Quote

Green Conservatism: A New Way of Thinking About the Environment

by Newt Gingrich (more by this author)

Posted 10/30/2007 ET
 

Do you remember back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when people began thinking differently about welfare? 

 

Politicians in Washington and in state capitals actually woke up to the fact that the usual left-right screaming matches weren't doing any good. Lots of us came to understand that the welfare system we then had was actually harming many of the people it was supposed to be helping. The result of this new way of thinking was welfare reform. 

 

Eleven years later, the effects of this change are nothing less than transformational. Welfare rolls have declined by more than 60 percent. And a million and a half fewer children are living in poverty. 

 

Today, I want to introduce you to a new way of thinking about the environment. 

 

My Latest Book: A Contract with the Earth

This week marks the launch of my new book, A Contract with the Earth.  

 

I wrote it with my friend Terry Maple, who was once the head of Zoo Atlanta and is now president and CEO of the Palm Beach Zoo and professor of conservation and behavior at the Georgia Institute of Technology. 

 

If I had to boil down the message of A Contract with the Earth to just a couple sentences, I would say it's this:  

 

The left doesn't have the last word on how we protect our environment -- and neither do the folks who say we should sit back and do nothing. 

 

The fact is, according to polling done by my grassroots organization, American Solutions, 95 percent of Americans believe we have an obligation to be good stewards of God's creation for future generations. Eighty-two percent said they believe so "intensely."  

 

Over the last 36 years, I have watched the pro-regulation, pro-litigation, pro-taxation and pro-centralized-government advocates become the definers of environmentalism.

 

The left would have us believe that to be an environmentalist you have to believe in catastrophic threats, dramatic increases in government power and economically draconian solutions. Such a big-government bureaucracy, trial-lawyer-litigation and excessive-regulation "environmentalism" does a poor job of protecting the environment while it erodes individual freedom, destroys jobs and weakens our country. 

 

The time has come to propose a fundamentally different approach to a healthy environment and a healthy economy.  

 

The time has come for the development of a mainstream environmentalism as an alternative to big bureaucracy and big litigation environmentalism. You could call it "green conservatism," but it's really the mainstream environmental approach that has worked so well in the United States. President Theodore Roosevelt epitomized this approach when he said, "The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose and method." 

 

A Better Way to Protect God's Creation

A Contract with the Earth, which is available in both book and audio form, describes a different -- and better -- way to protect God's creation. 

 

Take this quick quiz:

• Do you believe a healthy environment should be able to coexist with a healthy, growing economy?
• Do you believe investments in science and technology will generate solutions to most of our environmental problems?
• Do you believe incentives should be offered to encourage corporations to clean up the environment?
• Do you believe corporate and private philanthropy is essential to the success of a global and environmental movement?

If you answered "yes" to most of these questions, you're probably in the environmental mainstream. You may even be a green conservative. 

 

I'll have a lot more to say about A Contract with the Earth and new ways of thinking about protecting our environment in the weeks and months ahead. For now, you can read more about green conservatism at ContractWithTheEarth.com. 

 

You can buy my book here. 

 

Join Me in Atlanta and New York City

Terry Maple and I will be appearing in person this afternoon in Atlantic Station in Atlanta and on Thursday evening at the New York Public Library. Details on these two events are below:  

 

Atlanta, Ga. -- Tuesday, October 30, 2pm-4pm
A Forum on the Environment: Contract with the Earth         More info here.
Location: Atlantic Station     Central Park     B/T East & West District Ave's         Atlanta, Ga.  

 

New York City, N.Y. -- Thursday, November 1, 7:15-8:45pm
A conversation with Jeffrey Sachs.          More info here. Purchase tickets at Smartix 

Location:  New York Public Library         Celeste Bartos Forum         Humanities and Social Sciences         5th Ave & 42nd Street         New York, N.Y. 

 

And don't forget to go to ContractWithTheEarth.com to see where Terry and I will be appearing to talk about A Contract with the Earth. 

 

Insanity in the Empire State: The Feds Won't Stop the Madness

You've probably heard of New York Democratic Gov. Elliot Spitzer's misguided plan to issue driver's licenses to immigrants in this country illegally. 

 

What you might not have heard is that the federal government is now on board with the insanity in the Empire State. 

 

The Associated Press is reporting that this weekend the federal government "cut a deal" with Gov. Spitzer to allow the creation of a three-tiered license system in New York -- with licenses going to illegal immigrants. 

 

Here's what Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the AP: "I don't endorse giving licenses to people who are not here legally, but federal law does allow states to make that choice." 

 

Federal law allows states to make the choice to offer driver's licenses to people in this country illegally?  

 

Federal law allows states to compromise our national security and the integrity of our elections? 

 

Federal law allows this? 

 

Then the federal law needs to be changed. Now. 

 

Calling on Congress to Prohibit States From Issuing Driver's Licenses to People in America Illegally

Polling shows that 72 percent of registered New Yorker voters oppose giving New York state driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. 

 

Congress should pass a law -- immediately -- that supports the common sense of New Yorkers and Americans across the country and prohibits states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

Quote

Global Warming - Give Me a Break

Al Gore and others have inundated the airwaves and schools with inaccurate information on the causes of global warming.  

This 8 minute video from ABC news is an excellent reality check in regard to the global warming debate and Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth."

Click here to watch it now or visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXxKOkzciG4

RM - There are a few other interesting things to see in the 'related videos' section...

Quote

Hillary Clinton Accuser Claims New Evidence of Fraud in Documentary

Friday , October 26, 2007        By Sharon Kehnemui Liss

Hillary Clinton and Peter Paul pose at an Aug. 12, 2000, Hollywood gala to benefit Clinton's New York Senate campaign.

 

WASHINGTON — One gift that Hillary Clinton is unlikely to enjoy on her 60th birthday Friday is the premiere of "Hillary Uncensored," a scathing documentary whose 13-minute trailer has been No. 1 on Google Video since Oct. 10, with more than 1.1 million views to date.

The film's first full-length showing is scheduled for Friday night at Harvard University, followed by viewings at universities through the weekend and a wrap Tuesday at the Metropolitan Club in New York City.

Among the allegations summarized in the documentary:

— Bill and Hillary Clinton solicited cash from Peter F. Paul, an international lawyer and businessman, even after Hillary Clinton's campaign manager told The Washington Post she would not take money from him;

— FBI agents and U.S. attorneys colluded with the Clintons to keep Paul, who was convicted of cocaine possession and fraud, tangled up in the criminal courts for years;

— The Clintons later made sure Paul was kept in a Brazilian prison for 25 months, including 58 days in a maximum security cellblock nicknamed the "Corridor of Death," while the Justice Department waited to extradite him;

— Hillary Clinton still hasn't filed reports to the FEC enumerating Paul's excessive contributions to her 2000 Senate campaign.

Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign spares no kindness about its view of Paul, whose long arrest record, officials say, demonstrates his inherent deceit.

"Peter Paul is a professional liar who has four separate criminal convictions, two for fraud. His video repackages a series of seven-year-old false claims about Senator Clinton that have already been rejected by the California state courts, the Justice Department, the Federal Election Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee," Clinton's campaign said in a statement to FOXNews.com.

While it's a coincidence that the film about the New York senator and Democratic presidential candidate is being released on her birthday, the movie's producers say it is no accident the film's trailer is getting such attention.

Douglas Cogan, a businessman-turned-associate producer and researcher for the film, said he's made it his mission to expose what he calls "the greatest campaign finance fraud that ever has been committed."

The Clintons think "they are truly above the law," Cogan said. "My country has never seen anyone like Hillary Rodham Clinton."

The allegations in the film are not new, although much of the video is. The film resurrects claims made by the thrice-convicted Paul that he unwittingly agreed to violate election-funding laws in exchange for a pledge from Bill Clinton to work with him in his new venture, Stan Lee Media, after Clinton left the presidency.

The documentary revisits Paul's claim that, in exchange for Bill Clinton's promise to promote Stan Lee Media overseas, for which Paul said he was willing to pay $17 million, he also agreed to produce an August 2000 fundraising gala in Hollywood for Hillary Clinton's 2000 New York Senate campaign.

"My interest in supporting Hillary Clinton was specifically to hire Bill Clinton," Paul told FOXNews.com in a telephone interview, noting that Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign "concocted" the whole idea of the fundraiser.

Paul said he believed that in exchange for organizing the gala, "I had accomplished the hiring of the president of the United States to work with me when he left the White House."

The gala cost $1.2 million, which was under-reported to the Federal Election Commission and led to the arrest of Clinton's then-Senate campaign fundraising chief, David Rosen.

Rosen was found not guilty; a co-host of the gala, Aaron Tonken, was sentenced in a separate case to more than five years in prison for misappropriating funds for charity to pay for fundraisers featuring Hollywood celebrities.

Paul never got to work with Bill Clinton. Stan Lee Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2001, long after it became apparent to Paul that Clinton wasn't going to join the company and, Paul alleges, had stolen one of Stan Lee Media's chief investors.

Paul writes off his convictions in the 1970s for cocaine possession and defrauding Fidel Castro of $8.7 million as part of an international anti-Castro effort gone wrong. He adds that the securities fraud plea that he agreed to cop in March 2005 was to get out of jail after 43 months in Brazilian and New York prisons. He still is awaiting sentencing on that plea despite being under house arrest since then.

As for the Rosen case, he calls that a farce aimed at getting a Clinton crony off the hook. The accompanying civil case, he said, also set a legal precedent Hillary Clinton later used to get out of being a defendant in his case against her and her husband.

"I am not the one-dimensional villain that I am portrayed to be, but I am the victim not only of the Clintons" but of their associates, who Paul says tried to steal his assets and wrap him up in a corrupt court system.

"Not only was the indictment and the trial (of Rosen) a scam, the judge ... turned it into a referendum on the credibility of Peter Paul," Paul said, also faulting the prosecutor for not objecting to Judge Howard Matz's characterization of Paul as a con man during his instructions to the jury.

"You conclude either that the prosecutor is incompetent or, worse, that the prosecutor is dogging the case."

Paul claims that while he has been prosecuted and marginalized by the Clintons, his video evidence proves his case against them — that the power couple defrauded him by falsely pledging the former president's post-White House services in exchange for footing the bill for all the gala's expenses.

That video documentation, however, may be worth only the revenue from copies sold. The California Court of Appeals last week upheld, 3-0, a lower court's ruling to excuse Hillary Clinton as a defendant in that suit. The court also noted that the new video isn't new evidence.

"In his motion to admit new evidence, Paul also seeks to admit the videotaped recording of the July 17, 2000, telephone call to demonstrate Senator Clinton had sufficient knowledge of Paul's business enterprises and the president's involvement with Paul such that it would not have been a 'fishing expedition' to depose her. While the recording itself may have only been recently obtained by Paul, the substance of the conference call is not new evidence," reads the ruling written by Judge P.J. Perluss.

Nonetheless, the conference call with then-first lady Clinton is among the most compelling moments in the new documentary. The video, taken in Paul's Beverly Hills office a month before the gala, shows on one end of a teleconference, Paul, Tonken and their business partner Alana Stewart, Rod Stewart's ex-wife. On the other end is Hillary Clinton.

Clinton can be heard saying: "Whatever it is you're doing, is it OK if I thank you? ... I am very appreciative and it sounds fabulous. I got a full report from Kelly (White House adviser Kelly Craighead) today when she got back and told me everything that you're doing and it just sounds like it's going to be a great event. But I just wanted to call and personally thank all of you. I'm glad you're all together so I could tell you how much this means to me, and it's going to mean a lot to the president, too."

Paul's attorney, Colette Wilson, argues that Clinton's conversation proves she was in violation of campaign finance rules preventing candidates from personally having a hand in coordinating fundraising events in excess of $25,000.

The appeals court's ruling to dismiss Hillary Clinton as a defendant is flawed because "my evidence showed that this gala was coordinated between the candidate and Peter Paul," Wilson said. "The whole basis of (Clinton's motion to dismiss) was her right to solicit campaign contributions, so she admitted" she knew about the gala planning.

Wilson said that the appeals court also erred when it cited the lower court's claim that they were on a "fishing expedition" by demanding to depose Clinton about her knowledge of the gala.

"I would attack that by saying that the case is defined as too broad [when it] is asking to take a lot of people's depositions. A fishing expedition means you don't have a clue whether the person has any evidence or not," she said.

But Wilson acknowledged that it's the court's discretion to admit new evidence or not.

"They don't have to allow it in. The cutoff is what was available during the lower court submission," she said.

Wilson contends that several of the videotapes, including the would-be smoking gun, weren't available to Paul because they were confiscated by the FBI when the securities fraud investigation began in 2001 and were withheld from Paul until April of this year, long after the lower court heard the case.

"They still have the originals," she noted, adding that the FBI sent the videos to a vendor to be copied and sent to Paul.

Wilson said she's not certain she wants to appeal for an en banc hearing of the entire appeals court or to ask the California Supreme Court to take the case because it could mean a delay of two years before they can return to the underlying case — the alleged fraud committed by the Clintons in pledging that Bill Clinton would work for Stan Lee Media.

Of that, Wilson and Paul claim to have plenty of evidence and still are able to depose Hillary Clinton as a material witness.

Paul said he also is prepared to keep open the case against the Clintons through other means. He is filing a new complaint with the FEC and is requesting that when Michael Mukasey is confirmed as U.S. attorney general, he investigate how the government could have prosecuted Rosen when authorities knew he did not commit a crime.

Cogan said he hopes the film also shines light on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

"Hillary can no longer feign ignorance in what went on here," he said. "I think she is absolutely an unthinkable commander in chief."

Click here to view more information on the allegations made in the film.

Click here to learn more about Peter F. Paul.

Quote

Hawaii Five-0-Five

by Jed Babbin (more by this author)

Posted 10/25/2007 ET

Why are Republicans so split on an unconstitutional bill that carves a group of Americans out of our society and sets them -- like an Indian tribe -- as a separate sovereign state? 

Yesterday, by a vote of 261-153 the House passed Rep. Neal Abercrombie’s (D-Hi) HR-505, the “Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2007.” That bill, and Sen. Daniel Akaka’s (D-Hi) version, attempt to create a new “sovereign” state within the United States:  a new Native Hawaiian “tribe” comprised of descendants of indigenous Hawaiians. 

Thirty-nine Republicans voted in favor of Abercrombie’s bill.  (Click here for the full roll call vote.)

Abercrombie’s bill, as he said yesterday, is “…all about land and money.”  There are about 150 current laws conferring federal benefits on native Hawaiians.  But they were put in jeopardy by a 2000 Supreme Court decision that struck down a state law restricting to native Hawaiians the right to vote for some state offices.  Unsurprisingly, the court said that neither race nor ancestry was a permissible basis for discrimination except within other sovereign governments such as Indian tribes.  Because some Hawaiian activists want that money and land, Abercrombie and Akaka are trying to create a new Hawaiian “tribe” where there wasn’t one before. 

And that’s the problem. Under the Bureau of Indian Affairs definition of a tribe, the people who comprise it must exist as a community apart from society and have -- from historical times -- political influence over its members.  Under those criteria, Hawaiians are no more a tribe than the Cleveland Indians baseball team. But this is no joke.  According to one House staff report on the bill obtained by HUMAN EVENTS, this new “tribe” could be comprised of as many as 400,000 people worldwide, including about 20% of Hawaii’s population.  It could have authority over people in all fifty states.

Under the Abercrombie bill, America’s “special political and legal relationship” with native Hawaiians would be recreated in a separate and autonomous government.  The bill says it will, “provide a process for the reorganization of the single Native Hawaiian governing entity and the reaffirmation of the special political and legal relationship between the United States and that Native Hawaiian governing entity for purposes of continuing a government-to-government relationship.” 

The methods and means for corruption are built into the new “government’s” form and function.  The only problem now affecting recognized American Indian tribes that is excluded (so far) is casino gambling.

The bill creates a nine-member commission that will create and maintain a roll of members of the new tribe entitled to participate in the “reorganization” of Hawaii and the benefits (remembering Abercrombie’s “land and money”) it will create.  Naturally, the eligibility criteria can be interpreted several ways that presumably the commission will decide and probably have to set up its own court system to adjudicate.

That same House staff analysis said that the bill, “allows for negotiations between the ‘three governments,’ the U.S., the State of Hawaii, and the new Native Hawaiian governing entity on the following matters:

1) the transfer of lands, natural resources, and other assets, and the protection of existing rights related to such lands or resources;
2) the exercise of governmental authority over any transferred lands, natural resources, and other assets, including land use;
3) the exercise of civil and criminal jurisdiction;
4) the delegation of governmental powers and authorities to the Native Hawaiian governing entity by the United States and the State of Hawaii;
5) any residual responsibilities of the United States and the State of Hawaii; and
6) grievances regarding assertions of historical wrongs committed against Native Hawaiians by the United States or by the State of Hawaii.”

In effect, the new government will negotiate with the United States to create its own, separate mini-nation, invisible to most of the people who live in or around it. Within it, the new government can write, enforce and adjudicate civil and criminal law.  And there will be two classes of citizens in Hawaii, natives and others. 

The result could be that neighbors in Hawaii -- one a native Hawaiian and one who’s not -- could have vastly different rights to land, tax obligations and voting rights. 

Last year, a Grassroots Institute poll showed that fewer than a third of Hawaiians supported the idea. 

The idea of creating a new sovereign tribe is clearly unconstitutional.  In 1913, in the U.S. v. Sandoval case, the Supreme Court stated that the federal government’s power, under Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution (the commerce clause which mentions regulation of commerce with “the Indian tribes) did not include creating new tribes.  Sandoval’s reasoning covers only preexisting tribes that lived apart from other Americans, and had their own societal laws and rules.  Hawaiians obviously don’t meet the Sandoval criteria, so the bill cannot be constitutional.

Any doubt of the unconstitutionality of the bill was put to rest by the US Civil Rights Commission which said that this legislation would, “…would discriminate on the basis of race or national origin and further subdivide the American people into discrete subgroups accorded varying degrees of privilege.” 

Of the 105 members of the conservative House Republican Study Committee, six supported the bill. 

Are these Republicans bending to pressure from American Indian groups?  We don’t know yet, but the identities of the Republican supporters seems to be consistent with those who have large American Indian groups in their districts and states.

The bill now goes on to the Senate where it may die a natural death. Otherwise, the President will have to unlimber his veto pen.  Not that a veto will end the story because this bill will come back again and again. 

Money and land?  If Hillary is elected we may learn how to say “Whitewater” in Hawaiian.

Quote

NAFTA Superhighway has Guiliani as Key Player

Hawaii Reporter : May 7 , 2007 -- by Diane M. Grassi

"Particularly unnerving, given Guiliani's personal experience on 9-11, is his defense of open borders at any cost while condoning the NAFTA Superhighway Corridor and by extension the North American Union, without the purview or consent of the U.S. Congress or the will of the American people..."

On March 23, 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush, former Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin and former Mexican President, Vicente Fox, authorized the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), now under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Most Americans have little to no knowledge of this seemingly innocuous sounding unofficial treaty and therefore believe there is little reason to be alarmed.

However, what could be misinterpreted as legislation which has been scrutinized, and has gone through the proper channels of government could not be farther from the truth, in that the U.S. Congress has had no direct disclosure of nor has taken part in its execution.

Legally, a treaty would require a two-thirds majority of the U.S. Senate to concur for its ratification as determined by the U.S. Constitution. Cleverly, however, since the SPP is not a treaty, the President was able to avoid such a required procedure by using the power of the Executive Branch. And in August 2006, President Bush additionally crafted a Signing Statement to passed legislation declaring it Constitutional for his administration to withhold information from or deny authority required from the U.S. Congress on the SPP and its negotiations.

With the recent swell and frequency of free trade agreements being passed in the U.S. Congress in the past few years alone, seemingly rushed through without genuine debate or challenge, it would be easy for the public to assume that the SPP was authorized by Congress and thinking matters pertaining to it were in the best interest of the American people. And sadly, many U.S. free trade agreements do not ''directly better the workers of the countries involved, but are solely reserved for big business profiting from cheap labor, and foreign lobbyists and bureaucrats enriching themselves.

But the SPP is cleverly disguised as a boon for all three North American countries and its citizens, yet has lacked input or oversight from federal, state, or municipal legislators nationwide. The goals of the SPP agenda largely include a call for transparency and unprecedented cooperation with respect to all three governments' commerce and trade. The endeavor is to join forces in uniting as one competitive body in the global marketplace and to function as the North American Union (NAU), which at the same time whittles away at each country's sovereignty, its national security and its laws.

The facilitation of the SPP will stem from the use of the U.S. interstate highway system providing the roads for inter-continental and interstate commerce. For that to happen will require retro-fitting of existing interstates as well as building new roads, including gas and power lines, including light rail, from the interior of Mexico, through the central corridor of the U.S. and on into Canada.

Both the proposed NAU and NAFTA Superhighway are offshoots of the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed in 1992 by then President Bill Clinton. At the time it was sold to the American people and the Mexican government as a win-win for both peoples and would re-balance the flow of trade back to Mexico in order for Mexican workers to earn a living wage. But that never transpired and instead backfired, resulting in the onslaught of nearly 20 million illegal aliens since, illegally crossing the U.S. southern border, supposedly looking for decent paying jobs.

But to fully understand the evolution of the call for the need of a NAFTA Superhighway it is important to at least understand the recent history behind it. The introduction of free trade policy has morphed into a priority of the U.S. government today, even putting national security at risk in order to fulfill its agenda. It was the Reagan Administration's vision of free trade, a direct response to Japan's explosive growth and expansion in both the automobile and electronics industries in the U.S., which began to shift the balance of trade and the lopsided result we now have today with most of our trading partners.

And fifteen years since the passage of NAFTA has not only enabled the U.S. to globalize arguably beyond proportions in all areas of commerce, industry and trade, but it has helped to foster public-private partnerships, a benign term used to mask what are essentially foreign-direct investments. And foreign-direct investment has grown precipitously since 1988 when former President George H.W. Bush signed the Exon-Florio Amendment to the Defense Production Act of 1950.

It was also in 1988 when then President George H.W. Bush, through Exon-Florio delegated his power to approve or disapprove such foreign acquisitions to the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Investments in the U.S. (CFIUS), relieving the President of the responsibility in determining national security threats in foreign-direct acquisitions. Unfortunately, the definition of national security in a post-911 world remains too narrow to address protection of critical infrastructure, a scarce defense supply, or preservation of technological standards, among many other risks, unquestioned back in 1988.

The Exon-Florio Amendment authorizes the President to "suspend or prohibit foreign acquisitions, mergers, or takeovers of U.S. companies if a foreign controlling interest might take action that threatens national security." And the term "foreign control" remains ambiguous and decidedly so. The ramifications of the Exon-Florio Amendment reared its head when in February 2006 CFIUS, an arm of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, became widely recognized for its authorization of the Dubai Ports World to operate multiple East Coast port operations including the Port Authority of New York, and the ports of Baltimore and Miami.

The balancing act of national security and foreign-direct acquisitions has relegated national security concerns to that of an afterthought, as the Department of the Treasury's prime priority is expanding commerce in the global marketplace. Complaints about the secluded CFIUS process, however, predate the Dubai Ports World alarm bells of 2006. For it was in October 2005 when Senator Richard Shelby, (R) Alabama, called for hearings on the inclusion of Congressional oversight of CFIUS approvals. And it was prior to 2006 when Senator James Inhofe, (R) Oklahoma, lobbied for Congress to be able to reject CFIUS approvals.

As it stands, most every foreign acquisition sails through the approval process. Unless there is a 45-day investigation process after the required 30-day review by CFIUS, the President's approval is not required and thereby never reaches the Congress for any interaction or input. Between 1988 and 2005 only two foreign acquisitions were unapproved out of 1,555 reviews. Both were withdrawn and eligible for later re-instatement.

Many foreign entities seek out a "pre-screening" with CFIUS' member agencies, comprised of 12 departments of the U.S. government, if national security concerns are anticipated in order to mitigate the chances of non-approval and triggering the 45-day investigation.

The disparate interests of free trade and the protection of critical infrastructure, and in particular the U.S. highway system as well as public utilities, has given way to high-powered U.S. law firms and professional lobbyist organizations that lay the groundwork for foreign conglomerates to land foreign-acquisition contracts with cash-starved states amenable to foreign-direct investment.

Such is the case with the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), the brainchild of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) in concert with the SPP. It is a multi-billion dollar web of highway building, toll road maintenance, gas pipelines, public utilities and railroad contracts as complex and as multi-layered as the U.S. interstate highway system itself. A flurry of over 20 foreign acquisitions of interstate highway projects and toll road maintenance contracts have been approved since 2003 with many more nationwide working their way through state legislatures, such as that of the New Jersey Turnpike which Governor Jon Corzine believes is ripe for foreign funding.

But the TTC is the biggest and most massive highway building project of them all and for the first time will rely upon a foreign entity to not only maintain toll roads but to have a stake in building, controlling operations and tolls and expanding new roads and critical infrastructure. Additionally, eminent domain law will come into play in order to reconcile the taking of property and farmland for road expansion to accommodate pipelines and railroad tracks.

And much like the SPP planning, which took place behind closed doors, the TTC collaboration began in 2002 in Texas Governor Richard Perry's chambers, where state legislators and taxpayers were deliberately cut out of negotiations and the bidding process. Negotiations began with the Spanish engineering transportation construction firm, Cintra Concesiones de Infrastructures de Transporte, S.A., a subsidiary of the Grupo Ferrovial, which specializes in toll roads and car parks and considered a leading developer of private-sector infrastructure throughout Europe.

At the center of negotiations for multiple legs of the Superhighway Corridor throughout Texas, is none other than Rudolph Giuliani's law firm which landed the Comprehensive Development Agreement for a widening of Interstate-35, now referred to as the TTC-35, in addition to the Master Development Plans for State Highways 121 and 130 among other legs of the TTC. All negotiations for Cintra were and are presently handled by the law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, LLP, of which Republican Presidential candidate, Rudolph Giuliani, has been a senior executive partner since March 2005. His law firm is the exclusive legal counsel for Cintra. Bracewell & Giuliani is comprised of 400 attorneys, based in Houston, TX with offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., London and Kazakhstan.

Cintra joined with San Antonio, TX-based Zachry Construction Corp. to help land the contracts, in which Zachry owns a 20% interest. The Cintra-Zachry proposal for TTC-35 includes a private investment of up to $6 billion in upfront payments for the complete construction, design and operation of a 316-mile toll road between Dallas and San Antonio, giving Cintra the right to set tolls and keep toll road profits for a period of 50 years, as it will for each road it has contracted.

The NAFTA Superhighway and its corridors will run from Southwestern Mexico through Laredo, Austin and Dallas, TX, into Kansas City, KA, serving as an inland customs port. The corridor will split in Kansas with one leg going to Winnipeg, Canada through Omaha, NE. The other leg goes to Toronto, Canada through Des Moines, IA, Chicago, IL and Detroit, MI.

As many as 10 lanes, one-mile wide will incorporate double rails and pipelines. The second corridor is planned from Brownsville to Houston, TX through Arkansas, Memphis, TN and into Norfolk, VA. While the principal use for these corridors is to speed Asian goods into the Central and Eastern U.S., it will require 145 acres of land per mile or 540,000 total acres of land. And in Texas, the state may utilize its own discretion in using eminent domain law in order to reach its goal.

Had gasoline tax revenues been properly allocated and solel

Quote

Pelosi’s Most Dangerous Ploy

by Jed Babbin (more by this author)

Posted 10/15/2007 ET

Congressional Democrats anxious to force a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq are frustrated by their inability to muster a veto-proof majority for legislation that would establish a firm date for retreat.  But what they cannot do directly they are now working hard to do indirectly.

According to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Incirlik Air Base near Adana, Turkey is the transshipment point for about 70% of all air cargo (including 33% of the fuel) going to supply US forces in Iraq.  Included are about 95% of the new “MRAP” -- mine-resistant, ambush-protected -- vehicles designed to save the lives of American troops. Turkey wasn’t always this helpful.  In 2003, the Turks refused permission for the 4th Infantry Division to enter Iraq through Turkey.

Turkey’s Erdogan government has indicated that if the House of Representatives takes action on a non-binding resolution being pushed by Speaker Pelosi, Turkey might revoke our ability to use Incirlik as a waypoint for Iraq supplies.

At issue is the non-binding resolution passed on October 10 by the House Foreign Affairs Committee that labels the 1915-1923 massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire a genocide.  Such resolutions can be passed by either or both houses of Congress and are not subject to presidential veto.

On October 11, Pelosi said, “While that may have been a long time ago, genocide is taking place now in Darfur, it did within recent memory in Rwanda, so as long as there is genocide there is need to speak out against it.” 

But the resolution is gratuitous and Democrats’ timing suspicious.  It’s gratuitous because, in 1981, President Reagan referred to the Armenian massacre as genocide in a proclamation commemorating the Nazi Holocaust. 

Why, if Pelosi is so committed to ending genocide, aren’t she and Senate Democrat leaders doing something about the ongoing genocide in Darfur or the massacres of protesters in Burma?

Speaker Pelosi said, “This isn't about the Erdogan government. This is about the Ottoman Empire." Baloney.

The Democrat leadership could write and pass legislation insisting the UN intervene to save the living instead of using the memory of the dead to score political points.  In neither case should we intervene militarily. But the lack of concern for ongoing mass murder proves the Democrats’ only purpose is to enrage the Turkish government and end their cooperation on Iraq. 

The timing couldn’t be worse.  Not only are we dependent on Turkey for our principal supply line into Iraq, we are in on the verge of a crisis with Turkey, trying to convince the Erdogan government to continue to refrain from attacking the PKK -- Kurdish terrorist forces -- that have been raiding into southeastern Turkey for years. 

While the president and Secretary of State Rice appeal for restraint, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has called upon the Turkish parliament to declare a mobilization against the PKK terrorists. 

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) told me, “We are a nation at war, and our first concern must always be the brave men and women of our armed forces, who I believe are done a great disservice by this symbolic House vote.  This is just one more example of Democrats in the House being either oblivious or indifferent to the welfare of American forces serving in harm’s way.”

After the House committee vote, Turkish Ambassador to the United States Nabi Sensoy was recalled to Ankara for consultations.  In diplomatic terms, the recall of an ambassador is a very serious matter, indicating a near-break in relations between the nations involved. 

Amb. Sensoy spoke to me and HUMAN EVENTS chief political correspondent John Gizzi as he prepared to leave for Ankara.

Sensoy said he spoke to Speaker Pelosi and that she had made it very clear that she would bring the resolution up for a vote on the House floor next month. 

The ambassador referred to the widespread agenda of interests that Turkey and the US share, from the Balkans throughout the Middle East and the Caucasus.  He said it was a wonderful working relationship, proving effective against terrorism. 

Sensoy said the memories of the events surrounding the massacre of Armenians are very fresh in the minds of his countrymen, many of whom lost relatives in the carnage.  He said, “…we are very sorry for what happened. And we mourn the loss of life.  But nobody is talking about the hundreds of thousands of people who perished at the hands of the Armenians in that period.” 

He added, “The sentiments of the Turkish people are totally disregarded in this whole affair.  And it is being presented that all of a sudden the Turkish nation, after one thousand years of togetherness with the Armenians went simply berserk and started killing the Armenians.  The real truth is that the population living in the east of the Ottoman Empire at the time sided with the invading Russian army and they attacked the Turkish population.”

Turkey is our most under-appreciated ally.  Its eighth president, Turgut Ozal, was a great friend of America, once referring to his nation as, “little America.”  When Ozal died suddenly in 1993, neither President Clinton nor Vice President Gore went to the funeral, an insult the Turks remember.  Europe has been even less appreciative.  Turkey has practically begged to become a member of the European Union, but its applications to what some Turks call the “Christian club” have been stalled again and again because of European criticism of its human rights record. 

There is a deep-seated cultural sensitivity among the Turkish people and their government on the issue of the Armenian massacre nine decades ago.  Amb. Sensoy may have been thinking about the far-reaching effects – including on Turkey’s application for EU membership -- of the House genocide resolution when he told us, “No nation would like to be labeled with that greatest of human rights violations.”

House Republican leaders are very concerned about the effects the Democrats’ resolution could have.  House Minority Leader John Boehner told me, “If the Turks cut off our ability to use Incirlik, there’s no question that this could jeopardize our troops on the ground in Iraq.  And frankly, if this is just the latest in the Democrats’ string of back-door attempts to force a retreat from the war against al Qaeda, it’s certainly the most dangerous.”

Speaker Pelosi is apparently so intent on forcing an end to American involvement in Iraq that she is willing to interfere in our tenuous friendship with Turkey. When she does, it will be an historic event: the House of Representatives will be responsible for alienating a key ally in time of war and possibly interdicting supplies to US troops.

Quote

George W. Bush, Globalist

by Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author)

Posted 10/12/2007 ET

Have the Bush Republicans ceased to be reliable custodians of American sovereignty? So it would seem.

President George W. Bush began well. He rejected the Kyoto Protocol on global warming negotiated by Vice President Al Gore as both injurious to the economy and rooted in questionable science. He refused to allow the armed forces and diplomats of the United States to be brought under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

But now President Bush is about to take his country by the hand and make a great leap forward into world government. He has signed on to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which transfers jurisdiction over the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic oceans and all the oil and mineral resources they contain, to an International Seabed Authority. This second United Nations would be ceded eternal hegemony over two-thirds of the Earth. It is the greatest U.N. power grab in history and, thanks to George Bush, is about to succeed.

Within the Authority, consisting of 155 nations, America would have one vote and no veto. However, we would pay the principal share of the operating costs, as we do today of the United Nations.

In 1978, Ronald Reagan declared, "No national interest of the United States can justify handing sovereign control of two-thirds of the Earth's surface over to the Third World."

Rejecting the New International Economic Order that sought to effect a historic transfer of wealth and power from the First World to the Third, President Reagan in 1982 refused to sign the Law of the Sea Treaty or send it to the Senate. Now, Bush, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., have resurrected this monstrosity and are about to ram it through the U.S. Senate with, if you can believe it, the support of the U.S. Navy.

The rot of globalism runs deep in this capital city.

What is the matter with Bush? What is the matter with the U.S. Navy? For the sea treaty grants us no rights we do not already have in international law and tradition -- it only codifies them. It siphons off national rights, national sovereignty and national wealth, however, and empowers global bureaucrats and Third World kleptocrats whose common trait is jealousy of and hostility toward the United States.

Under LOST, if the United States wishes to mine the ocean or scoop up minerals from its floor, we would have to pay a fee and get permission from the Authority, then provide a subsidiary of the Authority called the Enterprise with a comparable site for its own exploitation with our technology. Eventually, the Authority would collect 7 percent of the revenue from the U.S. mining site, giving this institution of world government what the United Nations has hungered for for decades: the power to tax nations.

While the treaty assures the right of peaceful passage on the high seas and through narrows that are territorial waters, we already have that right under international law. And for the past two centuries, we have had as guarantor of the right of free passage the U.S. Navy. Now, we will have it courtesy of the International Seabed Authority.

"It is inconceivable to this naval officer," writes Adm. James Lyons, former commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, "why the Senate would willingly want to forfeit its responsibility for America's freedom of the seas to the unelected and unaccountable international agency that would be created by the ratification of LOST.

"The power of the U.S. Navy, not some anonymous bureaucracy, has been the nation's guarantee to our access to and freedom of the seas. I can cite many maritime operations -- from the blockade of Cuba in 1962, to the reflagging of ships in the Persian Gulf, to our submarine intelligence-gathering programs -- that have been critical to maintaining our freedom of the seas and protecting our waters from encroachment. All those examples would likely have to be submitted to an international tribunal for approval if we become a signatory to this treaty. ... This is incomprehensible."

U.S. warships today inspect vessels suspected of carrying nuclear contraband. In the Cold War, U.S. submarines entered harbors to tap into communications cables to protect our national security. Our subs routinely transit straits submerged. To do this, post-LOST, the Navy would have to get permission from an Authority composed of states most of which have an almost unbroken record of voting against us in the United Nations.

Why are we doing this? Do we think we will win the approbation of the international community if we show ourselves to be good global citizens by surrendering our rights and our wealth?

The Law of the Sea Treaty is an utterly unnecessary transfer of authority from the United States and of the wealth of its citizens to global bureaucrats who have never had our interests at heart, and to Third World regimes that have never been reliable friends. That Republicans senators think this is a good idea speaks volumes about what has become of the party of T.R., Bob Taft, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

And they call themselves conservatives.

Quote

Hey, Rush: We're Good

by Roger D. Carstens (more by this author)

Posted 10/16/2007 ET

When Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) took to the Senate floor to denounce media commentator Rush Limbaugh for comments that he made on his nationally broadcasted show, Senator Reid called upon Mr. Limbaugh to apologize for his remarks -- ending his statement by saying, "I ask my colleagues, Democrat and Republican alike, to join together against this irresponsible, hateful, and unpatriotic attack -- by calling upon Rush Limbaugh to give our troops the apology they deserve." Well, I have listened to the comments Rush made on his 26 September show and have come to the clear conclusion that Rush has nothing to apologize for.

But first, let me apologize for coming late to the dance. As one of two American Special Forces officers assigned to an Iraqi Counter Terrorism organization, I spend my days on a compound with over 100 Iraqis and little connectivity to the U.S. by way of computers (we are on an Iraqi network) or TV.

During a break in the battle however (and I mean that in a literal sense) I was able to devote a few minutes to some research, and here is what I came up with:

On his 26 September show, Rush was engaged in a conversation with a military caller. The chat focused on people claiming to be military veterans while denouncing our current efforts in Iraq and on Soldiers who falsify their military service and/or lie about atrocities that they have never seen.

The exchange went like this:

CALLER: No, it's not. And what's really funny is they never talk to real soldiers. They pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and spout to the media.
RUSH: The phony soldiers.
CALLER: Phony soldiers. If you talk to any real soldier and they're proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq, they understand their sacrifice and they're willing to sacrifice for the country.

The dialogue before and after above snippet clearly referred to people like Jesse MacBeth, the young man who claimed that at as an Army Ranger he deployed to Iraq where he and his fellow Rangers committed numerous atrocities.

Shortly after making his claims, Mr. MacBeth was debunked when it was discovered that he had never been a Ranger, had never been to Iraq, and had been thrown out of the Army shortly after joining (side note: his story hit the web ages ago and the Special Ops community had a good laugh that he was even being taken seriously. Like any tight knit group, you can usually pick out an imposter who claims to be a member of your tribe).

And yet despite the obvious linkage between Rush's use of the term "phony soldiers" and the story of Jesse MacBeth, some political leaders like Senator Reid chose to ignore the obvious and pursue the spurious.

And I guess that is just politics. I get that. After serving as a Legislative Liaison for the Department of Defense, I understand the way the game is played.

Yet there are a few things about Senator Reid's floor speech that bothered me.

For starters, Reid states: " Rush Limbaugh took it upon himself to attack the courage and character of those fighting and dying for him and for all of us." I have conducted a non-scientific survey of those of my colleagues who are "switched on" enough to have been following this brou-ha-ha, and not one of them believes that Rush denigrated our service. If that is what this is all about, then it is a non-issue. There is no "there" there.

Reid goes on to say, "He never served in uniform. He never saw in person the extreme difficulty of maintaining peace in a foreign country engaged in a civil war. He never saw a person in combat. Yet he thinks that his opinion on the war is worth more than those who have been on the front lines."

Well, if combat service or observing entities in conflict is the arbiter as to who gets to voice their opinion about this war, then there will be precious few who will be allowed to talk. One could even argue that Mr. Reid would have to forfeit his right to opine because, like Rush, he has never worn a uniform and his one-day visits to the combat zone hardly qualify as seeing people engaged in "the extreme difficulty of maintaining peace in a foreign country engaged in a civil war."

In fact, if only Soldiers were allowed to voice their opinions on the war, Mr. Reid might find himself in trouble.

Today's military remains staunchly Republican and in support of the war effort. Many of those who have spent a lot of time in the combat zone are ardent supporters of the war (but not all. Let's not forget that superbly written Op-Ed in the NYT in which 7 serving enlisted men voiced their disagreements with the current course of the war. But by and most of the military folks that I talk to are supportive of the war glad to be over "in the suck"). Like Rush pointed out -- we are at war, and if you join, expect a combat tour. Like immediately. And repeatedly.

This is the point: we all get to have an opinion regardless of whether you do or do not have combat experience -- and that is a good and healthy thing. Rush gets his, Senator Reid gets his, and I get mine.

Continuing on, Senator Reid went on to say, "And what's worse, Limbaugh's show is broadcast on Armed Forces Radio, which means that thousands of troops, overseas, and veterans here at home, were forced to hear this attack on their patriotism."

Well, a few things:

- DoD members are not "forced" to listen to Armed Forces Radio (AFN). While not given a large a menu as we might have in the states, there are a few options. In the relatively few moments that I have to listen to the radio, I usually roll with the Brit's Radio One or an Iraqi station so that I can check out the local tunes.

- Without citing any statistics (and I am sure that they are out there to be cited) I can confidently state that most members of the military are conservative - and that Rush Limbaugh is seen as being in line with their political views and supportive of their efforts. I base my opinion on over 20 years of time with Soldiers, Sailors, Airman and Marines (and even some superb Coasties).

Add to that this: troops know Rush and are clear where he is coming from. He has been at this for about 20 years, and in all of that time he has repeatedly shown his respect for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States' Armed Services (personally, I started listening to him back in 1989 or 1990 when I was in a Lieutenant in the 1st Ranger Battalion in Savannah, GA).

To state that we were forced to listen to Rush attack our patriotism seems a bit disingenuous. We were not forced, and our patriotism was not attacked. Period.

Lastly, the Congressional Record reports Senator Reid as saying, "it is unconscionable that Mr. Limbaugh would criticize them for exercising the fundamental American right to fee speech."

As I see it, the only one criticizing anyone for exercising their free speech is Mr. Reid.

A final note: as I stated above, I have spent some time on Capitol Hill. Enough to know the value of floor time, especially when the Department of Defense Authorization and Appropriations bill had yet to be passed. Senator Reid's seven minute speech is a monumental indicator of the importance that the Democratic Party places on taking Rush out of the game. I do not expect this to be the last attack.

Quote

A Choice for Taxpayers

by Robert Novak (more by this author)

Posted 10/11/2007 ET

Back on their heels in a defensive posture all year while majority Democrats in Congress offered liberal initiatives, reform-minded conservative Republicans this week introduce the most sweeping tax plan since Jack Kemp's three decades ago. It would establish a radically simplified, flatter tax for an estimated 90 percent to 95 percent of all income tax filers.

Those taxpayers presumably would accept this offer: give up all your current deductions, and your annual earnings up to $100,000 would be taxed at 10 percent, with a 25 percent rate on everything above that. But that is not all. The bill would repeal the hated Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), giving up $840 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. Government would have to get leaner.

This is too daring for the Bush administration's Treasury or the House Republican leadership. The "Taxpayer Choice Act," introduced Thursday, is sponsored by three influential junior members. They are headed by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, in his fifth term in Congress. But Kemp was also a lone wolf when he introduced his across-the-board tax cut, which became the heart of President Ronald Regan's economic program.

Ryan's reform was triggered by the runaway AMT, which originally was intended to catch rich tax avoiders but keeps spreading to ordinary citizens. It would hit 23 million additional families this year alone. Congress has restricted the AMT on a piecemeal basis, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is pushing for a "patch" that would limit its grasp to 4 million upper-bracket families.

But Rep. Charles Rangel, Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, opposes any patch this year. Instead, he would repeal the AMT completely and replace lost revenue with "the mother of all reforms." That would redistribute up to a trillion dollars of Americans' income over a decade, creating a more steeply graduated tax system.

The response comes from Ryan, a 37-year-old former Kemp speechwriter who today is the leading supply-sider in Congress. Like Rangel, he would repeal the AMT. Unlike Rangel, he would not recover the revenue.

Ryan would seize the moment to push a tax choice plan that has been percolating for years. Ryan added as co-sponsors two House Republican colleagues thinking along the same lines: Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, a third-termer who is chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, and Rep. John Campbell of California, in his first full year in Congress.

This trio wanted to wait until Rangel unveiled his massive reform, but the Democratic tax leader is so far behind schedule that Ryan moved this week. Under the plan, taxpayers could either continue under the present tax code or accept the simpler system. In place of deductions and credits, every taxpayer would get a generous standard exemption              ($39,000 for a family of four). Nearly everybody presumably would take this opportunity to escape the scrutiny and invasiveness of the Internal Revenue Service. The taxpayer could change back only once in a lifetime (with an exception for such life-changing events as death, marriage or divorce).

This system may avoid the fate of flat-tax proposals, encountering the wrath of the "tax expenditure lobby" seeking to retain deductions for home mortgages, charitable contributions and state income tax payments. Those exclusions make a 25 percent tax rate impossible and undermine the plan, but the Taxpayer Choice Act puts the decision in the hands of the individual whether to retain them.

The plan also would make permanent President Bush's capital gains and dividends tax cuts. Nevertheless, Paulson and the Treasury cannot live with it because they are unwilling to give up that $840 billion in extra revenue. Neither can Rep. Jim McCrery, ranking Republican on Ways and Means.

Ryan, Hensarling and Campbell pose a gut check for the Republican Party. Is it willing to part with a rapacious tax without replacing the revenue and offer taxpayers a bold choice? In 1978, the Republican National Committee under Chairman Bill Brock endorsed Kemp-Roth. To take a similar daring step today, the party would have to divorce itself from the Bush administration's tutelage and embark on a course of tax simplification and spending discipline.

Quote

Another Liberal Noose-ance

by Ann Coulter (more by this author)

Posted 10/17/2007 ET
 

Liberals are so invigorated by the story about a noose being found on an obscure Columbia University professor's door that now nooses are popping up all over New York City. Liberals love to make believe the Night Riders are constantly at their doors.

I'll be shocked by a noose appearing on a college campus the day an actual racist does it.

Could Columbia at least produce one student or professor who supports racism before holding another "rally against racism"? Every concrete example of the racism allegedly sweeping the nation's campuses keeps turning out to be a fraud. Far from "institutional racism," there is "institutional racial hoaxism" run amok in this country. Will anyone rally against that?

Out of legions, here are just a few hoax hate crimes on college campuses.

-- In 1997, at Duke University, a black doll was found hanging by a noose from a tree at the precise spot where the Black Student Alliance was to be holding a rally against racism. Two black students later admitted they were the culprits and were immediately praised for bringing attention to the problem of racism on campus. Indeed, four years later the president of Duke gave a baccalaureate address nostalgically describing the hoax as a "protest" against racism. Next stop: the Nobel Peace Prize.

-- In 2003, vile racial epithets were scrawled on the dorm room doors at Ole Miss, producing mass protests and a "Say No to Racism" march. And then it turned out the graffiti had been written by black students, against whom no charges were brought. A "Say Yes to Racism" rally at Ole Miss was later canceled due to lack of interest.

-- In 2005, obscenity-laced racist and anti-Semitic messages appeared on dormitory walls at the College of Wooster in Ohio. The fliers were instantly blamed on "typical white males," even though all the letter I's in the epithets were dotted with little hearts. Breadcrumbs left by the culprits included the message "Vote Goldwater" among the obscenities. The matter was dropped and flushed down the memory hole when the perpetrators turned out to be a group of leftist students led by a black studies major.

-- Just this year, anti-Muslim fliers were put out on the George Washington University campus -- by leftists, including a member of "Iraq Veterans Against War." When it was thought the leaflets were from the conservative group Young Americans For Freedom, the dean called for the expulsion of the culprits and the university demanded that YAF officers sign a statement disavowing "hate speech." But when it turned out leftists had distributed the fliers, the matter was dropped faster than Larry Craig was dropped from Mitt Romney's campaign.

The one real example of racism on a college campus in recent memory was perpetrated against white men of the Duke lacrosse team. As that injustice was being perpetrated, gender and ethnic professors at Duke kept droning on about the "racism and sexism" students "live with every day" -- as the professors put it in an open letter that falsely presumed the players were guilty of rape. We don't expect a rally against the prejudiced professors, but an apology might be nice.

Playing the game of He Who Is Offended First Wins, Americans seek status not by claiming to be rich or of royal lineage, but by portraying themselves as victims. In one recent hoax hate crime, a white woman professor at Claremont McKenna College said her car had been vandalized with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti, with the words "Shut Up!" spray-painted on the hood of her car.

She was not black or Jewish, but had recently converted to Judaism and spoke out against racism. So she was a victim! After the vandalism of her car, she promptly became Queen for a Day. Far from "silenced," this anonymous mountebank was given a national microphone to bore us with her race-gender-culture theories. The campus was shut down for a day for anti-racism rallies in the charlatan's honor. Then eyewitnesses identified her as the one who had spray-painted her own car, and the pity party was over.

These liberal racism-hunters are like dirty old men who spend their days poring through pornography in order to better denounce it -- but enough about the Warren court.

Assuming against all reason and experience that the Columbia noose is not another hoax by a high-status victim, how is it that a pimply adolescent can cause such tumult in liberal New York City?

Liberals claim to believe the Klan has established a beachhead at Columbia University, Bill O'Reilly is head of the Manhattan branch, Rush Limbaugh despises the troops, I'm planning a pogrom from the heart of Manhattan, and George Bush is establishing fascism in America.

Some anonymous liberal hag on Air America Radio, which no one knew was still on the air, fell down outside her Park Avenue apartment this week, and her liberal colleagues were claiming it was Kristallnacht.

If it rains after a liberal washes his car, they say it's a right-wing dirty trick.

Liberals love nothing more than these constant self-righteous-athons -- as if they would ever have the courage to stand up for any cause not universally supported by everyone around them. 

 

Quote

School Board Approves Birth Control Prescriptions at Maine Middle School

Thursday , October 18, 2007

PORTLAND, Maine — Pupils at a city middle school will be able to get birth control pills and patches at their student health center after the local school board approved the proposal Wednesday evening.

The plan, offered by city health officials, makes King Middle School the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception available to students in grades 6 through 8, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.

There are no national figures on how many middle schools, where most students range in age from 11 to 13, provide such services.

"It's very rare that middle schools do this," said Divya Mohan, a spokeswoman for the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care.

The Portland School Committee voted 5-2 for the measure.

Chairman John Coynie voted against it, saying he felt providing the birth control was a parental responsibility. The other no vote came from Ben Meiklejohn, who said the consent form does not clearly define the services being offered.

Opponents cited religious and health objections.

Diane Miller, who said she has worked as a school nurse in another district for eight years, called the proposal "tragic" and asked "What would God have us do?"

Miller said the plan gives children an adult responsibility they are not ready for, and puts them at risk from sexually transmitted disease and emotional problems.

"I just don't know how we can even look at this and consider it," she said.

Peter Doyle, a former middle school teacher, said the proposal violates the rights of parents, potentially ignoring their special knowledge of their children's health, and puts young girls at risk of cancer from too early use of hormone-based contraceptives.

"You all are going to be responsible for the devastating effects on young women when this goes through," he said.

Those who favored the plan said it isn't about encouraging premature sex, but protecting kids who don't have strong support from their parents.

"Unfortunately, not every child is getting the kind of parental involvement that is going to help keep them safe," said Richard Verrier.

"If my daughter were not able to talk with me about something, if she couldn't reach me for whatever reason, to keep her safe and healthy, I would want to make sure she had access to those resources from trusted adults," Verrier said.

Condoms have been available since 2002 to King students who have parental permission to be treated at its student health center.

About one-fourth of student health centers that serve at least one grade of adolescents 11 and older dispense some form of contraception, said Mohan, whose Washington-based organization represents more than 1,700 school-based centers nationwide.

At King Middle School, birth control prescriptions will be given after a student undergoes a physical exam by a physician or nurse practitioner, said Lisa Belanger, who oversees Portland's student health centers.

Students treated at the centers must first get written parental permission, but under state law such treatment is confidential, and students decide for themselves whether to tell their parents about the services they receive.

Five of the 134 students who visited King's health center during the 2006-07 school year reported having sexual intercourse, said Amanda Rowe, lead nurse in Portland's school health centers.

A high school in Topeka, Kan., on Wednesday stopped providing free condoms to students after district officials learned of the month-old program. The district has a policy against providing contraceptives.

Quote

Pretty good guesses. You're half right. I believe this was done by Neal Boortz, but I'm not positive. If I can find the quote in context,I'll send you those as well.

1) "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the commongood."

A. Karl Marx         B. Adolph Hitler        C. Joseph Stalin          D. None of the above - Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/29/2004

2) "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few,by the few, and for the few...and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity."

A. Lenin            B. Mussolini              C. Idi Amin        D. None of the Above - Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 5/29/2007

3) "(We)...can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people."

A. Nikita Khrushev         B. Jose f Goebbels          C. Boris Yeltsin       D. None of the above - Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007

4) "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own... in order to create this common ground."

A. Mao Tse Dung          B. Hugo Chavez             C. Kim Jong Il         D. None of the above - Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007

5) "I certainly think the free-market has failed."

A. Karl Marx            B. Lenin              C. Molotov          D. None of the above - Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007

6) "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched."

A. Pinochet             B. Milosevic            C. Saddam Hussein         D. None of the above - Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 9/2/2005

Quote

People of Deceit

by Michael Reagan (more by this author)

Posted 10/05/2007 ET

Nothing frightens those who peddle lies than the cold hard light of truth. They react to exposure of their deceits the way vampires react to a having a crucifix held up in front of them.
 
Ever since the birth of conservative talk radio and the Internet ended the liberals’ total monopoly over the news, the left has been simmering with impotence -- over the loss of their absolute control over what the Americans are allowed to see and hear, and their inability to do anything about it.
 
Time and again liberal attempts to sell the nation their shoddy goods have been frustrated when talk-radio hosts have taken to the airwaves and warned their millions of listeners that they were about to be taken to the cleaners.
 
It was not until the administration’s fatally flawed immigration reform bill that seemed destined for passage was derailed by army of angry voters recruited by talk radio hosts and conservative Internet Web sites that the left understood both the incredible power of the new media and their utter helplessness in the face of it.
 
Clearly something had do be done, they thought. So the left, led by the slimy Media Matters organization, began a counterattack using the liberals’ favorite weapon -- the lie.
 
An innocuous remark by Fox’s Bill O’Reilly praising a famous Harlem restaurant was taken out of context by the liberal mainstream media which tried to ignite a firestorm, but the public wasn’t buying.
 
Then, when Rush Limbaugh spoke about men falsely claiming to be veterans of the Iraq war such as one, Jesse MacBeth, who told a pack of lies about his non-existent service in Iraq and whose deception had already been exposed days earlier by ABC's Charlie Gibson and Brian Ross, the left jumped on Rush falsely claiming that his attack on such phony soldiers was an attack on all Iraq war vets who criticize the war.
 
As Fox’s John Gibson said: “When MoveOn stepped on its own toes sliming Gen. Petraeus, [David] Brock of  Media Matters swung into action looking for a conservative who would say something that could take the focus off MoveOn.
 
“Enter Rush Limbaugh and the ‘phony soldier’ discussion.” As Gibson noted, Media Matters was so anxious to get the stink off MoveOn they made up the Rush controversy.
 
It was a patently obvious lie -- few Americans have been more supportive of the U.S. military than Rush Limbaugh -- and, shamefully, Democrats such as Sen. Harry Reid who had to know how false the charge was, quickly bought into it.
 
The whole incident shows just how desperate the liberals have become. Without the new media to keep an eye on them, their failure to accomplish their stated goals since winning control of the Congress would have been covered up by the subservient mainstream media.
 
Those of us in talk radio and the Internet are the left’s worst nightmare -- our monitoring of their activities had been shining the light of truth on their attempts to deceive the nation, and their current assault on the new media is failing as a result.
 
Like all Marxists, the liberals won’t stop trying to lie their way into power. As a result, they won’t stop trying to destroy the new media. First it was Bill O’Reilly, then it was Rush Limbaugh and who knows who’ll be next -- Laura Ingraham, Mike Savage, me?
 
You can be certain they’ll find a new target, and just as certain that they’ll keep pushing for a new “fairness doctrine” or some other way to silence the opposition. And you can be certain that whatever target they pick they’ll be lying through their teeth when they attack.
 
They can’t help themselves. The truth is not in them.

Quote

MAKE SURE YOU WATCH THE VIDEO AT THE END!


Cause some dont get that chance...........





  

 

SORRY MOMMY & DADDY.
I didn't mean to spill my milk at dinner last night.

  

 

SORRY MOMMY & DADDY.
I didn't mean to play with my dolls that long.

  

 

SORRY MOMMY & DADDY.
I didn't mean to be a mistake.. why can't I eat?



SORRY MOMMY & DADDY.
i didn't mean to pee in my pants yesterday.

  

 

SORRY MOMMY & DADDY.
I didn't mean to cry when my bath water was too hot.



SORRY MOMMY & DADDY.
I love you! Why don't you love me back? Why is everything I do wrong?


1,504,000 CHILDREN GET ABUSED BY THEIR GUARDIANS. IT'S NOT RIGHT. THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE TO SUFFER. IF YOU THINK  CHILD ABUSE IS WRONG YOU CAN  

HELP BY SENDING TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS.

 


CLICK TO VIEW MOVIE:

http://www.youtube.com/v/uWow42TCwzg&autoplay=1
THIS IS SO MESSED UP! SEND IT TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS SO THAT THEY CAN  

SEND IT TO THEIR FRIENDS, IF YOU DON'T YOU DON'T HAVE A HEART. 

 

Quote

Why I Decided Not to Run For President

by Newt Gingrich (more by this author)

Posted 10/01/2007 ET
 

Last Saturday, my family and I faced a big decision about how we can best serve America.

Before the opening of Solutions Day on Thursday, the success of Solutions Day and the American Solutions movement to create real change with real solutions was unknowable. But by Saturday morning, the verdict on the American people's desire to actively participate in creating the next generation of solutions to the daunting challenges America faces was in.

American Solutions had resonated with and had captured the imagination of the American public, and it became clear Saturday that American Solutions would be an active and successful voice in the American dialogue going forward.

That left us with a choice on how best to serve: Move forward with assessing a Gingrich candidacy for President of the United States with its uncertain outcome; or remain the citizen leader of American Solutions for Winning the Future, which has now proven to be an organization that will play a major role in shaping the 2008 election debate and beyond by offering solutions and representing millions of Americans who want real change.

Some have asked why I couldn't have explored the possibility of running and remained the Chairman of American Solutions. The fact is -- because of the current, misguided and destructive campaign finance laws, as well as the willingness of some to make misguided allegations without knowing all the facts -- if I had decided to explore being a candidate, it would have become necessary to sever my relationship with American Solutions to protect it from false allegations of being used as a devise to promote the feasibility of my candidacy, which is not permissible under the law. Moreover, under those same destructive campaign finance laws, I would have had to absolutely sever all ties with American Solutions to guard against allegations that I was "coordinating" with the group I had help found. This would have left American Solutions which is less than a year old, without a leader and, therefore, extremely vulnerable to failure.

As of Saturday, thousands of people from all across the nation came together to make Solutions Day the incredible success that it was. That would not have happened without the untold number of volunteer hours spent, the talent of the board, the millions of dollars donors invested and the incredible professionalism of the American Solutions staff led by Dave Ryan and Pat Saks.

I was not willing to sacrifice American Solutions and its future potential to change American for the better for what would have been an uncertain run to be President.

I have said all along that the agent of change was not the presidency but the more than 513,000 elected officials and millions of citizen activists. I still believe that change will not come from Washington but from the American people, and we proved it over the weekend. Let me just share with you what would have been sacrificed if I had abandoned leadership of the American Solutions movement.

The Inaugural Solutions Day Begins a National Movement to Win the Future

Last week, almost 200,000 Americans visited our website, AmericanSolutions.com, to learn about the inaugural Solutions Day, which had more than 35 workshops from six different locations in different parts of the country and more than 2,000 gathering sites around the nation -- and that did not including any of the individuals watching independently either online or via satellite television. To give you an idea of how operationally big the challenge was, it was the equivalent of producing 35 television shows with substantive content to be broadcast live within five hours, and we did it without a technical glitch that led to an interruption of any workshop.

It all began Thursday night with a nationally televised opening at the Cobb Galleria Centre in Atlanta, Ga. So great was the response that we had to expand the ballroom we were in by removing a wall and setting up more chairs, but even so, it was standing room only. More than 1,200 people came to the Cobb Galleria for Solutions Day. Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams emceed with great enthusiasm, which he said came from the audience. Georgia Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Democratic Mayor of Atlanta Shirley Franklin, former Gov. Roy Romer and Kellyanne Conway all joined me in helping launch American Solutions as a positive idea-and-solution-oriented movement to change America.

On Saturday, the bipartisan American Solutions effort featured former Democratic Gov. Roy Romer (the head of Edin08) leading an education workshop in Denver and Elaine Kamarck, the former head of Vice President Al Gore's Reinventing Government project, leading a workshop on how to replace bureaucracy with 21st Century approaches to governance.

Adding to the solution-oriented series of programs were two income tax replacement models. Former Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey discussed the optional flat tax and in another workshop, Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder discussed the Fair Tax. Students for Saving Social Security led a workshop for optional personal Social Security Retirement Savings Accounts. Former Congressman Bob Walker discussed the impact of a hydrogen economy as part of our energy future as well as the future of space exploration. Conservationist and former ZooAtlanta director Terry Maple led a workshop on "green conservatism."

Congressman Brian Bilbray led a workshop from San Diego on immigration and protecting the border. David Barton of WallBuilders presented a workshop from Des Moines, Iowa, on Rediscovering God in America. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee taught his workshop from New Hampshire.

The Center for Health Transformation developed the health materials for the workshops and, by last Saturday, presented 28 different topics on health transformation, including ideas from former Gov. Jeb Bush discussing Medicaid reform in Florida and Gov. Tim Pawlenty doing the same thing in Minnesota.

The center had also recruited national figures such as Dr. Mark McClellan, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration and of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Center for Disease Control Director Dr. Julie Gerberding to outline specific areas of health progress.

All 35 workshops are available for viewing at AmericanSolutions.com. Also, be sure to check out the lists of "go-dos" that workshop moderators included to bring about real change in our communities.

The Choice and Making the Right Decision

On Saturday morning, as Callista and I were on our way to the University of West Georgia in Carrollton where I was speaking and where many of the workshops were preparing to get underway, we were confronted with a choice: I could continue to lead what I believe will be the most successful movement for change in a generation or I could abandon that effort to pursue the uncertain road of running for President.

As you know, an effort to assess a Gingrich candidacy was to have begun today, Monday, October 1, two days after the completion of Solutions Day. That assessment was to discern whether there was sufficient support for a candidacy. My decision not to seek the presidency preempted that effort. Because it never began, the outcome of such an assessment can never be fully known, but I was humbled by the messages of support and by the people who said they would be willing to make a pledge to raise resources had I elected to run.

We do know that we could have met Federal Election Commission requirements and that there would have been sufficient resources to start filing for primaries on October 15 (the Utah deadline, the earliest in the country).

We also knew from recent trips to the Republican Conference on Mackinac Island, Mich., and the conservative dinner for the Nevada Policy Research Institute that there was and is a hunger for new ideas and new energy in the race.

I had said publicly for months that I was committed to focusing on American Solutions and the success of Solutions Day and would not begin to assess a candidacy until after the completion of the workshops Saturday, September 29. And that is what I did. I did not and would not take a single step toward running before Saturday.

Late last week, I outlined a process by which an assessment headed by my friend and advisor Randy Evans could begin, but my directions were clear: No activity could take place before Monday, October 1.

Randy was prepared to take leave, if necessary, from his law firm to complete the assessment.

I had suspended my relationship as a contributor with Fox News until the results of the assessment were known.

As of yesterday, a website, NewtNow.org, was preparing to launch.

On Saturday morning, Callista and I fully expected to see Randy hold a press conference on Monday to announce the website and explain why we had established $30 million in pledges as the threshold for running.

I will tell you that like most middle-class Americans, I cannot afford to match someone like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's ability to write a $100 million personal check, which is permissible under the law to support his campaign. I reasoned, therefore, that if we could find enough pledges to mount a serious effort, I would consider a campaign focused on solutions, using new communications approaches in order to have a genuinely solutions-oriented dialogue with the American people.

The Most Open and Non-Partisan 527 to Date

The still-open question was whether we could do both. As American Solutions emerged on September 27 and 29, our legal advisers fully assessed the McCain-Feingold censorship law on the simultaneous activities of the newly conceived candidacy assessment and my desire to continue leading American Solutions and what implications, legal and otherwise, that would have on American Solutions were I to become a candidate.

American Solutions is technically organized as a 527. That means it can raise unlimited personal and corporate after tax dollars. However, it cannot engage in federal campaign activities. American Solutions had been designed as a unique non-partisan institution -- the only 527 of its kind.

Every aspect of American Solutions and how it operates is well within the law -- even though I disagree strongly with the law.

Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and independents were invited to present Solutions Day workshops.

Similarly, anyone could join in the program as a viewer by signing up without regard to party affiliation.

Over the next few weeks, American Solutions plans to release the results of six national polls and $250,000-plus worth of research to the candidates of both parties and will post it on the Internet for everyone to see and use.

I am proud to say that American Solutions for Winning the Future is the most open, transparent and non-partisan 527 in existence.

Under the McCain-Feingold Censorship Law, We Could Raise Money or Raise Ideas -- Not Both.

I became all too familiar with political attempts to censure citizens when I taught a class called Renewing American Civilization at Kennesaw College in Georgia when I was Speaker of the House. Even though I had been a college teacher for eight years and had a Ph.D. in Modern European History, some did not like the fact that I was teaching a course on a college campus. A full-scale attack was launched on me and ethics charges in the House soon followed. Ultimately, the bipartisan ethics committee, a federal judge and the IRS reached the same conclusion that should have be obvious all along: There is nothing unethical or unlawful about a former college teacher with a Ph.D. teaching a non-partisan class to college students. That was more than a decade ago, and McCain-Feingold has only made it worse by what I can only describe as criminalizing citizenship participation in civic affairs and the right to free speech.

But the law is the law whether I agree with it or not. With the success of American Solutions and the recognition that it will be a viable enterprise going forward, it became clear Saturday that I could not under the McCain-Feingold censorship law, the current law governing campaign finance, participate in leading American Solutions while exp