become an agency dedicated to furthering a partisan agenda. After six months of desperately searching for widespread disfranchisement in Florida, the Commission produced a 200-page report based on faulty analysis and echoing vague and unsubstantiated claims. The shoddy quality of the work, its stolen-election message, and its picture of black citizens as helpless victims in the American political process is neither in the public interest nor in the interest of black and other minority citizens. Do we really want black Americans to believe there is no reason to get to the polls; elections are always stolen; they remain disfranchised? There is important work the Commission can do. But not if its scholarly and procedural standards are as low as those in this Florida report." NANNY STATE: Democrats controlling the U.S. Senate, with Senator Hillary in the lead, have engineered the defeat of Mary Sheila Gall, President Bush's nominee to head the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC), by party-line vote in the Senate Commerce Committee. That Gall has been a commissioner on the CPSC for a decade, that she was originally nominated by the first President Bush and confirmed without controversy by a democrat Senate in 1991, that she was re-nominated by President Clinton and re-confirmed (unanimously, according to media reports) in 1999, mattered not in the least to democrat demagogues. Gall had committed an unpardonable sin -- she actually had the temerity to suggest that parents have some responsibility for safeguarding their own children, that people who act like idiots in their use of products actually bear some responsibility for the consequences of their own stupidity. And such individual responsibility, of course, simply won't do. John Breaux (D-LA) explained why: ".in the real world we live in, people are negligent with products." So, according to left-wing logic, the company that made that product must be blamed. Not the negligent user, of course. Because everyone knows that Americans are nothing but helpless boobs, who couldn't survive from one day to the next without the omniscient and omnipresent federal government guiding their every move. Hey, all you democrat voters, take heed -- Senate democrats think that you are nothing but incompetent fools. Make you feel good? And you keep voting for these guys. MEDICAL MIRACLES: The doctors and research scientists worked to save human lives. They investigated vaccines and immunization for, and treatment of, malaria and typhoid; they studied muscle and nerve regeneration and bone transplants to help injured people; they tried to discover the cause of birth defects; they tested the effects of various pharmaceuticals on phosphorous burns; they investigated the limits of human endurance to extremely high altitudes and freezing temperatures, and tried to extend that endurance. The potential for extraordinary medical breakthroughs is the excuse used today to justify scientific experimentation with human stem cells, the sort of research that President Bush just announced would be permitted to a limited degree. Some have condemned Bush for not going far enough, by holding out the prospect of regenerating brain activity in Alzheimer's patients, or the repair of spinal cord injuries. Others have condemned Bush for going too far, and for undermining the sanctity of life by allowing the research at all, because the cells for that research come from human embryos. One of the more venal comments on Bush's decision came from an editorial in a major newspaper that called his decision waffling, because it showed "a perpetual fear of offending the Republican Party's right-wing base." Pro-life opponents of stem cell research, the editorial said, "should not be allowed to dictate pubic policy, especially in an area where the health of so many people might be in the balance." Yes, indeed, the health of many people might be affected, and there could be enormous benefits from such research. But there are far larger considerations in addition to "the health of so many people". Those doctors and research scientists mentioned at the beginning of this section did not do their work in modern American research laboratories. They did their work at places with names like Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrueck. Before anyone reacts with outrage that such atrocities "could never happen here", does anyone recognize the names Tuskegee and MK-Ultra? There are profound moral implications to the use of humans in medical research, even unborn human embryos -- regardless of how many people may eventually benefit -- and when the moral dimension of any research is ignored or denied, anything is possible. We are on the threshold of astonishing new discoveries and technologies that hold the potential to redefine the very meaning of life itself. The issue is not "can we?", but rather, "should we?". That one of the premier newspapers in this country refuses to even acknowledge that moral dimension, and suggests that opposition to such research should simply be dismissed out of hand because that opposition is "right-wing" and therefore, presumably, outside the mainstream of elite opinion, is far more frightening than any of the "slippery slope" arguments that opponents make about the research itself. Elite opinion in the society that created Auschwitz and the rest also thought that the work of men such as Josef Mengele and many more like him would benefit the health of many people. Whether or not stem cell research should be permitted or should be banned today is a moral debate in which our modern society must engage, just as we must engage the moral dimensions of abortion, cloning, and other genetic research. Such debate -- or the absence of such debate -- says an enormous amount about us, about our humanity, and about our values as a society. Thoughtful, well-meaning, moral, and intelligent people on both sides of these issues can and do differ, profoundly. The attempt to silence one side or the other with personal vilification and ad hominem attacks, rather than to deal with the moral aspects of all this intellectually, diminishes us all as a society and, if successful, holds chilling and dangerous implications for the future. FOR MORE INFORMATION. ======================== Federal Election Reform report: http://www.reformelections.org/data/news/full_report.pdf United States Commission on Civil Rights: http://www.usccr.gov/ Draft Staff Report On Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election: http://www.usccr.gov/vote2000/stdraft1/main.htm Dissent to the Civil Rights Commission by Commissioners Abigail Thernstrom and Russell G. Redenbaugh: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/final_dissent.htm Thernstrom statement to the U.S. Senate: http://rules.senate.gov/hearings/2001/062701_thernstrom.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mr. Kim Weissman [EMAIL PROTECTED] <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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