(AP) - PHOENIX-A state lawmaker who wants to reinstate a 1950s federal deportation program known as "Operation Wetback" is under fire again for sending supporters information from a white separatist group.
Republican Rep. Russell Pearce has apologized for e-mailing the article from the West Virginia-based National Alliance. But that hasn't stopped criticism from all directions, including state GOP leaders. [...]
The article lashes out at how the media portrays "any racially conscious White person who looks askance at miscegenation or at the rapidly darkening racial situation in America."
It says the "media masters" force on the public their view of "a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish 'Holocaust' tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood of non-White aliens pouring across our borders ... ."
Yesterday, a source close to Foley explained to THE NEW REPUBLIC that in early 2006 the congressman had all but decided to retire from the House and set up shop on K Street. "Mark's a friend of mine," says this source. "He told me, 'I'm thinking about getting out of it and becoming a lobbyist.'"
But when Foley's friend saw the Congressman again this spring, something had changed. To the source's surprise, Foley told him he would indeed be standing for re-election. What happened? Karl Rove intervened.
According to the source, Foley said he was being pressured by "the White House and Rove gang," who insisted that Foley run. If he didn't, Foley was told, it might impact his lobbying career.
"He said, 'The White House made it very clear I have to run,'" explains Foley's friend, adding that Foley told him that the White House promised that if Foley served for two more years it would "enhance his success" as a lobbyist. "I said, 'I thought you wanted out of this?' And he said, 'I do, but they're scared of losing the House and the thought of two years of Congressional hearings, so I have two more years of duty.'"
Let the two years of Congressional hearings begin!
Your average Houstonian watches his average healthcare cost double in six years of his ex-governor's rule. It serves the average Houstonian right for settling for below-average leadership.
What liberals believe. Because of the Chicago Tribune's registration process, I'm quoting in full the ten propositions of what it means to be a liberal by Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago, and the author of Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime. I added the boldface to each proposition:
1. Liberals believe individuals should doubt their own truths and consider fairly and open-mindedly the truths of others. This is at the very heart of liberalism. Liberals understand, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed, that "time has upset many fighting faiths." Liberals are skeptical of censorship and celebrate free and open debate.
2. Liberals believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support the civil rights movement, affirmative action, the Equal Rights Amendment and the rights of gays and lesbians. (Note that a conflict between propositions 1 and 2 leads to divisions among liberals on issues like pornography and hate speech.)
3. Liberals believe individuals have a right and a responsibility to participate in public debate. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion expansion of the franchise; the elimination of obstacles to voting; "one person, one vote;" limits on partisan gerrymandering; campaign-finance reform; and a more vibrant freedom of speech. They believe, with Justice Louis Brandeis, that "the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people."
4. Liberals believe "we the people" are the governors and not the subjects of government, and that government must treat each person with that in mind. It is liberals who have defended and continue to defend the freedom of the press to investigate and challenge the government, the protection of individual privacy from overbearing government monitoring, and the right of individuals to reproductive freedom. (Note that libertarians, often thought of as "conservatives," share this value with liberals.)
5. Liberals believe government must respect and affirmatively safeguard the liberty, equality and dignity of each individual. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion the rights of racial, religious and ethnic minorities, political dissidents, persons accused of crime and the outcasts of society. It is liberals who have insisted on the right to counsel, a broad application of the right to due process of law and the principle of equal protection for all people.
6. Liberals believe government has a fundamental responsibility to help those who are less fortunate. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support government programs to improve health care, education, social security, job training and welfare for the neediest members of society. It is liberals who maintain that a national community is like a family and that government exists in part to "promote the general welfare."
7. Liberals believe government should never act on the basis of sectarian faith. It is liberals who have opposed and continue to oppose school prayer and the teaching of creationism in public schools and who support government funding for stem-cell research, the rights of gays and lesbians and the freedom of choice for women.
8. Liberals believe courts have a special responsibility to protect individual liberties. It is principally liberal judges and justices who have preserved and continue to preserve freedom of expression, individual privacy, freedom of religion and due process of law. (Conservative judges and justices more often wield judicial authority to protect property rights and the interests of corporations, commercial advertisers and the wealthy.)
9. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, for without such protection liberalism is impossible. This, of course, is less a tenet of liberalism than a reply to those who attack liberalism. The accusation that liberals are unwilling to protect the nation from internal and external dangers is false. Because liberals respect competing values, such as procedural fairness and individual dignity, they weigh more carefully particular exercises of government power (such as the use of secret evidence, hearsay and torture), but they are no less willing to use government authority in other forms (such as expanded police forces and international diplomacy) to protect the nation and its citizens.
10. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, without unnecessarily sacrificing constitutional values. It is liberals who have demanded and continue to demand legal protections to avoid the conviction of innocent people in the criminal justice system, reasonable restraints on government surveillance of American citizens, and fair procedures to ensure that alleged enemy combatants are in fact enemy combatants. Liberals adhere to the view expressed by Brandeis some 80 years ago: "Those who won our independence ... did not exalt order at the cost of liberty."
Consider this an invitation. Are these propositions meaningful? Are they helpful? Are they simply wrong? As a liberal, how would you change them or modify the list? As a conservative, how would you draft a similar list for conservatives?
Because their foreign and domestic policies are such monumental failures, a similar list for conservatives would be harder to come by in the era of Bush-Rove-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice. Not to mention Foley-Hastert-Santorum-Frist.
To generate their own list, conservatives could recite Stone's list above, and simply append each proposition with a cheeky Wayne's-World "NOT!"
Meanwhile, the other "Mission Accomplished" guy has of course achieved his personal mission. Like Foley, Bush has gotten his rocks off over his own fetish: removing Saddam Hussein from power. And once again we see that what the GOP politician says his mission is, and what his mission actually is, are two very different things. He says he wants to spread freedom and democracy and fight terrorism, but what he really wants is to act out a family vendetta and show up his wimp daddy.
These two men — Foley and Bush — are cut from the same cloth. And today, this very day on which we learn of North Korea's entry into the Nuclear Club, represents the complete melding of Foley-Bush as emblematic of modern Republicans. They pretend to protect our children, or our nation, and simply refuse to do it. They pretend to be Christian. They pretend to have compassion. They pretend to strategize about wars and economies and disaster preparedness.
The GOP is the party of saying one thing, and doing its opposite. That's why Foley is still relevant: he is the patron saint, the living symbol, of the complete and utter failure of the Republican Party.
