Guest Thoughts

These columns represent the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Nikitas3.com

From the Coalition for Marriage and Family

Michael Leavitt, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is proposing regulations to enforce current laws that protect the conscience rights of health care workers. Congress has passed three laws (Church Amendments, Coats Amendment, and the Hyde/Weldon Amendment) over the past 35 years protecting such rights; however, no regulations have ever been implemented.

If these regulations are issued, health care workers who work in programs that receive federal funding—including federal, state and local government programs—would have their right to not participate in such practices as abortion and sterilization protected and would ensure that they are not discriminated against for their choice.

HHS is accepting public comments on these new regulations and we need you to submit comments today. Planned Parenthood supporters have been supplying thousands of comments to HHS opposing any regulations that protect doctors, nurses, pharmacists or others’ conscience. The deadline for submitting a comment (which is viewable by the public) is this Thursday, September 25, 2008.

In submitting your public comments, please provide information to HHS as to your knowledge or lack of knowledge of the conscience protections contained in the law. For instance, did you know that health care providers have conscience protections, or are there examples where an organization you are affiliated with did not know of these rights? Provide examples where a lack of knowledge of conscience rights led to coercion to violate conscience.

Additional key points:

* Please implement regulations that enforce current conscience laws for health care workers, including students in health care schools, many of whom are unaware of their conscience rights.

* Health care workers should not be forced to participate in abortion or sterilization programs, whether directly by performing abortions or by referring for abortions.

* Current law protects health care workers from being discriminated against when they refuse to engage in abortion or other practices to which they have ethical, moral, or religious objections.

 * The HHS regulations should define abortion to include the destruction of human life before or after implantation.   Such a definition will protect those who reasonably believe that destroying embryos by drugs that may prevent implantation constitutes abortion.   Health care workers should not be forced to dispense or prescribe drugs, or perform or refer for practices that they believe involve an abortion.

 * Even if there is dispute about whether certain drugs cause an abortion, the conscience rights of those who think those drugs can cause abortion even before implantation should be protected.

How Judicial Activism Threatens Us

by Curt Levey

Mr. Levey recently wrote in a cover story for Townhall Magazine:

[T]he purveyors of judicial activism - and its handmaiden, the 'living Constitution' - try hard to blur the distinction between activist and legitimate court decisions.  So it's important to clarify that true judicial activism is marked by the elevation of a judge's policy preferences above objective interpretation of the law, such that the resulting decision is not plausibly grounded in the common-sense meaning or original intent of the constitutional or statutory text at issue.

The article lays out the common forms of judicial activism - construing black as white, twisting legal doctrines beyond recognition, inventing new rights, ignoring old rights, and playing policymaker - while providing examples of each.  It then tackles popular but misguided definitions of judicial activism, explaining that a court's decision is not necessarily activist because it 1) overturns actions by the other branches of government; 2) doesn't follow precedent; 3) arguably should have gone the other way; or 4) angers conservatives.

Conservatives have every reason to be angry about judicial activism, but they handicap the battle against it when they overuse the term.

Of course, conservative judges are sometimes guilty of activism themselves.  But for the most part

[C]onservative judges can't compete when it comes to judicial activism, because they're not even trying.  Sure, their biases sometimes cloud the objective interpretation they shoot for.  But many liberal jurists don't even shoot for objectivity.  Instead, they are proud of belonging to the school of judging exemplified by Barack Obama's yearning for a judge who will 'bring in his or her own perspectives, his ethics, his or her moral bearings.'

Because judicial activism is such a jurisprudential disgrace, it's easy to overlook the specific reasons why it is dangerous.  Accordingly, the article reminds us of eight such reasons:

1) Because judicial activism lacks any standards, it cedes unchecked power to judges.

2) Judicial activism is intentionally anti-democratic.  The progressives who fuel judicial activism from inside and outside the judiciary are committed to using the courts to achieve political agendas that are too far out of the mainstream to be enacted through democratic means.

3) Judicial activism is part of a concerted effort to impose the values of the intellectual elite on the average American. 

4) Judicial activism compromises American sovereignty by encouraging reliance on international law.  After all, when you're discovering new rights, you may not be able to find any support in the myriad of domestic sources of law.

5) The Framers provided us with a democratic method of constitutional evolution, namely the amendment process.  But the amendment process has withered [b]ecause of the availability of an easy alternative - judicial activism.

6) As Roe v. Wade exemplifies, judicial activism [d]istorts the political process and prevents compromise.

7) The circus that judicial confirmations have become is the inevitable result of judicial activism, which sanctions the politicization of judging, while also raising the stakes in selecting judges who will wield nearly unlimited power.

8) The greatest evil of the so-called 'living Constitution' is the harm done to US citizens when the Constitution and laws that protect us are pushed aside with the stroke of an activist judge's pen.

Given the danger posed by judicial activism, it is no wonder that:

The American people ... are acutely aware of the problem. ...  [A] 2005 survey by the American Bar Association revealed that Americans, by an almost two-to-one margin, agree that judicial activism seems to have reached a crisis. Judges routinely overrule the will of the people, invent new rights and ignore traditional morality.

McCain is Better for African-Americans

by Frances Rice, chairman of the National Black Republican Association www.nbra.org

In his "I Have a Dream" speech, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Character is defined as the essence of a person and determines a person’s judgment, or what a person will do when no one is looking.  Dr. King’s admonishment is relevant during this 2008 election, and black Americans should evaluate the candidates based on competence to be our Commander in Chief, not skin color. We need the right president, not just a black president.

So, who has the character and judgment to be our president? We believe it is John McCain.

McCain The Statesman

► McCain is a man of courage and integrity.  Senator John McCain is a war hero who was tortured as a prisoner of war while serving his country with honor and distinction.  He has championed campaign finance reform and has a proven record of ensuring that legislators and policy makers put the interests of the American people above those of special interests.  In spite of efforts of his detractors to tarnish his image, McCain remains a champion of the people, and his long voting record demonstrates his sound judgment.

● Notably, in its final November 20, 1991 report, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics completely exonerated Senator McCain's conduct in the so-called "Keating Five" investigation. The Ethics Committee wrote:  "Senator McCain has violated no law of the United States or specific Rule of the United States Senate; therefore, the Committee concludes that no further action is warranted with respect to Senator McCain on the matters investigated during the preliminary inquiry."

► McCain supports black political and economic equality. McCain supports policies that are better for urban communities because his policies are based on helping the poor with a hand up, not a hand out.  His philosophy is founded on the fact that if you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day, but if you teach a man how to fish, he will feed himself for a lifetime.  In addition to the $500 billion that is spent each year on poverty programs, McCain wants to enact policies that encourage personal responsibility and bring an end to the failed socialist policies of the Democrats which foster dependency on government handouts and generational poverty.

► McCain supports school choice scholarships.  McCain supports quality education for blacks.  He sides with black parents who want school choice scholarships, home schooling and charter schools.  He believes that competition is the key to success in educating our children.  He understands that if educators concentrate on teaching well, the passing of standardized tests will come naturally.  McCain believes that the tax payers’ money for education belongs to the people, not the buildings controlled by the teachers’ unions.

► McCain favors religious freedom in pubic places.  McCain voted yes to legislation that says putting up religious symbols and praying on public school campuses as part of a memorial service does not violate the First Amendment to the Constitution.  The law also provides legal assistance to any government entity defending these religious freedoms.  McCain supports protecting the unborn and the Defense of Marriage Act which helps preserve marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

► McCain wants to lower taxes and gas prices.  McCain supports our free market economy based on the principles of limited government and low taxes for both families and small businesses.  These principles have led to America being the most prosperous nation on earth.   He advocates promoting our nation’s economic prosperity through sound economic policies and keeping gas prices low.  He supports the “gas tax holiday” and offshore drilling while protecting our environment.  He supports constructing new power generating facilities and developing new, clean alternative energy sources like solar, wind and clean coal, while expanding the use of nuclear power.

► McCain supports a strong national defense.  McCain understands that the first obligation of our president is the safety and security of this nation and the men and women who defend it.  He has the military experience, judgment and principled leadership to be our Commander in Chief.  McCain advocated the surge strategy in Iraq that has been hugely successful. Violence is down enormously, and the Iraqi parliament has passed almost all of the "benchmark" legislation demanded by the Democratic Congress.   McCain knows that we have enemies for whom no attack is too cruel, even on innocent life.  The Jihadists would, if they could, strike us with the world’s most terrible weapons.  McCain is a proven leader who has the character and judgment to be president.

How Obama Could Shape the Supreme Court

by Curt Levey

"Among the starkest contrasts between John McCain and Barack Obama is the dramatic difference in their promised approaches to judicial appointments, especially to the closely divided Supreme Court.

So begins the cover story in a recent issue of National Journal, which analyzes what an Obama and McCain Supreme Court would look like.  We focus here on the article’s observation that Barack Obama “exudes determination to move the [Supreme] Court sharply to the left.”  That warning has been heard before, but the stature and nonpartisan reputation of the article’s author, former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Stuart Taylor, gives the warning added credibility.  Taylor – who called the Bush Administration’s handling of enemy combatants “a global scandal” and accused the High Court’s conservative bloc of "colorblind Constitution absolutism” – is no conservative.

The virtual certainty of an increased post-election Democratic majority in the Senate means that Obama is “far more likely [than McCain] to get the Senate to confirm just about anyone he chose,” says Taylor.  As a result,

“The door would be open for Obama, if he were so inclined, to appoint the kind of crusading liberal that the Court has not seen since Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall retired in 1990 and 1991 – or, for that matter, to appoint Hillary Rodham Clinton if she wanted the job.” 

Taylor notes that Obama might “disappoint” some of his most fervent supporters by appointing a “moderate-liberal consensus-builder” to the Court.  But that possibility rings hollow when Taylor reminds us that Obama cited former Chief Justice Earl Warren, the father of liberal judicial activism, “as a model for the kind of justice he would pick.”  If we take Obama at his word, a likely pick would be Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who Taylor lists among “the most-talked-about prospects” for an Obama Supreme Court.  A bright but ultra-liberal Hispanic woman, Sotomayor would allow Obama to check three boxes with a single pick.  The mere mention of her name brings fear to in-the-know conservatives

Were Sotomayor to replace 88-year-old liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court’s shift to the left would be muted.  However,

“[A] Scalia or Kennedy retirement would enable Obama to move the Court dramatically to the left, creating a solid liberal majority for the first time since Chief Justice Earl Warren retired in 1969.

That very real possibility should frighten conservatives all the more when they consider that

1) by the end of an 8-year Obama presidency, Justices Scalia and Kennedy would be 80 years old, an age most men never reach, and

2) given the damage the Supreme Court has done to the rule of law since 1969, imagine what the Court would do if it regained a “solid liberal majority.

In fact, not much imagination is necessary, because Taylor lays out the possible agenda of an Obama Supreme Court.  For easy reference, we have transformed Taylor’s “conservative nightmare” scenario into a Top Ten List (while retaining his wording)

Top Ten Things to Expect from an Obama Supreme Court:

#10 – expanding and perpetuating the use of racial preferences

#9 – creating new constitutional rights to physician-assisted suicide and human cloning

#8 – expanding judicial oversight of military detentions and CIA interrogations

#7 – prohibiting tuition vouchers for religious schools

#6 – banning the death penalty

#5 – requiring taxpayers to fund essentially unlimited abortion rights

#4 – creating new constitutional rights to massive government welfare and medical care programs

#3 – stripping "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance

#2 – eroding property rights

#1 – ordering all 50 states to bless gay marriag

Of course, this “conservative nightmare” is a “liberal dream” for Obama's most enthusiastic supporters.  It’s no wonder that the issue of judicial appointments looms large in this year’s race for the White House.

Put Massachusetts “On top of the World” — Again

by Matt Kinnaman

"We were on top of the world" in 1986, said Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. "The economy was booming and spending growth was in double digits." According to a Boston Globe retrospective on those bright economic times, “The Bay State was Silicon Valley before there was a Silicon Valley.” 

At that point, the Massachusetts state government budget was $8.8 billion. Adjusted for inflation and population changes since 1986 (including increases by births and an influx of foreign immigration), Massachusetts’ 2008 budget ought to be $18.7 billion, almost $11 billion less than what the legislature and the governor’s office are asking for, and enough of a cushion to absorb the projected $11 billion dollar revenue reduction from a proposed elimination of the income tax. And that doesn’t count the floods of new revenue that will be created by new economic activity, a phenomenon that occurs most powerfully in states with people-friendly, low-tax, pro-growth policies. 

Ending the Massachusetts state income tax and rolling back state government spending to $18.7 billion would put our state economy "on top of the world" - again.

But some people are trying to stop this from happening.

Governor Deval Patrick said it’s “a dumb idea.” He called it “irresponsible” and “foolish.” Massachusetts Teachers Association president Anne Wass labeled it “wacky” and “wrong-headed.”  They’re speaking about the ballot initiative to eliminate the Massachusetts income tax, on track for a statewide up-or-down vote on election day, November 4, 2008.

In 2002 a similar initiative attracted 45% of the vote.  This time taxpayers just may be in a mood to go all the way, especially if they remember how the legislature has treated them in the past on taxes.

Background: In 2000, the citizens of Masschusetts passed a ballot question reducing the income tax rate to 5%. After the initiative passed, House Speaker Thomas Finneran said, "The voters have spoken. We'll abide by it. There won't be any attempt to cushion it, modify it, tailor it in any way. I respect their grasp of issues and I respect the position they take on an issue like that. There won't be any problem with us. We'll implement it." 

Sounded great. Didn’t happen. The legislature blockaded it, and the best that voters can hope for now is for a 5% rate by 2014, if “economic triggers” defined by legislators kick in.

Or taxpayers can take more immediate and dramatic action and eliminate the income tax altogether.

Would it be a catastrophe? Or would it be the most powerfully transformative event in Massachusetts politics since tea first went into the harbor?  What would it mean to the Massachusetts economy if three million Massachusetts taxpayers received an average annual raise of $3,600 each? (That’s the amount they’d keep via elimination of the income tax).

What would it mean if people suddenly found the Bay State a more attractive place to live, work, invest, and raise families? What would happen to the fortunes of Massachusetts if the Commonwealth became a nationwide magnet for opportunity-seekers?

“The most valuable natural resource in the 21st century is brains,” says tech-savvy Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes magazine. “Smart people tend to be mobile. Watch where they go. Because where they go, robust economic activity will follow.” 

They don’t go to Massachusetts very often. From 1991-2007 more than 550,000 people moved out. This is what the US Bureau of Census calls “net domestic migration,” which in plain English means a vast disappearance of jobs, families, companies, inventions, enterprises, schools, teachers, entrepreneurs, doctors, young people…and revenue. In population loss measurements, the Commonwealth is the 49^th worst among the 50 states.

The cost of this exodus is incalculable, and when human capital is appreciating faster than any other resource, it’s something no state can afford when 49 competitors are lined up at the door.  Especially when most of those states are much friendlier to taxpayers than Massachusetts is.

Income tax receipts in Massachusetts currently account for 39% of overall state revenue, approximately $11 billion a year. Removed from the proposed 2008 state budget of $29 billion, legislators would be left with about $18 billion to spend.

Nine states—Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming—have no income tax.  As a group they are attracting population, and in multiple surveys of economic climate, performance, and prospects, they leave Massachusetts in the dust. Without an income tax, all nine states have figured out how to run budget surpluses.  Are they “dumb.” Are they “foolish.” Are they “irresponsible?” Are they “wacky?” 

Or is it just politicians in Massachusetts?

An Open Letter To Sen. Obama From Black Republicans

by Frances Rice, chairman of the National Black Republican Association www.nbra.org

At a fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida, Senator Barack Obama displayed his hypocrisy when he played the race card against Republicans, while whining that he expects Republicans to play the race card against him.  This dishonest tactic is straight out of the Democratic Party’s race-baiting political playbook.

Since Obama wants the American people to believe he is disgusted by racism, we call upon Obama to condemn his fellow Democrats for their Jim Crow-style racist attacks against black Republicans because we do not adhere to the Democratic Party’s liberal agenda.

More specifically, we ask Obama to condemn Democrat Senator Joe Biden who boasted proudly on FOX News that his qualification to be president was enhanced because his home state of Delaware held blacks in human bondage. “You don’t know my state,” Biden crowed, “my state was a slave state.“  Imagine the media firestorm that would have ensued if a Republican had uttered such an outrageously racist comment.

We request that Obama denounce Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy who called black Republican judicial nominees, including Justice Janice Rogers Brown, "Neanderthals."

We ask Obama to condemn Democrat Senator Harry Reid who appeared on Meet the Press and attacked black Republican Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, demeaning the justice as an incompetent Negro, incapable of writing good English. “Slap at Thomas stinks of racism,” was the headline of the New York Daily News’ December 7, 2004 editorial.

We request that Obama denounce the Democrats who threw Oreo cookies (black on the outside and white on the inside) onto the stage during an appearance of Maryland’s former Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele when he was seeking a seat in Congress.

We ask Obama to condemn the Democrat bloggers who posted a doctored photo of Michael Steele on the Internet, depicting him as a “Simple Sambo” with a Jim Crow-era “black face,” nappy hair and thick red lips.

We request that Obama denounce the two members of the Democratic Senatorial Committee (DSCC) who resigned in September 2005 after admitting they illegally obtained Michael Steele’s credit report in a violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a federal offense. The two culprits were Katie Barge, the DSCC’s research director who pled guilty to a misdemeanor, and her deputy, Lauren Weiner.

We ask Obama to condemn the Democrat talk show hosts and cartoonists who denigrated Dr. Condoleezza Rice after she was nominated by President George Bush to be the first black woman Secretary of State.  Cartoonist Pat Oliphant drew Dr. Rice as a big-lipped, buck-toothed squawking parrot  Cartoonist Jeff Danzinger depicted Dr. Rice as a stereotyped “mammy,” barefoot and ignorant.  Democrat Ted Rall referred to Dr. Rice as President Bush’s “House [N-word]”.  Democrat John Sylvester characterized Dr. Rice on his radio talk show as a stupid, servile black woman, calling her an “Aunt Jemima”.

We request that Obama denounce Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a former “Kleagle” in the Ku Klux Klan, who led other Democrats, including Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, in a filibuster of Dr. Rice’s confirmation when she appeared before the Senate for her hearing. 

We ask Obama to apologize for writing a letter in support of Byrd, considering the following facts about Byrd.

*In 2001, Byrd was forced to apologize for using the N-word on television.

*Byrd pushed to have the Senate’s main office building named after Democrat Senator Richard Russell, Byrd’s mentor and leading opponent of anti-lynching legislation.

*Byrd, along with Democrat Senators Sam Ervin and Albert Gore, Sr., was a chief opponent of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and filibustered against the bill for 14 straight hours before the final vote.

*Byrd, along with other racist Democrats, smeared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the 1960s.  This racist attack on Dr. King was ongoing when Democrat President John F. Kennedy had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a communist in order to undermine Dr. King. 

The relentless disparagement of Dr. King by Democrats led to his being physically assaulted and ultimately to his tragic death.  In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King's leaving Memphis, Tennessee after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Byrd called Dr. King a "trouble-maker" who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

We request that Obama apologize to all black Americans for the Democratic Party’s 200-year history of racism against all black Americans as exposed in the books Unfounded Loyalty by Rev. Wayne Perryman and A Short History of Reconstruction by Dr. Eric Foner.

We ask Obama to embrace the 2006 report by the Commission appointed by North Carolina’s governor which uncovered facts that prompted the Democratic Party of North Carolina to pass a unanimous resolution apologizing for the Democratic Party’s role in the bloody 1898 Wilmington Race Riots where dozens of black Americans were massacred.  That apology is on the Internet at:  http://www.ncdp.org/node/1546 . 

In a letter to the North Carolina Democratic Party, Lt. Governor Richard H. Moore wrote:  “We can no longer ignore the fact that many of us grew up being taught a much sanitized – and inaccurate – history….  The truth is ugly.”

If Obama refuses to condemn the Democrats for their racist past and current race-baiting against black Republicans, then what right does Obama have to preemptively accuse Republicans of using racism against him?

Smith College flunks free speech lesson

by Matt Kinnaman

Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts is a top-tier school with a remarkable story. It was founded as an all-women’s college in 1871, one year before Susan B. Anthony was arrested for attempting to cast a ballot in the 1872 presidential election.  Nearly a half-century before they were guaranteed voting rights by the 19th amendment, women were blazing a trail to first-class citizenship at Smith College. 

It’s no surprise that Smith describes itself as “empowering” and "transforming.”  According to its promotional material, the college is “heady, nervy, intellectually exciting.”  With its history of promoting civil rights even under hostile circumstances, this is clearly not a campus that would blatantly crush free speech.

But on April 29, 2008 that’s exactly what happened after guest speaker Ryan Sorba arrived to address an audience in the Smith College library.  Sorba is the author of The Born Gay Hoax, which challenges the premise of genetically-based same-sex attraction.

This turned out to be too much for today’s Smith College community. Early in Sorba’s presentation, student protesters stormed the library, waved signs, shouted him down, chased him from the podium, and commandeered the microphone. The speech was cancelled. But was the premise of Sorba’s presentation outside the bounds of constitutionally-protected expression? Was it outside the bounds of legitimate academic inquiry?

Not according to Simon LeVay, a gay neuroscientist, and one of the worlds foremost voices promoting the paradigm of biologically-based homosexual attraction. Even so, LeVay points out that the scientific community is unsettled on the “gay gene” debate and in a current PBS report about the ‘nature versus nurture’ controversy, he asks, “Are the positions taken by researchers merely the expression of their own personal attitudes and prejudices—whether pro-or anti-gay—that have been dressed up in academic language?" 

This is precisely the type of question that students at an “heady, nervy, intellectually exciting” college ought to confront at a presentation like Sorba’s. Instead, they shut it down, violating the spirit of inquiry and academic integrity on which Smith was founded.

In the cacophony after Sorba was driven from the library, an attendee captured the floor for just a moment: “You guys are all cheering and that’s great. I understand you’re excited. You won. But what did you really win?”

Excellent question. In August 1814, the desperate British military burned the Library of Congress.  In the aftermath, Thomas Jefferson wrote; "I learn from the newspapers that the vandalism of our enemy has triumphed at Washington over science as well as the arts.”

The British book-burning rampage was no worse than what happened at Smith College, because at Smith the underlying principles of all liberal democratic institutions were trampled in the very halls where they ought to be most protected.

And did it escape the Smith censors’ notice that Sorba’s book was still in draft form at the time of the incident? His presentation offered the perfect opportunity for listeners to expose flaws in his book through rational critique prior to its publication. But rational critique has been chased out by a dangerous form of political correctness that threatens the foundations of free inquiry and ordered liberty.

On the day before Ryan Sorba was silenced at Smith, the American Psychiatric Association provided a foreshadowing of events in Northampton when it pulled the plug on a Washington, DC conference session titled "Homosexuality and Therapy: The Religious Dimension."  David Scasta, the gay psychiatrist and former APA president coordinating the symposium said, "It was a way to have a balanced discussion about religion and how it influences therapy. We wanted to talk rationally, calmly and respectfully to each other.”

But the panel’s headliner, New Hampshire’s Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson, boycotted and forced the event to be cancelled.  Robinson, who is also gay, claimed that APA, by including two evangelicals on the panel, was being manipulated by the conservative activist group Focus on the Family. Bishop Robinson is quoted as saying “just my showing up and letting this event happen” would give “credibility” to views he disagrees with.

But isn’t “showing up” for the debate integral to our civil liberties? Isn’t the guarantee of free speech inseparable from the full enjoyment of first-class citizenship?  And isn’t censorship of ideas other than one’s own a hallmark of totalitarianism?

The answers are powerfully obvious.

The Threat is from Radical Islam - Part 2 (Part 1 below)

by J. Laurence Eisenberg

If you pay attention to popular misconception, Arabs fear Christians because 1,000 years ago Crusaders invaded Arab lands and sought to rule over Islam.  And Arabs hate Jews because Jews took over Muslim lands and imposed a Western democracy where it doesn’t belong. 

And none of this is true.

The prophet Mohammed had his visions in Arabia in 626 AD.  Before that there were no Muslims.  There certainly were no Muslims anywhere in Israel, a state that existed more than 1,000 years before Islam was dreamed of. Any Arabs that may have lived in Israel before then were either Jews or Christians.

Long before Mohammed had his visions, all of Arabia was under the direct control of Persia which ruled until Macedonian Alexander the Great defeated Darius in what is now Iraq in the late 300s BC. All of those states became Greek provinces or vassal states until Rome superceded Greece as the dominant Mediterranean power.

Mohammed expanded his newfound religion into Mesopotamia or Babylonia (Iraq), and then into North Africa before he moved west into Israel or Judiah.

By then the Western Roman empire had collapsed and the Eastern empire, based in Constantinople, was being pressured by the Ottoman Turks. 

Palestine, as the Romans called Israel, was easy pickings for conquest.  Prior to that time it had never  in its history been governed by Arabs.

When the first Christian Crusaders arrived, the only people in Israel were Jews, Christians and those Muslims created by forced conversion of the local population, or by emigration from other Muslim areas.  The Muslims had only been there for a little more than 100 years by the time the Crusaders arrived.

No doubt there was lots of slaughter committed by both sides as the Holy Land underwent several centuries of invasion and counter-invasion by Christians and Muslims, until the Muslims finally pushed the last Crusader king out.  The Jews lost whichever way the battles went, and they were the only original religion of the region among the three.

Historically, the Crusaders never invaded a single Arab land outside of Israel.  They never governed Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt or Iraq.  They never had any intention of ruling any Arab land other than that which they considered to be their Holy Land where their religion was created.

They felt no need to rush into Israel during the time after the collapse of the Roman empire but only after Muslims took control of the area and began forced conversions and desecration of Christian holy sites. 

Even after the Arabs seized the holy lands and established their Arabian empire, it didn’t last long, i.e., Arab control of Arab lands. 

What followed the brief period of Arab rule of Arab lands was the complete takeover of those lands by the Turkish Ottoman empire.  It was Muslim Turks who ruled, oppressed and held down their Arab subjects for hundreds of years, and they ruled until the end of World War I when Turk-governed lands were handed over to England or France as League of Nations mandates. 

The English gave independence to the newly created nation of Iraq less than 10 years after the mandate began.  The remaining areas were British or French mandates for the 25 years between the two world wars and then they were given their independence. 

Yet it is that very brief period of colonial rule upon which Arabs place every grievance, and for which they absolve themselves of the virtual stone-age existence they lived until very recently. 

Charles Krauthammer recently wrote an article analyzing why it is that all so-called peace talks involve Israel’s withdrawal to pre-June 4, 1967 borders.  That was the day before the outbreak of the so-called Six-Day War in which the Arabs have spent the last 40 years trying to undo their loss in that war.

Krauthammer’s point was that the real anniversary of that war ought to have been May 16, 1967, the date that Egypt’s Colonel Nasser ordered all UN peacekeepers out of the Sinai Peninsula. 

That UN buffer separating Egypt and Israel had kept the area peaceful for 10 years. The UN complied and withdrew, at which point Nasser blockaded the port of Eilat which was Israel’s only port in the south, an act of war and a real provocation to Israel.

This is vital to understanding Israel’s reluctance to give up its gains from that war: The Sinai peninsula, the Golan heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. 

Israel understands, or at least understood, that the UN and any promises made by an Arab dictator are completely unreliable.

Israel now has already given up effective control of the Sinai, Gaza and the West Bank to the Palestinians and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is now thinking about returning the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for a promise.

I took my late mother to a benefit performance of Nozze di Figaro at Covent Garden in November 1980. I was seated next to the Countess of Avon, the widow of former British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, the fellow who ordered British troops to join Israel in the Suez campaign. 

We discussed what might have happened if President Eisenhower had not pressured England and Israel to withdraw in exchange for promises, and had the Suez reverted to British ownership and Israel maintained control of the Sinai. 

I don’t know the answer to that, but it seemed to both of us at that time that the Middle East might have been a better place.

My point is that our State Department is always in favor of exchanging real things for unenforceable promises. It was that way when Eisenhower was president and has been ever since. It’s possible that we won World War II because the War Department, and not the State Department, was the dominant agency.

We are once again engaged in wishful thinking about "working things out" with a country like Iran that seeks our destruction.  Worse than that, a substantial number of politicians, both Democrat and Republican, favor such dialogue, converting strength to weakness and giving our mortal enemies hope and encouragement.

The campaign of the Islamists will not stop. A recent release from the Simon Weisenthal Center urged the British University and College Union to rescind its recent decision to boycott academic contact with Israel. 

UCU is Britain’s largest academic union, and true to the marxist/socialist ideology of many of both British and American professors, it is strongly pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel. 

True to the nature of such institutions purporting to represent free speech, open mindendness and liberal thoughts, it ceases dialogue and boycotts “all information and discussion” - an example of how liberals see such things.

We are in a death struggle with Islam. We are not going to survive taking legal actions and talking to liars.  One of our greatest potential allies in this struggle is Russia  because it faces the very same terrorism in its homeland.

We’ve done a lot to infuriate the Russians, and President Putin has done many things to cause us grief, particularly limiting freedoms within his nation.

It’s great that President Bush is reviving their earlier friendship and working on the two key issues of the day: Autonomy for Kosovo and the establishment of US missile bases in the Czech Republic and Poland. Russia is fiercely opposed to the bases and also opposes the NATO plan to grant autonomy to Kosovo. Both the US and the EU support the Kosovo initiative.

Our planned bases in the region are for the express purpose of positioning anti-missile interceptors to guard against missile attacks from North Korea and Iran. They are not intended or needed for defense against Russia, but you can see how Russia might think otherwise.

President Putin probably would give up his objection to the missile bases if we would, as we should, give up support for Kosovo’s independence, which is a really bad idea. Because Kosovo is not, nor has it ever been, an independent nation. It’s never been a nation. It’s always been a province of Serbia, just like New Jersey is part of the United States. 

Unfortunately for the Serbs, Kosovo has had a majority Muslim population since the Turks conquered that area and converted many Christians to Islam. Recently that population has been swelled by the immigration of ethnic Albanians. 

Why is it that we always side with Muslims against Christians?  Where is the sense in that? It is true that Serbia behaved abominably when it engaged in its ethnic cleansing campaign in the 1990s, which we stopped by bombing and killing thousands of innocent Serbs without a second thought and thereafter caught and jailed their war criminal president Slobodan Milosevic.

They now have a new government, probably have learned their lesson and there is no real reason why a piece of their country should be torn away from them. 

And we had better be careful in that regard, because we in America have large states which now have growing alien populations that may push to separate California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas from the USA. 

Why not if Kosovo is a precedent? 

Certainly President Putin sees that analogy as it could apply to Chechnya within Russia. But as the State Department says; “de jure is de facto”, i.e.,  since the Muslim majority is already in place, why not make it a legal fact? 

Most of us can tell them why not.

The United States bombed Serbs, saved all the Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo from the threat of ethnic cleansing, spent millions rebuilding those areas and to this day maintain troops as part of the NATO peacekeeping contingent. 

Did we earn a lot of goodwill in the Muslim world for those efforts? 

Of course not.  Need we be reminded that the recent attempt to break into Fort Dix in New Jersey to murder American servicemen was perpetrated by ethnic Albanians from Kosovo? They care not a whit about whatever good we may do for them, nor will they ever stop trying to kill us. 

Fortunately, we’ve done very well protecting the homeland during the years since 9/11.  But we must be on guard. Muslims living in the USA have been arrested and prevented from carrying out their plans to blow up JFK airport in New York.  These terrorists weren’t Arabs,  Kosovars or Iranians. They were just Muslims who hate America.

We may now be on the road to forgetting all about 9/11.  The recent Supreme Court ruling will effectively relegate terrorism to a criminal act subject to prosecution in the courts as it was during the Clinton administration.  Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards even said there is no war against terrorism! 

Meanwhile presidential candidates and our State Department are calling for dialogue with Iran and withdrawal of our troops from Iraq in what can only be considered a surrender of superior forces. 

And that is a course of action that we should avoid at all costs.

Compassionate Capitalism

by Matt Kinnaman

       1981 was an eventful year. Ronald Reagan was inaugurated President of the United States, George Gilder published his best-selling economic treatise Wealth and Poverty, and an obscure, hard-luck door-to-door salesman named Chris Gardner tried against all odds to become a stockbroker.

The decade to follow—the 1980s—opened new horizons of economic prosperity, cleared a path to the longest peacetime economic boom ever, and established a new understanding of the essential goodness of capitalism.

By the close of the millennium in 1999, GDP had nearly doubled, 35 million new jobs had been created, industrial production was up nearly 80%, and the stock market, in which nearly half the nation had become investors, grew in value 15% annually.

Even so, the mainstream media and the political left have been fixated ever since on an apparition they call the “go-go 80s,” a dark episode that lurks in their imaginings as “the decade of greed.” And ever since they've grown old watching re-runs of a 1986 anti-capitalist Hollywood movie called Wall Street.

In 2008 we need to take a closer look at a very different film called The Pursuit of Happyness.

Released in December 2006 and starring Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness dramatizes the real-life story of Christopher Gardner, a flat-broke single parent fighting to rise from homelessness and poverty, impelled by a belief that economic success comes not from greed but from specific traits of moral character.

Struggling in San Francisco in 1981, Gardner faces endless hardships in remaking his shattered life. His son’s mother has left him for greener pastures. His business has failed. He’s homeless, broke, and burdened by single parenthood. But he cares for his son, and persists toward his unlikely goal of entering the rarefied heights of professional finance. 

In the film the word 'happyness' appears as misspelled graffiti outside the daycare center that Gardner’s son attends each day.  Agitated by the persistent presence of the error, he reminds his young boy "that’s not how you spell happiness". 

Benjamin Franklin (“Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"), Thomas Edison (“Success is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration”) and other leading lights recognized long ago that quantitative economics has at its foundation an indispensable qualitative aspect, that true success is not driven by short-cuts and greed, but by the self-sacrificing moral decisions of enterprising individuals.

In The Pursuit of Happyness the most resonating quote from the Wall Street film -- "Greed is good" -- is finally faced down by Gardner’s accurate depiction of the generous heart of capitalism. 

Gardner’s real-life struggles in 1981 were being illuminated that year by George Gilder’s publishing hit Wealth and Poverty in which Gilder explained that greed cannot possibly account for the immense generosity and preemptive sacrifices practiced by entrepreneurs and capitalists. 

“The moral core of capitalism,” writes Gilder “is the essential altruism of enterprise.” Entrepreneurs are motivated to create value for others.  Only then do they receive value in exchange—but the sacrifice comes first, before the possibility of any return, and the determination of the returns remains always in the hands of others.

That’s why The Pursuit of Happyness matters. As his life unravels, Gardner turns not to greed but to what Gilder describes as “the circle of giving.” Most closely analogous to parenthood—which is the central plot element of the movie—it explains why capitalists “must therefore be willing to focus on the needs of others more than on their own. They must be willing to forgo their own immediate gratification to produce goods of value to others.”

Whether Hollywood’s marketing machine knows it or not, The Pursuit of Happyness rewrites the 1980s: Personal success and economic growth are not powered by greed, but by using the assets of liberty—private property and individual rights—for self-sacrificing pursuits aimed at the interests of others. 

In 1981 Ronald Reagan’s historic across-the-board tax cuts launched an unprecedented economic boom, igniting a world-wide expansion that is still underway driven by millions of Chris Gardners.  Reagan switched it on, Gilder explained it, Gardner lived it, the Hollywood makers of Wall Street didn’t get it, and in 2008 many in the elected American political class still don't.

As they push tax hikes and persist in characterizing profits as “greed,” let’s hope that Senator Obama and the Democrat majorities in Washington and Boston get the 1980s figured out before it’s too late. If they do, it will transform their politics, and their economies. And that will transform millions of American lives for the better.

The Threat is from Radical Islam (Part 1)

by J. Laurence Eisenberg

A TV ‘talking head’ recently said that we should no longer be saying that we are fighting just Al Qaeda, but rather that we should group it with Hamas, Fatah, and Hezbollah and just come to the realization that we are at war with militant Islam. 

And he was right.

We’ve been too preoccupied with political correctness to face reality, so we do our best to appease the Islamists and try to compartmentalize the danger. 

That’s a path to disaster and the end of our civilization.  When I say ‘civilization’ I mean Western civilization, not some hodgepodge amalgamation that the multiculturalists want to foist upon us. And one example should be giving us pause.

At the moment, only one Muslim nation is a member of NATO, and that nation is also trying very hard to gain admission to the European Union. That nation is Turkey which has been a good friend to us in the past and with which we’ve maintained very good relations.

But now Turkey has elected a fundamentalist government and we don’t know for sure what path that government will follow. For example, the new prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan said the following when he was mayor of Istanbul:

 “If the people want it, of course secularism will go away…and anyway, for the love of Allah, what is this secularism? But the fact is that 99% of the people of this country are Muslims.  You cannot be both secular and a Muslim!  You will either be a Muslim, or secular!  When both are together, they create a reverse magnetism.  For them to exist together is not a possibility!”

And:

“By Allah’s grace we are Sharia-ists! We will turn Istanbul into Medina.  I am the iman of Istanbul. Our reference guide is Islam.  Our only goal is an Islamic state!”

Should America be concerned?

Yes. If Erdogan has his way, Turkey will no longer be the secular, democratic state that Kemil Ataturk founded. It will revert to a Sharia (fundamentalist) law Islamic state.  If it gets into the EU, it will funnel militant Muslims into Western Europe and that will eventually spell big trouble for the West.

Erdogan may not be able to succeed in changing the hearts and minds of Turkey’s 50 million citizens and steer them away from the secularism that they’ve enjoyed since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1919. But he’s trying, and that’s a real threat.

Naturally anyone with these sentiments is called an “islamophobe”. 

But some fears are certainly justified.

When the Organization of the Islamic Conference met, the foreign ministers attending called islamophobia “the worst form of terrorism”. 

Can you imagine that? The ministers warned that this form of discrimination would cause millions of Muslims in Western nations to be further alienated. 

In the United States, the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, issues non-stop accusations of islamophobia and now supports the “flying imans”, who were removed from a Northwest Airlines flight for praying aloud and doing other provocative and suspicious things to incite passenger fear. Many suspect that the imams were a setup to provoke the legal case that ensued.

And indeed the imams filed a lawsuit that intended to hold not only the airline, but also the suspicious, frightened and complaining passengers liable for what the imams call malicious complaints. But what really are seeking to do is to force airline passengers into the state of passivity that existed before 9/11.

Fortunately, Republican congressman Peter King of New York has proposed legislation which will exempt airline passengers from this kind of lawsuit, and that legislation appears to be on its way to passage.

But it's not just airline travel that we need to fear.  A recent Pew global attitudes survey found that younger Muslims in the US are much more likely than older American Muslims to say that suicide bombing can be justified.

In fact 26% of these younger Muslims feel that way and 28% do not believe that Muslims carried out the 9/11 attack.

It seems as if American Muslims are becoming more militant and radicalized than their parents.  At present there are 2.5 million Muslims in America or less than 1% of our population, so we have less of a problem than, say, France, where Muslims are now more than 10% of its population.  But we need to understand that the end game of Islam is converting secular states to Sharia law, not melding into the greater society.

Why should we fear Sharia law?

Sharia doctrine allows for killing of apostates, polygamy, and the beating of women.  It permits slavery, and there are many slaves throughout the Middle East, while Arab slave traders continue to be active in Africa. 

Sharia law does not grant equal weight to a woman’s testimony in court, and women are not allowed to marry whom they please or dress as they wish. 

The list of misogynous laws and regulations is way too long to detail.

Meanwhile Islamic militants attack people of other faiths as well as other Muslims. Aside from 9/11, Bali, Madrid and London, smaller attacks against Christians and Jews are taking place worldwide. The Christian population has been reduced by 60% in Lebanon since Muslims became the majority. In Turkey, Islamists slit the throats of three Christians for publishing Bibles.

And it’s not just Christians and Jews that they seek to destroy.  There is ongoing murder of Buddhists in Thailand, and Thailand is a Buddhist nation.

More than 200 Hindus were slaughtered in the Mumbai (India) train bombings last year. 

Most of all, militant Muslims kill other Muslims and there is no outcry anywhere on the globe. 

Have you ever seen a Muslim demonstration anywhere decrying the Shia/Sunni Muslim-on-Muslim violence in Iraq?

American Muslims protest targeting of suspicious passengers like the 'flying imams', but say nothing about militants beheading innocent Westerners. And we need to see some concern over the latter before we can feel comfortable having so many Muslims in our midst.

Recently news was made when America opened a diplomatic dialogue with Iran over Iraq.  It was the first high-level diplomatic meeting in over 30 years, and it was a big mistake. 

It doesn’t matter how good Ambassador Crocker feels about the meeting. It doesn’t matter what statements of mutual interest were made, or what promises Iran made.  None of it is real.

Whenever a diplomat says that issues were dealt with in a very frank and transparent way, it translates to “nothing was or will be accomplished”.

This is worthy of mention because so many of our politicians --  particularly Democrats, but including some Republicans - advocate dialogue with Iran as if there were any possibility of appeasing a nut like Ahmedinejad or the ruling mullahs.

The reason such appeals to reason are made in the first place is that those who oppose military action or even less aggressive, but forceful pressures such as embargos, boycotts and confrontation in the political arena, have no other way of confronting evil. So they go the way of hope; they want to “give peace a chance”.

These are the same folks who were satisfied with the outcome of the Munich agreement that led to World War II, and the same folks who walked away from Vietnam feeling so good about themselves, oblivious to the millions who died, suffered torture, imprisonment or exile in the aftermath.

Islamic militants who are the driving force in Islam today are seeking the destruction of Western civilization, secularization, democracy, liberty, equality and the freedom to worship. There is really nothing else that drives these people and it certainly isn’t the existence of the state of Israel.

(This column will be continued in another segment.)

Time for Massachusetts to Pony Up

by Matt Kinnaman

Massachusetts was once a magnet for people seeking freedom and opportunity. They came here with big ideas about the future, launched a daring experiment in human progress, and the rest is, literally, history. 

As the cradle of the American republic, Massachusetts became a beacon for freedom, enterprise, and innovation. That’s the reason Massachusetts’ license plates can legitimately bear the words “The Spirit of America.” 

But times have changed. Instead of being attracted to ultra-liberal Massachusetts, people now flee the state looking for better opportunities elsewhere. They’re not making it here anymore because Massachusetts is a very liberal, highly taxed, highly regulated anti-business state. Economist always warn about such places as bad places to do business and create jobs.

Not long ago, “Make it in Massachusetts” was the rousing call of Ed King, the challenger who defeated incumbent Governor Michael Dukakis in the 1978 Democratic primary.  After being elected governor, King’s pro-growth policies were lauded by Ronald Reagan. King eventually became a Republican himself.

When Ed King died in 2006, making it in Massachusetts had grown increasingly difficult. No longer a leader in the original American promise of progress and prosperity, the Bay State had become a very tough place to succeed.

According to Chief Executive magazine’s rankings of the “Best and Worst States for Business,” Massachusetts now ranks 48th, and gets a “D” for taxation and regulation.

Forbes’ annual ranking of “The Best States for Business” puts Massachusetts at 49th in business costs and 47th in economic climate.

The Tax Foundation assigns other unhappy numbers to Massachusetts.  The state’s 9.5% corporate tax rate is one of the heaviest loads nationwide.  Only 3 states are worse.  Massachusetts property taxes are among the highest. Only 7 states are worse.  And “Tax Freedom Day,” marking the days that workers must labor to pay off their total tax burden, doesn’t arrive in Massachusetts until April 28th. Only 5 states are worse.

Massachusetts also ranks 49th in population retention. The state is experiencing an exodus.  Young people—the group most critical to the creation of a strong economy—are leaving the fastest, taking with them their dreams, their college degrees, their creative energy, and their future families.

Why is this happening? Because somewhere along the way, despite its lofty historical and geographical vantage point atop Boston’s Beacon Hill, the Massachusetts legislature lost its vision, and instead of creating incentives, it spent its time formulating high taxes and weaving tangled regulations that have smothered and strangled business growth.

Commenting on the situation, Michael D. Goodman, director of economic and public policy research at the University of Massachusetts' Donahue Institute, said that ''Absent some significant policy action, absent some renewed economic growth and job growth in particular, I think the population trajectory for Massachusetts is very troubling. We fail to act at our own peril."

148 years ago, on April 3, 1860, Pony Express service began, with tag-teams of riders and horses racing to cover the continent in an unprecedented 10 days, creating the fastest method of information delivery yet devised. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Then, a mere year-and-a-half later, on October 24, 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph line was completed. What had taken the fastest horses and riders ten days to finish could now be completed almost instantly. In this new world, the Pony Express operated for only two more days, and then shut down forever.  Why? Because a better choice was available.

In 1819 Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in McCulloch v. Maryland that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.”  In Massachusetts, opportunity is being destroyed by high taxes and the associated high business costs. Entrepreneurs, investors, and young aspirants of all types are assessing the opportunities outside of Massachusetts, and are voting with their feet.

It’s predictable. When there’s a better way to do things, free people will gravitate to it. They abandoned the Pony Express because it became too expensive; it was fraught with unnecessary difficulties and adverse conditions. Today, many business owners and young workers feel the same way about Massachusetts. They see better choices in other states.

Can Massachusetts make it again? Yes, but only if its legislature is determined to make Massachusetts number one—instead of 47, 48, and 49—in the measurements that attract people and businesses to come here, and to stay.

What must the legislature do? 

Create a tax structure that makes it more attractive to live and do business in Massachusetts than anyplace else in the nation. 

What must the people do?

Hold them accountable.

Now, that’s the spirit of America.

The President’s Middle East Plan

by J. Laurence Eisenberg

In his last year in office, President Bush wants to move the so-called Middle East peace process along as much as he possibly can. Unfortunately there is little American media coverage about what’s in this process. To get a feel for what is going on, one needs to look at news, editorials and opinion pieces in The Jerusalem Post and other foreign sources.

There is actually quite a lot of activity in addition to terrorist activities from Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda. Those things are reported. We hear of it whenever a bomb explodes in Lebanon, rockets are launched at Israel, or when Iranian speedboats menace American warships in the Straits of Hormuz.

So let’s take a look at what’s really going on in the Middle East. 

President Bush sincerely wants to effect change and get things started to establish a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue, however futile such an effort may appear at this time. That means that several things need to be addressed and agreed upon:

*Borders of the two states need to be established;

*Some part of Jerusalem need to be given to the Palestinians for their capital;

*The Palestinians must recognize the permanent existence of Israel as a Jewish state, and renounce violence as a means of settling differences.

Secretary of State Rice has been traveling around the region trying to get some accommodation on Israeli settlements in what will eventually be Palestinian areas, particularly the West Bank.

At the Annapolis meeting she named a US special envoy for Middle East security, James Jones.  It was thought that Jones wouldn’t become actively involved until such time as the parties reached some agreement on how to proceed, but now he has been tasked to develop a security plan on how to deal with the period of time from when Israeli forces leave areas to be turned over to the Palestinians and when the Palestinians can take over security.

He met with Israeli officials on December 18 to discuss this.

Options under consideration include use of NATO or UN forces, or troops from neighboring countries such as Egypt and Jordan. According to Secretary Rice, the security vacuum that will exist is a matter of concern to neighboring states. 

There is deep disagreement on this issue. The Palestinians want all settlements removed and the security fence removed.  The Israelis want to keep at least some strategic settlements and, of course, the fence.

It’s not just an end to new settlements that is envisioned.  The framework includes stopping construction of new apartments in East Jerusalem, an area that hasn’t yet been ceded to the Palestinians. A special team from the US consulate in Jerusalem is going to be tasked to monitor the withdrawal process.

The most realistic way to achieve this process would be to get Israeli agreement to stop building new settlements and to leave the rest to future negotiations.

The matter of Jerusalem already is going the Palestinians’ way.  That is, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert has recognized the need to give some part of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians.  That leaves no room for negotiation or alternatives for the location of the Palestinian capital.  Keep in mind that the Palestinians and all of the rest of the world had no problem requiring that Tel Aviv be the capital of Israel.

Nevertheless, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has met with Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Queri to work out details of how this will happen.

One needs to recall that when Jordan had control of Jerusalem, Jews were kept from their most holy sites and attacks on Jews were frequent.

The third issue – recognition - is the most difficult of all. To this day, Palestinian maps and all other Arab maps don’t show Israel as a state.  Fatah has given some indication that they might be willing to eventually recognize Israel - after they’ve gotten all that they want - but the more radical Hamas has never agreed to the existence of a Jewish state and it is Hamas that won the last elections and which governs Gaza.

One can see the start of efforts to help Fatah regain power and to eliminate or dramatically reduce Hamas as a political force.  There are a few problems with that solution, however:

Hamas appears to be much stronger than the more moderate Fatah and enjoys considerably more military and financial support from Muslim states, particularly Syria and Iran.  Just how any outside group could maneuver a Fatah victory isn’t clear. 

Absent that, what solution could there be?

A Palestinian state comprised only of the West Bank with Gaza still unresolved? Both President Bush and Prime Minister Olmert have stated that the solution must include Gaza as part of the Palestinian state; a two-state, not a three-state solution.

Even Fatah’s promise to recognize Israel is contingent on allowing for a right of return of all Palestinians to Israel proper.  Of course that is a non-starter since the result would be an Arab majority and Arab-ruled Israel with Jews as a minority. 

This is the so-called “secular” state solution that has long been suggested by the Arabs, and why not? The end result would be the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.

We should not be entirely negative.  One has to acknowledge that some progress was made at the Annapolis preliminary meeting because several Arab states actually showed up and agreed to meet in the same room with Israel.  Of course, that didn’t include shaking hands or anything else remotely indicative of recognition, but it was a step in the right direction.

It seems likely that Arab participation was motivated more by fear of fundamentalist revolution in their own countries than anything else.  It’s in their own interest to do something to hamper Hamas, because Hamas promises an Islamic state and that’s the kind of thing that could cross borders.

Starting a process could last years and puts more support on Fatah, weakens Hamas and helps countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq.

It is important to keep in mind that President Bush says that he hopes to have an actual peace treaty signed before he leaves office less than a year from now. That’s highly unlikely. Most likely the real objective here isn’t to reach an agreement such as was attempted by Clinton. 

Such an agreement simply isn’t likely under current circumstances. A more realistic accomplishment would be an agreement on a framework for an eventual settlement, maybe many years from now. The best practical outcome would be to establish targets and set up working groups tasked to come up with the eventual accords.

When President Bush went to Israel in January, the press said it was his first visit to Israel. Actually it was his first visit as President of the United States, because he has traveled to Israel as a private citizen.

His earlier visit started a deep friendship with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was his host.  Bush came away from that trip with deep affection and admiration for the Jewish state and his actions as president have reflected those feelings. 

It’s no wonder that Prime Minister Olmert  referred to President Bush as Israel’s best friend in the world.

So why is it that in spite of Bush’s obvious support of Israeli positions that so much is done to keep the Palestinians afloat?

We need to consider two things:

Our State Department has supported Arab causes throughout its history.  Pleas keep in mind that in the entire world there are only about 5,000 American foreign service officers in the career diplomatic corps. The other 40,000 employees in the State Department are all civil servants, almost immune from any kind of discipline or pressure. 

The diplomats don’t create policy; they are tasked to implement it.  Policy is made by the career desk officers and the deputy assistant secretaries and assistant secretaries who supervise them.

In theory, the secretaries, who are primarily political appointees should be supporting the policy of whichever administration is in power.  The reality is that these political appointees generally know very little about the core issues and depend a great deal on papers, draft policies and briefings by the career staff. 

The career civil service in Washington is mostly left-leaning and to some degree anti-Semitic.  Meanwhile, almost all of our Secretaries of State and the other political appointees have moved away from whatever their original opinions may have been to those of the State Department’s Arabists.  That particularly affects Republican administrations since Democrat administrations of recent years have tended to be more leftist.

Our nation’s left wing, particularly in the media and in Hollywood, has spent decades propagandizing us to see the Palestinians as victims and Israelis as oppressors. Even Jews in this group tend to side with the Palestinians.  There hasn’t been a Hollywood movie sympathetic to the Israelis since Black September in the early 70s, and that was a brief blip resulting from the Munich Olympic slaughter of Israeli athletes. These anti-Israel tendencies give the State Department significant public support for the positions it proposes.

So we are left with this seeming incongruity - a significant portion of America’s Jews are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, while virtually all Christian conservatives support Israel unequivocally!

This situation looks hopeless.  As things are, we can’t expect much real progress to be made in the near future. In fact there is great danger to the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state.  Maybe if this process actually begins, a few years of relative peace can be achieved, at least from the Fatah side.

But history has often been influenced by completely unforeseen events.  Maybe the majority of Palestinians will tire of continued violence and refuse to follow radical leaders. 

Maybe a great leader who genuinely desires peaceful coexistence will emerge and make great changes. 

No one can possibly foresee these things.

However as things stand, this appears to be not much more than posturing for domestic audiences, an effort by politicians to be seen as trying to do something.

More Scientists Doubt 'Warming' Theory

by Matt Kinnaman

Ronald Reagan’s inauguration was still 555 days away when Jimmy Carter’s presidency unofficially ended on July 15, 1979. That was the night of Carter’s infamous “malaise” speech, when he said “And I'm asking you for your good and for your nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel.”

Carter never recovered.

In a speech on May 18, 2008, Barack Obama channeled Jimmy Carter: "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times,” said Obama. “That's not leadership. That's not going to happen.”

On the same day, Al Gore was addressing the graduates of Carnegie Mellon University. Gore intoned that global warming is “the most serious crisis our civilization has ever confronted."  Obama agreeably states “I believe it's one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation,” and wants to see an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, roughly a return to the energy levels of the Great Depression.

Before being drawn irresistibly into the Obama-Gore-Carter vortex, voters might want to hear some breaking news.  The day after Obama and Gore warned that the sky is falling just like Jimmy Carter said, an announcement at the National Press Club in Washington DC documented the largest scientific consensus ever assembled on the topic of global warming. 

This consensus comprises more than 31,000 credentialed American scientists who have signed the Petition Project, a statement which says “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind,” and that “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate.”

Are these 31,000 scientists in the pockets of Big Oil? According to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which coordinated the petition drive, “The Petition Project has no funding from energy industries or other parties with special financial interests in the ‘global warming’ debate. Funding for the project comes entirely from private non-tax deductible donations by interested individuals.”

The blockbuster claim of the Petition Project is that human hydrocarbon use is uncorrelated with global temperature, rates of glacial melting, and sea level increases. The current cycle of these events began more than 100 years prior to the post-1940 rise in carbon dioxide levels. The only clear climate correlation is with increased solar activity, which has absolutely nothing to do with human activity. An extraordinary—and growing—number of scientists agree.

Gore calls those who disagree with him about global warming “deniers” and says "I think those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view. They're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat." Does Al Gore deny that 31,000 American scientists now disagree with him?

Last summer, Gore proclaimed “if we have huge falsehoods and false impressions that persist for an extended period of time as the basis for our policy choices, then no wonder we’re driving over the edge of a cliff.”  In truth, the quickest way to drive over the edge of a cliff today is not in a new SUV, but by cutting off our energy supplies and rationing opportunity in the way called for by Gore and Obama.   

American strength has always been built by entrepreneurs, starting with the enterprising political class of 1776. Americans respond best to entrepreneurial vision. They rebel at the language of limits.  Powered by their use of technology, America’s young are wired into this enterprising current more than ever, and today 70% of high school students plan to start their own companies.

Carter’s fatal political transgression was his insistence that Americans do what is antithetical to the American spirit; accept terminal limits on their resources and consumption. Gore built a Carter-era bridge to the 21st century. Obama wants us all to go along for the backward journey.

That's not leadership. That's not going to happen.

The Case Against Federal Funding for Embryonic Stem  Cell Research

by J. Laurence Eisenberg

In a Florida debate over embryonic stem cell research, Mr. Eisenberg argued against federal funding. Here is his line of reasoning:

I’d like to be perfectly clear about my positions: 

I am not opposed to stem cell research.

I am opposed to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research on both practical and moral grounds.

I am not in favor of making embryonic research illegal as long as it is done by the private sector.

Let’s also be clear about the current status: there is no federal law against embryonic stem cell research. That research is going on in the private sector. The federal government made a number of embryonic stem cell lines available which were in existence before the funding ban to any recognized researcher. 

Is there is any particular benefit to the pursuit of embryonic stem cell research?  As I see it, facts count for more than hopes. This is an avenue full of empty promises.

We need to examine four basic questions:

Is embryonic stem cell research likely to produce health benefits worth the time and money invested in such research?

Are there other, alternative stem cell research paths more likely to provide positive results?

What are the moral issues involved?

Is federal funding the best way to do such research?

Let’s look at the first issue.  Proponents of embryonic stem cell research have promised cures for almost anything. Senator Kerry in the 2004 presidential election implied that spinal-cord injured actor Christopher Reeve would be up and walking had only federal funds been available for research. 

The truth is that no approved treatments have been obtained using embryonic stem cells.  There are no human trials despite all the promises.  After 20 years of research, embryonic stem cells haven’t been used to treat people because the cells are unproven and more importantly, unsafe.  They tend to produce tumors, cause transplant rejection and form the worst kind of cells.

Let me repeat that another way.  Human embryonic stem cells do have the ability to form every tissue in the body when they are left to grow and differentiate as part of an intact human embryo. But even after 20 years of experience with mouse embryos, researchers haven’t been able to turn embryonic stem cells into pure cultures of specific, viable types. And that’s what’s needed if these cells are to have any therapeutic value.

Politicians make promises in order to win elections and the media blows that same horn, but to date no one has actually been able to accomplish that first step in the process.  According to the Journal of Clinical Investigation in July 2005, “just injecting stem cells is not going to work….first you have to be able to differentiate the cells into functional, transplantable tissues.”

“Worse, these cells are hard to control and have the potential to explode into a cancerous mass after a stem cell transplant….with embryonic stem cells, a significant number become cancer cells, so the cure could be worse than the disease.” 

Thus the 'fountain of youth' being offered might be much less appealing if people knew that such applications might lead to cancerous eruptions once inside the patient’s body.

As to the second issue, yes, indeed there are better alternatives.

These would be adult bone marrow stem cells and neo-natal blood stem cells. Unlike embryonic stem cells which have never produced a practical result, adult bone marrow stem cells have been used clinically about 30,000 times.  To be sure, there are risks to the donor during extraction including the  risk of transmitting infectious diseases should the donor have any. But this is a treatment that has proven results and which can be improved upon.

Neo-natal (umbilical) cord blood stem cells have even greater promise.  They have some great advantages: they can become several - and perhaps all the different tissue types. They involve no donor risks; they have the capacity for many cell divisions; and they cause less graft versus host disease.

So far, more than 6,000 patients and 66 diseases have been successfully treated with cord blood cells with a survival rate of over 70% among high-risk adults, with higher rates among children. 

The fact is that adult stem cells and neo-natal cord blood stem cells are going to be the sources for regenerative, miraculous medicine in the future.  Embryonic stem cell research just isn’t getting good research results.

Moral issues are the third thing to consider. The root cause for the politicization of this issue isn’t scientific, but political, the social issue of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion under federal law. 

Despite the scientific grounds for restricting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, there are people who base their opposition on moral and religious grounds because they believe that an embryo is a human being. 

It follows then that creating human embryos for the purpose of their destruction is just another form of killing.  While Republicans can be party leaders as pro-choice or pro-life proponents, Democrats must be pro-choice.  The connection between a ban on harvesting embryonic babies for their cells and the pro-life position on abortion is so obvious that Democrats are politically driven to support embryonic research for fear of offending their abortion-rights constituency.

Democrats have pushed for a so-called compromise and they’ve been joined by some Republicans as well. They say that we should add to the embryonic stem cell lines authorized for research by President Bush by also using what they claim to be an excess of about 400,000 “unwanted” frozen embryos.

The problem with that logic is that only about 2.8% of those embryos have been designated by their parents for research. That’s about 11,000 available embryos. Parents want to keep the others because they may want more babies in the future. And even those 11,000 won’t produce as many research embryos because there is a very high mortality rate when they are thawed. The ultimate yield might only be a bit less than 300 lines which would be enough for current laboratory trials, but so are those lines already designated by the president. The problem is that in the process of harvesting embryonic stem cells, the embryo itself is destroyed.

This harvesting is extremely inefficient.  It requires women’s eggs. For example, to treat the 17 million diabetes patients in the united states will require from 850 million to 1.25 billion human eggs. At ten eggs per donor, we’d need to have 85 to 150 million donors; more than exist in America today, and the cost would be $100, 000 to $200,000 per patient treated. That’s a minimum of $1.7 trillion for that disease alone!

More importantly, harvesting a woman’s eggs puts the woman at risk. It requires superovulation regimens for fertility treatments which can cause a wide range of problems including memory loss, seizure, stroke, infertility, cancer and even death.  This creates the additional ethical issue of exploitation of women, most likely poor women, to collect their eggs.

Let’s get to the fourth issue which is, after all, the subject of tonight’s debate: federal funding. 

There are 21 stem cell lines still available for research. In the current fiscal year, the National Institute of Health has a budget of $641 million to spend on non-embryonic stem cell research. 

Most federal funding isn’t through the NIH. It’s in the forms of grants to universities and other research institutions.  When grants run out, the people employed in those institutions need to find another project or get more funding on their current project or they are out of work. In other words, there is a built-in bias in the research industry - and it is an industry - to constantly seek federal funds in order to maintain these institutions and the jobs in them.

But most breakthroughs result from research done in the private sector and as you all well know. The pharmaceutical and biotechnoly industries spend billions on research to develop new treatments and cures. They are motivated to do so in order to remain in business.

Let’s look at the words of William Haseltine, CEO of Human Genome Sciences Inc., a leading advocate of embryonic stem cells. “The routine utilization of human embryonic stem cells for medicine is 20-30 years hence.  The timeline for commercialization is so long that I simply would not invest.”

What’s happening in states like California that have authorized state funding in the billions is that the taxpayers are funding what venture capitalists will not, while advocates are trying to get federal taxpayers to do the same thing.

Government largesse isn’t always the best option. In 2004 several states had billions budgeted for research. By 2007 very little of those funds made it to researchers.  It takes time to establish the various government boards, panels and institutes that will be responsible for awarding grants. Of the $3 billion authorized by voters in California in 2004, not a penny has yet been spent on embryonic stem cell research.

And let’s not forget the matter of waste. California’s $3 billion of funds will cost another $3 billion in interest over the next 30 years and maybe more given past history in that state.

Government funding just isn’t all that advantageous when funds that could be spent on research are spent on lobbying, while political upheaval over the issue of funding leads to restrictions on research, and money is thrown at high-risk but low-yield projects.

Government research has led to some great successes, but only one-third of Nobel Prize winners won their prizes while working on government-funded projects or in government institutions. The boondoggles we hear about in government projects rarely occur in privately-funded projects. 

Private institutions appear to be much better than government institutions at identifying truly innovative research.

Let me illustrate that argument by reminding you of the great in-vitro fertilization debate of not too long ago.  Advocates spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress to support such research.  They claimed that it wouldn’t be done without government support, that the United States would suffer a ‘brain drain’ if it was not funded, and that infertile couples would have to travel abroad for help.

The federal government never funded that research, and today the USA has the largest IVF industry in the world, at $3 billion a year.

Combined with all assisted reproduction industries, it’s a $16 billion a year industry, all without federal assistance.

Even more remarkable is Missouri’s approach.  Less than a year ago that state established a safe haven for embryonic stem cell researchers, but included no public funding for the work.  Literally within days, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research put in $2 billion and an international team of stem cell researchers. Contrast that with California’s $3 billion taxpayer-funded plan that to date has done nothing.

In conclusion, why should the American taxpayers fund research that the private sector can do more efficiently and which at least half of the population opposes?

Must we use taxpayer funds to keep institutions and researchers dependent on federal funding in business?