The NSA Wire-tapping Program

Much ado has been made about President Bush's directives to the NSA to wiretap some terrorism suspects without first getting a warrant from the FISA court. If you listen to the Left, you'll get gleeful accounts of how crazy, wrong, and dishonest this president has been regarding this whole program. Liberals very clearly think they have caught the president red-handed doing illegal things.

Listen to people who know the law and have studied this case, however, and you get a far different viewpoint. Some conservatives are not totally convinced of the program's legality, and others are thoroughly convinced. None that I have seen, who have studied the case law honestly, are out there calling for impeachment, as the liberal democrats are.

John Hindraker's piece at PowerLine blog should serve as the definitive (and exhausting to read) bit on the legality of the program. And Andrew McCarthy's piece at National Review is both compelling and funny. And Ann Coulter weighs in, as well, in her usual acerbic way. Here is the beginning of that rant:

I have difficulty ginning up much interest in this story inasmuch as I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East, and sending liberals to Guantanamo.

But if we must engage in a national debate on half-measures: After 9/11, any president who was not spying on people calling phone numbers associated with terrorists should be impeached for being an inept commander in chief.

With a huge gaping hole in lower Manhattan, I'm not sure why we have to keep reminding people, but we are at war... In previous wars, the country has done far worse than monitor telephone calls placed to jihad headquarters. FDR rounded up Japanese — many of them loyal American citizens — and threw them in internment camps. Most appallingly, at the same time, he let New York Times editors wander free.

She never fails to "put it out there" and stir the pot.

A Homerun for Atheists

Today, a federal judge sided with parents of schoolchildren in a Pennsylvania town, who sued their school district for changing their science curriculum to include a disclaimer that said "evolution is a theory, not a fact," and proposing Intelligent Design as an alternate theory of the universe. The judge was very vocal in the ruling, not just saying the school board was wrong, but slamming the entire ID movement to begin with. It was a truly ugly day for ID proponents (including Yours Truly).

The Facts
Darwin's Theory of Evolution is just that -- a theory. It touches on a lot of subjects and has never been proven, despite 150 years of research attempting to do so. It is virtually impossible to prove the central tenet of Darwinism: that all life originated from a common ancestor. Looking at all the species on Earth, no one has ever found fossils or bones of any "missing link" species -- those types of animals that show a transition from one species to another. There are a number of other problems, as well, with the theory. Many books have been written describing these problems. Many scientists have authored papers and books describing their concerns about the theory. Some debate (not a lot) has taken place in the scientific community on the subject. I say "some" because generally, secular scientists dismiss those scientists who dare to disbelieve Darwinism, and routinely name-call or otherwise hurl insults at them. They rarely address the issues raised.

Intelligent Design is another theory -- also largely unprovable -- that basically states that the more rational and logical approach to the origins of life and the universe lies in the actions of an intelligent entity. Proponents will typically rattle off many of their main concerns with Darwinism and other related origin-of-life theories, then propose ID as a more reasonable alternative. They will rarely bring up God, for a few reasons; the most important of which is that the theory doesn't depend on it. It simply states that when you observe things that are particularly complex or extremely unlikely to happen by chance, a reasonable person would also consider the possibility that some intelligence was at work doing these things purposefully.

To me, and to ID proponents, these things seem like common sense. And because ID is straightforward, theists are likely, once they've actually listened to some well-spoken person go over it, to buy into it and at least consider its rationality.

The judge in the Pennsylvania case did not agree.

Here is the text of the disclaimer that the school board required to be read at the outset of the science class. Ask yourself how this seems unreasonable or like prosyletizing:

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.

With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.

Hardly the rantings of bible-thumpers. This is the reasoned approach that is the ID movement.

Yet in this particular case, ID proponents were few and opponents were many. Since ID mainly states the case that evolution is simply a theory, not a fact, and doesn't put ID out there as something that can be proven in any way, the school district got slammed hard. The district, represented by the normally able Thomas More Law Center, offered no peer-reviewed documents in support of its theory or in opposition to evolutionists'. ID's stance that supernatural forces are at work in the universe is unprovable, and supernatural causations are by definition excluded from "science," so they got burned from several directions at once. The judge just chewed them up and spit them out.
His comments:

...this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

What Doomed ID?
The reason why the court (the judge) ruled against teaching ID seems, in reading the court document, to rest on the notion that ID is simply "creation science" or "creationism" re-packaged to be more palatable to a sophisticated audience. In fact the court writes, after 20 pages of support, that "The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism."

Creationism is the idea that what the Bible says about the formation of the universe in the Book of Genesis is literally true, word for word. Putting aside the fact that Genesis had the more consistent and (ultimately, proven) accurate description of the creation, or "Big Bang" event than science had proposed until recently, Creationism always was a theology-based idea. It was rooted in the Bible and garnered very little scientific evidence to support itself. Creationists, for example, believe that the Earth is 4,000+ years old, which is just old enough to have included Adam & Eve and the Torah, from the Bible. Science actually proves otherwise, and very few people take, or ever took, Creationism seriously.

ID, on the other hand, is based in science, not on the Bible. It suggests that as we progress with science, more and more evidence is emerging that points to a supernatural cause in the origins of life and the universe. It points out that while you can't empirically prove God exists, you can observe things in the universe that are so statistically improbable as to be called virtually impossible; whole chains of these types of things; and infer the existence of this supernatural power as a result.

Endorsement of Religion
The court went on to state that, of the disclaimer offered at the biology class "we find that an objective student would view the disclaimer as a strong official endorsement of religion." In other words, somehow if you put out a disclaimer that Darwinism is a theory, and offer an alternate for students' consideration, this is somehow akin to the school district having an official religion. This is patently ridiculous. And in the end, it's offensive to me as a Christian. But it's not really a surprise. This society has been drifting further and further away from its Christian roots in favor of secularism/atheism for many years, now. It's frightening, and if it goes much further, this country will be in serious danger of collapse.

At the end of the day today, Frank Pastori, a Christian talk-show host on KKLA here in Los Angeles, and a proponent of ID, told callers to his show tonight that, flatly, "ID is dead. It's over." While that seemed really alarmist to me at the time, having spent time reading the entire 139-page court opinion on the trial, I can see why he said this. The ID community utterly failed to stand up for its ideas in a big case, and the rest of the scientific community had it together. They made the ID team look like fools.

Jesse Jackson: Beyond Stupid

Jesse Jackson's Cause du Jour this week was the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams up at San Quentin. Williams founded the "Crips" street gang in South Central L.A. several decades ago, and was sent to death row for brutally murdering 4 innocent people in cold blood, at point-blank range, with a shotgun. 25 years later it's time for him to pay the piper, and along comes Jesse Jackson to get a little news coverage for himself.

Obviously everyone expects this from Jackson by this point, but he went a step further with this cause: Besides being self-promoting and ridiculous in his assertions of Williams's innocence and "victim of the system" status, Jackson, a preacher, compared this murderous thug to the greatest biblical characters of all time.

A couple of weeks ago, I heard Jackson on the radio saying that Williams was like Moses: misunderstood. Then a few days later, he repeated this and added Saint Paul to the list of people Tookie was like. Finally, when Governor Schwarzenegger denied clemency for Williams, Jesse Jackson said the governor was like Pontius Pilate. That, of course, means Tookie Williams, multiple murderer and founder of one of the most violent street gangs in L.A., is like Jesus Christ himself.

Why the media or anyone continues to take Jesse Jackson seriously is way beyond me. Now the "Reverend" is out comparing killers to God. What is next?

Little Lefties More Disgusting than their Parents

I have now seen everything:

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004021.htm

De-Christmasing Christmas

Jeff Jacoby (a practicing Jew) at Townhall.com has written a concise opinion on one instance of the de-Christmasing going on in New England right now. There are obviously examples of this all over the country (the waitress at BJ's told us "Happy Holidays" last night), but each year Christians get a little more miffed and are now finally starting to fight back.

"We're trying to be inclusive," says the Boston parks commissioner, explaining why the white spruce that was sent from Nova Scotia under a giant banner reading "Merry Christmas, Boston" became a "holiday tree" on her department's website. But suppressing the language, symbols, or customs of Christians in a predominantly Christian society is not inclusive. It's insulting.

The article is a good, quick read.

John Gibson wrote a book that's out right now called, "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought" and has devoted a website to its follow-up, as well. Here are a few items posted as examples on Amazon's book description:

• In Illinois, state government workers were forbidden from saying the words "Merry Christmas" while at work
• In Rhode Island, local officials banned Christians from participating in a public project to decorate the lawn of City Hall
• A New Jersey school banned even instrumental versions of traditional Christmas carols
• Arizona school officials ruled it unconstitutional for a student to make any reference to the religious history of Christmas in a class project

In short, this is not "freedom of religion" or "inclusiveness", it's discrimination of one particular religion, Christianity, by exclusion.

What President Bush SHOULD be Saying

The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal has a fantastic fake speech today, one that conservatives wish the president had delivered.

Enjoy it here.

Coulter on John Murtha Love-Fest

Ann Coulter posted a great column today on GOP reaction to John Murtha's call for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. Her point was one I've made before - though admittedly she does a 10x better job than I could - that conservatives are far too nice sometimes when arguing with liberals. They sometimes appear to lose because they can't bring themselves to street-fight the way liberals can.

The article is a quick read, and funny. Here's an excerpt:

Can't Republicans disagree with a Democrat who demands that the U.S. surrender in the middle of a war without erecting monuments to him first? What would happen if a Democrat were to propose restoring Saddam Hussein to power? Is that Medal of Freedom territory?

I don't know what Republicans imagine they're getting out of all this love they keep throwing at Democrats. I've never heard a single liberal preface attacks on Oliver North with a recitation of North's magnificent service as a Marine.

and:

The only Republican congressman who did not offer to have sex with John Murtha on the House floor was Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio. While debating Murtha's own proposal to withdraw American troops from Iraq in the middle of a war waged to depose a monstrous dictator who posed a threat to American national security, Schmidt made the indisputably true remark that Marines don't cut and run. (She was right! Murtha voted against his own proposal.)

My Thanksgiving Day Prayer

We had 20+ people at our house this Thanksgiving. When all the food was laid out, we all came together and bowed our heads for this prayer, which I had written a little earlier. It was my first-ever attempt to write such a prayer:

Lord God, we thank you for the blessings you give us every day of the year.

We thank you for giving us the skills to do the work we do and provide homes and food for our families and our communities.

We thank you for giving us health and strength to live our lives without suffering.

We thank you for giving us the temperaments to live with each other peacefully and for the love we have to help one another when in need.

And we especially thank you today, Lord, for bringing our families together to feast and enjoy each others’ company.

We ask you, Lord, to please bless these gifts that you have brought us, to bless this home and these people, and to send your special graces today to all those around the world who cannot enjoy these gifts.

And especially, Lord, we ask you to bless our American troops overseas, who are apart from their families this Thanksgiving, at the risk of their own lives, in the pursuit of freedom for others. Be with them and their families and grant them peace today.

We ask for all this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, your son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one god forever and ever.

Amen.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

John O'Neill on "Kerrying" the Troops

John O'Neill, of "Swift Boat Veterans" fame, has written an op-ed in the New York Sun on the actions of the mainstream media (MSM) and the Democratic party during this war. It is excellent. The full article is buried behind a subscription link, but you can read a copy of it at the Democracy Project, here.

Some excerpts:

It is abundantly clear that the vast majority of military personnel simply wish to be left alone by the Kerrys and other politicians to finish a job which they believe is nearly done and which they know the John Kerrys and Nancy Pelosis of Washington are totally incompetent to direct and even understand.

and:

Sadly, the party of Henry Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt has become the party of retreat - from the Iranian Hostage Crisis to the retreat from Mogadishu; to opposition to the 1991 Gulf War; to the failure to avenge the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or the USS Cole bombing or the murder of our own troops and embassy personnel around the world. Indeed, this past Thursday night, the nation watched the bizarre spectacle of a Democratic Party speaking in favor of immediate withdrawal but too afraid to even cast a vote recording for posterity these convictions.

The entire article is a must-read.

Liberal Bias in the Media

I had a heated debate the other day with a very liberal friend of mine about the war, George Bush, faith, etc. When you talk with liberals, you wind up all over the place in short order. But I digress...

At one point I'd made the comment that the news media is biased. Not only did he not buy this, which shocked me (I figured everyone knew this to be true), he thought it was an absolutely insane statement. I don't generally keep a list of items that show liberal political bias lying around, but I'm going to start doing so. Here are just a few I picked up today, all of which happen to pertain to the MSM (mainstream media)'s inability to report positive news coming from Iraq:

From the 101st Airborne:
"The Iraqi’s pour into the streets to wave at us and when we liberated the cities during the war they gathered in the thousands to cheer, hug and kiss us. It was what the soldier’s in WW2 experienced, yet no one questioned their cause!! Saddam was no better than Hitler! He tortured and killed thousands of innocent people. We are heroes over here, yet Americans badmouth our President for having us here."

Marines Complain About Negative Reporting in the Media:
"They felt that it's not that the negative stories — like casualty reports — shouldn't be reported, but that we never hear what America is getting for this sacrifice. As one Marine put it, it's like if I spent $7.99 for a slice of pizza and the headlines the next day read, 'Marine Out Eight Bucks!'"

The Corporal Jeffrey Starr Incident by the NY Times:
The Times intentionally mis-represented a letter that a soldier who died in Iraq sent to his family, making it seem as though he was afraid to be there, when in fact he was proud of what he was doing: "Unfortunately they did not tell Jeffrey's story. Jeffrey believed in what he was doing. He [was] willing put his life on the line for this cause."


My point, by the way, to my liberal friend was that when you are of a "leftie" mindset, you don't notice the media bias because it's all in agreement with your worldview. When you are right-leaning, though, you see the bias all over the place. Whether it's referring to the president's comments against Democrat anti-war comments as "lashing out" (when was the last time you heard of a liberal "lashing out"?) while using words like "pressing" when referring to liberal comments; or pointing out that XX number of Americans have died in the war at every possible opportunity; or trying to frame the president right before an election with phony papers; it's everywhere, and it needs to be called out.

Good Piece on the Importance of Winning in Iraq

A major general in the USAF has published someone else's column on the importance of winning the war in Iraq. It's a 5-minute read and makes some good points, not pulling punches. Here are some excerpts:

They will pick off the other non-Muslim nations, one at a time. It will be increasingly easier for them. They already hold Spain hostage. It doesn't matter whether it was right or wrong for Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Spain did it because the Muslim terrorists bombed their train, and told them to withdraw the troops. Anything else they want Spain to do, will be done. Spain is finished.

The next will probably be France. Our one hope on France is that they might see the light and realize that if we don't win, they are finished too, in that they can't resist the Muslim terrorists without us. However, it may already be too late for France. France is already 20 percent Muslim, and fading fast!

If we lose the war, our production, income, exports, and way of life will all vanish, as we know it. After losing, who would trade or deal with us, if they were threatened by the Muslims?

If we can't stop the Muslims, how could anyone else?

The Muslims fully know what is riding on this war, and therefore, are completely committed to winning, at any cost. We better know it too, and be likewise committed to winning at any cost.

And:

name any Muslim countries throughout the world that allow freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, equal rights for anyone – let alone everyone, equal status, or any status for women, or that have been productive in one single way that contributes to the good of the world.

Finally:

If we don't win this war right now, keep a close eye on how the Muslims take over France in the next 5 years or less. They will continue to increase the Muslim population of France, and continue to encroach little by little, on the established French traditions. The French will be fighting among themselves, over what should or should not be done, which will continue to weaken them, and keep them from any united resolve.

People need to take this war in Iraq seriously. It will have repercussions throughout the world, whichever way it goes. We simply MUST win in Iraq. There is no other acceptable outcome.

Tell this to every liberal you can get ahold of.

Senate Slaps Bush While He's Abroad

The U.S. Senate, under the wonderful (not) leadership of Bill Frist, dealt President Bush a body blow today when they voted in a resolution that essentially demanded that he set a timetable for troop withdrawal commencing some time in 2006. And this while the president was traveling in Asia.

Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma, in an interview on Hugh Hewitt's radio show this afternoon, pointed out an aspect to this I had not considered:

When you practice that kind of legislation, you're going to get poor results. You can't have a committee run a war, the war...we have to win this war. This is a real war, and what they did is damage the American people today, because together, we can win this war. If we divide ourselves, we'll lose the war, and most Americans don't understand that if we lose this war, it's not like walking home from Vietnam with our head down. It is we lose our way of life. And they will pick off the Europeans, one at a time, we will not have allies, we will not have the trade, the standard of living that we have today, and we will be vulnerable evermore.

By demanding regular reports (which they had already been getting, and in greater frequency than they requested in this resolution) and a timetable for withdrawal, the Senate is handing Iraqi terrorists exactly what they want. Now the terrorists will be encouraged to sit back and wait it out, and those Iraqis who might be opposing the terrorists there will be discouraged from helping our military track them down because they fear our withdrawal and their own death as a result. This thing is a disaster, politically.

I've already written to the Senate Majority leader, Bill Frist, and to John Warner, the sponsor of the bill, and to the Majority Whip, Mitch McConnell. Let's see whether they backtrack at all, tomorrow (I'm not holding my breath). At a minimum, the president should be on the phone to these guys, if not outright denouncing the action in a speech, even before he comes back to the U.S.

Podhoretz Writes Definitive Piece on Bush "Lies"

Norman Podhoretz, father of John Podhoretz, who writes for the New York Post, put together this piece, which I would say is definitive proof that those who claim President Bush lied about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction, are themselves the liars. Not only did the president not lie, but those who are claiming he did today in fact know this is a ridiculous claim and many were out in front saying the exact same things about Saddam Hussein before the war that the president was saying.

Here is an excerpt:

But the consensus on which Bush relied was not born in his own
administration. In fact, it was first fully formed in the Clinton
administration. Here is Clinton himself, speaking in 1998:

If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s
weapons-of-mass-destruction program.

Here is his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, also speaking in 1998:

Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.

Here is Sandy Berger, Clinton’s National Security Adviser, who chimed in at the same time with this flat-out assertion about Saddam:

He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.

Finally, Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, was so sure
Saddam had stockpiles of WMD that he remained “absolutely convinced” of it even after our failure to find them in the wake of the invasion in March 2003.

Podhoretz's article is must-reading for anyone who believes "Bush Lied," or argues with someone who does.

Schwarzenegger Goes Down in Flames

It is 12:30AM and I am up doing some work, scanning the ongoing results of tonight's special election here in California. Amazingly, it is beginning to look as though not a single ballot initiative passed. This is unheard of. Proposition 73, which would require parental notification before a minor has an abortion -- this has to be the biggest no-brainer of all time -- is even failing to pass. More tellingly, of the 4 propositions that Governor Schwarzenegger got onto the ballot and pushed hard for the last couple of months, every one is going down.

This is bad, bad news for the governor and for the state. California has been in financial trouble the last few years due to crazy overspending by the Democratic-controlled legislature. Until a year ago we also had an incompetent Democratic governor, Gray Davis, who basically rubber-stamped every piece of pork to come through the legislature. The liberals ran the state and we were headed for bankruptcy.

Davis wound up overextending himself by mis-handling the electricity crisis, raising the auto registration fees by a huge amount (alienating every constituency), and signing a driver's-license-for-illegal-immigrants bill that most of the state did not support. He got tossed out on his ear in a special election, shortly after winning re-election. Out with the liberal, in with the moderate Republican (my choice, Tom McClintock, evidently was way too conservative to get elected). Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected by promising to reform the government and get spending under control.

After he got elected, he went to the Democrats in the legislature and basically said, "look, there's a new sheriff in town..." The liberal Democrats, predictably, laughed at him and ridiculed him in the press. You might remember Arnold's "girlie man" comment that got him into hot water in the press (he was referring to the liberals in the legislature). But Schwarzenegger had said during his campaign that, if elected, he would try to work with the politicians, but if they wouldn't play ball, he would go around them and go straight to the citizens through ballot initiatives.

Using this threat once he got into office, Schwarzenegger proved to be formidable. He forced the legislature to change workers' compensation laws that were destroying businesses in California; he repealed Davis's car tax; he got the legislature to get rid of the illegal immigrant license bill that had passed; he killed a proposal to amend the state's "3-strikes"; etc. In short, he was very effective and the legislature had to step back a bit when he would threaten.

This Fall he pushed 4 propositions: 74, 75, 76, and 77. These were all designed to REFORM the state government, in different ways:

Prop 74 would change the current law that says that public school teachers, who currently only have to work for 2 years before getting "tenure" -- basically a lifetime job -- would have to instead work for 5 years first. When you consider that California public schools rank near the bottom in academic performance in the country, clearly reform of some kind is necessary. The whole idea of tenure for public school teachers to me seems ridiculous just to start with. College professors are one thing, but elementary and high school teachers?? Why on earth would we want them to have guaranteed jobs? My boss can fire me any time he wants to, and the threat of that keeps me working hard every day. Why should teachers be any different? To put this in perspective, the L.A. Times stated that of the 30,000 teachers employed by the horrible LAUSD, in the past 10 years a grand total of 12 have been fired. How afraid of losing their jobs do you think teachers are? Anyway, this proposition is losing by 5 percentage points.

Prop 75 tries to cut down on the power of special interest groups in Sacramento by requiring public employee unions to get their members' permission to spend their union dues on political campaigns before they spend them. Basically you have union members who may support the governor on any given issue, but the dues they are required to pay to their union (which can and often are raised at will) go to support political smear campaigns against the governor. If I were a teacher with a conservative nature, I would be furious that my money was being spent in this way. The California Teachers Association is one of the most powerful special interest groups in Sacramento and oppose the governor every time he turns around. They get popular support by claiming they're out there "for the children," when in fact they are out there for the teachers. California teachers have an excellent pension system that allows them to retire early on the public dime, simultaneously costing taxpayers a fortune and removing the most qualified teachers from the system. The passage of Proposition 75 would severely impair the CTA's ability to continue to influence legislators in the state capitol. Yet this bill is going down 52-48.

Prop 76 changes the requirements of the legislature to pass a spending bill within the means of the state Treasury (they have a habit of borrowing whatever they need); it also gives the governor some authority, subject to legislature approval, to make spending cuts mid-year, before deficits get ugly and corner everyone in the next budget cycle. This prop is going down hard, 61-39.

Finally, Prop 77 authorizes the redrawing of legislative districts throughout the state, by a panel of 3 retired non-partisan judges. State elections almost never result in an incumbent getting thrown out of office, because the district lines are drawn in such a way that there really is no competition. As a result, each district tends to elect a more "extreme" individual, and so you get hard-left liberals from some districts and hard-right conservatives in others. They are so far apart, idealogically, that they will never see eye-to-eye and thus the "compromise" deals that should be happening up there don't happen. With 77 passing, the districts would be competitive and elections would be much less predictable. In theory, also, more "moderate" legislation would come out of Sacramento. Proposition 77 is losing 58-42.

With the loss of all these propositions, the Democratic legislature will no longer fear the governor. Without a credible threat of going straight to the people, making the legislators irrelevant, the governor will effectively be impotent; a lame duck.

Conservatives' hopes for reforming the state government are going down in flames. Tune in in a few years and see whether the liberal legislature has bankrupted California yet; or whether there are any businesses left in the state; or whether our school system is actually graduating a majority of the kids who go through it. If these election results are any indication, we're in for a world of hurt...

Bork Weighs In On Miers Again

Judge Robert Bork, the conservative judge who was dragged through the mud during confirmation hearings back in the 1980's, has penned another editorial about the Miers nomination, and it's great reading, as usual. It's on the Wall Street Journal's Opinion page, requiring free registration. Get it here.

Republican Con-Law expert and Bush Kool-Aid Drinker Hugh Hewitt has been going after other conservatives who don't support the nomination relentlessly the last couple of weeks. It's amazing to see him reach for positive comments and pretend that his "side" is winning this argument, in the light of so much well-written heat from prominent conservatives. Consider this amazing statement:

On Miers' side to date: Ken Starr, Lino Gralia, Thomas Sowell, James Dobson, Jay
Sekulow, Marvin Olasky, Chuck Colson, Michael Medved, William Rusher, R. Emmett Tyrrell and of course Fred Barnes. Against her: The Corner, Tucker Carlson, Bill Kristol, Robert Bork, Mark Levin, George Will, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, and Charles Krauthhammer. I like those odds.

"I like those odds???" You have got to be kidding me. And I've listened, by the way, to James Dobson describing his support for Ms. Miers. I'd actually call it "indifference," if you want to be accurate. On his appearance on Michael Medved's radio show last week, he gave his support but grudgingly. He admitted he didn't have any special inside knowledge, and that he was basing his support strictly on the fact that the president has explicitly asked for it. I haven't heard much from the other "supporters," but at least with guys like Dobson, Sekulow, Olasky, and Colson you're talking specifically about evangelical Christian leaders; not experts in constitutional law OR politics, so how much weight can you give them?

Anyway, yesterday Hugh took issue with Bork's statement about the president's amnesty plan for illegal aliens. Although the president, of course, doesn't call it that, that is what it is. He has called it a "Guest Worker Program," and recently started referring to it as a "Temporary Worker Program." But with the end-result normally being citizenship, it's effectively an amnesty plan.

Today Republicans and Democrats alike are complaining about Ms Miers's "inadequate" answers to the questionnaire they gave her. National Review has posted a PDF of the 57-page document here. And Michelle Malkin has a good roundup of opinions on it. Things do not appear to be getting better. It will be an interesting couple of weeks...

The Miers Nomination Should Be Opposed

There are many reasons why President Bush's nomination of his personal attorney, Harriet Miers, should be opposed. This is an issue which has unexpectedly divided the president's "base" of voters; in my opinion, because most of the base is conservative first, Republican second. Those who insist on supporting this nomination, and there are a number of very prominent folks, like Hugh Hewitt, who do, seem to me to be doing so out of respect for the president and a wish to re-unify the party. While I think those are nice sentiments, I feel the negatives outweigh these sentiments.

We Know Nothing About This Nominee. Ever since Judge Robert Bork was savaged by liberal Democrats back in the '80s, conservative Republicans have increasingly relied on "stealth" nominations -- people who have very little record, whose personal views are largely unknown -- in an effort to avoid confrontations with the same Democrats. In many cases, this has come back to bite conservatives, with nominees like David Souter turning out to be liberal judicial activists. So the whole "stealth" idea is, to me, a bad one to begin with. And Harriet Miers is a "super-stealth" nominee. No one seems to know for sure what her views are on anything. Her supporters rely on the fact that she's an evangelical Christian as proof that she's a reliable conservative. But this strikes me as pretty thin.

We Shouldn't Be Sending Up Stealth Candidates. Republicans now control both houses of Congress and the Presidency. If ever there was a time to lose our fear of liberal retribution, now is the time. The president has decided, for some reason, to try and avoid the fight that conservatives around the nation had been salivating over: that of going to battle to get an "originalist" put onto the Supreme Court, with everyone knowing he/she was a conservative from the get-go. While Chief Justice John Roberts sailed through the confirmation hearings by disavowing any particular philosophy and by distancing himself from conservative comments he'd made in papers written throughout his career, the idea of getting an "originalist" like Judge Michael Luttig, whose positions everyone already is familiar with, onto the court was something conservatives were ready to go to battle for. We want to see an end to liberal judicial activism and nominees should be proud of their rulings and positions, not afraid of discussing them.

Perpetuating Stealth Sends a Bad Message to the Next Generation. What the president is saying, intentionally or not, with his nomination of Harriet Miers, is that if you are a law student or young in your career, and/or have any hope of vying for a federal judgeship or Supreme Court justice-ship, don't write anything that states your views; don't speak to anyone about your personal philosophy on anything remotely controversial. This is a horrible message to send to people. We need people to express their opinions and to fight for what they believe in. Suppressing that is unhealthy for the country and for the people with the opinions.

Others Are Better-Qualified. I'm not a lawyer, but even I can see that there are a huge number of people in the country, male and female, who are better qualified -- have a more "appropriate" resume -- for this position than Harriet Miers. Even the White House, when extolling Ms. Miers's virtues, seemed unable to come up with much more to cheer about besides the fact that she is an evangelical Christian and had worked with Meals on Wheels. In truth, she has run a large law firm in Texas and headed the Texas state bar. However, she is reported to have never practiced Constitutional Law, but was a corporate lawyer. She obviously has never judged before -- something others have ignored or minimized, but which I think is important. The polls before this nomination clearly indicated that people wanted the president to pick "the best person for the job," regardless of gender, race, etc. In short, if you were "hiring" a justice, given a list of candidates, would you choose Ms. Miers as "the best?"

She is a Crony. This may not seem like much, but it sets a bad precedent and looks very unprofessional. You don't nominate your buddies to positions at this level, especially when they come with guaranteed lifetime tenure. The Supreme Court is both the highest law in the land and its justices are there for life. If you want to make an argument that she's deserving, then nominate her for a federal judgeship in a circuit court. This is still a prestigious position and one of great authority. But the Supreme Court?? Come on.

The Liberals Like Her. When you get guys like Harry Reid saying they like your nominee, you know you're in trouble. Either that or you're brilliant beyond measure because you completely conned the guy. I like the president just fine, but I don't think he's one of these "insane brilliant" people who could pull that off. Add to that the fact that he met with Democrats -- consulting? -- before making the nomination and you make it look like Reid and the other nutty liberals actually signed off or even suggested Ms. Miers as the nominee. That is frightening and if true would also set a really bad precedent.

There are plenty of very prominent conservatives on both sides of this issue, so it's not a slam-dunk for either side. Here is a really interesting table of data about the discussion that sort of encapsulates all the arguments and the people making them. With confirmation hearings hoping to be done well before Thanksgiving, it should be an interesting next few weeks...

Stop the Hatred

Michelle Malkin, blogger extraordinaire, has a name for the leftist Bush-haters in this country: "Moonbats". And the more I see of them, the more appropriate I think that moniker is and the more disgusted I get. That the moonbats could get 100,000 people to an anti-you-name-it rally in Washington over the weekend is truly frightening.

The rally, which Michelle covers in photos and a few quotes, was also followed by numerous other bloggers. But the pictures tell the fastest story. Take a look at these on Michelle's main page. You've got a mass of people here who simply hate the president of the United States and will stop at nothing to bring him down. Sorry, no matter who the president is, this kind of thing is un-American.

You also get a sense of just how juvenile the whole "movement" is. "Castrate Cheney"?? "F--- the War"?? What are we, in fifth grade? These people are not just delusional, but moronic.

Activist mom Cindy Sheehan was there, and her vitriol just seems to get more and more harsh as the weeks go by. Weren't her 15 minutes up a month or so ago? At this point she is not only screaming about the war, but blaming the president for the damage in Louisiana from the hurricanes. Why does anyone still take her seriously?

Michelle's very next post described and linked to a video of Bill Maher, host of a Bush-hating talk show on HBO, making a joke about abused women and holding up a doctored photo of Laura Bush, looking like she had been beaten, and mentioning that the president had been drinking again. How does material like this even get uttered, much less on public airwaves? How can liberals think that this stuff is productive for them?

Protest things based on their merit. When you protest a war, have reasons for your opposition and express them to others in an effort to persuade them you are justified. Don't attack the people involved in that war personally; it's just unbecoming. And it does nothing to move your cause forward. It makes you look like a hateful fool and people remember this stuff.

Michael Yon's Latest: Gates of Fire

Michael Yon, freelance writer embedded with the U.S. Army 1-24thInfantry Battalion in Iraq, released his latest dispatch earlier today. Called "Gates of Fire," it lives up to Yon's standard brilliant writing and descriptions of the front lines in Iraq.

Here is a short excerpt of a car/helicopter chase of a trio of terrorists at over 100 mph. This is the chase that precedes an intense firefight that Yon describes afterward:

Kiowas are small, carrying just two people; they fly so low the two flying soldiers are practically infantrymen. The pilot swooped low and the "co-pilot" aimed his rifle at the Opel, firing three shots and blowing out the back window. The Kiowa swooped and banked hard in front of the car, firing three more shots through the front hood, the universal sign for "stop."

The car chase ended, but the men fled on foot up an alley. We approached in the Strykers and I heard Kurilla say on the radio, "Shots fired!" as he ducked for a moment then popped back up in the hatch. Kurilla continued, "Trail section clear the car and clear south to north! I'm going to block the back door on the north side!"About fifteen seconds later our ramp dropped. We ran into combat.

Please take ten minutes and read the entire dispatch, which details a firefight that shot up the unit's brave commander, Lt Col Kurilla, who Yon has written about many times. Yon has also included photos taken in the middle of the firefight, and his account of the action is nothing short of breathtaking. My heart was racing as I read it.


Then ask yourself (and maybe your local media) why this kind of reporting is not seen or heard in any other media outlets. Why do we only hear about body counts, evil American soldiers abusing prisoners, and poor, innocent men being held at Guantanamo Bay without trials? Why is the REAL support for our troops not reported on? Why do we instead have to suffer through endless Cindy Sheehan stories, or reports of anti-war protestors displaying mock coffins in front of Walter Reed Army Hospital (and our wounded troops)? Why are TRUE troop-support projects like Soldiers' Angels and Homes For Our Troops ignored, while phony support projects such as Code Pink and AirAmerica get all the coverage? Could it possibly be a liberal anti-war anti-military bias in the media?

Iraq: Liberal Media Bias vs Reality

As the weeks go by and the war in Iraq, and against terrorism, drags on, I find myself getting angrier and angrier at liberal bias in the mainstream media; and at the overall attitude toward the military by liberals. They claim to support the troops, yet they do whatever they can to undermine them and their mission.

Steven Bochco, creator of one of my favorite shows, "Hill Street Blues," has created a new show called "Over There". It is purportedly (I haven't watched it) set in Iraq and has a "Hill Street" feel to it: ensemble cast, gritty drama. Except these are soldiers, not cops. From what I hear, the show seems to be a great example of the mainstream media perpetuating the standard stereotypes about soldiers. Demeaning stereotypes such as "it's not really a volunteer army, it's a 'recruited' army and many of these soldiers came from broken homes and had no choice but to join"; that soldiers, in general, aren't all that bright; that soldiers do not support the war effort or their commanders. Good stuff like that.

In reality the liberals who perpetuate stuff like this probably do not know any people in the military, and have never really been exposed to it in real life. How else to explain their bizarre opinions of these heroic men and women who have volunteered to serve their country, putting their lives on the line every day?

Blogger Michael Fumento has written a piece on this show after having watched a few episodes. Michael is currently embedded in Iraq and has decades of military experience. The article is relatively short and I think illustrates well how the left in this country is really separated from mainstream thinking, and from reality.

For a real look at what's going on in Iraq and what kind of risks are willingly taking every day, real some military weblogs ("milblogs"). I have read a few and am looking for some to add to my list of regular reads. I stumbled into Michael Yon's blog this evening and found his story about taking down terrorists who tried to blow up a convoy he was in, riveting. Read it here. When I finished reading this particular dispatch, I found myself wondering just how long this blogger will survive in such an environment.

The contrast between the world portrayed by Bochco on TV, and the world in which Yon lives, could not be more stark. While they both claim to be describing the same place and the same conflict, the characters involved could not be more different.

The Dangers Of Liberal Bias
A few lines in Yon's latest piece really reminded me of how vocal liberals are endangering our troops and hurting the overall war effort. First, comments like the following remind me that liberals are being heard, even in Iraq:

I looked back to where we had been because the prisoner [the American soldiers always remind me that I should call prisoners "detainees"] was still there, handcuffed, and on his knees, with the radio transmitter lying beside him on the ground.

It seems harmless enough, but let's get real: "Detainees" is a non-judgemental word, while "prisoners" indicates they are being held for a reason. These are men who have been captured while attacking U.S. troops, trying to kill them. Why the concern for not hurting their feelings or judging them in even the simplest of ways? It gets worse. After the troops capture the guy who tried to blow them up, they cannot interrogate him properly and are offered help by the Iraqis; help which they have to reject, thanks to liberal pressure:

"Let him go and we will catch him again." But LTC Kurilla kept reiterating, “You know I can't give him to you. I might not agree with all the rules, but I must enforce them.""Give him to me, just for the night," the Chief said. "You can have him back tomorrow.""That I cannot do," Kurilla replied firmly. "If your police had been with us when we captured him, you could have him. But these are the rules."

In this case, no more troops were killed as a result of our inability to get the necessary information from this prisoner. Thank God. But it could easily have gone the other way, and the liberals who would prevent the army from letting the Iraqi police interrogate a prisoner to get the information they need to save lives, would be the first ones clamoring on the news for George Bush's head on a platter for killing our young soldiers (aka Cindy Sheehan), or reading the killed soldiers' names on national television (a la "Nightline").

Here is another comment, made in various forms to Yon by several soldiers:

Many quiet tears marked the true pain of the loss. A few soldiers wondered, Do people at home even care?

Indeed, Yon himself wonders this sometimes. Following an interview, he pondered this:

I walked back through the dark and did the radio interview by cell phone. During such interviews, I get the impression that people at home are losing faith in the effort, though we are winning. But at home they cannot see it, and when I said goodbye that time, I sat in the dark.

The message on Yon's blog and in other milblogs is that our soldiers are good at what they do, are proud to be serving and are loyal to our country and their commanders; and most importantly, that they are having a positive impact in Iraq. Yet you would never know it by the reports in the mainstream media. At a time when liberal college campuses are forbidding military recruiters on campus and liberal pundits can't stop talking about this "unelected" commander-in-chief having gone to war for no good reason, we need to start recognizing these people for who they are: enemies. They are endangering our soldiers with their ridiculous comments and campaigns. I, for one, have had just about enough. How about you?

Intelligent Design

Ever since President Bush suggested that Intelligent Design theory ought to be taught to kids in schools alongside Darwinism/Evolution, the blogosphere has been abuzz with people commenting. I ran across a number of comments at Media Matters, a liberal blog, regarding a column that Fox News's Tony Snow wrote on the subject. I found the article to be fair to both sides of the debate, but the comments were a bunch of unchallenged rants with very little basis in reality. I got the impression that folks just flat-out don't want to believe in God, and therefore cannot bring themselves to even consider subscribing to Intelligent Design theory. They don't have an argument against it, other than to say that those horrible Christians just want to rule the country as a theocracy and that such talk about higher powers is idiotic:

f*ck snow and all of the other theofascists who embrace science when it's convenient for them (computers, planes, cars, medicines, phones, etc) but shirk science when it threatens their dream of turning the US into jeezusland.

or this gem:

snow keeps talking about the supposed "missing links" in evolutionary theory. but the fact is that new discoveries are being made all the time, including the recent discovery of a dinosaur with feathers. intelligent design is nothing new. but with so many of the "missing links" being filled in, the religionists are looking for something to keep the idea of creation going, since the bible view is an obvious fairy tale.

I'm in the middle of a book that a friend of mine let me borrow called "The Case for a Creator." I'm not crazy about the way he wrote it, but the interviews are fascinating. The author interviews a dozen different scientists - all with accomplished resumes - to have them explain various aspects of what you could call Intelligent Design theory. That is, what is it and why should we take it seriously; and what about all those "traditional" theories like evolution and the Big Bang, etc.?

Intelligent Design is NOT Creationism. Creationism is based on the bible (e.g. God created the universe in 7 calendar days); ID is based on science (e.g. if the universe were expanding at a rate even a fraction faster than it is, life in the universe would be impossible). So why all the screaming about teaching it to kids? It has at least as much validity as Darwinism, which hasn't been proven after 150 years of trying.

Case in point, raised in this book: Darwin claims that all life on earth has a common ancestor. That is, we were lizards, or amoeba, long before we were humans. According to one scientist interviewed on the subject, Darwin himself acknowledges that to prove this theory, we would eventually need to unearth fossils of "transitional" creatures - creatures that exhibited a connection to more than one species of animal, and that no such fossils at the time had been found. He believed that soon afterward, the fossil record would vindicate him with these "missing link" fossils. 150 years later, we're still waiting for the first one. Claims that various fossils have met these criteria have been proven in every instance to be wrong or false. Yet we continue to wait, sure that he was right. And we continue to teach this theory to our children in schools, despite its lack of any evidence.

I'm not a scientist, and thus not qualified to refute any of these claims on either side. But I think the debate is a healthy one and I find the arguments that I've heard so far for ID to be compelling. Why can't liberals welcome this debate, as well?