Mood:
suaveNow Playing: MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
Topic: Lib Loser Stories
Of course Clintax didn't take his advice as the poor and uneducated is 90% of the liberal base...
Roe attorney: Use abortion to 'eliminate poor'
In unearthed letter urged President-elect Clinton to 'reform' country
A letter to Bill Clinton written by the co-counsel who successfully argued the Roe v. Wade decision urged the then-president-elect to "eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country" by liberalizing abortion laws.
Ron Weddington, who with his wife Sarah Weddington represented "Jane Roe," sent the four-page letter to President Clinton's transition team before Clinton took office in January 1993.
The missive turned up in an exhibit put together by the watchdog legal group Judicial Watch, which has been researching the Clinton administration's policy on the abortion drug RU-486, notes James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web.
Weddington told the president-elect: "I don't think you are going to go very far in reforming the country until we have a better educated, healthier, wealthier population."
He said the new leader can "start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country."
Weddington qualified his statement, saying, "No, I'm not advocating some sort of mass extinction of these unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can't afford to have babies.
"There, I've said it. It's what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited and ... well ... so Republican."
Weddington explained he was "not proposing that you send federal agents armed with Depo-Provera dart guns to the ghetto. You should use persuasion rather than coercion."
He points to President Clinton and his soon-to-be first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton as the "perfect example."
"Could either of you have gone to law school and achieved anything close to what you have if you had three or four or more children before you were 20?" he asked. "No! You waited until you were established and in your 30's to have one child. That is what sensible people do."
Later, Weddington took a shot at the "religious right."
"Having convinced the poor that they can't get out of poverty when they have all those extra mouths to feed, you will have to provide the means to prevent the extra mouths, because abstinence doesn't work. The religious right has had 12 years to preach its message. It's time to officially recognize that people are going to have sex and what we need to do as a nation is prevent as much disease and as many poor babies as possible."
Weddington then argued that with 30 million abortions up to that point since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, America is a much better place.
"Think of all the poverty, crime and misery ... and then add 30 million unwanted babies to the scenario," he said. "We lost a lot of ground during the Reagan-Bush religious orgy. We don't have a lot of time left."
The lawyer also delved into biblical theology.
"The biblical exhortation to 'be fruitful and multiply' was directed toward a small tribe, surrounded by enemies," he argued. "We are long past that. Our survival depends upon our developing a population where everyone contributes. We don't need more cannon fodder. We don't need more parishioners. We don't need more cheap labor. We don't need more poor babies."
In his postscript, Weddington said: "I was co-counsel in Roe v. Wade, [and] have sired zero children and one fetus, the abortion of which was recently recounted by my ex-wife in her book, "A Question of Choice" (Grosset/Putnam, 1992) I had a vasectomy in 1969 and have never had one moment of regret."
The Weddingtons divorced in 1974.
Their client in the 1973 case, Norma McCorvey, recently attempted to challenge the ruling that struck down
all state laws restricting abortion, arguing changes in law and new scientific research make the prior decision "no longer just."
Commenting on a 2004 court ruling dismissing the challenge, Sarah Weddington said those who filed it "got publicity but the publicity actually has been very helpful for those of us who believe the government should not be involved."
After announcement of McCorvey's challenge, Weddington received about two dozen offers to help defend the Roe decision.
World Net Daily ** Roe attorney: Use abortion to 'eliminate poor'
The entire Judicial Watch File, "The Clinton RU-486 Files" is worth a read. It's subtitled, "The Clinton Administration's Radical Drive to Force an Abortion Drug on America." You know up front there's an agenda, but the documents they've pulled out of the Clinton Library are pretty damning. The Weddington letter is just the most straightforward - it's pretty obvious how RU-486 was championed and shepherded through the FDA.
Posted by yaahoo_2006iest
at 4:26 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, 15 May 2006 4:48 AM EDT
silly
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- A Democratic candidate for Alabama attorney general denies the Holocaust occurred and said Friday he will speak this weekend in New Jersey to a "pro-white" organization that is widely viewed as being racist.
Larry Darby concedes his views are radical, but he said they should help him win wide support among Alabama voters as he tries to "reawaken white racial awareness" with his campaign against Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson.
The state Democratic chairman, Joe Turnham, said the party became aware of some of Darby's views only days ago and was considering what to do about his candidacy.
"Any type of hatred toward groups of people, especially for political gain, is completely unacceptable in the Alabama Democratic Party," said Turnham.
Speaking in an interview with The Associated Press, Darby said he believes no more than 140,000 Jewish people died in Europe during World War II, and most of them succumbed to typhus.
Historians say about 6 million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis, but Darby said the figure is a false claim of the "Holocaust industry."
"I am what the propagandists call a Holocaust denier, but I do not deny mass deaths that included some Jews," Darby said. "There was no systematic extermination of Jews. There's no evidence of that at all."
Darby said he will speak Saturday near Newark, N.J., at a meeting of National Vanguard, which bills itself as an advocate for the white race. Some of his campaign materials are posted on the group's Internet site.
"It's time to stop pushing down the white man. We've been discriminated against too long," Darby said in the interview.
New Jersey's Democratic State Committee chief on Friday decried Darby's planned visit, and said in a statement that denying the Holocaust was "historical blasphemy."
"I am astonished as anyone has ever been that anyone is running for public office in Alabama on that platform," said Tyson. "I do not take him as a serious candidate."
Turnham said the party began an investigation last week after hearing about some of Darby's comments in a television interview. While the party supports the free-speech rights of any candidate, Turnham said some of Darby's views appear to be in "a realm of thought that is unacceptable."
"We have Holocaust survivors and families of Holocaust survivors here in Alabama, and many of them are members of the Democratic Party," said Turnham.
The winner of the Democratic primary on June 6 will face either Republican Attorney General Troy King or Mark Montiel, who is opposing King in the GOP primary.
surprised
Several years ago, Brian Woods sued the school board in Akron, Ohio, on behalf of his autistic son Daniel. Mr. Woods wanted to make sure that Daniel received an appropriate education, and he won several concessions and about $160,000.
"I soundly defeated a team of lawyers," Mr. Woods, an adjunct professor at Cuyahoga Community College, said yesterday.
When the Cleveland Bar Association got wind of Mr. Woods's victory recently, it also went to court - to sue Mr. Woods.
The bar association said he had engaged in the unauthorized practice of law. It sought a $10,000 fine, lawyers' fees and a promise that he would not continue to assist other parents seeking to represent their own children in court.
The Ohio Supreme Court was not impressed. On April 20, it ordered the bar association to produce evidence by next week in support of its complaint, saying the available facts suggest that Mr. Woods "has not engaged in the unauthorized practice of law."
With that deadline looming and after reports on the controversy in The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, the bar association backed down. Sort of.
In a statement on Wednesday, its president, P. Kelly Tompkins, said the complaint against Mr. Woods "had a legitimate, technical basis." Mr. Woods did, after all, represent someone else in court - his son - without being a lawyer.
The filing of the complaint was nonetheless a mistake, Mr. Tompkins said, withdrawing it and apologizing to the Woods family. The association should not have considered filing the complaint, he said, until after the 
Sandee and Jacob Winkelman at home in Parma, Ohio. She said lawyers wanted thousands of dollars to help Jacob, who is autistic. "We had no money, and we had nowhere to send Jacob to school," she said. >>>>>
Federal courts around the country are divided over the circumstances in which parents who are not lawyers may represent their children in federal court under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act.
Ms. Winkelman said the ruling of the appeals court effectively barred the courthouse doors to her son. Her family, she said, simply could not afford a lawyer.
"One quoted $60,000," Ms. Winkelman said. "She wanted $2,600, biweekly. I was in tears. I decided to go on my own. We had no money, and we had nowhere to send Jacob to school. When you're in a do-or-die situation, you do what you have to do."
Christina H. Peer, a lawyer for the Parma district, said there were good reasons for requiring that only lawyers might handle such cases.
"People who are not attorneys cannot represent the interests of another in a court of law," Ms. Peer said.
Where disabled minors are involved, she added, courts should be even more reluctant to let others, even parents, speak on the minors' behalf.
"Do they have the skills," Ms. Peer asked, "to adequately represent the rights of their children?"
A lawyer for Susan Woods, Daniel's mother, said he was furious that the bar association had pursued charges of unauthorized practice of law against her and her husband.
"I'm very angry about it," the lawyer, Allan M. Michelson, said. "I'm upset that my fellow attorneys should spend their time like this."
In an interview, Mr. Tompkins of the bar association sounded conciliatory.
"Our board had not approved this filing," he said. "We had a breakdown internally on this."
But he refused to rule out the possibility of further action after the Supreme Court acted in the Winkelman case.
"We'll stand down until it's resolved," Mr. Tompkins said.
Mr. Woods said he suspected that the peace might be temporary.
"The issue is," he said, "to shut me up so that I can't beat them again."
spacey
Way to represent the interests of your constituants, ding-bat...
Bones
Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney, the Georgia Democrat who hit a Capitol Police officer who did not recognize her and asked her to stop, has raised some eyebrows in defense circles. She added autopsy pictures to the 2007 budget report from the House Armed Services Committee.
In the report's section for dissenting views, Mrs. McKinney attached 24 grisly photographs of the remains of Jaime Gomez, the chief of staff to a Colombian senator who is running in the May 28 presidential elections. His supporters say he was killed, but the government says his death may have been an accident.
"War never truly creates peace, but always leads to more war," Mrs. McKinney writes.
"The threat of unconsolidated and ill-equipped terrorist groups has been used to expand the funding of huge corporate contracts for weapons and war while denying the human suffering and needs that face us."
Ron Bonjean, a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, told The Washington Times congressional bureau chief Charles Hurt, "Our focus should be on winning the war on terror rather than printing up 30 pages of skeletal remains."
Mrs. McKinney's office said she could not be reached for comment last night.
Democratic Chairman Howard Dean Mischaracterizes His Party's Platform on Gay Rights
WASHINGTON - Democratic chairman Howard Dean mischaracterized his party's platform on gay rights in an interview courting evangelicals, then set the record straight Thursday when an advocacy group called him on it.
Dean told Christian Broadcasting Network News that the 2004 Democratic platform declares "marriage is between a man and a woman" just one of the points he made in reaching out to religious conservatives who are largely hostile to the party.
But the platform does not define marriage that way, and his remarks prompted the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to return a $5,000 donation from the Democratic National Committee.
Dean later acknowledged his misstatement, but the group sent back the money anyway. "We need for Governor Dean to demonstrate real leadership on our issues," executive director Matt Foreman said in an interview, "not to equivocate depending on the audience."
Dean sought to establish common ground with religious conservatives in the interview on Pat Robertson's network, a tall order considering their opposition to the Democratic Party's positions on abortion rights, gay rights and some other social issues.
Dean said that "one of the misconceptions about the Democratic Party is that we're godless and that we don't have any values."
He went on: "The truth is, we have an enormous amount in common with the Christian community, and particularly with the evangelical Christian community. And one of the biggest things that Democrats worry about is the materialism of our country, what's on television that our kids are seeing, and the lack of spirituality."
With Republicans embracing the traditional definition of marriage in 2004, Democrats sought to appeal to such traditionalists without giving up their support for gay rights.
The result: a platform plank that left the central question about what defines marriage to the states, and specifically rejected President Bush's support for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
It asserted: "We support full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of our nation and seek equal responsibilities, benefits, and protections for these families."
Dean stated in the interview: "The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says that marriage is between a man and a woman. That's what it says."
He added that the party differs with some religious leaders in believing "everybody deserves to live with dignity and respect, and that equal rights under the law are important."
After the gay rights group went public with its complaints about his remarks, Dean acknowledged: "I misstated the Democratic Party's platform, which does not say marriage should be limited to a man and a woman," and reasserted the party's commitment to equal protection for all.
Foreman said Dean should be persuading Democrats to fight against ballot initiatives seeking to ban gay marriage, but instead has misrepresented the party's "important and affirming plank" several times.
"There has been a disturbing lack of clarity from Governor Dean about where we fit into the party and the country," he said after Dean corrected himself.
Foreman said the $5,000 was for sponsorship of the group's leadership awards dinner in Washington last week, and will be missed.
On the Net: 
loud
CALLER: Did he say something about discrimination?
RUSH: "Millions of Americans will be at risk of losing their day in court when they suffer the yolk of discrimination." I don't think -- not racists -- he's calling us bigots overall. Women are going to lose their rights. Humans are going to lose their rights. Workers are going to lose their rights. Animals are going to lose their rights. Everybody is going to lose their rights. We're going to die. We're all going to be shipped down to Club Gitmo and that's it. We're dead; we're all going to be imprisoned.
CALLER: This is why we can't come together as a country. I mean, do you hear Republicans saying anything like this? I mean, I'm sure there's a friend or two, there's a Pat Robertson, but for the most part you don't hear people being incendiary about Democrats on the Republican side.
RUSH: Well, you know you mentioned Pat Robertson. Look, Pat Robertson can say whatever he wants and it will be news for two days about what a kook he is, and they'll go talk to Republicans, "Don't you think you should distance yourself from this man? Don't you think this man should shut up?
Don't you think this man is embarrassing?" Harry Belafonte comes out, calls Bush a terrorist, worse than Hitler, blah, blah, blah, says that the Patriot Act is the equivalent of Nazism or whatever he said, he gets two days of serious analysis on CNN and the other cable channels. So it is what it is. Chuck Schumer is just a fading liberal who realizes he's in the minority. I think if you want to talk about racism, listen to Ted Kennedy here. We played this bite earlier, but this is old Ted, and he's screaming on the floor of the Senate yesterday, before the cloture vote.
KENNEDY: Our Founding Fathers failed the test when they wrote slavery into the Constitution. Abraham Lincoln pointed the way, and we passed the 13th, 14th, Fifteenth Amendment and had the Civil War but we didn't resolve this issue. It was only 'til we had the courage of those members of what branch of government? Not the United States Congress, not the United States Senate, not the executive, the judiciary, the Fifth Circuit. We're talking now about the Supreme Court! But they are the ones that changed this country inevitably with what we call the march toward progress.
RUSH: So here's Senator Kennedy again admitting what the court represents to liberals. It's the way to get what they believe enacted as law since they can't pass those laws democratically in legislative bodies. But Senator Kennedy leaves out something very important here, and it's this, ladies and gentlemen. The only reason that civil rights had to go to the courts was because of Democrats back in the fifties and sixties in that very same precious Senate of which Senator Kennedy is a member. They filibustered civil rights back in the sixties. They filibustered against civil rights legislation. Democrat governors stood in schoolhouse doors to disobey the executive branch. Democrat chiefs of police like Bull Connor turned fire hoses loose. Democrats were beating up congressman John Lewis back when he was marching with Dr. Martin Luther King. It was the Democrats back then who were standing in the way of the passage of civil rights, which is why it had to go to the courts.
Senator Kennedy conveniently leaves that out, because the modern mantra is that it's Republicans who were racists. It was Republicans who don't want civil rights. It was Republicans who stood in the way of the Civil Rights Act. A greater percentage of Republican senators voted for the Civil Rights Act than did Democrats. Bill Clinton's icon, his mentor, J. William Fulbright, led one of the Senate measures to oppose civil rights. Big segregationist. All these southern Democrats were huge segregationists, and that's why it had to go to the courts, because the legislatures, the Congress and the Senate back then, run by Democrats, were the obstacle to civil rights. That's history.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, Coretta Scott King died today. And there's all this coverage. I mean, I'm not critical of the coverage, but I just think it's ironic. I just think it's as hypocritical as can be because here's Coretta Scott King being lionized and deified practically today, but none, zilch, zero, nada of the reporting is mentioning who it was that wiretapped her husband, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., for the purposes of destroying his marriage. It was good old Bobby Kennedy. Party? Democrat. Year? Sixties. Same year that Democrats in the Senate are fighting the Civil Rights Act.
So they're wiretapping Martin Luther King. They were spying, domestic spying, Bobby Kennedy, because the rumors were that Martin Luther King had mistresses all over the place and they wanted to find them, and they wanted to discredit Martin Luther King. The Kennedy administration, for the purposes of making it all public and destroying his marriage. Today, they lionize Coretta Scott King but leave out an interesting, I'd say 75%, of the story.
END TRANSCRIPT
Read the Background Material...
chatty
An international surveillance network established by the National Security Agency and British intelligence services has come under scrutiny in recent weeks, as lawmakers in the United States question whether the network, known as Echelon, could be used to monitor American citizens.
Last week, the House Committee on Intelligence requested that the 
Although Echelon was originally set up as an international spy network, lawmakers are concerned that it could be used to eavesdrop on American citizens.
"I am concerned there are not sufficient legal mechanisms in place to protect our private information from unauthorized government eavesdropping through such mechanisms as Project Echelon," Barr said in an interview on Tuesday.
The finished report will outline the legal bases and other criteria used by United States intelligence agencies when assessing potential wiretap targets. It will be submitted to the House and made available to the public.
"If the agencies feel unable to provide a full account to the public, then a second classified report will be provided to the House Committee on Intelligence," Barr said. "This is to stop the agencies hiding behind a cloak of secrecy."
Judith Emmel, chief of public affairs for the NSA, declined to comment about the UKUSA Agreement but said the agency was committed to responding to all information requests covered by Barr's amendment. "The NSA's Office of General Counsel works hard to ensure that all Agency activities are conducted in accordance with the highest constitutional, legal and ethical standards," she said.
Until last Sunday, no government or intelligence agency from the member states had openly admitted to the existence of the UKUSA Agreement or Echelon. However, on a television program broadcast on Sunday in Australia, the director of Australia's Defence Signals Directorate acknowledged the existence of the agreement. The official, Martin Brady, declined to be interviewed for the "
.
Meanwhile, 
According to the report, Echelon is just one of the many code names for the monitoring system, which consists of satellite interception stations in participating countries. The stations collectively monitor millions of voice and data messages each day. These messages are then scanned and checked against certain key criteria held in a computer system called the "Dictionary." In the case of voice communications, the criteria could include a suspected criminal's telephone number; with respect to data communications, the messages might be scanned for certain keywords, like "bomb" or "drugs." The report also alleges that Echelon is capable of monitoring terrestrial Internet traffic through interception nodes placed on deep-sea communications cables.
While few dispute the necessity of a system like Echelon to apprehend foreign spies, drug traffickers and terrorists, many are concerned that the system could be abused to collect economic and political information.
"The recent revelations about China's spying activities in the U.S. demonstrates that there is a clear need for electronic monitoring capabilities," said Patrick Poole, a lecturer in government and economics at Bannock Burn College in Franklin, Tenn., who compiled a 
On the "Sunday Program" special on Echelon, Mike Frost, a former employee of Canada's Communications Security Establishment, said that Britain's intelligence agency requested that the CSE monitor the communications of British government officials in the late 1980s. Under British law, the intelligence agency is prohibited from monitoring its own government. Frost also said that since the cold war is over, the "the focus now is towards economic intelligence."
Still, Echelon has been shrouded in such secrecy that its very existence has been difficult to prove. Barr's amendment aims to change that.
"If this report reveals that information about American citizens is being collected without legal authorization, the intelligence community will have some serious explaining to do," Barr said.
It only took this "intellectual, smarter than everyone else" libtard about five-and-a-half years to discover left-wing hatred for Bush...
Digital Lynch Mob
Kapow! Within a day, I got more than 2,000 e-mails. A day later, I got 1,000 more. By the fourth day, the number had reached 3,499 -- a figure that does not include the usual offers of nubile Russian women or loot from African dictators. The Colbert messages began with Patrick Manley ("You wouldn't know funny if it slapped you in the face") and ended with Ron ("Colbert ROCKS, you MURDER") who was so proud of his thought that he copied countless others. Ron, you're a genius.
Truth to tell, I peeked into only a few of the e-mails. I did this because I would sometimes recognize a name I thought I knew, which was almost always a mistake. When I guilelessly clicked on the name, I would get a bucket of raw, untreated and disease-laden verbal sewage right in the face.
Usually, the subject line said it all. Some were friendly and agreed that Colbert had not been funny. Most, though, were in what we shall call disagreement. Fine. I said the man wasn't funny and not funny has a bullying quality to it; others (including some of my friends) said he was funny. But because I held such a view, my attentive critics were convinced I had a political agenda. I was -- as was most of the press, I found out -- George W. Bush's lap dog. If this is the case, Bush had better check his lap.
It seemed that most of my correspondents had been egged on to write me by various blogs. In response, they smartly assembled into a digital lynch mob and went roaring after me. If I did not like Colbert, I must like Bush. If I write for The Post, I must be a mainstream media warmonger. If I was over a certain age -- which I am -- I am simply out of it, wherever "it" may be. All in all, I was -- I am, and I guess I remain -- the worthy object of ignorant, false and downright idiotic vituperation.
What to make of all this? First, it's not about Colbert. His show has an audience of about 1 million -- not exactly "American Idol" numbers. Second, it marks the end of a silly pretense about interactive media: We give you our e-mail addresses and then, in theory, we have this nice chat. Forget about it. Not only is e-mail too often a kind of epistolary spitball, but there's no way I can even read the 3,506 e-mails now backed up in my queue -- seven more since I started writing this column.
But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.
The hatred is back. I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during antiwar demonstrations. I can appreciate some of it. Institution after institution failed America -- the presidency, Congress and the press. They all endorsed a war to rid Iraq of what it did not have. Now, though, that gullibility is being matched by war critics who are so hyped on their own sanctimony that they will obliterate distinctions, punishing their friends for apostasy and, by so doing, aiding their enemies. If that's going to be the case, then Iraq is a war its critics will lose twice -- once because they couldn't stop it and once more at the polls.
LOL, It took former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, Indiana libtard Evan Bayh, and 17 other pollsters and focus groupers to write ONE book on fighting terror...
Reclaiming Their Inner Truman
Centrist Democrats, including two of the party's leading presidential prospects, advanced a foreign policy formula today they hope will reconcile voters to a party perceived as meek and directionless on national security.
↓
The DLC's tough talk joins a cacophony of other voices struggling to attract the attention of Democratic leaders preparing for the contingency of party control of Congress in 2006 and for the '08 presidential race. The Center for American Progress has issued numerous white papers. The liberal American Prospect magazine devoted an issue to emerging Democratic ideas, including many on foreign policy.
Mark Warner, the former Virginia Gov. who was elected two months after 9/11, and Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat who has been witheringly critical of his party's dithering on foreign policy, took turns at the podium. They sounded similar themes, but they differed, often significantly, in register. [MARC AMBINDER
]
Warner likes specifics. "The litany of mistakes are almost unprecedented," Warner said at one point, proceeding to then list the various and sundry errors he attributes to the Bush administration. Or: "We're seeing the ramifications" of [the policy]." And then he listed the ramifications.
Warner said he "gets more than a little annoyed when I hear the president's political folks like Karl Rove, say that Democrats can get caught in a pre-nine eleven mentality. Well, I was the first person elected after September 11th."
He was cautious when describing the use of military force.
His speech drew more on the sweep of history than on the precise dynamics of the present conflict.
And as critical of his party's political dithering on foreign policy than he was of Pres. Bush's policies.
"If you ask me why we lost the last presidential election, I believe it was more than anything else it was because our perceived problems of national security broadly defined and national security, more specifically," he said.
"We're not going to be able to have a dialogue with the American people...[on education and jobs]...if they first don't trust us with those lives."
The presence of two of the party's top presidential prospects was not lost on the organizers of the event. The DLC recognizes that the party will likely not adopt a single message until it anoints a presidential standard-bearer in late 2007 or early 2008. Warner and Bayh took turns greeting DLC chairman Al From and whispering in his ear. Both contributed blurbs to the new DLC book, although Warner noted he was identified as the "Former Governor of Virginia, Indiana."
.
Warner, Bayh and Sen. Hillary Clinton will headline the DLC's annual meeting in Denver this summer.
Left-Wing Unilateralism
On March 19, 2003, Rev. John L. McCullough, executive director of Church World Service, issued a statement opposing the invasion of Iraq.
On May 1, 2006, Rev. McCullough spoke at a "Save Darfur" rally in Washington, D.C. He said, "The people of Darfur no longer have time for diplomatic courtesies, and we have no patience for partisan politics. Already hundreds of thousands have died, and far too many others are at risk of the unrelenting tide of death that is sweeping across hot desert sands.
"The time for political posturing has expired. The time for decisive action is now. Hear us when we say, 'we are America and we are Darfur.' We have reached the moment of our moral imperative, the intertwining of our lives, and we see our common destiny."
Suddenly, the left has discovered the virtue of unilateralism.
That raises the question, how many have to die before liberals will give permission for the United States to act militarily without U.N. approval? One hundred thousand? Four hundred thousand? What's the cutoff point? When did the death toll in Darfur reach the point that the left said, "OK, let's send in the Marines"?
It is worth noting that the "Save Darfur" protesters did not march in front of the United Nations. They rallied in Washington. Despite all of their rhetoric about the U.N., they know where the real power lies. When you need an ethnic group saved from genocidal maniacs right away, Kofi is not the guy to ask. Better to go straight to the top.
And that's the great irony. Many on the left know that the United Nations is a crock, but they dare not admit it. The concept of the inherent goodness of the "international community" working to achieve peace and harmony through democratic means is too important to their world view and too useful to them politically.
"If we act, then the world will follow," Sen. Barack Obama said at the rally two Sundays ago.
Yeah, well, that was kind of the whole point behind invading Iraq. But the left didn't care about Saddam's victims. Maybe there weren't enough of them. That mysterious death threshold had not been met. Or maybe sending troops to Sudan without U.N. approval is OK just because it isn't George W. Bush's idea.
Last week the government of Sudan signed a peace treaty with the largest rebel group in Darfur. It was the second peace treaty U.S. diplomats from the Bush administration have brokered in Sudan. Funny, there has been no left-wing cheering for the President's successes.
If this peace deal holds, perhaps the left will flip-flop again and proclaim the success of diplomacy. But even if it does succeed, it won't bring back the hundreds of thousands who died while waiting for the world to act. It can be said that they were, indirectly, victims of the United Nations.
Under U.N. hegemony, the United States and Britain can no longer halt the slaughter of innocents simply by rattling their sabers. Murderous tyrants, protected by their allies and counterparts inside the U.N., know that the U.N. is brilliantly effective at grinding the tank treads of justice to a halt. The U.N. does not stop evil men from using the machinery of government to slaughter innocents. It only stops the good guys from intervening when that happens.
This is the world the activists of the left have created. And they love it in theory. But when it comes to preventing another genocide, they suddenly discover the value of massive armies deployed without regard for diplomatic courtesies.
One wonders if any of them stop to consider the world that would exist had the more radical types succeeded in transforming Washington so that the federal government concentrated on funding schools and social services and the Air Force had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomb. Whose guns would the left ask to borrow then?
Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader.