The Pendragon's Hall

The court system strikes again, issuing two contradictory opinions on the Ten Commandments. The High Court, in 5-4 twin rulings, said the display of the Ten Commandments at a courthouse in Kentucky violated the "separation of church and state" but a monument of them at a courthouse in Texas did not. The Court called for deciding these things on a casy by case basis. I suspect the reason they didn't rule the same is that a uniform ruling would have settled the question once and for all, and I think the justices are beginning to enjoy listening to these cases, but that's neither here nor there. They claim the cases are different--I don't see how. Both are state property, and the Texas display seems a lot more in-your-face, being a stone monument, than the Kentucky displays. They claim, however, that the two Kentucky displays violate the separation of church and state. For the last time (well, probably not the last but you know what I mean), there is no constitutional separation of church and state and for people who can read the "legalese" of a court ruling, the Supreme Court doesn't even try to pretend there is, referring instead to the establishment clause. The establishment clause reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." No mention of separation of church and state in there. And in both these cases, guess what? Congress made no law. The Texas display was contributed by a private organization and the Kentucky displays were placed by the county government. It had nothing to do with Congress. And it should have nothing to do with the Supreme Court either. The Constitution only forbids the "establishment" or preference to a religion to the US Congress and neither to state nor local governments, nor certainly to private groups. But don't expect to hear that from the establishment. They'd just as soon you not read the Constitution too.

This is really getting humorous now. Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) has tentatively announced his candidacy for the Presidency in 2008. I expect we'll be hearing from Bobby Byrd any day now too. So let's see...we've got Senators Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, Bayh and Biden running for President. All we need is a few more and the Senate could accomplish a lot that year. One thing the dream team of John/John showed us is that Democrats can't actually be expected to show up to their jobs while they are campaigning so if we time things just right, enough Democrats will be missing, and something will get done.

A Good Response to the Hype

I thought I was in favor of cancelling third world debt. With this article raising some of the problems with it, I am not so sure. Like "fair trade" "debt forgiveness" seems to have a seedy underbelly.

In spite of the obvious futility of the move, I was excited to read that the House of Representatives passed a bill demanding reform by the UN in forty-six separate ways (fairly important ways, like rigorous ethics exams for oil-for-food people, no nepotism, no tyrannical genocidal maniacs on the human rights commission, etc.) and saying that if these demands are not met, US funding to the UN will be slashed by fifty percent. For once, I will actually support congressional Republicans over the President, who's still trying to be a diplomat, and certainly over House Democrats who wanted a bill that basically said, "Reform," didn't list any specific ways to reform, and left the cutting of funding up to the secretary of state. Yeah, right. I remember the last time a secretary of state was allowed to use her discretion and what Democrats wanted to make of that. They probably would then demand that Condi submit her reasons for cutting the funding back to the Congress, especially the Senate, for endless debate. I don't give the bill much chance of passing the Senate but if it does, and Bush breaks his bad habit and vetoes it, I will never forgive him. It's about time the US, without whom the UN would never have existed, start pulling some strings over there. Another thing that would have been nice is if countries got to take turns hosting the useless layabouts.

The news media is increasingly amusing. Among their richest later efforts are such gems as these: "Clintons Balance Another Budget" and "GOP Worried About Bush's Approval Ratings." Interestingly, no one mentions that Clinton ran twice opposing a balanced budget and only finally agreed to it when forced by a Republican Congress. The even funnier thing is how the article tried to drum up sympathy for the poor "put-upon" Clintons who had to put up their millions in book fees and speaking fees to pay for the legal actions taken during the administration's endless scandals. Didn't the hero "Deep Throat" shed some light on this? Follow the money. I heartily doubt they used their own. And it is just hysterical that AOL claims GOP leaders are worried about Bush's falling approval ratings. Apparently they are worried he will cost them the Congress in '06 or '08. First off, he is the GOP leader, so I don't know who these other leaders are. Secondly, if not for Senate Republicans, Bush's approval ratings wouldn't be falling. The article cleverly but unwittingly included the truth when it said that Bush was in danger of being a lame-duck president. Only because his own party is scuttling him. No, Bush is in no danger of losing anything for his party, but his party might cost him in the long run. It's time to rein in those "mavericks."

I suppose I probably should comment on the Michael Jackson acquittal. I haven't really been following it so I don't know what kind of evidence was presented and I do know the Michael Jackson is a dirt bag and has been credibly accused before of molesting children. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the current accuser was probably lying, or even if not, that so much stupidity had been done to set the kid up for molestation. The accuser's mother practically pleaded stupidity when she singled out the only Hispanic on the jury and winked at him, saying, "You know how our culture is," apparently trying to justify why she would allow, or even volunteer, her children to sleep in the same bed with someone who had been credibly accused of molestation before and who is known to be bi-sexual at the least. But I'm a minority, I'm too stupid to think of that. Oh, and before anyone gets huffy I'm not saying that, she was saying that. The Hispanic juror wasn't impressed. It seems to me that either this family was just after the fame and money or the incident really did occur but they should be the ones penalized. What kind of parents open their kids up to this possibility? It doesn't matter who it is--Michael Jackson just seems to be an extreme case--parents should not be sending their kids over to a single (sort of) pop star's house, especially when he has a reputation of being shady. And certainly not sleeping in the same bed with him! I don't know whether he is guilty or not, I think perhaps not this time, but I really hope parents stop assuming everything's going to be all right. Of course, the parents of Michael's current accuser probably just figured, "Oh well. If he gets molested, we'll get court fees."

Will the media quit trying to drum up sympathy for "Deep Throat"? The latest headline on AOL breathlessly announces the release of a tape recording of "the only known conversation" between President Nixon and the man they now credit as being "Deep Throat." One kind of wonders how Felt knew all this nitty-gritty information about Nixon when he wasn't one of Nixon's confidantes. I mean, isn't the whole point about Nixon that he was some dark, mysterious tight-lipped politican who hid the truth from everyone? But I digress. In the AOL story, the reporter pontificates endlessly about how Felt should have been Hoover's replacement at the FBI or at least the second one when L. Patrick Gray was forced to resign on charges of corruption. Apparently Nixon had some vendetta against "old-school" FBI career-men and wanted to populate the post with his own "loyalists." Leaving aside the fact that it was the "old-school" FBI that allowed our entire government to be permeated with Communist agents in the late '40s and early '50s, I really want to know where these editorials were when Clinton was dismissing career White House staff and replacing them with his bimbo friends from Arkansas? In fact, where was the watchdog media that toppled Nixon during the whole fiasco in which Clinton took presidential corruption to heights even Lyndon Johnson couldn't touch, much less Richard Nixon? They were quietly covering up the information and defending him on the grounds that "everyone does it." The problem, as others smarter than myself have said before, is not that Nixon was such a crook but that the press didn't like Nixon and did like Clinton, so everything Clinton did was all right and is still all right. But Nixon, well, nothing is good about him. He's the one who conceded an unfair election in 1960 to spare the country the division that would result from pressing his claims. Something like that happened in 2000, didn't it? No, it didn't. Nixon is also the one who resigned rather than face impeachment so that the country didn't have to go through the constitutional crisis that would have ensued. That happened in 1998 too, didn't it? No, it didn't. The problem is, Nixon was more of a man than Clinton, Gore or Kerry or Mark Felt could ever dream of being and they hated him for it. And their pets in the media just keep perpetuating those lies.

Mean Howard Dean is enjoying his new role as Democrats' cheerleader-in-chief apparently. Yesterday he defended his bitter personal attacks on the Republican leadership, and even went further, deriding the party as the party of "whites and Christians." As I am both, this doesn't particularly sadden me but it makes me interested that Dean is renouncing his claim to both. We already knew he didn't really want to be white, but it seems to me that when he was heading into Super Tuesday with a lot of southern primaries on the line, Dean went all out to prove he was a Christian. Of course this is the guy who claimed his favorite book of the New Testament was the book of Job (Old Testament) because he was feeling like Job insofar as the other Democrats were picking on him. This is also the guy who left the church he attended because the church wouldn't allow a bike path through their property. Nevertheless, he tried to convince the guys driving around with a Confederate flag in their pickup trucks that he was a card-carrying Christian. Now he derides a whole political party as being in the hands of "Christians." Remember this in '08, all of you.

Why am I not surprised? AOL's headlines today tell how money inspired "Deep Throat" to go public with his identity. And the news media is actually not commenting on the morality of it. The family stands to make more than $1 million in book deals and Felt's daughter is moralizing about how this will help her son finish law school and pay off his debts. Good night, but it's handy to have a spy in the family. Why didn't I think of that? Somehow, though, I suspect that in an alternative universe where the spy stepped forward to exonerate the popular Republican President who was winning the war in Vietnam, he would probably have to carry the secret to his grave. That, and there would be no movie so we wouldn't have to deal with all the cussing Woodward and Bernstein and their ilk at "The Washington Post" do in "All the President's Men."

Newsmax's latest headline says that Senator John Kerry is planning to suggest impeachment for President Bush for falsifying reports of WMD in Iraq, leading to what he calls an "illegal war." While he waits for normal Americans to stop laughing, it might be wise to consider that if President Bill Clinton could barely be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors" by an opposition Congress, President Bush will not be impeached for fabricated crimes by his own party. If he even does this, and I sort of doubt he will, Kerry will only end up demonstrating once again the latent stupidity of the Democratic Party and their inability to raise any real issues that forces them to make something up.

In the meantime, I have a little bone to pick with Senator Kerry for false advertising. He promised me something that he hasn't delivered. He promised if I voted for Bush the economy would be bad, so I figured I should vote for Bush so the economy would stay bad and the interest rates on my student loans would continue to be low. Now Bush is re-elected and the economy is booming and interest rates are going way up. Kerry didn't fulfill his promises. I'm thinking of suing for damages, and maybe throwing Heinz Ketchup in, so Kerry can go halfies with the big baboon. Think John Edwards will take the case? I hear he likes taking money from the rich and it might help remove another rival for the '08 candidacy. Maybe I'll have my people call his people.