Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, May 2007

1. Kensington. The Ninth Circus Court of Appeals struck yet another blow against mining here in Alaska last week, throwing out a Corps of Engineers permit that allowed the Kensington mine near Juneau to dump tailings and slurry into a lake near the mine. The reason given by the black-robed legislators was that the Corps apparently no longer has the authority to issue permits for mining activities that do not comply with the 1972 Clean Water Act as they have been doing since the Act was passed 35 years ago. Why, it is almost like finding a diamond in the tailings pond. Who would have thought that the legislation passed a generation ago actually has language in it that does not allow a federal agency to do what they have been doing to implement it since it was passed in 1972. The idiotic act of judicial irresponsibility was hailed by all the usual suspects on the left and among the greens. Kensington’s parent company is considering an appeal to the US Supreme Court. This outrageous opinion, if successfully upheld, will be used by greens, their lawyers, and the judicial activists sitting on the Federal Bench to shut down yet another industry in Southeast Alaska and eventually statewide, where they have driven tens of thousands of high paying jobs out of state by the destruction of the logging industry via federal environmental fiat. ADN, Weds.

2. Public Funding. Leftists here in Alaska are conducting yet another raid on the public treasury, this one intended to publicly fund all gubernatorial and legislative campaigns publicly. They have floated a pair of ballot initiatives intended to clean up politics here in Alaska and are out gathering signatures. They intend to pay for it with a three cent per barrel tax on oil produced here in the state. If passed, the ballot initiatives will essentially become an incumbent protection scheme for state legislators. There is also a pair of bills floating in the last legislature to set up such a scheme. Both bills are unfortunately backed by well-meaning Republicans. Entry into the system would take a specified number of petition signatures for a candidate along with a number of $5 donations to that candidate. Candidates are limited to a certain dollar amount unless they are running against a candidate who is not p articipating – which we will see in every single race. This is a very, very bad idea, as it introduces yet more government control into elections and the actions of candidates. A better reform would be unlimited contributions from individuals, groups or organizations with the only requirement being full disclosure of those donations within 24 hours. If you disclose everything, it will be difficult to argue about who is buying influence and which candidates are bought and paid for by their backers. ADN, Sat.

3. Video. Campaign techniques are changing fast as both technology and the ability to get a message out near instantaneously on the web merge. One of the big changes used by the left last election cycle was sending an opposition campaign worker with a video camera to every event staged by their opponent. They used it to good effect last year when a Webb (D, VA) staffer filmed former US Senator George Allen’s (R, VA) use of the term ‘macaca’ to describe the Webb guy holding the camera. This screw up was plastered over the media, the net, and used by the Washington Post for months in a series of blistering attacks on Allen to eventually defeat him for office last year. Allen’s failure to immediately stand up, acknowledge his use of the racial epithet and apologize directly to the staffer helped seal his fate among Virginia voters. Daily Kos owner / operator Marcos Moulitsas suggested that his lefties do the same thing to every single major Republican candidate over the next year and a half. This means that the cameras will be out there, and every single gaffe will be up on You Tube, Daily Kos or something similar for the upcoming election cycle. This means that Our Side will have to be much more disciplined about what they say, who they say it to, and how it is said, for it will be quite easy for the Other Side to build a video narrative of a candidate that will not be all that flattering or helpful. This also means that Our Side needs to be out there with our own cameras, following all of the leftist candidates around, filming all of their gaffes. It also means that we need to be filming the union thugs and other goons used by democrats to keep citizens away from their candidates. I expect it will be superb entertainment and excellent viewing for political junkies. The Other Side is a bit better at using the new media than we are so far. We need to do better, something that I expect Fred Thompson is already doing. Dean Barnett in Hugh Hewitt, Tues.

4. Weasels. The CIA Weasels and their treasonous supporters in the drive-by media struck another blow against America in support of their buddies in Al Qaida and other Islamist organizations we war against last week when ABC News reported a secret CIA plan to destabilize the Iranian government. AJ Strata believes it was a CIA weasel leak to ABC. By week’s end, it st arted to look more like the leak came out of democrat staffers in congress. I had initially thought that this was a marvelous bit of administration agitprop aimed at the Mullahs in general and Ahmadinejad in p articular, intended to encourage them to sleep less well at night and to heighten their paranoia. It still may be. Unfortunately, by weeks end there were reports of additional Iranian crackdowns against opposition protestors and late-night grabs of western sympathizers. Given that all that stuff goes on all the time anyway, I find it difficult to believe that the Iranians are acting to cleanse themselves of opponents with any more vigor than they have been all along. You would think that the WH would now understand that they have at least three bureaucracies at war with them – the CIA, State Dep artment and Justice Dep artments, and would have long ago st arted using their anti-Iranian leaks with that knowledge in mind. We will see how this all plays out. On a lighter note, there were also reports late last week of large, unannounced naval movements in the Persian Gulf.

5. ESA. Hugh Hewitt reported Tuesday that environmentalists were stepping up their opposition to the border fence. Use of the ESA and federal courts to obstruct its construction will likely be the vehicle to make sure it doesn’t get built.

6. Anbar. We continue to get positive reports out of Iraq, as the new warfighting plan continues to unfold. Last week had a large number of reports of significant progress into previous anti-American, pro-Baathist, insurgent and Al Qaida hotbeds like Anbar province. It appears that Al Qaida overplayed its hand against the locals and the tribal leaders have turned against them and declared war against them. We are now seeing the civil war we always wanted in Iraq – the one pitting Al Qaida against everyone else. And Al Qaida is losing the fight. Keep it up, guys. We are close, very close.

7. Payments. The new French government is st arting to deal directly with their immigration problem. The new Immigration Minister announced a program to st art paying immigrants to return to their country of origin. France currently has over five million immigrants, including a large number of young, unemployed Muslim men. These guys have been busily burning vehicles for years, blaming their failure to assimilate into French culture on everything but themselves, their tribes, Imams, Mullahs and Mosques. Paying five million immigrants $8,000 per family to return to their country of origin will cost a boatload of money, but not nearly as much money as it will cost to allow them to remain. We will hope this program is successful. LGF, Fri.

1. Global Warming. The argument over global warming has been joined by some real scientists over recent months. Interestingly enough, the arguments of the skeptics have st arted to get printed in local papers. This one came out of a New Zealand publication and quotes a Kiwi meteorologist who spoke at the annual meeting of a local farmer’s organization. He went after global warming as a myth, one that would “… be a joke in five years.” He noted that water vapor was responsible for 95% of all the greenhouse effect. It is of no small significance that global warming activists all blather on about greenhouse gasses and how they are all terrible things, but never seem to be able to name them specifically along with their specific contribution to the claimed problem. For if water vapor is truly responsible for 95% of the greenhouse, that means everything else – all the prime players like carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide / sulfuric acid, and methane are responsible for only 5% of the total effect. He then went on to note that carbon dioxide was responsible for 3.2% of the total left after water vapor, with manmade carbon dioxide only being 3.6% of all carbon dioxide, or 0.12% of the total effect. So mankind and all the Ford Excursions, Chevy Suburbans, and Hummers I thru III are responsible for only 12 of every 10,000 p arts of the total effect. If the entire system is so fragile that this small of a contribution would trash the atmosphere forever, one wonders how we have survived such events as large volcanic eruptions (Pinatubo injected 10 cubic kilometers of stuff into the atmosphere in a 2-day eruption in 1991), meteor impacts (Tunguska in 1908, an estimated 30 meter stony object), or catastrophic forest fires (18 million acres burned in China in 1987, 3 million acres in Idaho in 1910, 3 million acres in Canada in 1825). It’s going to be fun to watch the global warming house of cards coming down under the weight of real live, honest to God, actual, verifiable facts.

2. Polling. Approval ratings for Congress are now running slightly below those of the President, with the latest Gallup poll of congress running at around 29%. Bush’s approval numbers were running in the mid to upper 30’s until the WH st arted pushing the most recent Kennedy assault on America (Immigration Bill). In the poll, congress is down from its February high of 37%, with 64% disapproval. The decline is steepest among democrats, with only 37% of democrats approving of what congress is doing. Late last week, another pollster crafted a poll that oversampled democrats by nearly a factor of two and showed that congress was now polling slightly ahead of the President. While 2008 is still a ways off, and Republicans are busily self-destructing in support of the Amnesty Bill working its way thru the Senate, next year may not be as politically awful for Republicans as the other side wants it to be. We may very well be in the same position Truman was in when he lost his democrat majority in congress for two years and won it back for the next 40 years. 2008 ought to be most interesting. Captain’s Qu arters, Weds.

3. Bobrick. One of the key democrat inside players here in Alaska pled guilty to a bribery scheme as p art of our ongoing corruption investigation into local politicians. Bill Bobrick, a lobbyist and fundraiser for local and statewide democrats pled guilty of a single felony charge of conspiracy to commit extortion, bribery and money laundering. He is expected to turn state’s evidence against former legislator Tom Anderson (R), who was indicted on bribery and money laundering charges last year. Anderson was one of the Good Guys up here. I hope he has not done what he is accused of doing. Bobrick is the reason that local democrats have not jumped on top of the ongoing corruption scandal with the legislature as hard as they normally would have, as Bobrick is closely tied to most, if not all most powerful elected democrats here in Alaska for many a year. He was Executive Director of the Alaska democrat p arty in the 1980s. His plea takes him out of the political game, which means the money he has been raising will now have to flow into democrat campaigns from the greens and unions. ADN, Weds.

4. Bears. The rocket scientists masquerading as federal game management biologists have come up with their latest idiotic scheme to identify and control problem bears along the Russian River. They plan on capturing the bears and dying their fur with garish bright shades of hair dye. The Russian River sits a couple hours south of Anchorage, and is a world class salmon and rainbow trout fishery. Federal biologists have refused to control bears along the river and there has been a serious increase in unpleasant bear-human interactions along the river for several years. Rather than d arting the bears and removing them from the area, shooting them, or opening the area for a seasonal hunt, they have chosen to identify the bears via hair dye, perhaps to make it easier for well-armed fishermen to shoot them. Salmon season opens on the Russian in three weeks. It ought to be a fun summer. ADN, Mon.

5. Immigration. The latest attempt to pass Kennedy-McCain immigration reform is underway in the senate. This legislation will grant immediate amnesty to 12 million illegals. It will also allow them to bring their immediate families into the country, introducing yet another 38 million people into the country. Details of the legislation are fluid, as the thousand page legislation was not released until it hit the floor of the senate last weekend. The WH is doing a hard sell on the bill. McCain has destroyed his presidential run by being at its center. Conservatives are apoplectic and have been burning the phone and e-mail lines to the senate all week long in opposition. The legislation has nicely split conservatives among the self-appointed elites and the grass roots. Limbaugh has come out in strong opposition to the bill, and believes it is being pushed as hard as it is by the political class because they need new taxpayers to pay to keep the welfare state afloat when the baby boomers st art retiring in large numbers. They are willing to throw away the entire American culture simply to keep the welfare state afloat. I hope Limbaugh is wrong about this. Unfortunately he is rarely wrong about politicians. It appears we need a rather serious housecleaning over the course of the next few elections. 2006 was a st art. There will be more in 2008 and 2010.

6. Berger. Sandy Berger, who was Clinton’s national Security Advisory, and accused of stealing classified documents from the National Archives surrendered his law license last week in a ploy to bypass further cross-examination by the Board of Bar Counsel where he was expected to be pressed about the theft. His buds in the Dep artment of Justice, the same people who cut a sweethe art plea bargain on the theft and destruction of the documents have so far refused to administer a polygraph which Berger agreed to with his plea bargain. Chief House Investigator Henry Waxman, (D, CA) is doing his level best to ensure that Justice’s investigation of the Berger theft closes immediately. Berger was sent into the National Archives to steal things that would be embarrassing to Bill and Hilary Clinton. He has not said everything he knows about the theft. His democrat buds in the bureaucracy, on Capitol Hill, and in the drive-by media are helping him cover his tracks. Why would someone toss away a law license, a valuable asset worth three years of graduate school, simply to make sure he was not cross-examined? Captain’s Qu arters, Fri.

1. Tornado. One of the techniques used by democrats at the state and federal levels has been the use of natural disasters as a vehicle to destroy incumbent Republicans. In 1992, Lawton Chiles (D), Florida Governor purposely refused to request federal disaster aid for almost a week after Hurricane Andrew hit the Homestead area. The way the system works, is that the feds can’t send anything in until the state governor requests aid. Chiles refused to ask for federal aid, and we got almost a week of whining, complaining, and pitiful news coverage on those that had lost everything, all intended to demonstrate that Bush 41 was uninterested in the plight of the poor, the inform, and those that have lost everything in a natural disaster. The ploy worked reasonably well when the Bush administration at the time didn’t push the issue on the state. The democrats reprised their little game in 2005 when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. In that disaster, the democrat Governor of Louisiana and the democrat Mayor of New Orleans refused to take the simple evacuation measures that saved lives in the rest of the Gulf Coast. Democrats and their willing accomplices in the drive-by media spent the next 15 months or so painting the Bush administration as uncaring, incompetent and bureaucratically inept. The ploy worked reasonably well, especially given the woefully incompetent reporting out of New Orleans before, during and after the flooding. The Katrina response was one of may underlying events that drove the election results in 2006. Last week came the next natural disaster and next democrat attempt to politicize the aftermath. This one took place last week following a 1.7 mile wide tornado that leveled the town of Greensburg, KS. It didn’t take long for the democrat governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius, to accuse the Bush administration of sending too many Kansas National Guard troops to Iraq, leaving her insufficient National Guard troops and equipment for her to respond to the disaster. Another National Guard General gave the democrat response to the President’s weekly message Saturday with the same charge. Of course, this was patently false, as there was no shortage of National Guard troops in Kansas and surrounding states to come to the aid of the survivors. Here the story gets interesting, as a couple blogs have carried a story about Sebelius talking to Sam Brownback (R, KS) via a cell phone call and apologizing all over herself for making the false charges. The story has her saying she was told to make the charges by democrat p arty chair Howard Dean and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D, IL). There has been some dispute about the story, but the original blogs have stood by their reportage so far. Democrats reacted by threatening defamation lawsuits, the latest vehicle used by leftists to shut up critics in the political wars. It will take a while for all this to sort out. Sebelius may or may not have gotten phone calls to make the anti-war charges against the Bush administration. If she did, this is no surprise to those of us who have been watching democrats and their lackeys in the media for a long time. If she didn’t, then she figured it out for herself, making her just as venal as the rest of the p arty leadership. As to the threatened lawsuits, remember that they st arted being used by the Clintonoids during the runup to his impeachment in the late 1990s as a vehicle to shut up critics like Matt Drudge. There are a lot of democrats with a lot of money and a lot of willing lawyers and leftist judges. I fully expect to see the political wars to move off the blogs and into the courts for the upcoming election cycle. We let them win this battle at our peril.

2. Times. Up until 15 years ago, Anchorage had two newspapers. One is the McClatchy-owned Anchorage Daily News (ADN), referred to as the Daily Worker by local conservatives. The other was the Anchorage Times, backed by one of the local oil service companies, Veco. The Times was eventually driven out of business and forced to shut down. The two papers made a deal 15 years ago to keep the editorial portion of the Anchorage Times alive in the editorial section of the ADN. Both companies signed contracts that allowed the Voice of the Times, generally far more conservative than the editorial pages of the AND, to run editorials, conservative columns and letters to the editor on half a page every day. Last week, the top two executives of Veco pled guilty to attempted bribery in federal court in connection with out ongoing legislative corruption scandal and are on their way to jail. With that horsepower off the local political playing field, the ADN announced they would not be renewing the contract to carry the Voice of the Times for another five years, effectively silencing yet another conservative outlet here in Anchorage. It was a good ride while it lasted, and it probably lasted longer than it should have. With this change, I expect the ADN to swing even more leftist in what they print and comment upon. And I expect the Voice of the Times to take their show on the road to the Internet and st art competing with the ADN on the net. We will wish them the best of luck, as they have been pretty decent people for a long time. From time to time, their pro-oil industry leanings have infuriated some folks, but they have always played the game straight up, and I respect that.

3. Ninilchik. The Federal Subsistence Board took yet another step toward inciting a race war between natives and non-natives here in Alaska last week. The vehicle for this incitement was a decision to give Ninilchik tribal members first rights to 4,000 red salmon, 3,000 silver salmon, and 1,000 late-run king salmon on the Kenai River and its tributaries. The natives will be allowed to put their nets in the waters of the Russian River, a world-class rainbow and salmon fishery, in locations currently closed to sport fishing. Ninilchik is a small town just south of Soldotna, and the tribal members need to drive past local mega-stores on their way to the river. Yet the feds have determined that they are indeed a rural locale, giving them the vehicle to claim their special, race-based rights to fish on the Kenai, Kasilof rivers and Deep Creek on the Kenai Peninsula. All rivers are heavily fished by sport and commercial fishermen during the summer. Most are armed due to the large numbers of bears prowling the river banks during the time fish are in the rivers. I do not expect armed fishermen to take well the notion of someone putting nets into waters they are flogging with flies or hardware, catching what they must release. This is an ugly situation that is well on its way toward getting much, much uglier. And it is all completely unnecessary. It is all enabled by the feds not insisting on equal treatment of all Alaskans under the law. Go fishing in Alaska the next few years? Bring your flack vest.

4. Digg. This story is a couple weeks old and concerns the RIAA and Digg. The RIAA is the recording industry group that has been suing its customers for downloading audio and video files without paying for them. Digg is website where various articles are posted and ranked by its membership. As with most of these sorts of things on the web today, it now has a nice infestation of leftists censoring all things conservative. One Digg member posted the decryption key to current generation DVDs online. There was a discussion far and wide about encryption, product keys, hacks and other related subjects. The RIAA found out that the industry key, previously highly classified within the industry, had been posted online and responded with a demand for Digg to remove all posts containing the key. The demand was backed up with threat of a very expensive lawsuit. Digg management responded by pulling all posts with the key. The entire website erupted in response – a veritable online riot, mob rule ensued, with the users screaming bloody murder and reposting the encryption key far and wide across the internet. It took less than a day for the Digg management to relent and apologize to its membership. This puts them in an interesting position. On one hand, the customers are demanding they do something that may or may not be patently illegal. On the other hand, the RIAA will quite likely take them to court and put them out of business like they did to Napster. Will be interesting to watch. Lesson here for the RIAA: You boys are in trouble as an industry for a lot of reasons, and going after your customers via lawsuit is not a way to endear yourselves to your customers. There has to be a better way to enforce your property rights and allow paying customers access to the product while keeping non-paying customers from accessing your product. There is an answer(s) out there in the marketplace. Those answers are not to be found in the courtroom.

1. Milblogs. Back in my old military days, the three services were described as the Devious (USAF), the Defiant (Navy) and the Dumb (Army). Nobody had any special description for the Marines at the time. Last week, the Army demonstrated quite emphatically why they were and still are referred to as The Dumb. The Army staff released a new OPSEC (Operations Security) regulation which can be used by commanders to shut down all blogging from the war zone. I cannot think of a worse move for those guys. One of the real failures of the administration in this conflict has been losing the infowar – p articularly the job of getting word back to the home front what is going on across the battlefield. We haven’t heard about the successes, failures, and most importantly the heroes. Milbloggers – active duty military members and their family members – have filled that void to some extent, and have provided some real insight into current operations, actions of the enemy, and related subjects. The growth of Milblogs has been nothing short of spectacular, both in quality and quantity. They are even being used as military training resources for new guys in country, a way to get newly deployed people up to speed quickly both at the schoolhouse and operationally. The new regulation is reportedly an attempt to update existing OPSEC regs to include recent advances in communication such as e-mail (not so recent), blogging, and posting online videos in places like You Tube. Unfortunately, the rocket scientists writing the actual reg now require Commander’s review of all things posted online for public consumption. The fear among Milbloggers is that this new requirement will be used by busy commanders as an excuse to completely shut down the information flow out of the battlefield simply because they will be too busy to spend any time reviewing any proposed posting. Once the new reg hit the streets, all Hell broke loose among the Milbloggers, for if this only applies to the Army, the other services are expected to follow suit, as they have similar OPSEC requirements. The reaction also spread to conservatives in congress, with Richard Shelby (R, AL) weighing in to support the Milbloggers. The public reaction prompted the Army staff to release a clarification of the new reg a couple days later. The annual Milblogger meeting was held in DC last weekend. I expect they will have a lot to talk about. It is terribly unfortunate when our side unilaterally disarms in the ongoing infowar. I hope this is not as serious as it seems from here at this time.

2. COIN. COIN is the military acronym for Counter Insurgency operations. What we are dealing with in Iraq in p articular and against the Islamists worldwide is an insurgency – powered by the Iranians, Al Qaida, Baathist dead-enders and cranky Sunnis in Iraq and funded by oil dollars worldwide. The sm art guys in the military have been revising their analysis, strategy, planning, operations and intelligence to respond to the new form of insurgency seen in Iraq. I will paraphrase the following from a posting by Grim at Blackfive last Sunday as it provides a great description of the current state of the art thinking on how to defeat and destroy this p articular insurgency. The new model is essentially a gravity well. Locals are classed as red, yellow, green and blue on a network diagram of that gravity well. The yellows are active leadership nodes of the network. Reds are active members of the insurgency. The blues are people actively seeking membership into the group. Greens are lurkers and potential members. What happens when you take out a leader (yellow), is that there is always some red to step and take his place. It isn’t really a formal organization, rather it is a social network based on strong ties between the leadership (yellows). The gravity well description works if you picture the yellows / reds as a planet or a star. Blues are analogous to a tightly bound planet or satellite. They have been captured and are p art of the network. The closer you get to the center, the faster you move, the more tightly bound you are to the center, and harder it is to escape. Look at the greens as slowly-moving, not gravitationally bound bits of stuff, that have not yet gotten close enough to the center to be captured or bound into an orbit. The strength of an insurgency is its drawing power – or gravity. It is based on a couple things – fear, as in “join us or die”, and drawing power via stories or myths, as in “we are inevitable, the wave of the future.” In order to defeat the insurgency, you must defeat both of these things and reduce the gravity well, or decrease the drawing power of the insurgency and draw the greens and blues away from the center. Like a gravity well, the closer you are to the center of the insurgency, the harder it is to pull you away from it. So how do you do this? According to Grim, the first thing you do is build an intelligence database by dumping literally everything you know and find out into it. This includes how people are related to one another, p articularly important in a p art of the world dominated by tribal governments and groupings. Once you get an intelligence map, you st art going after the leadership and their stories, the myths upon which the insurgency is founded. Insurgents say and do a lot of things, mostly based on something they have been told, figured out and believe. Breaking those stories, those beliefs are just as important as killing the leadership. Break the stories and kill the leadership, and you reduce the pull – the gravity – of the insurgency. The second thing you do is to introduce another gravity well into the mix – something that will exert a stronger pull on the blues and greens than the center of the insurgency, something that will disrupt the insurgency, something that will compete with the insurgency for the he arts and minds of the wannabees and lurkers. This is normally a competing organization / group, with a powerful set of stories, leaders and relationships. You want to encourage the competing organization, build it up, reward it for doing Good, thus increasing its social pull – its gravity well – in the region. Pull enough blues and greens away, and the insurgency will vaporize, disintegrate, because it is not sufficiently massive to grow (and insurgencies, like a cancer, must always grow). None of this happens quickly, but at least the Sm art Guys in uniform have a good working model upon which to engage and destroy the Bad Guys. Godspeed, guys.

3. Indictments. The feds announced four more indictments last week on our ongoing bribery / corruption scandal. This one grew out of the strong-arm routine a year ago in the passage of the Producers Production Tax on oil production. One of the local oil service companies, Veco, which had its CEO and Chief Legislative Officer cop federal bribery pleas today, was strong arming legislators for support. The rewards were promised jobs and cash. Indicted were Pete Kott (R, Eagle River), former House Speaker, now out of the legislature; Bruce Weyhrauch (R, Juneau), a one-term Representative who decided not to run for reelection; and Vic Kohring (R, Wasilla), the only currently sitting legislator. There are 2-3 more indictments in the wings, which have not yet been unsealed. They may include up to three state senators and a “statewide elected official” to be named later. Given that we only have five statewide elected officials – governor, lt. governor, two US Senators and a House member, this last is most intriguing. As a conservative, this is a real embarrassment, and will require some significant housecleaning on our side of the fence. It is also something made more possible by leaving the legislature in Juneau, an isolated community, with no roads in or out, populated by liberals and lobbyists during the 3-4 month long legislative session. If the legislature were up here in SouthCentral Alaska, they would not be out of sight and out of mind dealing with temptation for months. The other unfortunate thing that will fall out of this mess will be another round of ethics legislation – completely unnecessary as far as I am concerned. We are quickly approaching the point in time when the ethics laws are simply too complex and wonderful for a citizen legislator to follow reasonably well. They are becoming an impediment for public service – which is probably what the left wants, as it would tend to favor more of their guys - lawyers - in office. Great. Just what we need, more lawyers. Ethics laws would not have stopped the current scandal, as these guys have been indicted on violating federal laws for bribery, corruption and vote trading. That stuff is illegal and has been illegal for a very long time. Will let you know more about this as it plays out.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations:
Debate USA, http://www.debateusa.com/ ;
MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com
and the home page: http://home.gci.net/~agimarc
Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. You can find it at: http://www.thevanguard.org/

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