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June, 2003 |
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June 30, 2003 - What the Republican Party hopes will be the “cutting edge” issue for the 2004 elections is on the table. It isn’t Weapons of Mass Destruction or the incessant drip of blood in the desert. It isn’t economic dislocation or stubborn unemployment statistics. Ironically it was placed on the table by a 5-4 majority opinion written by supposedly reliably conservative Justice Sandra Day O’Connor striking down Texas’ sodomy statute while almost simultaneously the Canadian Supreme Court acting to recognize marriage between persons of the same sex...click here for entire article June 28, 2003 - “Abbas said that at Aqaba,
Bush promised to speak ”According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush June 27, 2003 - Anne Coulter says that liberals hate America. I’m told that the views I express and the values I hold make me a liberal so it seems fair to say that she – and the collection of Coulter clones who spout her slogans from memory – say that I hate America. It is hard to admit that a fervent patriot hates any version of America but the more I have thought about the proposition the more I have concluded that the Vixen of Vitriol may be correct. Let me explain. First let me tell you about the America I love. She is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A citizen of the Country I love has the right to speak his mind, publish his views, criticize his government and peacefully protest the missteps of his government. He has the right to worship or not worship as his conscience may dictate and no one can require him to support religious practices or institutions to which he does not adhere. The America I hate says advocacy of those propositions is treason...click here for entire article June 26, 2003 - We are approaching the celebration of our Independence from the British Crown and the birth of a new democratic Republic. When with the assistance of the French king we achieved the dissolution we had sought through long years of blood and sacrifice we set about crafting a new order of government building upon the individual rights and liberties of British subjects, first by collegial consensus and finally with the first national exercise to create a contractual government embodied in the provisions of the Constitution of the United States. We drew upon our shared experience and tried to insure that the people of the new nation would be protected against the oppressions their fathers, their grandfathers and their great-grandfathers had suffered at the hands of a monarchy...click here for entire article June 25, 2003 - The news filtering out of Iraq is disturbing. A week ago a super secret US Special Forces unit – Task Force 20 – struck a convoy of vehicles headed across the Syrian border and then, in a coordinated air-ground operation blasted the village from which it came, Muger Addib. The first word of the attack came with the news that Don Rumsfeld’s Pentagon was analyzing DNA samples to determine if Saddam Hussein and one of his sons were taken out in the attack on the convoy. Since then a convoy of about 20 US Vehicles, including earth moving equipment have arrived at the village and a US reporter seeking information has been told that if he tried to take photos his camera would be broken...click here for entire article . June 21, 2003 - I’m chagrinned to find that I am labeled as a “left winger”. I always thought of myself as conservative and the values that I hold dear as conservative values. It may seem odd that as a life-long member of the Democratic Party my boyhood hero was Abraham Lincoln, but perhaps that is explained by the fact that I grew up in Illinois. In the days before I attended public school my grandfather, himself a life-long Democrat had taken charge of my education. Drilling me first in the Alphabet using the letters cast into the iron of my grandmother’s wood burning cook stove he chose my primers from the shelves of his eclectic library. It was a liberal education I began, in the classic sense of the word...click here for entire article June 19, 2003 - “ He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.” United States Constitution, Article II, section 2...click here for entire article June 17, 2003 - ``If we don't move forward, if we don't take this opportunity, if we don't punch through this current wave of violence, then where are we?' We're nowhere -- with two peoples killing one another day after day after day.''...click here for entire article June 12, 2003 - He broke into broadcast journalism on the Whitehouse beat for NBC Radio in 1944 coming to Washington as a print reporter for United Press. By 1945 he was on the air with America United, a local DC newscast for the network’s fledgling television station. He became a commentator on the Camel News Caravan – a 15 minute network program hosted by John Cameron Swayze – in 1955 and in 1957 Chet Huntley joined the program. Soon they co-hosted the program. Their coverage of the 1960 Democratic Convention established them as a team and led to their co-anchoring the nightly NBC Huntley-Brinkley Report with Huntley in New York and Brinkley in DC....click here for entire article June 11, 2003 - A bus is bombed in Jerusalem and the third rocket attack in two days strikes Gaza. Blood pays the toll in blood on the Bush roadmap to peace. It is an endless trade, a bargain of death for death as the toll mounts day by day. Has it been a full week since George led his parade across the symbolic bridge in the latest Rove production substituting stagecraft for statecraft? From Washington a wave of words – “strongly deplore” – “denounce in the strongest terms” – is the only answer. Yassar Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Usama Bin Laden have all been shuffled to the margins and yet from the margins the strikes continue with lethal blows in Israel, and Arabia; in Afghanistan and Iraq. These are the consequences, still unlearned, of preemptive war and coercive occupation. An unending file of ripped and torn bodies litters the highway along with the shreds of the roadmap....click here for entire article June 9, 2003 It was at this hid oasis as the winds began to cool, June 8, 2003 Armed with death the faithful went, In the desert, in the town, The promise made, Death would be there, June 7, 2003 - During the Senate Watergate Hearings Senator Howard Baker crystallized the issue for the nation with his question to Whitehouse Counsel to the President John Dean. “What did the President know and when did he know it?”, the Republican Senator asked and the answer brought the President down. As the President’s justification for sending the nation’s youngsters into the Second Iraqi War is increasingly subject to doubt the central question is broader and extends to the Bush Administration’s entire foreign policy – military – intelligence establishment. What did they know and what did they do with it ....click here for entire article June 6, 2003 - There were two articles above the fold on today’s local news page here in Central Illinois. One featured the city council debate on amendments to its liquor control ordinance to make it possible to issue licenses to gas stations to sell beer and hard liquor and to a new Latin Dance Club aimed at young people. The other story described how social workers were dispatched to the junior high to help students deal with grief over their classmate who died in a car driven by a drunk teen. The prevailing side of the council debate argued that permitting gas stations to sell alcohol was necessary to facilitate business and increase sales taxes. After assuring the council that he would provide security guards to prevent underage patrons from buying drinks the proprietor of the new dance club got his license as well. The other story told how the battery of social workers helped the kids understand death and its ceremonies in a “death denying” society. Presumably there was some mention of the role of alcohol in the death while the kids were being helped, but the article did not mention it....click here for entire articleJune 4, 2003 - Something strange is happening
in Alabama. The new Republican Governor, Bob Riley, campaigned by reminding
the voters that in his three Congressional terms he never once voted for
a tax increase. During his time in the U.S. House he was named its most conservative
member. Now he is Governor of Alabama and he has come up face to face with
the facts. As Governor he has to cope with the fact that his state is faced
with a financial crisis brought on by the national economic downturn coupled
with the Bush Administrations tax-cut strategy. That is not unusual; it is
a problem that he shares with state Governors and legislators across the
nation. What is unusual is the solution that he proposes to deal with Alabama’s
financial crisis. He is proposing to increase Alabama’s taxes and move
the state to a more progressive tax structure. He proposes nothing less than
a New Deal for Alabama, bringing his state’s tax system into the 20th
Century. His State Republican Chairman admits to being confused. On the one
hand he gets talking points from the Bush Administration to explain why we
have to cut taxes. On the other hand he gets talking points from the Riley
Administration explaining why Alabama has to increase taxes....click
here for entire article June 1, 2003 - More than one third of American households will not see a benefit from the two phase Republican tax-cuts. Phase three is yet to be unveiled but it is coming. Newsweek reports in its June 2nd edition that the next step in the Bush tax reduction program will feature restricting income taxation to money earned in the territorial United States, exempting overseas income coupled with a drive to either reduce or eliminate taxation of corporate profits. The Bush economic program has been sold to Congress and the public as a tax-cut and an economic stimulus program. In reality it will accomplish neither objective. It will not reduce the burden of taxation upon American families. The burden of collecting taxes to provide for essential public services and facilities is being shifted from the Federal government to State and local governments. If the economy is to prosper the infrastructure upon which the economic engine moves must be maintained. If the contribution of Federal funds to maintain the transportation system, to rebuilding highways and airports, is reduced in the wake of reduced Federal taxation then the contribution of State and local taxes must increase if we are to hold our own. Taxes won’t be cut but rather State and local taxing bodies will be forced to increase their levies to pick up the slack left by the abdication of Federal responsibility.....click here for entire article |
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