WHO NEEDS CONSISTENCY?

VIA BILLMON

I warned you about this ever-broadening interpretation of the so-called right to privacy. It’s not a ‘right’ specifically enumerated in the Constitution or Bill of Rights.
Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh.com
August 22nd, 2003

Now they need my medical records, my private medical records to find out if I've committed a crime called doctor shopping? . . . But the question is this: Why would any of us want such records made public, even if they prove our innocence? It's not up to me to prove my innocence by giving up my right to privacy.
Rush Limbaugh
Radio Show
December 22, 2003

CONSERVATIVE TOLERANCE

This is from Roger L. Simon's blog:

marky48, I banned you. (First person in months). I just lost patience. Sorry.
Posted by: Roger at April 28, 2005 08:40 PM

C'mon Roger, as long as you're at it, toss in SteveJ. There is no material difference.
Posted by: Rick Ballard at April 28, 2005 08:57 PM

NOTE: Steve J. is me! :-)

WHY ARE T-BONDS OKAY NOW?

BUSH:I know some Americans have reservations about investing in the stock market, so I propose that one investment option consist entirely of Treasury bonds, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government.

4/28/05 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/04/20050428-9.html




BUSH: You see, a lot of people in America think there's a trust, in this sense -- that we take your money through payroll taxes and then we hold it for you, and then when you retire, we give it back to you. But that's not the way it works. There is no "trust fund," just IOUs that I saw firsthand, that future generations will pay -- will pay for either in higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs. 4/5/05

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/04/20050405-4.html

"WE SUPPORT THE TROOPS!"

Yes, the Republican mantra used to attack liberals but it is just more empty talk. When the Senate got a chance to provide more armored vehicles, 38 Republicans voted against it.

Here are the details:

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 109th Congress - 1st Session
as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate
Vote Summary
Question: On the Amendment (Bayh Amdt. No. 520 )
Vote Number: 108
Vote Date: April 21, 2005, 04:32 PM
Required For Majority: 1/2
Vote Result: Amendment Agreed to
Amendment Number: S.Amdt. 520 to to H.R. 1268 (Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005 )
Statement of Purpose: To appropriate an additional $213,000,000 for Other Procurement, Army, for the procurement of Up-Armored High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (UAHMMWVs).
Vote Counts: YEAs 61 NAYs 39

NAYS - 39
Allard (R-CO)Bennett (R-UT)Bond (R-MO)Brownback (R-KS)Bunning (R-KY)Burr (R-NC)Chambliss (R-GA)Coburn (R-OK)Cochran (R-MS)Cornyn (R-TX)Craig (R-ID)Crapo (R-ID)DeMint (R-SC) Dole (R-NC)Domenici (R-NM)Ensign (R-NV)Enzi (R-WY)Frist (R-TN)Graham (R-SC)Grassley (R-IA)Gregg (R-NH)Hagel (R-NE)Hatch (R-UT)Inhofe (R-OK)Inouye (D-HI)Isakson (R-GA) Kyl (R-AZ)McConnell (R-KY)Murkowski (R-AK)Roberts (R-KS)Sessions (R-AL)Shelby (R-AL)Smith (R-OR)Stevens (R-AK)Sununu (R-NH)Thomas (R-WY)Vitter (R-LA)Voinovich (R-OH)Warner (R-VA)

KEN MEHLMAN ON KARL ROVE

From a Frontline interview:

Give me a sense of [Karl] Rove. We all hear some myths, some realities. Give me a sense of the guy.

Karl is first and foremost loyal. That is the most important quality about him you need to know. He's loyal to the president in a way that very few people have ever been as an adviser to a president, loyal. Karl doesn't view his own agenda as separate apart from the president's, but his agenda is serving the president.

KARL ROVE ON THE IRAQ WAR

From the same lecture at U of Utah:

Audience Member: You hinted at that. But what I want to know is apparently, [you are] not paying a lot of attention to the 200,000 people who marched in Washington on April 26 and the hundreds of thousands who have marched all over the world, and there are one or two people here today. My question to you is: How can we get our government’s ear, those of us who are opposed to this invasion. Thank you. [Some applause and cheering from crowd.]

Mr. Rove: The way to do it is to do it the way that everybody else does, which is talk to your representatives and petition the Congress, and petition the President. You talk about 200,000 people. With all due respect, I worry about the 3,000 people killed on 9-11. [Applause.] I have a 13-year old. I would like to leave to my child a world that is peaceful, not a world that is threatened by transnational global terrorism. [Applause.]
Let me give you just one example. We need to see the world as it is, not as we would desire it to be. We have an organization that is sophisticated, well financed and dangerous. It is not five guys in some cave someplace. Al Qaida—these people, have access to cash flow in the tens of billions of dollars. We shut down one charity in Arlington, Texas that last year shipped $13 million to Al Qaida. Do you know how many people went through those training camps in Afghanistan? One hundred thousand. Some of them, 15,000 or 20,000, went through sophisticated training in electronics, spycraft, small weapons, explosives, biological and chemical weapons.
These people mounted a sophisticated operation aimed at the United States of America, and if anybody thinks they have now gone away or that they do not desire to hurt us and harm us, or to drive us back out of the world, you are kidding yourself. If we want to leave our children a legacy of a dangerous world, where people unbound by convention have access to some of the world’s worst weapons and have demonstrated a willingness to use them, then we either do not see this job to its conclusion or we fail – because that’s exactly the legacy we will leave them. [Applause.]

KARL ROVE ON THE PRESIDENCY

Mr. Rove delivered a lecture entitled "What makes a great President" on Nov. 13, 2002, at the University of Utah. Here are some excerpts:

But it strikes me that one of the most important things that a president has to have to be successful is clarity of vision. Effective presidents have a strategic vision and a direction in which they want to lead the country. They are concerned with big issues and big challenges, and seek to explain their vision in a way that allows people to understand their circumstances and develop confidence in those proposals.

For the clarity of vision doesn’t necessarily always lend itself to a clarity of direction, which is the second great characteristic – consistency of purpose but a willingness to change strategy in moments of crisis.

The third thing, and this is what I have come to understand acutely in the last two years, is that in moments of crisis presidents benefit, for good or for ill, from the legacies that have been left to them by the previous presidents.

What Truman did in changing the national security structure of the United States made it possible for America to win the Cold War and develop the military strength necessary to keep the peace.

A successful president must have an internal self-confidence. A good president doesn’t wet his finger in the morning and put it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing, but has core values and confidence in self.

Successful presidents are also successful coalition builders. No president can operate effectively by himself. A president must build coalitions within his own party and between the parties. He must also rise above parties. That’s not to say to triangulate against both parties, but at times, to put the interests of the country above the partisan interests of either party.

A successful president also organizes advisers to give him what a president most often lacks – solid, straightforward advice.

A president who is successful, I am convinced, is a president who spends a lot of time figuring out how to cultivate this truth-telling, because you can get very isolated inside that bubble. Sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue is 18 acres of sheer utopia, and like Utopia it can be isolated from reality quickly.

DOUBLE STANDARD ON TERRORISM?

US turns away Saudi delegation member: officials
AFP – 4/25/05



CRAWFORD, United States (AFP) - A member of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz's delegation was denied entry into the United States after authorities found he was on a government "watch" list, a US official said.
The US Department of Homeland Security, in a routine check of the delegation passenger manifest, found that one traveller was on a government list meant to screen out possible terrorists, the official said on condition of anonymity.
The official could not confirm whether the person was a reporter or a Saudi official or even what nationality the person was, but another US official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was a Saudi.
The second official also said the individual's name had appeared on a US government "watch" list.

THE TUCSON DAILY STAR V. COULTER

Charges refiled against pair in Coulter pie-tossing incident
By Joe Burchell and C.J. Karamargin
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Criminal charges have been refiled against two men accused of throwing cream pies at conservative political columnist Ann Coulter during a speech at the University of Arizona last year.
Phillip Edgar Smith, a UA political science major, and William Zachary Wolff, both 24, were charged in Pima County Justice Court with misdemeanor assault, disorderly conduct and criminal damage last Tuesday, said Dan Benavidez, spokesman for the County Attorney's Office. Similar charges against the pair were dismissed on March 18 after neither the arresting officer nor Coulter appeared to testify against them. Both Coulter and a UA police spokesman said the County Attorney's Office failed to properly notify them of the trial.

This isn't new but does show that the Star is sticking by parts of its previous story.

This is new:

Berkman said that if Coulter got the dismissal postcard, she should have gotten other notices because they were sent to the same address.
Both Smith and Wolff denied a claim in an earlier Coulter column that they "suffered bloody noses and broken bones" when they were apprehended after throwing a pair of tofu cream pies at Coulter, and missing, as she addressed about 2,500 people on the UA campus in October.

UA police Sgt. Eugene said police reports didn't indicate either was injured.

Coulter, in an e-mail to the Star, said her comment was based on what she was told by "eyewitnesses," but she added, "I am not a medical professional, nor did I examine the defendants personally."

Questions for this story had to be e-mailed to her editor, who obtained answers and then e-mailed them back. No direct contact with Coulter was provided.

So, in addition to the Pima County DA's office lying, the eyewitnesses also lied and mislead Coulter about the facts.

APPELLATE COURT FILIBUSTERS

Contrary to GOP claims, there is nothing unusual about trying
to filibuster nominees:

According to the Congressional Research Service, cloture motions were filed and cloture votes held on 14 appeals court nominations from 1980 to 2000. As recently as 2000, cloture votes were necessary to obtain votes on the nominations of both Richard Paez and Marsha Berzon to the Ninth Circuit. Current Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was among those voting against cloture on the Paez nomination. Democrats have also demanded 60 votes for controversial nominees, such as Edward Carnes, who was nominated to the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in 1992. Over the years, many other attempted filibusters did not result in a cloture vote.
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=11630

"JUSTICE" SUNDAY

When I got the webcast, Colson was speaking. According to Chuck the Felon, "separation of powers" is a Christian concept. He ended urging the audience to call their Senators.

McCain & Murkowski were singled out for special attention.

James Dobson is now up. He can't imagine "anything more significant" than this event. The court system, especially the Supreme Court, threatens our values. "I appreciate and agree with Majority leader Tom Delay." Claims the Dred Scott decision contributed to the Civil War and then mentions Roe v. Wade. He calls the resulting abortions a "holocaust."

"We aren't trying to force our views on anybody." Dobson mentions gay-marriage, Terri Schiavo and claims that the Court does not respect the sanctity of life.

Rev. Al Mohler up. "Our main message is salvation by faith alone." Claimed that Justice Blackmun was determined to allow abortion. "The text [Bible] is the inerrant and infallible word of God." "Religious liberty is at stake." Defends Pickering for saying judges should base decisions on the Bible.
"If we are going to save this civilization..." "It is nothing less than cowardice" to prevent an up or down vote on the Senate floor.

Sen. Frist up. Argues for an up or down vote.

Bishop Harry R.Jackson up. "Righteousness" means banning abortion and same-sex marriage and is different from "Justice."

Dr. Bill Donohue up. "If the secular left is worried, they should be worried." "Do we need a Constitutional amendment that" prohibits the Supreme Court from overturning a law unless their decision is unanimous. "That would end judicial activism." Mentions Terri Schiavo.

Tony Perkins showed a taped interview with Judge Pickering.

Judge Pickering up. Claims that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional.

Perkins:"The President deserves to have his nominees voted on."

John Conlee up. Sings for the troop's families. "They also serve, those who stand and wait."

THE END