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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Look for our
2003
Thanksgiving Edition Wednesday
morning.
CONTENTS:
The
Foundation
Insight
ICTUS
Imprimis
Family
Culture
Liberty
The
Gipper
Opinion in
Brief
Government
Re:
The Left
Political Futures
For the
Record
Reader
Comments
The Last Word
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THE FOUNDATION
"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private
-- and public virtue is the only foundation of republics." --John
Adams
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INSIGHT
"The national budget must be balanced. The public debt
must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and
controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation
doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of
living
on public assistance." --Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 B.C.
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ICTUS IMPRIMIS
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their
rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given
liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is
at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." --John
Philpot Curran
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FAMILY
"Today's kids desperately need moral guidance. They
need
to know right from wrong. And sadly, too many adults have abdicated their
responsibility to teach kids values that respect life. In public schools,
students are taught to 'construct' their own truths. And teachers are trained
not to offer direction, lest they hamper a child's autonomy. The results of
such
thinking have been explosive." --Charles Colson
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CULTURE
"It occurred to me that in our work with secular
organizations, the leader shapes the heart and passion of the corporate entity.
In our work with non-profit organizations, we have found the same principle to
be operative. When it comes to the focus of the organization, the people who
serve there tend to take on many of the core personality traits of the leader
toward fulfilling the mandate of the organization. If this is true, and most
churches seem to lack the fervor and focus for evangelism, is it reasonable to
conclude that it may be because of the lack of zeal most pastors have for
identifying, befriending, loving and evangelizing non-Christian people?"
--George Barna
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LIBERTY
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or
ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support
any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
--John F. Kennedy
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THE GIPPER
"To those who cite the First Amendment as reason for
excluding God from more and more of our institutions everyday; I say: The First
Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this
country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from
government tyranny." --Ronald Reagan
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OPINION IN BRIEF
"The GOP Congress seems...resigned to grit its
collective teeth and swallow a massive Medicare prescription drug benefit. Deep
down, Republican lawmakers surely lack the appetite for this fat-drenched
legislative entree. Yet they look obligated to finish it, as if leaving their
meal untouched would be impolite. Instead, they should send this pricey dish
back to the kitchen and order a snack instead." --Deroy
Murdock
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GOVERNMENT
"In the dead of night, at 3:00 a.m. Saturday morning,
the House began voting on HR 1, the Medicare reform bill which includes
that new
prescription drug benefit. Members, as always, were allowed 15 minutes to vote
'yea' or 'nay'. After the 15 minutes were up, Democrats and a small band of
conservative Republicans teamed up to provide the 218 votes needed to BLOCK
passage of the bill! A HUGE victory for limited-government conservatives who
saw the bill as nothing more than an extension of LBJ's liberal and hugely
expensive Great Society program. Oh, well. Back to the drawing board boys.
Same time next year?
"Ah, but not so fast Buckaroo. GOP leaders decided
NOT to close the vote after the prescribed 15 minutes. Instead, they left the
vote open for an additional THREE HOURS and mounted a furious arm twist-a-thon
in an attempt to get two Republicans to change their votes and obtain the
number
necessary for passage. It is believed that NO vote has EVER been kept open
that
long. In the end, they had to call in the Big Dog, fresh from his trip to
merry
ol' England. According to Richard Cohen of National
Journal, President Bush personally laid on the carrots and sticks to
targeted House Republicans who had initially voted 'no'. Ultimately, he got the
two votes he needed when Reps. Butch Otter of Idaho and Trent Franks of Arizona
flip-flopped and voted for the bill. I'm betting they both got a LOT more than
30 pieces of silver for THIS one! What does it say about the merits of this
bill
that it required such extraordinary machinations to obtain passage in the
House?
And what will the Senate do with it now? Will Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton
DARE to mount a filibuster against a bill that the AARP wants so desperately?
And if so, do they have the 41 votes to block it?" --Chuck Muth
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RE: THE LEFT
Open letter to George W. Bush: "Today you arrive in my
country...and I bid you welcome. You will find yourself assailed on every hand
by some pretty pretentious characters collectively known as the British left.
They traditionally believe they have a monopoly on morality and that your
recent
actions preclude you from the club. You opposed and destroyed the world's most
blood-encrusted dictator. This is quite unforgivable. I beg you to take no
notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock
of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against
Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin. It has
marched for
Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over
Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone
American for a century. Broadly speaking, it hates your country first, mine
second. ... For a decade there was nothing really to hate. But thank the Lord
for his limitless mercy. Now they can applaud Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim
Jong-Il....and hate a God-fearing Texan. So hallelujah and have a good time."
--Novelist Frederick Forsyth
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POLITICAL FUTURES
"I'm angry because of the thoughtless and needless
waste
of taxpayers' hard-earned money. Angry because soft money -- big money -- from
special interests to both parties controls things in a way that is nothing
short
of bribery. Angry that this money pays for cynical consultants who sneeringly
brag, 'We do campaigns; we don't do government.' I'm angry at a process in
which 59 votes out of 100 cannot pass a bill because 41 votes out of 100 can
defeat it. Explain that to Joe Six-Pack at the Kmart. In recent years, the
process has become so politicized and so polarized and so ingrained that we
cannot even put it aside in time of war. It is a system that 'Cuisinarts'
individual thought into a mushy party pudding -- a system that expects one
to go
along with the team, even if the quarterback is calling the wrong signals. One
of these days, someone smarter and younger and more articulate than I is going
to get through to the American people just how really messed up the federal
government has become. And when that happens, the American people are going to
rise up like that football crowd in Cleveland and run both teams off the
field."
--Senator Zell Miller
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FOR THE RECORD
"As a proxy measure of social conservatism, one could
use the National Right to Life Committee index that rates members of Congress
from 0 to 100, with 100 being a perfect anti-abortion score. As a proxy measure
of fiscal conservatism, one could employ the National Taxpayers Union system,
which grades officeholders on fiscal policy, granting school-style grades that
range from A to F. Senators who receive As and Bs are taxpayers' friends,
while
those receiving Cs, Ds, and Fs are big spenders. If the myth of social
liberal/fiscal conservative were true, we would expect to find plenty of
senators who receive low marks from Right to Life, but high marks from the
taxpayers group. Analysis of these scores, however, reveals that social
liberals tend to be fiscal liberals and social conservatives tend to be fiscal
conservatives. Of those who received a score of 60 or less from Right to Life,
there is not a single senator with a taxpayer-friendly grade better than a C+.
Those senators who had a Right to Life score better than 80 had an average
taxpayer-friendly grade of a B. Those senators who had a Right to Life score
between 60 and 80 had an average taxpayer-friendly grade of B-. Those who
had a
Right to Life score between 40 and 60 had an average taxpayer-friendly grade of
C. And, finally, those with a Right to Life score of 40 or less had an average
taxpayer-friendly grade of C-. The more socially liberal the politician, the
more fiscally liberal is the politician. For the most part, a conservative
is a
conservative and a liberal is a liberal. This is the hard truth."
--Claremont's
Brian Janiskee
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)"
Federalist No. 03-47
quotes President Bush as saying, "In some cases, the measured use of force is
all that protects us from a chaotic world ruled by force." Surely, this applies
perfectly to Col. West!"
Editor's Reply: BINGO!
"Assuming LTC West
did violate the UCMJ, he did so with good cause. How do we go about
changing the
UCMJ in order to avoid subjecting our military personnel to such harassment I
the future."
Editor's Reply: First, we do not presume that LTC West violated
the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but if he did, this case screams for
prosecutorial discretion. Second, as for the UCMJ, the Code itself is not the
problem as it, and the JAGC folks charged with enforcing it, tend to work
well.
The real issue here is that LTC West is in a political quagmire -- he is a
scapegoat being used to demonstrate "rule of law" to the Iraqi ICG.
"Wow! Heroes tour promoting her book deal and fishing for a movei! Face
on the cover of Newsweek, Time and how many others? Invited to all the talk
shows to share her story of her heroic efforts fighting for our country and
then
rescued in a bloody battle, fatal to a couple of our guys, all in our cause!
Ain't it wonderf---oh, wait a second: that WASN'T about the brave gal who
actually DID defend herself -- Shoshana Johnson (who is NOT white and blue-eyed
and blonde). Oops, sorry. Stupid
me..."
"
Federalist No. 03-47
reports the Chinese are still trying to do business with B.J. Clinton, now
wanting to pay him $2 million to be a spokes-model for their men's apparel
products. May I suggest they launch the ad campaign with a sale: 'All Pants
Half
Off'."
"The King of Pop is finally facing the music. Perhaps he should
have moved his Neverland boys ranch to Massachusetts."
"I nearly fell
off my chair laughing just now reading your response to the reader's
chastisement of
The Federalist for
(correctly) calling New Hampshire's new bishop 'Vicky Gene.' This is a well
kept
secret in the lib press....NEVER have they printed his full first names. Then I
sobered up: It's only in places like
The
Federalist, the AAC website and Virtuosity that we are seeing the
TRUTH on this issue. Bravo for continuing to show the light on all of this."
"Albert Arnold Gore invented Waterless Urinals? In his "home-state" of
Tennessee, we called those outhouses..."
"From Federalist No. 03-46:
'We've long been familiar with RINOs (Republicans in name only). Now Georgia
Senator Zell Miller has emerged as a DINO, saying that partisanship on the
Intelligence Committee is "the first cousin of treason," and that "Heads ought
to roll".' --Robert L. Bartley May I suggest that we should refer to Senator
Zell Miller as "DINO MIGHT " because his strong character and truthfulness
simply blows the liberals away."
"Howard Dean says he is a metrosexual?
Does that mean he is attracted to mass transit...? Remind me not to get on that
train!"
"So many leftist idiots, so little space. And yet
The Federalist does a fine job of
identifying the most rotten apples of the crop. I always enjoy the Village
Idiots section!"
"
The Federalist
ranks right at the top of all the e-mails I receive other than from my four
sons. Your intellect is far superior to those leftists and their minions who
keep on attacking our America since it doesn't reflect their opinions as to how
this nation should work, or not work, depending on whether you are
privileged or
not. Of course being privileged means being a politician !"
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THE LAST WORD
"That is the eternal mystery of this [the Terri
Schiavo]
case. Assuming everything Michael says about Terri is true -- she has no
consciousness, she will never recover, and she would not want to live with
feeding tubes -- well, then, she's not in pain, bored, angry or upset. Dennis
Kucinich has been in a persistent vegetative state for 20 years -- how
about not
feeding him?....Or how about that case in Minnesota last year where the guy
who'd been in a coma for decades suddenly reappeared and ran for Senate? What
was his name? Walter Mondale?" --Ann Coulter
Lex et Libertas -- Semper Vigilo, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark
Alexander, Publisher, for the editors and staff. (Please pray on this day, and
every day, for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world
in defense of our liberty, and for the families awaiting their safe
return.)
-- PUBLIUS --
--- End Message ---
