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THE FEDERALIST(r) DIGEST The Conservative e-Journal of Record * Veritas Vos Liberabit * 15 February 2002 Federalist Edition #02-07 Friday Digest *To support The Federalist, Link to -- http://www.Federalist.com/support.asp *To sponsor an edition of The Federalist, Link to -- http://www.Federalist.com/sponsor.asp *To retrieve today's Digest as HTML printer-friendly text or PDF Link to -- http://www.Federalist.com/current2002.asp *To change your e-mail address or format, see instructions in footer. CONTENTS: The Foundation Federalist Perspective ______----********O********----______ THE FOUNDATION "[T]o promote true religion is the best and most effectual way of making a virtuous and regular people. Love to God and love to man is the substance of religion; when these prevail, civil laws will have little to do." --John Witherspoon ______----********O********----______ FEDERALIST PERSPECTIVE Top of the fold... Ignoring their oaths to support the Constitution, a majority of the House of Representatives early Thursday passed "campaign finance reform" legislation, 240-189. Referring to the money swamping politics, bill sponsor Marty Meehan (D-Taxachusetts) claimed, "James Madison would be rolling over in his grave" if he could see the attempted influence buying. But we think not! We think these statements more akin to Madison's view: "This bill does not contain real reform. Instead, this bill strips citizens of their political rights and unconstitutionally attempts to regulate political speech," noted Rep. Tom DeLay. Observed Federal Election Commission Chairman David Mason, "In fact, the Shays-Meehan bill would make it more difficult to achieve consistent, fair, and, yes, vigorous enforcement of campaign finance laws. Furthermore, certain significant provisions of Shays-Meehan are so complex, so vague, or so broad as to be unworkable, or unenforceable." NRA Chief Executive Officer Wayne LaPierre warned, "Shays-Meehan attacks the very heart of the First Amendment. We will fight this infringement right up to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of all Americans. Fairness and free speech cannot be victims of politics." The bill is more accurately called "Demo incumbent protection act" than reform, and it violates constitutional rights on several scores -- notably, free speech, freedom of the press, free association, and free use of property. As Madison and all the Founding Fathers well understood, "factions" would often arise in politics to press for common goals, and a free people could never suppress factionalism without destroying liberty. But there is nothing about money in politics that couldn't be better fixed by injection of a little integrity into politicos! Now, the issue moves back to the Senate, which earlier passed a similar bill, and President George W. Bush has indicated he will sign into law any "improvement" over existing campaign finance rules. But hey, at least it leaves all the Leftlabor graft and payola untouched! In other news, on the overseas warfront against Jihadistan, typifying the enemy we face, a suspected al Qaeda terrorist cornered in Yemen blew himself up with a grenade rather than be taken prisoner. In eastern Afghanistan, a team of forensic specialists gathered biological evidence to determine if Osama bin Laden was among those killed in a U.S. missile attack last week against members of his al Qaeda terrorist network. The evidence collection also turned up U.S. credit card applications and airline schedules. Sources say bin Laden was in a village near the missile strike site a few days before the February 4th operation. (We suppose that U.S. intelligence either has collected DNA samples from members of bin Laden's family for comparison -- or Monica Lewinsky was a one-time intern to Osama and she saved the blue burqa as a souvenir!) Reactions to President Bush's naming names in calling Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of evil" continued arriving -- with our European "allies" alternately wailing and sniping. Evidently they have not yet gotten over the Clinton-era propensity of treating words as weapons and weapons as words. (You know what we mean ... like saying a cruise missile was lobbed to "send a message"! Only "message" ordnance can send is "Boom!") Mr. Bush said Wednesday of the Iraqi tyrant, "President Saddam Hussein needs to understand I am serious about defending our country." Mr. Bush repeated that he will "keep all options available" to deal appropriately with the Iraqi threat to our countrymen and allies, including the possibility of a U.S. "stand-alone" strike. "This is not an argument about whether to get rid of Saddam Hussein. That debate is over. This is ... how you do it," an unnamed senior administration official said, about plans to gear up for Iraq as the next major battlefront in the anti-terror war. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher backed up Mr. Bush's stance: "His [Hussein's] aim is, in fact, quite clear: to develop weapons of mass destruction so as to challenge us with impunity. How and when, not whether, to remove him are the only important questions. ... America's allies, above all Britain, should extend strong support to President Bush in the decisions he makes on Iraq." The Pentagon and CIA are currently filling in final mobilization details for an assault on Iraq using 200,000 U.S. troops. Battle orders could be issued within 60 days. President Bush also entertained Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf Wednesday, renewing mutual pledges of assistance in the anti-Jihadi war. Musharraf indicated confidence that capture of Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, the suspected lead kidnapper of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl would lead to his safe return, although Saeed has reportedly given conflicting accounts of the safety and whereabouts of Pearl. Counterterrorism experts have now identified Abu Zubaydah, a wily Palestinian terrorist, as al Qaeda's new chief of operations, replacing Mohammed Atef, who was killed in a November missile strike in Afghanistan. Zubaydah is believed to be attempting quick activation of Jihadi "sleeper" cells in the U.S. and Europe. Ominously, though, he is said to have active contacts in Pakistan. And at the five-month mark since 9-11, not that we need reminding of why we are at war with Jihadistan, the bodies of five Port Authority police officers were recovered from the rubble at New York's "Ground Zero." Quote of the week... "As for money [in politics], it's just a symptom. Overweening government has wormed its way into nearly every aspect of our lives. Our pervasive regulatory and redistributive state creates huge incentives for profiteering. Because of the big government problem there's a big money problem. By cutting government down to size, we can minimize the influence of big money. Restoring the Framers' notion of enumerated, delegated and thus limited powers will get the state out of our lives and out of our wallets. That's the best way to end the campaign-finance racket and root out venality without jeopardizing political expression. Until then, let's protect political ads at least as much as we protect Internet porn and flag burning. The suppression of political speech is intolerable in a free society. Not surprisingly, when the state tries to control political information, powerful forces work to outwit the system. That's the way it should be if the First Amendment means anything." --Robert A. Levy On cross-examination... "Our federal government, which was intended to operate as a very limited constitutional republic, has instead become a virtually socialist leviathan that redistributes trillions of dollars. We can hardly be surprised when countless special interests fight for the money. The only true solution to the campaign money problem is a return to a proper constitutional government that does not control the economy. Big government and big campaign money go hand in hand." --Rep. Ron Paul Open Query... "Does anyone think for a moment, that if those waging holy war on this country, people fully prepared to die in the process of doing so, had access to weapons capable of inflicting infinitely greater death and destruction on us -- and against which we had no defense -- they would refrain from using them?" --Frank Gaffney The BIG lie... Senate Demo leader Tom Daschle cannot make up his mind about that "axis of evil" thing! Last weekend, he said, "I think that it's important for us to look at each of these countries as threats to this country clearly, as problems that we've got to address clearly. But I think we've got to be very careful with the rhetoric of that kind. We've already seen the moderates in Iran scramble to draw distance between us and them, and I think we've got to be very careful with how we approach all three countries." This was a change -- just after Mr. Bush introduced the phrase in his State of the Union message, Daschle agreed on the necessity of targeting the three terror-sponsoring, weapons-collecting countries. Then, on Monday, Dashcle tacked back the other way again, saying, "He's [Bush's] right in calling attention to the danger they pose to the United States. He's right in calling for strategy. I would hope we could do it multilaterally and not unilaterally, because I think that's where we get into trouble. We want to avoid at all costs the terror of 9-11. If they're building weapons of mass destruction, we've got to deal with it. But I don't think the case has yet been made." Memo to Tom: And what would constitute "the case having been made"? Does lower Manhattan have to be nuked? News from the Swamp... More mischief from the Swamplands, but emanating from the Executive Branch: Mr. Bush this week has been spotlighting a slew of domestic policy initiatives to kick start the year's political combat. Mr. Bush offered plans to increase health care accessibility, to fight the drug war, and -- worst of all -- to turn tail and follow the misguided path of junk science in the Kyoto protocols on global climate change. The latest in Mr. Bush's domestic initiatives is the "Clear Skies" program, including a mandatory cap-and-trade scheme for emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury, and a mandatory reporting scheme linked to a "voluntary" system of carbon dioxide emissions credit swaps --Kyoto lite! Retorts Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, "What is voluntary will actually be coercive. ..[W]e are making a very big mistake. Bush is conceding two things, that CO2 should be regulated and [the U.S. should be] forced to use less and that a regulatory scheme for energy is inevitable. ... [The] solution will not be putting the world on an energy starvation diet...." Hey, we should all demand to be included in the "voluntary" exchange of CO2 -- we just collect every breath we exhale and send it to the White House, special delivery to lead Kyoto-pusher, EPA's Christine Todd Whitman! Memo to Mr. Bush: NASA's James Hansen, the scientist who led the pack on the globaloney of worldwide climate change, has cooled his jets and now predicts only the minor amount of planetary heating over the next 50 years that skeptics had calculated -- a mere 0.7 degree Centigrade (1.25 degree Fahrenheit) warming between now and 2050. Hansen ignited the incendiary theory during "flamboyant" congressional testimony 14 years back. For the record, a 0.7 degree Centigrade change over 50 years is well within historic planetary temperature fluctuations -- before anyone was driving SUVs! And on the subject of mischief, here is some adroit perspective on condom use from Colin Powell for an MTV broadcast: "It's important that the whole international community come together, speak candidly about it, forget about taboos, forget about conservative ideas with respect to what you shouldn't tell young people about." Memo to Colin: We know you don't like playing second fiddle to Don Rumsfeld, but you are still Secretary of State, not Commissar of Culture. And, as The Federalist has consistently noted since your arrival on the political scene, you forgot about conservative ideas long ago! You have repeatedly contradicted your boss on numerous policy matters, and it is past time that he showed you the door! >From the Left... More effluent from "Most Ethical Administration" this week, as a House Government Reform subcommittee ended a yearlong investigation into the expensive gifts showered on Bill and Hillary Clinton as they left the White House and she prepared to enter the Senate. Investigators calculated the Clintons made off with over $360,000 in presents, although many were listed as "lost" or "misplaced," and a substantial number were significantly undervalued. Former Clinton spokesmouth Joe Lockhart complained, "This is really kind of sad. The core right-wing of the Republican party is refusing to let go of an issue that was fully resolved last year." Judicial Benchmarks... In the halls of justice on the right, the jury in a federal case from Georgia fined four Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System library board members $23.3 million in damages for intentional discrimination against eight white librarians. The board members demoted and transferred the librarians, saying, "there are too many white faces in management." Kelly Beard, attorney for the librarians, commented, "This verdict is yet another wake-up call to public entities around the country that everyone is protected under the 14th Amendment. It seems that there is an assumption out there that it's OK to discriminate against white people. The bottom line is you can't discriminate against anyone." The 14th Amendment, you will recall, guarantees each person equal protection under the law. The lawyer for the library board of trustees called the verdict "a travesty of justice that will not stand." Really there ought to be more "red faces" on the board, as they ought to be ashamed! In the halls of injustice on the left, recent examinations of serving judges call into serious question the plaints of Democrats trying to hold up Bush nominees as potentially shifting the judiciary to conservative "extremes." If anything, confirming the Bush judges will restore balance to a Left-leaning bench! To wit: Out Left Coast way, fully 70 percent of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges are Clinton picks. Among the latest outrages are from Clintonista Judges Richard Paez and Marsha Berzon, who have partially gutted the state's "Three Strikes" anti-crime initiative approved by 72 percent of California voters in 1994. These judges decided that treating a third conviction based on a "minor" crime as a harsh-penalty offense is "cruel and unusual punishment." So much for the chant otherwise supported by Demo-Leftists, "every vote should count".... The Commissars... Uh, about that "land of the free and home of the brave" thing, the nation's capital isn't going to be at all anymore, as the Washington Metropolitan Police Department is planning installation of a gargantuan network of surveillance cameras in shopping districts, streets, and neighborhoods, added to the existing "hundreds" of spycams already deployed to monitor mass-transit stations, monuments and schools. A department representative says the massive surveillance scheme was inspired by the pervasive set of spycams in Britain. And you know -- we should always take our liberty cues from the Brits! The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) met in the Swamp this week, repeating the organization's earlier calls that Congress give money and support for standardized drivers' licenses constituting a national identification system. The AAMVA has been at great pains to claim the proposed system, standardized across the nation with all state databases linked, would somehow not be a national ID. They have their fingers crossed behind their backs, or they are lying through their teeth! Regarding the redistribution of your income... The central government handed out more than $32 million in performance bonuses to government workers during the last year of the Clinton administration. Performance -- what kind? And a sampling of EPA grants awarded under Clinton: A $1,500 grant to help a university group create a "solid waste board game" called the Can Man Game; over $47,000 to the Seattle Mariners baseball team (which had an $80 million payroll in 2001) to develop a recycling program at its new stadium; $150,000 to research the "role of lighting in human performance and productivity"; over $300,000 for an eight-year "golf and the environment" project to encourage golf courses currently using pesticides and fertilizers to become more environmentally friendly; almost $100,000 to study possible reductions in methane gas emissions from livestock in the Ukraine. And why not trade "bovine emissions" pollution credits right alongside carbon dioxide? >From the department of military readiness/ correctness... Still wondering why we've been expending lots of defense bucks but haven't got a lot of bangs left? Wonder no more! A draft report from the General Accounting Office, examining U.S. contributions to UN peacekeeping missions during Clinton administration years 1995-2001, indicates expenditures of $24.2 billion in so-called "indirect" costs -- which were never credited against U.S. "back dues" to the UN, and $21.8 billion of which came out of Pentagon coffers. Just call us Uncle Sap! >From the states... Speaking of "tamper proofing" drivers' licenses, Tennessee state drivers' license examiner Katherine Smith died in Memphis under "most unusual and suspicious" circumstances Sunday. Her car crashed into a utility pole with slight damage, but was immediately engulfed in flames -- a day before she was set for arraignment on charges she conspired to provide fraudulent licenses to five Middle Eastern co-conspirators, including Mohammed Fares, Mostafa Said Abou-Shahin and Abdelmuhsen Mahmid Hammad, all subjects of an FBI investigation for ties to the 9-11 attacks and to terrorist cells in the U.S. (Indeed, the fact that the "victim" and car interior were doused with gasoline could qualify as "suspicious.") Memphis -- same place a noted Harvard bio-warfare expert "fell" off a bridge in December...? Hello......! In Jacksonville, Florida, ten Christian firefighters are suing the city, charging violation of their constitutional rights during mandatory training sessions in which they were told they must follow their "dharma" in order to achieve a closer relationship with God, and they were taught about the Four Noble Truths of Buddha. "This is a clear case of the coercive power of the government being used to advance one religion to the detriment of all others," explained Brian Fahling, an American Family Association Center for Law & Policy attorney representing the Jacksonville firefighters. >From the Old Dominion, the Virginia Senate passed, 30-10, a law requiring Virginia schools to post signs displaying the national motto, "In God We Trust." The lone opponent was Senate Demo Leader Dick Saslaw, who moaned that the motto is on all U.S. currency but does not deter bank robbing. Hey, how does he know? In business news... OK, in the final analysis, there are only two significant differences in the bankruptcy filings of energy giant Enron and technology giant Global Crossing. First, Enron had more Republicans in their donor files and Global Crossing had more Democrats in their donor files. Second, expect to continue to hear much more about Enron than about Global Crossing from Leftmedia talkingheads. Court Jesters... >From the "Kleptocracy" Files, an Arizona jury awarded $450,000 to Michelle Nations, who stepped in a gopher hole in a Tucson city park and sprained her ankle. Comments Overlawyered.com: "Quite an ankle sprain." The Arizona Daily Star quotes a lawyer for the city, Michael Owen, saying he was "astonished" at the verdict: "You would think in a park -- in a natural space -- people should have to watch where they're going." There were warning signs about the holes posted near parking areas of the park, but Nations's lawyer argued the signs weren't prominent enough. Culture comment... The National Education Association this week approved its task force report on making schools "safe" for "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students." The report has not yet been made public, but homosexual advocates, predictably, are whining it does not go far enough. NEA President Bob Chase says the report builds on a "simple civil rights enforcement" agenda emphasizing language in teacher contracts and district policies. But Peter LaBarbera of the Culture and Family Institute responds, "We find it hard to believe that in the name of safety you can promote homosexual behavior, which has been shown to shorten lives and be harmful. And transgender behavior -- we are talking about boys that, yes, their identity might actually be girls -- and all that encompasses." Why worry if the homosexualists aren't satisfied? As California goes.... The Left Coast state's Superintendent of Schools Delaine Eastin Wednesday released a related report on compliance with a January 2000 law requiring schools to provide expanded protections on the basis of sexual orientation. Eastin's task force declared that schools should use "culturally sensitive" textbooks explicit about sexual orientation, which include "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender historical figures, events, concepts and issues." >From the "Gender Disorientation" Department... Two British men sparked a terror scare this week aboard an American Airlines flight to New York. After the crew reported the men making suspicious trips together to the toilet facilities, the pilot summoned for help and two F-16s were scrambled to escort the flight to the nearest airport. It was later determined that the men, homosexuals hopped up on crack, had been engaging in, shall we say, lewd lasciviousness lavatory lechery. Faith Matters... The national executive board of the Boy Scouts of America reaffirmed its unwavering commitment to the organization's traditional morality and leadership standards, including that an avowed homosexual cannot serve as a role model for the moral values of the Scout Oath and Law and that these values cannot be modified under "local option" choices. The board further decided that duty to God is an obligation for those choosing to associate with Boy Scouts of America, which has defined good character throughout the BSA's 92-year history. The BSA, one of the largest youth organizations in America, serves over five million young people between 7 and 20 years of age. On the frontiers of science... A new study from the journal Psychological Review suggests that intelligence, measured as IQ, is not so dependent on nature as previous research has found. Study co-author Bill Dickens summed up the claims, "If you get into a good environment, that's going to increase your IQ and lead you into a better environment. ...[I]t's environment that's doing the work. Genes are just giving the initial kick." You will recall that Leftists have been modulating between a snit and a dither since the 1994 publication of the "controversial" book The Bell Curve, which presented strong arguments that heredity is a major factor in personal accomplishments in life. Around the world... As President Bush is packing for his first state visit to Red China, Freedom House published findings about the Chinese Red government's state policy of repression of religious faith, including documented brutal and fatal crackdowns on underground Protestants, Roman Catholics, Falun Gong practitioners. Freedom House's Nina Shea commented, "China remains determined to eradicate all religion it cannot control, using extreme tactics. President Bush, who has repeatedly voiced concern for religious oppression in China, must speak out forcefully and publicly in support of religious freedom during his state visit to China next week." Tibetan groups also report a recent Chinese military occupation of the largest monastery in Tibet. And Palestinian terrorists may be lobbing rockets and sending bombs into Israel, but apparently it's Palestinian terror chief Yasser Arafat who's losing his cool. During an argument this week with his security head, Jibril Rajoub, Arafat tried to hit Rajoub and even pulled a pistol on him. As Don Feder observed, "Like the 'martyrs' with their 70 virgin brides, Arafat is wedded to terrorism. He may have decided to tack his course for the time being. Eventually, he will revert to form...." And speaking of "terrorists," in Kabul, Afghanistan, "peace-loving" Hajj Muslims, frustrated at the long wait for a plane to take them on a "pilgrimage" to Mecca in neighboring Saudi Arabia, stormed an Ariana Airlines plane preparing to leave for India, and murdered Afghanistan's minister of civil aviation and tourism, Dr. Abdul Rahman. And last... Our heroes have always been cowboys ... and this week two moved along. Gen. Vernon Walters, one of the most successful Cold Warriors, passed away Sunday at age 84. Gen. Walters was a key player among the stalwart band Ronald Reagan assembled to topple the "Evil Empire." And country singer Waylon Jennings died Wednesday. Your Editorial Board can honestly say, "We've always been crazy," and not a day goes by we aren't "lonesome, on'ry, and mean." Our prayers go out to the family members and friends of these two men. We will miss them both. -- PUBLIUS -- *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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