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********************************** Weapon of Mass Obstruction It appears Republicans in the Senate are finally calling the Democrats' bluff over the judicial nomination of Miguel Estrada. It is expected that they will call for a cloture vote today, forcing the Democrats to go on record as being either for or against a simple, straight up-or-down vote on this highly qualified nominee. But don't expect to see Bobby Byrd standing at the podium reading from the West Virginia phone book any time soon. More likely you'll see multiple cloture votes - votes requiring 60 senators to end debate and vote on the nominee - rather than a full-blown filibuster. Here's why, as explained in a Washington Times editorial yesterday: "...Democrats would only need a few members to hold their place on the floor, while all 51 Republicans would have to be present, awaiting the first opportunity to force the vote. Unfortunately, during a lengthy filibuster, it's more likely that a few Republicans will take breaks than a few Democrats will break ranks." As we've stated before, this is a CRITICAL fight that we MUST win. If the Democrats sink Mr. Estrada, they'll only be more obnoxious and bold in opposing future nominations, especially should any Supreme Court seats become available. Fortunately, unlike the days when Trent Lott was running the show, Republicans seem prepared to play hardball for a change. They need to be encouraged not to give in and applauded for "going to the mattresses" over this matter of Constitutional principle. Pick up the phone and give 'em a call at (202) 224-3121. Just ask the operator to connect you to the senator(s) of your choice and tell 'em to hang tough on Estrada. Heck, if you're signed up with us at GOPLongDistance.com, the one-minute call will cost you less than a nickel! (If not, see message below.) - Chuck Muth, Editor ************************************ NEW! 4.75 cents-per-minute Long Distance * All state-to-state calls in the continental U.S. * Residential or commercial * 6-second billing increments * 24 hours/day * 7 days/week * No access codes * No minimums * No activation fees * Calling Card Rate is 10 cents per minute * No monthly service charge unless your bill is less than $20.00 a month (then a $1.99 service charge will apply) * No need to change your local phone company * No hassles * Easy sign-up. * And a small portion of each bill goes to help continue publishing our FREE Chuck Muth's News & Views e-newsletter. Just go to: <http://www.GOPLongDistance.com> today. ********************************** Nah, No Liberal Bias Here "At the end of the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 NASCAR race in Las Vegas last weekend, Michael Waltrip, who came in third, started his post-race remarks by asking God's blessings on President George W. Bush. "What? You didn't read about this? You didn't see it as the crawl under the CNN Headline News? No. You would only have read about it if (a) Janeane Garofalo had said something dreadful about the President, again; or (b) Martin Sheen had said something good about the President." - Rich Galen, "Mullings," 3/5/03 *********************************** Day-O Wacko That goofy Day-O singer is at it again. On Tuesday, Harry Belefonte - who not long ago called Secretary of State Colin Powell a "house slave" of the Bush administration - told a Finnish TV station that the president and his administration were "misguided...and I think they are men who are possessed of evil." Unlike Saddam, right Harry? He also said the president was not "a man of honor." Compared to who? Bill Clinton? It might be time for some institutional care for this aging croaker. The wheel is turning, but the hamster's obviously dead. *********************************** Mushhead Compares OBL to Founding Fathers "A Democratic congresswoman compared Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorists with America's Revolutionary War armies. 'If you think back to our founding as a country, we are a country of revolution,' Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio said in an interview with the Toledo Blade. . . . 'One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped to cast off the British crown,' Miss Kaptur said." - Greg Pierce's "Inside Politics," 3/6/03 *********************************** Pinko Sees Red When it comes to out-of-the-mainstream liberals, it's pretty hard to get to the left of PBS' Bill Moyers. His latest crusade is against folks such as President Bush and Vice President Cheney wearing American flag lapel pins. "When I see flags sprouting on official lapels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao's Little Red Book on every official's desk, omnipresent and unread," said Moyers recently. Why do they hate America so? Not the terrorists...the liberals. ********************************** Union Defends Anti-American Actors The Screen Actors Guild has stepped forward to defend Hollywood peaceniks against being "blacklisted" or boycotted for expressing their anti-war and un-American views. The SAG says Hollyweirdos shouldn't "lose their right to work" just because they are using their celebrity and wealth to oppose American foreign policy. I'm sorry, where's that clause in the Constitution that guarantees someone the "right to work" as an over-priced entertainer again? I can't seem to find it in my copy. Anyway, News & Views reader Phil Beckwith of Riverton, Wyoming, sent along SAG's phone number in case anyone wants to give 'em a jingle: (323) 954-1600. ********************************** Can We Talk? As we've noted before, not all Hollywood celebs are left-wing pinkos. Take former talk-show hostess Joan Rivers, who had this to say about actor Sean Penn and his trip to Baghdad in an effort to diffuse the Iraq confrontation: "He thinks he can solve it, that moron. This is a man who couldn't even make it work with Madonna." Good one, Joan. *********************************** W Takin' It All In Stride "(The protestors have) got all the right in the world to express their opinion," President Bush told reporters on Monday. But he noted the fact that, "If they tried to do that in Iraq, they'd have their tongues cut out." Ouch. Mr. Bush also pointed out that he hadn't "seen many protests on behalf of the Iraqi people who suffer and are tortured." As to the need for getting yet another United Nation's resolution in order to carry out military action against the Hussein regime, the Commander-in-Chief said, "I just disagree that we need to get U.N. permission to protect ourselves." Indeed. ************************************ Conspiracy Theory "The truth is that if the United States does go to war with Iraq, it won't be over oil. If oil were the primary concern of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq, then war would be one of the last things the Bush administration would be considering. . . . That the Bush administration is going to war with Iraq over oil makes for a good conspiracy theory. But, as with many such theories, it has little basis in fact." - Columnist H. Sterling Burnett ********************************** Don't Act Like Americans Due to increased anti-U.S. sentiments around the globe, the State Department has warned Americans traveling abroad "not to act like Americans," reports John McCaslin in his "Inside the Beltway" column. A travel advisory issued by the State Department "cautions U.S. citizens to avoid behaviors that could cause them to be singled out as obviously American. These include: the wearing of white socks and tennis shoes; complaining if asked to share a bathroom; threatening to sue over bad service, television reception, or weather." ********************************** That Scary Free-Speech Thingy A 14-year-old junior high school student in a Chicago suburb has been suspended for wearing a t-shirt to school. The boy, whose father is of Lebanese descent, sported a t-shirt bearing an image of the World Trade Center towers, a plane and an image of an Arab terrorist. The boy's mom said he wore the shirt in an effort to show that not all Arabs are terrorists responsible for the September 11 attacks. Nonetheless, Finley Junior High School sent the lad home on February 19 telling his mom in a letter that the shirt "could be taken as a promotion of terrorism." For the record, although a legitimate point can be made about such t-shirts being a distraction in the classroom, that's NOT the reason being given here for sending the boy home. Administrators are saying the message itself is "bad," NOT that it's a distraction...just like the similar instance in Texas where a kid wore a shirt portraying President Bush as a terrorist. Is this really what we want to teach our children about what it means to be an American? Whatever happened to disagreeing with what someone might say, but defending to the death their right to say it? Our Founding Fathers must be rolling over in their graves. ************************************ Now THIS Is Cold In a brutally candid column, Jack Wheeler, president of the Freedom Research Foundation, makes the case for using torture on captured al Qaeda terrorists in order to keep them from massacring thousands of other Americans the way they did on September 11. "In 1995, the Philippine State Police captured an al Qaeda agent. They knew he was planning some terrorist act, but didn't know what. So they tortured him - the old-fashioned way, right out of the movies with putting out cigarettes on his testicles, breaking his ribs, the whole brutal nine yards. It took two weeks and finally he broke, revealing a plot to hijack 11 airliners. By exposing and unraveling the plot, the torture saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives, so it was clearly justified." Wheeler supports using whatever means necessary to extract whatever information recently-captured al Qaeda kingpin Khalid Shaikh Mohammed might have stored in his noggin. He suggests hooking his brain up to a lie detector machine and his lungs to a respirator. It gets kinda technical here, but the bottom line is that whenever KSM is determined to be lying, the respirator is turned off. "Few experiences are more terrifying than that of suffocation," Wheeler notes. Such a torture method would have KSM "singing like a full chorus of canaries" in "an hour or two at the most." But Wheeler saves his coldest reommendation for how to deter future terrorist activity: "After all useful information has been extracted from his brain, KSM should be informed that he will now be killed after his body is smeared with pig fat, that his dead body will be handled by women, and all other actions taken that prevent a Muslim from entering heaven upon death so that he dies believing he will never get the heavenly wine and virgins, but will burn in Hell instead. Upon his execution, there should be no physical remains. The body should be cremated and the ashes scattered to the winds." Wheeler concludes: "Then, the word can be spread. All members of al Qaeda must know that once captured, their terrorist brethren will betray their comrades and that their fate will be ashes and Hell. The only way to win the war against terrorism is to terrorize the terrorists into giving up their evil jihad." Something tells me Wheeler's column is gonna open up a VERY spirited dialogue. And, no, we can't do this to Alec Baldwin or Martin Sheen. You can read the full column at: http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20030305-77856900.htm *********************************** Go Forth and e-Multiply If you know someone who might like to receive News & Views, you can sign 'em up at: http://www.chuckmuth.com. Also, occasionally, the automatic listserve we use will "bump" subscribers off the list if your mailbox is full or experiences some other technical glitch. If you suddenly stop receiving News & Views, the first thing you should do is try to re-subscribe using the link above. ********************************* ********************************* Published by Citizen Outreach Chuck Muth Editor/Publisher 611 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, #439 Washington, DC 20003-4303 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Citizen Outreach is a 501(c)(3) non-profit public policy organization and does not endorse candidates or lobby for specific legislation. 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