War of the Words

Duping the Public With Clever Words
by Walter E. Williams
Posted 06/12/2007 ET


Dr. Thomas Sowell, a distinguished economist and longtime friend and colleague, recently wrote a series of columns under the title “A War of Words.” He pointed out that liberals succeed in duping the public because they are so clever with words that they give the appearance of compassion. Liberals talk about the need for “affordable” housing and health care. They tarnish their enemies with terms such as “price-gouging” and “corporate greed.” Uninformed and unthinking Americans fall easy prey to this demagoguery.

Politicians exploit public demands that government ought to do something about this or that problem by taking measures giving them greater control over our lives. For the most part, whatever politicians do, whether it’s rent controls to produce “affordable” housing or price controls to eliminate “price-gouging,” the result is a calamity worse than the original problem. For example, two of the most costly housing markets are the rent-controlled cities of San Francisco and New York. If you’re over 40, you’ll remember the chaos produced by the gasoline price controls of the 1970s. Socialist agendas have considerable appeal, but they produce disaster, and the more Socialist they are, the greater the disaster.

Liberals often denounce free markets as immoral. The reality is exactly the opposite. Free markets, characterized by peaceable, voluntary exchange, with respect for property rights and the rule of law, are more moral than any other system of resource allocation. Let’s examine just one reason for the superior morality of free markets.

Say that I mow your lawn and you pay me $30, which we might think of as certificates of performance. Having mowed your lawn, I visit my grocer and demand that my fellow men serve me by giving me three pounds of steak and a six-pack of beer. In effect, the grocer asks, “Williams, you’re demanding that your fellow man, as ranchers and brewers, serve you. What did you do to serve your fellow man?” I say, “I mowed his lawn.” The grocer says, “Prove it!” That’s when I hand over my certificates of performance -- the $30.

Morality of Allocation

Look at the morality of a resource allocation method that requires that I serve my fellow man in order to have a claim on what he produces and contrast it with government resource allocation. The government can say, “Williams, you don’t have to serve your fellow man. Through our tax code, we’ll take what he produces and give it to you.” Of course, if I were to privately take what my fellow man produced, we’d call it theft. The only difference is when the government does it, that theft is legal but nonetheless theft -- the taking of one person’s rightful property to give to another.

Liberals love to talk about this or that human right, such as a right to health care, food or housing. That’s a perverse usage of the term “right.” A right, such as a right to free speech, imposes no obligation on another, except that of non-interference. The so-called right to health care, food or housing, whether a person can afford it or not, is something entirely different. It does impose an obligation on another. If one person has a right to something he didn’t produce, simultaneously and of necessity it means that some other person does not have right to something he did produce. That’s because, since there’s no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy, in order for government to give one American a dollar, it must, through intimidation, threats and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American. I’d like to hear the moral argument for taking what belongs to one person to give to another person.

There are people in need of help. Charity is one of the nobler human motivations. The act of reaching into one’s own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else’s pocket is despicable and worthy of condemnation.

Dr. Williams is a nationally syndicated columnist, former chairman of the economics department at George Mason University, and author of More Liberty Means Less Government

What really happened to the WMD

Monday, June 11, 2007 5:29 PM
This is one of the more shocking stories I have read so far about the WMD's that we know existed in Iraq before the war started. While it answers many question it leaves many unanswered. Like who knew what and when did they know. --Emery J Woodall III

U.S. agent says Iraqis led him to Saddam's WMD

By William Hargrave

This claim comes from Dave Gaubatz, who served for 12 years as an agent in the U.S. Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations. He says he was "hand-picked" to locate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Between March and July 2003, he identified several of Saddam Hussein’s WMD sites in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq invasion.

Where were they? Huge caches were located within the city limits of the southern Iraqi city of Nasariyah, and were also discovered in another location 15 to 20 miles south of Nasariyah between two canals and near Um Qasr in the Basra region 284 miles south of Baghdad.

Some of this information has been published by The Spectator (London), The New York Sun, and other U.S. newspapers and Internet news sites. But the mainstream media have chosen not to inform readers and viewers of the credible reports of WMDs discovered in Iraq.

According to these reports, Saddam’s WMDs were apparently smuggled to Syria, Iran and other destinations under the nose of American forces. The political fallout that would occur from investigation and affirmation of this extremely serious American operational failure with its profound military and geo-strategic implications has apparently helped to keep a lid on this information—until now.

Gaubatz appealed to Congress to investigate his claims. But neither political party wishes to touch the issue for different reasons. The Democrats do not want the public to know that President Bush’s stated reason for invading Iraq might be justified. The Republicans do not want Americans to know that the administration's military command failed to stop what may have been the biggest WMD transfer of all time.

The issue is, as The Spectator put it, “an axis of embarrassment.”

At the start of the 2003 invasion, Gaubatz was sent to Nasariyah to locate possible WMD sites and ascertain threats to U.S. interests in the area. Fluent in Arabic, Gaubatz was able to meet numerous locals who told him he had struck gold: the WMDs were actually close by in farms and marshes. Some were buried in concrete bunkers 20-30 feet beneath the Euphrates River. These were vaults with 5-foot-thick concrete walls beneath the river bed.

“These were under 25 feet of water,” Gaubatz said in an interview with Insight. “Saddam didn’t care about poisoning the water of southern Iraq."

“They took us to the sites, we took photos and grid coordinates,” he said. “The missile imprints were still in the sand. Based on the detail they provided and what was confirmed by others, I felt 100 percent confident WMDs were at the locations identified. The Iraqis told us we must either excavate the sites and remove the WMDs or our enemies would.”

Along with Gaubatz, a group of U.S. Office of Special Investigations (OSI) agents visited the sites and got what his doctor later told him was radiation sickness from all the contaminants in the air and the water.

The U.S., however, did not investigate these locations. Other nations did.

The failure to find significant stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons has proved a massive public relations problem for the Americans and the British, whose intelligence indicating that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein did possess WMD stockpiles was one of their primary justifications for the invasion of Iraq.

How credible is the source?

“Mr. Gaubatz is not some marginal figure,” said Melanie Phillips, a columnist for London’s Daily Mail newspaper, in a recent piece on Saddam’s secret WMD bunkers for The Spectator, a weekly British conservative magazine. “He’s pretty well as near to the horse’s mouth as you can get.”

Gaubatz is a sandy-haired man who’s been stationed as a federal agent at nuclear sites stateside and then as a U.S. Air Force special agent overseas. He is widely regarded as one of America’s most capable and experienced intelligence officials. According to Phillips, Gaubatz was decorated in 2001 for being the “lead agent in a classified investigation, arguably the most sensitive counter-intelligence investigation currently in the entire Department of Defense.” Because his “reports were such high quality, many were published in the Air Force’s daily threat product for senior USAF leaders or re-transmitted at the national level to all security agencies in the U.S. government.”

After 20 years on active duty service in counterintelligence work (12 of them as an OSI agent), he retired, and then obtained a position as a civilian Federal Agent with the Air Force (OSI). He was specifically chosen to go to Nasariyah in Iraq to locate Saddam’s WMD sites and discover threats to U.S. forces in the area. He saw mass Shi’ite graves of women holding their babies in their arms. He met Muslims who told him they were being recruited for terrorist cells. Every time he stumbled on a factoid, he sent a memo to the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), a group of more than 1,000 Americans, Brits and Australians whose job it was back in 2003 to locate the WMDs.

Between March and July 2003, Gaubatz says he was taken by local Iraqis to four suspected WMD sites — two within Nasariyah, one just south of the city, and another one near Basra. He says Iraqi sources told him the sites contained biological and chemical weapons, missiles and material for a nuclear program. Gaubatz said he was sure he found the WMD sites because the Iraqi government had obviously gone to considerable lengths to conceal the bunkers. Three of the bunkers were buried 20 to 30 feet under the Euphrates River.

Gaubatz was told by American environmental engineers that the parts of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers near the sites showed abnormally high radiation levels. Gaubatz and his team had also been exposed to radioactive substances and he still suffers unexplained headaches and nausea.

Gaubatz asked his superiors for heavy equipment to be brought in from Kuwait so the bunkers could be excavated. The response was that there weren’t enough soldiers available to secure them.

“People were putting their lives on the line showing us those sites,” he said, adding that some of his informants have since been kidnapped, tortured, and then killed. “But they [the superiors] told me they didn’t have the manpower or equipment to do so, plus it wasn’t safe. Well, war is never safe.”

Moreover, the conventional understanding was that the WMDs were further to the north. Gaubatz had already sent some 60 classified intelligence reports to Prince Sultan Air Base, an American base in Saudi Arabia. When he returned to the United States, he contacted two Republican congressmen: Reps. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan and Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania. Interested, they tried to follow up on his information by accessing the 60 intelligence reports. But not only had all the reports Gaubatz had sent to Saudi Arabia mysteriously disappeared, their intended audience, the ISG, never saw them. The congressmen tried extracting information from the Defense Department and the CIA as to how this was allowed to happen, but were stonewalled.

Gaubatz has since learned the sites have been looted and an unknown amount of the weapons carried off. Now, he says, the U.S. has an even more difficult task: Figuring out exactly where the WMDs are and proving they were transported there from Iraq. He says the WMDs were there for the finding not so long ago, but the U.S military totally underestimated what it would take to locate them.

“There weren’t enough soldiers to secure the borders, much less exploit the sites,” he said.

“The Americans were not prepared. They were overwhelmed. It was a Katrina of war,” Gaubatz said, referring to the massive August 2005 hurricane that wiped out much of New Orleans.

"We witnessed thousands of Iranians pouring into southern Iraq," he said. "We were told by Iraqis the Iranians' intent was to initiate a civil war."

Gaubatz says his team "immediately" reported this important intelligence to the Pentagon and the CIA, but "it was never followed up on."

"The Iranians were taking over Shi'ite-dominated southern Iraq," he said.

Internet news sites cited reports in 2003 that U.S. intelligence believed Saddam’s WMDs were moved west to Lebanon’s heavily fortified Bekaa Valley, a beehive of Hezbollah forces, Iranians and Syrians. Also, prominent Washington journalist Bill Gertz has reported on the stream of tractor-trailer trucks the CIA spotted moving from Iraq to Lebanon via Syria in early 2003. Russian military advisors and special forces helped move the poison gas components, missile parts, nuclear-related equipment, tank and aircraft parts. Some of the WMDs could have also been trucked eastward into Iran. Why were the Russians so anxious to get the incriminating materials out before the Americans arrived? Perhaps because much of it was manufactured by them or Eastern European nations such as Ukraine, Bulgaria and Belarus.

Oddly, the United States has not publicized this huge arms transfer. Gertz reported that John Shaw, a deputy undersecretary of state who in October 2004 leaked information to the media of Russia’s involvement in the truck convoys, was forced to resign on Dec. 10 of that year. The reason: “exceeding his authority” in releasing the information, according to the Pentagon.

Gaubatz says that, while in Iraq, he was continuously mistaken by locals for being a Russian. This was because prior to the U.S. invasion, the locals said they saw numerous Russians coming in and out of the area.

The likelihood that WMDs were successfully spirited out of Iraq was also addressed in a 2006 book, “Saddam’s Secrets,” by former Iraqi fighter pilot and Gen. Georges Sada. He says not only were many of the WMDs driven out in large 18-wheeler trucks to Syria, but some WMDs were also flown out.

“I know the names of some of those who were involved in smuggling WMDs out of Iraq in 2002 and 2003,” Sada wrote. “I know the names of officers from the front company, SES, who received the weapons from Saddam. I know how and when they were transported and shipped out of Iraq. And I know how many aircraft were actually used and what types of planes they were.”

Gaubatz has learned through his Iraqi sources that some time after his 2003 visit, someone brought in heavy equipment and got the weapons out of the Euphrates bunkers and other nearby sites. With notebooks showing the site coordinates in hand, he meticulously makes his case.

“Take me back to those sites and let’s see what’s there now,” he says. “It won’t be a popular thing to say the enemy has taken these WMDs. You’d at least find the footprints: labs and storage.”

"I have been informed by Israeli intelligence and learned through British intelligence that the intelligence on WMDs our team provided in 2003 was accurate," he said.

Gaubatz almost got a chance to go back a year ago when then-Congressman Curt Weldon expressed interest in visiting the sites. About nine Iraqis who had helped Gaubatz locate the sites had been given asylum in the U.S. after word leaked out that they were helping the Americans. According to e-mails showing correspondence between him and Weldon’s chief of staff, Russ Caso, Weldon met with some of these Iraqis. His office then thought up a plan: Weldon and Hoekstra, who was then the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, would travel to Iraq on a junket, but detour to a WMD site. If they could get the military to produce some heavy equipment and security, Weldon would be present during the excavations. If nothing was found, the trip would remain secret. If WMDs were found, the congressmen would alert the media that they had happened upon the strategic sites.

Then Gaubatz got word that Weldon did not want to alert rival Democrats, the Pentagon or even intelligence officials about the trip. He backed out.

“It was going to be this big private trip,” Gaubatz said, “but they were offering no protection for the Iraqi witnesses.”

Weldon, who lost his election race in 2006, now heads up a company called Defense Solutions. He did not respond to e-mails and phone calls from Insight. Neither did former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who had previously spoken out about the presence of WMDs in Iraq. A spokesman for Hoekstra referred all calls to the House Intelligence Committee, whose spokesman, Jamal Ware, also declined to respond to questions.

Gaubatz is disturbed by what he sees as a government effort to bury the story. He reports being interviewed in March by talk show host Glenn Beck for a one-hour segment to appear on CNN's Headline News. Gaubatz was with an Iraqi contact for the show. The Iraqi, who was part of the federal witness protection program, got calls from the FBI telling him they should stop the interview from being broadcast. The interview was not shown. Gaubatz says the FBI used security concerns as a justification for leaning on Beck's people, but the Iraqi had spoken out on these issues before and there had been no problems.

The real problem was, Gaubatz says, that "with me and the Iraqi source going public about this, it would open a can of worms on the WMD issue. Weldon and Russ Caso [Weldon's chief of staff] keep on telling me not to anger the wrong people."

Gaubatz rues the fact that many people in Iraq — Americans and Iraqis alike — have risked their lives to reveal priceless intelligence information to U.S. policymakers. But in the sieve that is America’s intelligence apparatus, the most important information gets filtered out so that the president and members of Congress have critical gaps in understanding events on the ground. Weldon and Hoekstra, Gaubatz said, had no idea that WMDs were sitting in Iraq waiting to be found until he took the initiative to approach them.

“I was hand-picked to go to Iraq and locate WMD sites,” Gaubatz says. “The sites at a minimum should have been searched when I and my team identified them. I put my life on the line everyday to go out into Iraq. Many troops did lose their lives. If one of the primary reasons we went to war was because of Saddam having WMDs, we should have done our jobs and excavated the sites before our enemy did.”

One congressman who supports Gaubatz on the record is Rep. Virgil Goode, a Republican whose U.S. House seat represents a district in southern Virginia where Gaubatz grew up. In an interview, Goode says he remembered mentioning WMDs to the House Intelligence Committee, but his inquiries—like so many—went nowhere.

“I believe he saw something,” Goode said of Gaubatz. “I think a whole lot of members of Congress have bought the national news media line that there were no WMDs there.”

Four years into the war, Gaubatz says, “The Republicans want to forget this. They don’t want to know if there were WMDs because if there were, they blew it and the WMDs are not accounted for.”

“And the Democrats have Bush in a hot box. Why would they want to change that?”

- Katharine Harris contributed to this report.

Resources:

-- "I found Saddam’s WMD bunkers," The Spectator, April 20, 2007

-- "I found Saddam's WMD bunkers," full article, MelaniePhillips.com

-- "Ex-Officer Spurned on WMD Claim," New York Sun, Feb. 8, 2006

-- United Nations Security Council Report, May 28, 2004

-- "UN inspectors: Saddam shipped out WMD before war and after," WorldTribune.com, June 11, 2004

-- "Report: U.S suspects Iraqi WMD in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley," WorldTribune.com, Aug. 26, 2003

-- "Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms," The Washington Times, Oct. 28, 2004

-- "Photos point to removal of weapons," The Washington Times, Oct. 29, 2004
-- "2 Russian generals given awards in Iraq on war eve," The Washington Times, Oct. 30, 2004

-- "Pentagon ousts official who tied Russia, Iraq arms," The Washington Times, Dec. 30, 2004


SOURCE: www.insightmag.com - June 4-11, 2007, Posted On: 6/4/2007

Independent Democratic Senator would attack Iran

Sen. Joe Lieberman on Sunday advocated the use of military action against Iran to halt what he said was that nation's training and support of terrorists against U.S. troops in Iraq.

Read more

Fred Thompson: Lights, Camera, Ass-Kicking Time

By Jabulani Leffall
Jun 8, 2007


There are any number of reasons why people love Fred Thompson and why he should win the 2008 Election should he run for President of the United States. But for right now, let’s start with why he is especially unique.

Fred Dalton Thompson is perhaps the best example of what it takes to belong to an exclusive fraternity of people who have been through the revolving door leading from politics to Hollywood and back. But unlike the late-great Jack Valenti, he wasn’t just a lobbyist in a nice suit and unlike Ben Stein, he’s not merely a speechwriter who went on to say “Bueller, Bueller, Bueller,” hock eyedrops and challenge you to win his money on television.

And although Thompson is being compared to the so-called “Great Communicator” Ronald Reagan, you don’t have to dig through old black and white movies or Cold War era revisionist history texts to find him. You can catch him on cable and network TV re-runs probably right up through the election. Lastly, unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, well let’s just say he’s unlike Arnold.

Fred Thomspson has a serious chance to win the hearts of the American people because for more than 30 years, he has lived out his act. He’s actually made a great living playing himself. He’s been a prosecutor in real life and a prosecutor on television’s Law & Order. He’s been a senator on the silver screen -- Born Yesterday – and an actual U.S. Senator from Tennessee. He’s also been a rear admiral, a director of the CIA, a high ranking FBI agent and a White House Chief of Staff but to his credit, anyone can do those jobs.

And to think, he could have just been another cranky attorney telling you to get off his lawn but now he may well be the most complete candidate out there even though he hasn’t “announced” that he’s running. But, really, he left Law & Order on May 30 and has been on the talk show circuit ever since so unless he’s prepping for a roll as a retired actor and senator who almost ran for president, he’s given the public every indication that he’ll hit the campaign trail this summer and autumn.

It all began in 1977 when the story of a Tennessee Parole Board scandal, which Thompson helped expose, later became the subject of a 1983 book, Marie, written by Peter Maas. Roger Donaldson, a director, copped the film rights to the book and in the course of doing research in Nashville, interviewed Thompson among others and was apparently so impressed he asked him to play himself. Since then all he had to do was show up and talk in that heavy southern drawl, a baritone molasses that brings to mind your grandpappy and just screams authority figure. He’s the real deal and also knows how to handle himself on and off camera. Let’s see how he stacks up against front runners from both parties:

Thompson and the Donkeys

Fred Thompson vs. Hillary Rodham Clinton

Thompson has also been a U.S. Senator so Hillary can’t pull the lack of experience card out on him. Given his voting record and the fact that he always stays in character, he edges Hillary out in the sense that he is not a carpetbagger or panderer who bristles up when challenged and backs his way out of previously established positions like Hillary did with the Iraq War. Scandals? Please, Thompson was as co-chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee in its investigation of a little thing called Watergate. But Hillary will dig and she will go there after digging. But in the end the public will find that Thompson’s association with the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982, which in part caused the Savings & Loan crisis in the late 80s is a far cry from what Whitewater eventually unearthed. Hello!

Fred Thompson vs. Barack Obama

A lot of people talk about how articulate and good looking Obama is. They talk about his youthful vigor, his audacity of hope, the courage that will keep him from lighting up a square (cigarette for those not familiar with ghetto talk) when his wife is not looking. He’s lauded as a Kennedy-esque vision in black. The truth of the matter is, that neither the staunch conservatives, nor the former Dixiecrats, nor the patronizing-ass northern white liberals who bought his dinner plates to hear him speak are going to vote for him. Let’s face it, he’s black. Mainstream America says it’s ready and people chant, chant, chant until they close the curtain and go down the list and pick somebody white. Let’s face it, Obama probably won’t be a hit south of Chicago, west of New York and east of California and that’s the area where people actually still vote. He might’ve had a chance with the condescending-ass Hollywood limousine liberals but chances are that guys like Kevin Costner, Alec Baldwin and Bruce Willis are going to say: “I worked with Fred, I like him, he can’t be all that bad considering the other choices. Let’s see Fred Thompson or black dude. Think I’ll go with Freddie boy!”

Fred Thompson vs. John Edwards

This probably presents the biggest challenge for Thompson as he will be going head-to-head with someone who is neither a woman nor a person of color. Edwards is a good ‘ol boy south of the Mason-Dixon line just like Thompson is. You also can’t count out the fact that Thompson’s wife, while not a stripper as MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough intimated, is still hot enough to host E! News Daily and despite her credentials in the Republican party, is too cute to be taken seriously and can’t stand up against a woman who has fought cancer. Hate to put it in such shallow terms but you can’t beat a cancer survivor with a doped-horse, a full-house, three of a kind, first and goal or anything else -- it’s impossible. The only way Thompson pulls this out is to have his people focus on Edwards’ status as a loser. Not only did he lose in the primary to John Kerry, he lost as a vice presidential candidate in the general election and went on to lose cool points getting expensive haircuts and championing efficient energy while living in a energy vaccum of a mansion like the homie Al Gore. In the debates, Thompson can just bring it back to his status everytime Edwards makes an eloquent point. He can even get folksy with it: “C’mon ya’ll are you going to believe Fred ‘Big Daddy from down home’ Thompson or this loser.”

Thompson and the Elephants in the Room

Thompson vs. John McCain

For a longtime the former P.O.W. thing was really working for McCain. Who doesn’t support the troops? They dodge bullets and landmines while we sit on our asses, eat crispy chicken sandwiches and write about people we don’t know behind the sublime but anonymous glow of a computer screen in the middle of the night. Then he decided that supporting the troops also meant supporting the “troop surge” and it’s hard to say that you take no prisoners in the “war on terror” when someone actually took you as a prisoner in the war on “Reds.” Not a good look dawg. And consensus builder, consensus schmilder. The GOP is looking for a bullheaded polarizer with all the ol’ boy “heh, heh, heh” of Bush but just without the George W. part. A true conservative, Thompson fits that mold. McCain, meanwhile, as The State newspaper in South Carolina suggests, suffers from “guilt by association” with Ted Kennedy and Dianne Feinstein on immigration.” Being a white man sandwiched between the “Greatest Generation,” and “Baby Boomers,” Fred Thompson would likely be tough on all brown and black people as well as big on small government and bullish on tax cuts. Sounds like a winner to me. Sorry John, maybe vice president? Probably not.

Thompson vs. Rudolph Giuliani

This is a no-brainer. You can’t invoke 9-11 forever. It’s like Chris Rock once opined, why is this guy a superhero for doing his job, going on television calming people down, assessing the damage and getting out there so that his city could see he gave a flip. And even if you concede that what he did is commendable, it was seven years ago. Here’s another reason: the rule of the WASP illuminati shadow government establishment is one Catholic per bicentennial. We already had JFK. Plus, after he put away all of his brethren from the “old country,” support from the Gotti boys might be out. Besides, this cat can’t leave the Tri-State area and pick up votes. No one cares about him once you get out of the Holland Tunnel. But here’s the key: Old people vote but when they’re not voting, they’re watching procedural dramas. Fred Thompson in a landslide. Because, the old lady from Brooklyn who always pokes her head out the window while you’re trying to serve your crack to dope fiends in peace; the old lady that you wish would pass on or get put in a nursing home so you can take over her rent controlled flat; the old lady who would’ve voted for a fellow Brooklynite – Giuliani - when she went to the library in Crown Heights, is only going to remember the nice man from Law & Order. Because she can’t remember, Giuliani, Thompson, why her son isn’t calling and her drug prescription information.

Thompson vs. Mitt Romney

Okay, so what do we got here? There’s an Actor-Senator, a woman, a black man, a Catholic adulterer, a rich white pretty boy tort lawyer, a Vietnam-War-Hero-turned-Iraq-War-Zero and a Mormon. Chances are that there are many people who might put a woman and possibly but not probably an (clearing throat) African-American before a Mormon at the polls. But if you go in order from last to first on the list at the beginning of this paragraph, the choice is pretty clear for any mainstream American being honest with themselves who wants a candidate who they think or know can win.

Time will tell whether Academy Award Winner Al Gore jumps in to mix it up or if some red herring, planned terrorist threat or Osama Bin Laden mixtape hitting the streets will shake things up. However, given American culture’s obsession with actors and the propensity for those actors to make the smooth transition in politics, Mr. Thompson might have his hand on a Bible on the steps of some white building come January 2009 and it won’t be because he was so remarkable. It will be because Americans for all their hypocrisy political correctness and fickle consumer nature are the truest when they get in that booth and no one can hold them accountable for their natural fears and prejudices as well as affinities and preferences. Did you hear that? I think that was the Law & Order bell. And……scene… cut…print.

Why Are They Famous is a biweekly analysis of celebrities and other figures in the public eye.

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9 reasons why the Democrats cannot be allowed anywhere near the presidency!

You'll find them here:

Desperate to Win: Liberals and Democrats Downplay the War On Terror

Senate Amnesty Could Strain Welfare System

Newest Data Shows Latin American Immigrants Make Heavy Use of Welfare

Contact: Steven Camarota
sac@cis.org
202-466-8185

WASHINGTON (June 6, 2007) — As they debate legalization for illegal immigrants, Senators would do well to keep in mind the most recent data on welfare use by the people in question. According to the Department of Homeland Security, nearly 60% of illegal aliens are from Mexico and 80% of the total are from Latin America as a whole. A Center for Immigration Studies analysis of 2006 Census Bureau data, which includes legal and illegal immigrants, shows use of welfare by households headed by Mexican and Latin American immigrants is more than double that of native households. Among the findings:

• 51% of all Mexican immigrant households use at least one major welfare program and 28% use more than one program.
  – 40% use food assistance, 35% use Medicaid, 6% use cash assistance.
  
  
  
• 45% of all Latin American immigrant households use at least one welfare program and 24% use more than one program.
  – 32% use food assistance, 31% use Medicaid, 6% use cash assistance.
  
  
  
• 20% of native households use at least one welfare program and 11% multiple programs.
  – 11% use food assistance, 15% use Medicaid, 5% use cash assistance.
  
  
  
• Among Mexican and Latin American households, welfare use is somewhat higher for households headed by legal, as opposed to illegal, immigrants. Thus legalization will likely increase welfare costs still further.
  
  
  
• 90% of Mexican and Latin American households have at least one worker. Their heavy welfare use reflects their low education levels and resulting low incomes – and not an unwillingness work.
  – 61% of all Mexican immigrants have not graduated high school.
  – 48% of all Latin American immigrants have not graduated high school.
  
  
  
• There is a common but mistaken belief that welfare programs are only for those who don’t work. Actually, the welfare system is designed to provide low-wage workers, or more often their children, things like food assistance and health care.
  
  
  
• It is the presence of their U.S.-born children coupled with their low education levels that explains why so many immigrant households use the welfare system.
  
  
  
• Most recently arrived immigrants are barred from using welfare programs and this would likely apply to those legalized by the Senate bill – however this is not true in every state, nor does not apply to all programs. Most important, the bar does not apply to the U.S.-born children of immigrants, who are immediately eligible.
  
  
  
• There are an estimated 1.4 million households headed by illegal aliens using at least one major welfare program. If even half these families returned to their home countries, the savings for taxpayers could be substantial.
  
  
  
• If we do not wish to make a large share of illegals return to their home countries, then the United States has to accept the welfare costs. There is no other option.
  
  
  
• Programs examined in the analysis are food stamps, WIC, school lunch, Medicaid, TANF, SSI, and public/rent-subsidized housing.

If Illegals Stay, So Will Welfare Costs: The heavy use of welfare by immigrants from those parts of the world that send the most illegals is relevant to the question of whether to allow illegal immigrants to stay or, alternatively, to enforce the law and cause them to return home. The figures reported above are drawn directly from the best government data available, and show that allowing illegals to stay creates significant welfare costs. Many of the welfare costs described above are due to the presence of U.S.-born children, who are awarded U.S. citizenship at birth. Thus, the prohibition on new immigrants using some welfare programs makes little difference because their U.S.-citizen children will continue to be eligible. We estimate that nearly 400,000 children are born to illegal aliens each year.


Welfare Use by Working Immigrant Families: Most immigrants from Mexico and Latin America hold jobs. Their heavy use of the welfare system is due to the fact that a very large share have little education and as a result are able to earn only low incomes in the modern American economy, even though they work. The welfare system is geared toward helping low-income workers, especially those with children. Their education levels and the presence of U.S.-born children means welfare use will be extensive.


Tax Payments: Of course, immigrants, including illegal aliens, also pay taxes. However, because of the education level and resulting incomes levels of Mexican and Latin American immigrants, their tax payments are much less than natives on average. The same is true for illegal aliens. In a 2004 study, the Center for Immigration Studies estimated that illegal alien households used about $2,700 more services than they paid in taxes at the federal level only. We also found that households headed by a legal Mexican immigrant created a net fiscal drain at the federal level of roughly $15,000, and for those with only a high school degree the drain was a little over $3,700. However, those with more education were a fiscal benefit. A new Heritage Foundation study estimated the net fiscal drain at all levels of government created by households headed by high school dropout immigrants at about $20,000 a year. A 1997 National Research Council study found the same pattern – less-educated immigrants create a net fiscal drain and educated immigrants create a net fiscal benefit.


Data Source: The data for this analysis come from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS) collected by the Census Bureau in March of 2006. It includes legal immigrants and most illegal immigrants. Like the Department of Homeland Security, we distinguish legal from illegal immigrants based on the socio-demographic characteristics of those who responded to the survey. By design our estimates of illegal immigration closely match those of DHS.


Results are also broken out for the following states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Texas.

Scroll down for Table: "Use of Welfare Programs Based on Nativity of Household Head"


The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institute which examines the impact of immigration on the United States.

The "Googling monkeys" bust McCain!

Amnesty” now is a political dirty word – the favorite slur of the bill’s opponents. But it was not always thus. The Googling monkeys discovered that McCain himself embraced the term during a news conference a few years ago in his office in Tucson, Ariz.

“McCain Pushes Amnesty, Guest-Worker Program,” reported the Tucson Citizen of May 29, 2003. The senator is quoted as saying: “Amnesty has to be an important part because there are people who have lived in this country for 20, 30 or 40 years, who have raised children here and pay taxes here and are not citizens. That has to be a component of it.” The newspaper also quoted McCain as saying: “I think we can set up a program where amnesty is extended to a certain number of people who are eligible and at the same time make sure that we have some control over people who come in and out of this country.”

So now you know what he REALLY thinks and what he's REALLY trying to pull on all of us while he continues to delude himself into thinking we might want him for President.

Ouch!

Think there's a government secret about 9/11 ???

YOU'RE RIGHT!

Here it is

Excerpt: "DAVID'S HAMMER: The Case for an Activist Judiciary"

An excerpt from the new book


DAVID'S HAMMER

The Case for an Activist Judiciary

by Clint Bolick


Published by the Cato Institute

and reprinted here with permission




ISBN: 1933995025

List Price: $11.95

LFB Price Only $9.50

You Save 21%!






David's Hammer is the winner of the June 2007 Lysander Spooner Award for Advancing
the Literature of Liberty. For more information about the Lysander
Spooner Awards, CLICK HERE.



To go to our full review, or to go to purchase the book, CLICK HERE.



The excerpt, below, is the first chapter of the book, David's Hammer. Enjoy!



_______________________________________________



DAVID'S HAMMER

The Case for an Activist Judiciary




by Clint Bolick




CHAPTER 1:

MRS. SWEDENBURG GOES TO COURT

The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of the people.

—Justice William O. Douglas

From the beginning of my legal education, law for me has been intertwined with wine. Fittingly, my first U.S. Supreme Court argument was about the beverage that is the sublime joint product of nature and human ingenuity.



The case of Juanita Swedenburg, a proud woman, a farmer and entrepreneur who asks nothing of her government but to be left alone to mind her own business, is emblematic of the debate over the role of the judiciary in a free society. For when all else failed in Mrs. Swedenburg's quest to pursue her livelihood free from arbitrary government interference, she did what many Americans do when their basic rights are violated: she turned to the courts for justice. Whether the courts should help ordinary Americans like Juanita Swedenburg or should leave them to the mercy of democratic politics, even when politics are dominated by powerful special interests, is at the heart of the debate over what is pejoratively called "judicial activism."



For better or worse, the task of resolving such important matters is largely in the hands of lawyers. Law, as William Shakespeare understood, is not always the noblest of professions. Many lawyers make their living off the misfortunes and disputes of others. It is, for most, a mercenary profession: lawyers take their clients as they find them; they are obliged to zealously represent them; and winning, rather than justice, is the goal of most litigation. Lawyers draft the laws that make society so complex that lawyers are needed even for the simplest transactions; then lawyers make the simplest transactions so complex that lawyers are needed to decipher and, in the end, litigate them. The American legal system, designed of course by lawyers, is rigged so that even the most frivolous claims entail little risk for the lawyers pursuing them; indeed, the cost of defending against litigation is so great that "voluntary" settlements, which invariably entail a payoff to the lawyer prosecuting the action, are routine. Those costs are then passed along to all of us in the form of higher prices and fewer choices. Law is often such a racket that sharks are said to never attack a lawyer because of professional courtesy.



Most Americans seem to share my disdain for the legal profession as a whole. Among American professions requiring a doctorate, lawyers alone are deemed not entitled to use the "doctor" honorific, substituting instead the quaint term "esquire" following the name. By contrast, when I visit Germany, I am greeted as "Herr Doktor Professor" Bolick—a double honorific!—suggesting that at least in some countries, lawyers are deemed worthy of special respect. I'm not sure that idea would go over very well in our country.



And yet, as cynical as the legal system and profession can be, American law also has a romantic aspect. For all its flaws, law in a free society is the most powerful tool to correct injustice. In no other system in the world can the law so readily bring the mighty to account. In our nation, the courtroom is the great equalizer. A creative lawyer can change the world in one fell swoop. That was what the Framers of our constitutional experiment intended, for they understood that courts were necessary to provide the ultimate check against tyrannical government. Whatever maladies courts might visit upon American society, they continue to play that liberty-enhancing role today. Our judiciary is at once both a legacy of and prerequisite for our enduring free society.



I experienced that revelation during college. I had prepared for a career in teaching and politics. As I neared graduation, however, I discovered that neither profession was suited to an idealist. Our public education system, even in the late 1970s, was in serious decline; it required systemic change, which was not achievable one student at a time. My experiences with politics, both local and national, suggested that principle was, to say the least, not the fore-most consideration. At best, compromise in a forward direction seemed possible, but not sweeping change.



As I was discovering all that, I was also taking an undergraduate course in constitutional law. As the son of a welder whose formal education never went beyond eighth grade, I'm not sure I had ever even met a lawyer, and like most Americans, I held the legal profession in disdain. I took the course hesitantly, mainly because of the reputation of its teacher, Robert G. Smith, the esteemed Drew University professor emeritus of political science. Reading about cases such as Brown v. Board of Education was an epiphany: law used as the Framers intended could work revolutionary change in our society, bringing down systems of oppression such as the separate-but-equal regimes. Unlike politicians, lawyers arguing in the courts can hold fast to underlying principles and achieve change without compromise. The appeal was alluring, and before I knew it my Volkswagen Dasher was packed with all of my belongings on a cross-country trek to law school at the University of California at Davis.



Davis proved to be a harsh environment. Diversity was encouraged in everything except philosophical viewpoints. Having experienced a true liberal arts environment at Drew, I was astounded at the ideological homogeneity and hostility that permeated Davis. So I took my New Jersey palate to the nearby Napa Valley and found frequent sweet refuge in the head-spinning assortment of wines. The free tastings were perfect for a poor student's budget. And when my classmates in their collective wisdom chose Ralph Nader as our commencement speaker (after all, Jane Fonda, who had spoken previously, was a tough act to follow), I celebrated my liberation instead with my family in the more congenial surroundings of the Napa vineyards.



Armed with a law degree and somehow having managed to convince the California legal cartel that I was fit to practice, I immediately began suing bureaucrats for a living. Nine years later, in 1991, I cofounded the Institute for Justice (IJ) in Washington, D.C., with Chip Mellor. Many of the cases my IJ colleagues and I litigated are discussed in the following pages. Until I left IJ in 2004 to work full-time for school choice, I often said that my colleagues and I had the greatest jobs in the legal profession: we got to choose our cases, choose our clients, and not charge anything for our representation. Best of all, the people we sued were bureaucrats.



Although my interest in wine persisted as I embarked upon my legal career, some time passed before that passion dovetailed with my work. My curiosity was sparked, however, during a visit in the early 1990s to a small winery in bucolic Middleburg, Virginia. The proprietor was a striking older woman, Juanita Swedenburg, who owned and operated the winery with her husband. She produced several good wines, including a chardonnay with the toastiest nose I can remember. We got to talking, and Mrs. Swedenburg asked me what I did for a living. When I told her that, among other things, I challenged regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship, she exclaimed, "Have I got a regulation for you!"



Most states, it turned out, prohibited direct interstate shipments of wine to consumers. Thus, if tourists from another state visited Mrs. Swedenburg's winery and asked how they could obtain her wines back home, she would have to reply, "You can't." The only way Mrs. Swedenburg could sell her wines in other states would be to obtain a distributor, and most distributors have little interest in handling a few cases from an obscure Virginia winery. Nor was Mrs. Swedenburg inclined to hand over 30 percent of the retail price to a distributor who added nothing of value. For all practical purposes, Mrs. Swedenburg's small business was shut out of the market outside her home state.



As a descendant of settlers who fought in the American Revolution, Mrs. Swedenburg was outraged that such a stupid law could exist in a nation with the greatest free-enterprise system in the world. I wondered too. Indeed, the problem seemed widespread: I knew obtaining wines from some of my favorite small wineries in California was difficult. Virginia, it turns out, allowed direct shipment to consumers of wine produced within the state but not from wineries outside its borders.



But it would be several years before I could turn my attention to challenging the laws. I was extremely busy with other cases, and I knew my colleagues at IJ would greet with skepticism any case I proposed involving wine. I would have to demonstrate that some bigger principle was at stake than my passion for wine. Most of the cases at IJ involved states' imposing oppressive restraints upon their own citizens, which we challenged under the Fourteenth Amendment; the wine issue, by contrast, presented a trade barrier erected by some states against entrepreneurs in other states. In the meantime, I had to avoid Mrs. Swedenburg's winery lest she ask me why I wasn't taking on her legal albatross.



When finally I had a chance to turn my attention to the issue of direct interstate shipment of wines, I found that indeed a bigger principle was involved: freedom of commerce among the states, whose protection was one of the principal motivations for creating the U.S. Constitution. Under the Articles of Confederation, states were locked in debilitating trade wars. To protect their own industries, states would shut off imports from other states. If such actions persisted, the United States never would constitute a single economic union, which, in turn, would inhibit its prosperity. The Framers of the Constitution saw clearly that the states could not be trusted to resist protectionist temptations and that the remedy would be to confer authority upon Congress to regulate trade, thereby preventing states from enacting parochial trade barriers that impeded the national interest in free domestic trade. That understanding took the form of article I, section 8, of the Constitution, which delegated to Congress the exclusive authority to "regulate Commerce... among the several States."



Those few words, that seemingly simple command, have given rise to much of the debate over judicial activism during the past 75 years. The overarching question, one that I will touch upon later, is whether the Framers, in giving Congress the authority to regulate commerce, meant to limit that power to commerce or rather to allow Congress to regulate everything. Given that the latter construction not only ignores the plain meaning of the clause but also fundamentally transforms the Constitution from a charter of limited and defined powers into an open-ended grant of plenary national authority, the answer to the question seems obvious. But apparently it is not, as we shall see.



The question raised in the wine context was a different and also recurring one: what happens if the states enact trade barriers but Congress does not exercise its authority to regulate commerce in a given instance? In the face of congressional silence, may states create protectionist trade barriers? In other words, is affirmative congressional action necessary to effectuate the core purpose of the commerce clause, or is the clause self-executing so as to prohibit state-erected protectionist trade barriers of its own accord? The doctrine that the commerce clause by its own terms prohibits such trade barriers is referred to as the "dormant" or "negative" commerce clause.



This is the stuff of many a scholarly debate and so may make the eyes of mere mortals glaze over. Yet the answers to that question—like the answer to so many seemingly arcane questions of constitutional law—are of utmost importance to the likes of Juanita Sweden-burg. And not to her alone. More than two centuries after ratification of the Constitution, states still cannot resist the temptation to distort markets to benefit their own domestic industries to the detriment of out-of-state competitors. So that, as if to demonstrate the pre-science of the Framers, the constitutional guarantee of free trade in the Internet era is perhaps even more vital than it was in the founding era.



That is because of the Internet's revolutionary power of "disinter-mediation"—the ability of producers and consumers to meet and transact business in cyberspace, without the necessity, or added cost and inconvenience, of a middleman. In this way, the Internet is the greatest agent of consumer freedom in the history of mankind.



And yet, as Star Wars teaches, the Empire always strikes back. Some middlemen have adapted to and flourished in the Internet era. But others have resorted to the age-old tradition of seeking government protection against competition and innovation. Businesses selling products ranging from insurance to automobiles to contact lenses to caskets have flocked to their state legislatures to restrict or prohibit transactions over the Internet, thus preserving their economic hegemony and limiting consumer choices.



That was the situation with wine. Over the past few decades, the number of American wineries has grown to approximately 3,000 in all 50 states—the overwhelming majority of them small, family-run enterprises that produce only 2,000 or 3,000 cases each year. At the same time, the liquor-distributor industry experienced extreme consolidation, so that today a handful of behemoths dominate the multibillion-dollar industry. As a result, the distributors can distribute only a fraction of the tens of thousands of distinct wines produced each year in our nation alone. By contrast, the Internet offers the potential that middlemen cannot for matching consumers with their favorite wines, no matter how vast the choices.



Bans on direct shipment of wine are a relic of the post-Prohibition era, when states wanted to stifle organized crime by separating the production of alcohol from its distribution. They created mandatory "three-tier" systems of alcohol distribution: producer to distributor to retailer. In the unique context of wine, however, a number of states, eager to promote their own wine production, acted to allow direct shipping from in-state wineries. To protect in-state distributors, however, many states also acted to forbid shipping by out-of-state wineries directly to consumers. When IJ filed a lawsuit against New York in 1999 on behalf of Juanita Swedenburg, 31 states prohibited direct interstate wine shipments to consumers. Seven of them made such shipments a felony. The discriminatory trade barriers presented a textbook example of precisely the evil that the Framers intended to forbid when they placed the commerce clause in the Constitution.



The Federal Trade Commission studied the issue and found that "State bans on interstate direct shipping represent the single largest regulatory barrier to expanded e-commerce in wine." The states' professed regulatory concerns—protecting against underage access to alcohol and tax collection—all could be facilitated, the commission found, through regulatory actions short of discriminatory prohibitions against direct shipping.



The trade barriers raised the question of the scope of the "dormant" commerce clause, which in reality has never been dormant. Decades of cases have found that where a state regulates commerce not by one set of rules but by two—one regulatory regime that applies to out-of-state products and another, less-onerous regime for domestic products—the burden shifts to the state to demonstrate a compelling state interest that cannot be achieved through less-burdensome means. By that rule of law, many discriminatory trade barriers have been struck down over the years—effectuating the Framers' desire to ensure a free national market.



That doctrine likely would have resolved the matter in Juanita Swedenburg's favor if she were selling a product other than alcohol. But another constitutional provision—the Twenty-First Amendment, which repealed Prohibition—pertains directly to alcohol. That amendment prohibits the "transportation or importation into any State... for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof."



For some, those words began and ended the debate. Where prohibited by state law, direct shipping of wine unquestionably encompassed the "transportation or importation" of "intoxicating liquors" into a state "in violation of the laws thereof." Therefore, some would argue that regardless of a state's motivation, its alcohol laws are protected by the Twenty-First Amendment.



Nevertheless, no Constitution would have existed for the Twenty-First Amendment to amend were it not for the constitutional guarantee of national economic union. The Twenty-First Amendment did not repeal the commerce clause. When faced with seemingly competing constitutional provisions, the proper role of courts, my colleagues and I argued, was to harmonize the two provisions, not to aggrandize one while draining the other of meaning.



The surface conflict between the commerce clause and the Twenty-First Amendment also raised a more fundamental question lurking beneath much constitutional litigation: is the Constitution a grant of government power to which rights are the exception or a recognition of individual rights to which government power is the exception? When faced with a dispute between an asserted freedom and an asserted government power, should a court indulge a presumption in favor of government power or individual liberty? The answer to that threshold question of constitutional interpretation would affect not only Juanita Swedenburg but also scores of other people whose rights are restricted by government power.



For some, the questions raised by the direct-shipping issue were quite easy. The first appellate judge to rule on the issue was Frank Easterbrook of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a jurist who does not lack for self-assurance. Like many conservatives, Easterbrook doubts the doctrine that the commerce clause on its own accord prohibits protectionist trade barriers. For Easterbrook, the question presented was one of states' rights, which should triumph because Congress had not exercised its regulatory authority to prevent state regulation. In upholding Indiana's direct-shipment ban, the opening words of Judge Easterbrook's opinion clearly fore-cast the outcome: "This case pits the twenty-first amendment, which appears in the Constitution, against the 'dormant commerce clause,' which does not."



For others, the question was not so simple. The leading U.S. Supreme Court precedent was a 1984 case, Bacchus Imports v. Dias, in which the Court struck down a Hawaii law that exempted certain liquors produced in state from an otherwise applicable alcohol tax. The obvious purpose was to benefit domestic producers. (Ironically, the same Frank Easterbrook who later as a judge would disdain the dormant commerce clause argued the Bacchus case successfully for the challengers.) The Bacchus Court harmonized the commerce clause and the Twenty-First Amendment, noting that although the amendment's scope was broad: "One thing is certain: The central purpose of the [Twenty-First Amendment] was not to empower states to benefit local liquor industries by erecting barriers to economic competition. " For that reason, the Court held, "State laws that constitute mere economic protectionism are... not entitled to the same deference as laws enacted to combat the perceived evils of an unrestricted traffic in liquor." So if the courts applied Bacchus, the question in our case would be whether the state's ban addressed "the perceived evils of an unrestricted traffic in liquor" or whether in reality it constituted "mere economic protectionism."



The wine cases were characterized by remarkable cross-ideological alliances on both sides. On our side were prominent conservatives such as Kenneth Starr and Barbara Olson; on the other side, conservatives included Robert Bork, C. Boyden Gray, and Miguel Estrada. Our "free the grapes" legal team also included such liberal stalwarts as former Stanford Law School dean Kathleen Sullivan and University of Indiana lawyer Alex Tanford, who frequently litigated cases for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a debate opponent of mine on the school-choice issue. Conservative jurists, such as Judge Easterbrook of the Seventh Circuit and Richard Wesley of the Second Circuit, reached opposite conclusions from other conservatives, such as J. Michael Luttig of the Fourth Circuit and Danny Boggs of the Sixth Circuit; liberal judges such as Sonia Sotomayor of the Second Circuit were at variance with other liberal judges, such as Martha Daughtrey of the Sixth Circuit. Never before had I litigated an issue that transcended ideological boundaries as dramatically as this one did. Yet sharp lines of rhetorical demarcation existed: judicial "activism" versus judicial "restraint," and "states' rights" versus the supremacy of the federal Constitution and national economic union.



Although several cases raising similar legal claims would be litigated by various advocates en route to the U.S. Supreme Court, my colleagues and I decided to challenge New York's law. We chose New York for two major reasons: after California, New York's wine market is the largest in the United States, and its direct-shipment laws discriminated in favor of New York wineries and against out-of- state wineries. Notably, almost all of the New York wineries supported our lawsuit: although they enjoyed sheltered markets in New York, they were shut out from direct shipping to other states in retaliation for New York's ban on direct out-of-state shipping.



In challenging the New York regime, we were taking on the big boys. No sooner did we file our lawsuit than seven powerful interests intervened to help defend the law: the state's four largest liquor distributors, whose combined revenues exceeded one billion dollars annually; the package stores, which enjoyed a monopoly over the retail sale of interstate wine; the truckers' union, which enjoyed a monopoly over wine delivery; and the Rev. Calvin Butts, who was concerned about underage access. Not all of the interests on the other side seemed entirely savory: the press reported that around the time of our lawsuit, 50 Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided one of the liquor distributors seeking evidence of mob connections. The massive orchestrated special-interest intervention in our case suggested that New York was the chosen field of battle in which the liquor-distributor behemoth would take its stand.



The New York litigation made for unusual adversaries as well. The lead lawyer for the liquor distributors was Randy Mastro, a prominent New York lawyer who had served as deputy mayor under Rudolph Giuliani. On our side as an expert was John Dyson, a businessman who owned wineries in Italy, New York, and California, and who was another Giuliani deputy mayor. Adding to the ironies was that Mastro's late father had been a political science professor of mine at Drew University and frequently had urged that some day I needed to work with Randy. When I met Randy, who bears an uncanny physical resemblance to his dad, I told him I didn't think that this encounter was what his father had in mind. The high-priced, big-firm lawyers on the other side tended to be the types who judged other attorneys by their hourly rates. Given that my colleagues and I at IJ charged our clients nothing, I can only imagine the disdain in which our adversary lawyers held us.



The quality and temperament of a judge can make all the difference in a case. We were very fortunate that the judge assigned to us was Richard Berman, an appointee of President Bill Clinton who was bright, courteous, thoughtful, thorough, and judicious. During our first court hearing, my colleague from IJ and I were literally surrounded in a semi-circle by a phalanx of 18 lawyers representing the combined interests on the other side. Judge Berman smiled when I likened it to David versus Goliath. In subsequent hearings, most of our opposing lawyers sat discreetly in the gallery, but the image was indelibly established.



Throughout the trial-court litigation, the lawyer for the state barely made a peep, ceding the law's defense to the liquor distributors' lawyers. They in turn litigated the case with such bombast and hyperbole that it would have driven me crazy if I had not grown up among similar personalities in neighboring New Jersey. The spectacle of the liquor distributors' tail wagging the state's dog was enormously helpful to us in demonstrating that the purpose and effect of the laws were protectionism, not public health and safety.



That was the case we put on. We showed that the original three-tier system was adopted at the behest of the liquor distributors. When the legislature in the 1990s overwhelmingly passed direct-shipping legislation, the liquor distributors urged Governor George Pataki to veto it, and he did, citing concerns for domestic industry and tax revenues. As for underage consumption, we produced state records showing that the relevant numbers were 16,000 and zero—the first being the number of reported instances of minors' obtaining alcohol through the three-tier system over a five-year period; the second being the reported instances of minors' obtaining alcohol over the Internet during the same period. I told the judge that if my college-age son could navigate the system by ordering wine over the Internet using a credit card, satisfying the winery that he was over 21, arranging to accept delivery on campus of a box labeled "Alcohol: Adult Identification Required," and producing another acceptable identification upon delivery, I would celebrate his ingenuity with him over a glass of cabernet. Unfortunately, the existing system allows minors far too many ways to obtain alcohol for them to have to resort to the far more cumbersome process of ordering it over the Internet. Ultimately, our case rested on the logic that whatever rules applied to deliveries to consumers by in-state wineries ought to apply also to deliveries by out-of-state wineries; the fact that two sets of rules applied rather than one demonstrated that the purpose and effect of the laws were protectionist.



Our adversaries relied heavily on the underage access issue, offering evidence that states with permissive direct-shipping laws also reported higher rates of binge drinking on college campuses. (It was hard to imagine college students guzzling Mrs. Swedenburg's chardonnay at a keg party, but maybe kids have become more sophisticated since my college years.) Without a shred of irony, the liquor distributors joined forces with Christian conservatives and groups committed to alcohol abstinence. The distributors argued that state authority under the Twenty-First Amendment was plenary and that Congress had affirmatively given states the power to ban direct interstate shipping.



Judge Berman didn't buy it. "That the New York direct shipping ban on out-of-state wine burdens interstate commerce and is discriminatory (on its face) is clear," he ruled. Moreover, he found that "the direct shipping ban was designed to protect New York State businesses from out-of-state competition." Applying the Bacchus decision, he concluded that the Twenty-First Amendment provided no shelter because the "State has not established that its goals cannot be accomplished in a nondiscriminatory manner." As a result, he ordered that the state allow out-of-state direct shipment of wine on the same terms and conditions as in-state direct shipping.



The liquor-distributor empire quickly struck back, filing an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. That court reached a starkly different result on states' rights grounds. Recognizing that a majority of the Second Circuit's sister courts had ruled in favor of challenges to discriminatory wine shipment bans, Judge Richard Wesley found that those decisions had "the effect of unnecessarily limiting the authority delegated to the states" under the Twenty-First Amendment. Moreover, the court found that no real discrimination took place, for "all wineries, whether in-state or out-of- state, are permitted to obtain a license as long as the winery establishes a physical presence in the state." The state's interest, in reality, was not protectionism but in ensuring "accountability," which could be accomplished by requiring a physical presence of all wineries.



The "physical presence" requirement sounded benign—who could object to a business establishing a physical presence in the state in order to ensure "accountability" to the state's legitimate regulatory regime? In practice, however, that jurisprudential innovation could have created the exception that would have swallowed the commerce clause. A small winemaker like Juanita Swedenburg would have found opening and fully staffing a warehouse just to gain the privilege of selling a few cases of wine in New York economically impossible. Multiply that burden by 50, if other states followed suit, and the rule would close markets to small wineries all across the United States. The decision boded chilling ramifications far beyond wine: if every state could require a physical presence upon the pretense of health or safety concerns, the vast promise of the Internet to expand consumer freedom would halt in its tracks. After all, the whole point of the commerce clause was that an enterprise in one state could do business in another state without having to move there. The state's legitimate regulatory interests with regard to alcohol could be achieved in less onerous fashion, such as requiring a license in order to do business. Indeed, federal law provides plenty of potent tools to enforce state alcohol laws against out-of-state companies.



Because the Second Circuit decision conflicted with decisions from other circuits, prospects for review by the U.S. Supreme Court looked promising. But once the high court took the case—along with a companion case from Michigan, in which the trial court had upheld the direct-shipment ban but the appeals court had struck it down—the prospects didn't seem especially encouraging. Although we had the leading precedent on our side, 20 years had passed since the Bacchus decision. In that time, all five of the justices in the majority were gone, while the three dissenters (Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor) were still on the Court. Moreover, Justice Thomas believes no such thing as the dormant commerce clause exists and the rights often protected under that doctrine in fact were intended to be protected under other constitutional provisions. We tried to attract Justice Thomas's vote by including a separate claim under the privileges and immunities clause of article IV, section 2, of the Constitution, whose scope largely mirrors the commerce clause, but the Court did not accept review on that issue.



So we assumed that we began our trek to the U.S. Supreme Court with four likely votes against us and no certain votes in favor. If our math was correct, we would need to cobble together the votes of Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer—an odd-couple lineup that apparently never had been previously aligned in a 5-4 decision.



The uncertain endurance of the Bacchus decision allowed our opponents to return to basics and argue that state power under the Twenty-First Amendment was plenary. A "plain language" and states' rights approach might appeal to Justice Scalia and tip the balance against us. We countered with a strong historical analysis showing that the Twenty-First Amendment had merely restored the status quo prior to Prohibition—and that discrimination and protectionism were not encompassed within the states' powers to regulate alcohol at that time. We also had the benefit of a strong record of protectionism in the New York case and of the Federal Trade Commission report that laid waste to the states' defenses relating to underage access and taxation.



While the case headed toward argument before the Supreme Court, both sides made their cases in the court of public opinion. State attorneys general launched high-profile sting operations ostensibly to demonstrate how easy it was for underage buyers to game the system. (Revealingly, the sting artists never ordered successfully from wineries, but from retailers, who were licensed by the three-tier system yet avoided its regulations.) On our side, the feisty and highly quotable Juanita Swedenburg was the poster-child small entrepreneur fighting for her right to earn an honest living. As the argument approached, Mrs. Swedenburg's husband and business partner, Wayne, passed away, depriving her of a major source of strength and support. But if her determination ever flagged, I never saw it.



In our side's oral argument, former Stanford Law School dean Kathleen Sullivan argued the Michigan case, and I represented the New York plaintiffs. To buttress their states' rights argument, New York and Michigan jettisoned the liquor distributors' lawyers, who had done the heavy lifting in the earlier rounds, in favor of the solicitors general from the two states. But the move didn't work, because the states' lawyers insisted that their powers under the Twenty-First Amendment were without limit, essentially asking the Court to overrule Bacchus. Even Justice O'Connor, who had dissented in Bacchus, seemed taken aback by the states' extreme position. For my part, I pointed out the heavy influence of protectionism in New York's regulatory scheme and assailed the "presence" requirement. Were the justices to visit Swedenburg Winery (which I cheerfully encouraged them to do), they could find Mrs. Swedenburg harvesting grapes, tending the tasting room, bottling wine, and filling orders. The thought that she could afford to open a New York operation in order to sell a few cases of wine there was ludicrous.



In the end, the Court divided 5-4 in striking down the discriminatory Michigan and New York laws. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority that included Justices Scalia, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, declared that the effect of the laws was "to allow in-state wineries to sell wine directly to consumers in that State but to prohibit out-of- state wineries from doing so, or, at the least, to make direct sales impractical from an economic standpoint." Such laws, the Court ruled, "deprive citizens of their right to have access to the markets of other States on equal terms." The Court flatly rejected the physical presence defense, remarking that "for most wineries, the expense of establishing a bricks-and-mortar distribution operation in 1 State, let alone all 50, is prohibitive." Nor did the Court credit the states' underage access or taxation arguments, finding that less-onerous alternatives were available to service legitimate state interests. The Court's legal holding was simple—"state regulation of alcohol is limited by the nondiscrimination principle of the Commerce Clause"—and the New York and Michigan laws violated that principle, with no convincing justification.



For Mrs. Swedenburg, the victory was sweet vindication. As fate would have it, although I spoke to her the day the decision came down, I didn't actually get to see her until months later, whereupon I received what must have been the biggest hug of my entire life. The case was a vindication of the American legal system as well. In few other nations could one small entrepreneur prevail over the powerful combination of massive commercial interests and government. Her triumph demonstrates that ours truly is a nation governed by the rule of law.



Indeed, that spectacle—the judicial redress of injustice visited upon an individual by the government—is a hallmark of a free society. By contrast, the New York Times recently profiled the failed attempts of Chinese citizens to challenge oppressive laws, years after the legal system in Communist China ostensibly was changed to allow such actions. That Americans can bring down tyrannical laws through peaceful judicial action, while people in many other countries cannot, is testimony that ours remains among the freest nations in the world.



Yet plainly, not everyone would agree that such judicial power is a positive phenomenon. The legal clash in the direct-shipping cases between the small wineries and the liquor distributors is a microcosm of the debate over the proper role of the courts in the American constitutional system. Those who assert that courts should defer to democratic processes would consign the likes of Juanita Swedenburg to defeat and despair, while rendering a nullity the constitutional promise of freedom of commerce. There is no way that Juanita Swedenburg could take on the powerful liquor distributors in the political arena. Indeed, she is not even a citizen of the state in which the laws that constrained her opportunities were enacted. New York wineries had succeeded in gaining exemptions from the onerous direct-shipment laws for themselves, but outsiders like Juanita Swedenburg—even banded together in a trade association and aligned with New York consumers who wanted to purchase their wines—were no match in the legislative arena against the powerful liquor-distributor oligopoly and its lobbyists and political contributions.



So the only recourse for Juanita Swedenburg was through the courts, wielding the commerce clause, which was made part of the Constitution precisely to protect the ability of people like her to engage in commerce throughout the nation. In the judicial arena, despite the resources arrayed against her, that proud Virginia farmer was able to prevail.



But many on both sides of the political spectrum—as reflected in the divergent judicial opinions on the direct-shipping issue in the lower courts and the Supreme Court—would argue that the courts should have deferred to the states and that the result constitutes raw judicial activism. Some conservatives would go even further and assert that courts have no business invalidating laws in the first place—that the entire enterprise of "judicial review" of laws is constitutionally illegitimate.



As I will discuss in the following pages, federal courts have over-stepped their constitutional bounds in many instances over the past two centuries. Judicial activism in many instances is inappropriate and presents a serious challenge to the rule of law.



But in our efforts to curb improper judicial activism, we should be very wary about throwing out the baby with the bath water. For better or worse, courts in a free society are the ultimate guardians of our most precious liberties. As Justice Ginsburg recently observed, courts provide a vital safeguard "against oppressive government and stirred-up majorities." Alone among the branches of government, the judiciary is charged with the vital responsibility of standing up for the rights of the individual against the government leviathan, no matter how broad the democratic mandate.



Were it otherwise, were we to indulge the recurrent impulse to curb the power of the judiciary to protect individual liberties, relying entirely instead on the willingness of elected and appointed government officials to restrain themselves in the exercise of their powers, the result for Juanita Swedenburg—indeed, for all of us—would be that the rights we hold dear under the Constitution would not be worth the paper on which they're written.



With a proper understanding of the limited yet essential role of the judiciary in a free society, we shall see that the judicial intervention reflected in cases such as Mrs. Swedenburg's is worthy of a hearty toast over a fine glass of wine.





[Footnotes have been omitted.]



_____________________________________________



To go to our full review, or to go to purchase the book, CLICK HERE.



__________________________________________________




From David's Hammer by Clint Bolick. Copyright © 2007 by the Cato Institute. Reprinted here by permission of the author and the publisher.




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Who is the purist Dem of 'em all?

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5 Million Dollar Reward: The Most Dangerous Man in America

This Man Leads Nuclear 9/11 Plan

UPDATE: Nuclear Terrorist Linked to JFK Plot!!!

Shocking secrets of the new immigration bill (only a week to protest before the vote!)

These are parts of the new immigration bill you have not heard about. If you think it is totally insane please write your representatives!

1. Security doesn't come first in this bill. This bill would immediately legalize illegal aliens that are currently in the country. The only way Congress will actually see to it that the border security and enforcement provisions in the bill will be implemented is if they have to do them before they even consider an amnesty for the people who are here.

2. Illegal aliens won't have to pay back taxes...where do we get the same deal? The whole idea that illegal aliens shouldn't have to pay the taxes they already owe for working in the United States is utterly and completely offensive because it actually gives them a privilege that American citizens aren't getting: forgiveness for taxes owed to the IRS.

3. If passed, this bill will make taxpayers pay the legal bills for illegal aliens seeking amnesty. Tucked away on page 317 is a provision that would allow lawyers in the federally-funded legal services program to represent illegal aliens, which they are presently barred from doing.

4. This bill rewards illegal aliens for breaking our laws. There are tens of millions of people who respect our laws and our country, waiting patiently, in line, often in their home countries, to get a chance to come here. Under this bill, illegal aliens will immediately be eligible for a "Z Visa" which allows them to work, go to school, and -- this is important -- stay here for the rest of their lives if they so choose because there is no limit on the number of times it can be renewed.

5. The bill gives the government only one business day to conduct a background check to determine whether an applicant is a criminal or a terrorist. It is impossible, of course, to determine in a single day whether someone is a terrorist or a criminal.

6. In the bill Section 601(g)(2), illegal-alien gang members would be eligible for amnesty merely by signing a "renunciation of gang affiliation."

7. Gang-bangers and other criminals, who have been ordered to leave the United States by an immigration judge but defy the ruling, are called absconders. Section 601(d)(1)(I) permits U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to grant an absconder a Z visa anyway if he can show that being forced to leave the United States "would result in extreme hardship" to the alien, his spouse, parent or child.

8. The bill effectively shuts down our immigration-court system. If an alien in the removal process is eligible for the Z visa, the immigration judge must close the proceedings and offer the alien the chance to apply for the amnesty.

9. If ICE officials apprehend an alien who appears eligible for the Z visa (in other words, just about any illegal alien), they can't detain him. Instead, ICE must help him apply for the Z visa. Rather than initiating removal proceedings, ICE will be initiating amnesty applications. It's like turning the Drug Enforcement Agency into a needle-distribution network.

10. To qualify for the Z-visa amnesty, an illegal alien need only have a job (or be the parent, spouse, or child of someone with a job) and come up with a scrap of paper suggesting he was in the country before Jan. 1 of this year. Any bank statement, pay stub, or similarly forgeable record will do. Expect a mass influx unlike anything this country has seen before, once the 12-month period for accepting Z visa applications begins. These rules are an open invitation to sneak in and present a fraudulent piece of paper indicating that you were already here.

11. As promised, the bill will legalize most of the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens now in the country via a new "Z visa." Each would pay $3,000 - only slightly more than the going rate to be smuggled into America. This is not up front. They will have eight years to pay it back. (that works out to a payment plan of $31.25 per month)

12. Supporters of the bill call the Z visa "temporary" - neglecting to mention that *it can be renewed indefinitely *until the visa holder dies. Thus, we have the country's first permanent temporary visa. On top of that, it's a super-visa - allowing the holder to work, attend college or do just about anything else. * Are you a law-abiding alien who's interested in switching to this privileged status? Sorry. Only illegal aliens can qualify.

13. The bill increases legal migration by at least 50 percent over the next decade by granting green cards to all the remote relatives who are in the chain migration categories, a number estimated at 750,000 to 900,000 a year. That is triple the current number of 250,000. Giving green cards to millions of additional relatives ensures that legal immigration will continue to grow as this larger pool of permanent residents brings in spouses.

14. The bill claims that bench marks must be met before amnesty/guest-worker provisions go into effect. But the bench marks fail to require that the U.S.-Mexico border be closed, fail to require that the border fence be completed as mandated by Congress in October and fail to require that the Department of Homeland Security implement the entry-exit visa system so Americans can know if visitors and guest workers actually leave.

The border security part of the bill calls for a 370-mile-long fence on the U.S./Mexico border. That is only half as long as the 700-mile-long fence ordered by the Secure Fence Act passed overwhelmingly by Congress and ostentatiously signed by the president in front of TV cameras just before the November 2006 election.

15. Another bench mark is that "tools" will be provided to prevent illegal immigrants from getting jobs, including requirements for identification
standards and an employee verification system. But the bill lacks a requirement that anybody actually use the tools.

16. The costs of the Senate immigration bill are mind-boggling. Unbelievably, the Senate has made no attempt to estimate this costs or how to how to pay them. The Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector puts a potential price tag on this bill of $2.5 trillion, which is five times the cost of the Iraq war.

17. At least 60 percent of illegal immigrants lack a high school diploma, which means they will work low-wage jobs, pay little or no income tax, and be heavy users of our schools and means-tested social benefits such as Medicaid, school lunches, Women, Infants and Children Program, subsidized housing, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and free legal counsel.

18. Fiscal costs would go up dramatically after amnesty recipients reach retirement. Each elderly low-skill immigrant imposes a net cost - that is benefits minus taxes - on U.S. taxpayers of about $17,000 per year, according to the Heritage Foundation. These costs would hit Social Security and medicare at the very time Social Security is expected to go into crisis.

19. Section 413 calls on Congress to "accelerate the implementation" of the Security and Prosperity Partnership - announced by Bush in Waco, Texas, in 2005 - so that the United States can "improve the standard of living in Mexico." Do U.S. taxpayers want to take on the awesome economic burden of solving poverty problems in Mexico?

20. The Senate immigration bill states that the United States want to increase access to credit for "poor and under-served populations in Mexico," and expand efforts "to reduce the transaction costs of remittance flows" from the U.S. to Mexico now running at $23 billion a year. That is money made in the US but transferred out of our economy.

21. The Senate bill also puts the United States into a "partnership" with Mexico for "increasing health care access for poor and under-served populations in Mexico," for "assisting Mexico in increasing its emergency and trauma health care facilities," and for "expanding prenatal care" in the border region. Do U.S. taxpayers want to take on the awesome economic burden of solving problems in Mexico?

22. The Senate bill authorizes 4,000 new Border Patrol agents, but doesn't require that they be trained or deployed.

23. Last but not least. Illegal Aliens will receive instate tuition.
Illegal aliens would receive a taxpayer subsidy worth tens of thousands of dollars and would be treated better than U.S. citizens from out of state, who must pay three to four times as much to attend college. In an era of limited educational resources and rising tuition, U.S. citizens, not aliens openly violating federal law, should be first in line to receive education subsidies.*

24. Health standards ignored. Z-Visa holders are not required to be given medical examinations and immunizations. Z-Visa applicants and permanent
residents are two peas off the same pod. Both can live in the USA as long as they want. Permanent residents are required to be given a medical examination and immunized but Z-Visa holders are not. All aliens, including Z-Visa holders should be required to be given medical examinations and immunized. They are living and breathing in our country just as permanent residents. The health and safety issues are one and the same. TB or Leprosy anyone?

25. "There are no serious assimilation components to the legislation." Dual citizenship, naturalized Americans voting here and overseas, non-English classrooms and multilingual ballots all thrive, despite McCain-Kennedy's
"comprehensive" scope. "Assimilation" appears only once in this legislation, and not until the 343rd of 347 pages. "Americanization" never emerges.

26. The amnestee doesn't have to know squat in English to get probationary status or a Z visa. After four years when seeking to renew the Z visa the first time, he only has to take -- not pass, just take -- the naturalization language test or be on a waiting list for English classes. "Learn English" only happens after eight years, and then it's not actual mastery of the language.


Read more on this subject

Democratic candidates voted for war without having read National Intelligence Report

Guess who?

John Edwards

Hillary Clinton

Read about it

Hilrya Rodhamovich Clintonov’s economic plan

“It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people...” —Adam Smith

Demo-gogue presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave a little-noticed stump speech this week that should’ve sent up countless red flags.

By now, all of us know about Clinton’s re-warmed plans for socializing medicine, regulating healthcare services and providers and centralizing government control of about ten percent of the U.S. economy.

This week, however, Clinton went national with her classist “it takes a village” model, claiming that free-enterprise Capitalism is the root of all evil.

In a speech on “shared prosperity,” she proclaimed that it’s time to replace the conservative notion of an “ownership society” and economy with one based on communal responsibility and prosperity, alleging that the current system is really an “on your own” society that increases the income gap between “poor” and “rich” Americans.

Now, if Clinton is implying that individual initiative, self-reliance, responsibility and ingenuity—the very foundation of free enterprise—are the keys to creating wealth, then she is right. If she is implying that dependence upon the state and redistribution of income creates poverty, then she is right here, too—but that was not her message.

“I prefer a ‘we’re all in it together’ society,” she went on. “I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.”

In a quintessential example of Clintonista doublespeak, Hillary outlined her economic fairness doctrine: “There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets, but markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed. Fairness doesn’t just happen. It requires the right government policies.”

So, according to Ms. Clinton, free markets work best when they’re constrained by the right government policies. In other words, free markets work best when they’re not free.

Apparently Hillary has also been smoking Fidel’s hand-rolled cigars. How else are we to account for her failure to recall that centralized economies, like that of the former Soviet Union, are doomed to fail and have cost millions of lives along the way?

Of course, Clinton’s allusion to “rules” is Demo-code for taxation, which, as we know, is often the forcible transfer of wealth from one group to another. This taxation, in turn, creates reliable political constituencies for Democrats. As George Bernard Shaw once noted, “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.”

Clinton’s economic plan is nothing more than a contemporary remake of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s class-warfare proclamation: “Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.”

In fact, Roosevelt’s “principle” was no more American than Clinton’s. It was a paraphrase of Karl Marx’s Communist maxim, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev said of Roosevelt’s “New Deal” paradigm shift, “We can’t expect the American people to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.”

Echoing that sentiment was perennial Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas (the grandfather, incidentally, of Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas): “The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

No irony was spared in another interview this week, when Hillary Clinton was asked about the enormous wealth that she and Bill have amassed since their co-presidency. Clinton replied, “My husband and I never had any money. Now suddenly we’re rich. I have nothing against rich people.”

“Never had any money”? Spare me. She and Bill were long ago cashing in on commodity futures and real-estate deals. Still, the wealth they have accumulated in recent years must make those good ol’ days seem Spartan by comparison.

Hillary claims that if elected, she will “hit the restart button on the 21st century and redo it the right way.” I checked, and the Clintons were in the White House the first year of the 21st Century. Did they push the wrong button then?

Only when the Clintons voluntarily surrender for redistribution all their assets to the U.S. Treasury will I then consider her economic views with at least the sincerity afforded one who is not a complete hypocrite. In the eternal interim, her Socialist “we’re all in it together” claptrap should be considered a perilous hazard to prosperity for all.

Quote of the week

“I am not robbed by people who have more money than I. I am robbed by a government that wants to penalize my industry and give increasing portions of what I earn to people who do not emulate my principles, morals and ethics... We once taught our young people the virtues of hard work, saving, personal responsibility and accountability for one’s actions, chastity before and fidelity and commitment in marriage, honesty, integrity and virtue—not to mention the Ten Commandments (especially the one about not coveting that which belongs to your neighbor). We now teach them entitlement, victimhood, class envy and rights to other people’s money.” —Cal Thomas

The Patriot Post