Google Custom Search

Saturday, January 13, 2007

The Liberty Sphere Draws Fire Over Gun Rights

Washington, DC (TLS). The Liberty Sphere has drawn fire over gun rights for the past couple of days. As most of our regular readers know, the NRA's 'Anti-Gun Blacklist' was published here in order to shine the spotlight on those agencies, corporations, and individuals who are on record for supporting measures that would essentially negate the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is part of the 'Bill of Rights' afforded to individual citizens.

No amount of spin or revisionist history can cloud the simple fact that the rights protected in the Bill of Rights apply to individuals as birthrights. That is, the Founders viewed them as so sacred, so essential to human liberty, that they referred to those rights as 'unalienable.'

One reader, however, insists that the 2nd Amendment contains no such individual right, a view which in itself is suspect since the Bill of Rights refer to individual citizens. If these rights do not apply to citizens individually, then they cannot be applied collectively either. It takes each individual citizen being afforded liberty in order for the collective society to be free as a whole. Take away individual rights, and you automatically make null and void collective rights.

For example, if free speech is viewed as a collective right only, if individual citizens are not afforded the right of free expression, then how can it be possible for the society to be free collectively? What you have at that point is a government dominated totalitarian state that presumes it can speak for the citizens. Thus, the 'collective' right of free speech automatically negates the freedom of individuals to speak their minds without government reprisal.

Be that as it may, the reader in question, who identifies herself as Mara S., states the following:

'I have been the victim of a crime. Many years ago, my house was broken into while I slept one night, and I'm glad there was no gun in the house because it would probably have been stolen along with my jewlery and some other valuables. If I'd awakened and surprised the thief, he might well have killed me with it in confusion and panic. Actually, a few days later, police caught the thief in the act of breaking into another person's home and they shot him when he tried to get away. If he'd found a gun in my house and escaped with it, he might have used it then to return fire, possibly killing a policeman or someone else. Or he might have fenced it long before that confrontation, with God-knows-what results in some distant city, if not my home town. Any of those outcomes would have been far more likely than the chance I might have awakened, fully alert, in time to use the hypothetical gun to protect $700-worth of insured valuables.

'Currently, I own what's known in my neck of the woods as a "varmint rifle," the varmint at issue being groundhogs. I enjoy removing my rifle from its secure hiding place now and then for target practice at a nice range near my home, where NRA instructors let me also try out handguns of different calibers. I'm a good shot with most of the weapons I've fired, if I do say so myself. The instructors officially agree, even going so far as to suggest I consider getting involved in competitive shooting. Maybe I will someday. As you might guess, I have no problem with people owning guns if they need them, whether for the business of protecting their crops or for sport.

'And yet -- now, please try to wrap your brain around this without squealing -- I fully support laws requiring people to register their guns and store them safely, as well as restricting ownership to those who can be plausibly expected not to harm innocent people with them by intent, accident, or negligence.

'I believe law enforcement professionals from street cops to attorneys general who tell me that well-written gun laws, properly administered, are among the best weapons we have for prosecuting the perpetrators of violent crimes, if not preventing such crimes outright.

'There is no unconditional right to own a gun expressed in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I resent the NRA's distortion of the amendment's language to suggest otherwise.

'The amendment was penned at a time in our nation's history when our land-based military might consisted of farmers behind trees, uniforms optional. In order for such a militia -- our only "army" at the time -- to be effective, it was prudent to ensure that citizens had their government's permission to keep guns handy.

'It's insulting to the intelligence of the American people to expect us to extrapolate from this that our nation -- now blessed with a military force armed to the teeth, when deployed (and then only) with the most sophisticated weapons known to mankind -- stillo needs civilians skulking around with flintlock pistols jammed into their waistbands to protect us from enemies both seen and unseen.

'And you know, that is the only valid argument I believe we pull out of the Second Amendment. Much as some might wish it were otherwise, the amendment does not say "the heroic circumvention of 3 a.m. rape scenarios being a male fantasy that just won't go away, the right of guys throughout the land to keep Colt Pythons in their night tables shall not be infringed."

'See how silly that sounds?

'Speaking of irritating word-play, I resent being labeled "anti-gun" because I am pro-reason, just as I resent being labeled "pro-abortion" because I disagree with many of the policies and philosophies promoted by self-styled "pro-life" or "right-to-life" organizations.

'Is it not possible to explore differences of opinion on complex and volatile issues without resorting to simplistic name-calling? People do not reverse themselves to consider the merits of a cause they reject simply because they've been forced to endure non-stop hysterical hyperbole from its proponents and can't stand it anymore. That is in the realm of brainwashing and torture, I believe.'

And that is 'the word' from Mara S.

Her argument disintegrates upon five salient points.

First, the brainwashing that has been done over the last 50 years has been perpetrated by leftist revisionists who fail to consider the original intent of the Framers when interpreting the Constitution. For too long individual law-abiding citizens have watched as these purveyors of government control slowly whittle away our rights. We have been on the defensive for much too long. What you are seeing now is our offensive. The gloves are coming off. We refuse to allow this to take place any longer. The hysteria and hyperbole were perfected by anti-gun bigots who portray those of us who support gun rights as 'snaggle-toothed, ignorant, rednecked hillbillies from the backwoods,' who are to be feared because we may go on a shooting spree at the drop of a hat.

As a proud gun-owner, I have never fired my weapon at a human being. I hope I never have to. But I will not hesitate to do so if my life, my family, and my property are threatened.

Second, before assuming that what some legal scholars or law enforcement officials have to say about the matter, it is wise to consider the words of the Founders themselves, who stated repeatedly that the beginning of tyranny is the removal of the rights of the people to keep and bear arms. The issue is NOT the purpose of having the guns but the principle that government has no right to take them away. THAT is the issue. Jefferson's philosophy was very clear: government that is powerful enough to remove the individual rights of citizens, including the right to own guns, is a tyrannical government to be feared. He even went as far at to say that such government has lost its moral authority to govern.

Third, over 100 million law-abiding citizens own guns. Less than one percent of these guns are used in committing crimes. It is the height of stupidity to claim that law abiding citizens must be punished for what a small minority does. That, too, is tyranny. This is tantamount to saying that because one citizen out of 100,000 in a town yelled 'fire' in a crowded theater, causing scores to be trampled to death, that government should then ban free speech. This argument is entirely illogical and quite dangerous.

There are some law enforcement groups that have a vested interest in doing precisely what is unfair, illogical, and dangerous, i.e., make all citizens pay for what the minority criminal element does. These law enforcement groups believe that only they have the right to weapons. That is called 'a police state.' No part of the Constitution grants the right to own guns to law enforcement officials only.

Four, licensing and registration is an unconstitutional practice. An innate right needs no permission from government, according to Jefferson. History is our teacher in this regard. Licensing and registration is a precursor to confiscation. The first thing Germany did to set the stage for Hitler's program of confiscation was licensing and registration. Government had to have the names of the citizens who owned guns so that when the time came for confiscation, they would know who to go after.

Increasingly, gun owners are wary of such laws. And steps are being taken to protect ourselves. For example, many are making their own guns. Some are buying guns from sources where there is no serial number that can be traced. These are the desperate steps of otherwise good citizens who see the handwriting on the wall. Just as prohibition did not work because, one, you cannot permanently squelch human liberty, i.e., the people will find a way to do what they want, and second, such prohibitions only create a vast underground black market, so it is that restricting the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms will not work but result in civil disobedience and a vast underground black market of weapons that will make them even more readily available.

As gun owners find themselves the targets of laws aimed at taking away their rights, steps are taken to insure their continued possession of firearms. Government can either stop with the march of madness to rob the citizens of their rights, or it will face an army of millions underground who will find a way to keep and bear arms. It is really quite that simple.

Five, each year thousands of crimes are prevented by gun owners. This is well-documented, though you will not hear anything about it in the mainstream media, which has a vested interest in keeping such facts from the general public.

Consider these statistics:

* Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year -- or about 6,850 times a day. This means that each year, firearms are used more than 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.

* Of the 2.5 million self-defense cases, as many as 200,000 are by women defending themselves against sexual abuse.

* Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606). And readers of Newsweek learned in 1993 that "only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The "error rate" for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high."

* Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.

* Handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense. Citizens use handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year. Many of these self-defense handguns could be labeled as "Saturday Night Specials."

So you see, Mara S., your argument simply does not wash. You have bought into the propaganda of collectivists who run roughshod over individual rights.

However, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to your post. It is essential that we have these debates in America.

Village Idiots

Washington, DC (TLS) Hillary Rodham Clinton claims it takes a village, not the parents, to raise a child. Using her theme, I would say it takes the Capitol Hill village--the village idiots--to make a mockery of all that the Founders envisioned when they launched this glorious experiment in human liberty. What the Democrats on the Hill fail to realize is that with each and every initiative that flies in the face of the principles our forefathers stood for, they are proclaiming to the world that the concept of human liberty was a failure after all.

Each time a bill is introduced that whittles away just a bit more of our freedoms, they are announcing that the Founders' ideals were simply the dreams of men growing older and nothing more. As one person wrote to me recently, 'Why do you put so much stock into what a bunch of white guys said over 200 years ago?'

Well, my friend, were it not for what that bunch of white guys did over 200 years ago, you would not be able to even ask that question without facing execution.

And this is precisely the Democrats' dilemma. Everything we have in this nation today came as a result of men who were willing to put their very lives on the line to blaze a trail of liberty. True, they were men of their era. They were shortsighted when it came to certain specific issues. Yet their principles are the very ones that later led to freedom being expanded to include women and minorities. Yet in order for liberals to continue to gain the support of persons who neither care for nor respect the principles of the Founders, they are caught in a catch-22. They must support measures that limit liberty to continue to get elected, or they acknowledge that because of the Founders' vision we have a free country, and therefore risk losing the support of persons who are ashamed of our heritage and wish for this nation to be a socialist nation.

But let's not kid ourselves here. Some of the very ones sitting in Congress have the very same goals as the U.S. Communist Party, the socialists, and the terrorists, i.e., they wish for the country to become something it is not and never has been. They want a 'brave new world' where capitalism, free markets, and the ability to choose our own destiny are viewed with disdain. They want a nation controlled by big government.

Pray tell, how is this any different than the terrorists? The only difference is that the terrorists want a Muslim totalitarian state...but a totalitarian state nonetheless. When one looks at the votes cast by village idiots such as Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Barney Frank, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, Joe Biden, John Conyers, Bill Nelson, Patrick Leahy, Chris Dodd, and about two hundred others, a frightening scenario becomes clear. Consistently they vote for more government power and less freedom of the individual--that is, except for those who are in their favor who can benefit from the elitist mindset, such as Nancy Pelosi exempting Starkist Tuna from the new minimum wage bill because the owner of Starkist, Del Monte, is located in Pelosi's district.

Barney Frank, star village idiot, pounded the gavel on Republicans who objected to the Pelosi scam, refusing to allow them to speak. So much for 'free, open, honest' government.

The country may not be able to withstand two more years of the reign of the village idiots. Our only hope is the Presidential veto and the filibuster.

Barbara Boxer Denigrates Condi Rice


Washington, DC (TLS) Extremist Leftist Barbara Boxer, the Senator from California who along with her comrades at arms Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi seek to make America a socialist nation, denigrated Secretary of State Condi Rice at a Senate hearing today. As Rice was answering questions from Senators concerning the President's plan for victory, Boxer responded by stating since Rice has no children, she has no moral authority to support a troop surge.

As expected, apologists for Boxer claim she did not mean it. Yet this is the mantra shared by most Leftists concerning this war. As Phil Donahue, Michael Moore, and other extremists have stated, 'If the politicians in Washington had kids in the military, they would have never sent anyone to war to begin with.'

What a completely demented, insane, and acidic thing to say!

Apply this 'logic' to other wars. I suppose Boxer, Moore, and Donahue would say that since George Washington had no kids in the military, then he could not with integrity command troops in our fight for independence.

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if these wackos were to say that America should have never gone to war for independence from Britain to begin with. I have long ago ceased to be shocked by what proceeds from the mouths of these pacifistic, America-hating, liberty-robbing idiots on the Left.

Quite to the contrary. I am no longer shocked by ANYTHING they say. I simply get fighting mad.

The only thing I can say is that if Americans elect these village idiots to Congress again in 2008, then they deserve to have their rights taken away. I wonder if a person who doesn't know the difference between liberty and tyranny should be voting anyway.

Boxer and her ilk comprise one of the biggest problems this nation faces.

Friday, January 12, 2007

48 Hours and Counting

It has now been fully 48 hours since the Democrats gave their response to the President's plan for victory in Iraq. They still have no alternative plan for victory.

Let's Try This Again--THROW OUT THE CASE!

Washington, DC (TLS). Durham, NC District Attorney Mike Nifong has asked to be removed from the Duke lacrosse case. Interestingly, this news comes only one day after the prosecutor met personally with the accuser--something which he has failed to do until very late in the process. It is also interesting that Nifong's request, which was sent to N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper, comes only one day after the accuser changed her story yet again--the only thing which she can be counted upon to do consistently.

As Nifong's legal nightmare intensifies, so does the precarious situation in which the Judge in the case, the N.C. judiciary, and the state Democrat Party find themselves. Nifong's recusal only magnifies the glaring shortcomings of the entire state judicial system in North Carolina. It is clear that Nifong has no case and knew he had no case all along, in spite of his repeated assurances that he did. This means that others knew he had no case--some of whom certainly had the authority to intervene.

Thus, the removal of Nifong from the glare of the public eye and the lights of the television cameras places a near-blinding spotlight on the Judge in the case and the judicial system. They now have no Nifong to hide behind. Their gross errors in judgment and lack of integrity are now brought out into the light of day for all to see. Perhaps this is one reason why Nifong was allowed to go on so long with the hoax. There are others in high places who share in his culpability. But as long as the focus was on Nifong, these behind-the-scenes co-conspirators could escape scrutiny.

That day is gone. The spotlight is now on the Judge, the North Carolina judicial system, and members of the N.C. Democrat Party who at the very least engaged in a conspiracy of silence while a desperate prosecutor fabricated a case against three innocent young men in order to get elected to office. It is really quite that simple.

Thus, one more time the plea arises from far and wide, from defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, Judges, news commentators, pundits, politicians, and concerned citizens--THROW OUT THIS CASE!

If there is one single ounce of integrity left in the N.C. judicial system, the very next step will be throwing this case out of court entirely. And it needs to happen as soon as state government offices re-open next week.

Pelosi, Conyers, Ellison Take Steps to Place Americans at Risk


Muslim Keith Ellison, D-MN


Rep. John Conyers

Washington, DC (TLS). One of the reasons the U.S. has successfully prevented another major terrorist attack on our own soil is the practice of profiling. In short, it is the height of stupidity to strip search an 88-year-old Caucasian grandmother at an airport, given the fact that the profile of terrorists is 'young Muslim males of Middle Eastern descent.'

As you well know, profiling is one of the basic components of tracking and catching criminals. It is not a racially motivated tactic but a rational one.

Yet here comes Nancy Pelosi, John Conyers, and Keith Ellison. The three Demos want to amend the Patriot Act to prevent the FBI from doing one of the things it does best, profiling criminals. But because acts of terrorism are usually perpetrated by young Muslim men, Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, wants the practice stopped, thus placing Americans in greater danger.

If left to the intentions of this gang of three, Americans will be at greater risk than ever for being targeted by terrorists.

Read the complete story here:

  • Gang of Three
  • PELOSI EXEMPTS HOMETOWN COMPANY FROM WAGE HIKE


    Washington, DC (TLS). The Liberty Sphere has consistently reported that the Democrat majority in Congress is long on promises but short on action. Even the action they take is hypocritical and ill-conceived.

    Take, for example, the minimum wage hike the House approved this week. Noted columnist George Will wrote last week that such an increase is bad for the country for a myriad of reasons, the most important being the negative impact it will have on small businesses that employ most American workers. Jobs will be cut.

    Yet the House, under the command of Pelosi, rammed through the controversial bill in a divided House.

    However, news comes today that Pelosi's Bill exempts a hometown company from the minimum wage increase!

    Apparently, taking the 'high moral ground' and 'doing what's right for workers who sorely need a raise,' as Pelosi has wailed, applies to everyone else in the country but her own area. Back in the old Soviet Union the lavish lifestyles of the leadership of the Communist Party were decried as elitist and hypocritical, given that Communists claimed that such riches were immoral and given the fact that 95% of the country lived in dire conditions.

    Pelosi is an elitist hypocrite--always has been. The standards she sets for the rest of the country always have exemptions when it comes to her and her family, her hometown, and her home district. This is one more example.

    If a seafood company in Pelosi's hometown can be exempted from minimum wage requirements, then why can't the small, struggling independent apothecary in New Haven also be exempt? If fact, why can't all businesses be exempt? Labor in this country is a commodity. Government has no business setting minimum prices for a commodity, particularly when the average American worker earns much more than the 'minimum wage.' These things are normally set by markets.

    Pelosi's problem is that this is yet one more example of her elitism and hypocrisy. And this is precisely why that by the time the Senate is through with her Bill, there will be changes, amendments, corrections, and common-sense approaches, such as tying the minimum wage to tax cuts for small businesses.

    Read the full story on Pelosi here:
  • Pelosi's Hypocrisy
  • The Anti-Gun Blacklist

    Washington, DC (TLS). Get ready for an eye-opener. The following is the NRA's blacklist of organizations, corporations, non-profits, and prominent individuals who are on record as supporting measures to rob the citizens of their 2nd Amendment rights.

    You will note that some on the list are religious organizations and members of the clergy. As I have reported to you before on The Liberty Sphere, some religious groups, such as the United Church of Christ, are some of the most reactionary, extremist Leftwing groups in the country. Such is the case with the United Church of Christ. They are on the blacklist as is the national headquarters of The United Methodist Church, among others.

    The list pulls no punches and spares NO ONE who is guilty of attempting to rob the citizens of their Constitutional rights.

    National Organizations With Anti-Gun Policies

    The following organizations have lent monetary, grassroots or some other type of direct support to anti-gun organizations. In many instances, these organizations lent their name in support of specific campaigns to pass anti-gun legislation such as the March 1995 HCI "Campaign to Protect Sane Gun Laws." Many of these organizations were listed as "Campaign Partners," for having pledged to fight any efforts to repeal the Brady Act and the Clinton "assault weapons" ban. All have officially endorsed anti-gun positions.

    AARP
    AFL-CIO
    Ambulatory Pediatric Association
    American Academy of Pediatrics
    American Civil Liberties Union
    American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing
    American Medical Women`s Association
    American Medical Student Association
    American Medical Association
    American Association for the Surgery of Trauma
    American Trauma Society
    American Federation of Teachers
    American Association of School Administrators
    American Alliance for Rights and Responsibilities
    American Medical Association
    American Bar Association
    American Counseling Association
    American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
    American Academy of Pediatrics
    American Association for World Health
    American Ethical Union
    American Nurses Association
    American Association of Neurological Surgeons
    American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences
    American Firearms Association
    American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
    American Jewish Committee
    American Trauma Society
    American Psychological Association
    American Jewish Congress
    American Public Health Association
    Americans for Democratic Action
    Anti-Defamation League
    Association of American Medical Colleges
    Black Mental Health Alliance
    B`nai B`rith
    Central Conference of American Rabbis
    Children`s Defense Fund
    Church of the Brethren
    Coalition for Peace Action
    Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
    College Democrats of America
    Committee for the Study of Handgun Misuse & World Peace
    Common Cause
    Congress of National Black Churches, Inc.
    Congress of Neurological Surgeons
    Consumer Federation of America
    Council of the Great City Schools
    Council of Chief State School Officers
    Dehere Foundation
    Disarm Educational Fund
    Environmental Action Foundation
    Episcopal Church-Washington Office
    Florence and John Shumann Foundation
    Friends Committee on National Legislation
    General Federation of Women`s Clubs
    George Gund Fun
    Gray Panthers
    H.M. Strong Foundation
    Hadassah
    Harris Foundation
    Hechinger Foundation
    Interfaith Neighbors
    Int`l Ladies` Garment Workers` Union
    Int`l Association of Educators for World Peace
    Jewish Labor Committee
    Joyce Foundation
    Lauder Foundation
    Lawrence Foundation
    League of Women Voters of the United States*
    Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
    Manhattan Project II
    Mennonite Central Committee-Washington Office
    National Safe Kids Campaign
    National Association of Police Organizations
    National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
    National Black Nurses` Association
    National Association of Chain Drug Stores
    National Network for Youth
    National Assembly of National Voluntary Health & Social Welfare Organizations
    National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
    National Association of School Psychologists
    National Association of Counties*
    National Association of Pediatric Nurse Associates & Practitioners
    National Association of School Safety and Law Enforcement Officers
    National Education Association
    National Association of Elementary School Principals*
    National Association of Public Hospitals
    National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
    National Association of Secondary School Principals
    National Association of Social Workers
    National Association of Children`s Hospitals and Related Institutions
    National Association of School Psychologists
    National Council of La Raza
    National Center to Rehabilitate Violent Youth
    National Commission for Economic Conversion & Disarmament
    National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
    National Council of Negro Women
    National Association of Community Health Centers
    National People`s Action
    National Education Association*
    National League of Cities
    National Council on Family Relations
    National Council of Jewish Women
    National Organization for Women
    National Political Congress of Black Women
    National Parks and Conservation Association
    National Peace Foundation
    National Urban League, Inc.
    National Parent, Teachers Association*
    National Urban Coalition
    National SAFE KIDS Campaign
    National Organization on Disability
    National Spinal Cord Injury Association
    NETWORK: A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby
    Ortenberg Foundation
    Peace Action
    People for the American Way
    Physicians for Social Responsibility
    Police Foundation
    Project on Demilitarization and Democracy
    Public Citizen
    SaferWorld
    Society of Critical Care Medicine
    Southern Christian Leadership Conference
    The Council of the Great City Schools
    The Synergetic Society
    20/20 Vision
    U.S. Catholic Conference, Dept. of Social Development
    Union of American Hebrew Congregations
    Unitarian Universalist Association
    United States Catholic Conference
    United Methodist Church, General Board & Church Society
    United Church of Christ, Office for Church in Society*
    United States Conference of Mayors
    War and Peace Foundation
    Women Strike for Peace
    Women`s National Democratic Club
    Women`s Action for New Directions (WAND)
    Women`s Int`l League for Peace and Freedom
    World Spiritual Assembly, Inc.
    YWCA of the U.S.A.

    *The national organization only endorses federal legislation.

    Anti-Gun Individuals & Celebrities

    The following celebrities and national figures have lent their name and notoriety to anti-gun causes, speaking out for anti-gun legislation and providing a voice for anti-gun organizations.
    Celebrities:

    Krista Allen - Actress

    Suzy Amis - Actress

    Louis Anderson - Comedian

    Richard Dean Anderson - Actor

    Maya Angelou - Poet

    David Arquette - Actor

    Ed Asner - Actor

    Alec Baldwin - Actor

    Bob Barker - TV Personality

    Carol Bayer Sager - Composer

    Drew Barrymore - Actress

    Kevin Bacon - Actor

    Lauren Bacall - Actress*

    Sarah Ban Breathnach - Writer

    William Baldwin - Actor

    Candice Bergen - Actress

    Richard Belzer - Actor

    Tony Bennett - Singer

    Boys II Men - Pop Group

    Jon Bon Jovi - Singer

    Peter Bogdonovich - Director

    Peter Bonerz - Actor

    Albert Brooks - Actor

    Beau Bridges - Actor

    Benjamin Bratt - Actor

    Bonnie Bruckheimer - Movie Producer

    Christie Brinkley - Model

    Dr. Joyce Brothers - Psychologist/Author

    James Brolin - Actor

    James Brooks - TV Producer

    Mel Brooks - Actor/Director

    Betty Buckley - Actress

    Ellen Burstyn - Actress

    Steve Buscemi - Actor

    David Canary - Actor

    Kate Capshaw - Actress

    Kim Cattrall- Actress

    Josh Charles - Actor

    Robert Chartloff - Producer

    Stockard Channing - Actress

    Jill Clayburgh - Actress

    Terri Clark - Singer

    George Clooney - Actor

    Jackie Cooper - Actor/Director*

    Jennifer Connelly - Actress

    Judy Collins - Singer

    Kevin Costner - Actor

    Sean Connery - Actor

    Sheryl Crow - Singer

    Walter Cronkite - Frmr News Anchor

    Billy Crystal- Actor

    Julie Cypher - Director

    Arlene Dahl - Actress

    Clive Davis - Writer

    Linda Dano - Actress

    Matt Damon - Actor

    Pam Dawber - Actress

    Patrika Darbo - Actress

    Stuart Damon - Actor

    Ellen Degeneres - Actress

    Gavin de Becker - Writer

    Rebecca DeMornay - Actress

    Danny DeVito - Actor

    Michael Douglas - Actor

    Phil Donahue - Talk Show Host

    Richard Donner - Director

    Fran Drescher - Actress

    Richard Dreyfus - Actor

    David Duchovny - Actor

    Sandy Duncan - Actress

    Christine Ebersole - Actress

    Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds - Singer

    Missy Elliott - Singer

    Nora Ephron - Director

    Gloria Estefan - Singer

    Melissa Etheridge - Singer

    Mia Farrow - Actress

    Mike Farrell - Actor

    Carrie Fisher - Actress

    Sally Field - Actress

    Doug Flutie - NFL player

    Fannie Flagg - Actress

    Jane Fonda - Actress

    Rick Fox - NBA Player

    Andy Garcia - Actor

    Art Garfunkel - Singer

    Estelle Getty - Actress

    Geraldo - TV personality

    Richard Gere - Actor

    Kathie Lee Gifford - TV personality

    Paul Glaser - TV director

    Brad Gooch - Writer

    Elliott Gould - Actor

    Louis Gossett, Jr. - Actor

    Michael Gross - Actor

    Nancy Lee Grahn - Actress

    Bryant Gumbel - TV Personality

    Deidra Hall - Actress

    Ethan Hawke - Actor

    Mariette Hartley - Actress

    Mark Harmon - Actor

    Anne Heche - Actress

    Howard Hessman - Actor

    Marilu Henner - Actress

    Dustin Hoffman - Actor

    Hal Holbrook - Actor*

    Whitney Houston - Singer

    Helen Hunt - Actress

    Grace-Lynne Ingle - Actress

    John Ingle - Actor

    Francesca James - TV Producer

    Norman Jewison - Director

    Lainie Kazan - Actress

    Richard Karn - Actor

    Jeffrey Katzenberg - Producer

    Barry Kemp - TV Producer

    David E. Kelley - TV Producer

    Diane Keaton - Actress

    Margaret Kemp - Interior Designer

    Chaka Khan - Singer

    Coreta Scott King - Activist

    Kevin Kline - Actor

    Michael E. Knight - Actor

    Jonathan Kozol - Writer

    William Kovacs - Director

    Lenny Kravits - Singer

    Lisa Kudrow - Actress

    Wally Kurth - Actor

    Christine Lahti - Actress

    k.d. lang - Singer

    Ricki Lake - TV personality

    Denis Leary - Actor

    John Leguizamo - Actor

    Norman Lear - TV Producer

    Spike Lee - Director

    Hal Linden - Actor

    Lisa Linde - Actress

    Tara Lipinski - Former Olympian

    Keyshawn Johnson - NFL player

    Rob Lowe - Actor

    Amanda Marshall - Singer

    Barry Manilow - Singer

    Camryn Manheim - Actress

    Howie Mandel - Actor

    Kyle MacLachlan - Actor

    Madonna - Singer

    Marla Maples - Actress

    Marsha Mason - Actress*

    Mase - Singer

    Penny Marshall - Director

    Prema Mathai-Davis - YWCA Official

    John McDaniel - Musician

    John McEnroe - Athlete

    Brian McKnight - Musician

    Ed McMahon - TV personality

    Natalie Merchant - Singer

    Bette Midler - Singer

    Shane Minor - Musician

    Mary Tyler Moore - Actress

    Michael Moore - Film Maker

    Norval Morris - Law Professor

    Mike Myers - Actor

    N Sync - Music group

    Kathy Najimy - Actress

    Paul Newman - Actor

    Jack Nicholson - Actor

    Leonard Nimoy - Actor

    Mike Nichols - Director

    Stephen Nichols - Actor

    Rosie O`Donnel l- Actress/Talk Show Host

    Jennifer O Neill - Actress

    Julia Ormond - Actress

    Jane Pauley - TV Personality

    Sarah Jessica Parker - Actress

    Mandy Patinkin - Actor

    Richard North Patterson - Writer

    Rhea Perlman- Actress

    Michelle Pfieffer - Actress

    Sydney Pollack - Director

    Aidan Quinn - Actor

    Colin Quinn - Actor

    Dennis Quaid - Actor

    Elizabeth Bracco Quinn - Actress

    Bonnie Raitt - Singer

    Debbie Reynolds - Actress

    Mary Lou Retton - Former Olympian

    Paul Reiser - Actor

    Peter Reckell - Actor

    Rob Reiner - Actor/Director

    Robert Redford - Actor/Director

    Anne Rice - Writer

    Cathy Rigby - Actress

    Natasha Richardson - Actress

    Fred Rogers - Mr. Rogers

    Julia Roberts - Actress

    Marc Rosen - TV Producer

    Tim Robbins - Actor

    Tim Roth - Actor

    Renee Russo - Actress

    Robin Ruzan - Wife of Mike Myers

    Meg Ryan - Actress

    Susan Sarandon - Actress

    Jerry Seinfeld - Actor

    Kyra Sedgwick - Actress

    Martin Sheen - Actor

    Russell Simmons - Record Producer

    Neil Simon - Playwright*

    Louise Sorel - Actress

    Mira Sorvino - Actress

    Rena Sofer - Actress

    Britany Spears - Singer

    Bruce Springsteen - Singer

    Kevin Spirtas - Actor

    Barbra Streisand - Singer

    David Steinberg - Director

    Sylvester Stallone - Actor

    Harry Dean Stanton - Actor

    Meryl Streep - Actress

    Patrick Stewart - Actor

    Sharon Stone - Actress

    Sting - Singer

    Trudie Styler - Actress

    Jonathan Taylor Thomas - Actor

    The Temptations - Pop Group

    Vinny Testaverde - NFL player

    Marlo Thomas - Actress*

    Uma Thurman - Actress

    Steve Tisch - Producer

    Mike Torrez - Former Baseball player

    Shania Twain - Singer

    Dick Van Dyke - Actor

    Eli Wallach - Actor*

    Ruth Warrick - Actress

    Harvey Weinstein - Producer

    Jann Wenner - Publisher

    Sigourney Weaver - Actress

    Victor Webster - Actor

    James Whitmore - Actor*

    Andy Williams - Singer*

    Kelli Williams - Actress

    Henry Winkler - Actor

    Oprah Winfrey - Entertainer

    Richard Widmark - Actor

    Rita Wilson - Actress

    Vanessa Williams - Singer

    Herman Wouk - Author

    Joanne Woodward - Actress*

    Peter Yarrow - Singer

    Catherine Zeta-Jones - Actress

    Ahmet Zappa -Actor

    Diva Zappa -Actress

    Dweezil Zappa - Musician

    Gail Zappa -

    Moon Zappa -Actress


    * Denotes membership on

    Brady Campaign`s National Committee


    National Figures:


    Joel J. Alpert M.D. - Pediatrician

    Robert Bernstein Ph.D - Pediatrician

    Robert E. Brennan - Financier

    Bishop Edmond Browning - Espiscopal Leader

    James E. Carter - Former President

    Marion Wright Edelman - Director, Childrens Defense Fund

    Michael Eisner, Former Chairman and CEO The Walt Disney Company

    Ahmet Ertegun - Music Producer

    Amitai Etzioni - Teacher

    Tom Freston - MTV President

    Dr. Lorraine E. Hale - Social Worker

    Della M. Hughes - Activist

    Ed Koch - Former Politician

    C. Everett Koop - Former Surgeon General

    Rev. Wallace Ryan Kuroiwa - Clergyman

    Gerald M. Levin - Chairman, Time Warner

    Davis S. Liederman - Ex. Dir. Child Welfare League

    Paul Rabbi Menitaff - Clergyman

    Abner Mikva - Former Judge

    Richard Parsons - Pres. Time Warner

    Steven Rockefeller - Financier

    Ellen Y. Rosenberg - Activist

    Rabbi David Saperstein - Clergyman

    Herb Scannel - Pres. Nickelodeon

    Vincent Schiraldi - Dir. Justice Policy Institute

    Lyle Elmer Strom - Federal Judge

    Joe Volk - Clergyman

    Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie - Clergyman



    The following journalists actively

    editorialize in favor of gun control laws:


    Steve Benson - Cartoonist

    Tony Auth - Cartoonist

    Jim Borgman - Cartoonist

    Jimmy Breslin - Columnist

    Art Buchwald - Columnist

    Stuart Carlson - Cartoonist

    Marie Cocco - Columnist

    E.J. Dionne Jr. - Columnist

    Bonnie Erbe - Columnist

    Tom Fiedler - Columnist

    Michael Gartner - Columnist

    Mark Genrich - Columnist

    James Glassman - Editor

    Bob Herbert - Columnist

    Molly Ivins - Columnist

    Bill Johnson - Columnist

    Donald Kaul - Columnist

    Mike Lane - Cartoonist

    Leonard Larson - Columnist

    Mike Luckovich - Cartoonist

    Jimmy Margulies - Cartoonist

    Doug Marlette - Cartoonist

    Deborah Mathis - Columnist

    Colman McCarthy - Columnist

    Jim Morin - Cartoonist

    Tom Oliphant- Columnist

    Mike Peters - Cartoonist

    Robert Reno - Columnist

    Frank Rich - Columnist

    Cindy Richards - Columnist

    Kevin Siers- Cartoonist

    Ed Stein - Cartoonist

    Tom Teepen - Editor

    Tim Toles - Cartoonist

    Garry Trudeau - Cartoonist

    Cynthia Tucker - Columnist

    Steve Twomey - Columnist

    Steve Villano - Columnist

    Adrienne Washington - Columnist

    Don Wright - Cartoonist


    Anti-Gun Corporations/Corporate Heads

    The following listing includes the most prominent national corporations that have lent their corporate support to gun control initiatives or taken position supporting gun control.

    A & M Records
    Al Cafaro, Chrm. & CEO
    595 Madison Avenue
    New York, NY 10022
    (212) 826-0477
    www.amrecords.com
    Record Production, Entertainment

    American Century Companies
    James E. Stowers, CEO
    4500 Main St., 4th Floor
    Kansas City, MO 64111
    (816) 531-5575
    www.americancentury.com
    Mutual Fund & Stock Investment Company on NYSE

    American Multi Cinemas Entertainment, Inc.
    Stanley H. Durwood, Co-Chairman, CEOPeter C. Brown, President, CFO
    106 West 14th Street, #1700
    Kansas City, MO 64141
    (816) 221-4000
    www.amctheaters.com
    Movie Theater Company

    Argosy Casino
    H. Steven Norton, President, CEO
    777 N.W. Argosy Parkway
    Riverside, MO 64150
    (816) 746-7711
    www.argosycasinos.com/
    Gambling Casino Company

    Ben & Jerry`s Homemade, Inc.
    Bennett R. Cohen Chrm. & CEO
    Rte. 100, Box 240
    Waterbury, VT 05676
    (802) 244-5641
    www.benjerry.com
    Ice cream and frozen yogurt

    BJC Health Systems
    Fred L. Brown, President & CEO
    4444 Forest Park Ave.
    St. Louis, MO 63108
    (314) 747-9322
    www.bjc.org/
    Healthcare Company

    Blue Cross Blue Shield - Kansas City
    John P. Mascotte, President
    P.O. Box 419169
    Kansas City, MO 64141
    (816) 395-2222
    Healthcare Company

    Brooks Investments-Robert Brooks
    Robert Brooks
    45 Chesterfield Lakes Road
    Chesterfield, MO 63005
    Investment Company

    Carter Hawley Hale Stores, Inc.
    Philip M. Hawley, Chrm. & CEO
    444 South Flower Street
    Los Angeles, CA 90071
    (213) 620-0150
    Retail clothing and accessories stores

    Crown Central Petroleum Corp.
    Henry A. Rosenberg, Jr.
    One North Central Street Box 1168
    Baltimore, MD 21203
    (301) 539-7400
    Refiners and marketers of petroleum products, convenience stores

    Development Specialists - Chicago
    70 W. Madison Street, #2300
    Chicago, IL 60602
    (312) 263-4141

    Earthgrains - St. Louis
    8400 Maryland Ave.
    St. Louis, MO 63105
    (314) 259-7000
    www.ironkids.com/Pages/Earthgrains.html
    National Bread Company

    General American - St. Louis
    Richard A. Liddy, CEO
    P.O. Box 396
    St. Louis, MO 63166
    (314) 843-8700
    www.genam.com
    Life Insurance

    Hallmark Cards
    Irvine O. Hockaday, President & CEO
    P.O. Box 418307
    Kansas City, MO 64141
    (816) 274-5111
    www.hallmark.com
    Greeting Card Company


    Health Midwest
    2316 East Meyer Boulevard
    Kansas City, MO 64132
    (816) 751-3000
    www.healthmidwest.org
    National Healthcare Company



    ICN Biomedicals
    Adam Jerney, Chrm. & CEO
    3300 Hyland Avenue
    Costa Mesa, CA 92626
    (714) 545-0113
    www.icnbiomed.com
    Pharmaceutical products

    James B.Nutter Co. - Kansas City
    James B.Nutter
    4153 Broadway
    Kansas City, MO 64111
    (816) 531-2345
    Investment Banker

    Kansas City Chiefs
    Lamar Hunt, Owner
    One Arrowhead Drive
    Kansas City, MO 64129
    (816) 924-9300
    www.kcchiefs.com
    Pro Football Team

    Kansas City Royals
    David Glass, CEO
    P.O. Box 419969
    Kansas City, MO 64141
    (816) 921-8000
    www.kcroyals.com
    Pro Baseball Team

    Kenneth Cole
    152 W. 57th Street
    New York, NY 10019
    (800) 536-2653
    www.kennethcole.com
    Clothing retailer

    Lamar Advertising Company
    Lamar Outdoor Advertising
    5551 Corporate Boulevard, Suite 2-A
    Baton Rouge, LA 70808
    P. O. Box 66338
    Baton Rouge, LA 70896
    (225) 926-1000
    Fax (225) 926-1005
    www.lamar.com


    Levi Strauss & Co.
    Robert D. Haas, Chairman
    Philip Marineau, CEO
    Peter A. Jacobi, President and COO
    1155 Battery St.
    San Francisco, CA 94111
    (415) 501-6000
    FAX (415) 501-3939
    www.levistrauss.com
    Clothing

    Mallinckrodt, Inc. - St. Louis
    C. Ray Holman, President & CEO
    675 McDonnell Blvd, Box 5840
    St. Louis, MO 63134
    (314) 654-2000
    www.mallinckrodt.com
    Clothing Starch Company

    Maritz, Inc. - St. Louis
    William E. Maritz, Chairman & CEO
    1375 N. Highway Drive
    Fenton, MO 63099
    (314) 827-4000
    www.maritz.com
    Corporate Travel & Research Company

    Michael Douglas Foundation
    3550 Wilshire
    Los Angele, CA 90010

    MNC Financial, Inc.
    Alfred Lerner, Chrm.
    Ten Light Street Box 987
    Baltimore, MD 21203
    (301) 244-5000
    Banking, financial services

    Sara Lee Corporation
    Sara Lee Foundation
    Three First National Plaza
    Chicago, IL 60602-4260
    Phone: 312-726-2600
    www.saralee.com
    Fax: 312-726-3712

    Schnucks Markets
    Craig D. Schnuck
    11420 Lackland Road
    St. Louis, MO 63146
    (314) 994-9900
    www.schnucks.com
    Grocery Stores

    Silver Dollar City
    Peter Herschend
    One Corporate Drive
    Branson, MO 65616
    800 475-9370
    www.silverdollarcity.com
    Amusement Parks

    Site Oil Company - St. Louis
    Alvin J. Siteman, President
    50 S. Bemiston
    St. Louis, MO 63105
    (314) 725-4321
    Oil Company

    Southland Corporation
    Masatoshi Ito, Chrm.
    2711 North Haskell Avenue
    Dallas, TX 75221
    www.7-eleven.com
    Convenience stores

    Southwestern Bell Telephone- St. Louis
    One Bell Center
    St. Louis, MO 63101
    (314) 235-9800
    www.swbell.com
    Telecommunications Firm

    Sport & Health, Inc.
    Don Konz, CEO
    1800 Old Meadow Rd.
    McLean, Virginia 22102
    (703) 556-6556
    www.sportandhealth.com
    Health clubs and fitness centers

    Sprint Corp PAC
    William T. Esrey, Chrm., Pres. & CEO 2330 Shawnee Mission Parkway
    Westwood, KS 66205
    913 624-3000
    www.sprint.com
    Telecommunicaitons Firm

    SSM Health System - St. Louis
    477 N. Lindbergh
    St. Louis, MO 63141
    (314) 994-7800
    Healthcare Company

    St. Louis Cardinals
    William DeWitt Jr., Controlling Owner
    250 Stadium Plaza
    St. Louis, MO 63102
    (314) 421-3263
    Pro Baseball Team

    St. Louis Rams
    Georgia Frontiere , Owner
    One Rams Way
    Earth City, MO 63045
    (314) 982-7267
    www.stlouisrams.com
    Pro Football Team

    St. Louis University
    Rev. Lawrence Biondi, President
    221 N. Grand Blvd.
    St. Louis, MO 63103
    (314) 977-2222
    www.slu.edu
    Private Catholic University

    Stoneyfield Farms Yogurt
    Mr. Gary Hirshberg, CEO
    10 Burton Drive
    Londonderry, NH 03053
    (603) 437-7594
    Yogurt

    Sverdrup Corp.
    Richard E. Beumer,
    Chairman & CEO
    13723 Riverport Drive
    Maryland Heights, MO 63043
    (314) 436-7600
    www.sverdrup.com
    Engineering Firm

    Time Warner Inc.
    Gerald M. Levin, Chrm. & CEO
    75 Rockefeller Plaza
    New York, NY 10019
    (212) 484-8000
    www.pathfinder.com/corp/
    Publishing, film and music recordings

    TMP Worldwide/Monster.Com
    Andrew McKelvey, CEO
    1633 Broadway, 33rd Fl.
    New York, NY 10019
    Phone: 212-977-4200
    Fax: 212-956-2142
    www.tmpw.com
    www.monster.com
    online employment service

    Unity Health - St. Louis
    1650 Des Peres Road #301
    St. Louis, MO 63131
    (314) 909-3300
    www.smhs.com/unityheath.html
    Healthcare Company

    Working Assets
    Peter Barnes, Founder
    701 Montgomery Street
    San Francisco, California 94111
    (415) 788-0777
    www.workingassets.com
    Long distance telephone service


    Publication and Media Outlets

    The following publications and media outlets have assisted in the attack on Second Amendment rights. The editorial policies of some of the media sources listed portray firearms in a negative manner in an attempt to generate public support for restrictions on firearms ownership. Others have refused some or all of NRA`s advertisements.


    Capital Cities/ABC
    Television Network
    77 W. 66th Street
    New York, NY 10023-6298
    (212) 456-7777

    Bell Atlantic-D.C.
    2055 L Street, N.W.
    Washington, D.C. 20036
    (202) 392-9900

    Blue Chip Stamps
    15801 S. Eastern Avenue
    Los Angeles, CA 90040
    (213) 720-4600

    The Christian Publishing Society
    The Christian Science Monitor
    One Norway Street
    Boston, MA 02115
    (508) 586-6200

    Columbia Broadcasting Service
    CBS Television Network
    51 W. 52nd Street
    New York, NY 10019
    (212) 975-4321

    Corporation For Public Broadcasting/ PBS Television
    1320 Braddock Place
    Alexandria, VA 22314-1698
    (703) 739-5000
    (703) 739-0775 - Fax

    Cox Newspapers
    Atlanta Journal-Constitution
    Credibank Towers, Suite 400
    2800 Biscayne Blvd.
    Miami, FL 33137
    (305) 576-7678

    Gannett News Service
    USA Today
    1000 Wilson Blvd.
    Arlington, VA 22229
    (703) 276-5806

    Johnson Publishing Company, Inc.
    Ebony Magazine
    820 S. Michigan avenue
    Chicago, IL 60605-2190
    (312) 322-9250

    Knight-Ridder Newspapers
    Detroit Free-Press
    321 W. LaFayette Blvd.
    Detroit, MI 48231
    (313) 222-6400

    Miami Herald
    One Herald Plaza
    Miami, FL 33132-1683
    (305) 350-2111

    Los Angeles Times
    Times Mirror Square
    Los Angeles, California 90053
    (213) 237-4511
    (213) 237-7679 - Fax

    McCall`s Magazine
    110 Fifth Avenue
    New York, NY 10017-5603
    (212) 463-1000

    Motorcycle Cruiser Magazine
    Emap PLC
    6420 Wilshire Blvd., Floor 17
    Los Angeles, California 90048
    (323) 782-2000

    National Broadcasting Company
    NBC Television Network
    30 Rockefeller Plaza
    New York, NY 10112
    (212) 664-4444

    Newsweek, Inc.
    Newsweek Magazine
    444 Madison Avenue
    New York, NY 10022-6999
    (212) 350-4000

    Rolling Stone Magazine
    Jann Wenner, Chrm. & CEO
    745 5th, Avenue
    New York, NY 10151
    (212) 758-3800

    The New York Times Corporation
    The New York Times
    229 W. 43rd Street
    New York, NY 10036
    (212) 556-1234

    Time Magazine
    Time & Life Building
    Rockefeller Center
    New York, NY 10020
    (212) 522-1212

    Times-Mirror Corporation
    The Los Angeles Times
    Times Mirror Square
    Los Angeles, CA 90053
    (213) 237-3000

    The Baltimore Sun
    501 N. Calvert Street
    Baltimore, MD 21278
    (301) 332-6300

    The Tribune Company
    Chicago Tribune
    435 N. Michigan Avenue
    Chicago, IL 60611
    (312) 227-3000

    Washington Post
    1150 15th Street, N.W.
    Washington, D.C. 20071
    (202) 334-6000

    Compiled by:
    NRA Institute for Legislative Action
    11250 Waples Mill Road
    Fairfax, Virginia 22030

    Find this item at: http://www.nraila.org/Issues/factsheets/read.aspx?ID=15

    Suspicious Incidents at the Nation's Airports

    Washington, DC (TLS). Sources in the nation's counterterrorism task force are reporting that a Saudi news agency has information pointing to suspicious incidents in U.S. airports. According to the Saudis, strange people have been noticed watching restricted areas in airports across the country, including Chicago's O'Hare.

    Counterterrorism reporter Oliver Guitta is reporting that the Saudi daily 'Al Watan' reported that the strange occurrences include the theft of several airport vehicles in a number of airports, including the theft of a United Air car in Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

    A similar attempt to steal an airport vehicle was reported in Buffalo, New York.

    Airport officials across the United States have reported to the U.S. Homeland Security Department that strange persons have been seen watching restricted areas at various airports.

    These incidents are enough to raise questions, among the Saudis at least, about a possible terrorism scheme being devised that targets multiple airports within the United States. So far, however, none of this has been reported in the national media in the States.

    Thursday, January 11, 2007

    24 Hours and Counting--Still No Plan

    It has now been 24 hours since the Democrats provided their 'response' to the President's plan for victory in Iraq. There is still no plan proposed by Democrats that would insure an American victory.

    A Message to Nifong From the Mother of One of the Accused

    Washington, DC (TLS). The mother of one of the Duke lacrosse students who has been indicted by Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong has a message for the prosecutor. According to advanced excerpts from a segment to be aired on CBS News' '60 Minutes' this coming Sunday, Leslie Stahl asked the parents of the accused players that if Nifong were to come into the room and stand before them, would they have anything they'd like to say to him. A mother of one of the accused answered, 'I would say to Mr. Nifong that he has picked the wrong families, the wrong lacrosse team, and the wrong University family to harass, and he will pay for it for the rest of his life.'

    These words of warning are an apt summary of this entire shameful and embarrassing episode in American jurisprudence and American politics.

    It is time for action. No longer can the judiciary wait. This circus has gone on for much too long. The Judge should have dismissed this case long ago. The fact that this has not happened is a further indictment against the North Carolina judicial system.

    How can honorable men and women stand idly by as this completely fabricated hoax is perpetrated on innocent young men and their families? It is to be noted that Nifong has been charged with ethics violations by the North Carolina Bar, and an investigation has ensued. Investigations take time, no doubt. But to leave innocent lives hanging in the balance while slothful officials in the N.C. judiciary try to decide what to do with a prosecutor out of control makes the entire N.C. judicial system look like a bunch of clowns at a Ringling Brothers' circus.

    Why has the Judge failed to dismiss this case entirely? This case should have been thrown out of court months ago.

    Why has the Judge failed to remove Nifong from the case at the very least, so that the present log-jam can be cleared making it possible for the three falsely accused young men to have their names cleared?

    Nifong continues to refuse to drop charges of sexual assault against the three students, in spite of the fact that as of today, the accuser has changed her story of what happened that night yet again, claiming that one of the accused committed no sexual act of any kind. She had stated repeatedly up until today that all three had engaged in such acts.

    DNA evidence also shows that the accuser had engaged in sex with several young men during the night in question, but none of the DNA found on the woman belongs to any of the accused. Obviously the accuser had been spreading around her charm far and wide that night. It is to be wondered just how many men she had frolicked with that evening.

    The longer this travesty of justice is allowed to go on unfettered, the more the entirety of the N.C. judicial system and the N.C. Democrat Party appear to be co-conspirators with the D.A. who has engaged in unethical and incompetent practices at the very least, and who has in all likelihood committed crimes for which he should face prosecution. And this doesn't even begin to address the perpetual inertia exhibited by the Judge in this case.

    To be candid, at this point more and more questions are raised in my mind concerning the integrity of everyone involved in the state's 'case' against the students. One would think that at the very least the Judge would have thrown the case out of court. The fact that this has not happened only raises more suspicions. When even the lab that examines DNA evidence colludes with a renegade D.A. to withhold such evidence, it is clear to even the most casual observer that these proceedings are tainted, rotten to the core, dripping with corruption from top to bottom. The terms 'set-up,' 'conspiracy,' 'judicial corruption,' and 'high crimes and misdemeanors' immediately come to mind.

    In fact, until concrete action is taken immediately to bring this sad chapter to a close, everyone from the Judge, the D.A.'s office, the N.C. Democrat Party, as well as the N.C. judiciary oversight bodies, is suspect.

    LIBERTY ALERT!! Reid Introduces Bill to Silence Free Speech


    Washington, DC (TLS). Senator Harry Reid, the new Senate Majority Leader, has introduced legislation that would essentially ban grassroots groups from alerting their constituents about pending bills that directly effect citizens.

    The legislation is introduced as 'Senate Bill #1.'

    The Senate needs to be inundated with phone calls against this bill. The phone number to call is 202-224-3121. That puts you directly in touch with Capitol Hill.

    Tell them you wish for the provisions in the Bill that limit the freedom of speech of grassroots organizations and their members to be removed.

    Senate Bill #1 has been made the top priority of Democrats who control the Senate. Stung by grassroots organizations in the past that 'out' the shady dealings of Senators and Congressmen who wish to enact liberty-busting legislation, these politicians wish not only to silence the grassroots organizations that provide the alerts but to make sure average citizens are kept in the dark about pending legislation.

    The Bill has one or two honorable components that target lobbyists. However, the Bill does not hamper in the least multi-million dollar organizations like Moveon.org from continuing to mount their grassroots tactics. These organizations have the money to shield themselves. High powered attorneys who work for these groups will insure that the organizations keep up with necessary forms and paperwork, as well as defend them from litigation. Shockingly, the proposed bill does not even address organzations like Moveon.org at all. Such organizations fall into a different category than those targeted in the Bill.

    Bloggers and other grassroots individuals and small organizations will be left to fend for themselves in litigation, unless we spend most of our precious time filling out paperwork to submit to Congress that will 'allow' us to call our readers and/or members to political action. In other words, we will need the approval of Congress to do what I am doing now IF this Bill is passed.

    My friends, this is nothing less than pure tyranny.

    If the Democrat majority can get away with silencing the free speech of citizens and grassroots organizations, you can rest assured that their rights-robbing express will head into other areas of American liberty.

    For example, several Bills are being developed as we speak that continue the practice of eliminating 2nd Amendment Rights by gradually hamstringing the ability of citizens to purchase weapons that protect them against home-invasions, rape, and murder.

    There are whispers on the Hill today, in addition, that a move is under foot to resurrect another attempt to outlaw homeschooling in America. Such an attempt was launched several years ago, but James Dobson's 'Focus on the Family' sent out an urgent plea to listeners to contact their legislators to stop it. Because of Dobson's freedom of speech in alerting citizens to the underhanded, sleazy dealings of rights-robbing politicians, the bill was defeated. Yet the anti-homeschooling crowd is in Congress in full force with the Democrat majority.

    I encourage you today to call Congress and register your opposition to Senate Bill #1. And I pledge to continue to issue these alerts, no matter what laws the thugs approve. The Liberty Sphere will engage in nonviolent resistance to any law that squelches free speech. If this means defying laws that Jefferson believed had no authority because of their tyrannical aims, then so be it.

    This is a call to protest. Senate Bill #1 MUST be defeated.

    15 1/2 Hours, Still No Plan

    The clock is still ticking. It has now been 15 1/2 hours since the Democrats presented their response to President Bush's plan for victory. They have yet to present a plan except for what is tantamount to an immediate, unconditional surrender.

    And the clock still ticks....

    The Clock Ticks and Still No Plan

    By the way...the clock ticks and the Democrats still have not presented a plan for winning the war in Iraq.

    It is now officially 3 and 1/2 hours since the Demo response to the President's address to the nation. Still, no plan.

    A Novel Idea: How About Expulsion Proceedings Against Congressmen?

    The San Francisco extremists, who by the way are in a majority in that city, demand impeachment hearings against President Bush. John Conyers, Congressman, has called for such hearings in the past, in spite of his own ethically-challenged difficulties.

    The darling of the Democrats, Cindy Sheehan, also wants the President impeached.

    I have a better idea--expulsion hearings on members of Congress who are not fit for public office.

    Let's start with Barney Frank. He thinks the President is guilty of genocide in the Katrina disaster, his 'rationale' being that since the majority of New Orleans is Black, then obviously the President didn't want to help because he wished for the area to become 'more white.'

    Yes, I am serious. Frank made these allegations on Fox News yesterday afternoon.

    Anybody that stupid doesn't have the intelligence to serve in Congress.

    Then there is Ted Kennedy. Senator Blowhard needed to be expelled years ago after he allowed a young woman to drown because he was too drunk to get help or call the police...until the next morning after he sobered up.

    Funny how the citizens of Massachusetts keep electing this man to office, year after year. He should have gone to prison for his crime.

    Then there is Nancy Pelosi. What a lovely mother and grandmother. Too bad she is a hopeless socialist. I pity the children who grow up in her family. I don't care how 'nice' she is. Breshnev was a 'nice' Commie, but still a Commie.

    What about Congressman Hastings, who was convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors yet who was backed by Pelosi for a committee chairmanship?

    What about Leaky Leahy? Forced to resign from a Senate Committee because he broke the law and leaked classified documents to the press, Patrick Leahy is a high-profile Democrat in the new Congress. My, aren't we flying high.

    And then we come to John Conyers, the man who is the new Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in spite of the fact that he broke federal law and House rules in the manner in which he conducted his campaign and used his staff for personal purposes.

    Oh, and included in these expulsion hearings would most definitely be Muslim Keith Ellison, D-MN, who lied about Thomas Jefferson's copy of the Koran, as did the terrorist-front group, CAIR, which supported his run for Congress. As it turns out, Jefferson wanted to read the Koran to find out why Muslims in Algiers, Morocco, and Tripoli were committing atrocities against neighboring villages in the region. He was considering waging war against those Muslim nations. Ellison conveniently left that part out when he was extolling the virtue of being sworn in on Jefferson's Koran.

    Let's not forget that paragon of purity, Harry Reid, who illegally accepted campaign funds from dubious sources. But because he gave the money back after he was caught, his cohorts in the Democrat Party embrace him. It's too bad that petty thieves and robbers don't have their advocacy when they go to court. All they would need to do is promise to give back what they stole, and all would be well. They might even be rewarded with a Committee chairmanship!

    That is, if you live in this Demo-world of demented, brain-damaged dawdlers.

    I cast my vote for expulsion hearings in Congress. It would seem that there are LOTS of Democrats we could disgrace even as they hypocritically spout their blather about impeaching the President.

    Bring 'em on.

    'Rise of the Food Tyrants' by Walter E. Williams

    One of the brightest intellects in the country today, Dr. Walter E. Williams, describes how the food police and the smoking bans are actually examples of tyranny that our Founders would have never tolerated.

    Rise of the food tyrants
    by Walter E. Williams
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Posted: January 10, 2007
    1:00 a.m. Eastern

    In the wake of New York City's ban on restaurant use of trans fat, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the ban is "not going to take away anybody's ability to go out and have the kind of food they want, in the quantities they want. ... We are just trying to make food safer."

    That, my friends, is tyrannical double-talk.

    Read the rest of the article here:
  • Walter Williams at WorldNetDaily
  • Wednesday, January 10, 2007

    UNFIT FOR OFFICE--DEMS HAVE NO PLAN IN IRAQ

    The clock is ticking on the time it takes for Democrats in Washington to present a plan for success in Iraq. It is now 1 hour and 30 minutes since Dick Durban gave the Democrat response to President Bush's plan for victory in Iraq. Nothing in Durban's response, nor the diatribes of Senator Blowhard, nor the vitriol of Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid contains one single hint of an alternative plan for victory.

    Their modus operandi? Bash Bush. Cut and run. Withdraw funds from troops. Pass stupid resolutions from the House and Senate Floor denouncing the President's plan...all while our troops are in harm's way.

    What idiots.

    And yes, they are unpatriotic.

    Their words portray a willingness for America to lose. Let's face it. If we leave Iraq now, we all lose, and the world loses. The terrorists win.

    Frankly, I am ashamed to live in the same country with these Democrat turncoats who have presented a recipe for failure. They do not live in the same America that I love. In fact, their only motivation for opposing the President's plan is political, period. They don't care about the troops, they don't care that terrorism would be emboldened, they don't care to put the U.S. in greater danger, and they don't care about the citizens who will be at greater risk from terrorist attack if we lose this war. They are engaging in their seditious blather for political expediency only.

    As recently as December 17, 2006, many of the Democrats who now threaten to cut funds for our troops because they disagree with the troop surge had themselves supported an increase in U.S. forces. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and others are all on record as supporting an increase in troop levels at some time or another throughout this war. Now that the President has come on board with the plan, they attack it.

    Scumbags, each and every one.

    In addition, the Democrats spent three years lambasting the President's defense team, demanding that Donald Rumsfeld be fired, that Generals who were conducting the war be replaced, etc, etc. All of that has now happened. Rumsfeld and the Generals in charge are out the door. A new team is in place.

    So why is it that now all of a sudden, the Democrats are quoting the OLD TEAM that they wanted canned? Suddenly the very people they claimed needed to be replaced are the experts they quote in support of their opposition to the troop surge.

    Is there some illogic I smell here?

    Actually, in the minds of Democrats who wet the finger and put it in the air to see which way the wind of popular opinion blows, it is perfectly logical. If the President does it, it is wrong, although he is presently doing the very thing they were calling for as late as December of last year.

    After all, public opinion APPEARS for now at least to be turning against the war. Thus, demagogues get busy to parrot what they hear in the polls, pure and simple. No patriotism, no stand for principle and ideals, no backbone, no statesmanship.

    This should not be a war the President fights alone. Rudy Giuliani had it right tonight when he stated, 'The terrorists started the war. They attacked us. We have no choice in this, we are at war. It is time for Americans to unite in fighting our common enemy that wishes to destroy us. Partisanship should play no role in this whatsoever.'

    Cindy Sheehan and her cowardly, anti-American, unpatriotic cohorts in the Democrat party are to be denounced and reprimanded with all our might. Instead of helping us win, they want us to lose.

    If it were up to me, they would be expelled from Congress permanently. They are not fit to be in public office.

    By the way...that clock is still ticking...still no Democrat plan for victory in Iraq.

    Ellison, CAIR Lied About Jefferson's Koran

    Muslim Keith Ellison, D-MN

    Remember how Keith Ellison, D-MN, the first Muslim elected to Congress, claimed that taking his ceremonial oath of office on Thomas Jefferson's Koran indicated religious tolerance and a search for knowledge and wisdom on the part of the Founders?

    Remember how CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, denounced Ellison's critics as bigots, pointing to the fact that Jefferson owned a copy of the Koran?

    Remember how Nancy Pelosi beamed with pride as Ellison took his oath of office on the Koran, much to the delight of the New York Times, the liberal media establishment, and the Left?

    As it turns out Jefferson had good reason to own a copy of the Koran. According to the records kept in the Library of Congress, the very source of Jefferson's Koran, the nation's third President was considering waging war against Muslim countries such as Morocco, Algeria, and Tripoli. Muslim pirates from these nations had pillaged, plundered, and slaughtered villages occupied by non-Muslims in the region, including invading neighboring territories for the purpose of committing acts of barbarism against any who had not converted to Islam.

    Thus, Jefferson's desire to read the Koran was based solely upon his need to know the source of what led these Muslim barbarians to commit such atrocities. In short, he had to know what the enemy was thinking before waging war!

    Read the complete story here:
  • Jefferson's Koran
  • New York Times Caught in Lies Yet Again

    Michelle Malkin, news commentator extraordinaire, has caught the New York Times in lies, yet again. This time the subject is abortion, an issue on which the Times never ceases to roll out its most vehement rhetoric in favor of wide-open abortion-on-demand.

    It seems that the Times printed a story that was a complete fabrication, supposedly exposing how anti-abortion laws inflict horrific human suffering. As you will see in the article, the Times reporter failed to report the facts.

    All the abortion lies fit to print

    By Michelle Malkin

    It's official: The editors of The New York Times have no shame. Don't take my word for it. Listen to the Times' own ombudsman, Byron Calame.

    Click here for the complete story:
  • Michelle Malkin
  • South Carolina Senator Endorses Mitt Romney for President


    Washington, DC (TLS) The groundwork for Campaign '08 is already being laid. Senator Jim DeMint (shown above), R-SC, has announced that he will support Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in his bid for the Republican Presidential nomination.

    DeMint breaks ranks with his fellow South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who worked for the nomination of John McCain in 2000 and is expected to be solidly behind the Senator in '08. Graham's support for McCain will carry weight in the state of South Carolina. South Carolinians give Graham high marks, and he remains very popular. The question is can such support translate into votes for McCain in the primary. That remains to be seen.

    While McCain has some support, some Republicans are leery of him, and with good reason. Gun Owners of America rates the Arizona Senator with an 'F-' when it comes to 2nd Amendment rights. McCain is also known for his disdain for the 'religious right,' which wields an enormous amount of power in this Bible Belt state.

    And this is why South Carolinians may turn out to prefer Mitt Romney. Romney is a Mormon, a fact that initially may raise eyebrows among the brethren. There are some within the conservative Christian community that consider the Latter Day Saints as a cult rather than a Christian denomination. However, Romney's values and views will resonate in South Carolina, particularly with the Republican base and the religious right.

    However, there are questions. Where does Romney stand on the 2nd Amendment? Jim DeMint rates a grade of 'A' from Gun Owners of America, even higher than Lindsey Graham's grade of 'B.' DeMint would hardly support someone who hinted at further restricting a right that the Founders considered central to the preservation of liberty. However, there is Romney's flip-flop on the abortion issue, which some say was a political decision to appease a very liberal state (Massachusetts) where abortion rights are considered as sacred as Senator Blowhard's hair. And does Romney view marriage as a sacred commitment between a man and a woman? His religious affiliation would suggest that he does.

    Romney has plenty of factors in his favor. He is articulate, well-groomed and dressed, intelligent, and charismatic. He has served the state of Massachusetts as Governor, managing to work successfully with some of the most liberal politicians in the country, and yet maintain his core conservative principles. As Americans get to know him, he may well turn out to be exactly the thing Americans are looking for in 2008. That remains to be seen.

    But as for now, the two South Carolina Senators are divided--Graham for McCain and DeMint for Romney. It will be interesting to see how this scenario plays out when it is time to launch the campaign in earnest.

    Moveon.Org Continues Its 'Let America Lose' Policy

    George Soros' gang at Moveon.org is praising Senator Blowhard, aka Ted Kennedy, D-MA, for his strongly-worded threat to cut off funding for our troops in Iraq unless the President begins an immediate, unconditional withdrawal from the country. Moveon.org plans a massive, nation-wide blitz to protest the President's plan for a troop surge to stabilize the region and increase our chances of winning this war.

    The full story on this gang of thugs' plans is found here:

  • CNSNEWS
  • Tuesday, January 09, 2007

    SENATOR BLOWHARD THREATENS BLOCKING FUNDING FOR TROOPS!


    Senator Blowhard, aka Ted Kennedy, D-MA, today vowed to block funding for our troops and the War in Iraq. The Senator from Massachusetts unleashed his vitriol in response to a bipartisan supported plan for a temporary troop surge to stabilize Baghdad.

    This is precisely the type of rhetoric and denigration of our troops that Senator Joe Biden, D-Delaware, warned about this past Sunday. Biden responded to a comment by Nancy Pelosi which contained a veiled threat of a withdrawal of funding unless the President begins an immediate, unconditional withdrawal from Iraq. The heart of Biden's criticism was the inherent assumption that Congress can second guess a President's war strategy. According to Biden, this must not be the practice of Congress, and certainly it is not in the best interests of the troops on the ground for Congress to pull the rug out from under them, playing a game of Russian Roulette with the lives of soldiers all because of a disagreement with the President on the manner in which the war is conducted.

    Biden joins Senators Joe Lieberman, Carl Levin, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain in a bipartisan approach to stabilizing the region.

    Yet along comes Senator Blowhard, who can always be counted upon to blow his stack with some of the most unintelligible gibberish in Washington. It seems the resident village idiot wants funding withdrawn to force the President out of Iraq. Apparently the Senator from Massachusetts never stopped to consider the far-reaching consequences of such an act, not the least of which is leaving our soldiers out in the cold without the support of the politicians back home.

    This is precisely what the Left did to Viet Nam soldiers, and we all know of the shameful, despicable manner in which they were treated. In fact, 'Blowhard' Kennedy stated in his remarks that this was Viet Nam all over again.

    Apparently, Senator, this is true in more ways than one. With people like you coming very close to treason, you won't stop until America is once again humiliated like we were in Viet Nam. Why don't you go soak your head in a tub of icewater.

    Is Bush Administration Complicit in 'North American Union' Scheme?

    Just prior to the 2004 Presidential campaign a bombshell of an accusation was leveled against the Bush Administration and other politicos, including Democrats, that the U.S. Government was devising secret plans to form a so-called 'North American Union' that would include Mexico and Canada. At the time such charges were dismissed as the babbling of hopeless conspiracy theorists.

    Unfortunately, we can no longer dismiss these allegations.

    A growing body of evidence is being amassed that shows beyond any doubt that such a plan is being discussed at the highest levels of government, including the infamous U.S. 'shadow government,' i.e., the Council on Foreign Relations. Not only are there documents that prove some of our nation's leaders are working on such a union, but sources at the top levels of government state that the Canadian and Mexican leadership have already been consulted about such a plan.

    Under the guise of 'securing the North American Continent from terrorism,' these co-conspirators within all three governments are quietly going about the work of creating this union without the approval of citizens.

    According to records obtained by WorldNetDaily.com, these plans include a common currency that would be called 'the Amero,' obviously to compete with the European 'Euro,' and borders separating the three nations of North America would be erased, resulting in a shared government and shared security force. Widespread speculation has ensued that suggests that the proposed 'super-highway' that would run from Mexico through Texas and the heart of the continent is a key component of the scheme to unify. Immigration from Mexico, of course, would be a non-issue since there would be no border. Illegal aliens would cease to be immigrants. They would be citizens of the North American Union just like everyone in the U.S. and Canada.

    Americans clearly reject the present policies of ignoring the nation's laws on illegal immigration. Regardless of what politicians say about the recent mid-term elections, that election was as much a referendum on illegal immigration as the Iraq War. Americans believe that the Republicans have betrayed their trust on the issue, since it was Republicans who led the nation to believe that they wished to do something about the problem. As it turned out, they were just as bad as the Democrats on this issue.

    The ugly truth is that both Democrats and Republicans engage in a conspiracy of collective inertia when it comes to illegal immigration. The reason, which was once clouded in a fog of secrecy, is now coming out into the light of day. There are powerful members of both Parties who wish to dissolve our borders and unite with Mexico and Canada.

    Preposterous, you say? Think again. Connect the dots.

    The Bush Administration has recently suggested that Social Security be made available to illegal aliens. In spite of the much touted 'border fence,' the Bush Administration has done precious little to enforce U.S. law on illegal aliens. The border fence is a joke, a political ploy to appease those citizens who are demanding that their government enforce its laws against illegals.

    Add to this a little-known concept that President Bush embraces but seldom discusses openly--the notion of a nation without borders. According to the President's thinking, America is a concept, not a place on a map.

    While such an idea has some merit, when it is placed within the context of a North American Union that would essentially negate the U.S. Constitution, the notion takes on an ominous connotation.

    Consider further evidence. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has recently proposed sweeping changes in public policy in the state, including universal healthcare for illegal aliens. This would be just one more step toward solidifying the notion of a North American Union where illegal aliens would be given the same freebies as legal American citizens.

    And by the way, Democrats have always loved this concept, so this cannot be blamed solely on Republicans.

    In a North American Union, the principles for which our founding fathers bled and died would go up in smoke. The Constitution would be subservient to the common laws of the Union. All of this would be done, of course, without the approval of the citizens. And even if, at the eleventh hour, such a proposal were to be placed before the electorate for an up or down vote, no authorization has been granted to our nation's leaders to even consider such a union, much less engage in talks with Canada and Mexico about it.

    Lest anyone get the wrongheaded notion that participation in this scheme is unique to a Republican administration, remember that globalism is a concept that has been pushed by both Democrats and Republicans spanning several administrations. Bill Clinton practically placed American foreign policy under the direction and whim of the U.N. Plus, the Council on Foreign Relations is made up of powerful persons who are members of all Parties, Democrat, Republican, and Independent.

    Apparently a shadow government made up of some of our nation's leaders of all political stripes is making decisions about the future of our country without any prior knowledge or consent of the governed. This is what the Founders referred to as 'tyranny.'

    These charges are very serious, for sure. And if they are true, the citizens have every right to take to the streets. If the President is involved in this scheme in any way, then as much as I would loathe the thought, he must be investigated for high crimes and misdemeanors.

    But we must not stop there. Any politician who is engaging in this ill-fated scheme to negate our Constitution in favor of a Union the citizens clearly do not want should be investigated thoroughly along with the President. This is not a partisan issue in any way. The tentacles of the shadowy Council on Foreign Relations reach deeply into the highest levels of government.

    It is time that this un-elected consortium be brought into the light of day.

    For further information on this developing story, click here to go to the WorldNetDaily website for complete information:
  • North American Union
  • SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH--Amniotic Fluid, Not Embryos

    Washington, DC (TLS). A major scientific breakthrough involving stem cells retrieved from amniotic fluid rather than human embryos has turned the debate about stem cell research into a whole new ballgame. The announcement came from scientists who have discovered that stem cells are found in plentiful supply in amniotic fluid. This would throw the argument by the Left and victims such as Michael J. Fox into a tailspin.

    If it is not necessary to retrieve stem cells from embryos in order to help those afflicted with debilitating illness, then several pro-life politicians were voted out of office in vain this past November.

    This technology is a major breakthrough that will give researchers, and victims of illness, an endless supply of stem cells in their fight against disease.

    Here is the story from CNSNEWS:


    New Discovery Stokes Debate Ahead of Dems' Stem Cell Bill
    By Melanie Hunter
    CNSNews.com Senior Editor
    January 08, 2007

    (CNSNews.com) - A new study has found that stem cells are in plentiful supply in amniotic fluid, but at a time the charged issue of experimentation involving human embryos is back on the political agenda in the U.S., a group that favors the controversial research insisted Monday the discovery does not make embryonic stem cells (ESC) obsolete.

    Two Republican lawmakers - both with medical backgrounds - announced Monday they would introduce alternative legislation on Tuesday, authorizing federal funding for stem cell research that does not involve creating or destroying human embryos.

    Two days later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to reintroduce legislation to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

    Currently, federal funding for embryonic research is restricted to a small number of ESC colonies that existed in 2001, when President Bush announced the policy. ESC research proponents want to expand that dramatically, but the president last July vetoed previous legislation seeking to do so.

    In a study reported at the weekend, American researchers said they were able to obtain stem cells from amniotic fluid - the substance surrounding babies in the womb - without harming either the baby or mother.

    They found the cells to be "pluripotent" - that is, able to differentiate into various types of cells, including brain and bone.

    This is the capability scientists believe ESCs will have, thus offering the possibility of future treatments for injuries and degenerative diseases. But the use of embryonic cells is controversial, because the early-stage embryos are destroyed in the process.

    Dr. Anthony Atala of the Institute of Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University of School of Medicine, who led the study, said in a statement that while ESCs were considered the most adaptable, "our hope is that these cells will provide a valuable resource for tissue repair and for engineered organs as well."

    Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) said Monday they will introduce "an ethical alternative" to the Democrat bill.

    "As a scientist who studied advanced embryology earning both a Master's and a Doctorate in Human Physiology, I know and confirmed with leading scientists that it is unnecessary to harm or kill embryos to obtain cell lines for research," Bartlett said in a statement.

    "With the accelerated federal funding under our bill, there could be rapid progress expanding the number of ethical pluripotent stem cell lines for research," he added.

    Gingrey said the bill would allow lawmakers "to side-step the moral questions surrounding embryonic stem cell research."

    "In America, we do things the right way," he said. "We don't take organs from death row prisoners because they are 'going to die anyway.' Neither should we steal the life of a fertilization clinic embryo just because there's a chance it won't be used to impregnate a woman."

    For the complete story, click here:
  • CNSNEWS
  • BOSTON MAYOR WAGES WAR ON GUN RIGHTS

    Boston Mayor: Suspend Driving Privileges for Gun Law Violators

    (CNSNews.com) - The anti-gun mayor of Boston wants to suspend the driver's licenses and revoke the vehicle registrations of people convicted of firearms violations in Massachusetts, the Boston Globe reported on Monday. Mayor Thomas Menino also wants firearms charges such as illegal possession of a gun or selling guns without a license to be listed on driving records that police check during traffic stops. He plans to introduce the measure today. According to the Globe, Menino believes such a law could help stem gun crimes and warn police that the drivers may be carrying guns.

    COMMENT--It seems to me that citizens have more to fear from politicians, such as the Mayor of Boston, who wish to rob Americans of their Constitutional rights than we do from 'drivers who may be carrying guns.'

    Add this one to your list of the enemies of the 2nd Amendment!

    Monday, January 08, 2007

    Senator Graham Blasts Democrat Proposals for Iraq


    Washington, DC (TLS). Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC, blasted Democrats for their proposals on the Iraq War. As one of South Carolina's first-term Senators, Graham serves on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee.

    Graham sharply criticized Democrats who are calling for an immediate, unconditional phased withdrawal from Iraq. 'These Democratic proposals are, to me, a formula for defeat,' said Graham. 'They are nothing more than just a political way to get out of Iraq and it will come back to haunt us for years.'

    When asked about the U.S. current strategy in Iraq, Graham stated that while we are not losing we are also not winning, and that 'now is the time to come up with a strategy to win.' Graham further stated, 'I don't think any Republican or Democrat should do anything right now to say the war is lost. We should try to win this war.'

    In addition, Graham supports the President's proposal for a troop surge in Iraq with the clear purpose of stabilizing the region, helping Iraqi leadership control the country, and 'preventing the nation from falling into the abyss.'

    'Now is the last chance, and the only chance, to get this right,' Graham maintains.

    Graham is not the only source of support for the President's plan of a troop surge in Iraq but is joined by a bipartisan group consisting of Carl Levin, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and many others.

    While the Democrat leadership in Congress is very vocal in its contending for an immediate, unconditional withdrawal, this in no way suggests unity in the ranks. Democrats in the Senate and House clearly do not support Nancy Pelosi's strongly-worded rhetoric, indicating that any request for money for the war will have to be 'justified,' a notion that brought an immediate reprimand from Senator Joe Biden, who stated that Congress should never second-guess a President's war strategy.

    With Senators like Graham leading the way, the U.S. may well be on its way toward a stabilization of Iraq, which will mean that the time-frame for our gradual withdrawal can be moved forward.

    Marking the Death of an Ex-Marxist--Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

    Today we mark the death of a noted historian and women's studies scholar, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, in Atlanta, at the age of 65. For the past few years Dr. Fox-Genovese suffered from multiple sclerosis. She had major surgery in October from which she never recovered.

    At the time of her death Dr. Fox-Genovese was the Eleonore Raoul Professor of the Humanities at Emory University in Atlanta. In 1986 she founded the university's Institute for Women's Studies and served as its director until 1991.

    Earlier in her life Fox-Genovese was an avowed Marxist and married a leading Marxist historian, Eugene Genovese. The couple later renounced and disavowed Marxism and began writing material on the South and traditional family values, leading Dr. Fox-Genovese to be viewed as a pariah in radical feminist circles despite her pioneering work in the field of women's studies.

    The following interview with Eugene and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese is found on the website of the American Enterprise Institute. It is a most interesting read. The Liberty Sphere mourns the passing of this noted scholar and historian who came to see the failure of Marxism and embraced the American system of free enterprise.


    'Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese have been dubbed "the royal couple of radicalism" by Vanity Fair. Long regarded as the nation’s leading Marxist historian, an expert on the antebellum South and slavery, Eugene Genovese has of late become a lacerating critic of the academic Left and a defender of the Southern Right. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, whose most recent book is titled Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life, was a pioneer in the field of women’s studies—yet she has become a pariah in feminist circles, not least for her defense of traditional families.

    As a girl, Mrs. Fox-Genovese had three ambitions: to become the first woman president, to marry a black man, and to have 21 children. As a boy, her husband dreamed of a Communist America. They got a happy marriage instead. Editors Bill Kauffman and Scott Walter interviewed the couple at their Atlanta home.

    TAE: You’re from a patrician family. What did they think when you married a Sicilian Marxist?

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: There was a little initial, how shall we say, opposition. I was absolutely outraged. I was sure I had brought them the man whom I had been brought up to marry. And they didn’t immediately recognize it, not because he was Sicilian or working class, but my father was a long-standing Cold Warrior and was a little nervous about Marxism. Gene also had two previous marriages to his credit, and something of a reputation as a "swinger."

    MR. GENOVESE: I kidded her father years later, told him he was a terrible father. I said I never would have let a daughter of mine marry me.

    TAE: What would your favorite education reform be?

    MR. GENOVESE: I would start by abolishing the Department of Education. I was ready to vote for Lamar Alexander, who, I thought, was a terrible Secretary of Education, on the grounds there is always room on a mourners’ bench for repentant sinners. I would also close down half to two-thirds of the colleges in the country and transfer that money to secondary education. If we were doing what we should be doing at the secondary level, our students would be getting the equivalent of the first two years of college anyway.

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: Many too many people go to college, but they can’t get jobs without college. We have a cultural elite and a political economy that has devalued manual labor and frequently doesn’t pay it or abolishes the jobs.

    I’d certainly restore single-sex schooling. I’d favor a voucher system. I would favor public subsidy for religious schools, while allowing them to retain their religious principles and identity.

    MR. GENOVESE: One of the things that has struck me is the way in which the Catholic schools have been turned into secular institutions, because if you can’t discriminate in hiring, much less the content of the curriculum, what makes you a Catholic school except that it gives you an angle to beat taxes?

    I cannot get over this business with Father Curran protesting the loss of his Church license to teach theology at Catholic University in Washington. Was it really an issue to be taken to the secular courts, loaded with Jews, atheists, and Protestants, over whether a Catholic university should be able to determine what is proper to teach as Catholic theology? This is a bad joke.

    We’ve had a problem with an excellent prep school in Georgia because they would only hire Christian teachers. I think they are making a mistake, but a mistake they’re entitled to make.

    TAE: Would you make the same defense of a white supremacist who owned a restaurant and didn’t want to serve blacks?

    MR. GENOVESE: That’s a trickier question. We’ve had a history of racial antagonism in this country which brought on the most ghastly war in our history. It’s poisoned our life as a nation. And I would be in favor of certain minimal dos and don’ts on that score, enforced nationally.

    The real tragedy of the South and integration was that they let the federal government do what they should have done themselves. If they had started 10 years earlier to make education separate but genuinely equal—and they were making real strides at the last minute when they finally saw the magnitude of the threat—I wonder how it would have turned out. I think segregation was wrong on principle, but I’m not sure that if they had succeeded the condition of black schools in the South wouldn’t be a lot better.

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: We missed that opportunity so we are stuck with the problem of kids who come from families that don’t have traditions of education, that don’t have books around, who largely come from an oral culture into which television and various forms of rock music can very easily be fed.

    MR. GENOVESE: The high school I went to in Brooklyn was half-Italian, half-Jewish. The Jewish kids came out of homes where education was a big thing. The Italian kids came out of homes where it was not. My father was an exception.

    And in the end, I can cry over a number of the Italian kids I grew up with, one smarter than the next, who never really developed intellectually because they had no future. What was lost?

    But on the other side of it, we had tough teachers who taught us. I don’t care what kind of a home you came out of, you went into an English class with Miss O’Mealia—she was a bitch on wheels, but when you finished a class with her, you could parse a sentence and you knew how to read and write.

    And that’s all been lost, I’m afraid. When I hear about the public school situation in New York now I want to cry.

    TAE: In Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life, you refer to mothers who "work out of necessity." Are the yuppies who place their 3-month-olds in day care buying into the materialistic culture you often criticize?

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: Of course they are. I have enough respect for freedom, and enough horror at the sanctimonious bullying that surrounds us, not to tell other people what to do. But yes, I think that some significant percentage of the yuppie career women who are putting their kids in day care at a very early age are driven by some combination of the consumer culture and a misguided sense that they have to be as busy as their husbands. The necessity is more psychological than material; it’s tragic.

    TAE: Tocqueville argued that the only way you would have strong families, under modern liberal democracy, would be to emphasize sex role differences more than in the past. Was he right?

    MR. GENOVESE: Why the Good Lord, after Adam turned out to be such a wimp, gave him authority over Eve is something I—well, I’m not going to suggest the Good Lord did not know what He was doing, but it remains somewhat puzzling.

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: In order to have greater specialization in sex roles, we need something that the elite, including the conservative elite, isn’t vocally, visibly giving us: a defense of marriage, especially where there are children, that really does make divorce more difficult. You can’t specialize in being a woman if he can walk out with his secretary, or young law associate, without ever looking back. That’s self-immolation.

    We need social respect, and even support, for motherhood. We should have deductions for children, and less emphasis on deductions for child care and the earned income tax credit, which tend to support single mothers and working women at the expense of women who stay home.

    TAE: Was the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment a good thing?

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: Yes, in retrospect. At the time I thought people who were arguing that it would mean unisex toilets were alarmist. The last decade suggests they weren’t.

    TAE: You encouraged the Citadel’s legal team to ask expert witnesses for the opposition which they hated more, men or the South. Which was it?

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: In a lot of ways the South has become a symbol of what the feminist elite doesn’t like about men. The driving thrust of that case was to destroy the Citadel as we know it. But beyond that, to deny to men single-sex education, even if it had to be denied to women as the price, because single-sex education just might help to train men to be better and more responsible men.

    TAE: Should we make a distinction between private and public single-sex education?

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: As a matter of law, it’s a meaningless distinction. There are no private schools that do not depend upon their tax-exempt status for gifts they receive from their alums, and that don’t finance up to 40 percent of students’ tuition through federally guaranteed loans.

    These days, it’s less-affluent kids who have the greater need for the benefits of single-sex education, and we see that dramatically in the discussions about all-male high schools in the inner city, or all-female math classes. Typically, the students at the Citadel come from families with combined incomes of less than $60,000, and in which one or both parents haven’t finished college. Single-sex education provides a focus that really helps kids like that to develop their potential.

    TAE: Are you a Southerner?

    MR. GENOVESE: In some ways I have felt a Southerner all my life. My background is Sicilian: it’s all the same. But that doesn’t make me a real Southerner—just ask any real Southerner, no matter how gracious.

    TAE: You’ve written, "Rarely, these days, even on southern campuses, is it possible to acknowledge the achievements of the white people of the South." Why?

    MR. GENOVESE: For most of its history, the South was a slave society in a way that the North, which tolerated slavery into the nineteenth century, was not, because the South developed a social system based on slavery. There is a natural revulsion to that legacy. However, along with it went a very strong conservative tradition, and I think what we’re witnessing today is an attempt to combat a Southern conservative tradition by demonizing it.

    TAE: What insights are found in the Southern conservative tradition that are not found in traditions north of the Mason-Dixon line?

    MR. GENOVESE: The main argument of the Southerners was that the social relations in the North—what we would now refer to as capitalism—were inherently revolutionary and undermined traditional values. It’s the same argument Marx made in The Communist Manifesto, except he liked it, and they didn’t.

    Northern conservatism was a rear-guard action, doomed to fail; whereas, as long as slavery existed, the South had a social system that could sustain its values.

    TAE: Why the anti-Southern hysteria today?

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: There’s a painful irony or genuine bad faith there: some people’s history is worthy of respect and other people’s isn’t. It’s one thing to say that slavery is an abomination; it’s another to decide on how to treat the South in the wake of the War. In my judgment, segregation was much less excusable than slavery. Slavery had been the way of the world, and it was recognized as wrong at a historical moment. But segregation was artificial from start to finish.

    MR. GENOVESE: You could appeal to the Bible to support slavery. The attempt to appeal to the Bible to support segregation was contemptible. And there is an interesting wrinkle to this. What made segregation possible, after the War, was the extent to which scientific racism became the vogue. After the War, scientific racism sweeps the South. It had swept the North before the War: Harvard was teaching that stuff, but no Southern college would touch it because it was unscriptural.

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: When you bring these issues of eugenics up to today’s debates, the contradictions in all of this are absolutely mesmerizing. Because it’d be a piece of cake to argue that radical pro-abortion and pro-right-to-die starts with your personal choice, and yet the next step is euthanasia, where who gets to choose is ambiguous. Not to mention sex selection and the obsession with amniocentesis: absolutely a new eugenics. The folks who push this, however, are the first to scream against any hint of biological base for racial difference, which in fact is extraordinarily suspect.

    On the other hand, sex differences are real differences. So you have the contradiction of people who are defending the right of biologically fit individuals to shape who shall live and who shall die, which is very eugenicist, at the same time they are denying the significance of biological difference between the sexes.

    MR. GENOVESE: We know people who are lifelong liberals, staunch supporters of the civil-rights movement, and they will say privately what they never say publicly, that one of the major reasons they support abortion rights is because they see no other way to control the number of black and Hispanic babies being born.

    TAE: Will women benefit if the courts bring us gay marriage?

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: In my humble opinion, no one will benefit, and marriage as we have known it will virtually disappear from the face of the Earth. If we have same-sex marriage, we will have it on the grounds that marriage exists to provide financial benefits and personal gratification for individuals.

    Same-sex marriage is the logical outcome of instrumental sex, sexual equality, equality in sexual pleasure between women and men, divorce and abortion at will. It reduces marriage to a matter of personal fulfillment or gratification, and contractual convenience. And the whole notion of marriage as founding families, the integral unit that binds society, will be lost.

    TAE: Why does lesbianism occupy such a hallowed place in contemporary feminism?

    MR. GENOVESE: They run the mimeograph machines.

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: And because it’s been able to take the moral high ground of anti-male purity. Feminist theory has to get more and more radical to justify its existence; if it simply merges with the mainstream, there’s no reason not to absorb women’s studies into other departments.

    TAE: Do the two of you attend church, and are you believers?

    MR. GENOVESE: Betsy converted to Catholicism a year ago, and I went to confession and returned to the Church about a week ago.

    TAE: What do you think of the view that Marxism is really just secularized Christianity?

    MR. GENOVESE: When I first heard that argument, I sneered. Over the years, I came to see that there was a good deal of truth in that. At this point I am much more in tune with the argument that Marxism and much of Enlightenment thought can fairly be considered a heretical development of the Christian religion.

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: I was never a radical of any kind. As for the period in which I defined myself as a Marxist—I perfectly understand that no one on the Right could have understood this—it was in large part as a conservative reaction to the radicalism that was going on in the emerging women’s and cultural studies circles.

    TAE: Mr. Genovese, you were not only a Marxist but also a member of the Communist Party and a self-described Stalinist. Having been so spectacularly wrong before, why should we listen to your advice on matters political?

    MR. GENOVESE: I am painfully aware of my mistakes, and I’m not about to put down anybody who says, "I don’t have to listen to you." From the 1960s, when I was positioned on the far left, I was very active in insisting on a dialogue with conservatives. I always insisted that there were good and bad people in all political camps and that most people were opportunists anyway.

    TAE: You’re the only couple alive who could write for both Chronicles and Commentary. Where would each of you place yourselves in the current political universe?

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: I am on [former Pennsylvania Governor Bob] Casey’s Campaign for the American Family. I think very highly of Dan Coats’s American Renewal proposal. I voted for Bush in ’92, with some enthusiasm. I will vote for Dole. My primary concern with the Republicans these days is that we don’t have a good middle ground between the conservative Right that tends towards Buchanan, on the one hand, and the country-club Republicans on the other. I’d be much happier if we had a more socially responsible and compassionate Republicanism, something around Bennett, Kemp, Coats.

    TAE: You, Mr. Genovese, cannot tell us that you voted for George Bush in 1992.

    MR. GENOVESE: I did, and it was the first time in my life I voted for a Republican presidential candidate, and unlike Betsy, I did so holding my nose and choking. I followed Clinton’s career as governor of Arkansas. I never thought he’d get the nomination, because like everybody else who follows Southern politics, I knew all about his womanizing, and I thought it would kill him. But it was not until I saw his wife and his entourage that I took the measure of what we were dealing with.

    My estimate of him was—notwithstanding my bad record—"This sob is going to sell out to big business with a vengeance, and cover his behind by selling out to the radical Left on cultural questions." Those two things are my private nightmare. And that’s what he’s done. I think that this administration is the foulest administration in my lifetime, and maybe in American history. I think these people are moral degenerates, utterly devoid of any principles whatever.

    TAE: Speaking of degenerates, both of you are experts on political correctness on campus.

    MR. GENOVESE: We’re not concerned about anything that’s been done to us because our academic positions have been invulnerable. But if they can get away with this stuff for somebody who was president of the Organization of American Historians and all that crap, what do you think they’re doing to our young colleagues and students?

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: A number of us wrote a textbook, and after Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life came out, the primary author removed my name from the text, on the grounds that women in departments would veto the adoption of the book because my views were beyond the pale.

    Here’s another one:A student in an English department at a prestigious university had been preparing for the qualifying exam with two of her best friends. They expelled her from the group because she was Christian. I had this student in class. She’s a brilliant student, but I couldn’t have told you for sure she was a Christian. It wasn’t an issue. But for her friends, this was a matter of principle. This is in part the lesbian thing again, because the suspicion was that if she were a Christian, she might not be sufficiently sympathetic to lesbianism.

    TAE: Is Jesse Jackson a great political leader whose effect has been salutary?

    MR. GENOVESE: Jackson has got himself into a box from which it’s very difficult to escape. He has veered very sharply to the left, and he has never explained this shift because he was culturally very conservative in critical ways, even on abortion. I don’t know where that leaves him. He can run for President and get an overwhelming black vote and 10 percent of the white vote, but I don’t see how he could take the next step, unless he returns to where he started. Because what he was saying back in the ’70s has a lot to recommend it.

    I don’t think we can just blame Jesse Jackson, because he did make overtures to the Right at that time, and vice versa. But the Right had nothing to offer. On the other hand, there are people like Kemp and his idea about encouraging people to buy their own apartments—a program, by the way, that the Communists executed brilliantly in Bologna. This guy cares—but what person in his or her right mind is going to buy an apartment if their kids have to go to a school that’s violence-ridden, if they can’t go near the windows because there might be a drive-by shooting, if they can’t play on the playground because it’s drug-ridden?

    This is what I hate about the whole market mentality. These guys think that if you make the right moves in the economy, everything else follows. But if you’re prepared to deal with it comprehensively, I don’t see any reason that we can’t get better answers out of the Right than out of the Left, because the Left is completely ossified.

    TAE: So what are the elements in this comprehensive program?

    MR. GENOVESE: I have an idiosyncratic position. I’m opposed to the Balkanization that’s gone with multiculturalism, but since the 1960s I’ve argued that the black experience in the United States has no analogue and justifies the claims of the black nationalists that black people have been a nation within a nation. I don’t think we will solve these problems without granting a good deal of autonomy and police power to the communities in question.

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: I’m strongly in favor, not merely of single-sex schools in the inner cities—and all black, if need be—but boarding schools, preferably five-day rather than permanent. Take kids who come from destitute or single-mother families in crime- and drug-ridden projects, and give them a clean place to sleep and regular meals, physical exercise, the obligation that they do their homework, and tough love.

    MR. GENOVESE: At the risk of unfairness and caricature, if you wanted to characterize the policies of the Left since the 1960s, they amount to putting half the folks on the dole in order to support the other half in style as bureaucrats who take care of the folks on the dole. And it’s a very attractive political program because the bureaucrats and social workers have a vested interest in it. And all the folks on the dole can see is whether or not you’re going to pay them the dole or leave them to rot.

    I’ve never been more pessimistic about what we euphemistically call race relations in this country than I am now.

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: I think, without undue hyperbole, one could argue that race relations have never been better. And that there may be a real gap between the politics of race relations and how people actually live.

    MR. GENOVESE: There are two separate, overlapping questions. One is race relations. The other one is the condition of the black community. These times, for black people, are the best of times and the worst of times. The progress that’s been made in the last quarter-century is astonishing. At the same time it’s gone hand in hand with a condition in the ghettos that is wretched to an unprecedented degree.

    In the ’60s, when the Great Society started, I took the position that we were looking at a potential disaster. My argument was that with the new integration, the black middle class and solid working class could move into integrated communities and the ghettos would be cut adrift and decapitated. What kind of a leadership could develop on that basis?

    In my more cynical moments, I think that the extent to which the inner-cities have been inundated with drugs has been the best safety valve the regime has had. If these people weren’t strung out on drugs…well, I won’t finish the sentence. But what has struck me forcibly in the last decade is how rhetorically radicalized the black bourgeoisie—both the real bourgeoisie and the pseudo-bourgeoisie of government employees—has become. And I think a good part of that is the terrible strain of feeling that you’re abandoning the brothers and sisters. This tends to cause people to exaggerate every slight into a major problem of racism in their own lives.

    TAE: Novelist Walker Percy theorized that because the South is still somewhat influenced by Christianity, maybe this time the South will save the Union. Do you put any stock in that kind
    of hopefulness?

    MR. GENOVESE: I still threaten to run for governor of Georgia on a program of throwing the Yankees out, but much of the old folkways are going, along with the small towns, and the South is becoming more like the North. The problems that we are dealing with are now national.

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: More people do go to church down here. More people maintain contact with their relatives and their families, nuclear and extended, and more Southerners return home.

    TAE: Would that be one way out of the catastrophe of the black ghetto: a repatriation of Northern blacks to their rural Southern roots?

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: I know Southern blacks who maintain that in some ways, life for the black community was actually better under segregation. They don’t like to say it that way because they didn’t like segregation, but what they did like was the mutual assistance, the strength of the churches, the strength of families, and the creating of a world that was secure for kids to grow up in.

    MR. GENOVESE: Jackson made this point talking about education. He said, "my mother would see the teacher at church and she would say, ‘I can’t come to the pta meeting, I have to work.’ But they put their heads together on whatever problem there was."

    How do you replicate something like that in an urban environment, especially where the church is no longer the center of the community? One of the things that disturbs me more than anything else is the indications among black youth of a significant drop-off in church attendance.

    TAE: You’re both big baseball fans. How did Marxism and women’s studies affect your understanding of the game?

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: The first thing that made it clear to me that I was going to be in serious trouble with the women’s movement was back in the early ’80s when I wrote a piece on baseball wives for the Village Voice, which they butchered. I argued that women and men are different and that baseball brings it out. Certainly women could be fans: even Yankee fans, because girls, too, could be for power, corruption, and winning. There is physical identification with the danger—Roger Kahn describing his father throwing a hard ball at him and coming to terms with it; Jackie Robinson at second base with the cleats—that as women we experience vicariously.

    MR. GENOVESE: The toughest moment in our marriage was when my wife, who had been a Boston Red Sox fan, switched to the New York Yankees. I was a lifelong Giants fan and grew up hating the Yankees with a special passion. When she did that I knew the marriage was being put to its ultimate test.

    MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: I thought I put it to its ultimate test when I beat you at gin.

    MR. GENOVESE: That was easier to take. When the Dodgers got Jackie Robinson, I was in the Communist Youth Movement, and I almost got my head handed to me because while I wanted Robinson to succeed, whenever he came up to hit against the Giants, I would be yelling, "Strike the sob out!" It went down hard with the comrades.

    Published in Fixing America's Schools September/October 1996