Right Minded Online

Following every partisan, bitter campaign season, I must — we must — set aside our ammunition for a time and remind ourselves, even appreciate, that the fellow who is my ideological opponent is an American first. We often make ourselves unlikable during political campaigns, even during the grind of everyday partisan politics. But remember, if we someday get attacked again, and God willing we won’t, but if we do, it’s not just my America that gets attacked, it’s the other guy’s America, too. It won’t be a blue state or a red state, it will be the USA that gets attacked.

Last October, Michelle Duggar from Arkansas gave birth to her 16th child. The Duggar family received nationwide media attention, for obvious reasons, but not all the press coverage was flattering.

For example, Mark Morford of the San Francisco Gate penned a scathing, condescending column presumptuously titled “God Does Not Want 16 Kids: Arkansas mom gives birth to a whole freakin’ baseball team. How deeply should you cringe?”

Morford writes: “Ah, but this is America, yes? People should be allowed to do whatever the [expletive] they want with their families if they can afford it and if it’s within the law and so long as they aren’t gay or deviant or happily flouting Good Christian Values, right? Shouldn’t they? [Expletive], gay couples still can’t openly adopt a baby in most states (they either lie, or one adopts and the other must apply as “co-parent”), but Michelle Duggar can pop out 16 kids and no one says, oh my freaking God, stop it, stop it now, you thoughtless, selfish, baby-drunk people.”

Whew.

Morford doesn’t live in solitary, though. His anti-family views are shared by many liberals these days — attitudes that are actually quantifiable.

You see, liberals are having a huge baby problem. As Professor Arthur C. Brooks of Syracuse University noted in a recent Opinion Journal article, “They’re not having enough of them, they haven’t for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That’s a “fertility gap” of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20% –explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.”

Furthermore, “the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today’s problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold. Consider future presidential elections in a swing state (like Ohio), and assume that the current patterns in fertility continue. A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020 — and all for no other reason than babies.”

Similarly, USA Today ran a story on the “fertility gap” back on September 26. Consistent with Professor Brooks’ findings, the paper noted that “Republican House members overwhelmingly come from districts that have high percentages of married people and lots of children….”

Specifically, GOP congressmen represent 39.2 million children younger than 18 — about 7 million more than Democrats. Republicans average 7,000 more children per district. Many Democrats represent districts that are inhabited by a sizeable number of single people and relatively few children.

What the USA Today article did not say is that one large contributor to the fertility gap is abortion. There have been some 47 million legal abortions performed in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade in 1973. We certainly cannot gage what percentage of those snuffed-out lives might have become Democrat voters, Republican voters, or non-voters, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that conservatives aren’t contributing a whole lot to that statistic. In short, the Democrats are aborting their own future voting base.

Even though the left’s anti-family (or at least, anti-large family) attitudes will likely benefit conservatives increasingly as years go by, conservatives remain steadfastly pro-family and pro-life.

I decided to turn one of my blog posts from Saturday into a “Tennessee Voices” piece which the Tennessean was gracious enough to run today under the title “Race amounted to a poor excuse for Ford’s defeat.” To make it easy, I’m re-printing the text below:

Back on September 12, Rosie O’Donnell, who co-hosts ABC’s television show “The View,” remarked on the air (to much applause) that “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of church and state.”

Rosie certainly isn’t the first person, nor will be the last, to make disparaging remarks about Christianity. Trashing the Christian faith is a pastime as old as Christianity itself. We in Wilson County witnessed recently just how emboldened enemies of the faith are with the ACLU’s lawsuit against the Wilson County school system.

I’m certainly not trying to play the victim here, but those who have insulted and attempted to censor Christians don’t understand what they’re asking. Christians are the best friends of humanity the world has ever known.

Just look around you. Here in Wilson County we have Friendship Christian School and Mt. Juliet Christian Academy — two private schools established and operated by Christians. In Lebanon, there is Cumberland University, established by Presbyterians. Other colleges affiliated with Christian denominations in Nashville include Trevecca, Belmont, and David Lipscomb.

Then there are the hospitals. In Nashville alone there are Baptist and St. Thomas, both of which bear the names of Christian organizations.

When it comes to feeding the destitute and homeless, there is the Nashville Rescue Mission, whose main purpose is to “To offer a cup of cold water in Jesus’ Name, to offer the Living Water of Jesus Christ.” Last year, the Christ-centered homeless shelter served more than 470,000 meals.

Compassion International is a worldwide Christian child sponsor organization that serves more than 770,000 children in over than 20 countries.

Angel Food Ministries, out of Monroe, Georgia, is a Christian organization that sells low-cost groceries to families in at least 32 states. Last year, Angel Food Ministries sold more than 1.6 million units of food. One unit costs $25 and “assists in feeding a family of four for about one week or a single senior citizen for almost a month.”

In the aftermath of the tsunami that struck Indonesia nearly two years ago, Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian relief organization founded by Franklin Graham, sent workers and 100 tons of food, medical supplies, and shelter materials into the devastated region. They cleaned more than 4,200 contaminated wells, distributed food rations to more than 10,000 families, and treated more than 6,300 people who were affected by malaria and measles.

When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans last year, the Southern Baptists were there to assist. In fact, Southern Baptist volunteers responded to 166 named disasters last year, prepared 17,124,738 meals, repaired 7,246 homes, and removed debris from 13,986 yards.

That said, where are the schools and universities that have been founded by radical Islam that Rosie O’Donnell equates to radical Christianity? You won’t find them. That’s because radical Islam is only dedicated to tearing down what productive societies build up.

What hospitals have been built by atheist organizations? You won’t find too many. Of course, atheism hasn’t exactly been the friend to humanity that Christianity has. Atheism has most closely been linked to communist governments. It is generally accepted that communism was responsible for approximately 100 million deaths during the 20th century.

And how much hunger relief are pagan organizations providing around the world? How many volunteers did the ACLU send down to New Orleans after the hurricane? This isn’t to say that non-Christians aren’t capable of performing acts of good will. But as a whole, the positive marks left on society by religions other than Christianity do not compare to those left by Christians.

Actually, the ACLU has been active in New Orleans, but not in the same way Southern Baptists have. Back in August, the ACLU of Louisiana demanded the removal of a memorial for the nearly 130 people killed in St. Bernard Parish by Hurricane Katrina.

The memorial, located along the Mississippi River near the Gulf of Mexico, consists of a 13-foot-tall stainless-steel cross bearing an image of Christ. The memorial was built with private money on private land by government employees working on their own time. Nevertheless, the ACLU wants it gone.

Those who are most hostile to Christianity also tend to lean leftward. And it is the left which consistently demands better health care, better education, and more benefits for the poor.

Ironically, it is Christianity, above any other religion, that provides the very things liberals demand. The difference is that Christians use their own money and resources, whereas liberals believe in funding their demands largely with other people’s money and resources.

Liberals like Rosie O’Donnell and those who infest the ACLU would like nothing more than to drive Christianity underground. But they probably wouldn’t like the results. If we truly drove Christianity underground, we’d have to take down our schools, universities, hospitals, homeless shelters, and cease our disaster relief efforts — none of which cost the taxpayers one dime. Indeed, humanity would be far worse off without us.

In the spirit of good sportsmanship, congratulations to the Democrats for winning their first national election since 1996, and their first congressional election since 1992. As of this writing, the Democrats have gained 26 House Seats, and are leaning toward three more in undecided races, along with the six Senate seats they needed to gain a majority in the upper chamber.

The Democrat gains appear to be right on target as far as history is concerned. Since 1914, the average gain for the opposition party in a President’s sixth year is 34 House seats and six Senate seats.

There have been several reasons being attributed to the Democrats’ victory, such as anti-war sentiment, anti-Bush sentiment, and anti-GOP sentiment. I have yet to hear “pro-Democrat sentiment” listed as a reason for the Democrats’ win.

One caveat is that since Democrats have won the House and Senate, as per some of their TV advertisements (especially in Missouri, where Democrat Claire McCaskill beat Senator Jim Talent), we can expect sufferers of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and spinal cord injuries to finally be cured. I’ll be holding the Democrats to this one.

According to another liberal theory, since Bush/Cheney manipulated gas prices to help sway the election, we can look for a return $3 per gallon gasoline. However, two days after the election, regular unleaded was still $2.07.

And we can also look for optimistic reporting on the economy with Democrats now in power. Even if there is no change in economic indicators, the mainstream press will suddenly discover that the U.S. economy really is in good shape.

In the grand scheme, however, the GOP cannot blame the news media for their defeat, since the mainstream press no longer monopolizes the flow of information. We cannot blame the voting machines, voter fraud, voter intimidation, complicated ballots, and all the other factors Democrats blame when they lose. At least this conservative is willing to recognize a legitimate Democrat victory.

Although the political climate did not favor the GOP this time around, you can still look to the fact that Republicans abandoned the conservative ideology that swept them to power in 1994 as the primary reason for their defeat in 2006. While conservatism continues to prosper, big-government Republicanism has been defeated.

Even though the Democrats gave the American people nothing to vote for, instead choosing to campaign against President Bush and the GOP rather than on behalf of liberalism, the Democrats did rely on a handful of conservative candidates (Jim Webb in Virginia, and Heath Shuler in North Carolina, for example) as a front to help elect to power a Democrat leadership (Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid) that really is far left.

In short, conservatism won in 2006 when it ran as a Democrat.

As I wrote in this newspaper exactly three years ago “Because the Democratic Party has shifted so far to the left, Republicans have felt obligated to shift leftward, too, in order to co-opt the center of the political spectrum. This is misguided for two reasons. First, Republicans win by being conservatives. In becoming invertebrate centrists, they risk alienating conservatives into either not voting, or voting for third-party candidates. Second, by blurring the lines between themselves and Democrats, left-leaning Republicans present an indistinguishable alternative between themselves and their opponents, giving Democratic voters no reason not to vote for the candidate with the ‘D’ beside his name.”

I’m not going to say that it’s a good thing that the GOP lost, because it means we’re now going to be subjected to a Democrat Congress for the next two years, and that’s NEVER a good thing. However, good things can come out of the GOP’s defeat IF the result is a period of honest introspection by Republicans that produces a leader who can refocus the party on conservatism in the mold of, say, Newt Gingrich. When displayed unabashedly, conservatism wins elections. We know this, because we saw it happen in 1980, 1984, and 1994, and it will happen again.

Until then, conservatives can distinguish themselves from our fellow countrymen across the aisle by not falling into the derangement that envelops liberals when they’re out of power, and that is to not allow politics to affect our God-given joy and optimism. To do otherwise would be to allow the government to determine our outlook, and that would be the antithesis of conservatism.

Dear Fellow Conservatives:

I’m not buying into the conventional “wisdom” that the GOP is about to lose the U.S. House, and perhaps even the Senate. That has been the common thread running through the mainstream media’s campaign reporting, and the Democrats have been celebrating in the end zone for weeks without having yet scored a point.

Yes, I’ve seen all those generic polls which show generic Democrats beating generic Republicans. I also remember the exit polls from 2004 that showed John Kerry winning the presidency.

The Democrats may win. The Republicans may win. We won’t know for sure until tomorrow. That’s because there’s only one poll that counts, and it is being taken today in voting booths across America. It is therefore your responsibility to include yourself in that poll.

I don’t believe you are as depressed as the media pundits — some refer to them as “journalists” — are saying. Judging from press reports on the GOP voter base, we are a bunch of dour-faced stay-at-home voters this time around, sort of like the dumbfounded who’s of Whoville right after the Grinch stole Christmas.

The thing is, I know a lot of conservative voters. I’m sure you do, too. And I have yet to meet one who isn’t excited about voting.

All the media reports of “cut-and-run” conservative voters have one design: to get you and I stay in our pajamas today by believing the 2006 elections are a lost cause and that there’s no use in us even bothering to vote.

The problem with the mainstream media is that they don’t know conservative voters. They’re all liberals, for Pete’s sake.

The conservative ideology is inherently optimistic and hopeful. This means conservatives have no reason not to be optimistic and hopeful. Our message, after all, is a winning message: permanent tax cuts, no amnesty for illegals, no same-sex marriage, no abortion-on-demand, and finish the war in Iraq.

Our political opponents believe the opposite, which is why they cannot go directly to the voters with their message and expect to win. Instead, the Democrats and mainstream media, which has shed any pretense of objectivity this election season by stumping unabashedly for the Democrats, have created a string of diversions.

Just since the primaries, there has been the classified National Intelligence Estimate that was leaked by the New York Times in order to discredit President Bush. The Democrats and press then spent the better part of a month using former congressman Mark Foley’s sex scandal (in which there was no sex) to discredit the entire Republican Party.

Then there’s Michael J. Fox, who is campaigning for various Democrats by telling voters that the Republicans oppose stem cell research. Nothing could be further from the truth. We oppose embryonic stem cell research, not only for ethical reasons, but because there has never been a medical breakthrough using embryonic stem cells.

But we strongly favor adult stem cell research, which has shown a myriad of medical uses, most recently in Great Britain where researchers have grown a human liver using stem cells from an umbilical cord. The insinuation is that if we elect Democrats, then sufferers of such diseases as Parkinson’s will be cured. It’s a cruel hoax the Democrats are playing on sick people in order to get votes.

Despite this, the media fixation hasn’t been on Fox’s disingenuous campaigning, it’s been on Rush Limbaugh for criticizing Fox’s disingenuous campaigning.

For another example, when John Kerry made the remark last week that “education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq,” the mainstream media couldn’t wait to bury it. Had a Republican made that statement, you and I both know the press would have given it wall-to-wall, twenty-four-hour-a-day coverage.

Several Democrats joined with Republicans to either denounce Senator Kerry or demand an apology. The mainstream press, on the other hand, went to bat for Kerry by telling the American people what the senator really meant, that it was really nothing more than a “botched joke.” In other words, the media actually out-Democrat the Democrats. And these are the people who are trying to convince us to stay home today.

Again, I don’t believe for a second that there’s a large pool of conservative voters sitting this one out due to apathy or some diabolical wish to teach the GOP a lesson. However, for the one or two of you reading this who might fit that category, if you want Nancy Pelosi to become the next Speaker of the House, then by all means stay away from the voting booth.

Really, if you want a majority party that would roll back all or part of the Bush tax cuts, believes same-sex marriage should be legal, supports unrestricted abortion rights (even up to the moment of birth), believes we should grant amnesty to the 12,000,000 illegal immigrants who are in this country, and believes we should cut and run from Iraq before the job is done, then go ahead and be a cut-and-run conservative.

If not, then quit being silly, get off your duff, and go vote.

On October 8, the communist nation of North Korea tested what was believed to be its first nuclear weapon. North Korea developing its own nukes is certainly a blow to U.S. (and international) diplomacy, which is how we’ve dealt with that nation since 1994.

Reaction from Democrats was predictable. They reacted the way they always react when something adverse happens. They blamed President Bush.

About a nanosecond after the news broke, failed presidential candidate John F. Kerry quipped “While we’ve been bogged down in Iraq where there were no weapons of mass destruction, a madman has apparently tested the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.”

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid asserted that “on the Bush Administration’s watch, North Korea’s arsenal has grown to as many as a dozen bombs” because Bush is “distracted by Iraq and paralyzed by internal divisions.” Senator Reid then suggested that the president “rally the international community and…directly speak with the North Koreans so they understand we will not continue to stand on the sidelines.”

Three days after the nuke test, Jimmy Carter penned a New York Times editorial, asserting that “…beginning in 2002, the United States branded North Korea as part of an axis of evil, threatened military action, ended the shipments of fuel oil and the construction of nuclear power plants and refused to consider further bilateral talks. In their discussions with me at this time, North Korean spokesmen seemed convinced that the American positions posed a serious danger to their country and to its political regime.”

“Responding in its ill-advised but predictable way, Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, expelled atomic energy agency inspectors, resumed processing fuel rods and began developing nuclear explosive devices.”

In other words, North Korea has nukes not because of failed diplomacy, but because President Bush said they were part of the axis of evil.

Democrats have once again stepped on a rake and had the handle hit them squarely between the eyes, because all it takes is a recent history lesson to refute everything the Democrats have said.

In 1994, the Clinton administration sent Jimmy Carter to North Korea, who struck a deal with then-dictator Kim Il Sung. Under the terms, we gave North Korea more than $5 billion worth of oil, two nuclear reactors, and lots of technology. They promised not to build nukes, and, in return, we allowed the North Koreans to evade weapons inspectors for the next five years.

Japan and South Korea were furious, and understandably so.

The New York Times called it “a resounding triumph.”

In another flashback, the New York Sun recently reminded us that “In 2000, President Clinton went so far as to dispatch Secretary Albright to pay homage and clink glasses with Kim Jong Il, a toast that will live in infamy as one of the lowest points to which an American state secretary has ever sunk. North Korea has reveled in the diplomacy while moving ahead with its nuclear weapons program.”

Finally, on October 17, 2002, the New York Times declared on its front page, “Confronted by new American intelligence, North Korea has admitted that it has been conducting a major clandestine nuclear weapons development program for the past several years.”

A resounding triumph, indeed.

Folks, the way to handle North Korea is the same way John F. Kennedy, the last great president the Democratic Party produced, handled the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962. (Hint: It wasn’t through diplomacy.)

The result — that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev turned his ships around and pulled his nukes out of Cuba — prompted then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk to comment, “We were eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked.”

That’s how you deal with communists, and that’s what Kim Jong Il is — a communist. Communists lie and deceive, and cannot be trusted to keep whatever promises they make. The Soviet Union proved it, and the North Koreans have proven it again. Like militant Islam, communists understand one thing, and that one thing is power and might, which the U.S. has plenty of. The diplomatic pattern the Democrats ran failed miserably, and it won’t work for the Bush administration, either. It’s time to play hardball.

About a month ago, President Clinton gave an interview to Chris Wallace of Fox News that has become famous more for the former president’s meltdown than for the actual content of the interview.

The interview seemed to be going well until Chris Wallace posed the question “Why didn’t you do more to put bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were president?” The former president, red-faced, pointing his finger, and invading the personal space of the interviewer, launched into a tirade against Fox News and right-wing conservatives.

Normally, the antics of a former president who no longer has any official capacity would not be worthy of a column, except that in defending the Clinton administration, former President and Mrs. Clinton criticized the Bush administration and attempted to shift blame onto the current president, which now makes the Clinton interview and the fallout from it a relevant topic.

Clinton’s diatribe not only showed the American people a side of the former president rare, if ever, seen in public, but it also kept conservative fact-checkers busy for hours.

Before continuing, it must be remembered that 9/11 was not the fault of either President Clinton or Bush, Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were solely the fault of Islamic militants, and no one else.

That said, President Clinton took several swipes at the Bush administration which must be refuted.

The first of many quotes from Bill Clinton that are proven lies was the claim, “I’ve never criticized President Bush.” Fact is, President Clinton has criticized President Bush as much as anyone, having broken a long-standing tradition of former presidents not publicly criticizing their successors.

Second, the former president, who has never criticized President Bush, asserted that the Bush administration “did not try” to kill Osama bin Laden in the eight months they controlled the White House prior to 9/11.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice retorted the day after the Clinton interview that “The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn’t do that is just flatly false,” and that “What we did in eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding [eight] years.”

Third, President Clinton asserted that Richard Clarke — the White House anti-terror guru hyped by Clinton as the country’s “best guy” — had been “downgraded” by the Bush administration.

Rice contends, “Richard Clarke was the counterterrorism czar when 9/11 happened. And he left when he did not become deputy director of homeland security, some several months later.”

Fourth, President Clinton claimed, “I worked hard to try and kill [Osama bin Laden]. I tried. I tried and failed,” and that “All I’m asking is if anybody wants to say I didn’t do enough, you read Richard Clarke’s book.”

Byron York of National Review Online countered in an editorial on the same day of the Clinton interview “But Clarke’s book does not, in fact, support Clinton’s claim. Judging by Clarke’s sympathetic account — as well as by the sympathetic accounts of other former Clinton aides Like Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon — it’s not quite accurate to say that Clinton tried to kill bin Laden. Rather, he tried to convince — as opposed to, say, order — U.S. military and intelligence agencies to kill bin Laden. And when, on a number of occasions, those agencies refused to act, Clinton, the commander-in-chief, gave up.”

But perhaps Clinton’s biggest whopper came when he asserted, “I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with finding bin Laden when they didn’t have a single meeting about bin Laden for the [eight] months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say that I didn’t do enough said that I did too much. Same people.”

Fact is, for the most part, Republican leaders praised President Clinton’s 1998 military strike on terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, and urged more aggressive action against terrorism. House Speaker New Gingrich expressed firm support, and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said, “Our response appears to be appropriate and just.”

Many liberals are praising President Clinton’s aggressiveness in his interview with Chris Wallace, claiming he has given Democrats a template for countering the criticism that they are too soft on terrorists. While there are appropriate times to express anger, it does no good if angry words are based on a string of lies, and Bill Clinton’s meltdown was filled with them.

President Clinton is accustomed to being treated like royalty by the mainstream press, whose reporters typically fawn over him and lob softball questions. For once, President Clinton was thrown a fastball — the same type questions the White House press corps throws at the Bush administration at every press conference — and the former president didn’t know what to do with it.

By the way, two days following the Clinton interview. President Bush was asked about his predecessor at a news conference, and responded, “We’ll let history judge all the different finger-pointing and all that business. I don’t have enough time to finger-point. I’ve got to do my job, and that is to protect the American people from future attacks.”

Thank you, Mr. President, for responding like a gentleman.

On September 20, 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez came to the United Nations headquarters in New York City and excoriated the President of the United States. This came one day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used the same platform to lambaste George W. Bush.

First, doesn’t this testify to the greatness of the United States, that a couple of Third World dictators can come over here and say whatever they want about the leader of the free world without fear of retribution while often denying their subjects the same rights?

There’s a reason why foreign leaders can get away with things like that here, whereas the reverse may not be true. We’re civilized. Plus, we’re the greatest nation in the world, so belligerent comments from pipsqueak foreign thugs don’t really bother us all that much.

Without further adieu, here’s an excerpt from Hugo Chavez’s speech to the U.N.:

“I think that the first people who should read this [Noam Chomsky] book are our brothers and sisters in the United States because their threat is in their own house. The devil is right at home. The devil, the devil himself is right in the house. And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here. Right here. (crosses himself) Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today. This table that I am now standing in front of, yesterday ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the President of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as ‘the devil’ came here talking as if he owned the world. Truly as the owner of the world. I think we can call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the President of the United States.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wasn’t quite the firebrand, but did accuse the United States and Britain of using their veto power on the Security Council to further their own interests and he said it had become an “instrument of threat and coercion.”

“If they have differences with a nation or state, they drag it to the Security Council,” and assign themselves the roles of “prosecutor, judge and executioner, is this a just order?”

The Iranian leader had harsh words regarding our war in Iraq, remarking “the occupiers are incapable of establishing security in Iraq” and every day hundreds of people get killed “in cold blood.”

Aside from the fact the Chavez and Ahmadinejad made these comments while standing on U.S. soil, their comments are virtually indistinguishable from those made by Democrats. Granted, a smattering of Democrats did chastise Chavez for his tactics. But their “outrage” paled in comparison to the vitriol they typically show toward the President.

On the other hand, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) did side with the Venezuelan dictator over the American President, asserting “I can understand the frustration, ah, and the anger of certain people around the world because of George Bush’s policies.”

Senator Harkin further noted that “We tend to forget that a few days after 9-1-1 thousands, thousands of Iranians marched in a candlelight procession in Teheran in support of the United States. Every Muslim country was basically on our side. Just think, in five years, President Bush has squandered all that.”

Baloney. Every Muslim nation was NOT on our side. Remember the Palestinians dancing in the streets on 9/11?

The Democratic Party is enslaved by its hatred of George W. Bush, and, by extension, its loathing of the United States of America. To support that claim, we’ll close with a few more quotes from Democrats illustrating that they sound more like our America-hating enemies than our President.

“There are more people around the world who hate America and what they think it stands for than even life itself.” — Congressman Jim Moran, September 11, 2006.

“Is Karl Rove planning a terrorist attack during the Super Bowl, in order to set the stage for building towards war with Iran over the coming year?” — Bob Fertik of Democrats.com, February 4, 2006

Hurricane Katrina showed that “if you’re black in this country, and you’re poor in this country, it’s not an inconvenience — it’s a death sentence,” and that President Bush has waged “a war that we cannot win under any stretch of our imagination.” — Congressman Charlie Rangel, September 22, 2005

“Unfortunately, after Sept. 11, there was an outburst in America of intense suffering and patriotism, and the Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous. For three years, I’d say, the major news media in our country were complicit in this subservience to the Bush administration out of fear that they would be accused of being disloyal.” — Jimmy Carter, August 15, 2006

It’s one thing to criticize a presidential administration during a time of war. It comes with the territory. But it’s quite another to lambaste one’s own nation during such a time, which the left has done regularly. Indeed, the words Democrats use on our President and the United States are often indistinguishable from those spoken by the enemies we are trying to defeat.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is coming to Wilson County. It is suing the Wilson County school system for religious activities at Lakeview Elementary in Mt. Juliet, thereby violating “separation of church and state.”

The activities listed in the lawsuit include Prayer at the Flag Pole, the National Day of Prayer, the “Praying Parents” activities, teacher-led classroom prayers, and a Christian theme with overtly religious songs at a Christmas program.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two Old Hickory parents, who described the activities as “highly offensive” and subjected their kindergartner to “religious proselytizing” at school last year.

Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the Tennessee ACLU (which also stands for “Anti-Christian Liberal Utopia”), asserts “Religious freedom for everyone is jeopardized when public schools promote and endorse religious activities. In addition, the sponsorship of religious activities in Wilson County public schools broadcasts a divisive message to the religiously pluralistic community of Wilson County.”

The lawsuit asks that the school be stopped from engaging in any future, similar religious activities, seeks attorney fees, damages for “emotional distress,” and for the cost of homeschooling, since the religious activities led the parents to pull their son out of school to homeschool him.

We’ve been through this before here at Right Minded. There is no separation of church and state. The First Amendment states, in part, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” A simple rendering of the English language refutes the concept of “separation of church and state.” The Wilson County school system is not Congress, no laws have been made, and no religion has been established. The free exercise of religion, as practiced at Lakeview Elementary, in no way violates the First Amendment.

Remember, the Bill of Rights was never intended as a restriction on individuals. It is a restriction on government that guarantees the civil liberties of individuals. By filing its lawsuit, the ACLU is attempting to enlist the government (the judiciary) to employ the First Amendment to place restrictions on individuals.

The ACLU is demanding that Lakeview Elementary end the aforementioned “religious activities” because of the wishes of ONE child’s parents. Lakeview Elementary has an enrollment of 591 students, yet the school is expected to bow to the religious preference of ONE student’s parents. Talk about tyranny of the minority.

The ACLU has long engaged in the practice of suing various counties and municipalities in its obsession to rid the American landscape of any public vestiges of the God of the Bible. Sometimes communities buckle under the ACLU’s intimidation and remove Christian landmarks and/or activities without a fight. Ten Commandments plaques hanging in courthouses and Christian gatherings at public schools (which Christians help pay for, by the way) are favorite targets of the ACLU. Sometimes, however, defendants stand up to the ACLU, and a string of court losses handed the ACLU just within the past year suggests that judicial opinion may be wising up to the ACLU and its over-zealotry.

For example, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals last year allowed the Ten Commandments to remain in the Mercer County, Kentucky courthouse. Judge Richard Suhrheinrich, writing for the panel, noted “The ACLU makes repeated reference to the ’separation of church and state.’ This extra-constitutional construct has grown tiresome. The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state.”

Fortunately, it looks as though the ACLU is going to have a fight on its hands here in Wilson County. The response from both county and city officials was swift and unified in support of the school system. The Mt. Juliet City Commission issued a press release the next day in order to “go on record supporting the free exercise of religion” and to “urge [the] Wilson County School System to fight [the] lawsuit that seeks to ban religion from public schools.”

Commissioners Ray Justice and Glen Linthicum are sponsoring a resolution in support of Lakeview Elementary and the Wilson County school system — a resolution which has the support of the entire commission.

Linthicum correctly asserts that “students don’t forfeit their rights at the schoolhouse door. A Muslim student, or a Hindu student, or a Jewish student has a constitutional right to pray or to read their scriptures at school on their own time. But so do Christians! It is outrageous that the ACLU would seek to ban Christianity from the school grounds.”

We are sure to be treated to a string of news stories in the coming months as the ACLU’s lawsuit works its way through the legal system, and will likely renew debate on the role of religion in public. Remember this, though. The ACLU attacks no other religion the way it attacks Christianity. That’s because the ACLU isn’t necessarily opposed to all religions. It is just opposed to Christianity.

Americans just celebrated the fifth anniversay of 9/11 — an event which showed just how raw our emotions still are as the events of that day are permanently seared into our memories.

The evening before and the evening of 9/11, ABC aired a two-part, five-hour miniseries “The Path to 9/11.” The film was a somewhat fictionalized telling of the otherwise historical events that led up to 9/11, starting with the World Trade Center bombing in February, 1993.

Three things were evident from “The Path to 9/11,” and are historically irrefutable. One, the Islamic militants who have repeatedly attacked our interests are evil people without a soul. Two, for eight years, the Clinton administration was lackadaisical about fighting the terrorists, and passed up opportunities to take out Osama bin Laden. Three, the newly-minted Bush administration knew the terrorists were planning a massive strike, but lacked the details needed in order to take specific preventative measures.

Bill Clinton was so distraught over “The Path to 9/11″ that days before the airing, his attorney, Bruce Lindsey, penned a letter to Disney chief Bob Iger to protest “The Path to 9/11.”

Lindsey argued, in part, that “The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has a duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely. It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known.”

It’s not often that you hear about a U.S. President, former or sitting, protesting to an American media outlet, which is why the Lindsey letter made news.

It must be said that President Bush also protested to a media outlet, the New York Times, last December, although for a far different reason.

The New York Post ran a story on September 10 detailing the President’s encounter with Times editor Bill Keller last December. Keller described the 2005 meeting with Bush and the president’s emphatic warning that if the paper revealed the secret wiretapping program, and if there was another terror attack on U.S. soil, the Times would be implicated. “The basic message was, ‘You’ll have blood on your hands….’”

President Bush could have protested Dan Rather’s forged National Guard papers. He could also have protested the sham that was Plamegate. But when George W. Bush protested to the media, he did so not on his own behalf, but instead on behalf of the American people.

Two presidents, two appeals to the media, two very different motives. President Clinton is trying to protect a crumbling legacy. President Bush is trying to protect us.

On the evening of 9/11, President Bush made a wartime address to the American people, which a wartime President must do from time-to-time. The speech could not have been better timed. The President was optimistic, and rose above politics by making a pro-America, pro-freedom appeal.

The money quote from the President’s speech was this: “The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century, and the calling of our generation.”

The predictable onslaught of criticism by the Democratic Party began about a nanosecond after President Bush closed the speech with “Thank you, and may God bless you.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi remarked “Rather than try to defend their own failed record, Republicans have resorted to the desperation politics of fear. It is long past time for Republicans to be honest with American people and stop questioning the patriotism of those who recognize that the president’s Iraq policy has not worked, is making us less safe and must be changed.”

Similarly, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid lamented “Sadly, it was a missed opportunity for President Bush, who obviously was more consumed by staying the course in Iraq and playing election year partisan politics than changing direction for this wonderful country.”

What is not as widely known is that Congressman Jim Moran, a Democrat, spoke during a 9/11 rally in Arlington, Virginia. During his remarks, Congressman Moran made the statement “There are more people around the world who hate America and what they think it stands for than even life itself.”

So while Democrats lambasted the President for playing politics by making a pro-America, pro-freedom speech on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, one of their own used the opportunity to trash our great nation.

Indeed, the difference between Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, illustrated by their respective protests to the media, could hardly be wider. One went to bat for his legacy, the other went to bat for the American people.

Likewise, the fifth anniversary of 9/11 brought out similar differences between the President and the Democratic Party. The President was optimistic and shared his love of America and the pillar of freedom we represent to the world. Democrats showed themselves to be selfish and petulant, because they want 9/11 to be about them. But you’d better not question their patriotism.

On July 14, 2003, columnist Robert Novak penned an editorial, “Mission to Niger,” in which he described a curious trip retired diplomat Joseph Wilson took to Niger in order to investigate whether or not that country sold uranium to Iraq.

The subject of Novak’s column was the political firestorm that had erupted after President Bush attributed reports of attempted uranium purchases to British intelligence in his State of the Union address earlier that year.

But what erupted following Novak’s column was an even greater political firestorm. You see, imbedded in the op/ed was the statement “Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.”

To make a long story short, critics of President Bush (i.e., the Democratic Party and mainstream press) spent three years trying to attribute the leakage of Valerie Plame’s identity to the upper echelon of the Bush administration, insisting that a crime had occurred.

A special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, was appointed to investigate the scandal that became known as “Plamegate.” Accusations flew that Karl Rove or even Richard Cheney had authorized the leak of an undercover CIA spy’s identity, exposing Wilson and his family to danger, all in order to retaliate against Joseph Wilson for calling the President a “liar.”

For three years, the Democrats and media hammered the Bush administration, which no doubt brought some discredit to the President in the eyes of the American people. That discredit was completely unwarranted.

The investigation, which became nothing more than a perjury trap, did result in the October, 2005 indictment of Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

On October 31, 2005, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Joseph Wilson remarked “We now know, both from Mr. [Matthew] Cooper’s testimony, the Time reporter testimony, that Mr. Rove gave him Valerie’s name….”

On April 6, 2006, CNN ran the headline “Prosecutors: former VP aide says Bush authorized leak.”

The Democrats and media smelled blood and went into overdrive. The accusations compounded, including the assertion that the President declassified sensitive information in order to discredit Joseph Wilson’s research in Niger.

Then it all began to unravel. On April 13, the report broke that Scooter Libby had actually asserted that neither Bush nor Cheney had, in fact, authorized the leak.

The focus then turned to Karl Rove. On May 12, columnist Jason Leopold announced that an indictment of Karl Rove was imminent, and that he was prepared to resign his position at the White House. No indictments or resignation letters ever materialized. On June 13, Patrick Fitzgerald announced that no charges would be brought against Karl Rove, after all.

News on Plamegate was then relatively quiet until August 29 when it was at last revealed that Novak’s source wasn’t Bush or Cheney or Rove. It was Richard Armitage, Colin Powell’s deputy at the State Department, who columnist Christopher Hitchens described as “an assiduous underminer of the president’s war policy.”

It marked a ridiculous end to a ridiculous scandal.

Days later, the New York Times editorialized that “Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, knew the identity of the leaker from his very first day in the special counsel’s chair, but kept the inquiry open for nearly two more years before indicting I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, on obstruction charges.”

Here are some concluding facts regarding Plamegate and the crime that never was:

The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in July, 2004 that Saddam Hussein had indeed sought uranium from Niger.

Valeria Plame’s status at the CIA was not undercover, but merely “classified.” Divulging her employment at the CIA was therefore never a crime — not by anyone.

The knowledge that Joseph Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA had nothing to do with trying to discredit Joseph Wilson. That knowledge did not come from anyone at the White House — not even from someone who supports our war in Iraq.

The mainstream press which dogged the Bush administration since shortly after Robert Novak’s bombshell 2003 column has paid relatively scant attention to the Armitage revelation now that there is nothing left of Plamegate, which illustrates a complete lack of integrity by the mainstream press.

Just like the forged National Guard documents used by Dan Rather to discredit President Bush right before the 2004 election, the media (with the full approval of the Democratic Party) have used a string of forged accusations to once again try to discredit the President. Indeed, the American media have reminded us that they cannot always be trusted to practice objective journalism — not when there’s a political agenda to move.

On June 23, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down perhaps the worst decision it has rendered in some time. In Kelo v. City of New London, the court, in a 5-4 split, gave its blessing to local governments that use the power of eminent domain to seize the property of landowners and turn that property over to private developers. In doing so, the justices rejected a challenge by homeowners in New London, Connecticut who fought the city’s plan to seize their property for a private project.

The Kelo ruling completely ignores the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states, in part, “…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Certainly, private development can in no way be construed as public use without a complete re-definition of words. That Justices Breyer, Ginsberg, Kennedy, Souter, and Stevens completely disregarded the explicit language of the Constitution illustrates the need for judges who will interpret that document strictly as it is written. Indeed, when judges take it upon themselves to re-write laws, individual rights tend to be undermined.

Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., who is running for the Senate in 2006, was a guest on Teddy Bart’s Roundtable four days later where he made the following remark about the Kelo ruling: “I’ve always believed individual rights are a big thing…but I find value in the court’s decision. As long as people are compensated fairly, I can appreciate the decision. Certain areas in our state are crying for development. If this decision helps — it’s a positive.”

The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation (HR3058) exactly one week after Kelo that would deny federal funds to any city or state project that uses eminent domain to force people to sell their property for private development. The vote was 231-189, with 192 Republicans voting for the bill, and 157 Democrats voting against. Congressman Ford voted against this legislation.

Meanwhile, Ford was hammered by bloggers as word of his Kelo endorsement spread around the Internet. On July 8, the Chattanooga Times Free Press blistered Ford, as well. Ford responded two days later with an op/ed of his own which began “Let me be clear: I support the rights of homeowners and business owners.”

As the website Blogging for Bryant noted on July 11, “Harold Ford Jr.’s reasoning on the Kelo decision…is straight out of the John Kerry ‘I voted for it, before I voted against it’ playbook.”

On July 12, Ford continued his damage control by responding to a series of questions posed to all Senate candidates by blogger and journalist Bill Hobbs. There, Ford asserted “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s decision goes too far because it fails to denote the critical difference between rehabilitation with the consent of property owners on the one hand and development solely for corporate profit on the other.” Remember that only two weeks earlier Ford had remarked “As long as people are compensated fairly, I can appreciate the decision.”

Ford’s damage control tour stopped by the Lebanon Democrat on July 18, in which his anti-Kelo piece appeared on this editorial page. Know that without the fallout following his Roundtable appearance, such an editorial would never have appeared.

Although Ford’s inner beliefs on the power of eminent domain may not have changed, his political position certainly has. I credit blogs for running rings around Ford, and more-or-less forcing him into a flip-flop. Ford is politically astute enough to know that he is a liberal running for public office in a red state. Amidst the vociferous public outcry following the Kelo decision, Ford found himself on the wrong side, and bloggers wouldn’t let him off the hook.

Remember that the Kelo ruling empowers government to take private property and give it to another owner for virtually any reason the government deems necessary. Kelo is an abomination for private property rights in America. Harold Ford, Jr. called it a “positive” ruling, and only backpedaled after Internet bloggers pointed out his praise of the decision.

Notwithstanding, the five justices who rendered Kelo still sit on the Supreme Court, meaning that advocates of absolute property rights in America constitute a minority on the high court. Since the U.S. Senate is vested with confirmation power over the President’s judicial picks, who do you want voting for the next Supreme Court nominee?

On August 22, State Senator Jerry Cooper was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of bank fraud, mail fraud, and conspiracy to commit bank and mail fraud.

Specifically, Senator Cooper is accused of conspiring to falsify an appraisal of property he owned, then using the appraisal and his political connections to help the buyers of the property obtain a $1.77 million loan from BankTennessee, which is co-owned by Lt. Gov. John Wilder.

Cooper’s indictment brings the number of indicted state senators to five within the last 15 months. All five indicted senators are Democrats. Four senators were indicted last year in the Tennessee Waltz sting. (One Republican House member, Chris Newton, was also indicted as a result of Tennessee Waltz.)

On August 28, one of those indicted senators, Kathryn Bowers, resigned her seat, citing health reasons. Senator Bowers was videotaped accepting bribes during last year’s sting.

Despite all this, no one in the leadership of the Democratic Party has ever called for the resignation of any of their indicted senators. The GOP, on the other hand, did call for Newton’s resignation — and he did resign — which illustrates the ethical divide that exists between Democrats and Republicans.

Of the remaining three indicted senators, only Ward Crutchfield (D-Chattanooga) is still in office. Senators Roscoe Dixon and John Ford resigned earlier. Last year, Ophelia Ford (D-Memphis), sister of John Ford, won a special election to fill her brother’s vacated seat. Her margin of victory over Republican Terry Roland was 13 votes.

The Senate voided Ford’s election this January after it was discovered she was aided by votes cast by felons and dead people. (Roland’s attorneys were able to identify 146 questionable ballots.)

But Ford’s attorneys then ran to a federal judge screaming “racism,” and were able to win an injunction. But in April, after the injunction was lifted, the full Senate voided Ford’s election on a 26-6 vote. Indeed, the evidence of voter fraud was so overwhelming that most of the Democrats even sided with the GOP for once.

Thus, even though Republicans hold an 18-14 majority in the Senate (with one vacant seat), Democrats still control the Speaker’s chair and eight of the fourteen committee chairmanships. At the same time, of the sixteen senators who made up the Democratic Caucus following the most recent general election (2004), nearly a third (5) are currently under indictment.

Indeed, the long-standing Democrat control of the Tennessee Senate has fostered a culture of corruption that is rarely seen elsewhere in society. Really, what other organization do you know of where nearly a third of the members are under indictment?

That the Governor (a Democrat), the Speaker of the Senate (a Democrat), and the Speaker of the House (a Democrat) have not called on even one of their indicted senators to resign reveals the nonchalance Democrats have toward corruption among their own party members.

It is not too much to ask that the individuals who are charged with making the laws the rest of us have to live by follow the law themselves. But a vote for a Democrat this November is a vote for Democrat leaders who turn their backs on the lawlessness of their own lawmakers.

It was recently announced by the Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration that the state finished the 2005-2006 fiscal year with a revenue surplus of $411.2 million, which is, oh, a hundred million or so more than what had been projected in May.

This means Tennesseans overpaid their taxes by a hefty margin. The state budget was fully funded, and the coffers still overflowed by $411.2 million. That’s nearly $70 for every man, woman, and child in Tennessee, or $280 for a family or four. Imagine getting a refund check in the mail around this time of year for $280.

Well, here’s what Tennessee Democrats have to say to the taxpayers about that: dream on, suckers.

As is always the case, the Tennessee General Assembly and Governor Bredesen have spent that money. They spent every dime that was budgeted, and they have spent the overpayment, too. There will be no rebates, and with Democrats still in power over the Legislature and executive branch, there will be no effort to reduce any taxes, which could easily be done without affecting one, single government program.

For example, the state collects about $450 million each year from the 6% tax on groceries. Thus, last fiscal year’s $411.2 million surplus could have been used to virtually eliminate the food tax.

This isn’t the first time the state has run a revenue surplus. It is the third year in a row. Two years ago, the state ran a surplus of $380 million. We taxpayers didn’t get one dime of it back. Last year, the state ran a surplus of $260.8 million. We taxpayers didn’t get one dime of that back, either. Thus, combining the last three years, Tennessee taxpayers have overpaid their taxes by $1.052 billion. That’s “billion” with a “b.” And the government has kept it all.

Now, Senator Mae Beavers has been mischaracterized by her political opponents as a weak senator, a “do-nothing.” Well, try this on. Far from being a do-nothing, it was Senator Beavers who wrote a bill early this year (SB2785) that would phase out the state’s 6% food tax over a period of 12 years. This isn’t someone else’s bill that she just attached her name to. Senator Beavers started out as a lone wolf with a longshot piece of legislation.

Senator Beavers is the strongest, most outspoken conservative in the Tennessee Senate. She is a rare, authentic taxpayer advocate. And so, by the end of the legislative session, SB2785 had drawn 13 co-sponsors — all Republicans — to go along with Senator Beavers. Remember, it only takes 17 votes to pass a bill in the Senate.

In the House, though, Democrats still hold a 53-46 majority, and the House companion bill, HB2588, has a zero percent chance of passage as long as Democrats run that show.

Republican Jim Bryson, who is challenging Governor Bredesen this November, promised early on that a “major initiative” of his administration would be “to reduce the sales tax on food with an eye toward permanent elimination.”

Likewise, John Worley, who is challenging Stratton Bone for his seat in the General Assembly, remarks “When we have a surplus of tax dollars several years running it proves we are overtaxed in Tennessee. Giving those tax dollars back to the citizens by reducing the tax on food is how I would address the issue.”

“Reducing the food tax, gradually, is a tax break that will benefit everyone. Our economy will continue to grow incrementally with the reduction of taxes and thus our tax dollars generated would continue to increase even with a tax reduction on food. Not only that, we would begin to see more people from surrounding states coming to Tennessee to shop. This will boost the economy by bringing in more money to businesses in our state. More money for our businesses means more jobs for Tennesseans.”

Democrats have repeatedly scoffed at the idea of cutting the food tax. On the one hand, Tennessee liberals complain that the food tax is regressive and hurts the poor disproportionately, but when given the opportunity to lower the food tax while not affecting one, single government program, Democrats refuse to consider it.

Remember that as long as Democrats are at the helm of state government, our taxes will never go down. And if we overpay our taxes, which we have done for three years in a row totaling more than a billion dollars, we will never get a dime of that money back, either. Democrats may care about the poor, but they care about government even more.

Illegal immigration is a nationwide scourge, and critics and supporters have all turned toward the federal government looking for answers. There isn’t much that can be done at the state level regarding deportation or amnesty, given that federal laws on illegal immigration have largely trumped states’ rights. But there are measures that could be taken here in Tennessee to help demagnetize the state from illegal immigration. Unfortunately, Democrats in the Tennessee Legislature have dropped that ball more times than a clumsy wide receiver.

Two years ago, the Tennessee General Assembly passed legislation to issue driver’s certificates to illegal immigrants. Republicans came under fire for largely supporting this legislation, but Susan Lynn, who very ably represents the 57th District, recently explained to me why the GOP did what it did.

She writes, “The legislation took driver’s licenses away from illegal aliens and created a driving certificate. The alternative, voting no, would have allowed illegal aliens to keep their driver’s license. I think I can speak for all of my Republican colleagues accurately when I state that none of us wanted a driving certificate. However, this was our one and only chance in three years to take driver’s licenses away from illegal aliens. We’d tried to do it before but our bills had all been killed.”

That’s not the only time Republicans in the Legislature have tried to help make Tennessee less of a magnet for illegal immigrants. Here’s a blow-by-blow account of GOP-sponsored legislation that has been shot down in the Democrat-led House just within the last two years.

HB3229 by Dolores Gresham (R-Somerville) would have allowed Tennessee highway patrol officers to be trained to enforce federal immigration and customs laws. The bill passed in the Senate but was killed in a House committee on 4/11/06.

HB196 by Curry Todd (R-Memphis) would have required proof of citizenship to vote and to receive certain state funded services. It was killed in a House subcommittee on 3/30/2005.

Amendment No. 6 by Todd to HB1091 by Kim McMillan would have required proof of citizenship to vote. It was deep-sixed on the House floor on 4/13/05.

Amendment No. 17 by Todd to HB1114 by Kim McMillan would have required proof of citizenship to vote and receive certain state-funded services. It, too, was deep-sixed on the House floor on 5/26/06.

HB2903 by Donna Rowland (R-Murfreesboro) would abolish the practice of giving certificates of driving to individuals with no proof of citizenship or legal residency and instead issue a one-year renewable driver’s license to legal aliens. The bill passed the Senate, but was rolled to 2007 in a House committee.

A series of amendments by Rowland to a bill filed by Phillip Pinion were all tabled on the House floor.

Amendment 4 would have prohibited illegal immigrants receiving a driving certificate from also being offered a voter’s registration application.

Amendment 5 would have required driving certificates to have issuance and expiration dates printed on them along with the type of documentation the applicant provided to prove residency or the word “none” if no proof of residency was given.

Amendment 6 would have required driving certificates to be distributed by the Department of Safety from a different location than where they issue drivers’ licenses.

Amendment 7 would have required applicants for drivers’ certificates to be fingerprinted.

Amendment 8 would have rewritten the bill and abolished the driving certificate program, requiring confirmation of residency for a license.

Again, all five of Rowland’s amendments were tabled on the House floor, which was a nice way of killing the amendments.

Democrats in the Tennessee House of Representatives have coddled illegal immigrants by refusing to pass legislation that would help demagnetize the state. Republicans, currently on the short end of a 53-46 balance of power in the lower chamber, have fought the Democrats for years by trying to legislate common sense regarding illegal immigrants, but have been consistently thumped.

Fortunately, the Tennessee GOP has made illegal immigration a centerpiece of their election campaign, while Democrats either try to provide cover for their coddling, or run from the issue altogether. While Republican incumbents like Susan Lynn have exposed what’s been going on in the Democrat-led House, candidates like John Worley, who is challenging Stratton Bone in the 46th District, are making the well-documented case that illegal immigrants in the state will continue to be coddled as long as Democrats are in power.

Democrats frequently point to the federal budget surplus the government enjoyed during the latter Clinton years as the former president’s crowning achievement, contrasting those years with the deep deficits that have run up during the Bush presidency.

It is true that deficits have steepened during the Bush presidency, due primarily to the economic hit following 9/11, the cost of the War on Terrorism, but primarily the burgeoning weight of entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

What is not true is that the government ran surpluses during the Clinton years. A “USA Today” article that ran August 2 (”What’s the real federal deficit?”) exposed a neat accounting trick used by Congress that ignores entitlement obligations when computing the federal deficit. (Republicans are just as duplicitous as Democrats with their accounting tricks, which would be illegal for private corporations to duplicate.)

Thus, even though the Clinton administration reported a surplus of $559 billion in its final four budget years, audited numbers prepared by the Treasury Department show a deficit of $484 billion. This means Bill Clinton’s crowning achievement of turning a large deficit into a surplus never really occurred.

This leads to the real question of this column: just what did Bill Clinton accomplish in eight years as president that has left a lasting, positive impact on the country and the world?

Well, he did get Yasser Arafat and Itzak Rabin to shake hands back in 1993, forming a peace deal that lasted about five minutes (just as he got Fleetwood Mac back together when he was running for president the year before).

He did sign (reluctantly) welfare reform legislation that dramatically cut the welfare rolls. He also got the Family Medical and Leave Act through Congress in 1993, the same year he handed our military its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

President Clinton did preside over prosperous times during the 1990’s, despite the tax increase he pushed through Congress his first year in office. He inherited a strong economy in January, 1993, and left with a flat economy in January, 2001. (The GDP actually shrank during the third quarter of 2000 and the first quarter of 2001.)

The truth is, President Clinton was a populist president who was more concerned with his approval rating than in being a strong leader who sometimes has to make difficult and unpopular choices. Even after his impeachment in 1998, Bill Clinton’s approval rating hovered in the 60’s. He was a popular president, but with surprisingly little to show for it.

Contrast the 42nd president with the 43rd, George W. Bush. To the glee of the left, President Bush’s approval ratings have been stuck in 30’s and 40’s as of late, and his critics have used this fact to question his effectiveness. However, George W. Bush has accomplished more with ratings in the 30’s and 40’s than Bill Clinton did with ratings in the 60’s.

Just within the past year, President Bush has won confirmation for two conservative judges to the Supreme Court (John Roberts and Samuel Alito). President Bush has fought for and won several rounds of tax cuts, thereby giving a spark to the flat economy he inherited.

Then there is the War on Terrorism. Unlike President Clinton, who did nothing after terrorists bombed the World Trade Center (February, 1993), a U.S. military headquarters in Saudi Arabia (November, 1995), the Khobar Towers (June, 1996), our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (August, 1998), and the U.S.S. Cole (October, 2000), President Bush did do something after we were hit on 9/11.

In the process, he has done things that others only talked about. Under President Bush, we have brought democracy to Afghanistan, decimated al Qaeda, deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and set the table for democracy in Iraq. As a result, there has not been an attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. And he continues to rack up political accomplishments even with anemic approval numbers.

There are a lot of positive things that can be said about Bill Clinton. He’s very well-spoken, extremely bright, and highly charismatic. But Bill Clinton is not a leader. He’s a people-pleaser. Goerge W. Bush, on the other hand, may not be as eloquent as his predecessor, but he’s also not a populist. He is a remarkable leader during a remarkable time. It’s a legacy that will be favorably reflected once the final history of George W. Bush’s presidency is written.

Bob Rochelle is running against Mae Beavers for his old senate seat here in District 17. Of course Bob Rochelle’s name became synonymous with “state income tax” during his last term of office (1999-2003), but the former state senator is now running a smoke-and-mirrors campaign and trying to distance himself from his prior years of passionate income tax advocacy.

Rochelle has attended several political rallies across Wilson County and asks that we stop living in the past. I have to admit that if I were Bob Rochelle, I’d be asking voters to forget about the past, too. But it doesn’t quite work that way. Anytime a prospective employee applies for a job, he turns in a resume describing his experience. Unfortunately for Bob Rochelle, his resume reads “STATE INCOME TAX,” so he instead wants to turn in a blank resume. Again, I can’t say I blame him.

Now, according to a “Nashville City Paper” article from June 1, Rochelle claims “Four years ago in the middle of a crisis, I felt we had to act. But times have changed. I will vote against an income tax that is not approved by a vote of the people. Put very simply: no vote, no tax.”

That said, let’s take a look at a chronology of Bob Rochelle:

1998 – Bob Rochelle runs for the State Senate in opposition to a state income tax.

August, 1999 – Bob Rochelle charters a state plane to Connecticut — the last state to pass an income tax — to learn how they did it. According to Phil Valentine’s book “Tax Revolt” (p. 21), “Rochelle studied the Connecticut plan and learned exactly how Governor Weicker and his cronies had passed a state income tax in the middle of the night. He came back fully armed with all the trick plays in their playbook and began following them to the letter. Rochelle aimed to duplicate Connecticut’s success in Tennessee.”

July 9, 2000 – Radio talk show host Phil Valentine gets word that Bob Rochelle is going to run the income tax the next day, a Saturday. After an impromptu income tax revolt at Legislative Plaza creates several delays inside legislative chambers, the vote is put off until the following Monday, but, unable to muster enough votes, the income tax legislation is set aside.

July 12, 2001 – The coup de grace of income tax revolts gathers in the late afternoon after Phil Valentine gets word from then-Senator Marsha Blackburn that Bob Rochelle is setting up to run the income tax that evening. The plan falls apart after protestors storm the State Capitol and gather on the second floor outside legislative chambers. The General Assembly is forced to pass a “bare bones” budget with no new revenue.

Valentine writes (p. 167) that Senator David Fowler was “in negotiations with Senator Bob Rochelle to allow the income tax to pass with a mandatory referendum on the issue before it went into effect. I believe his heart was in the right place, but you can’t outfox the fox. There’s no way Rochelle was going to come that close and risk his precious tax being nullified by the voters. I believed Fowler was being had, and I respectfully told him so.”

May 21, 2002 – It is reported that Jimmy Naifeh has fifty-three votes for the income tax in the House, and Bob Rochelle has the votes in the Senate.

May 22, 2002 – The House takes a vote on the income tax. It fails, receiving only forty-five votes. Representative Stratton Bone is one of the forty-five who votes FOR the income tax. A vote is never taken in the Senate.

July 5, 2002 – Bob Rochelle suspends his Senate campaign.

January, 2003 – Turncoat Governor Don Sundquist appoints Bob Rochelle to the Tennessee Tax Structure Study Commission (TTSSC) which is given the task of studying the state’s revenue structure and making non-binding recommendations. It is correctly pointed out by income tax opponents that the commission is stacked with income tax supporters who will ultimately recommend a state income tax. The fix is in from the beginning.

August 19, 2004 – Radio talk show host Steve Gill makes a presentation against the income tax to the TTSSC. It is reported that “Gill and Rochelle tried to shout over each other at times as the discussion grew heated.”

December 29, 2004 – The TTSSC formally recommends a state income tax. According to commission member Julius Johnson, who helped issue the minority report, “It wasn’t a very democratic process. … I hate to be critical of tremendous individuals; however, the final proposal was somewhat ruthlessly pushed upon us without allowing for amendments or alternatives or so forth.”

Bob Rochelle is, of course, part of the majority that recommends a state income tax.

2006 – Bob Rochelle runs for the State Senate in opposition to a state income tax.