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February 09, 2004
David Kopel on Gun Laws on National Review OnlineErasing a Clinton Legacy The omnibus appropriations bill passed by the Senate on Thursday contains several important reforms in federal gun laws, to protect the privacy of people who lawfully exercise their constitutional rights. Most of the reforms undo abuses of federal power introduced in the Clinton er. |
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Adams: I'm Tired of Neo-Cons Being Tired of Conservatives
I'm Tired of Neo-Cons Being Tired of Conservatives - by Jeff Adams - Sierra Times.com
February 02, 2004
Cato: Republicans Become the Party of Big Government
Cato Institute: Republicans Become the Party of Big Government
Excerpt:
In May 1995, the House approved a budget plan calling for the elimination of the departments of Education, Commerce, and Energy. At the time, the House determined that each of these departments was wasteful, ineffective, and unconstitutional. Indeed, the GOP presidential platform in 1996 stated: "The federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula ... this is why we will abolish the Department of Education."
It's true that many of the budget cuts of Reagan and of the GOP in the mid-1990s did not last very long. But at least they were pushing in the right direction. By contrast, President Bush has sought large spending increases for the Department of Education, for example. Education outlays increased from $36 billion to $61 billion in just the last three years.
A sharp contrast is evident when comparing Reagan and Bush on spending. While both boosted defense outlays during their first three years in office, Reagan offset that increase with a 13 percent cut in real discretionary nondefense spending. By contrast, Bush has increased nondefense spending by more than 20 percent in real terms.
Reagan was not able to follow through on many of his cuts because of solid opposition by the Democratic House. In the 1990s, President Clinton was an obstacle to many cuts, despite his conservative rhetoric. But today, Republicans have the White House and a majority in Congress and should be moving ahead with these long-sought reforms.
Instead, they have moved in an anti-reform direction in many cases. For example, they have turned their back on past Republican efforts to reform agriculture subsidies. The farm bill signed into law by President Bush in 2002 represented a reversal of the Republican 1996 Freedom to Farm Act. The 1996 Act had sought to finally wean farmers off federal price supports and subsidies. But the new farm bill embraced price supports and boosted farm subsidies.
The culture of spending seems to have prevailed over the current Republican Party. In his initial budget plan in 2001, President Bush noted: "For too long, politics in Washington has been divided between those who wanted Big Government without regard to cost and those who wanted Small Government without regard to need." Three years later it is clear that Bush has embraced Big Government without regard to cost.
January 17, 2004
President Bush has the best plan for our country's future
I can't even get started in pointing out how much is wrong with this op-ed. Describing Bush as a "penny pincher" is particularly perverse. The author describing himself as a libertarian is a knee-slapper too.
[Triangle Ed-Op] President Bush has the best plan for our country's future
by James Mack Jr.
January 13, 2004
December 24, 2003
Bartlett: Third parties don't have a chance
I hear this a lot from republicans. I wonder if it means that Libertarians are becoming uncreasingly threatening to them.
republican third party opponents seems to consistently understate the reality of the Libertarian threat. For example, Bartlett says:
it is true that Libertarian Party candidates at the state level have sometimes gotten enough votes to elect a losing Republican had he gotten their votes.
Sounds pretty insignificant. But when you restate it to conform with reality, it sounds much more impressive:
it is true that Libertarian Senate candidates have gotten enough votes to elect a losing Republican had he gotten their votes, in two consecutive elections.
December 06, 2003
Lindaman: Welcome Back, Rush...Now Retire!
AmericanDaily.com - Welcome Back, Rush...Now Retire! - Thomas Lindaman
August 02, 2003
Young Republican Convention Ruckus
This article is fairly long and more detailed than most folks would care to see.
Tempers Flare at Young Republicans Convention as Delegates Clash over Amendments -- GOPUSA
Read It Rating: .5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 90%
July 30, 2003
Bush Takes Responsibility for Iraq-Niger Claims, announces marriage meddling
This "defining marriage" business pisses me off. I checked my dictionary again, and as I expected, marriage is already defined, just like it was 7 years ago when I first wrote about this issue.
Of course, it wasn't an entirely fair test, because I looked in the same dictionary then as I did now. I'm a little scared to look in a newer one, lest I find that there really is no definition of marriage anymore -- thus requiring that the president and Congress get involved in the job of defining it (or, insanely laughably, put the definition in the Constitution).
Bush Takes Responsibility for Iraq Claims
President Touches on War, Gay Marriage, Economy in Wide-Ranging News Conference
By Mike Allen
The Washington Post
Wednesday 30 July 2003
President Bush took personal responsibility today for including flawed intelligence about Saddam Hussein in his State of the Union address after letting others take the blame for three weeks. But he said history will vindicate the war in Iraq, even though no unconventional weapons have been found.
...
Bush said administration lawyers are drafting a law that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, stopping short of endorsing the constitutional ban on gay marriage that is being championed by some Republican leaders following a Supreme Court ruling that effectively decriminalized sodomy.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -6
Learning Percentage: 45%
July 29, 2003
Nudists: Foley's attack on camp is malicious
Here's a quote from Foley in the article, in response to the charge that he's just using the camp as a hot issue to energize his bid to be promoted to the Senate:
''This might be an important issue that conservatives want a solution to, but I'm not doing this to energize the base,'' he said. ``I'd be pursuing this with the same vigor as I would if I were just seeking reelection.''
Meaning, I guess, "I'd be sticking my nose where it doesn't need to be for my own political gain, no matter what particular gain I was after."
The Miami Herald | 07/07/2003 | Nudists: Foley's attack on camp is malicious
BY PETER WALLSTEN
pwallsten@herald.com
In his quest for a seat in the U.S. Senate, Rep. Mark Foley has rankled a group that is barely covered in most elections: nudists.
Foley, of West Palm Beach, has hit the national TV and radio talk-show circuit in recent weeks to bash a Tampa-area summer camp not unlike most camps -- except that the boys and girls, ages 11-18, are naked.
Foley, a Republican hoping to replace Sen. Bob Graham, says that letting naked teenagers play together is immoral and potentially dangerous.
But ''naturists'' who say the camp exposes their children to a perfectly healthy and wholesome education see something more calculated: A candidate with a reputation as a social moderate on issues such as gay rights and abortion has found a convenient target to boost his reputation among conservatives who decide GOP primaries.
Read It Rating: 4.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 50%
July 24, 2003
Rep. Ron Paul, the GOP’s loner from the Lone Star State
‘I’ll probably win this argument’
Rep. Ron Paul, the GOP’s loner from the Lone Star State
By Jeff Dufour
Being Ron Paul would seem a frustrating proposition.
A strict opponent of almost everything government undertakes, the Texas Republican congressman usually finds himself on the losing end of legislative battles.
No more so than this year, in which the United States fought a war he didn’t support. Congress, meanwhile, enacted a tax cut he feels is too small, returned to deficits, expanded the role of government through the Department of Homeland Security and is poised to pass a Medicare reform package he abhors.
But, he said last week from his office in the Cannon Building, “I’m not frustrated because I didn’t expect very much. I think we’re getting what I have anticipated.”
Yet he’s not about to keep quiet. On July 10, he underscored why he’s often a thorn in his own party’s side as much as in the Democrats’. In a lengthy floor speech dubbed “Neo-Conned,” he lambasted the administration and its philosophical bedfellows.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 7.5
Learning Percentage: 65%
July 19, 2003
GOP Team Leader: Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger
One of the action items from the GOP Team Leader list today is to call talk radio stations asking why Democrats are politicizing security issues. They also have a talking points sheet on Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger. Thought I'd share it with you. I'll let you make your own determinations as to the worth of it. There's an interesting disclaimer at the end, and I've included that too (I bolded it as well), along with the copyright message.
Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger
September 11 crystallized
how vulnerable we are to terror, and showed what our enemies are willing and
able to do. President Bush promised the American people that he would not stand
idly while dangers gathered abroad. Saddam Hussein's regime was a grave and
gathering threat that the U.S. and our allies could not afford to ignore because
it:
- Possessed and used weapons
of mass destruction, and was known to be pursuing chemical, biological, and
nuclear weapons programs.
- Saddam Hussein's regime
used weapons of mass destruction against Iraqi civilians in Halabja in 1988,
and against the Iranian army in the 1980s.
- The Iraqi regime failed
to account for at least 30,000 liters of biological agents (including anthrax,
botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin), 3.9 tons of the nerve agent VX, nearly 30,000
empty munitions that could be filled with chemical agents, 550 artillery shells
filled with mustard agents, and over 6,000 chemical aerial bombs.
- Saddam maintained a cadre
of nuclear scientists that he called his "nuclear Mujahadeen," and
aggressively and covertly sought to acquire equipment necessary to manufacture
gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment. After the Gulf War in 1991, we discovered
that Saddam Hussein was several years closer to developing a nuclear weapon
than our intelligence experts predicted.
Repeatedly defied the
will of the international community that it abandon its weapons of mass destruction
program and submit to U.N. weapons inspections.
- Iraq defied 17 United
Nations Security Council resolutions over a 12-year period.
- Iraq repeatedly defied
and deceived international weapons inspectors. The semi-annual weapons updates
provided by Iraq to Dr. Blix contained over 600 instances of missing or incomplete
data on chemical, biological, and missile related imports, and Iraq was cited
for willful attempts to hide growth media that could be used to produce biological
agents.
Sponsored and harbored
known terrorists and terrorist groups.
- Iraq stoked terrorism
and instigated violence in Palestinian territories, paying the families of
suicide bombers $25,000 for attacking innocent civilians.
- Iraq harbored the notorious
Abu Nidal, whose terror organization carried out more than 90 terrorist attacks
in 20 countries that killed or injured nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans;
and Abu Abbas, who was responsible for seizing the Achille Lauro and killing
an American passenger.
- Iraq harbored Musab al-Zarqawi,
a known associate of Usama Bin Laden who directed an al-Qaida training camp
in eastern Afghanistan until late 2001. Zarqawi directed poisons/toxins lab
in northeast Iraq alongside the radical Ansar al-Islam group, and his terror
cell was responsible for assassinating an American foreign aid worker in 2002.
Represented a potentially
devastating nexus of weapons of mass destruction and terror organizations that
could have had threatened millions of civilians in the region and at home.
- With its weapons program
and known support for terrorism, Saddam's regime could have secretly passed
the world's deadliest weapons to terrorists. From information obtained in
Afghanistan, the United States knew that Al-Qaida was aggressively seeking
to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Was one of the most brutal
and repressive regimes in the world, which practiced ethnic cleansing, used
chemical weapons on its own citizens, and committed numerous atrocities.
- Saddam's ethnic cleansing
campaign displaced some 700,000 people throughout Iraq and destroyed more
than 2,000 Kurdish villages.
- The Iraqi regime had
more forced disappearance cases than any other country in the world.Ø
We are only beginning to uncover the truth about the Iraqi regime. Over the
last four months, U.S. and coalition forces, human rights groups, and Iraqi
citizens themselves have found:
- Mobile chemical and biological
labs of the kind described in Secretary Powell's presentation to the United
Nations.
- Nuclear arms materials,
including documents and components of a gas centrifuge used for uranium enrichment,
hidden in the garden of an Iraqi nuclear scientist.
- Mass graves of thousands
who were slaughtered by the regime.
- More than seven miles
worth of documents that are being analyzed to provide a fuller picture of
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.
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Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: -4
Learning Percentage: 0%
July 12, 2003
Ann Coulter and Joe McCarthy, sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g
If you find conservative pundit Ann Coulter to be shrill and irrational, then this article should provide you with reassurance that you weren't jumping to false conclusions. If you're a fan, I suggest reading this and other dissections of her books. It really sounds like she's playing fast and loose with the facts (on top of the shrillness and irrationality.)
Salon.com Books | Has she no shame?
Of course not, and now we know why: In her new book "Treason," Ann Coulter reveals that her role model is Joe McCarthy. And her grasp of facts is even worse than her judgment..
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joe Conason
July 4, 2003 | "Slander" is defined in Bouvier's Law Dictionary as "a false defamation (expressed in spoken words, signs, or gestures) which injures the character or reputation of the person defamed." The venerable American legal lexicon goes on to note that such defamatory words are sometimes "actionable in themselves, without proof of special damages," particularly when they impute "guilt of some offence for which the party, if guilty, might be indicted and punished by the criminal courts; as to call a person a 'traitor.'"
So how appropriate it is that in the rapidly growing Ann Coulter bibliography, last year's bestselling "Slander" is now followed by "Treason," her new catalog of defamation against every liberal and every Democrat -- indeed, every American who has dared to disagree with her or her spirit guide, Joe McCarthy -- as "traitors." And like a criminal who subconsciously wants to be caught, Coulter seems compelled to reveal at last her true role model. (Some of us had figured this out already.)
She not only lionizes the late senator, whose name is synonymous with demagogue, but with a vengeance also adopts his methods and pursues his partisan purposes. She sneers, she smears, she indicts by falsehood and distortion -- and she frankly expresses her desire to destroy any political party or person that resists Republican conservatism (as defined by her).
"Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America," according to her demonology. "They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn't slowed them down." And: "Liberals relentlessly attack their country, but we can't call them traitors, which they manifestly are, because that would be 'McCarthyism,' which never existed." (Never existed? Her idol gave his 1952 book that very word as its title.)
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: L4/R9
Freedom Rating: 1 (for exposing Coulter)
Learning Percentage: 95%
Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
t r u t h o u t - Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
The Associated Press
Wednesday 09 July 2003
RICHMOND, Va., July 8 (AP) — The former executive director of the Virginia Republican Party was sentenced today to three years of probation and fined $5,000 for illegally intercepting a Democratic Party conference call.
The former official, Edmund A. Mr. Matricardi III, apologized before Judge James R. Spencer of Federal District Court for illegally eavesdropping on two calls among the state's top Democrats in March of last year.
"I stand before you a humbled man," Mr. Matricardi, 35, said.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ?
Learning Percentage: 95%
July 08, 2003
Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
Note that this guy is already thinking about re-election in 2006, prior to the 2004 election. I wonder if anyone thought to ask him about his plans for his 8th, 9th and 10th terms after that.
A quote the promise-breaker:
"It seemed to me at that time term limits would be a good idea for the nation," he said. "I didn't fully understand what personal relationships and seniority could mean to the district."
Translation: "I had no idea how much power there was to grab in Washington. No way I'm giving this up."
And then there's this gem:
LoBiondo said because other congressmen have broken the term limit pledge, it would be unfair to people in his district to abide by it.
Translation: "Don't trust me, or my colleagues."
CNN.com - Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
VINELAND, New Jersey (AP) -- A New Jersey congressman elected on a promise to serve no more than 12 years Washington said Monday he will go back on his word and seek a seventh term.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 60%
June 30, 2003
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
TruthOut permacopy
Toward One-Party Rule
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
In principle, Mexico's 1917 Constitution established a democratic political system. In practice, until very recently Mexico was a one-party state. While the ruling party employed intimidation and electoral fraud when necessary, mainly it kept control through patronage, cronyism and corruption. All powerful interest groups, including the media, were effectively part of the party's political machine.
Such systems aren't unknown here — think of Richard J. Daley's Chicago. But can it happen to the United States as a whole? A forthcoming article in The Washington Monthly shows that the foundations for one-party rule are being laid right now.
In "Welcome to the Machine," Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation — from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America.
Mr. Confessore starts by describing the weekly meetings in which Senator Rick Santorum vets the hiring decisions of major lobbyists. These meetings are the culmination of Grover Norquist's "K Street Project," which places Republican activists in high-level corporate and industry lobbyist jobs — and excludes Democrats. According to yesterday's Washington Post, a Republican National Committee official recently boasted that "33 of 36 top-level Washington positions he is monitoring went to Republicans."
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -3.5
Learning Percentage: 40%
June 28, 2003
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
This is an extremely comprehensive obituary of a man who's going to inhabit a number of entries in U.S. History books for centuries to come.
There's a lot more to Strom Thurmond than one might think, given the caricature-in-real-life reputation that he's had for as long as I can remember. The article's title even serves as a capsule version of that image.
But there's a lot more to the story of Strom, as this article makes clear.
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
By Adam Clymer
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
Read It Rating: 10
Left/Right Rating: R7
Freedom Rating: mixed feelings
Learning Percentage: 70%
Cato: Republicans Become the Party of Big Government
Cato Institute: Republicans Become the Party of Big Government
Excerpt:
In May 1995, the House approved a budget plan calling for the elimination of the departments of Education, Commerce, and Energy. At the time, the House determined that each of these departments was wasteful, ineffective, and unconstitutional. Indeed, the GOP presidential platform in 1996 stated: "The federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula ... this is why we will abolish the Department of Education."
It's true that many of the budget cuts of Reagan and of the GOP in the mid-1990s did not last very long. But at least they were pushing in the right direction. By contrast, President Bush has sought large spending increases for the Department of Education, for example. Education outlays increased from $36 billion to $61 billion in just the last three years.
A sharp contrast is evident when comparing Reagan and Bush on spending. While both boosted defense outlays during their first three years in office, Reagan offset that increase with a 13 percent cut in real discretionary nondefense spending. By contrast, Bush has increased nondefense spending by more than 20 percent in real terms.
Reagan was not able to follow through on many of his cuts because of solid opposition by the Democratic House. In the 1990s, President Clinton was an obstacle to many cuts, despite his conservative rhetoric. But today, Republicans have the White House and a majority in Congress and should be moving ahead with these long-sought reforms.
Instead, they have moved in an anti-reform direction in many cases. For example, they have turned their back on past Republican efforts to reform agriculture subsidies. The farm bill signed into law by President Bush in 2002 represented a reversal of the Republican 1996 Freedom to Farm Act. The 1996 Act had sought to finally wean farmers off federal price supports and subsidies. But the new farm bill embraced price supports and boosted farm subsidies.
The culture of spending seems to have prevailed over the current Republican Party. In his initial budget plan in 2001, President Bush noted: "For too long, politics in Washington has been divided between those who wanted Big Government without regard to cost and those who wanted Small Government without regard to need." Three years later it is clear that Bush has embraced Big Government without regard to cost.
President Bush has the best plan for our country's future
I can't even get started in pointing out how much is wrong with this op-ed. Describing Bush as a "penny pincher" is particularly perverse. The author describing himself as a libertarian is a knee-slapper too.
[Triangle Ed-Op] President Bush has the best plan for our country's future
by James Mack Jr.
January 13, 2004
December 24, 2003
Bartlett: Third parties don't have a chance
I hear this a lot from republicans. I wonder if it means that Libertarians are becoming uncreasingly threatening to them.
republican third party opponents seems to consistently understate the reality of the Libertarian threat. For example, Bartlett says:
it is true that Libertarian Party candidates at the state level have sometimes gotten enough votes to elect a losing Republican had he gotten their votes.
Sounds pretty insignificant. But when you restate it to conform with reality, it sounds much more impressive:
it is true that Libertarian Senate candidates have gotten enough votes to elect a losing Republican had he gotten their votes, in two consecutive elections.
December 06, 2003
Lindaman: Welcome Back, Rush...Now Retire!
AmericanDaily.com - Welcome Back, Rush...Now Retire! - Thomas Lindaman
August 02, 2003
Young Republican Convention Ruckus
This article is fairly long and more detailed than most folks would care to see.
Tempers Flare at Young Republicans Convention as Delegates Clash over Amendments -- GOPUSA
Read It Rating: .5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 90%
July 30, 2003
Bush Takes Responsibility for Iraq-Niger Claims, announces marriage meddling
This "defining marriage" business pisses me off. I checked my dictionary again, and as I expected, marriage is already defined, just like it was 7 years ago when I first wrote about this issue.
Of course, it wasn't an entirely fair test, because I looked in the same dictionary then as I did now. I'm a little scared to look in a newer one, lest I find that there really is no definition of marriage anymore -- thus requiring that the president and Congress get involved in the job of defining it (or, insanely laughably, put the definition in the Constitution).
Bush Takes Responsibility for Iraq Claims
President Touches on War, Gay Marriage, Economy in Wide-Ranging News Conference
By Mike Allen
The Washington Post
Wednesday 30 July 2003
President Bush took personal responsibility today for including flawed intelligence about Saddam Hussein in his State of the Union address after letting others take the blame for three weeks. But he said history will vindicate the war in Iraq, even though no unconventional weapons have been found.
...
Bush said administration lawyers are drafting a law that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, stopping short of endorsing the constitutional ban on gay marriage that is being championed by some Republican leaders following a Supreme Court ruling that effectively decriminalized sodomy.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -6
Learning Percentage: 45%
July 29, 2003
Nudists: Foley's attack on camp is malicious
Here's a quote from Foley in the article, in response to the charge that he's just using the camp as a hot issue to energize his bid to be promoted to the Senate:
''This might be an important issue that conservatives want a solution to, but I'm not doing this to energize the base,'' he said. ``I'd be pursuing this with the same vigor as I would if I were just seeking reelection.''
Meaning, I guess, "I'd be sticking my nose where it doesn't need to be for my own political gain, no matter what particular gain I was after."
The Miami Herald | 07/07/2003 | Nudists: Foley's attack on camp is malicious
BY PETER WALLSTEN
pwallsten@herald.com
In his quest for a seat in the U.S. Senate, Rep. Mark Foley has rankled a group that is barely covered in most elections: nudists.
Foley, of West Palm Beach, has hit the national TV and radio talk-show circuit in recent weeks to bash a Tampa-area summer camp not unlike most camps -- except that the boys and girls, ages 11-18, are naked.
Foley, a Republican hoping to replace Sen. Bob Graham, says that letting naked teenagers play together is immoral and potentially dangerous.
But ''naturists'' who say the camp exposes their children to a perfectly healthy and wholesome education see something more calculated: A candidate with a reputation as a social moderate on issues such as gay rights and abortion has found a convenient target to boost his reputation among conservatives who decide GOP primaries.
Read It Rating: 4.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 50%
July 24, 2003
Rep. Ron Paul, the GOP’s loner from the Lone Star State
‘I’ll probably win this argument’
Rep. Ron Paul, the GOP’s loner from the Lone Star State
By Jeff Dufour
Being Ron Paul would seem a frustrating proposition.
A strict opponent of almost everything government undertakes, the Texas Republican congressman usually finds himself on the losing end of legislative battles.
No more so than this year, in which the United States fought a war he didn’t support. Congress, meanwhile, enacted a tax cut he feels is too small, returned to deficits, expanded the role of government through the Department of Homeland Security and is poised to pass a Medicare reform package he abhors.
But, he said last week from his office in the Cannon Building, “I’m not frustrated because I didn’t expect very much. I think we’re getting what I have anticipated.”
Yet he’s not about to keep quiet. On July 10, he underscored why he’s often a thorn in his own party’s side as much as in the Democrats’. In a lengthy floor speech dubbed “Neo-Conned,” he lambasted the administration and its philosophical bedfellows.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 7.5
Learning Percentage: 65%
July 19, 2003
GOP Team Leader: Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger
One of the action items from the GOP Team Leader list today is to call talk radio stations asking why Democrats are politicizing security issues. They also have a talking points sheet on Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger. Thought I'd share it with you. I'll let you make your own determinations as to the worth of it. There's an interesting disclaimer at the end, and I've included that too (I bolded it as well), along with the copyright message.
Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger
September 11 crystallized
how vulnerable we are to terror, and showed what our enemies are willing and
able to do. President Bush promised the American people that he would not stand
idly while dangers gathered abroad. Saddam Hussein's regime was a grave and
gathering threat that the U.S. and our allies could not afford to ignore because
it:
- Possessed and used weapons
of mass destruction, and was known to be pursuing chemical, biological, and
nuclear weapons programs.
- Saddam Hussein's regime
used weapons of mass destruction against Iraqi civilians in Halabja in 1988,
and against the Iranian army in the 1980s.
- The Iraqi regime failed
to account for at least 30,000 liters of biological agents (including anthrax,
botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin), 3.9 tons of the nerve agent VX, nearly 30,000
empty munitions that could be filled with chemical agents, 550 artillery shells
filled with mustard agents, and over 6,000 chemical aerial bombs.
- Saddam maintained a cadre
of nuclear scientists that he called his "nuclear Mujahadeen," and
aggressively and covertly sought to acquire equipment necessary to manufacture
gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment. After the Gulf War in 1991, we discovered
that Saddam Hussein was several years closer to developing a nuclear weapon
than our intelligence experts predicted.
Repeatedly defied the
will of the international community that it abandon its weapons of mass destruction
program and submit to U.N. weapons inspections.
- Iraq defied 17 United
Nations Security Council resolutions over a 12-year period.
- Iraq repeatedly defied
and deceived international weapons inspectors. The semi-annual weapons updates
provided by Iraq to Dr. Blix contained over 600 instances of missing or incomplete
data on chemical, biological, and missile related imports, and Iraq was cited
for willful attempts to hide growth media that could be used to produce biological
agents.
Sponsored and harbored
known terrorists and terrorist groups.
- Iraq stoked terrorism
and instigated violence in Palestinian territories, paying the families of
suicide bombers $25,000 for attacking innocent civilians.
- Iraq harbored the notorious
Abu Nidal, whose terror organization carried out more than 90 terrorist attacks
in 20 countries that killed or injured nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans;
and Abu Abbas, who was responsible for seizing the Achille Lauro and killing
an American passenger.
- Iraq harbored Musab al-Zarqawi,
a known associate of Usama Bin Laden who directed an al-Qaida training camp
in eastern Afghanistan until late 2001. Zarqawi directed poisons/toxins lab
in northeast Iraq alongside the radical Ansar al-Islam group, and his terror
cell was responsible for assassinating an American foreign aid worker in 2002.
Represented a potentially
devastating nexus of weapons of mass destruction and terror organizations that
could have had threatened millions of civilians in the region and at home.
- With its weapons program
and known support for terrorism, Saddam's regime could have secretly passed
the world's deadliest weapons to terrorists. From information obtained in
Afghanistan, the United States knew that Al-Qaida was aggressively seeking
to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Was one of the most brutal
and repressive regimes in the world, which practiced ethnic cleansing, used
chemical weapons on its own citizens, and committed numerous atrocities.
- Saddam's ethnic cleansing
campaign displaced some 700,000 people throughout Iraq and destroyed more
than 2,000 Kurdish villages.
- The Iraqi regime had
more forced disappearance cases than any other country in the world.Ø
We are only beginning to uncover the truth about the Iraqi regime. Over the
last four months, U.S. and coalition forces, human rights groups, and Iraqi
citizens themselves have found:
- Mobile chemical and biological
labs of the kind described in Secretary Powell's presentation to the United
Nations.
- Nuclear arms materials,
including documents and components of a gas centrifuge used for uranium enrichment,
hidden in the garden of an Iraqi nuclear scientist.
- Mass graves of thousands
who were slaughtered by the regime.
- More than seven miles
worth of documents that are being analyzed to provide a fuller picture of
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.
Action
Center | Races | My State |
Bills/Legislation | My
Issues | Policy Center | Got Info? | GOPoints
| Outstanding Leader
home | faqs
| links | search
| my profile
| log
out | build my team
Copyright © 2003 Republican National Committee. Paid for by The Republican
National Committee.
The information provided on this page
is provided by a third-party, and not the Republican National Committee.
Although the RNC is not responsible for the accuracy or validity of this third-party
information, if you find invalid, or incorrect information,
please let us know by clicking here and we will forward the suggested correction
to the responsible source.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: -4
Learning Percentage: 0%
July 12, 2003
Ann Coulter and Joe McCarthy, sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g
If you find conservative pundit Ann Coulter to be shrill and irrational, then this article should provide you with reassurance that you weren't jumping to false conclusions. If you're a fan, I suggest reading this and other dissections of her books. It really sounds like she's playing fast and loose with the facts (on top of the shrillness and irrationality.)
Salon.com Books | Has she no shame?
Of course not, and now we know why: In her new book "Treason," Ann Coulter reveals that her role model is Joe McCarthy. And her grasp of facts is even worse than her judgment..
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joe Conason
July 4, 2003 | "Slander" is defined in Bouvier's Law Dictionary as "a false defamation (expressed in spoken words, signs, or gestures) which injures the character or reputation of the person defamed." The venerable American legal lexicon goes on to note that such defamatory words are sometimes "actionable in themselves, without proof of special damages," particularly when they impute "guilt of some offence for which the party, if guilty, might be indicted and punished by the criminal courts; as to call a person a 'traitor.'"
So how appropriate it is that in the rapidly growing Ann Coulter bibliography, last year's bestselling "Slander" is now followed by "Treason," her new catalog of defamation against every liberal and every Democrat -- indeed, every American who has dared to disagree with her or her spirit guide, Joe McCarthy -- as "traitors." And like a criminal who subconsciously wants to be caught, Coulter seems compelled to reveal at last her true role model. (Some of us had figured this out already.)
She not only lionizes the late senator, whose name is synonymous with demagogue, but with a vengeance also adopts his methods and pursues his partisan purposes. She sneers, she smears, she indicts by falsehood and distortion -- and she frankly expresses her desire to destroy any political party or person that resists Republican conservatism (as defined by her).
"Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America," according to her demonology. "They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn't slowed them down." And: "Liberals relentlessly attack their country, but we can't call them traitors, which they manifestly are, because that would be 'McCarthyism,' which never existed." (Never existed? Her idol gave his 1952 book that very word as its title.)
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: L4/R9
Freedom Rating: 1 (for exposing Coulter)
Learning Percentage: 95%
Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
t r u t h o u t - Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
The Associated Press
Wednesday 09 July 2003
RICHMOND, Va., July 8 (AP) — The former executive director of the Virginia Republican Party was sentenced today to three years of probation and fined $5,000 for illegally intercepting a Democratic Party conference call.
The former official, Edmund A. Mr. Matricardi III, apologized before Judge James R. Spencer of Federal District Court for illegally eavesdropping on two calls among the state's top Democrats in March of last year.
"I stand before you a humbled man," Mr. Matricardi, 35, said.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ?
Learning Percentage: 95%
July 08, 2003
Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
Note that this guy is already thinking about re-election in 2006, prior to the 2004 election. I wonder if anyone thought to ask him about his plans for his 8th, 9th and 10th terms after that.
A quote the promise-breaker:
"It seemed to me at that time term limits would be a good idea for the nation," he said. "I didn't fully understand what personal relationships and seniority could mean to the district."
Translation: "I had no idea how much power there was to grab in Washington. No way I'm giving this up."
And then there's this gem:
LoBiondo said because other congressmen have broken the term limit pledge, it would be unfair to people in his district to abide by it.
Translation: "Don't trust me, or my colleagues."
CNN.com - Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
VINELAND, New Jersey (AP) -- A New Jersey congressman elected on a promise to serve no more than 12 years Washington said Monday he will go back on his word and seek a seventh term.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 60%
June 30, 2003
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
TruthOut permacopy
Toward One-Party Rule
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
In principle, Mexico's 1917 Constitution established a democratic political system. In practice, until very recently Mexico was a one-party state. While the ruling party employed intimidation and electoral fraud when necessary, mainly it kept control through patronage, cronyism and corruption. All powerful interest groups, including the media, were effectively part of the party's political machine.
Such systems aren't unknown here — think of Richard J. Daley's Chicago. But can it happen to the United States as a whole? A forthcoming article in The Washington Monthly shows that the foundations for one-party rule are being laid right now.
In "Welcome to the Machine," Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation — from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America.
Mr. Confessore starts by describing the weekly meetings in which Senator Rick Santorum vets the hiring decisions of major lobbyists. These meetings are the culmination of Grover Norquist's "K Street Project," which places Republican activists in high-level corporate and industry lobbyist jobs — and excludes Democrats. According to yesterday's Washington Post, a Republican National Committee official recently boasted that "33 of 36 top-level Washington positions he is monitoring went to Republicans."
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -3.5
Learning Percentage: 40%
June 28, 2003
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
This is an extremely comprehensive obituary of a man who's going to inhabit a number of entries in U.S. History books for centuries to come.
There's a lot more to Strom Thurmond than one might think, given the caricature-in-real-life reputation that he's had for as long as I can remember. The article's title even serves as a capsule version of that image.
But there's a lot more to the story of Strom, as this article makes clear.
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
By Adam Clymer
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
Read It Rating: 10
Left/Right Rating: R7
Freedom Rating: mixed feelings
Learning Percentage: 70%
Bartlett: Third parties don't have a chance
I hear this a lot from republicans. I wonder if it means that Libertarians are becoming uncreasingly threatening to them.
republican third party opponents seems to consistently understate the reality of the Libertarian threat. For example, Bartlett says:
it is true that Libertarian Party candidates at the state level have sometimes gotten enough votes to elect a losing Republican had he gotten their votes.
Sounds pretty insignificant. But when you restate it to conform with reality, it sounds much more impressive:
it is true that Libertarian Senate candidates have gotten enough votes to elect a losing Republican had he gotten their votes, in two consecutive elections.
December 06, 2003
Lindaman: Welcome Back, Rush...Now Retire!
AmericanDaily.com - Welcome Back, Rush...Now Retire! - Thomas Lindaman
August 02, 2003
Young Republican Convention Ruckus
This article is fairly long and more detailed than most folks would care to see.
Tempers Flare at Young Republicans Convention as Delegates Clash over Amendments -- GOPUSA
Read It Rating: .5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 90%
July 30, 2003
Bush Takes Responsibility for Iraq-Niger Claims, announces marriage meddling
This "defining marriage" business pisses me off. I checked my dictionary again, and as I expected, marriage is already defined, just like it was 7 years ago when I first wrote about this issue.
Of course, it wasn't an entirely fair test, because I looked in the same dictionary then as I did now. I'm a little scared to look in a newer one, lest I find that there really is no definition of marriage anymore -- thus requiring that the president and Congress get involved in the job of defining it (or, insanely laughably, put the definition in the Constitution).
Bush Takes Responsibility for Iraq Claims
President Touches on War, Gay Marriage, Economy in Wide-Ranging News Conference
By Mike Allen
The Washington Post
Wednesday 30 July 2003
President Bush took personal responsibility today for including flawed intelligence about Saddam Hussein in his State of the Union address after letting others take the blame for three weeks. But he said history will vindicate the war in Iraq, even though no unconventional weapons have been found.
...
Bush said administration lawyers are drafting a law that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, stopping short of endorsing the constitutional ban on gay marriage that is being championed by some Republican leaders following a Supreme Court ruling that effectively decriminalized sodomy.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -6
Learning Percentage: 45%
July 29, 2003
Nudists: Foley's attack on camp is malicious
Here's a quote from Foley in the article, in response to the charge that he's just using the camp as a hot issue to energize his bid to be promoted to the Senate:
''This might be an important issue that conservatives want a solution to, but I'm not doing this to energize the base,'' he said. ``I'd be pursuing this with the same vigor as I would if I were just seeking reelection.''
Meaning, I guess, "I'd be sticking my nose where it doesn't need to be for my own political gain, no matter what particular gain I was after."
The Miami Herald | 07/07/2003 | Nudists: Foley's attack on camp is malicious
BY PETER WALLSTEN
pwallsten@herald.com
In his quest for a seat in the U.S. Senate, Rep. Mark Foley has rankled a group that is barely covered in most elections: nudists.
Foley, of West Palm Beach, has hit the national TV and radio talk-show circuit in recent weeks to bash a Tampa-area summer camp not unlike most camps -- except that the boys and girls, ages 11-18, are naked.
Foley, a Republican hoping to replace Sen. Bob Graham, says that letting naked teenagers play together is immoral and potentially dangerous.
But ''naturists'' who say the camp exposes their children to a perfectly healthy and wholesome education see something more calculated: A candidate with a reputation as a social moderate on issues such as gay rights and abortion has found a convenient target to boost his reputation among conservatives who decide GOP primaries.
Read It Rating: 4.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 50%
July 24, 2003
Rep. Ron Paul, the GOP’s loner from the Lone Star State
‘I’ll probably win this argument’
Rep. Ron Paul, the GOP’s loner from the Lone Star State
By Jeff Dufour
Being Ron Paul would seem a frustrating proposition.
A strict opponent of almost everything government undertakes, the Texas Republican congressman usually finds himself on the losing end of legislative battles.
No more so than this year, in which the United States fought a war he didn’t support. Congress, meanwhile, enacted a tax cut he feels is too small, returned to deficits, expanded the role of government through the Department of Homeland Security and is poised to pass a Medicare reform package he abhors.
But, he said last week from his office in the Cannon Building, “I’m not frustrated because I didn’t expect very much. I think we’re getting what I have anticipated.”
Yet he’s not about to keep quiet. On July 10, he underscored why he’s often a thorn in his own party’s side as much as in the Democrats’. In a lengthy floor speech dubbed “Neo-Conned,” he lambasted the administration and its philosophical bedfellows.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 7.5
Learning Percentage: 65%
July 19, 2003
GOP Team Leader: Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger
One of the action items from the GOP Team Leader list today is to call talk radio stations asking why Democrats are politicizing security issues. They also have a talking points sheet on Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger. Thought I'd share it with you. I'll let you make your own determinations as to the worth of it. There's an interesting disclaimer at the end, and I've included that too (I bolded it as well), along with the copyright message.
Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger
September 11 crystallized
how vulnerable we are to terror, and showed what our enemies are willing and
able to do. President Bush promised the American people that he would not stand
idly while dangers gathered abroad. Saddam Hussein's regime was a grave and
gathering threat that the U.S. and our allies could not afford to ignore because
it:
- Possessed and used weapons
of mass destruction, and was known to be pursuing chemical, biological, and
nuclear weapons programs.
- Saddam Hussein's regime
used weapons of mass destruction against Iraqi civilians in Halabja in 1988,
and against the Iranian army in the 1980s.
- The Iraqi regime failed
to account for at least 30,000 liters of biological agents (including anthrax,
botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin), 3.9 tons of the nerve agent VX, nearly 30,000
empty munitions that could be filled with chemical agents, 550 artillery shells
filled with mustard agents, and over 6,000 chemical aerial bombs.
- Saddam maintained a cadre
of nuclear scientists that he called his "nuclear Mujahadeen," and
aggressively and covertly sought to acquire equipment necessary to manufacture
gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment. After the Gulf War in 1991, we discovered
that Saddam Hussein was several years closer to developing a nuclear weapon
than our intelligence experts predicted.
Repeatedly defied the
will of the international community that it abandon its weapons of mass destruction
program and submit to U.N. weapons inspections.
- Iraq defied 17 United
Nations Security Council resolutions over a 12-year period.
- Iraq repeatedly defied
and deceived international weapons inspectors. The semi-annual weapons updates
provided by Iraq to Dr. Blix contained over 600 instances of missing or incomplete
data on chemical, biological, and missile related imports, and Iraq was cited
for willful attempts to hide growth media that could be used to produce biological
agents.
Sponsored and harbored
known terrorists and terrorist groups.
- Iraq stoked terrorism
and instigated violence in Palestinian territories, paying the families of
suicide bombers $25,000 for attacking innocent civilians.
- Iraq harbored the notorious
Abu Nidal, whose terror organization carried out more than 90 terrorist attacks
in 20 countries that killed or injured nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans;
and Abu Abbas, who was responsible for seizing the Achille Lauro and killing
an American passenger.
- Iraq harbored Musab al-Zarqawi,
a known associate of Usama Bin Laden who directed an al-Qaida training camp
in eastern Afghanistan until late 2001. Zarqawi directed poisons/toxins lab
in northeast Iraq alongside the radical Ansar al-Islam group, and his terror
cell was responsible for assassinating an American foreign aid worker in 2002.
Represented a potentially
devastating nexus of weapons of mass destruction and terror organizations that
could have had threatened millions of civilians in the region and at home.
- With its weapons program
and known support for terrorism, Saddam's regime could have secretly passed
the world's deadliest weapons to terrorists. From information obtained in
Afghanistan, the United States knew that Al-Qaida was aggressively seeking
to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Was one of the most brutal
and repressive regimes in the world, which practiced ethnic cleansing, used
chemical weapons on its own citizens, and committed numerous atrocities.
- Saddam's ethnic cleansing
campaign displaced some 700,000 people throughout Iraq and destroyed more
than 2,000 Kurdish villages.
- The Iraqi regime had
more forced disappearance cases than any other country in the world.Ø
We are only beginning to uncover the truth about the Iraqi regime. Over the
last four months, U.S. and coalition forces, human rights groups, and Iraqi
citizens themselves have found:
- Mobile chemical and biological
labs of the kind described in Secretary Powell's presentation to the United
Nations.
- Nuclear arms materials,
including documents and components of a gas centrifuge used for uranium enrichment,
hidden in the garden of an Iraqi nuclear scientist.
- Mass graves of thousands
who were slaughtered by the regime.
- More than seven miles
worth of documents that are being analyzed to provide a fuller picture of
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.
Action
Center | Races | My State |
Bills/Legislation | My
Issues | Policy Center | Got Info? | GOPoints
| Outstanding Leader
home | faqs
| links | search
| my profile
| log
out | build my team
Copyright © 2003 Republican National Committee. Paid for by The Republican
National Committee.
The information provided on this page
is provided by a third-party, and not the Republican National Committee.
Although the RNC is not responsible for the accuracy or validity of this third-party
information, if you find invalid, or incorrect information,
please let us know by clicking here and we will forward the suggested correction
to the responsible source.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: -4
Learning Percentage: 0%
July 12, 2003
Ann Coulter and Joe McCarthy, sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g
If you find conservative pundit Ann Coulter to be shrill and irrational, then this article should provide you with reassurance that you weren't jumping to false conclusions. If you're a fan, I suggest reading this and other dissections of her books. It really sounds like she's playing fast and loose with the facts (on top of the shrillness and irrationality.)
Salon.com Books | Has she no shame?
Of course not, and now we know why: In her new book "Treason," Ann Coulter reveals that her role model is Joe McCarthy. And her grasp of facts is even worse than her judgment..
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joe Conason
July 4, 2003 | "Slander" is defined in Bouvier's Law Dictionary as "a false defamation (expressed in spoken words, signs, or gestures) which injures the character or reputation of the person defamed." The venerable American legal lexicon goes on to note that such defamatory words are sometimes "actionable in themselves, without proof of special damages," particularly when they impute "guilt of some offence for which the party, if guilty, might be indicted and punished by the criminal courts; as to call a person a 'traitor.'"
So how appropriate it is that in the rapidly growing Ann Coulter bibliography, last year's bestselling "Slander" is now followed by "Treason," her new catalog of defamation against every liberal and every Democrat -- indeed, every American who has dared to disagree with her or her spirit guide, Joe McCarthy -- as "traitors." And like a criminal who subconsciously wants to be caught, Coulter seems compelled to reveal at last her true role model. (Some of us had figured this out already.)
She not only lionizes the late senator, whose name is synonymous with demagogue, but with a vengeance also adopts his methods and pursues his partisan purposes. She sneers, she smears, she indicts by falsehood and distortion -- and she frankly expresses her desire to destroy any political party or person that resists Republican conservatism (as defined by her).
"Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America," according to her demonology. "They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn't slowed them down." And: "Liberals relentlessly attack their country, but we can't call them traitors, which they manifestly are, because that would be 'McCarthyism,' which never existed." (Never existed? Her idol gave his 1952 book that very word as its title.)
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: L4/R9
Freedom Rating: 1 (for exposing Coulter)
Learning Percentage: 95%
Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
t r u t h o u t - Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
The Associated Press
Wednesday 09 July 2003
RICHMOND, Va., July 8 (AP) — The former executive director of the Virginia Republican Party was sentenced today to three years of probation and fined $5,000 for illegally intercepting a Democratic Party conference call.
The former official, Edmund A. Mr. Matricardi III, apologized before Judge James R. Spencer of Federal District Court for illegally eavesdropping on two calls among the state's top Democrats in March of last year.
"I stand before you a humbled man," Mr. Matricardi, 35, said.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ?
Learning Percentage: 95%
July 08, 2003
Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
Note that this guy is already thinking about re-election in 2006, prior to the 2004 election. I wonder if anyone thought to ask him about his plans for his 8th, 9th and 10th terms after that.
A quote the promise-breaker:
"It seemed to me at that time term limits would be a good idea for the nation," he said. "I didn't fully understand what personal relationships and seniority could mean to the district."
Translation: "I had no idea how much power there was to grab in Washington. No way I'm giving this up."
And then there's this gem:
LoBiondo said because other congressmen have broken the term limit pledge, it would be unfair to people in his district to abide by it.
Translation: "Don't trust me, or my colleagues."
CNN.com - Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
VINELAND, New Jersey (AP) -- A New Jersey congressman elected on a promise to serve no more than 12 years Washington said Monday he will go back on his word and seek a seventh term.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 60%
June 30, 2003
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
TruthOut permacopy
Toward One-Party Rule
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
In principle, Mexico's 1917 Constitution established a democratic political system. In practice, until very recently Mexico was a one-party state. While the ruling party employed intimidation and electoral fraud when necessary, mainly it kept control through patronage, cronyism and corruption. All powerful interest groups, including the media, were effectively part of the party's political machine.
Such systems aren't unknown here — think of Richard J. Daley's Chicago. But can it happen to the United States as a whole? A forthcoming article in The Washington Monthly shows that the foundations for one-party rule are being laid right now.
In "Welcome to the Machine," Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation — from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America.
Mr. Confessore starts by describing the weekly meetings in which Senator Rick Santorum vets the hiring decisions of major lobbyists. These meetings are the culmination of Grover Norquist's "K Street Project," which places Republican activists in high-level corporate and industry lobbyist jobs — and excludes Democrats. According to yesterday's Washington Post, a Republican National Committee official recently boasted that "33 of 36 top-level Washington positions he is monitoring went to Republicans."
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -3.5
Learning Percentage: 40%
June 28, 2003
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
This is an extremely comprehensive obituary of a man who's going to inhabit a number of entries in U.S. History books for centuries to come.
There's a lot more to Strom Thurmond than one might think, given the caricature-in-real-life reputation that he's had for as long as I can remember. The article's title even serves as a capsule version of that image.
But there's a lot more to the story of Strom, as this article makes clear.
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
By Adam Clymer
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
Read It Rating: 10
Left/Right Rating: R7
Freedom Rating: mixed feelings
Learning Percentage: 70%
Lindaman: Welcome Back, Rush...Now Retire!
AmericanDaily.com - Welcome Back, Rush...Now Retire! - Thomas Lindaman
Young Republican Convention Ruckus
This article is fairly long and more detailed than most folks would care to see.
Tempers Flare at Young Republicans Convention as Delegates Clash over Amendments -- GOPUSA
Read It Rating: .5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 90%
July 30, 2003
Bush Takes Responsibility for Iraq-Niger Claims, announces marriage meddling
This "defining marriage" business pisses me off. I checked my dictionary again, and as I expected, marriage is already defined, just like it was 7 years ago when I first wrote about this issue.
Of course, it wasn't an entirely fair test, because I looked in the same dictionary then as I did now. I'm a little scared to look in a newer one, lest I find that there really is no definition of marriage anymore -- thus requiring that the president and Congress get involved in the job of defining it (or, insanely laughably, put the definition in the Constitution).
Bush Takes Responsibility for Iraq Claims
President Touches on War, Gay Marriage, Economy in Wide-Ranging News Conference
By Mike Allen
The Washington Post
Wednesday 30 July 2003
President Bush took personal responsibility today for including flawed intelligence about Saddam Hussein in his State of the Union address after letting others take the blame for three weeks. But he said history will vindicate the war in Iraq, even though no unconventional weapons have been found.
...
Bush said administration lawyers are drafting a law that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, stopping short of endorsing the constitutional ban on gay marriage that is being championed by some Republican leaders following a Supreme Court ruling that effectively decriminalized sodomy.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -6
Learning Percentage: 45%
July 29, 2003
Nudists: Foley's attack on camp is malicious
Here's a quote from Foley in the article, in response to the charge that he's just using the camp as a hot issue to energize his bid to be promoted to the Senate:
''This might be an important issue that conservatives want a solution to, but I'm not doing this to energize the base,'' he said. ``I'd be pursuing this with the same vigor as I would if I were just seeking reelection.''
Meaning, I guess, "I'd be sticking my nose where it doesn't need to be for my own political gain, no matter what particular gain I was after."
The Miami Herald | 07/07/2003 | Nudists: Foley's attack on camp is malicious
BY PETER WALLSTEN
pwallsten@herald.com
In his quest for a seat in the U.S. Senate, Rep. Mark Foley has rankled a group that is barely covered in most elections: nudists.
Foley, of West Palm Beach, has hit the national TV and radio talk-show circuit in recent weeks to bash a Tampa-area summer camp not unlike most camps -- except that the boys and girls, ages 11-18, are naked.
Foley, a Republican hoping to replace Sen. Bob Graham, says that letting naked teenagers play together is immoral and potentially dangerous.
But ''naturists'' who say the camp exposes their children to a perfectly healthy and wholesome education see something more calculated: A candidate with a reputation as a social moderate on issues such as gay rights and abortion has found a convenient target to boost his reputation among conservatives who decide GOP primaries.
Read It Rating: 4.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 50%
July 24, 2003
Rep. Ron Paul, the GOP’s loner from the Lone Star State
‘I’ll probably win this argument’
Rep. Ron Paul, the GOP’s loner from the Lone Star State
By Jeff Dufour
Being Ron Paul would seem a frustrating proposition.
A strict opponent of almost everything government undertakes, the Texas Republican congressman usually finds himself on the losing end of legislative battles.
No more so than this year, in which the United States fought a war he didn’t support. Congress, meanwhile, enacted a tax cut he feels is too small, returned to deficits, expanded the role of government through the Department of Homeland Security and is poised to pass a Medicare reform package he abhors.
But, he said last week from his office in the Cannon Building, “I’m not frustrated because I didn’t expect very much. I think we’re getting what I have anticipated.”
Yet he’s not about to keep quiet. On July 10, he underscored why he’s often a thorn in his own party’s side as much as in the Democrats’. In a lengthy floor speech dubbed “Neo-Conned,” he lambasted the administration and its philosophical bedfellows.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 7.5
Learning Percentage: 65%
July 19, 2003
GOP Team Leader: Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger
One of the action items from the GOP Team Leader list today is to call talk radio stations asking why Democrats are politicizing security issues. They also have a talking points sheet on Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger. Thought I'd share it with you. I'll let you make your own determinations as to the worth of it. There's an interesting disclaimer at the end, and I've included that too (I bolded it as well), along with the copyright message.
Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger
September 11 crystallized
how vulnerable we are to terror, and showed what our enemies are willing and
able to do. President Bush promised the American people that he would not stand
idly while dangers gathered abroad. Saddam Hussein's regime was a grave and
gathering threat that the U.S. and our allies could not afford to ignore because
it:
- Possessed and used weapons
of mass destruction, and was known to be pursuing chemical, biological, and
nuclear weapons programs.
- Saddam Hussein's regime
used weapons of mass destruction against Iraqi civilians in Halabja in 1988,
and against the Iranian army in the 1980s.
- The Iraqi regime failed
to account for at least 30,000 liters of biological agents (including anthrax,
botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin), 3.9 tons of the nerve agent VX, nearly 30,000
empty munitions that could be filled with chemical agents, 550 artillery shells
filled with mustard agents, and over 6,000 chemical aerial bombs.
- Saddam maintained a cadre
of nuclear scientists that he called his "nuclear Mujahadeen," and
aggressively and covertly sought to acquire equipment necessary to manufacture
gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment. After the Gulf War in 1991, we discovered
that Saddam Hussein was several years closer to developing a nuclear weapon
than our intelligence experts predicted.
Repeatedly defied the
will of the international community that it abandon its weapons of mass destruction
program and submit to U.N. weapons inspections.
- Iraq defied 17 United
Nations Security Council resolutions over a 12-year period.
- Iraq repeatedly defied
and deceived international weapons inspectors. The semi-annual weapons updates
provided by Iraq to Dr. Blix contained over 600 instances of missing or incomplete
data on chemical, biological, and missile related imports, and Iraq was cited
for willful attempts to hide growth media that could be used to produce biological
agents.
Sponsored and harbored
known terrorists and terrorist groups.
- Iraq stoked terrorism
and instigated violence in Palestinian territories, paying the families of
suicide bombers $25,000 for attacking innocent civilians.
- Iraq harbored the notorious
Abu Nidal, whose terror organization carried out more than 90 terrorist attacks
in 20 countries that killed or injured nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans;
and Abu Abbas, who was responsible for seizing the Achille Lauro and killing
an American passenger.
- Iraq harbored Musab al-Zarqawi,
a known associate of Usama Bin Laden who directed an al-Qaida training camp
in eastern Afghanistan until late 2001. Zarqawi directed poisons/toxins lab
in northeast Iraq alongside the radical Ansar al-Islam group, and his terror
cell was responsible for assassinating an American foreign aid worker in 2002.
Represented a potentially
devastating nexus of weapons of mass destruction and terror organizations that
could have had threatened millions of civilians in the region and at home.
- With its weapons program
and known support for terrorism, Saddam's regime could have secretly passed
the world's deadliest weapons to terrorists. From information obtained in
Afghanistan, the United States knew that Al-Qaida was aggressively seeking
to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Was one of the most brutal
and repressive regimes in the world, which practiced ethnic cleansing, used
chemical weapons on its own citizens, and committed numerous atrocities.
- Saddam's ethnic cleansing
campaign displaced some 700,000 people throughout Iraq and destroyed more
than 2,000 Kurdish villages.
- The Iraqi regime had
more forced disappearance cases than any other country in the world.Ø
We are only beginning to uncover the truth about the Iraqi regime. Over the
last four months, U.S. and coalition forces, human rights groups, and Iraqi
citizens themselves have found:
- Mobile chemical and biological
labs of the kind described in Secretary Powell's presentation to the United
Nations.
- Nuclear arms materials,
including documents and components of a gas centrifuge used for uranium enrichment,
hidden in the garden of an Iraqi nuclear scientist.
- Mass graves of thousands
who were slaughtered by the regime.
- More than seven miles
worth of documents that are being analyzed to provide a fuller picture of
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.
Action
Center | Races | My State |
Bills/Legislation | My
Issues | Policy Center | Got Info? | GOPoints
| Outstanding Leader
home | faqs
| links | search
| my profile
| log
out | build my team
Copyright © 2003 Republican National Committee. Paid for by The Republican
National Committee.
The information provided on this page
is provided by a third-party, and not the Republican National Committee.
Although the RNC is not responsible for the accuracy or validity of this third-party
information, if you find invalid, or incorrect information,
please let us know by clicking here and we will forward the suggested correction
to the responsible source.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: -4
Learning Percentage: 0%
July 12, 2003
Ann Coulter and Joe McCarthy, sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g
If you find conservative pundit Ann Coulter to be shrill and irrational, then this article should provide you with reassurance that you weren't jumping to false conclusions. If you're a fan, I suggest reading this and other dissections of her books. It really sounds like she's playing fast and loose with the facts (on top of the shrillness and irrationality.)
Salon.com Books | Has she no shame?
Of course not, and now we know why: In her new book "Treason," Ann Coulter reveals that her role model is Joe McCarthy. And her grasp of facts is even worse than her judgment..
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joe Conason
July 4, 2003 | "Slander" is defined in Bouvier's Law Dictionary as "a false defamation (expressed in spoken words, signs, or gestures) which injures the character or reputation of the person defamed." The venerable American legal lexicon goes on to note that such defamatory words are sometimes "actionable in themselves, without proof of special damages," particularly when they impute "guilt of some offence for which the party, if guilty, might be indicted and punished by the criminal courts; as to call a person a 'traitor.'"
So how appropriate it is that in the rapidly growing Ann Coulter bibliography, last year's bestselling "Slander" is now followed by "Treason," her new catalog of defamation against every liberal and every Democrat -- indeed, every American who has dared to disagree with her or her spirit guide, Joe McCarthy -- as "traitors." And like a criminal who subconsciously wants to be caught, Coulter seems compelled to reveal at last her true role model. (Some of us had figured this out already.)
She not only lionizes the late senator, whose name is synonymous with demagogue, but with a vengeance also adopts his methods and pursues his partisan purposes. She sneers, she smears, she indicts by falsehood and distortion -- and she frankly expresses her desire to destroy any political party or person that resists Republican conservatism (as defined by her).
"Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America," according to her demonology. "They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn't slowed them down." And: "Liberals relentlessly attack their country, but we can't call them traitors, which they manifestly are, because that would be 'McCarthyism,' which never existed." (Never existed? Her idol gave his 1952 book that very word as its title.)
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: L4/R9
Freedom Rating: 1 (for exposing Coulter)
Learning Percentage: 95%
Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
t r u t h o u t - Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
The Associated Press
Wednesday 09 July 2003
RICHMOND, Va., July 8 (AP) — The former executive director of the Virginia Republican Party was sentenced today to three years of probation and fined $5,000 for illegally intercepting a Democratic Party conference call.
The former official, Edmund A. Mr. Matricardi III, apologized before Judge James R. Spencer of Federal District Court for illegally eavesdropping on two calls among the state's top Democrats in March of last year.
"I stand before you a humbled man," Mr. Matricardi, 35, said.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ?
Learning Percentage: 95%
July 08, 2003
Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
Note that this guy is already thinking about re-election in 2006, prior to the 2004 election. I wonder if anyone thought to ask him about his plans for his 8th, 9th and 10th terms after that.
A quote the promise-breaker:
"It seemed to me at that time term limits would be a good idea for the nation," he said. "I didn't fully understand what personal relationships and seniority could mean to the district."
Translation: "I had no idea how much power there was to grab in Washington. No way I'm giving this up."
And then there's this gem:
LoBiondo said because other congressmen have broken the term limit pledge, it would be unfair to people in his district to abide by it.
Translation: "Don't trust me, or my colleagues."
CNN.com - Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
VINELAND, New Jersey (AP) -- A New Jersey congressman elected on a promise to serve no more than 12 years Washington said Monday he will go back on his word and seek a seventh term.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 60%
June 30, 2003
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
TruthOut permacopy
Toward One-Party Rule
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
In principle, Mexico's 1917 Constitution established a democratic political system. In practice, until very recently Mexico was a one-party state. While the ruling party employed intimidation and electoral fraud when necessary, mainly it kept control through patronage, cronyism and corruption. All powerful interest groups, including the media, were effectively part of the party's political machine.
Such systems aren't unknown here — think of Richard J. Daley's Chicago. But can it happen to the United States as a whole? A forthcoming article in The Washington Monthly shows that the foundations for one-party rule are being laid right now.
In "Welcome to the Machine," Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation — from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America.
Mr. Confessore starts by describing the weekly meetings in which Senator Rick Santorum vets the hiring decisions of major lobbyists. These meetings are the culmination of Grover Norquist's "K Street Project," which places Republican activists in high-level corporate and industry lobbyist jobs — and excludes Democrats. According to yesterday's Washington Post, a Republican National Committee official recently boasted that "33 of 36 top-level Washington positions he is monitoring went to Republicans."
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -3.5
Learning Percentage: 40%
June 28, 2003
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
This is an extremely comprehensive obituary of a man who's going to inhabit a number of entries in U.S. History books for centuries to come.
There's a lot more to Strom Thurmond than one might think, given the caricature-in-real-life reputation that he's had for as long as I can remember. The article's title even serves as a capsule version of that image.
But there's a lot more to the story of Strom, as this article makes clear.
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
By Adam Clymer
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
Read It Rating: 10
Left/Right Rating: R7
Freedom Rating: mixed feelings
Learning Percentage: 70%
Bush Takes Responsibility for Iraq-Niger Claims, announces marriage meddling
This "defining marriage" business pisses me off. I checked my dictionary again, and as I expected, marriage is already defined, just like it was 7 years ago when I first wrote about this issue.
Of course, it wasn't an entirely fair test, because I looked in the same dictionary then as I did now. I'm a little scared to look in a newer one, lest I find that there really is no definition of marriage anymore -- thus requiring that the president and Congress get involved in the job of defining it (or, insanely laughably, put the definition in the Constitution).
Bush Takes Responsibility for Iraq Claims
President Touches on War, Gay Marriage, Economy in Wide-Ranging News Conference
By Mike Allen
The Washington Post
Wednesday 30 July 2003
President Bush took personal responsibility today for including flawed intelligence about Saddam Hussein in his State of the Union address after letting others take the blame for three weeks. But he said history will vindicate the war in Iraq, even though no unconventional weapons have been found.
...
Bush said administration lawyers are drafting a law that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, stopping short of endorsing the constitutional ban on gay marriage that is being championed by some Republican leaders following a Supreme Court ruling that effectively decriminalized sodomy.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -6
Learning Percentage: 45%
Nudists: Foley's attack on camp is malicious
Here's a quote from Foley in the article, in response to the charge that he's just using the camp as a hot issue to energize his bid to be promoted to the Senate:
''This might be an important issue that conservatives want a solution to, but I'm not doing this to energize the base,'' he said. ``I'd be pursuing this with the same vigor as I would if I were just seeking reelection.''
Meaning, I guess, "I'd be sticking my nose where it doesn't need to be for my own political gain, no matter what particular gain I was after."
The Miami Herald | 07/07/2003 | Nudists: Foley's attack on camp is malicious
BY PETER WALLSTEN
pwallsten@herald.com
In his quest for a seat in the U.S. Senate, Rep. Mark Foley has rankled a group that is barely covered in most elections: nudists.
Foley, of West Palm Beach, has hit the national TV and radio talk-show circuit in recent weeks to bash a Tampa-area summer camp not unlike most camps -- except that the boys and girls, ages 11-18, are naked.
Foley, a Republican hoping to replace Sen. Bob Graham, says that letting naked teenagers play together is immoral and potentially dangerous.
But ''naturists'' who say the camp exposes their children to a perfectly healthy and wholesome education see something more calculated: A candidate with a reputation as a social moderate on issues such as gay rights and abortion has found a convenient target to boost his reputation among conservatives who decide GOP primaries.
Read It Rating: 4.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -1
Learning Percentage: 50%
July 24, 2003
Rep. Ron Paul, the GOP’s loner from the Lone Star State
‘I’ll probably win this argument’
Rep. Ron Paul, the GOP’s loner from the Lone Star State
By Jeff Dufour
Being Ron Paul would seem a frustrating proposition.
A strict opponent of almost everything government undertakes, the Texas Republican congressman usually finds himself on the losing end of legislative battles.
No more so than this year, in which the United States fought a war he didn’t support. Congress, meanwhile, enacted a tax cut he feels is too small, returned to deficits, expanded the role of government through the Department of Homeland Security and is poised to pass a Medicare reform package he abhors.
But, he said last week from his office in the Cannon Building, “I’m not frustrated because I didn’t expect very much. I think we’re getting what I have anticipated.”
Yet he’s not about to keep quiet. On July 10, he underscored why he’s often a thorn in his own party’s side as much as in the Democrats’. In a lengthy floor speech dubbed “Neo-Conned,” he lambasted the administration and its philosophical bedfellows.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 7.5
Learning Percentage: 65%
July 19, 2003
GOP Team Leader: Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger
One of the action items from the GOP Team Leader list today is to call talk radio stations asking why Democrats are politicizing security issues. They also have a talking points sheet on Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger. Thought I'd share it with you. I'll let you make your own determinations as to the worth of it. There's an interesting disclaimer at the end, and I've included that too (I bolded it as well), along with the copyright message.
Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger
September 11 crystallized
how vulnerable we are to terror, and showed what our enemies are willing and
able to do. President Bush promised the American people that he would not stand
idly while dangers gathered abroad. Saddam Hussein's regime was a grave and
gathering threat that the U.S. and our allies could not afford to ignore because
it:
- Possessed and used weapons
of mass destruction, and was known to be pursuing chemical, biological, and
nuclear weapons programs.
- Saddam Hussein's regime
used weapons of mass destruction against Iraqi civilians in Halabja in 1988,
and against the Iranian army in the 1980s.
- The Iraqi regime failed
to account for at least 30,000 liters of biological agents (including anthrax,
botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin), 3.9 tons of the nerve agent VX, nearly 30,000
empty munitions that could be filled with chemical agents, 550 artillery shells
filled with mustard agents, and over 6,000 chemical aerial bombs.
- Saddam maintained a cadre
of nuclear scientists that he called his "nuclear Mujahadeen," and
aggressively and covertly sought to acquire equipment necessary to manufacture
gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment. After the Gulf War in 1991, we discovered
that Saddam Hussein was several years closer to developing a nuclear weapon
than our intelligence experts predicted.
Repeatedly defied the
will of the international community that it abandon its weapons of mass destruction
program and submit to U.N. weapons inspections.
- Iraq defied 17 United
Nations Security Council resolutions over a 12-year period.
- Iraq repeatedly defied
and deceived international weapons inspectors. The semi-annual weapons updates
provided by Iraq to Dr. Blix contained over 600 instances of missing or incomplete
data on chemical, biological, and missile related imports, and Iraq was cited
for willful attempts to hide growth media that could be used to produce biological
agents.
Sponsored and harbored
known terrorists and terrorist groups.
- Iraq stoked terrorism
and instigated violence in Palestinian territories, paying the families of
suicide bombers $25,000 for attacking innocent civilians.
- Iraq harbored the notorious
Abu Nidal, whose terror organization carried out more than 90 terrorist attacks
in 20 countries that killed or injured nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans;
and Abu Abbas, who was responsible for seizing the Achille Lauro and killing
an American passenger.
- Iraq harbored Musab al-Zarqawi,
a known associate of Usama Bin Laden who directed an al-Qaida training camp
in eastern Afghanistan until late 2001. Zarqawi directed poisons/toxins lab
in northeast Iraq alongside the radical Ansar al-Islam group, and his terror
cell was responsible for assassinating an American foreign aid worker in 2002.
Represented a potentially
devastating nexus of weapons of mass destruction and terror organizations that
could have had threatened millions of civilians in the region and at home.
- With its weapons program
and known support for terrorism, Saddam's regime could have secretly passed
the world's deadliest weapons to terrorists. From information obtained in
Afghanistan, the United States knew that Al-Qaida was aggressively seeking
to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Was one of the most brutal
and repressive regimes in the world, which practiced ethnic cleansing, used
chemical weapons on its own citizens, and committed numerous atrocities.
- Saddam's ethnic cleansing
campaign displaced some 700,000 people throughout Iraq and destroyed more
than 2,000 Kurdish villages.
- The Iraqi regime had
more forced disappearance cases than any other country in the world.Ø
We are only beginning to uncover the truth about the Iraqi regime. Over the
last four months, U.S. and coalition forces, human rights groups, and Iraqi
citizens themselves have found:
- Mobile chemical and biological
labs of the kind described in Secretary Powell's presentation to the United
Nations.
- Nuclear arms materials,
including documents and components of a gas centrifuge used for uranium enrichment,
hidden in the garden of an Iraqi nuclear scientist.
- Mass graves of thousands
who were slaughtered by the regime.
- More than seven miles
worth of documents that are being analyzed to provide a fuller picture of
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.
Action
Center | Races | My State |
Bills/Legislation | My
Issues | Policy Center | Got Info? | GOPoints
| Outstanding Leader
home | faqs
| links | search
| my profile
| log
out | build my team
Copyright © 2003 Republican National Committee. Paid for by The Republican
National Committee.
The information provided on this page
is provided by a third-party, and not the Republican National Committee.
Although the RNC is not responsible for the accuracy or validity of this third-party
information, if you find invalid, or incorrect information,
please let us know by clicking here and we will forward the suggested correction
to the responsible source.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: -4
Learning Percentage: 0%
July 12, 2003
Ann Coulter and Joe McCarthy, sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g
If you find conservative pundit Ann Coulter to be shrill and irrational, then this article should provide you with reassurance that you weren't jumping to false conclusions. If you're a fan, I suggest reading this and other dissections of her books. It really sounds like she's playing fast and loose with the facts (on top of the shrillness and irrationality.)
Salon.com Books | Has she no shame?
Of course not, and now we know why: In her new book "Treason," Ann Coulter reveals that her role model is Joe McCarthy. And her grasp of facts is even worse than her judgment..
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joe Conason
July 4, 2003 | "Slander" is defined in Bouvier's Law Dictionary as "a false defamation (expressed in spoken words, signs, or gestures) which injures the character or reputation of the person defamed." The venerable American legal lexicon goes on to note that such defamatory words are sometimes "actionable in themselves, without proof of special damages," particularly when they impute "guilt of some offence for which the party, if guilty, might be indicted and punished by the criminal courts; as to call a person a 'traitor.'"
So how appropriate it is that in the rapidly growing Ann Coulter bibliography, last year's bestselling "Slander" is now followed by "Treason," her new catalog of defamation against every liberal and every Democrat -- indeed, every American who has dared to disagree with her or her spirit guide, Joe McCarthy -- as "traitors." And like a criminal who subconsciously wants to be caught, Coulter seems compelled to reveal at last her true role model. (Some of us had figured this out already.)
She not only lionizes the late senator, whose name is synonymous with demagogue, but with a vengeance also adopts his methods and pursues his partisan purposes. She sneers, she smears, she indicts by falsehood and distortion -- and she frankly expresses her desire to destroy any political party or person that resists Republican conservatism (as defined by her).
"Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America," according to her demonology. "They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn't slowed them down." And: "Liberals relentlessly attack their country, but we can't call them traitors, which they manifestly are, because that would be 'McCarthyism,' which never existed." (Never existed? Her idol gave his 1952 book that very word as its title.)
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: L4/R9
Freedom Rating: 1 (for exposing Coulter)
Learning Percentage: 95%
Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
t r u t h o u t - Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
The Associated Press
Wednesday 09 July 2003
RICHMOND, Va., July 8 (AP) — The former executive director of the Virginia Republican Party was sentenced today to three years of probation and fined $5,000 for illegally intercepting a Democratic Party conference call.
The former official, Edmund A. Mr. Matricardi III, apologized before Judge James R. Spencer of Federal District Court for illegally eavesdropping on two calls among the state's top Democrats in March of last year.
"I stand before you a humbled man," Mr. Matricardi, 35, said.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ?
Learning Percentage: 95%
July 08, 2003
Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
Note that this guy is already thinking about re-election in 2006, prior to the 2004 election. I wonder if anyone thought to ask him about his plans for his 8th, 9th and 10th terms after that.
A quote the promise-breaker:
"It seemed to me at that time term limits would be a good idea for the nation," he said. "I didn't fully understand what personal relationships and seniority could mean to the district."
Translation: "I had no idea how much power there was to grab in Washington. No way I'm giving this up."
And then there's this gem:
LoBiondo said because other congressmen have broken the term limit pledge, it would be unfair to people in his district to abide by it.
Translation: "Don't trust me, or my colleagues."
CNN.com - Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
VINELAND, New Jersey (AP) -- A New Jersey congressman elected on a promise to serve no more than 12 years Washington said Monday he will go back on his word and seek a seventh term.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 60%
June 30, 2003
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
TruthOut permacopy
Toward One-Party Rule
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
In principle, Mexico's 1917 Constitution established a democratic political system. In practice, until very recently Mexico was a one-party state. While the ruling party employed intimidation and electoral fraud when necessary, mainly it kept control through patronage, cronyism and corruption. All powerful interest groups, including the media, were effectively part of the party's political machine.
Such systems aren't unknown here — think of Richard J. Daley's Chicago. But can it happen to the United States as a whole? A forthcoming article in The Washington Monthly shows that the foundations for one-party rule are being laid right now.
In "Welcome to the Machine," Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation — from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America.
Mr. Confessore starts by describing the weekly meetings in which Senator Rick Santorum vets the hiring decisions of major lobbyists. These meetings are the culmination of Grover Norquist's "K Street Project," which places Republican activists in high-level corporate and industry lobbyist jobs — and excludes Democrats. According to yesterday's Washington Post, a Republican National Committee official recently boasted that "33 of 36 top-level Washington positions he is monitoring went to Republicans."
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -3.5
Learning Percentage: 40%
June 28, 2003
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
This is an extremely comprehensive obituary of a man who's going to inhabit a number of entries in U.S. History books for centuries to come.
There's a lot more to Strom Thurmond than one might think, given the caricature-in-real-life reputation that he's had for as long as I can remember. The article's title even serves as a capsule version of that image.
But there's a lot more to the story of Strom, as this article makes clear.
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
By Adam Clymer
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
Read It Rating: 10
Left/Right Rating: R7
Freedom Rating: mixed feelings
Learning Percentage: 70%
Rep. Ron Paul, the GOP’s loner from the Lone Star State
‘I’ll probably win this argument’
Rep. Ron Paul, the GOP’s loner from the Lone Star State
By Jeff Dufour
Being Ron Paul would seem a frustrating proposition.
A strict opponent of almost everything government undertakes, the Texas Republican congressman usually finds himself on the losing end of legislative battles.
No more so than this year, in which the United States fought a war he didn’t support. Congress, meanwhile, enacted a tax cut he feels is too small, returned to deficits, expanded the role of government through the Department of Homeland Security and is poised to pass a Medicare reform package he abhors.
But, he said last week from his office in the Cannon Building, “I’m not frustrated because I didn’t expect very much. I think we’re getting what I have anticipated.”
Yet he’s not about to keep quiet. On July 10, he underscored why he’s often a thorn in his own party’s side as much as in the Democrats’. In a lengthy floor speech dubbed “Neo-Conned,” he lambasted the administration and its philosophical bedfellows.
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: R2
Freedom Rating: 7.5
Learning Percentage: 65%
GOP Team Leader: Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger
One of the action items from the GOP Team Leader list today is to call talk radio stations asking why Democrats are politicizing security issues. They also have a talking points sheet on Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger. Thought I'd share it with you. I'll let you make your own determinations as to the worth of it. There's an interesting disclaimer at the end, and I've included that too (I bolded it as well), along with the copyright message.
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Action
Center | Races | My State |
Bills/Legislation | My
Issues | Policy Center | Got Info? | GOPoints
| Outstanding Leader The information provided on this page
is provided by a third-party, and not the Republican National Committee. |
Read It Rating: 8.5 Left/Right Rating: R1 Freedom Rating: -4 Learning Percentage: 0%
July 12, 2003
Ann Coulter and Joe McCarthy, sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g
If you find conservative pundit Ann Coulter to be shrill and irrational, then this article should provide you with reassurance that you weren't jumping to false conclusions. If you're a fan, I suggest reading this and other dissections of her books. It really sounds like she's playing fast and loose with the facts (on top of the shrillness and irrationality.)
Salon.com Books | Has she no shame?
Of course not, and now we know why: In her new book "Treason," Ann Coulter reveals that her role model is Joe McCarthy. And her grasp of facts is even worse than her judgment..
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joe Conason
July 4, 2003 | "Slander" is defined in Bouvier's Law Dictionary as "a false defamation (expressed in spoken words, signs, or gestures) which injures the character or reputation of the person defamed." The venerable American legal lexicon goes on to note that such defamatory words are sometimes "actionable in themselves, without proof of special damages," particularly when they impute "guilt of some offence for which the party, if guilty, might be indicted and punished by the criminal courts; as to call a person a 'traitor.'"
So how appropriate it is that in the rapidly growing Ann Coulter bibliography, last year's bestselling "Slander" is now followed by "Treason," her new catalog of defamation against every liberal and every Democrat -- indeed, every American who has dared to disagree with her or her spirit guide, Joe McCarthy -- as "traitors." And like a criminal who subconsciously wants to be caught, Coulter seems compelled to reveal at last her true role model. (Some of us had figured this out already.)
She not only lionizes the late senator, whose name is synonymous with demagogue, but with a vengeance also adopts his methods and pursues his partisan purposes. She sneers, she smears, she indicts by falsehood and distortion -- and she frankly expresses her desire to destroy any political party or person that resists Republican conservatism (as defined by her).
"Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America," according to her demonology. "They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn't slowed them down." And: "Liberals relentlessly attack their country, but we can't call them traitors, which they manifestly are, because that would be 'McCarthyism,' which never existed." (Never existed? Her idol gave his 1952 book that very word as its title.)
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: L4/R9
Freedom Rating: 1 (for exposing Coulter)
Learning Percentage: 95%
Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
t r u t h o u t - Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
The Associated Press
Wednesday 09 July 2003
RICHMOND, Va., July 8 (AP) — The former executive director of the Virginia Republican Party was sentenced today to three years of probation and fined $5,000 for illegally intercepting a Democratic Party conference call.
The former official, Edmund A. Mr. Matricardi III, apologized before Judge James R. Spencer of Federal District Court for illegally eavesdropping on two calls among the state's top Democrats in March of last year.
"I stand before you a humbled man," Mr. Matricardi, 35, said.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ?
Learning Percentage: 95%
July 08, 2003
Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
Note that this guy is already thinking about re-election in 2006, prior to the 2004 election. I wonder if anyone thought to ask him about his plans for his 8th, 9th and 10th terms after that.
A quote the promise-breaker:
"It seemed to me at that time term limits would be a good idea for the nation," he said. "I didn't fully understand what personal relationships and seniority could mean to the district."
Translation: "I had no idea how much power there was to grab in Washington. No way I'm giving this up."
And then there's this gem:
LoBiondo said because other congressmen have broken the term limit pledge, it would be unfair to people in his district to abide by it.
Translation: "Don't trust me, or my colleagues."
CNN.com - Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
VINELAND, New Jersey (AP) -- A New Jersey congressman elected on a promise to serve no more than 12 years Washington said Monday he will go back on his word and seek a seventh term.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 60%
June 30, 2003
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
TruthOut permacopy
Toward One-Party Rule
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
In principle, Mexico's 1917 Constitution established a democratic political system. In practice, until very recently Mexico was a one-party state. While the ruling party employed intimidation and electoral fraud when necessary, mainly it kept control through patronage, cronyism and corruption. All powerful interest groups, including the media, were effectively part of the party's political machine.
Such systems aren't unknown here — think of Richard J. Daley's Chicago. But can it happen to the United States as a whole? A forthcoming article in The Washington Monthly shows that the foundations for one-party rule are being laid right now.
In "Welcome to the Machine," Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation — from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America.
Mr. Confessore starts by describing the weekly meetings in which Senator Rick Santorum vets the hiring decisions of major lobbyists. These meetings are the culmination of Grover Norquist's "K Street Project," which places Republican activists in high-level corporate and industry lobbyist jobs — and excludes Democrats. According to yesterday's Washington Post, a Republican National Committee official recently boasted that "33 of 36 top-level Washington positions he is monitoring went to Republicans."
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -3.5
Learning Percentage: 40%
June 28, 2003
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
This is an extremely comprehensive obituary of a man who's going to inhabit a number of entries in U.S. History books for centuries to come.
There's a lot more to Strom Thurmond than one might think, given the caricature-in-real-life reputation that he's had for as long as I can remember. The article's title even serves as a capsule version of that image.
But there's a lot more to the story of Strom, as this article makes clear.
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
By Adam Clymer
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
Read It Rating: 10
Left/Right Rating: R7
Freedom Rating: mixed feelings
Learning Percentage: 70%
Ann Coulter and Joe McCarthy, sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g
If you find conservative pundit Ann Coulter to be shrill and irrational, then this article should provide you with reassurance that you weren't jumping to false conclusions. If you're a fan, I suggest reading this and other dissections of her books. It really sounds like she's playing fast and loose with the facts (on top of the shrillness and irrationality.)
Salon.com Books | Has she no shame?
Of course not, and now we know why: In her new book "Treason," Ann Coulter reveals that her role model is Joe McCarthy. And her grasp of facts is even worse than her judgment..
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joe Conason
July 4, 2003 | "Slander" is defined in Bouvier's Law Dictionary as "a false defamation (expressed in spoken words, signs, or gestures) which injures the character or reputation of the person defamed." The venerable American legal lexicon goes on to note that such defamatory words are sometimes "actionable in themselves, without proof of special damages," particularly when they impute "guilt of some offence for which the party, if guilty, might be indicted and punished by the criminal courts; as to call a person a 'traitor.'"
So how appropriate it is that in the rapidly growing Ann Coulter bibliography, last year's bestselling "Slander" is now followed by "Treason," her new catalog of defamation against every liberal and every Democrat -- indeed, every American who has dared to disagree with her or her spirit guide, Joe McCarthy -- as "traitors." And like a criminal who subconsciously wants to be caught, Coulter seems compelled to reveal at last her true role model. (Some of us had figured this out already.)
She not only lionizes the late senator, whose name is synonymous with demagogue, but with a vengeance also adopts his methods and pursues his partisan purposes. She sneers, she smears, she indicts by falsehood and distortion -- and she frankly expresses her desire to destroy any political party or person that resists Republican conservatism (as defined by her).
"Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America," according to her demonology. "They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn't slowed them down." And: "Liberals relentlessly attack their country, but we can't call them traitors, which they manifestly are, because that would be 'McCarthyism,' which never existed." (Never existed? Her idol gave his 1952 book that very word as its title.)
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: L4/R9
Freedom Rating: 1 (for exposing Coulter)
Learning Percentage: 95%
Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
t r u t h o u t - Republican Is Sentenced for Eavesdropping
The Associated Press
Wednesday 09 July 2003
RICHMOND, Va., July 8 (AP) — The former executive director of the Virginia Republican Party was sentenced today to three years of probation and fined $5,000 for illegally intercepting a Democratic Party conference call.
The former official, Edmund A. Mr. Matricardi III, apologized before Judge James R. Spencer of Federal District Court for illegally eavesdropping on two calls among the state's top Democrats in March of last year.
"I stand before you a humbled man," Mr. Matricardi, 35, said.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: ?
Learning Percentage: 95%
Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
Note that this guy is already thinking about re-election in 2006, prior to the 2004 election. I wonder if anyone thought to ask him about his plans for his 8th, 9th and 10th terms after that.
A quote the promise-breaker:
"It seemed to me at that time term limits would be a good idea for the nation," he said. "I didn't fully understand what personal relationships and seniority could mean to the district."
Translation: "I had no idea how much power there was to grab in Washington. No way I'm giving this up."
And then there's this gem:
LoBiondo said because other congressmen have broken the term limit pledge, it would be unfair to people in his district to abide by it.
Translation: "Don't trust me, or my colleagues."
CNN.com - Congressman reneges on term-limits pledge
VINELAND, New Jersey (AP) -- A New Jersey congressman elected on a promise to serve no more than 12 years Washington said Monday he will go back on his word and seek a seventh term.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 60%
June 30, 2003
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
TruthOut permacopy
Toward One-Party Rule
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
In principle, Mexico's 1917 Constitution established a democratic political system. In practice, until very recently Mexico was a one-party state. While the ruling party employed intimidation and electoral fraud when necessary, mainly it kept control through patronage, cronyism and corruption. All powerful interest groups, including the media, were effectively part of the party's political machine.
Such systems aren't unknown here — think of Richard J. Daley's Chicago. But can it happen to the United States as a whole? A forthcoming article in The Washington Monthly shows that the foundations for one-party rule are being laid right now.
In "Welcome to the Machine," Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation — from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America.
Mr. Confessore starts by describing the weekly meetings in which Senator Rick Santorum vets the hiring decisions of major lobbyists. These meetings are the culmination of Grover Norquist's "K Street Project," which places Republican activists in high-level corporate and industry lobbyist jobs — and excludes Democrats. According to yesterday's Washington Post, a Republican National Committee official recently boasted that "33 of 36 top-level Washington positions he is monitoring went to Republicans."
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -3.5
Learning Percentage: 40%
June 28, 2003
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
This is an extremely comprehensive obituary of a man who's going to inhabit a number of entries in U.S. History books for centuries to come.
There's a lot more to Strom Thurmond than one might think, given the caricature-in-real-life reputation that he's had for as long as I can remember. The article's title even serves as a capsule version of that image.
But there's a lot more to the story of Strom, as this article makes clear.
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
By Adam Clymer
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
Read It Rating: 10
Left/Right Rating: R7
Freedom Rating: mixed feelings
Learning Percentage: 70%
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
Krugman | Toward One-Party Rule
TruthOut permacopy
Toward One-Party Rule
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
In principle, Mexico's 1917 Constitution established a democratic political system. In practice, until very recently Mexico was a one-party state. While the ruling party employed intimidation and electoral fraud when necessary, mainly it kept control through patronage, cronyism and corruption. All powerful interest groups, including the media, were effectively part of the party's political machine.
Such systems aren't unknown here — think of Richard J. Daley's Chicago. But can it happen to the United States as a whole? A forthcoming article in The Washington Monthly shows that the foundations for one-party rule are being laid right now.
In "Welcome to the Machine," Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation — from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America.
Mr. Confessore starts by describing the weekly meetings in which Senator Rick Santorum vets the hiring decisions of major lobbyists. These meetings are the culmination of Grover Norquist's "K Street Project," which places Republican activists in high-level corporate and industry lobbyist jobs — and excludes Democrats. According to yesterday's Washington Post, a Republican National Committee official recently boasted that "33 of 36 top-level Washington positions he is monitoring went to Republicans."
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -3.5
Learning Percentage: 40%
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
This is an extremely comprehensive obituary of a man who's going to inhabit a number of entries in U.S. History books for centuries to come.
There's a lot more to Strom Thurmond than one might think, given the caricature-in-real-life reputation that he's had for as long as I can remember. The article's title even serves as a capsule version of that image.
But there's a lot more to the story of Strom, as this article makes clear.
Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100
By Adam Clymer
The New York Times
Friday 27 June 2003
Read It Rating: 10
Left/Right Rating: R7
Freedom Rating: mixed feelings
Learning Percentage: 70%
