Column/Legend
1 - Prefix  - L-Life,  H-Homosexual Behavior/Perversion, R-Religion/Legal Persecution/ACLU, E-Education, M-Media Bias, O-Other
2-7 - Yr, Mo, Dy
8 - L -Letter to Editor, C-Commentary, O-Op-Ed, M-Metro

Hotlink Index of this weeks's family values related news:  [Life]   [Homosexual Behavior/Perversion]   [Religion/Religious Persecution]   [Education]   [Media]   [Other]

LIFE
L041206     Pro-lifers set sights on new Congress
L041208     CALIFORNIA   Advocates for abandoned babies win lottery
L041208     Bush 'disappointing' some pro-lifers
L041210     State to fight law that lets doctors refuse abortions

HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR/PERVERSION
H041206     'Don't ask, don't tell' faces court test
H041206     MICHIGAN    Teacher, teen 'wed' in pagan ritual
H041208     Bills wed California to gay 'marriage' spotlight
H041209     Massachusetts firms drop domestic-partner benefits
H041211     Gay rights activists decry plan for march

RELIGION/RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
R041206     Passion plea
R041206L   Bumpy ride ahead for Supreme Court
R041207     Curious criticism
R041208C   The secular inquisition
R041209     U.S. communities fail to keep 'Christ' in Christmas
R041209C   High stakes benchmarks
R041209E   A threat to liberal dominance
R041209E   Sen. Reid's remarks
R041210     All together now
R041210     Lifelong atheist changes mind about divine creator
R041210     Pickering to leave appeals court seat
R041210    WASHINGTON   Mom's eavesdropping violated privacy law
R041210E  Onward Christian soldiers
R041211    Catholic-Jewish panel hits Gibson movie
R041211L  The uniqueness of Christmas
R041211L  The uniqueness of Christmas 2

EDUCATION
E041206M  Who better than family to instill values?

MEDIA
M041209C  The fourth estate rumbles for more privilege
M041210    A media setup
M041212E  Liberal bigotry, NYT-style
M041212M Ehrlich holds to freeze on press

OTHER
O041206     Frist's reply
O041207C   Moral standards holding their own
O041208L   Abstinence education: Good, not perfect
O041211     AMA revises sex-ed policy
O041211     Teens delaying sexual activity
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O041211   Teens delaying sexual activity
 

By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Teen sexual activity has dropped significantly since 1995 — primarily, teens say, because it is against their religious or moral values, says a new federal study regarded by many as the "gold standard" for family statistics.
    "There is much good news in these results," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said of the report released yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
    The report uses data from the long-awaited 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), a periodic national survey that provides bedrock data on American family life, marriage, divorce, adoption, cohabitation, family planning, fatherhood, infertility, pregnancy and birth.
    The NCHS report showed that more teens are delaying sex until they are older.
    The declines were especially dramatic among boys: Among males ages 15 to 17, the portion who never had sexual intercourse rose from 57 percent in 1995 to 69 percent in 2002.
    The first sexual experience still typically occurs in the teen years; however, the portion of males who maintained their virginity at age 19 rose from 25 percent in 1995 to 36 percent in 2002.
    Among girls ages 15 to 17, the number of virgins rose from 62 percent in 1995 to 70 percent in 2002. However, as the girls aged, about the same portion became sexually experienced — less than a third were still virgins by age 19 in both surveys.
    The most common reason for delaying sex was because it was "against [their] religion or moral values" — 37.8 percent of girls and 31.4 percent of boys chose this answer. The 2002 survey also found that 13 percent of girls and almost 11 percent of boys had pledged to remain virgins until marriage.
    Teen contraception use also rose. When teens started having sex, more of them — 75 percent of girls and 82 percent of boys — used contraceptives, especially condoms, according to the report.
    In addition, of teens who had had sex in the past three months, 83 percent of girls and 91 percent of boys said they used contraceptives. This was higher than in 1995, when 71 percent of girls and 82 percent of boys said they used protection during sex.
    Taken together, the new data show teens "are truly becoming more cautious — that is, they're having less sex or they're using contraception a bit more," said Bill Albert, spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
    "Both sides should claim victory," he said, referring to advocates of abstinence education and comprehensive sex education.
    Sharon Camp, president and chief executive officer of the New York-based Alan Guttmacher Institute, praised the findings but noted that at least one-third of teens said they had received "no formal instruction" about contraception, and at least half hadn't talked about it with their parents.
    "[T]oo many people of all ages still lack the information and services they need to protect themselves," she said.
    The new survey updates 1995 and 1998 NSFG data and questions more than 12,000 people, including 2,271 teenagers. It is the first time men have been interviewed for the survey. The data is expected to shed light on the effects of 1990s social policies, such as welfare reform and campaigns for abstinence education, marriage education and responsible fatherhood.
    The NSFG is not only a "gold mine" for information, it's "a gold standard for research," Mr. Albert said.
    A second NCHS report using NSFG data, which also was released yesterday , showed contraceptive use has become "virtually universal" among American women of reproductive age. About 82 percent of women said they had used birth-control pills, and 90 percent said they had used a condom with a male partner.
    The top five methods of birth control in the United States were oral contraceptives (11.6 million users), female sterilization (10.3 million women), male condoms (6.9 million users), male sterilization (3.5 million) and Depo-Provera injections (2 million users), according to the NCHS report.
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R041211   Catholic-Jewish panel hits Gibson movie
 

By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Ten months after Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" reached blockbuster status, an interfaith group of Catholics and Jews is still finding fault with the film, calling it a "notorious" reminder of Europe's anti-Semitic past.
    The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the U.S. Catholic-Jewish Consultation Committee recently called the film a "modern version of the notorious medieval Passion Plays which so often over the centuries have triggered riots against the Jews of Europe."
    The statement, posted on USCCB's Web site (www.usccb.org), was part of an ongoing discussion about the effect of "The Passion" on ecumenical relations between the two groups, represented by two dozen priests, bishops, rabbis and other officials.
    The R-rated movie released Feb. 25, which has earned $625 million to date worldwide, is a graphic account of the last 12 hours of the life of Jesus Christ, with a glimpse of the Resurrection at the film's end. Mr. Gibson, who co-wrote, produced and directed the movie, is a conservative Roman Catholic.
     The film was among several topics discussed at an ecumenical meeting last month by both groups. They released a statement Nov. 29 to clarify and offer some conclusions to the movie's effect worldwide.
    The committee noted the lack of incidents, but still linked the film to passion plays, which were tableaux performed throughout medieval Europe to dramatize Christ's death for illiterate viewers on the week before Easter.
    Passion plays have been linked with pogroms against medieval Jews and the Nov. 29 statement is the first time the USCCB has uncritically adopted that term to apply to Mr. Gibson's film.
    Eugene Fisher, the associate director for the USCCB's Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, downplayed the association. He said it was a follow-up from the committee's April 20 statement that said "The Passion" is a "work of artistic beauty" for some Christians while "for other Christians and most Jews it recalls the passion plays of the past."
    "In a sense, the film takes the form of a passion play," Mr. Fisher said. "It tells the story of Jesus' death. The point of the dialogue is that's what the Jews thought; that is what the Jewish participants were saying.
    "The Catholics agreed this was an understandable reaction on their part."
    But a Jewish committee member said its Catholic participants disliked the film.
    "The Catholics were equally distressed at the film and the violent presentation of what was happening," said Rabbi Jeffrey Wohlberg of the District-based Adas Israel Congregation.
    "Catholics at Catholic University also regarded the movie as an anti-Catholic, anti-papal presentation because the Catholic Church had already interpreted these events" of the Crucifixion, he said. The Rev. John Crossin, a Catholic University professor who participated in the Nov. 3 meeting, did not return a call for comment.
    One sore point among Jews, the rabbi said, was Mr. Gibson's reliance on scenes from "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ," a 19th-century account of the last 12 hours of Jesus' life written by German visionary Anna Catherine Emmerich. It has been criticized by some Jewish and Christian groups as blaming Jews for the death of Christ.
    Even more problematic was that in October the Catholic Church beatified Emmerich as a first step toward eventual sainthood.
    However, since the beatification process relied on the would-be saint's virtues and not her writings, it "could not be used in any sense to verify particular assertions or descriptions contained" in the book, according to the USCCB statement.
    Mr. Gibson's spokesman, Alan Nierob, did not return a call for comment on the statement, but the Petersburg, Ill.-based group Roman Catholic Faithful called it "ecclesiastical drivel."
    When Mr. Gibson "risks his personal fortune and reputation because our Lord is despised by the world, you miserable serpents not only do not support him, but join with those who condemn his courageous and beautiful effort," the group said.
    " 'The Passion of the Christ' has done more to uplift the human heart, to bring souls to Christ, to increase holiness, and to glorify our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, than all the USCCB committees, subcommittees, documents, pastorals, letters, faxes and speeches put together."
    "The Passion" is now angling for a place in the Oscar Award lineup for best picture, director, actor and cinematography, and is among the Top Five 2004 films for the People's Choice Awards for Favorite Movie Drama.
    Although dogged by charges of anti-Semitism during its prerelease days, there has been no proven anti-Semitic incidents tied to the film since its release.
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O041211   AMA revises sex-ed policy
 

By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The nation's top medical group this week updated its sex-education policy to oppose federal funding of any unproven programs, but abstinence educators still believe it targets only them.
    "The whole thing has to do with evidence. It's really a scientific issue," said Dr. J. Edward Hill, president-elect of the American Medical Association (AMA).
    Abstinence educators say there is evidence the teaching approach works.
    "The new AMA policy states that the AMA will only support programs that have proven effective," said Libby Gray, director of Project Reality, an abstinence education organization in Glenview, Ill.
    "If this is the case, they should review the studies that are readily available that show that abstinence education reduces teen sexual activity and stop supporting comprehensive sex-education programs that have not been shown to be effective," she said.
    The AMA policy change comes on the heels of a study widely reported from Rep. Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat, that said 11 out of 13 federally funded abstinence education programs contained medical or scientific errors or distortions.
    The National Abstinence Clearinghouse and other abstinence supporters protested Mr. Waxman's findings, saying they were politically motivated.
    However, supporters of comprehensive sex education said the Waxman study was just the latest to conclude that abstinence education rarely or never works.
    The Bush administration is a staunch supporter of abstinence education, and the Republican-led Congress earmarked $170 million, including $30 million in new funds, for abstinence education in its 2005 spending bill.
    Previous AMA policy opposed abstinence-only education, saying it could not support it "unless research showed that it was superior in preventing negative outcomes," Dr. Hill said yesterday .
    The new AMA policy doesn't address abstinence-only education per se. Instead, the group says it supports "comprehensive sex-education programs that stress the importance of abstinence ... and also teach about contraceptive choices and safer sex."
    "That's the big difference — the 'and also' part," said Dr. Hill, who is a family physician in Tupelo, Miss.
    The new policy also opposes "federal funding of community-based programs that do not show evidence-based results."
    That means "if an abstinence-only program is proven to work, we're extremely supportive of it, and would be supportive of federal funding for programs that work. But we want them to show the evidence that they work," Dr. Hill said.
    "There are several studies which show that abstinence education is effective," especially in reducing teen pregnancy and abortion rates, said Dr. Hal Wallis, a Texas doctor who is on the medical council of the Sioux Falls, S.D.-based abstinence clearinghouse.
    Federally funded studies have shown that virginity pledges delay having sex and abstinence education is responsible for more than half of the decline in teen births, he said.
    "Abstinence education is the first mechanism that has actually made a positive impact on the devastation caused by the errant sexual education programs of the 1970s and 1980s," said Dr. Eric Keroack, an obstetrician-gynecologist from Boston. "Why would we stop it?"
 
 
    TEEN SEX DECLINES
    New federal data on teen sexual activity show declines among all teen boys and high school-age girls.
 
    Percent of unmarried teens, ages 15 to 17, who have never had sexual intercourse.
    Female
    1988: 63
    1995: 62
    2002: 70
 
    Male
    1988: 50
    1995: 57
    2002: 69
 
    Percent of unmarried teens, ages 18 to 19, who have never had sexual intercourse.
    Female
    1988: 27
    1995: 32
    2002: 31
 
    Male
    1988: 23
    1995: 25
    2002: 36
 
    Source: "Teenagers in the United States: Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use, and Childbearing 2002," National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services.
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H041211   Gay rights activists decry plan for march

ATLANTA (AP) — A march by opponents of same-sex "marriage" that starts near the tomb of Martin Luther King has prompted protests from homosexual rights activists, who say the event is an attempt to hijack the slain civil rights leader's legacy.
    The march, set for today , is being organized by the predominantly black 25,000-member New Birth Missionary Baptist Church of suburban Atlanta. Its pastor, Bishop Eddie Long, opposes same-sex unions and counsels homosexual members to abandon their lifestyle.
    The church's Web site says one of the march's goals is to promote a constitutional amendment to "fully protect marriage between one man and one woman."
    A quote from King appears on the site where details of the march are posted, and marchers are instructed to gather at the King Center, the memorial where he is buried.
    "To march from the King Center against the rights of gays is a slap in the face to the legacy of Dr. King," said Keith Boykin, president of the National Black Justice Coalition, a homosexual activist group.
    "Dr. King said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, but Bishop Long seems to think that injustice against gays and lesbians is perfectly fine," Mr. Boykin said.
    Bishop Long said the march "was not derived out of an idea to protest same-sex marriage but to present a unified vision of righteousness and justice." He said the march also seeks to promote education reform, affordable health care and programs that create wealth for minorities.
    Rosalind McGinnis, managing director of the King Center, said the organization is not endorsing the march. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, has called same-sex "marriage" a civil rights issue and denounced proposed amendments to ban it.
    Last month, state constitutional amendments banning same-sex "marriage" were approved in 11 states.
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R041210   Lifelong atheist changes mind about divine creator
 

By Richard N. Ostling
ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God — more or less — based on scientific evidence and says so on a video released yesterday.
    At 81, after decades of insisting that belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Mr. Flew said in a telephone interview from England.
    Mr. Flew said he is best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson, who believed God was not actively involved in people's lives.
    "I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."
    Mr. Flew first made his mark with the 1950 article "Theology and Falsification," based on a paper for the Socratic Club, a weekly Oxford religious forum led by writer and Christian thinker C.S. Lewis.
    Over the years, Mr. Flew has proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, and Reading universities in Britain, in visits to numerous U.S. and Canadian campuses and in books, articles, lectures and debates.
    There was no one moment of change, but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Mr. Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife.
    Yet biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce [life], that intelligence must have been involved," Mr. Flew says in the new video "Has Science Discovered God?"
    The video was drawn from a New York discussion in May organized by author Roy Abraham Varghese's Institute for Metascientific Research in Garland, Texas. Participants were Mr. Flew; Mr. Varghese; Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder, an Orthodox Jew; and Roman Catholic philosopher John Haldane of Scotland's University of St. Andrews.
    The first hint of Mr. Flew's turn was a letter to the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine.
    "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote.
    The letter commended arguments in Mr. Schroeder's "The Hidden Face of God" and "The Wonder of the World" by Mr. Varghese, an Eastern Rite Catholic layman.
    This week, Mr. Flew finished writing the first formal account of his new outlook for the introduction to a new edition of his "God and Philosophy," scheduled for release next year by Prometheus Press.
    Prometheus specializes in skeptical thought, but if his belief upsets people, well "that's too bad," Mr. Flew said. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."
    Last week, Richard Carrier, a writer and Columbia University graduate student, posted new material based on correspondence with Mr. Flew on the atheistic www.infidels.org Web site. Mr. Carrier assured atheists that Mr. Flew accepts only a "minimal God" and believes in no afterlife.
    Mr. Flew's "name and stature are big. Whenever you hear people talk about atheists, Flew always comes up," Mr. Carrier said.
    Still, when it comes to Mr. Flew's reversal, he said, "Apart from curiosity, I don't think it's like a big deal."
    Mr. Flew told the Associated Press that his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. He accepts Darwinian evolution, but doubts that it can explain the ultimate origins of life.
    A Methodist minister's son, Mr. Flew became an atheist at 15.
    Early in his career, he argued that no conceivable events could constitute proof against God for believers, so skeptics were right to wonder whether the concept of God meant anything.
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R041210   Pickering to leave appeals court seat
 

By Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Charles W. Pickering Sr., whose lengthy fight for a seat on a federal appeals court ended when President Bush elevated him by bypassing Congress, is stepping down.
    "My nomination and permanent appointment to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has been pending before the full Senate for more than one year," Judge Pickering told reporters outside the federal courthouse in Hattiesburg, Miss., yesterday.
    "A minority of senators prevented an up or down vote on my nomination. A minority of senators prevented the majority from confirming me to a permanent position on the 5th Circuit."
    After being approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee along party lines, he was filibustered on the Senate floor by a group of Democrats.
    A frustrated Mr. Bush sidestepped the Senate and installed Judge Pickering on the court. Under constitutional guidelines on recess appointments, Judge Pickering's tenure on the court was set to expire as soon as Congress adjourned, which happened Wednesday.
    He is among 10 Bush judicial nominees who have been filibustered by Democrats, an issue that was used in the campaign that ousted Democratic Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in South Dakota. The first filibustered nominee — Miguel Estrada for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia — withdrew last year after waiting more than a year for confirmation.
    Eight other nominees remain blocked by a group of Democrats and are expected to be renominated by Mr. Bush when the new Congress convenes next month. With the announcement yesterday, Judge Pickering takes himself out of contention.
    "My confirmation struggle lasted four years," he said. "The bitter fight over judicial confirmations threatens the quality and the independence of the judiciary. The mean-spiritedness and lack of civility reduces the pool of nominees willing to offer themselves for service on the bench."
    Judge Pickering, 64, suggested that "President Bush can now nominate someone younger who will serve longer, which I believe is in the best interest of the court."
    Hopeful that the new Congress will bring fresh cooperation on Mr. Bush's judicial nominees, Senate Republicans were saddened by Judge Pickering's decision.
    "Gradually, everybody has come to see how badly mistreated Judge Pickering was," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican and member of the Judiciary Committee. "It's a dark day for the Senate. He just got caricatured by the groups."
    Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way, called Judge Pickering's farewell statement "a graceless goodbye."
    "Charles Pickering repeated the shameful, baseless charge that he was opposed because he has 'committed religious values,' " Mr. Neas said.
    "The truth is that many people of faith opposed his confirmation based on his record as a judge and public official. His partisan, ideological farewell underscores the concerns that were raised about his confirmation."
    Rep. Charles W. "Chip" Pickering Jr., Mississippi Republican and the judge's son, invoked last month's election.
    "The American people have rejected the politics of filibusters and obstruction over the past two elections, sending a strong message for confirmation reform," he said. "Those who have filibustered have lost seats, while those who supported my father continue to move forward with a positive agenda for the country."
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L041210   State to fight law that lets doctors refuse abortions
 

By Amy Fagan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

California's attorney general will try to reverse a key victory for the pro-life lobby by suing to overturn a recently passed federal law designed to protect health care providers from retribution if they refuse to support abortion.
    "This is an unacceptable attack on women's rights and state sovereignty, and a backdoor attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade," Bill Lockyer said Wednesday. "With this provision, what the federal government says to California is this: 'If you want back your own taxpayer dollars ... you first have to refuse to protect the constitutional rights of the women who live in your state.' That is wrong, it is unlawful, and I will fight to make sure it doesn't happen."
    The provision — which was sponsored by Rep. Dave Weldon, Florida Republican, and tacked onto the $388 billion spending bill that Congress recently passed — expands a federal law stipulating that a doctor can opt out of abortion training. It will deny federal funds to any federal agency and state or local government that discriminates against a health care entity — such as hospitals or insurance companies — because it doesn't provide, pay for or support abortions.
    Mr. Lockyer plans to file a lawsuit in federal district court within about two to three weeks, a spokesman said.
    He and other opponents of the new provision say it's an unfair infringement on state sovereignty because it forces states with pro-choice laws to either stop enforcing those laws or risk losing billions of federal dollars.
    Mr. Lockyer said California in particular could lose precious federal dollars if it tries to enact a state law that prohibits hospitals from refusing to perform abortions for women in emergency or life-threatening situations.
    But supporters say the provision is a defensive move that is needed to protect health care providers who have been coerced into supporting abortion or punished because they don't.
    The Alaska Supreme Court, for example, agreed with a pro-choice group that a private community hospital must perform late-term abortions, even though the procedure was against hospital policy. New Mexico denied a lease application for a community hospital that didn't perform abortions.
    Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, said these are part of an unfair "national campaign" backed by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union.
    "We don't believe there is a constitutional right to force health care providers to participate in abortion," Mr. Johnson said.
    He and other supporters of the provision admit that it "infringes" on states by forcing them not to discriminate or lose federal dollars. But they said these conundrums happen all the time with Congress, and courts have agreed that it's perfectly allowable.
    "The federal government has a right to attach strings to its grants," said Cathy Ruse, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a group that lobbied for the provision.
    Mr. Lockyer admits that courts have been reluctant to strike down restrictions on states' receipt of federal funds. But he said the Weldon provision's "sweeping scope goes far beyond restrictions previously considered by the courts."
    He notes that it will deny states a wide range of federal funds that have nothing to do with abortion. And he argues that it's unconstitutional because it punishes states that are trying to protect women's constitutional right to have an abortion.
    Mr. Johnson disagreed.
    The legal effort is simply "grandstanding by a pro-abortion politician to get points with pro-abortion pressure groups," he said.
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R041210   All together now
    Who wasn't chuckling this week when 25 volunteers with the Public Advocate of the United States broke into traditional religious Christmas carols in front of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union?
    The caroling, organizers say, was to highlight the ACLU's "continuing disregard for the rights of their many pro-family targets," including the Boy Scouts of America.
    "Public Advocate hopes that the spirit of the Christmas season will fill the members and employees of the ACLU and that they will ... renounce their efforts to destroy traditional values in America," said Advocate President Eugene Delgaudio, who was happy to report a short time later that several ACLU staff members actually stepped outside to join in the songs of the season.
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M041210   A media setup
    Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts, who is embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq, orchestrated hostile questions from two soldiers to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday, Matt Drudge reports at his Web site, www.drudgereport.com.
    Major media in the country gave the story big play, depicting the questions about a lack of armor for vehicles as an embarrassment to Mr. Rumsfeld.
    However, Mr. Drudge yesterday published a purported e-mail from Mr. Pitts in which the reporter brags about how he set up Mr. Rumsfeld and inspired a media frenzy.
    "I just had one of my best days as a journalist today," Mr. Pitts said in the e-mail. "As luck would have it, our journey North was delayed just long enough (so) I could attend a visit today here by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. I was told yesterday that only soldiers could ask questions so I brought two of them along with me as my escorts. Before hand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat have. While waiting for the VIP, I went and found the Sgt. in charge of the microphone for the question and answer session and made sure he knew to get my guys out of the crowd. ...
    "The great part was that after the event was over the throng of national media following Rumsfeld — The New York Times, AP, all the major networks — swarmed to the two soldiers I brought from the unit I am embedded with."
    The reporter added: "I have been trying to get this story out for weeks — as soon as I (found) out I would be on an unarmored truck — and my paper published two stories on it. But it felt good to hand it off to the national press."
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R041210   WASHINGTON   Mom's eavesdropping violated privacy law
    SEATTLE — Striking a blow for rebellious teenagers, the Washington Supreme Court ruled yesterday that state law prohibits parents from eavesdropping on a child's phone conversations.
    The case reached the high court because of a purse snatching. A 17-year-old boy was convicted of the robbery, in part on testimony from his girlfriend's mother, who overheard him discussing the crime on the phone with her daughter.
    The daughter had taken a cordless phone into her bedroom and closed the door. In another room, her mother pressed the speakerphone button on an extension, listened in and took notes.
    The court ruled that the daughter and her boyfriend had a reasonable expectation of privacy on the phone. Washington law prohibits intercepting or recording conversations without the consent of all participants.
    The boy will get a new trial.
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R041209   U.S. communities fail to keep 'Christ' in Christmas
 

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Is America ready for C——-mas?
    Christmas has been sanitized in schools and public squares, in malls and parades where Santa's OK, Jesus Christ is not. "Jingle Bells" rocks, but forget about "Silent Night."
    Some hope to assure the nation that it's all right to say "Merry Christmas."
    Champions of creches, live Nativity scenes, Christmas trees, greeting cards and salutations offer compelling evidence that December 25 is still a religious holiday — not a violation of separation of church and state.
    They are ready to rumble.
    "Those who think that the censoring of Christmas is a blue-state phenomenon need to consider what happened today in the Wichita [Kansas] Eagle," said William Donahue of the New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
    The Kansas newspaper ran a correction, he said, for mistakenly referring to a "Christmas Tree" rather than a "Community Tree" at the Wichita Winterfest celebration.
    "It's time practicing Christians demanded to know from these speech-code fascists precisely who it is they think they are protecting from dropping the dreaded 'C-word' " Mr. Donahue said yesterday.
    Some are particularly irked by public bans on Christmas carols.
    "The fact is, 96 percent of us celebrate Christmas. For a small minority to force their way and their will on the public majority is unconscionable," said Greg Scott of the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund (ADF).
    "People are tired of efforts to sanitize religious expression. This policy against even instrumental Christmas music in schools violates common sense and is neither necessary nor constitutional," Mr. Scott added.
    Sworn to protect "religious liberty," the ADF has issued a seven-point legal primer citing court decisions made from 1963 to 2004 that neutralize the notion that the U.S. Constitution requires government officials to eliminate public mention of Christmas.
    They've sent their findings to more than 5,000 schools nationwide and enlisted about 800 pro-Christian lawyers to stand by, should lawsuits emerge.
    "The bottom line: It's okay to say 'Merry Christmas,' regardless of the legal threats from the American Civil Liberties Union and its allies," the ADF states.
    The Virginia-based Rutherford Institute, which also advocates religious freedom, issued a step-by-step guide to help the public understand the legalities of Christmas.
    "Whether through ignorance or fear, Americans are painfully misguided about the recognition of religious holidays," said John W. Whitehead, the group's president. "There is an irrational bias against anything remotely religious unless it's sanitized and secularized, and unfortunately, far too many parents, students and teachers erroneously believe they cannot do anything."
    Much has annoyed defenders of Christmas in the past two weeks.
    Denver, for example, refused to allow a Christian church float in the city's holiday parade, because "direct religious themes" were not allowed. Homosexual American Indians, Chinese lion dancers and German folk dancers, however, were welcome.
    The mayor of Somerville, Mass., issued a formal apology this week to anyone offended by a press release "mistakenly" issued from his office that called the town "holiday party" a "Christmas party."
    School districts in Florida and New Jersey have banned Christmas carols altogether, and an "all-inclusive" holiday song program at a Chicago-area elementary school included Jewish and Jamaican songs, but no Christmas carols.
    Meanwhile, a Kirkland, Wash., high-school principal nixed a production of "A Christmas Carol" because of Tiny Tim's prayer, "God bless us everyone," while neighboring libraries banned Christmas trees.
    Ken Schramm, a commentator with an ABC television affiliate in Seattle, dismissed it all as "P.C. smothering" yesterday.
    Down in Kentucky, local officials rejected the offer of Grace Baptist Church to stage a live Nativity scene in a public square.
    Such actions have not fazed the Chicago-based God Squad, a group of carpenters and volunteers who have built a giant Nativity scene at Daley Center Plaza in downtown Chicago every year since 1987, despite outcries from the ACLU, the American Jewish Congress and American Atheists.
    "Our Founding Fathers didn't intend to take religion out of the state. They took state out of religion," organizer Jim Finnegan told reporters when this year's construction began shortly after Thanksgiving.
    The Nativity is still there.
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H041209   Massachusetts firms drop domestic-partner benefits
 

By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

To some major Massachusetts employers, this year's advent of same-sex "marriage" means the end of their domestic-partnership benefit programs.
    The decision by IBM Corp., the New York Times Co. and Northeastern University to offer health benefits only to "married" same-sex couples pleases some advocates, but troubles others.
    The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's Goodridge decision, which legalized same-sex "marriage" as of May 17, "leveled the playing field," said Candace Quinn, vice president of Baystate Health System, which employs 90,000 people.
    Years ago, she said, Baystate started offering domestic-partner benefits to its homosexual employees, because "they had no other option to cover their life partners."
    The Goodridge decision changed everything for same-sex couples, she said, and because Baystate doesn't offer domestic-partner benefits to unmarried heterosexual couples, it created an unfair situation for them.
    "So we are going back to the policy that we only supply benefits to married couples," said Ms. Quinn, adding that the policy change was announced in the summer so Baystate's 50 affected employees could make plans — including wedding arrangements.
    These decisions show that "corporate America is taking a step toward equality," said Winnie Stachelberg, political director at the Human Rights Campaign. "Equalizing benefits, responsibilities and rights for individuals by corporations was exactly what this [Goodridge] case was all about. It was about fair and equal treatment."
    Other homosexual rights groups, however, have expressed concerns that such policy changes could have unintended consequences.
    "There is no reason to terminate domestic-partnership policies immediately," Boston-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) said in a report.
    Many homosexual couples have good reasons not to "marry" — tax liabilities, potential job losses if they are in the military, potential rejection as adoptive parents — said GLAD, whose lawyers won the landmark Goodridge case.
    "Without careful thought, employers could inadvertently harm their employees' families and children," the group said.
    Massachusetts companies are making logical decisions in changing their policies, said Peter Sprigg, director of the Family Research Council's Center for Marriage and Family Studies. What's striking, he said, is that groups such as GLAD "are complaining about it."
    "If homosexual activists were sincere in wanting to participate in the institution of marriage, they should have no problem with the abolition of domestic-partner benefits once they earn the right to marry," said Mr. Sprigg, the author of "Outrage: How Gay Activists and Liberal Judges are Trashing Democracy to Redefine Marriage."
    The fact that some homosexual activists want to keep their options open shows that they are more interested in a "smorgasbord of relationship choices" with financial benefits, not marriage, he said.
    According to a Boston Globe story this week, major employers who are phasing out their domestic-partner health benefits include: IBM Corp., Raytheon Co., Emerson College, Northeastern University, the National Fire Protection Association, Boston Medical Center and the New York Times Co., which owns the Globe.
    Some companies, such as the Times Co., are dropping domestic-partner benefits only for nonunion employees because union employees have their benefits set by collective-bargaining agreements, the Globe story said.
    Brad Salavich, global program manager for work force diversity at IBM, told the Globe that its domestic-partner benefit — which will be phased out by January 2006 — was intended to "equalize benefits" for homosexual couples.
    "If [employees] choose not to continue to receive the benefits, that is a personal choice," he said.
    "It's sad and unnecessary" that any company would drop health benefits to couples, said Marshall Miller, co-founder of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, which in June joined leading homosexual rights groups in urging Massachusetts employers to retain their domestic-partnership plans.
    "As a society, we all benefit from having more people insured. And it certainly doesn't help the institution of marriage to force people to marry in order to get health insurance," he said.
    Squabbling over benefits "is not surprising," said Kristian Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which supports traditional marriage and opposes benefits for unmarried people.
    "There's a lot of confusion here as to which way we are going, as a culture. We're in sinking sand right now ... and we need to get back on solid footing," he said.
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H041208   Bills wed California to gay 'marriage' spotlight
 

By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Same-sex "marriage" promises to be a hot topic in California next year, as lawmakers introduce dueling bills this week and a high-profile lawsuit gets a hearing later this month.
    "We want to equalize everything," said California Assemblyman Mark Leno, who on Monday introduced his bill to make marriage "gender-neutral."
    Currently, California's family code says marriage arises out of a civil contract "between a man and a woman." Mr. Leno's bill would change the wording to "between two persons."
    It also says that no clergyman will be required to solemnize a same-sex ceremony.
    "This protects everyone's right to freedom of religion. At the same time, it ensures that all Californians are provided equal protection under the law" regarding marriage licenses, Mr. Leno, a homosexual Democrat who represents San Francisco, told reporters yesterday.
    Opponents of same-sex "marriage" rallied in the state Capitol in Sacramento yesterday.
    "Merry Christmas, California. The Democrat politicians want to trash your vote and push homosexual 'marriage' on you and children," said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, a traditional-values group.
    The Traditional Values Coalition, led by the Rev. Lou Sheldon, has denounced the Leno bill and called for a state constitutional marriage amendment instead.
    This week, Republican Assemblyman Ray Haynes of Riverside and state Sen. Bill Morrow of Oceanside introduced bills to amend the state constitution to say that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." This is the language of Proposition 22, a ballot initiative passed by 61 percent of voters in 2000 that cannot be overturned by lawmakers.
    Part of the upcoming debate will be over whether Proposition 22 refers to all marriages conducted in California or only out-of-state marriages that seek recognition in California.
    The Leno bill is generally given better odds for passage. The California Legislature is dominated by Democrats and both chambers' leaders — Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez of Los Angeles and state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata of Oakland — have signaled their support for Mr. Leno's bill, which is co-sponsored by Mr. Nunez.
    There will be some Democratic dissent, one assemblyman warned. "Not every Democrat represents Los Angeles or San Francisco," Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla, a Democrat who represents suburban Pittsburg, told the San Francisco Chronicle this week. "There are a number of members who think this is a mistake," he said.
    But Mr. Leno's bill only needs a bare majority to pass, while the Republican marriage amendment need approval by two-thirds of lawmakers.
    Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a wild card in the process. Detroit News columnist Deb Price wrote this week that Mr. Schwarzenegger has said he "doesn't oppose gay marriage if his state wants it."
    This has bolstered Mr. Leno's hopes that California might soon become the first state to allow same-sex "marriage" because of legislative — not court — action, Ms. Price wrote. Such a move would "put a stake through the 'activist judges' argument," she quotes Mr. Leno as saying.
    However, a spokeswoman for Mr. Schwarzenegger yesterday told reporters that he would prefer that same-sex "marriage" issues be decided in court or by "a vote of the people."
    A consolidated lawsuit seeking full "marriage" rights for same-sex couples has a Dec. 22 hearing before San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard A. Kramer. This case, which pits the city and county of San Francisco against the state of California, is expected to reach the California Supreme Court.
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L041208   Bush 'disappointing' some pro-lifers
 

By Ralph Z. Hallow
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Some pro-life leaders are doing a slow burn over President Bush's early Cabinet nominations of Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales and his support of pro-choice Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter.
    These leaders say Mr. Bush is not the only one who can claim a mandate from his Nov. 2 victory, since the Bush campaign has credited evangelical Christians with having played a major role.
    "Mr. Bush has been disappointing since the election because he supported Specter for the Judiciary chairmanship over the strong objections of pro-life Christians and because he nominated pro-choice candidates for both attorney general and secretary of state," says Rod Pennington, founder of Voices Heard, a new grass-roots Christian activist group.
    American Life League President Judie Brown said that, in a private meeting with her and other pro-life activists, Mr. Gonzales said, "I have no problem with Roe vs. Wade" — the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Mrs. Brown and other abortion opponents have sought to have that ruling overturned ever since.
    Mrs. Brown says the Justice Department is "crucial to pro-life concerns" because the attorney general "must defend any law passed by Congress, including the partial-birth abortion ban" that Mr. Bush signed into law last year. "We question where Mr. Gonzales' heart would be in such a defense," Mrs. Brown said.
    She also said she doubts whether Mr. Gonzales will vigorously press the Justice Department's lawsuit against an Oregon physician-assisted suicide law brought under Attorney General John Ashcroft, who is stepping down.
    As for Miss Rice, currently Mr. Bush's national security adviser, her job as secretary of state would touch on the right-to-life movement's concerns in that the Justice Department can — and now does — bar U.S. taxpayer funding of abortion groups overseas.
    "It's one of the few issues where you have a right-to-life concurrence with the State Department," says Free Congress Foundation Chairman Paul M. Weyrich.
    Mr. Pennington says his concern about Miss Rice stems in part from a 1999 San Francisco Chronicle interview in which she is quoted as calling herself a "pro-choice evangelical." Through a spokesman, Miss Rice declined to discuss that interview or her views on social issues.
    Many other evangelical and Catholic abortion opponents say they trust Mr. Bush and support — or at the very least reserve judgment on — his recent Cabinet nominations.
    "I know Condoleezza Rice and know something of the way she thinks and have tremendous confidence in her," said Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
    Mr. Mohler said he expects Mr. Gonzales would, as attorney general, uphold Mr. Bush's pro-life policies before the courts.
    Mr. Gonzales, currently White House counsel, aroused suspicions in pro-life circles while on the Texas Supreme Court, when he joined a majority in ruling that requiring minors to get parental permission for an abortion would, in some cases, violate the state constitution. Mrs. Brown said Mr. Gonzales' ruling implied that "he does not view abortion as a heinous crime."
    However, other pro-lifer leaders say they agree with the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, which has said it will support Mr. Gonzales to head the Justice Department.
    Meanwhile, Mr. Specter remains a sore point with some traditional-values leaders, still fuming over the support Mr. Bush gave him against a conservative challenger, Rep. Patrick J. Toomey, during the Pennsylvania Republican primary.
    Mr. Specter, slated to succeed pro-life Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, as Judiciary chairman when the new Congress convenes, caused an uproar with a post-election interview in which he seemed to be warning Mr. Bush against making pro-life judicial nominations. Mr. Specter later denied such an interpretation, and pledged to support the president's nominees.
    "We have mixed emotions on Arlen," Michael Bowman, executive director for Concerned Woman Political Action Committee. "We believe if the GOP has to be dependent on him, they will never truly be in the majority."
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L041208    CALIFORNIA   Advocates for abandoned babies win lottery
    CALIMESA — A couple who provide funerals for dead abandoned babies and helped inspire a law to save unwanted newborns have won a $27 million jackpot in the California lottery.
    Debi Faris-Cifelli and her husband, Steve, won the jackpot last Wednesday and plan to use the winnings to continue their advocacy work, possibly by starting a college scholarship fund.
    "We can do some good with the money," Mr. Cifelli, a high school guidance counselor, told television station KABC on Monday. "Now we're going to be able to do some things that'll last lifetimes, generations."
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R041207   Curious criticism
    "For no apparent reason, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democrats' new leader, is denouncing Justice Clarence Thomas," James Taranto writes in his Best of the Web Today column at www.OpinionJournal.com.
    Mr. Reid, in an appearance Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," said he might be able to support Justice Antonin Scalia as the next chief justice, but not Justice Thomas.
    When host Tim Russert asked Mr. Reid why he opposed Justice Thomas, the senator replied: "I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written. I don't — I just don't think that he's done a good job as a Supreme Court justice."
    Mr. Taranto commented: "Now, we haven't read Thomas' entire oeuvre, but we've read quite a few of his opinions, and we wouldn't describe any of them as 'poorly written' — much less so poorly written as to make him 'an embarrassment to the Supreme Court.' (One of our favorite opinions of recent years is Thomas' dissent in Grutter v. Bollinger, the 2003 case upholding racial preferences in college admissions provided they're vague enough.)
    "It's a shame Russert didn't press Reid to name some Thomas opinions he considers to be poorly written. In the absence of such examples, one can't help but suspect that the new Senate Democratic leader is simply stereotyping Thomas as unintelligent because he is black."
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L041206   Pro-lifers set sights on new Congress
 

By Amy Fagan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The pro-life movement, which helped pass several initiatives in the 108th Congress, thinks Republican gains in the Senate will aid the chances for bills to enforce state parental notification laws and to alert pregnant women about fetal pain.
    "There is enough of a shift that we think bills such as these two ... have a real chance," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee.
    The Senate has been the biggest blockade to pro-life bills. Republican pickups in this year's election mean the chamber will have about three additional pro-life votes come January, Mr. Johnson said.
    He said he hopes the defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, might make some pro-choice senators "who marched in lock step with the abortion lobby ... less inclined to get out on thin ice" in blocking abortion restrictions.
    Both sides of the abortion debate are anticipating a Supreme Court vacancy, particularly after deteriorating health has forced Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist to miss several sessions.
    Mr. Johnson said a battle over any Supreme Court nominee would take top priority for his group.
    Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, also said a Supreme Court vacancy would be a "huge priority" for her side. She promised a "tremendous fight" over any nominee who would "turn back the clock" on abortion or other rights.
    Until that fight erupts, however, the pro-life lobby will focus on other legislation.
    One priority, introduced as a bill for the first time in May, would require doctors to tell women seeking abortions after 20 weeks about the capacity of the fetus to feel pain and offer the option of pain-reducing drugs.
    The fetal-pain issue garnered interest during a federal court case in New York, in which the government was defending the federal ban on late-term partial-birth abortions. The judge in that case said the defense presented "credible evidence" that a fetus feels pain.
    Mr. Johnson said there is growing support for the fetal pain bill in the House, and he hopes it can pass both chambers this term.
    A bill returning to the scene next session would make it a federal crime to circumvent a state's parental-notification law by transporting a pregnant teen across the state line for an abortion without parental involvement.
    The measure passed the House three times but stalled in the Senate.
    Miss Saporta said the fetal-pain bill is "part of their campaign to separate the fetus from the woman."
    Although the teen-transport bill likely will be introduced in both chambers, she said, passage would "put the most vulnerable teens at risk" by forcing those in dangerous family situations to involve their parents in abortion decisions and by making other family members criminals if they intervene.
    Connie Mackey, vice president for government affairs for the Family Research Council, said her group also will push a ban on cloning human embryos for any purpose.
    The legislation stalled last session, but House and Senate sponsors plan to bring back their bills next session. "We will be working hard" to pass them, Mrs. Mackey said.
    She said her group will fight for more federal funding for adult stem-cell research, as a more promising alternative to embryonic stem-cell research. Pro-life lawmakers also are considering proposals to regulate abortion clinics and ban or limit RU-486, a home drug treatment that induces an abortion.
    Miss Saporta said she also suspects conservative lawmakers will try to ban or limit RU-486 but predicted they will fail.
    "It will be somewhat easier for anti-choice forces to pass further restrictions on abortion, but they won't be successful in all of their initiatives," she said.
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R041206   Passion plea
    CatholicExchange.com Editor in Chief Tom Allen is reminding readers of the upcoming People's Choice Film Awards and the "faithful" public's opportunity to vote for "The Passion of the Christ."
    "While the Motion Picture Academy has predictably given 'The Passion of the Christ' the cold shoulder, Mel Gibson's epic film has broken into the Top 5 for the People's Choice Awards for 'Favorite Movie Drama,' " reveals Mr. Allen, who considers the film "a sign of contradiction in our ever-deteriorating entertainment culture."
    "Let Hollywood know what people of faith believe is the best movie of 2004," he encourages, posting the Internet ballot site: www.pcavote.com.
    Voting ends Dec. 13, with the awards presented Sunday, Jan. 9, on CBS.
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H041206   'Don't ask, don't tell' faces court test

ASSOCIATED PRESS
    The Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy is being challenged by 12 homosexuals who have been separated from the military.
    They planned to file a federal lawsuit today in Boston that would cite last year's landmark Supreme Court ruling that overturned state laws making sodomy a crime as grounds for reversing the policy.
    Other courts have upheld the 11-year-old policy, but C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which is advising the plaintiffs, said those decisions came prior to the 2003 Supreme Court ruling.
    "We think the gay ban can no longer survive constitutionally," he said.
    Justin Peacock, a former Coast Guard boatswain's mate from Knoxville, Tenn., who is among the plaintiffs in the planned U.S. District Court lawsuit, was kicked out of the service after someone reported that he was seen holding hands with another man.
    "I would love to rejoin, but even if I don't get back in at least I could say I tried to get the policy changed," Mr. Peacock said.
    Lt. Col. Joe Richard, a Pentagon spokesman, said officials have not seen the lawsuit and therefore could not comment on it.
    The so-called "don't ask, don't tell" policy allows homosexuals to serve in the military as long as they keep their sexual orientation private. It was a compromise reached during the Clinton administration, after President Clinton had proposed allowing open homosexuals to serve. The Pentagon's previous policy barred homosexuals from military service.
    The Supreme Court ruled last year that state laws making sodomy a crime were unconstitutional. That decision overturned an earlier Supreme Court ruling that had upheld such laws.
    Two other lawsuits challenging the policy have been filed since the high court's reversal.
    One was brought in California by the Log Cabin Republicans. Mr. Osburn said that group could face a difficult fight because it was not bringing its suit on behalf of a specific injured party. He also noted that a federal appeals court in California has upheld "don't ask, don't tell," but the appellate court for Boston has not ruled on the issue.
    In the other suit, which was filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the plaintiff, who was separated from the Army, is seeking to recover his pension and is challenging the ban.
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O041206   Frist's reply
    Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said yesterday that the government should review federally funded sexual-abstinence programs, under fire from Democrats who say they contain false and misleading medical information.
    The programs, which get $170 million from Congress this year, teach young people the benefits of abstaining from sex until marriage. By law, they are not allowed to discuss any benefits of birth control or condoms in preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
    A report last week by Rep. Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat, charged that 11 of the 13 most widely used programs contain misinformation. He said they underestimate the effectiveness of condoms in preventing pregnancy and the spread of disease, exaggerate the prevalence of emotional and physical distress following abortion, blur science and religion or get fundamental scientific facts wrong.
    Asked about these charges, Mr. Frist, a doctor who often calls on his medical expertise, did not directly address the issues raised. But he said the programs should be reviewed, the Associated Press reports.
    "Of course they should be reviewed," Mr. Frist said on ABC's "This Week." "That's in part our responsibility to make sure that all of these programs are reviewed."
    Mr. Frist touted the benefits of a more comprehensive approach backed by President Bush in the global fight against AIDS called "ABC" for abstinence, being faithful and use of condoms.
    "Whether it's abstinence or whether it's a condom or whether it is better education on the infectivity of how washing hands in terms of the flu, all of these are public health challenges that we need in terms of better education," Mr. Frist said.
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H041206   MICHIGAN    Teacher, teen 'wed' in pagan ritual
    SOUTH HAVEN — A teacher and a 14-year-old former female student whom she is accused of sexually assaulting participated in witchcraft together and even "wed" in a pagan ritual, police said.
    Elizabeth Miklosovic, 36, a teacher at South Haven's Baseline Middle School, was arraigned last week on a charge of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
    Miss Miklosovic, a seventh-grade language arts teacher, lives with another woman and their adopted son, authorities said. She was placed on leave from her job.
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R041209C   High stakes benchmarks
 

By Thomas Sowell

Who sits on the Supreme Court for life may be more important than who sits in the White House for four years. With vacancies to fill among federal judges in general and vacancies expected to occur on the aging Supreme Court in particular, the stakes are very high in the judicial appointments made in the next few years. We and our children will be living with the consequences for a long time.
    This looks like an opportunity that may come just once in a lifetime to make judicial appointments that will stop the courts' dangerous pattern of continually eroding away the voting public's right to govern themselves through their elected representatives.
    Both political parties understand the historic high stakes in these appointments. Senate Democrats have dug in and refused to allow some judicial nominees even to be voted on by the full Senate because these were judges who believe in applying the written law, not imposing judges' personal notions as the law of the land.
    With the agenda of the political left increasingly rejected by voters at the polls, the only way to get the items on that agenda enacted into law is to have judges who will decree the liberal agenda from the bench. Too many judges have already done that on everything from gay marriage to racial quotas and the death penalty.
    It is not these or other particular issues which are the highest stakes. The highest stakes are democratic self-governance versus judicial fiats that threaten to make a mockery of the American system of government by elected officials.
    Some Republican senators are considering reacting to the Democrats' obstruction of judicial nominees by a change in the Senate rules that would no longer allow a minority of senators to prevent the majority from voting on these nominees.
    Putting in this rule change to stop the filibustering of judicial nominees would be a long overdue show of backbone on the part of the Republican senators. But George Will's column in the Dec. 8 issue of Newsweek argues that this is a bad idea.
    Putting a stop to filibustering judicial nominees could mean sliding down a "slippery slope" toward declaring "the illegitimacy of filibusters generally," according to Mr. Will. But, after more than two centuries of American history, it is not at all obvious what benefit this country has ever received from filibusters.
    It is all too easy to recall how Southern Democrats for decades blocked attempts to give blacks basic civil rights by filibustering such legislation in the Senate. That was surely not our country's finest hour.
    Filibusters, like judicial activism, make a mockery of the voter's right to self-governance. Both are ways for a willful minority to block the majority.
    As for slippery slopes, we are already on a very slippery slope toward irreversible laws created by judicial activists. Even judges who respect the Constitution as it was written and legislation as it was passed also respect judicial precedents.
    Conservative judges are not inclined to reverse long-standing precedents on which millions of people have relied, even if these judges think the original decision should not have been made the way it was. With activist judges guided only by their own ideology and conservative judges reluctant to overturn precedents, the agenda of the left is easy to enact from the bench and hard to dislodge afterward.
    If both the liberal agenda and the whole process of judicial lawlessness that serves it are ever to be stopped, Senate Republicans will have to face the question that Ronald Reagan used to ask: "If not us, who — and if not now, when?"
    George Will warns that someday the Republicans will be in the minority and Democrats can then use the proposed rule change to keep them from blocking legislation they don't like. But judicial nominations are too fundamental an issue, at a time when we stand at a legal crossroads, to worry that a rule change will, in effect, escalate the political arms race.
    The alternative to this political arms race is to stay disarmed in the face of a ruthless adversary who recognizes no limits of propriety or even decency, as their treatment of Judge Robert Bork and Judge Clarence Thomas amply demonstrated long ago.
 
    Thomas Sowell is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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M041209C   The fourth estate rumbles for more privilege
 

By Jonah Goldberg

Web only
 
    Maybe you haven't noticed, but the mainstream media are suffering from the perception that they're just the teeniest bit arrogant. Oh, who am I kidding? They behave like they're nobles or a priestly class. Dan Rather, Brian Williams and Peter Jennings might as well wear flowing ermine robes. From their palaces in midtown Manhattan they determine what the peasants see and read. They regard upstarts such as National Review, Fox News and -- shudder -- bloggers as little more than a motley collection of heretics, Anabaptists and barbarians.
    In the Middle Ages, aristocrats and clerics were protected by a panoply of rules and customs -- sumptuary laws, for example -- that separated them from the peons. Henry VIII declared that no man below the rank of earl could "wear cloth of gold or silver, or silk of purple color" in an effort to maintain a color-coding system for the lower classes.
    Well, elite journalists may not want a color-coding system for the rabble, but they do seem keen on having special laws just for them. How else are we to judge demands stemming from the Valerie Plame investigation? Recall that columnist Robert Novak revealed, perhaps inadvertently, CIA official Valerie Plame's identity in his column. The charge is that White House officials deliberately leaked her identity to Novak as payback after her husband, Joseph Wilson, "blew the whistle" on the administration. Wilson, a media prima donna of shocking proportions even for Washington, claimed that the White House knowingly put his wife's life in danger (this was shortly before Wilson and his wife posed in a big photo spread for Vanity Fair).
    Personally, I am dubious of the charge, and I think Wilson's credibility is beyond wanting. But we won't know until we know. So the Justice Department is rightly investigating the allegations, and the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, wants various journalists who were reportedly also fed the information about Plame to testify. One of these journalists, Judith Miller of the New York Times, is scheduled to appear before a judge this week and may go to jail if she doesn't spill the beans (this column was filed on the eve of her appearance). She vows that she won't reveal her sources. Miller's case is special because she never wrote about Plame.
    But now liberals are furious that journalists might actually have to help the investigation they demanded. Journalists are beyond indignant. As a group, they seem to think asking journalists to reveal their sources is more sacrilegious than using a church as a stable.
    The commentary about this affair is focused on whether or not journalists should report what they know about a crime. After all, knowingly endangering a CIA agent's identity is, and should be, a serious offense. If a plumber witnesses a crime, he has to say what he saw or he goes to jail. But not journalists. Indeed, Michael Kinsley recounts an illuminating story. "A very distinguished New York Times writer" once told Kinsley that "if the Times ballet critic, heading home after assessing the day's offerings of pliis and glissades, happens to witness a murder on her way to the Times Square subway, she has a First Amendment right and obligation to refuse to testify about what she saw." Why? Because she's a journalist!
    But in all of this debate, what people seem to be overlooking is that journalists aren't always analogous to witnesses to crimes. Sometimes they're accomplices. Imagine that a vindictive government official wants to embarrass an opponent by leaking his tax returns. He steals them from confidential files and meets a reporter from the Times in a back alley. The reporter publishes them. It seems to me the reporter isn't a witness, he's an accessory. If it makes it easier to understand the point, imagine instead of tax returns it's plans for a cheap nuclear weapon Al-Qaida could make.
    Obviously, there's a real, longstanding tension here; journalists do need some wiggle-room. But keep in mind, the Plame case isn't about a whistleblower. It's allegedly about a government official (or officials) abusing their authority. These journalists aren't exposing wrongdoing; they're concealing it.
    Indeed, the reigning talking point from the First Amendment voluptuaries is that lawyers and doctors are protected from revealing secrets, why shouldn't journalists be? Well, lawyers are not allowed to help their clients break the law, and neither are doctors. If it's against the law to ID a CIA agent, why should journalists -- including Novak -- be automatically off-the-hook?
    What's particularly ironic is that the big media lawyers fear the courts will allow blanket shield for journalists because there's no way to exclude one-man-band Web journalists -- i.e. bloggers -- from the new right. And what's the point of giving the nobility a new privilege if any peasant can take advantage of it, too?
    Jonah Goldberg is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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R041208C   The secular inquisition
 

By Samuel Gregg

Christians are bad. Comrades are good. That is the lesson of the recently concluded parallel process by which the European Union Commission and the European Parliament accepted Laszlo Kovacs of Hungary as a European commissioner while vociferously rejecting Italy's European affairs minister, Rocco Buttiglione, for his views on marriage and homosexuality.
    The media describe Laszlo Kovacs as a "socialist." In fact, he is a career communist with decades of totalitarian experience. Mr. Kovacs worked closely with the leadership of Janos Kadar's sinister regime, installed literally over the dead bodies of the Hungarian democracy activists killed by Soviet tanks after the 1956 popular uprising against the Communist Party's monopoly of power. Years before glasnost, Mr. Kovacs was one of the dictator's henchmen with the title of "Deputy Head of the Department of International Relations" of the Hungarian Communist Party's Central Committee.
    Given that communist systems imprisoned, tortured and murdered millions of people, one might think Euro parliamentarians would be slightly concerned about how deeply Mr. Kovacs was involved in some of the darker aspects of Hungary's communist dictatorship.
    Just as searching questions were rightly asked of former Nazi Party members seeking public office in postwar Germany, they might have queried speeches Mr. Kovacs gave in the 1980s, attacking Western institutions such as NATO and extolling the Soviet Union as the bedrock of Eastern Europe's "stability."
    Instead, the Euro MPs confined themselves to grumbling about Mr. Kovacs' somewhat scanty knowledge of energy policy. Mr. Kovacs passed his confirmation hearings with flying colors and is now the EU taxation and customs commissioner.
    Rocco Buttiglione never previously participated in a murderous regime. He is a worldly, mild-mannered, philosophy professor who can be defined as a classical liberal in the Acton-Tocqueville tradition. Yet Mr. Buttiglione was the focus of a tempest in the European Parliament. The same MPs who calmly evaluated the nomination of several ex-communists labeled Mr. Buttiglione a potential inquisitor, an intolerant zealot, and a stain on the political landscape. His views, they said, made him unfit for office.
    All Professor Buttiglione did was articulate his beliefs and answer questions. A full reading of the confirmation hearings transcripts reveal a man with profound tolerance and a commitment to equality before the law and to the equal dignity of every individual. The transcripts also reveal his religious faith and his personal views on the family and homosexuality — views Mr. Buttiglione stressed would not affect his official duties. His opponents, however, began a public campaign and maliciously quoted the transcripts selectively to caricature Mr. Buttiglione as a homophobe who believes women should be in the home with children (ironically, Mr. Buttiglione's wife is a successful working professional).
    The transcripts (available online at www.acton.org/rb) show Mr. Buttiglione blundered by assuming his questioners were open to a mature discussion of his views, including his opinion — which, incidentally, is also taught by Christianity — that not all sins should be treated as criminal offenses.
    The Euro MPs were not interested in such a discussion. Mr. Buttiglione was a target. He was "Borked" because he was not afraid to provide truthful answers about his personal beliefs even though those beliefs would have no role in his work. Mr. Buttiglione was Borked because faith in Europe is only acceptable if it is politically correct. Believing Christians have no place in Europe's public square.
    The breathtaking double standard of the past six weeks results from the rise of secularist fundamentalism. In the United States, secularist fundamentalism dominates academe, where speech codes are regularly used to harass any religious organization whose views on particular moral questions offend groups privileged by secular fundamentalism.
    Secularist fundamentalism also rears its head in the political realm. For example, Attorney General John Ashcroft was the target of opposition for being a religious believer. The American Civil Liberties Union and a chorus of other opponents repeatedly told us Mr. Ashcroft would try to impose his religious beliefs or even seek a theocracy.
    The secular fundamentalists do not care if the religious believer swears to uphold the law — all those with politically incorrect beliefs and faith must be persecuted and punished.
    An example is Judge Bill Pryor, whose offense was admitting he is a practicing Catholic. Some religious views are not forbidden under secularist fundamentalism — provided the practitioners have solid left-wing credentials. Secular fundamentalists and their left-wing allies never complain about the involvement in public life of the Rev. Jesse Jackson or the Rev. Al Sharpton.
    Europe and America both are witnessing a curious phenomenon of those who present themselves as guardians of tolerance committing terrible acts of intolerance in the name of tolerance. One need not be religious to regard this as a disturbing trend. The most effective way to combat the assault on religious liberty is through consistent public exposure and by rejecting the double standard. Anyone who desires genuine, open conversation in the public square should be on notice that secularist fundamentalism is rapidly infecting public life and that we sacrifice committed and worthy public servants if we allow witch hunts and Borking in the confirmation process.
 
    Samuel Gregg is director of research at the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Mich.
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O041207C   Moral standards holding their own
 

By Steve Chapman

Web only
 
    Nicollette Sheridan in a towel; raunchy lyrics on the radio; violence, skin and bad language in nearly every film -- it's no wonder Americans feel the entertainment industry is putting in overtime doing the devil's work. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that 70 percent of us fear that "popular culture -- that is, television, movies and music -- is lowering the moral standards in this country."
    But if that's what the purveyors of trash are attempting, they're doing a very poor job of it. The curious experience of recent years is that the more blood-letting and debauchery we're exposed to in mass media, the less inclined we are to emulate it. It's as though vicarious sin is an adequate substitute for the real thing. Our entertainment may be sinking lower, but our moral standards keep rising in spite of it.
    In fact, anyone trying to prove that we're succumbing to bad influences would have trouble filling a thimble with evidence. In 1994, conservative moralist William J. Bennett published a book, "The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators," noting an array of alarming trends and warning of impending doom. "Unless these exploding social pathologies are reversed," declared Bennett, "they will lead to the decline and perhaps even to the fall of the American republic."
    Well, he's been proven right in a sense -- most of those pathologies were reversed, and the republic didn't fall. But social conservatives rarely publicize the progress we've made. As a result, many Americans mistakenly assume that we are going to hell on a fast freight.
    One of the most vicious and destructive social ills is crime. In the late 1980s, with the rise of crack, it appeared to be spinning out of control. But in the last decade, the crime wave has moved toward low tide. Since peaking in 1991, the murder rate has plunged by 43 percent. The rate for all violent crimes has fallen by 29 percent. Ditto for property crimes like burglary and theft.
    You'd think all the canoodling onscreen would overstimulate carnal appetites, particularly among the young and hormonal. But all the data suggest it works more like a cold shower. Among teenagers, for example, the federal Centers for Disease Control report that since 1991, "HIV infection, other sexually-transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancy have decreased among high school students nationwide." Out-of-wedlock births among teens are down as well.
    Among women in general, unintended pregnancies have become less common. That's one reason the abortion rate, which was already on the decline, continued to fall during the 1990s. Although there have been some claims that it has risen since 2001, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which specializes in reproductive health research, says the data are too sketchy at this point to know whether anything has changed.
    Nor does all the racy fare seem to weaken marriage as an institution. The divorce rate has been slowly falling since the early 1980s, including a 16 percent decline in the last decade. Birth rates among unmarried women have been stable.
    How about other vices? Alcohol consumption is on the wane, along with tobacco use. Drunk driving deaths last year hit their lowest level since 1999. A rare exception is illicit drug use, which has risen.
    From all this data, you might get the idea that people take what they see and hear as a guide -- to what not to do. As it happens, there's other evidence for that proposition. In the Bible Belt, people tend to be more religious, which would be expected to foster more upright conduct. But the expectation proves unfounded.
    In 2002, most of the states with the highest divorce rates (after perennial champion Nevada) were conservative and Southern -- such as Arkansas, Alabama and Kentucky. The state with the lowest rate of marital dissolution? Massachusetts, home of John Kerry and hotbed of secular liberalism.
    How do we explain the overall paradox? Maybe endless exposure to racy or violent entertainment really does reduce the need for people to seek out such thrills in real life. Maybe openness about sex, drinking and other risky pleasures fosters more communication, which in turn leads to better decision-making. Maybe when we trust individuals with the freedom to make their own choices, they become more responsible rather than less.
    In any event, we do know that however tasteless and degrading our entertainment may be, we can enjoy it (or not) without letting it rule our lives. Our moral standards may be under attack, but they seem to be big enough to take care of themselves.
     Steve Chapman is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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R041212L   Parents' responsibility vs. children's rights
    Yet again, the courts have taken a stand favoring the granting of "rights" to some groups while removing them from others ("Mom's eavesdropping violated privacy law," American Scene, Nation, Friday).
    Ignoring the details of the case and focusing on the broader issue, what the Washington Supreme Court did was grant broad privacy rights to minor children while depriving parents of one means of carrying out their legal responsibilities for monitoring their children and their children's behavior.
    What comes to mind is the Columbine High School massacre. In that case, the parents of the killers both implicitly and explicitly were held responsible by the media and by the nation for not being aware of their children's activities and for not intervening. Had they done so — by listening to their children's telephone conversations or monitoring their Internet activities, for example — they may have saved many lives.
    As a parent, it seems to me that the courts cannot hold parents responsible for the behavior of their minor children while simultaneously granting rights to their minor children that deprive parents of the very means to carry out their legal responsibilities. Which way do the courts and the court of public opinion want it?
 
    GORDON E. FINLEY
    Miami
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M041212E   Liberal bigotry, NYT-style

On Friday, the New York Times took Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to task for comments he made last Sunday about future Supreme Court nominations on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press." Trouble is, the NYT gave Mr. Reid a pass over his patronizing treatment of Justice Clarence Thomas. The Nevada Democrat belittled Justice Thomas' record on the court as an "embarrassment," without providing a single substantive example of his supposed malfeasance. Moderator Tim Russert uncharacteristically let him get away with it.
    The NYT had nothing negative to say about Mr. Reid's demeaning treatment of Justice Thomas, so we presume that it doesn't bother their editorial-page staff very much. But the newspaper complained that he didn't try to caricature Justice Antonin Scalia as well. Mr. Reid described Justice Scalia as "one smart guy" that he might be able to support. This was unacceptable to the liberal party-line apparatchiks who run the NYT editorial page, so Mr. Reid needed to be put in his place. By failing to denounce Justice Scalia's "ultraextreme record," the paper solemnly intoned, Mr. Reid has "stepped on his first hornet's nest as leader." The paper expressed hope that Mr. Reid has been re-educated by orthodox Senate liberals, and that he now realizes "that flashes of brilliance hardly justify Mr. Scalia's retrogressive record on constitutional law."
    But hope reigns eternal, the NYT opined, because Sen. Charles Schumer is there to save the day and make sure that Mr. Reid sticks to the approved propaganda line, and promises not to support judicial nominees who "are out of the mainstream" like Justice Scalia.
    What is most striking about the comments Mr. Reid made about Justice Thomas and the NYT made about Justice Scalia is how glibly they describe their targets as an "embarassment," or "retrogressive" or "ultraextreme" without providing any evidence to substantiate their attacks. Their attitude is one of supreme arrogance: Mr. Reid and the NYT are liberals, they are smarter than the rest of us, they are morally superior to the rest of us, and they don't have to lower themselves to explain why conservatives are inferior and backward. Is it any wonder that people who behave this way lose election after election?
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R041210E   Onward Christian soldiers
 

By Deborah Simmons
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." — I Corinthians 13
 
    Americans began the unholy trend in 1962, when prayer in public schools was outlawed. In the 1970s, American women began looking for Mr. Goodbar and men began turning inward to avoid being victimized by Superwomen. Post Roe v. Wade, sexed-up America and hedonism led to abortion-mania, abandoned babies and neglected children. Schools no longer celebrated Christmas or Easter, or even mentioned the words — lest they risk being labeled Bible thumpers. Don't even think about tossing bills into Salvation Army kettles at Target or shopping malls run by Kimco Realty — because the bell-ringing Christian soldiers are not welcome.
    No surprise, then, by this headline in Thursday's editions of The Washington Times: "U.S communities fail to keep 'Christ' in Christmas."
    Bah humbug.
    As the article pointed out, some people even consider saying the seasonal phrase "Merry Christmas" a blasphemy. What it is is anti-Christian.
    "School districts in Florida and New Jersey," the article said, "have banned Christmas carols altogether, and an 'all-inclusive' holiday song program at a Chicago-area elementary school included Jewish and Jamaican songs, but no Christmas carols."
    With so many PC groups on the prowl these days, you never know what's next on the list. I wouldn't be surprised in the least to learn that the "PC smotherers" want to ban the word "holiday" itself (holy + day) or take "Santa" (saint) out of Santa Claus.
    Blessedly, these and other anti-Christian efforts give rise to groups like the God Squad, do-gooders based in Chicago who defy the American Jewish Congress, American Atheists and (God forbid) the American Civil Liberties Union and build a nativity scene in the Windy City. Another group, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which is based in Arizona, issued a legal primer regarding the public square and Christmas. It cites, the article said, "court decisions made from 1963 to 2004 that neutralize the notion the U.S. Constitution requires government officials to eliminate public mention of Christmas."
    As Greg Scott of ADF said: "The fact is 96 percent of us celebrate Christmas. For a small minority to force their way and their will on the public majority is unconscionable ... people are tired of efforts to sanitize religious expression. This policy against even instrumental Christmas music in schools violates common sense and is neither necessary nor constitutional."
    Indeed, someone somewhere is always going to be offended by something — whether that something is religious in nature or not.
    Religious liberty means precisely that: You are free to worship, pray or sing praises to the Almighty and, conversely, you are free not to.
    The anti-Christianites take on the ridiculous. A principal in Kirkland, Wash., (population 45,000), lowered the curtain on a production of the classic "A Christmas Carol" because feeble Tiny Tim says, "God bless us everyone." Other communities condemn the term "Christmas" trees and instead refer to them as "community" trees. It ain't the same.
    Trying to please all of the people all of the time is impossible. Trying to please the "speech-code fascists," particularly those who are acting un-Christianlike, produces a never-ending stream of lawsuits, apologies and excuses. Target, for example, banned the Salvation Army's red-kettle program because of requests from other nonprofits. How uncharitable of Target's executives.
    The Salvation Army is my favorite charity. I take my from wallet and give to them because, like the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army doesn't play politics, and helps anyone and everyone. The Army's substance-abuse treatment programs are among the most successful in the nation. But do you know what's truly remarkable? What is now the Salvation Army began as the evangelist mission of William Booth in London in 1852 to aid the least, the last and the lost. After all these years, the Salvation Army remains a faithful guiding light.
    I guess I'll have to put Target, Best Buy, Circuit City and some other retailers on my naughty list, and spend my Christmas dollars elsewhere.
    Perhaps I'll visit Wal-Mart in search of a CD with Kate Smith singing, as only Kate Smith could, "God Bless America" or Billie Holiday with a soul-stirring rendition of "God Bless the Child." And while I'm at Wal-Mart, I can tip my wallet to a red kettle and toss a smile to the Salvation Army bell ringers for faithfully reminding us of the reason for the season. God bless them and the work they do in His name.
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R041211L   The uniqueness of Christmas
    Thank you for the article "U.S. communities fail to keep 'Christ' in Christmas" (Page 1, Thursday), by Jennifer Harper.
    We Christians are actually at fault for the loss of Christmas. We should have copyrighted it 2,000 years ago so no one could use it without our permission. This year, as I helped to plan the "holiday" party in my office, I realized how offended and angry I am that these whiners have stolen it from us. They can give gifts, attend parties and decorate, yet mention the actual name of the holiday that falls on Dec. 25 and you are stared down and reminded of its "accepted" name.
    They have not bothered to steal Hanukkah, Ramadan or Kwanzaa. All of those holidays are politically correct and can actually be mentioned in a public setting — even celebrated. Blending these holidays together is absolutely ridiculous, as well, because they have no semblance to one another in origin or grandeur.
    Surveys show that an overwhelming majority of the American public believes in Jesus Christ. It is time to take this holiday back from the politically correct and the retailers and forbid them from misusing our holiday.
    I only wish we had the help of the trial lawyers, but they are having too much financial success with malpractice suits. They could be a force to reckon with.
 
    TERRI ENDICOTT
    Burke
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R041211L  The uniqueness of Christmas 2
This year may prove to be an unusual setback in the history of religious freedom in the United States if the American Civil Liberties Union, the courts and several schools around the nation have their way.
    Each Christmas season (particularly, but at other times as well) over the past few decades, we have witnessed increasing attacks by the secular forces in the country against religious expression in the public arena (read: "at taxpayer expense").
    "Christmas holidays" are now "winter breaks" in schools, creche scenes on public property are banned by the courts; suits to deny federal dollars to "faith-based" community groups are filed; and even the mere mention of a Creator in the Declaration of Independence has ended, for now, the inclusion of this important historical document in one California teacher's class lessons about American history. Imagine what Thomas Jefferson and other Founders would say to that.
    If a school calling a holiday "Christmas" is construed to be Congress passing a "law respecting an establishment of religion," then for it to disallow all mentions of Christmas in school is "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion.
    After all, if freedom of speech doesn't end at the schoolhouse door, neither should free exercise of religion. Both are protections of the same First Amendment. The Constitution is not a cafeteria line: You don't pick out what you like and leave the rest. It applies together, or not at all.
 
    JACK WEBB
    Springfield
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R041209E   A threat to liberal dominance
 

By Joseph Evans

Winning the general election and adding Republican seats in the House and Senate, President Bush earned his mandate, clearing the way for his agenda which includes appointing conservatives to the bench. In fact, Mr. Bush may choose to nominate Justice Clarence Thomas to replace an ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist. By doing so, the president would make American history and change racial expectations and political landscapes.
    Justice Thomas' elevation and his successful confirmation also would change aspects of African American social, cultural and political climate for the unforeseeable future. Before we rush to disagree, America is ready for this historic opportunity. By majority on Nov. 2, 2004, the American electorate revealed to American elite — still, that the people, county by county, believe that traditional values express its national ethos. Justice Thomas closely represents mainstream American values.
     The Pew Research Center conducted a poll (Sept. — Oct. 2003), that prophetically reported, "Voters who attend religious services regularly favor re-electing Bush by strong margins, while those who rarely attend religious services clearly favor a Democratic candidate." The poll data suggested that 63 percent of church attendees planned to support the sitting president, George Bush. On the other hand, 37 percent of those polled planned to vote for any Democratic nominee. Of those who seldom attend church, 62 percent planned to vote for the Democratic nominee; only 38 percent intended to vote for Mr. Bush.
    Commenting on African American conservative religious values, Steven Waldman, writing for Slate, admits that blacks are conservative on cultural issues. He states, "On many issues over which liberals mock the 'the religious right,' African Americans are closer to the evangelicals than the rest of the Democratic Party." He adds, "Even more important, African Americans tend to concur with the Republican position on the hot issue of gay marriage. Sixty-four percent oppose it as compared to 44 percent among white mainline Protestants and 30 percent among secular Democrats. Mr. Waldman goes on to say that blacks "support the Republican position on the death penalty, despite evidence that its implementation tends to discriminate against blacks."
    In the decisive Ohio election, 60 percent of African Americans voted against same-sex marriages. Statistically, Justice Thomas is well within the margin of African American cultural conservatism and other Americans' cultural expectations on most of his opinions and dissents.
    Where are the political pitfalls? Justice Thomas may be a threat to liberal hegemony. Many of whom are weary that unexpectedly, Justice Thomas is "the new Negro" role model, who like a Hebrew prophet shares his message of hope as nothing more than returning to religious and family values, hard work, self-help and personal responsibility. For instance, Cornel West, a prolific liberal scholar, writing in "Race Matters," admits that "[George Herbert Walker] Bush's choice of Thomas caught most black leaders off guard." Although Mr. West harshly questioned Justice Thomas' qualifications to be an associate justice, he conceded that black leadership was not prepared to have competition for the hearts and minds of black America, especially an alternative, ardently conservative voice.
    Mr. West published "Race Matters" in 1993, and still black liberal leadership is not prepared for Justice Thomas. This is partly because Justice Thomas provides ideological competition for what many believe will aid black America's self-improvement. Also, Mr. West exposes an apparent leadership flaw. The flaw is its unbridled political partisanship. African Americans are conditioned to receive leadership from a partisan worldview that is not necessarily accurate. Thus, Justice Thomas represents a paradigm shift in cultural politics. His confirmation represents change in racial expectations.
    Where are the upshots in a new political landscape? Justice Thomas' successful confirmation will further advance political maturation and sophistication and an intellectual debate in the black community. It will cause a rapid increase in socio-political transformation. For instance, what John McWhorther, author of "Losing the Race," calls alleviating "victimology." He believes that too often, African Americans are taught to engage society through a victim's lens: "This to often is not with a view toward forging solutions, but to foster and nurture an unfocused brand of resentment and sense of alienation from the mainstream. This is Victimology." President George W. Bush can extend his legacy by appointing justices that emulate his view of the rule of law and philosophically, Justice Thomas does.
    There is another philosophical reason, however. By appointing Justice Thomas, Mr. Bush may extend Western civilization. Unless minorities invest in the future of the country, it may decline. African Americans are in the best position to save traditional values in this country. As Shelby Steele states, many are waiting for the fulfillment of dreams deferred. In a generation, African Americans may begin to believe in the total American dream by further understanding its principles of supporting a market economy, delaying self-gratification and using the power of education and ideas.
    Of course many already responsibly do, but so many more will, should persons like Justice Thomas be afforded an opportunity to serve in the highest positions in the land.