Right Minded Online

Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it. And with that, Tennessee conservatives are facing a small dilemma over TennCare.

For a refresher, during the latter years of the Sundquist Administration, the former governor was busy pursuing a state income tax, arguing repeatedly that it wasn’t the spending that had sunk the state into such dire financial straits, it was a lack of revenue.

To this, income tax opponents pointed out that it was chronic overspending, and TennCare was often cited as the behemoth causing the financial crisis. We had plenty of wind to our back, proof that the state’s healthcare system was rife with fraud, and out-of-control pharmaceutical costs owing to a lack of any form of restrictions on prescriptions.

At one point, a full quarter of the state’s population was on TennCare, a far greater percentage than in any other state, and demands were made to cut TennCare back to the Medicaid-eligible only. We honestly never thought that cuts in TennCare would actually be made, certainly not under Don Sundquist. TennCare was going to be his ticket to a state income tax.

Enter Phil Bredesen. The new governor identified almost immediately that TennCare was in fact the behemoth that was draining the state’s coffers dry, and began pursuing various ways to contain costs, only to be blocked at every step by the Tennessee Justice Center and the judges they ran to.

This spring, the governor started toppling the dominos of his plan to trim TennCare by 323,000 enrollees, and this time he had the judiciary on his side. Later, he floated a compromise deal that would protect 97,000 of the most medically needy in a “safety net.”

Many conservatives (at least the partisan Republicans) then turned on Governor Bredesen for doing essentially what we had been demanding under Don Sundquist. (Okay, we aren’t perfect.)

Now, on its way out the door in May, the Tennessee General Assembly made a $180 million blunder.

As blogger Bruce Barry (pithinthewind.com) noted on May 28, “A proposal to put $100 million back into TennCare to keep ‘uninsurables’ enrolled kept the Tennessee House in session for an extra day. Rep. Joey Hensley’s (R-Hohenwald) amendment to the budget bill would have steered that money away from Gov. Bredesen’s plans to beef up the state’s health care ’safety net.’ Well-intentioned though the safety net plans are, moving the money back into TennCare makes sense because then it would draw $180 million of federal matching funds.”

In other words, had that $100 million safety net been left inside the TennCare program, it would have translated into $280 million by virtue of federal matching funds. But since the safety net is outside the TennCare program, there are no federal matching funds. Although those matching funds are paid for by us, too, from the state’s perspective, $280 million for uninsurables is far better than $100 million.

In early December, Governor Bredesen revealed that he would expand TennCare to re-enroll about 100,000 of those that had been originally cut from TennCare. This had actually been predicted six months ago, and here’s where the GOP has Bredesen cornered.

Sharon Cobb, a blogger and journalist from Nashville wrote back on June 13 “A six month investigation into TennCare reform has unearthed some startling documents and disturbing revelations about Governor Bredesen and his administration’s plans to blame the Tennessee Justice Center for the TennCare cuts, then as part of their political strategy, reenroll some of those cut from TennCare in 2006 — before the election.”

Cobb’s prophecy has come to pass. Governor Bredesen has been using TennCare — and the people who were on it — as a political pawn, essentially frontloading the cuts so he could take the heat early, then re-enroll some of those who were cut later on, during an election year, to lessen the political impact of trimming TennCare.

It still seems reasonable that TennCare’s roll had to be lightened. A large amount of savings, we conservatives argued both then and now, can be realized by ditching those leeching the system fraudulently (by under-reporting their income and/or lying about their residency), and by putting a cap on prescriptions. At the same time, most conservatives I know have no problem with their tax dollars going to help those who honestly cannot help themselves.

At any rate, Governor Bredesen has made a political move that could prove fatal if a high-profile Republican ever wanted to run against him, which is becoming ever-doubtful. But, fellow conservatives, let’s at least withhold our criticism of Governor Bredesen for doing exactly what we said should be done in the first place.

Every once-in-a-while it becomes necessary for politicians and candidates to remind themselves and their constituents exactly what it is they stand for. It’s easy to get caught up in the politics of opposition and forget to articulate a positive message of your own. Although I am not a politician or a candidate, I do believe deeply in conservatism, and need to step away from the news of the day to remind both myself and the readers what conservatives typically believe.

1. Man has the innate desire to be free. Regardless of an individual’s nationality, culture, or religion, he is born with the basic human desire for freedom. Spreading freedom at the expense of tyranny is the surest route to peace.

2. End the threat of terrorism. Islamic militants are a scourge to mankind because they seek intimidation, submission, and destruction by the use of terrorism. The only way to end terrorism is to destroy it. This will be accomplished by capturing terrorists around the world and planting democracy in the now-oppressed societies of the Middle East where terrorists flourish.

3. Close our borders. Illegal immigration opens the door to terrorists. Those who cross our borders illegally are criminals the moment they enter the United States. Deport illegal immigrants already in our country and strengthen our border patrol and law enforcement to prevent further infiltration. Those who wish to come to the United States legally are welcome.

4. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. The United States is a great melting pot, and has flourished as a result. As such, there is a distinct American culture that must be maintained if we are to retain our identity. We speak English, we fly the Stars and Stripes, we create opportunity, we help those who cannot help themselves, we believe in justice and liberty. Again, we seek not to strip those of different cultures of their identity, and we must never be expected to abandon our own identity in the name of multiculturalism and tolerance.

5. God has a place in public life. Most Americans believe in the God of the Bible, and the current trend of banishing God into the shadows appeases a very vocal anti-Christian minority at the expense of the majority. It is not our desire to impose our religious views on non-believers, but we will also not stand idly by while the God in whom we trust is rendered irrelevant.

6. Appoint judges to the court system who will interpret the Constitution as it is written. There are far too many judges who take great liberty with the language of the Constitution, or appoint themselves the legislative function of making laws. The Supreme Court’s Kelo decision, Roe v. Wade, and separation of church and state are based on premises that either are not contained anywhere in the Constitution, or actually run counter to it.

7. A marriage can only exist between one man and one woman. The nuclear family is the most basic, yet most fundamental building block of any society, and a nuclear family consists of a man, his wife, and whatever children they decide to bear. The sanctity of marriage must be protected by law.

8. President Bush’s tax cuts must be made permanent. The ultimate goal is to replace the current federal revenue system with a consumption tax, such as the Fair Tax, or at least a greatly simplified flat tax. Until then, the best thing the Congress can do to ensure our economic prosperity is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent.

9. Each and every life is of equal and inestimable value, including the lives of the unborn and the disabled. Conservatives stand with those who cannot speak for themselves.

10. Because the Social Security system cannot forever sustain itself in current form without collapsing under its own weight, we must transition to a system where we taxpayers have our own accounts without having to rely on future generations. Ultimately, each family is responsible for funding its own retirement.

11. The government exists to protect its citizens and keep law and order. There are a few basic services the private sector is unable or unwilling to perform that fall to the government, as well. But our government was never intended to tax one group of citizens and give to another. Charities are a very necessary component to any free and compassionate society, such as ours. The government is not charity.

If more people understood the math behind lotteries, there would be far fewer tickets sold. Some do know the math, and choose to play anyway. But some don’t know the math, and play because they honestly believe they are going to win a huge jackpot that will change their lives. The latter is perhaps the lottery’s saddest story.

Minority Wealth Magazine did a survey earlier this year, and discovered the following:

“A larger percentage of men questioned noted they felt playing their state lottery was the best way to build wealth, as compared to women. …[Forty-eight] percent of minority men preferred playing the lottery in lieu of savings as a financial design, compared to 41 percent of minority women surveyed.”

It looks like someone got some bad financial advice. According to the Tennessee Lottery, the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1-in-146,107,962. The odds of winning even the $200,000 prize are 1-in-3,563,609, while the odds of winning $10,000 are 1-in-584,432.

Let’s say a person puts $50 a month into Powerball tickets. He does this for 30 years. He will have “invested” $18,000 in the lottery. Since each ticket produces a 1-in-146,107,962 chance of winning, the odds of his winning the Powerball jackpot at any one time during that 30 years are still 1-in-8,117. Even his odds of winning $10,000 are 1-in-32. And that’s after buying 18,000 lottery tickets. But investing $50 per month for 30 years at 5% interest would give that person a 1-in-1 chance of ending up with $41,612.93.

To put this into even better perspective, you could buy 50 Powerball tickets a week and win the jackpot once every 56,000 years.

If you bought a ticket for every mile you drive, you’d have to make the equivalent of 300 round-trips to the moon before winning.

If you buy one Powerball ticket, you’re 27 times more likely to be killed by a wasp, hornet, or bee sting in the next year than you are to win the jackpot.

But there is one institute whose odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 146,107,962-in-146,107,962. It’s the Internal Revenue Service. The Southern Standard out of Des Moines, Iowa reported just last month that the federal government has netted at least $2.85 billion since the first jackpot was awarded in 1988.

And we were told it was for education. Well, some of it is, but not as much as you’d think.

Take, for instance, a casual player who puts in a hundred bucks a year, wins nothing, but placates himself with the justification that “it’s okay, because that money went to education.”

In truth, only about a third of the money that gets put into the lottery comes out for education. The rest goes toward prizes and administration. Thus, a person who puts $100 into the lottery is only sending $33.33 toward education.

Finally, a December 4 article “The high price of a dream” that appeared in The Star-Ledger out of New Jersey reported that lottery ticket sales rise as income falls. Put another way, the lottery is regressive.

The Star-Ledger compared lottery sales and winnings with income levels based in 577 zip codes across New Jersey between 2000 and 2004. It found that per-capita ticket sales were much higher in lower-income zip codes. For example, in communities with average household incomes below $52,000, the lottery sold an average of $250 in tickets per person per year — more than twice the amount for zip codes with $100,000 households.

This is certainly not the first study that reveals the predatory effect the lottery has on lower income citizens. And there’s no reason to suspect that trend is any different in Tennessee.

Indeed, the false promise of hope and the disingenuous argument that “it’s for education” have sugar-coated a government-endorsed industry that exploits those among us who can least afford it. But you don’t need me or a bunch of studies to prove the lottery is a bum deal. All it takes is a little math.

It was said that death always came after weeks of torture.

Abu Hussein, a father of three who served as an executioner under Saddam Hussein, told Reuters about his old job back on November 25.

“Sometimes we would hang them upside down and beat their feet with clubs. Or we would electrocute them,” he said. “One of the worst things was putting 10 people in a one-square-metre room for weeks. They had a brief break every day and were allowed the toilet every three days.”

Three executions were carried out each Monday and Thursday. The executioner said watching men writhe in agony as they died sometimes made him cry. But nobody could afford to defy orders. “We would have been killed on the spot. One time this executioner was one hour late in hanging someone and he was himself hanged. What could we do? All of this had a toll on us.”

But that was the old Iraq.

Still, it is important that we never, ever forget that if the Democratic Party had its way, these things would still be going on. Indeed, the left is far more outraged over our detention of terrorists at Guantanamo Bay than what went on in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. To them, the enemy is George W. Bush.

Indeed, a photograph carried by Yahoo! News/AP on November 26 showed protesters burning a dummy of Saddam Hussein during a demonstration in Najaf, Iraq. A banner held by supporters of Sunni politician Mathel al Alousiin read “We promise to the Iraqi people that we will smash terrorism.” This is one of those things we just don’t see on network television.

The Iraqi people know who the bad guy was. It’s a shame the Democrats don’t.

President Bush made a landmark speech on Iraq at the Naval Academy on November 30 during which he outlined his military strategy.

In the short term, Iraq makes steady progress in fighting terrorists, meeting political milestones, building democratic institutions, and training security forces.

In the medium term, Iraq takes the lead in defeating terrorists and providing its own security, with a fully constitutional government in place and begins to achieve its economic potential.

And in the longer term, Iraq is peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism.

In other words, President Bush’s Iraq strategy remains what it has always been: begin pulling out of Iraq once our goals have been met.

Democrat Senator Jack Reed’s response was typical: “I was disappointed. The president relied too much upon rhetoric, upon a laundry list of tasks accomplished, but not a coherent view of where we are realistically and where we must go to succeed.” Reed criticized President Bush for failing to answer key questions, including, “How do we know if progress is being made there?”

It would take a Democrat to look at Iraq and not see progress — a deposed thug dictator and the first free elections there in decades.

Fortunately, on November 18, House Republicans handed the Democrats their lunch right on the House floor. As an answer to Democrat demands that we pull out of Iraq immediately, the GOP put a nonbinding resolution on the table that called for just that. The House rejected it 403-3, meaning that despite their rhetoric, the Democrats, when forced to put up or shut up, sided with the President.

It is evident that the Democrats do not have any plan for Iraq, nor any vision for winning the War on Terrorism. Their only idea is to disagree with whatever President Bush does, and that is certainly no way to advance a nation at war.

As John Stuart Mill noted back in April, 1862, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things, the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war? It sounds as though Mill was speaking prophetically about the modern-day Democratic Party.

According to a poll recently released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 64% of respondents agreed that “religion is under attack” in America. Keep in mind that the ADL is certainly no friend of Christianity, which makes the results even more surprising.

The poll also found that 53% believe religion is losing influence in American life, while just 35% believe it is gaining influence.

Sixty-four percent of those polled agreed that “it is important that religious symbols like the Ten Commandments be displayed in public buildings such as court houses.”

Fifty-six percent favor the teaching of intelligent design or creationism alongside the theory of evolution in public schools.

And 57% said the Bible is “a more likely explanation for the origins of human life on earth” than Darwinism, whereas just 31% believe Darwin is a more likely explanation.

Those like me who do profess Christianity, favor public religious displays, and believe intelligent design ought to be taught alongside evolution are often called “extremists” by those on the left. In reality, we are in the mainstream of American culture.

And when conservatives point out that religion, particularly Christianity, is under attack, we are again ridiculed by the secular left, when, in fact, we are once again in the mainstream of American thought.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently provided a glaring example of the left’s bias against not just religion, but Christianity.

A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit rejected a lawsuit last month brought by two California students and their parents who challenged the way the Byron, California school district taught Islam.

Materials distributed to students informed them that during a simulation on Islam they would “become Muslims.” The materials contained such statements as “Remember Allah always so that you may prosper.”

As part of the two-week instruction, students took Islamic names, wrote those names on ID tags that bore the star and crescent, and wore them around their necks.

They memorized prayers and recited them. They made banners proclaiming “In the name of God, the most gracious, most compassionate. Praise be to God.”

Students also had to memorize parts of the Koran. They played a dice game called “The Jihad.”

They engaged in the Five Pillars of Faith, which included fasting during the month of Ramadan. Students were encouraged to give up candy. For extra credit, they could give up a sandwich for lunch or TV.

Steve Crampton, who heads the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy, nailed the oxymoron perfectly: “Imagine, if you will, that the shoe was on the other foot, and instead of Muslim practices, these kids were required to participate in traditional Christian practices. What if, to get a good grade, a Muslim student was forced to put on a baptismal robe and wade into the school swimming pool to be baptized — ‘In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit?’ You would have seen an injunction entered in a New York minute.”

He’s right. You see, the 9th Circuit ruled just three years ago that the phrase “under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional. Of course, that phrase refers to the Christian God. Civil libertarians hailed the decision, but they have been ominously silence on the case of Muslim indoctrination in Byron, California. Michael Newdow, the atheist who is presently suing to have the national motto “In God We Trust” removed from our currency, also hasn’t voice his opposition to the 9th Circuit’s de facto endorsement of Muslim indoctrination.

The reason is simple. The secular left isn’t against religion, per se. It’s just against Christianity. And most Americans can see it. The question is, how much longer will we tolerate this tyranny of the minority in public religious matters?

Back in 1999, U.S. Defense intelligence first identified 9/11 mastermind Mohamed Atta. At the time, Defense intelligence was perfecting sophisticated data mining techniques under a top secret operation consisting of 25 experts focused specifically on al Qaeda. The operation was recently revealed as “Able Danger.”

So why were we unable to stop Atta? Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) has made it his mission to find out. In a nutshell, during the Clinton presidency, the various intelligence-gathering agencies within the U.S. government were prohibited from talking to each other — a firewall provision that was reinforced by the Justice Department’s number two person at that time, Jamie Gorelick, who ended up on the 9/11 Commission. Weldon asserts that “Bill Cohen, Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton…said it was an extremely hard situation knowing the Clinton Administration did not allow agencies to talk to each other.”

There are several intelligence experts identified by Weldon who are willing to sacrifice (or have sacrificed) their careers in order that the truth be known, just as there are career bureaucrats who have set up roadblocks so they can save theirs.

Congressman Weldon has authored the book “Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information That Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America…and How the CIA Has Ignored It.” He spills much of what he knows in the October, 2005 edition of “The Limbaugh Letter.”

In 1999, 2000, and 2001, Congressman Weldon wrote language into three successive defense bills that would have opened the intelligence firewalls by establishing a National Collaborative Center. The CIA balked at the idea during a meeting on November 4, 1999, saying it couldn’t be done and wasn’t necessary, while, unbeknownst to them, Able Danger was turning up Atta.

Weldon notes “I think there are problems down the bowels of the intelligence agencies that basically don’t want this information to come out. They don’t want to have it known that the Defense intelligence community had absolute information, even though it was a different Administration, that could have allowed us to go after Mohamed Atta in 2000, one year before 9/11.” You see, back in September, 2000, Defense intelligence tried on three specific occasions to bring in the FBI to brief them, only to be rebuffed each time.

Then, two weeks after 9/11, Weldon’s friends in the Army’s Information Dominance Center handed over a chart of al Qaeda that had identified Atta. Congressman Weldon immediately passed the chart on to then Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley, who asked “Where did you get this from?” Weldon retorted “From the Army’s Information Dominance Center — this is the process I had been pushing the Administration since 1999 to put into place.”

Well, in 2003, President Bush established the collaborative effort first proposed by Weldon. It is called the National Counterterrorism Center.

Fast-forward to the 9/11 Commission, which was established to figure out why the intelligence dots weren’t connected, but itself was given dots that it refused to connect.

One 9/11 commissioner, Tim Roemer, was incredulous that Defense intelligence could have had a photograph of Atta, noting that “He didn’t even arrive here until 2001 or so.” Roemer did not know, however, that Defense intelligence was likely monitoring mosques back in 1999 and 2000 as part of its al Qaeda operation in order to take photographs and identify associations.

Indeed, the 9/11 Commission, which was chartered by Congress and the President, did not fully investigate Able Danger, even though it was designed specifically to monitor al Qaeda for a period of two years. The 9/11 Commission rejected Weldon’s information and finally labeled Able Danger’s work as “historically insignificant” — a label that was echoed by the Pentagon itself.

In reality, the 9/11 Commission said it wasn’t told about Able Danger’s identification of Atta. But Weldon counters “The 9/11 Commission had 100 staff people. I’ve got two people working for me. I uncovered more information about al Qaeda linkages in ten days than they did with 100 staffers in two years.”

The problem is that “…there are a lot of incestuous relationships [in the 9/11 Commission staff], because the staff director of the 9/11 Commission is now Condi Rice’s top staff person.” Indeed, it seems the commission was either incompetent or had the agenda of protecting the members of Washington’s political class.

This intelligence web and those who have spun it and been caught in it are far too complex to be given much detail in one column. On the one hand, it is a testament to American intelligence (and that from other governments) that there has not been a terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. On the other hand, the American people are not being told the truth about the preventability of 9/11 in the first place. Politics is ingrained so deeply in both the military and civilian bureaucracies and the 9/11 Commission that it requires a U.S. Congressman to jump hurdles and knock over barriers to piece together information that ought to have been woven together from the outset.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals outdid itself in a ruling it handed down back on November 2. Parents in Palmdale, California had brought a lawsuit against their school district for a survey that intruded into the sexual lives of students.

It was described on a consent form as a psychological assessment “to establish a community baseline measure of children’s exposure to early trauma.” Surprisingly, the letter actually informed parents that if the assessment team observed any uncomfortable feelings from a child, the assessment team reserved the “right” to seek a therapist that would provide the child with “further psychological help. To be fair, any parent who willingly signed away so much of his parental responsibility deserved to have his own head examined. Still, the school’s actions were fraudulent.

Students were given a 54-question survey. Ten of the questions were of a sexual nature: Touching my private parts too much, 17) Thinking about having sex, 22) Thinking about touching other people’s private parts, 23) Thinking about sex when I don’t want to, 26) Washing myself because I feel dirty on the inside, 34) Not trusting people because they might want sex, 40) Getting scared or upset when I think about sex, 44) Having sex feelings in my body, 47) Can’t stop thinking about sex, and 54) Getting upset when people talk about sex.

By the way, these weren’t high-schoolers who were being “assessed.” The surveys were given to first-, third-, and fifth-graders.

In an opinion that was stunning even for the Ninth Circuit, the court ruled against the parents, citing “there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children.” The court further opined that “parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students.”

Such thinking is mind-boggling to those of us with common sense, but the Ninth Circuit’s ruling is actually consistent with liberalism. Just as liberals don’t trust the voters, they also believe parents are too stupid to be able to instill proper values in their children. Conservatives, on the other hand, believe it takes nothing more than two dedicated parents to raise a child. Liberals believe it takes a village, as the Ninth Circuit has illustrated splendidly.

Under the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, a mother and father who are determined to protect their daughter’s virginity, for example, can be legally undermined by the school system. They have no recourse within the school system, because the left-wing Ninth Circuit has adjudicated away their right to be the only voice in instilling their own values of sexuality.

So, if this girl’s father and mother teach her that abstinence works every time it’s tried — because it does — that abstinence is the only fail-safe method for avoiding pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases — because it is — and that it’s Biblically prescribed to remain abstinent until marriage, their daughter’s school can still come along and tell her that it’s okay if she has sex as long as she practices “safe sex.” Again, the parents have no recourse other than to move to a part of the United States that’s not under the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit, which, thankfully, is a long way from Tennessee.

A recent Heritage Foundation paper, “Adolescent Virginity Pledges, Condom Use, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Among Young Adults,” noted that nearly 90% of parents want schools to teach youth to abstain from sex until they are married or in an adult relationship that is close to marriage.

Such a prevailing mindset is why the left believes parents are too stupid to manage their parental responsibilities without “help.” Liberal sex educators routinely ridicule abstinence programs and virginity pledges. It gets in the way of their agenda to pervert and sexualize America’s youth. If the left tried at the polls what they just got handed to them by the Ninth Circuit, they’d be sent packing by the voters.

President Bush recently nominated Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court. Early reaction from Democrats was predictable: that Alito is an “extremist,” citing Alito’s ruling as a Third Circuit Court judge to uphold a Pennsylvania law requiring a woman to inform her husband before having an abortion. Compare this to the opinion that “there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children,” and tell me just who’s out of the mainstream here.

Back on November 1, Democrats in the U.S. Senate made a show of bravado by invoking a rarely-used procedure to clear the Senate chambers of all media and observers as they tried to take the GOP to the mat.

The theme of the Senate Democrats’ closed-door session was pretty well summed up by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, that the Scooter Libby indictment “provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions.”

In their jubilance, however, Democrats forgot to take notice of the proverbial elephant in the living room. The mantra that “Bush lied, people died” was the centerpiece of their 2004 election campaign. This is what they tried to sell the American people in the races for President and Congress. The result, of course, was that they lost the White House, they lost seats in the House, and they lost seats in the Senate, which put the Democrats even deeper into minority status. In other words, the Democrats re-ran the same strategy on the Senate floor that got them whipped at the polls a year ago.

Furthermore, Democrats slam their fingers in the door whenever they accuse President Bush of manipulating intelligence data, because during the Clinton presidency, Democrats quoted the same “manipulated” intelligence.

Here are some examples:

“Never again can we allow Saddam Hussein to develop nuclear weapons, poison gas, biological weapons, or missiles to deliver them. He has used such terrible weapons before against soldiers, against his neighbors, against civilians. And if left unchecked, he’ll use them again,” said President Bill Clinton on December 19, 1998.

“We are very concerned about what is happening in terms of his weapons of mass destruction. He is a threat to the neighborhood. He has actually, as we know, invaded a country. He is also a threat because he wants to have and has had these weapons of mass destruction,” said Secretary of State Madeline Albright on November 12, 1998.

“We believe the President, with his duties as Commander in Chief, has the authority to [use force against Saddam Hussein], and particularly given the resolution in the wake of the Gulf War. But we will continue to work closely and consult with Congress,” said Joe Lockhart during a White House briefing on November 12, 1998.

“He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983,” said Sandy Berger, National Security Adviser, on February 18, 1998.

“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs,” said Democrat Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others in a letter to President Clinton, October 9, 1998.

“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on December 16, 1998.

So, if the Bush administration manipulated intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s WMD’s, who manipulated it during the eight years of Clinton’s administration?

Back then it was chic for Democrats to talk tough on terrorism. But now a Republican isn’t just talking tough, he’s acting tough, and so it’s no longer chic for Democrats to talk tough on terrorism.

If Democrats are content to keep re-running the same template that failed them at the polls last year, all the GOP has to do to keep its advantage is hand the Democrats the microphone, point out the obvious inconsistencies, and watch the Democrats perpetuate their own free-fall.

It’s November now, and with department stores locked and loaded for the Christmas shopping season, I’ve decided to pen my first-ever column on gift ideas for that special conservative in your life.

The hottest gift idea this year is undoubtedly the Club G’itmo line of apparel available at rushlimbaugh.com. My favorite is a t-shirt that reads “My Mullah went to Club G’itmo and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.” It comes in Institutional Orange only. If you really want that special conservative to get his jollies, have him wear his new shirt to Carthage and take his picture in front of the Gore-Lieberman Store.

If that special conservative happens to be into bumper stickers, you can head over to protestwarrior.com and order one that reads “The ACLU. We don’t hate religion. We just hate Christianity!” There’s another one that goes “SAY NO TO WAR! UNLESS A DEMOCRAT IS PRESIDENT….” These are great stocking stuffers.

For book ideas, there’s always “The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History” by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. (By the way, politically incorrect history is just history with God left in it.) Other book ideas include “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)” by Ann Coulter, “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder” by Michael Savage, “Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild” by Michelle Malkin, “Tax Revolt” by Phil Valentine, and anything by Thomas Sowell. For the budding young conservative, there’s the children’s book “Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!” by Katharine DeBrecht.

While on books, that special conservative might benefit from one of Dave Ramsey’s publications. Dave shows how even those living on modest incomes can become financially independent and well-off by retirement. Good retirement planning will sever one from the strings of Social Security, which is bad for the Democratic Party. A definite winner.

For the music lover, any compilation CD by Charlie Daniels will surely be appreciated. Nearly every song is dripping with political incorrectness. Daniels is openly pro-God, pro-America, pro-gun, and pro-South. Make sure Charlie’s tribute to Red Skelton’s “Pledge of Allegiance” is one of the tracks, where Daniels actually has the gall to include the phrase “under God.” The special conservative in your life will relish driving by his local Peace and Justice Center with the windows rolled down and “This Ain’t No Rag, It’s A Flag” playing at top volume.

How about a Ten Commandments wall hanging? The Ten Commandments are always a good thing to have around, and this will be one religious marking the ACLU can’t challenge.

If that special conservative is into investing, a share of Halliburton stock would make another great stocking stuffer.

He might also appreciate a voucher for a free tank of gas. Believe it or not, conservatives tend not to mind the high gas prices as much as non-conservatives. We know Bush and Cheney’s rich oil buddies are raking in obscene profits right now, and getting gouged at the pump is our way of making belated campaign contributions.

Anything of, by, or about Ronald Reagan would be a special treat for that special conservative in your life.

For $35, you can buy your conservative a one-year membership to the National Rifle Association. It comes with a magazine subscription.

For $12, you can by a “Choose Life” front plate from Tennessee Right to Life.

A Starbucks gift card would be nice. Great coffee, great pastries, and the place is often crawling with liberals. It would be an ideal place for the special conservative in your life to try out his new Club G’itmo tee-shirt, with a copy of “Tax Revolt” tucked under his arm for good measure.

If your conservative carnivore likes to grill, buy him a nice charcoal model — not gas. Burning charcoal will put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and thereby increase his contribution to global warming.

And you can always buy that special conservative a subscription to the Lebanon Democrat. If he asks you “Why in the world would I read a newspaper that has the word ‘Democrat’ as part of its name?” you can respond “Well, they’ve got this goon named Mark Rose who writes right-wing editorials once or twice a week. He’s a Neanderthal. I think you’ll like him.”

Today’s Nashville Eye column in the Tennessean, “This fair tax wouldn’t penalize anyone for earning a living,” belongs to yours truly. It is an encore to last Tuesday’s Lebanon Democrat column on the Fair Tax.

One of the most popular books of the year to emerge within the conservative and libertarian circles is called “The Fair Tax Book,” authored by libertarian talk show host Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder (R-GA).

Boortz and Linder make the case for what’s known as the “Fair Tax,” whereby the entire federal tax system would be abolished and replaced by a 23% consumption tax. The Internal Revenue Service and it’s 54,000-page tax code would go the way of the horse-and-buggy.

The authors are therefore rallying support for H.R.25, the “Fair Tax Act of 2005,” which Congressman Linder introduced early this year. It currently has 45 cosponsors, including Tennessee’s John Duncan. The Fair Tax Act of 2005 was similarly introduced in the Senate as S.25 by Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), but has only one cosponsor to date.

The legislation is endorsed by the National Taxpayers Union and Americans for Fair Taxation (not to be confused with Tennesseans for Fair Taxation). It would ensure that no federal taxes, including payroll taxes, would come out of anyone’s paycheck.

The primary argument against the Fair Tax is the 23% consumption tax. The left would scream “regressive!” until blue in the face, but Boortz and Linder use economic research to show that “embedded taxes” account for around 22% of the price of all goods and services. In other words, taxes paid by corporations are passed along to consumers. Of course, federal taxes on those corporations would disappear, and, therefore, so would embedded taxes.

Furthermore, the Fair Tax Act would give every family a monthly “prebate” to cover the consumption tax on essential goods and services, ensuring that no one would pay the Fair Tax up to the poverty level. The tax would apply to new items and services used for personal consumption, but not on used items, such as used cars and appliances, and not on business-to-business purchases used for production and services.

Most importantly, the Fair Tax is revenue-neutral. The 23% tax rate would (1) raise the same amount of federal funds that are raised by the current system, (2) pay the monthly prebates, and (3) pay collection fees to retailers and state governments.

A recent study by Ross Korves, an American Farm Bureau economist, showed that revenue generated under the Fair Tax would be less variable than that generated by income taxes. This reality also played out during the most recent recession, when tax revenue under Tennessee’s sales tax proved far more stable than revenue in other states that rely on income taxes.

A probable outgrowth of the Fair Tax would be a curb on illegal immigration. The monthly prebates would be distributed only to valid Social Security cardholders who are U.S. residents. Thus, illegal immigrants and non-residents would not receive the prebates, but would still have to pay the consumption tax. Keep in mind that incomes of illegal aliens are not presently taxed.

The current system is a drain on Americans. We expend vast resources trying to comply with the 54,000-page Internal Revenue Code. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that it costs our businesses alone some $400 to $500 billion just to comply with the tax code. Those resources would be directed elsewhere under the Fair Tax — like expanding the U.S. economy.

Folks, the Fair Tax plan is a liberal’s worst nightmare. That alone makes it worth supporting. Imagine, as a Tennessean, receiving 100% of your paycheck as “take home pay.” That’s what the Fair Tax would do. Families would be better able to save and invest their own money, the economy would grow faster, and financial independence would be achievable for far more Americans than it is today. As I said, it’s a liberal’s worst nightmare.

Those of us who live in House District 57 are among the most ably represented in all of Tennessee, which is why it’s a relief that Susan Lynn and Mae Beavers have decided to put the Wilson County Republican Party ahead of whatever rift that developed between them last year.

Susan Lynn has given us three years of conservative leadership since she was catapulted from the sidewalks of the Tennessee tax revolt to the General Assembly back in 2002. And Mae Beavers (along with Marsha Blackburn) is generally regarded as the matriarch of the conservative movement that coalesced during those tax revolt days that helped swing the state GOP to the right.

Of course, Representative Lynn is a solid conservative representing a solidly conservative district here in west Wilson County. And Senator Beavers is a solid conservative representing a part of Middle Tennessee that was once the uncontested home field of the Democratic Party, but has swung Republican just within the last couple of election cycles.

Indeed, the GOP has gained unprecedented momentum that could just as easily be squandered. Who would have thought even ten years ago that a Republican candidate for President of the United States would win 65.1% of the vote in Wilson County, Tennessee? It happened last year.

Tennessee Democrats have already identified Senator Beavers as their number one legislative target in 2006. They still view Senate District 17 as their birthright. There’s only one problem, though. With only nine months to go until the August primary, the Democrats still don’t have a horse in the race.

Given all this, it would be easy for Republicans to get over-confident and take these GOP legislative seats for granted. That would also be the worst thing to do, because you can’t take anything for granted in politics.

Conservatism is a winning ideology, and the Wilson County GOP is solidly conservative. But unfortunately, the only thing that’s gotten the Wilson County GOP in the news this past year is infighting. It is therefore encouraging that the county’s two most prominent Republicans have decided that enough is enough, and that it’s time to get back to promoting conservative candidates.

Both Susan Lynn and Mae Beavers have laid out templates on how to campaign and legislate as conservatives. Both are decent Christian women. Both are pro-life, pro-family, and pro-traditional marriage. Both support gun rights, fiscal conservatism, and adamantly oppose a state income tax. Those are the kinds of credentials that win elections.

But just as a football team cannot advance the ball on the field if its own players are arguing with each other, conservatism cannot be advanced if Republicans are better known for arguing with each other than on behalf of their cause and their candidates. Liberalism will gladly swallow up whatever ground conservatives relinquish.

Conservatives have realized unprecedented gains at both the state and national levels of government in just the past decade. That is because conservatism is winning in the court of public opinion. Despite this, there is still a great deal of real estate left to be won. Ours is still a state where there are few restrictions on abortion, where a marriage protection amendment will be on the ballot next year, and where a state income tax needs to stay buried. In other words, conservatism is still needed in state government — now more than ever.

Susan Lynn and Mae Beavers are examples of the kind of lawmakers conservatives need statewide to deliver the goods. Keeping them in office and electing more of them elsewhere should always be the paramount goal of conservatives and Republicans. Otherwise, the political world will pass us by.

In Massachusetts, the only state where same-sex marriage is legal, gay rights activists want the words “Mother” and “Father” struck from birth certificates and replaced by “Parent A” and “Parent B.”

Michele Granda, an attorney for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, says “There should be no doubt in Massachusetts that Massachusetts records should accurately reflect the true nature of Massachusetts families and that includes same-sex couples.”

Governor Mitt Romney has instead instructed hospitals to cross out “Mother” or “Father” and write in the phrase “Second Parent.” He argues from the common sense point-of-view that “…each child has a mother and a father. They should have the right to have that mother and father known to them and that’s something I’d like to preserve on a birth certificate.”

But Granda asserts “There’s no need for the governor to be stigmatizing the children born to same-sex couples just because he does not personally approve of same-sex couples.” Yes, we wouldn’t want to make the children of same-sex couples feel…uncomfortable. So let’s just drop the words “Mother” and “Father” for ALL families so we can appease a small cadre of gay activists. Nothing like the tyranny of the minority.

Thinking about this has gotten me to pore through some of my own childhood memories. For example, when I was 9 or 10, Parent B had a brilliant idea on teaching me about guns. Parent B had just gotten a 20-gage shotgun, and let me test it one day. There were some woods off to the side of our house then, and Parent B had me fire into those woods. The last thing Parent B told me before I squeezed the trigger was “Be sure you set the stock firmly against your shoulder. It’s going to kick.”

I didn’t set the stock firmly against my shoulder. It kicked, all right, and put me flat on my behind. It also left a bruise on my left shoulder. I always knew where Parent B stored that shotgun afterwards, but Parent B never had to worry about me sneaking it out when no one was around. I knew enough about that gun to not want to mess with it.

At that time, we lived near Pickwick Dam, and Parent B and I did quite a bit of fishing. There’s no telling how many bream I caught right below the dam, and a little bit farther down, the bass and catfish were plentiful. Things got real interesting when Parent B bought a boat. It was a V-bottom boat that he painted blue. It came with a huge 29-horse Johnson motor that could have propelled a locomotive just as easily as our boat. I remember Parent B and I launching off the boat ramp all those times. I would stand there at the water’s edge to keep the boat from drifting into the water while Parent B parked the truck. Sometimes we’d even go camping out by the river. There’s nothing like Parent B and son bonding.

When I was 15, I went to see my first major league baseball game. It was in St. Louis, and they were playing my beloved Philadelphia Phillies. The concept of “root root root for the home team” was meaningless to me then. It was Parent A who took me to that game, and we were accompanied by Parent A’s Parent A — I guess that would be grand-Parent A, or perhaps grand-Parent A/A. I’ll have to let the gay rights people sort that one out.

Parent B stayed behind with my little brother so they could have their own Parent B and son bonding. The Cardinals won that game, but the one redeeming moment for me occurred when the great Mike Schmidt hit a home run over the right field wall.

In the fourth grade, early in the year, in fact, I got really sick at school. I wasn’t sick that much as a child, so that’s why this sticks out. It was a Tuesday, and I ended up missing the remainder of the school week — three-and-a-half days, in fact.

Being sick is no fun, for sure. But as a child, having a stomach virus really is a small price to pay if you can get three-and-a-half days off from school for it. It was Parent B who came to pick me up that day. I believe both Parent A and Parent B ended up in the doctor’s office with me, though. I was quietly smug when the nurse validated my fever. You can’t fake a stomach virus or a 102-degree fever, after all. Both Parent A and Parent B knew every trick there was by then.

Back on August 9, Right Minded covered the disappearance of Latoyia Figueroa, a 24-year-old woman from Philadelphia. That column highlighted the way the media treats missing persons unequally by comparing the media’s saturation of the Natalee Holloway case to its non-coverage of the likes of Latoyia Figueroa.

To summarize, Natalee Holloway, of course, is a young, pretty white blonde, while Latoyia Figueroa was black. Conservative writer and blogger Michelle Malkin attributed the media’s cherry-picked disappearance coverage to its “Missing Pretty Girl Syndrome.”

The search for Figueroa ended on August 20 with the result that most everyone feared. Her remains were discovered in Chester, Pennsylvania, about 13 miles southwest of Philadelphia. Her 25-year-old former boyfriend and the father of her unborn baby has been charged with the murder.

Latoyia Figueroa was five months pregnant when she disappeared on July 18. Additionally, she was the mother of a 7-year-old daughter. Figueroa had lost her own mother as a toddler, and was raised by her mother’s cousin.

Not only does the contrast in the two cases illustrate the unequal treatment missing persons receive from the media, there’s another unsettling trend into which Figueroa’s murder falls: the violence to which a disproportionate share of pregnant women are subjected.

Six years ago, two state health researchers in Maryland conducted a study of maternal deaths. Isabelle Horon and Diana Cheng uncovered dozens of previously overlooked cases in their state. The researchers had assumed they would find more deaths resulting from medical complications than the state’s statistics showed. In the end, they were not prepared for the results.

Ms. Horon would later remark “We thought we had to have made a mistake. We kept checking and checking and rechecking.” But their findings were not an error. The leading cause of death among pregnant woman during the six-year period of study — accounting for 50 of the 247 deaths they covered — weren’t cardiovascular disorders, embolisms, or accidents. It was homicide.

Indeed, Horon and Cheng wrote in their study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2001, that in Maryland, “a pregnant or recently pregnant woman is more likely to be a victim of homicide than to die of any other cause.”

Similarly, a study published in the March, 2005 “American Journal of Public Health” showed homicide to be the second most common cause of injury-related deaths for pregnant women after car accidents in the United States between 1991 and 1999. The homicide rate for pregnant black women was more than triple that for white women. In other words, Latoyia Figueroa’s murder isn’t just an isolated incident.

By now you may be thinking, “Mark, you’re starting to sound like a liberal with all this talk about white favoritism.” Not at all. One of conservatism’s cornerstones is the equal and inestimable value of each and every human life, including the unborn. That simple, fundamental understanding forms our pro-life underpinnings. And it’s also why the media’s obsession with missing pretty white girls to the exclusion of others who don’t fit that template doesn’t make for responsible media.

I’m trying to give President Bush and Harriet Miers the benefit of the doubt. Problem is there’s just too much doubt to gain much benefit from.

I’m sure the Democrats have enjoyed watching the attempted mutiny going on over at the starboard side, with conservatives trying to toss Miers overboard, and President Bush clinging just as desperately to his second Supreme Court nominee.

We don’t know a great deal about Miers other than 1) she is a lawyer who has never served as a judge, 2) she is a woman, and 3) she a Christian. That last one is about the only thing I’ve heard about Miers that gives me comfort. Knowing that certain senators (Schumer, Clinton, Kerry, Kennedy, Boxer, etc.) are going to be uneasy over the fact that Harriet Miers has — gasp! — deeply held personal beliefs does provide some satisfaction.

But, truth be known, conservatives feel as though they’ve come up on the short end of a bait-and-switch. Many conservatives voted for President Bush foremost because of the prospect of his shaping the federal judiciary. But the President’s nominee to replace Sandra Day O’Connor may be capitulation, leaving conservatives to wonder whether he is too soft to hold up his end of an impending showdown on the Senate floor.

There is no doubt that Harriet Miers is an honorable person. She’s obviously bright and in no way deserves the slander that President Bush has set her up to receive. True, there are some prominent conservatives, Dr. James C. Dobson for one, who are applauding the President’s choice. But the bottom line is that there were so many more worthwhile candidates from which to choose.

President Bush has assured his base that Harriet Miers will adhere to the letter of the Constitution and will not waver. But “trust me on this one” simply won’t cut it with Supreme Court picks anymore.

I have to hand it to past Democratic presidents. They know how to pick Supreme Court justices. Seriously. Who was the last Supreme Court justice nominated by a Democrat who veered off to the right? There haven’t been any in my lifetime. Now, who was the last Supreme Court justice nominated by a Republican who veered off to the left? David Souter (Bush), Anthony Kennedy (Reagan), and Sandra Day O’Connor (Reagan) just among those who are currently sitting. So forgive me if “trust me on this one” isn’t enough this time.

Despite all their claims to nuance and intellectual superiority, when it comes down to Supreme Court nominees, liberals are very basic. There care about exactly one thing: would that nominee, if confirmed, ever rule against Roe v. Wade. The left doesn’t really care about qualifications or any other issue.

Conservatives care about Roe v. Wade, for sure, but the paramount question of a potential Supreme Court justice is his or her strict adherence to the Constitution as it is written (called “constructionism”). Conservatives don’t necessarily want like-minded ideologues on the bench as much as we want justices who will simply interpret our founding document as it is written without inserting his or her own personal beliefs in place of the law.

So, with respect to Harriet Miers, perhaps she will turn out to be a constructionist. Perhaps President Bush’s dark horse will play out as a stroke of genius. We will only know for sure once she is confirmed and starts writing opinions. But had the President appointed someone with an established judicial record of constructionism, such as Janice Rogers Brown, we wouldn’t have to be told “trust me on this one” yet again.

The destruction from Hurricane Katrina has prompted the left to crank up its accusations that Republicans are racists, like we’ve never heard that one before. The race card is a tried and failed maneuver liberals use against conservatives whenever they run out of ammunition. It’s as old as the dinosaurs, and it quit working almost as long ago.

The truth be known, liberals tell far more about themselves than conservatives whenever they start throwing racist accusations to the wind. Whenever conservatives disagree with liberals over any race issue, liberals are programmed to scream “racist!” It is as natural to them as breathing.

Jesse Jackson had called President Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina “incompetent” and charged that racism was partly to blame for the slow evacuation of survivors. And during a nationally televised fundraising event, rapper Kanye West said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

To this, Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson responded “The truth is black people died, not because of President Bush or racism, they died because of their unhealthy dependence on the government and the incompetence of Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco.”

Reverend Peterson followed up in his column on September 21 with this zinger:

“Enter Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. Jackson and Farrakhan laid blame on ‘racist’ President Bush. Farrakhan actually proposed the idea that the government blew up a levee so as to kill blacks and save whites. The two demanded massive governmental spending to rebuild New Orleans, above and beyond the federal government’s proposed $60 billion. Not only that, these two were positioning themselves as the gatekeepers to supervise the dispersion of funds. Perfect: Two of the most dishonest elite blacks in America, ‘overseeing’ billions of dollars. I wonder where that money will end up.”

The equally sharp Star Parker laid the truth bare in her September 12 op/ed, asserting “What we are witnessing is a well-honed black political public-relations operation geared to obfuscation, stoking hatred and fear, and nurturing helplessness and dependence among black citizens. Such efforts keep black politicians powerful, diversity businesses prosperous and blacks poor.”

Indeed, there is ample evidence to show that the racist label slapped on conservatives by liberals is grossly misapplied. During the past 40 years, Democrats have shown themselves to be anything but the party of black advancement.

For one, high taxes and regulations put in place largely by Democrats have helped keep minority upstarts down while protecting good ol’ boy networks.

The Democrat-protected government monopoly on education helps keep blacks trapped in urban ghetto schools, thereby preventing them from infiltrating the private schools attended overwhelmingly by whites. Democrat-controlled teachers unions staunchly oppose “No Child Left Behind,” even though that law is clearly targeted at getting poor children out of failing schools and into schools where they can excel.

Democrats recognize blacks as inferior to whites and therefore in need of affirmative action and diversity programs.

Never forget that the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 received the votes of a larger share of Republicans than Democrats. It was approved by 61 percent of Democrats in the House of Representatives, and 80 percent of Republicans. In the Senate, 69 percent of Democrats voted in the affirmative, and were joined by 82 percent of Republicans.

Furthermore, Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), the “conscience of the Senate” and a former Ku Klux Klan member, filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for more than 14 hours.

During the pre-civil rights era, when anti-lynching bills were being introduced into the U.S. Congress, none made it out of the Senate because Democrats filibustered them.

And forty years of liberal social programs, which reward out-of-wedlock births and single parenthood, have contributed significantly to the disintegration of the family — none more so than the black family, thereby banishing many blacks to a grinding cycle of intergenerational poverty and government dependence.

The Democratic Party’s track record on race relations is not pretty. Rather than lift blacks up, Democrats keep many of them down by stonewalling their progress, using them for votes and then forsaking them to the purgatory of permanent victimhood.

As happens from time-to-time, I’ve accumulated a surplus of op/ed fodder that needs to be cleaned out. It’s a shame, but not every worthwhile idea gets churned into a column. So here’s what’s in the inbox:

My brother recently posed this thought: “I am for a balanced budget. I am for smaller government. I am for free speech. I am for states’ rights. Can anyone tell me who actually represents me in Washington?” My answer, unfortunately, is nobody. With free-spending Republicans like the ones we’ve got in Washington these days, who needs Democrats anymore?

Why is it that the same people who criticized income tax protesters for taking their kids down to the State Capitol were the ones who used children and seniors as pawns in the attempt to win a sales tax increase in Davidson County last month?

On September 8, the United Food and Commercial Workers hired a group of non-union temporary workers to protest outside one Nevada Wal-Mart. Noted the Las Vegas Weekly, “They’re making $6 an hour, with no benefits; it’s 104 F, and they’re protesting the working conditions inside the new Wal-Mart grocery store.” By the way, the average Nevada Wal-Mart employee earns $10.17 an hour.

Fellow blogger and serviceman Lance Frizzell recently noted that the press accounts of 10,000 dead in New Orleans were off by, oh, a factor of ten or so. Remember that the American media brings that level of accuracy to the war in Iraq every single day.

When it was realized that hurricane relief would be needed right here in Tennessee, who did the Red Cross turn to? Did it ask the ACLU to open its office space to refugees? Americans United for Separation of Church and State? Of course not. The Red Cross turned to the church, primarily the Christian church, because the Red Cross knew we’d be available and eager to help. It’s just like liberals, who demand that our society do everything it can to “help the poor,” to attack those who actually carry out what they say needs to be done.

Tennesseans for Fair Taxation, an organization that promotes a state income tax, sent out an e-mail urging its supporters to contact the governor’s office after he declared his opposition to a state income tax would extend into a second term. TFT’s effort produced two phone calls and 26 e-mails. The governor’s office received more phone calls and e-mails complaining that “American Idol” didn’t schedule tryouts in Nashville. That’s just how popular a state income tax is in Tennessee.

When Walter Cronkite told a recent audience at the University of Southern California that “We [as a nation] are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders,” he illustrated just how liberals view average Americans. In short, conservatives trust the voters. Liberals only trust the courts. That’s why conservatives win elections.

If, God willing, Roe v. Wade were ever overturned, it would not automatically outlaw abortion. The power to make laws restricting or enforcing abortion rights would return to individual states. Some would outlaw abortion, some would allow it with some restrictions, some would enable it with few, if any, restrictions.

Following Hurricane Katrina, a neighborhood association in New Orleans had to act as law enforcement as the police force was unable to protect its citizens. According to Reuters, “Citizens organized armed patrols and checked on the elderly. They slept on their porches with loaded shotguns and bolted awake when intruders stumbled on the aluminum cans they had scattered on the sidewalk.” That’s precisely why we have a Second Amendment. After all, if you’ve got a piece, you’ve got peace.

Anglican bishops in the Church of England are asking Christian leaders to apologize for the war in Iraq. Didn’t we start a new country in order to get away from these folks?

I think I have finally figured out why “safe-sex” liberals get so agitated over the undeniable truth that “abstinence works every time it’s tried.” First, it’s an absolute statement, and liberals generally don’t react well to absolutes (moral or otherwise). And second, “safe-sex” liberals view abstinence as a restriction on personal freedom, ignoring the freedom from unwanted consequences that abstinence provides.

The Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration announced on August 17 that the state concluded the 2004-2005 fiscal year with a revenue surplus of $260.8 million. In other words, revenue collections were $260.8 million more than the state needed to balance the budget that the Tennessee General Assembly adopted in May of last year. Revenues grew nearly 6% from collections of a year before. The surplus amounts to about $175 for a family of four.

Combined with last year’s budget surplus of $380 million, Tennesseans have overpaid their state taxes by a combined $640 million the past two years. Don’t forget that the Tennessee General Assembly raised our taxes by $933 million back in 2002. Despite this, you can probably guess the amount of money Tennessee’s taxpayers can expect as a refund. Zero. That’s because Governor Bredesen and the Tennessee General Assembly have designs on that money, and it doesn’t involve compensating the taxpayers for their overpayment.

Since we are sending in more money than is required to run state government, our elected representatives COULD have done one of the following things with that surplus to ease the tax burden on Tennesseans:

1. The food tax is six cents on the dollar. Each penny translates into approximately $70 million in tax revenue. The state could simply have reduced the food tax from 6% to 2.5% with $15.8 million left over.

2. The tax on gasoline is 21.4 cents per gallon. The state could have abolished this tax with enough surplus money left — $209.7 million — to cut the sales tax on groceries from 6% to 3%.

3. The state could have abolished the franchise and excise taxes on businesses with enough left over ($183.4 million) to abolish the gasoline tax AND trim nearly two cents off the food tax.

4. The state could have abolished the franchise, excise, gasoline, and motor vehicle registration taxes completely, with enough money left over ($112.8 million) to cut the food tax by 1.5 cents, with $7.8 million to spare even then.

Indeed, there are a myriad of combinations by which the state of Tennessee could have tangibly eased the tax burden on Tennesseans, but, again, our elected representatives chose to do none of the above.

So what is the state doing with this year’s surplus? Growing government.

The largest expenditure will be a safety net Governor Bredesen has established on behalf of those Tennesseans who are losing their TennCare benefits. The governor has already set aside $105 million for that endeavor, but a portion of the windfall the state has enjoyed from a boost in car sales and business taxes might be added to that. Said the governor, “One of the things I want to do now is see if there’s some places in the safety net that we can put some of this additional money.”

That’s a noble idea, but is also the result of a $180 million blunder the legislature committed at the end of this year’s session. As blogger Bruce Barry (pithinthewind.com) noted on May 28, “A proposal to put $100 million back into TennCare to keep ‘uninsurables’ enrolled kept the Tennessee House in session for an extra day. Rep. Joey Hensley’s (R-Hohenwald) amendment to the budget bill would have steered that money away from Gov. Bredesen’s plans to beef up the state’s health care ’safety net.’ Well-intentioned though the safety net plans are, moving the money back into TennCare makes sense because then it would draw $180 million of federal matching funds.”

In other words, had that $100 million safety net been left inside the TennCare program, it would have translated into $280 million by virtue of federal matching funds. But since the safety net is outside the TennCare program, there are no federal matching funds. Although those matching funds are paid for by us, too, from the state’s perspective, $280 million for uninsurables is far better than $100 million.

It’s no wonder, then, that Tennessee gets a “D” from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which grades each state on its handling of tax and expenditure limits. Economist Dr. Barry Poulson, an expert in state government finance, spending, and tax policy, produced a fiscal discipline report card for APF in June, 2005.

Tennessee’s low score is attributable to two things. First, the state has no constitutional provision for treatment of revenue surpluses, meaning that the legislature and governor can more or less do whatever they please with our leftover money. And they do.

Second, although a provision known as the Copeland Cap is supposed to link yearly budget growth to growth in personal income, it is routinely waived by a simple legislative majority, meaning that the state budget typically grows faster than personal income, the Copeland Cap notwithstanding.

So, despite the hand-wringing we often hear regarding Tennessee’s relatively high sales tax and its effect on the poor, when given the opportunity to extend tax relief to the taxpayers or spend the excess revenue we pay that’s not required to balance the budget, the Tennessee General Assembly, without exception, always chooses the latter.

What is our exit strategy in the War on Poverty?

The Heritage Foundation reported in a June 13 research paper that “In the 40 years since President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, the nation has spent over $8.5 trillion on means-tested assistance: food, housing, medical care, and social services for poor and low-income Americans.”

Now, $8.5 trillion is 108% of the entire national debt. With a price tag that large, you’d like to see some results. But we haven’t.

According to the Census Bureau, the poverty rate in the U.S. in 1959 (the first year for which data are available) was 22.4%. By 1965, the year President Johnson declared war on poverty, the poverty rate had already fallen to 17.3%. The next year, it was 14.7%. In 2004, it was 12.7%. Since 1965, the poverty rate has never risen above 15.2%, or fallen below 11.1%. Clearly, the War on Poverty hasn’t worked. It’s time to end it.

A lack of wealth is not the problem. Going back to the Census Bureau, per capita income in 1967 (again, the first year for which such data are available) was $2,464, or $11,500 in 2003 dollars. In 2003, that figure was $23,276, having more than doubled during the intervening 36 years. So if our wealth production continues to increase, then why hasn’t the poverty rate been appreciably lowered?

The answer lies in the breakdown of the two-parent family. Using 2004 data, the poverty rate for people in married-couple families was 6.4%. The poverty rate for people in families with no wife present was 13.8%. And the poverty rate for people in families with no husband present was 30.5%.

In other words, a person living in a home headed by a single woman is nearly five times as likely to be impoverished than in a home headed by a married couple. And, of course, the percentage of families headed by married couples has fallen considerably since 1965. In that year, 87% of all families were married-couple families. By 2004, that number had fallen to 75%.

Thus, as per capita wealth has increased in the U.S., the number of individuals living in single-parent homes has increased so that our wealth-building has been offset by the breakdown of the nuclear family such that the poverty rate during the past four decades has remained largely unchanged. Throwing money at poverty has only treated its symptom — not the disease itself — and has instead produced unintended side effects, namely single parenthood.

We therefore do not need more government. We need more married-couple families. It’s so simple a concept that it’s often dismissed.

Back on May 19, 1992, Vice-President Dan Quayle asserted “…marriage is a moral issue that requires cultural consensus, and the use of social sanctions. Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong. Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this.”

“It doesn’t help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown — a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid, professional woman — mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice.’”

Quayle was summarily scorned and ridiculed by the press and the political left for his advocacy of traditional “family values,” but it turns out that Dan Quayle was right. Ten years after Quayle’s ill-fated comment, Murphy Brown star Candice Bergen conceded “[Quayle's] speech was a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable and nobody agreed with that more than I did.”

Instead of perpetuating an endless, costly war on poverty that encourages single-parenthood, it is time to formulate an exit strategy and pull out. The government certainly can’t force individuals to marry, nor should it, but it can replace the failed formula with, say, a tax system that rewards married-couple families instead of punishing them. In other words, let’s try conservatism for a change. After all, the most effective barrier against poverty isn’t a left-wing social experiment that redistributes wealth. The most effective barrier against poverty is simply a home that’s headed by a married man and woman.

On Monday, August 29, I had the privilege of joining seven other Nashville-area bloggers at a lunch with State Senator Rosalind Kurita, who is running for the U.S. Senate. (The bloggers consisted of three liberals, four conservatives, and one libertarian.)

Although the discussion was informal, it was understood that everything was on the record, and Senator Kurita, for the most part, showed herself to be a straight-shooter.

Perhaps the most poignant statement Senator Kurita made during the hour-plus discussion followed a request that she distinguish herself from fellow Democrat and candidate Harold Ford, Jr.

Said Kurita, “I know what it means to work hard for a living. I have worked for everything I have. I’m married. I have three children. I know what it means to save money for college. I know what it means to punch a time clock. I’ve worked the night shift. I’ve worked a swing shift. I know how to do a day’s work. I’m a nurse. I have really had to take responsibility for my actions. When you take care of people who have their lives in your hands, that’s accountability.”

The liberal side of Senator Kurita came out when she discussed U.S. energy policy. “We do not need to drill in the [Alaska National Wildlife Refuge], and it’s ridiculous that we — that bill passed the House. If we changed the speed limit, we could save more money than we could get out of the ANWR.”

Of course, the only way to lower gas prices is to extract more oil. Senator Kurita argued for alternative energy, but a capitalist economy cannot force its consumers into an alternative for which there is little demand at the present. The current demand is for more oil, and there’s plenty out there.

But there were several areas in which Senator Kurita and I agree.

On ethics, for example, Senator Kurita noted “I think that if someone has been an elected official, that they should not be a lobbyist. I think that the cooling off period is not very realistic. Once somebody is your peer they are always your peer, and that relationship isn’t going to change. I think that that’s more important than any other aspect that we look at in terms of the lobbyists. And I think we should have a reporting of lobbyists’ salaries, and this business that you make extra money if you accomplish a certain goal, I don’t like that. I really believe we need to change the culture on Capitol Hill.”

Senator Kurita has a strong love of the military, and deeply appreciates the fact that Ft. Campbell lies in her legislative district. She spoke very warmly of our soldiers and their families. When asked about Harold Ford, Jr.’s reference to our troops in Iraq as “oil cops,” Senator Kurita referred to them as “very brave soldiers,” and remarked that Ford’s characterization “doesn’t feel right.”

Senator Kurita shoots skeet out on the gun range at Ft. Campbell, and the troops she meets tell her things are going much better on the war front than are being reported by the media.

She also spoke very approvingly of fellow Senator Mae Beavers, acknowledging their friendly relationship and that Senator Beavers is a very strong woman (referring to her battle with cancer last year.)

I asked Senator Kurita if she believes President Bush’s judicial nominees each deserve an up-or-down vote. Senator Kurita cited the Senate’s “advice and consent” role, and that those charged in that role need information on each nominee and need to be fair. She believes it is “reasonable” for each nominee to receive an up-or-down vote, and that individuals should think for themselves and not vote one way or another simply because someone else tells them to.

Senator Kurita does not support a state income tax or the sales tax increase that got pushed through three years ago. She opposed the Supreme Court’s recent Kelo decision, and says there is “no way” a business should be able to take a person’s home.

She believes the way to erase deficit-spending at the federal level is to “stop spending.” Government programs have to work, and Senator Kurita cited the Medicaid program as one that needs reform — that the regulations currently on the book are too broad. We have to be realistic about expenditures.

The bloggers’ lunch with a top shelf U.S. Senate candidate was the first of its kind in the Nashville area, and exhibits the growing influence of blogs on politics. We were more or less able to interview a candidate who showed us the human side of a politician that voters rarely get to see. There were no sound bytes, no tap dancing, no campaign slogans — only open and honest discussion, transcripts of which were posted on several blogs by that evening.

Senator Rosalind Kurita showed herself to be a gracious lady, and seems to be genuine in her role as a representative of the people. Although there are issues on which she and I will have fundamental differences, one would have a hard time denying that she has the best interests of her constituents at heart.