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
L050216C    Stemming stem cell research

HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR/PERVERSION
H050215      Physicians look for link in resistant HIV strains
H050215      FLORIDA   Group launches drive for gay 'marriage' ban
H050216      Beyond everything
H050216      ARKANSAS   Huckabees convert to covenant marriage
H050218      Doctors, public support HIV test
H050220C   AIDS mutation menace

RELIGION/RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
R050214      Frist has necessary votes to change filibuster rules
R050215      Bush resends judicial picks
R050215L    Senate Rule 31 violated
R050215L    Stop whining
R050216      Robertson's priority
R050216L   Tent 'revival' or 'survival'
R050216Md Defrocked priest convicted of sodomy
R050216Va Jury indicts priest in Web child porn
R050216Va Prayer eyed in Virginia schools
R050218     Judge dismisses charges against anti-gay protesters
R050218     OHIO   Christian band says school discriminated
R050219     Catholic dioceses pass check for abuse
R050219Va Lesbian pastor scolds House
R050220E   A senatorial bottleneck


EDUCATION
E050215      Bill targets colleges' liberal bias
E050217L    Root of D.C.'s truancy problem
E050220      Bush seeks cuts elsewhere to boost schools initiative

MEDIA
M050214E   Columnists' errors, CNN's treason
M050214E   Lies and network news

OTHER
O050214      Conservatives, morals linked in poll
O050214C    Tolerance fetish
O050215Va  Drivers face fine for exposing porn videos
O050215Va  Marriage on the go
O050216Md Senate amends
O050218      Reed's goal
O050218      Senate votes to ban bias based on genetic makeup
O050218      Soros' donation
O050220C   Myth illogical
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O050215Va   Marriage on the go
 

By Amy Doolittle
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

It's a 13-year-old tradition in Prince William County: Eager couples, marriage licenses in hand, line up and get hitched in the annual Valentine's Day wedding marathon.
    "In Virginia, there is no blood test and no waiting period. You can apply literally from anywhere in the world and be married in 45 minutes for $62.50," said County Clerk David Mabie.
    Twenty-eight couples were scheduled to be married between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. yesterday at the Old Manassas Courthouse, where the clerk's office is located. Each couple had about 15 minutes to file into a room, take their vows, have a few photos taken and hustle out so the next couple could have their turn.
    The makeshift chapel provided 18 chairs for witnesses. During the ceremonies, the couples stood under an arch covered with plastic ivy and roses.
    "Unfortunately, we are on a very tight schedule today," Mr. Mabie said as one couple finished their vows and another waited outside. "Please proceed outside the room and offer your congratulations there."
    Caroline Lee, 22, of Haymarket, and Navy Petty Officer Rick Coalwell II, 22, of Dumfries, planned to have their wedding at the clerk's office three or four weeks ago, Miss Lee said before the ceremony. In attendance were five witnesses, including the couple's 8-month-old son, Christopher.
    "I am so nervous," Miss Lee said with a giggle as she waited for the previous couple to have pictures taken.
    During the ceremony, she cried as Petty Officer Coalwell said his vows and put the ring on her finger. Petty Officer Coalwell, who is stationed in Norfolk, returned from overseas in September.
    The couple will live in Norfolk, the newlywed Mrs. Coalwell said.
    After each wedding, Mr. Mabie gave each couple a marriage certificate and a heart-shaped refrigerator magnet that read, "Congratulations, David Mabie, Clerk."
    The marriage marathon has been held every year since Mr. Mabie took office in 1992.
    "I'm an elected official." Mr. Mabie said. "My job is mainly administrative, and this happy day gets me away from paperwork."
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O050215Va   Drivers face fine for exposing porn videos
 

By Christina Bellantoni
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

RICHMOND — Drivers who stock their mobile DVD and videotape players with adult material should face a $250 fine if passersby or other motorists are exposed to it, Virginia lawmakers decided yesterday.
    The House yesterday unanimously passed a bill sponsored by Sen. Harry B. Blevins that would impose a $250 fine if "obscene" material played inside a vehicle on a public street is visible outside the car.
    Mr. Blevins cited newspaper stories of children exposed to pornography.
    "The mother was horrified to see playing in the car an X-rated, sexually explicit movie that her daughter could see," the Chesapeake Republican said. "To me, it's not appropriate for that to be seen in public and on public streets."
    The bill already had unanimously passed the Senate. Now it will go to Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat.
    Mr. Blevins said Tennessee has a similar law. Several other states are considering such laws.
    He noted that he does not want to restrict First Amendment rights and that people can do whatever they want "in the privacy of their own yards and driveways." The state Attorney General's Office helped Mr. Blevins craft the bill to ensure its constitutionality, he said.
    The bill is one of several proposed this year to prevent adult material or actions from reaching the eyes of children.
    Delegate Samuel A. Nixon Jr. has sponsored a bill that would require any library that receives funding from the state to install an Internet filter system on its computers that would prevent children from being exposed to pornographic Web sites.
    The Chesterfield Republican's bill passed the House on a 76-17 vote earlier this month. It is pending in the Senate General Laws Committee.
    "Protecting children from online predators must be a priority," Mr. Nixon said when introducing his bill. "It's a sad fact that child exploitation is one of the fastest-growing threats."
    Family Foundation Executive Director Victoria Cobb said the foundation supports the bill after getting a complaint from an Henrico County parent who said her child had been exposed to "obscene" material at the local library.
    "This problem is very real," Miss Cobb said.
    Delegate Kathy J. Byron sponsored a bill that makes it a misdemeanor to fondle oneself in public. The Lynchburg Republican's bill passed the House unanimously earlier this month and is pending a hearing in the Senate Courts of Justice Committee.
    Delegate John A. Cosgrove, Chesapeake Republican, authored a bill that bans "up-skirt" photography, where people secretly film undergarments or private parts.
    Mr. Cosgrove's bill has also passed the House unanimously and will be heard by the Senate Courts of Justice Committee. He said this has become a problem in his district, where a man was caught taking such pictures inside a department store.
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R050216Va   Jury indicts priest in Web child porn
 

By Matthew Cella
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A Loudoun County, Va., grand jury yesterday indicted a Catholic priest on one felony count of possession of child pornography.
    The arrest of the Rev. Robert C. Brooks, 72, of Leesburg, was the latest in a massive two-year Internet child pornography investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
    Soren Johnson, a spokesman for the Arlington Diocese, said Father Brooks was most recently pastor of St. John the Apostle in Leesburg. He said Father Brooks resigned his position in October, when authorities informed the diocese of their investigation.
    The investigation, which resulted from the dismantling of a Belarus-based company that provided billing services for more than 50 child pornography Web sites, has netted nearly 200 arrests in the United States and more than 1,000 worldwide.
    Dean Boyd, an ICE spokesman, said the federal investigation, dubbed Operation Falcon, also has resulted in the arrest of a child psychologist, a police officer and a circus clown, among others.
    "It's just huge," he said. "Frankly, it's been very shocking to everyone."
    Father Brooks was ordained in Richmond in 1961 and became part of the Arlington Diocese upon its formation in 1974.
    Father Brooks served at St. James in Falls Church from 1980 to 1990, St. Ambrose in Annandale from 1973 to 1980, St. Mark in Vienna in 1972 and St. John in Highland Springs in 1971. He was assistant pastor at St. Philip in Falls Church from 1968 to 1971 and assistant pastor at St. Louis in Alexandria from 1961 to 1968.
    "The diocese is aware of no sexual misconduct or abuse on the part of Father Brooks in his 30 years as a priest of the Diocese of Arlington or the 13 years as a priest of the Diocese of Richmond," said Bishop Paul S. Loverde of the Arlington Diocese.
    Authorities also said yesterday that there are no accusations that Father Brooks had inappropriate contact with children. He was released on a $10,000 personal recognizance bond.
    Mr. Boyd said investigators are sifting through names that turned up on credit card records seized in 2003 from the Internet billing company Regpay and its affiliates.
    "Instead of going after the kiddie porn sites, we went after the billing companies," he said. "Basically, we have every credit card transaction these guys ever made."
    Mr. Boyd said investigators have been prioritizing their work, depending on how much contact the people named in the credit card records are likely to have with children.
    He said thorough investigations are being conducted to ensure that the people named in the records subscribed, paid for and downloaded child pornography. He said more arrests are likely.
    "We will take action as quickly as possible to the extent that we can legally," he said.
    • Jerry Seper contributed to this report.
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O050216Md   Senate amends
 

By Robert Redding Jr.
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

ANNAPOLIS -- The Senate yesterday removed specific sites from the Ehrlich administration's slot-machine gambling legislation to entice support in the House, where the bill has died in committee for the last two years.
    Under the Senate's alteration, the bill still calls for slot machines to be placed at four horse-racing tracks and three off-track sites. But the exact locations would be determined by a commission appointed by the governor and legislative leaders.
    In addition, the Senate reduced the amount of profits that would be kept by owners of slots facilities from 39 percent to 36 percent, thereby increasing the state's share of gambling revenue. The new plan also would require that $150 million from slots revenue be spent on public school construction each year for eight years.
    The Ehrlich administration seemed amenable to the changes, with communications director Paul E. Shurick saying, "Any time the Senate is moving forward is a good thing."
    But Mr. Shurick added that Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican, has not changed his mind about certain locations being off-limits to slots.
    "The governor has made it crystal clear that Ocean Downs and Timonium are deal breakers," he said.
    The Washington Times reported last week that Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., Prince George's Democrat, said he had been negotiating with the administration to take the sites out of the plan.
    The Times also reported that lawmakers have persuaded House Speaker Michael E. Busch to allow a full House vote on the slot-machine legislation he has helped defeat for two consecutive years.
    Sen. Edward J. Kasemeyer, Baltimore Democrat and floor manager of the slots bill, yesterday said the changes are aimed at attracting support among House members.
    Today, the slots bill will be up for further debate in the Senate, and the House Ways and Means Committee, which previously has killed the legislation, will hold a hearing on it.
    Mr. Busch, Anne Arundel Democrat, was adamant in his opposition to the bill yesterday.
    "I personally am not supporting slots," he said.
    Meanwhile, a House delegate is seeking to repeal a 17-year-old tax subsidy for coal companies.
    "This program is a perfect example of corporate welfare, and of the rule that few things have the life span of a government program," said Delegate Herbert H. McMillan, Anne Arundel Republican. "It's time for the Maryland coal industry to succeed or fail on its own."
    Ending the coal subsidy would provide an additional $14.7 million for Program Open Space, which aims to preserve open, undeveloped areas, Mr. McMillan said.
    The subsidy was implemented in 1988 and renewed in 1991 to stimulate coal use.
    Mr. McMillan's bill has eight co-sponsors and has been sent to the House Ways and Means Committee.
    • This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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R050216Va   Prayer eyed in Virginia schools
 

By Christina Bellantoni
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

RICHMOND — Lawmakers want to amend the state constitution to open schools and other public places to prayer and other religious activities.
    Delegate Charles W. Carrico Sr. said the amendment is needed because there is a growing effort to silence Christians.
    "I'm tired of hearing when you walk into a school you cannot profess your beliefs because you may offend someone else," the Grayson Republican said.
    Mr. Carrico, a retired state trooper, said he tried to use the Old Testament story of David and Goliath to inspire a group of students bound for the high school prom to avoid sex, drugs and alcohol. A parent filed a complaint against him, he said.
    He noted his amendment does not require people to participate in prayer, and said the state will not create any official school prayers.
    The amendment will be heard Monday in the Senate Courts of Justice Committee. The amendment passed the House last week on a 69-27 vote. If it passes the Senate, it would go to voters in 2006. Both chambers are controlled by Republicans.
    The amendment would allow prayer and other professions of "religious beliefs, heritage and traditions" on public property, including schools.
    It is already legal for Virginia schools to allow time for silent prayer and to allow religious student clubs to meet during non-instructional time.
    The Rev. C. Douglas Smith, executive director of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, said the amendment is not a "prayer issue or religious issue," and said he believes it is unconstitutional. "There is no question in anyone's mind there are volumes of case law that would render this null and void immediately," Mr. Smith said. "It puts at risk the constitution's hundreds of years of history which have sought to protect religious freedoms."
    The amendment was up for consideration yesterday in the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee, but senators referred it to the Courts of Justice Committee at the request of Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle, the Virginia Beach Republican who is chairman of that committee.
    The panel quickly voted 8-5 to refer the amendment to Mr. Stolle's committee.
    "Clearly, with all its freedom-of-religion and First Amendment implications, this belongs before the Courts Committee," Mr. Stolle said.
    Backers of the amendment said they're hopeful, but critics predict it will be difficult to get the amendment out of a Senate committee that historically has been unwilling to tinker with the state's Bill of Rights. With no companion bill in the Senate, a defeat before Mr. Stolle's committee early next week would kill the measure.
    Mr. Carrico said he was disappointed his amendment was not heard yesterday, but said he has "faith" it will pass.
    "It has just as good a chance there as anywhere else," he told reporters.
    Mr. Smith said he believes the amendment will be found unconstitutional in that committee, since "some of the Senate's best legal minds" are members.
    Debra Gold Linick, assistant director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, opposes the measure because she worries her 6-year-old daughter, Rebecca, will one day have religious views imposed upon her in the classroom.
    "We don't need prayer in schools during instructional time," Ms. Linick, a Fairfax County resident, said yesterday. "We don't send our kids to public schools to get a religious education." The debate in the House was one of the more passionate this session.
    "You shouldn't have to check your deeply held beliefs at the door of the courthouse, at the door of the Statehouse or at the door of the schoolhouse," said Delegate Bill Janis, Goochland Republican.
    The amendment would affect the religious freedom guarantees created in the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
    House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith, Salem Republican and a big fan of Jefferson, voted for the amendment, even though he said he hates "tinkering" with his idol's words in the state constitution.
    Several Democrats opposed the measure to say government should not be involved in religious matters.
    "I am a cross-wearing, church-choir-singing, mission-trip-going, pledge-paying Christian," said Delegate Kristen J. Amundson, Fairfax County Democrat. "But let me be clear " this legislation is either unnecessary or unconstitutional."
    • This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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R050216Md   Defrocked priest convicted of sodomy
 

By Foster Klug
ASSOCIATED PRESS

BALTIMORE -- A jury convicted a defrocked priest yesterday of sexually molesting a former altar boy he had baptized as an infant and who later shot the cleric after a confrontation on a city street.
    Dontee Stokes said Maurice Blackwell, 58, began molesting him when he was 13 and that the abuse continued until he was 17. In often graphic testimony, Mr. Stokes, 29, described during the trial how he was "in disbelief" when pats on the back from the man he regarded as a father figure eventually led to the former Roman Catholic pastor of St. Edward sodomizing him.
    Sentencing is scheduled for April 15. Blackwell faces up to 45 years in prison. He remains free until his sentencing.
    Deliberating for nearly six hours over two days, the jury convicted Blackwell of three of four counts of child sexual abuse, covering 1990, 1991 and 1992, but acquitted him of the charge relating to Mr. Stokes' accusation of abuse in 1989.
    After the verdict, Mr. Stokes stood among about two dozen friends, family members and supporters and told reporters that he felt vindicated after having his credibility attacked by Blackwell's attorney during the weeklong trial.
    "I definitely was on trial. Mr. Blackwell was at no point on trial. It was all about me," Mr. Stokes, a barber in Baltimore, said. "The world can see that I'm not a perfect person, but I stand here right and he stands wrong."
    Blackwell, who uses a cane because of injuries from the shooting, declined to comment as he left the courtroom with family and friends. Defense attorney Kenneth Ravenell said he planned to seek a retrial, and if that fails, would appeal the decision.
    Mr. Ravenell said he thought jurors based their decision on evidence they should not have heard, referring to detectives' repeated references to "other victims" during testimony. The judge ordered testimony about other victims stricken from the record, but Mr. Ravenell said, "It's impossible for people to wipe clear what they've already heard."
    Earlier in the trial, Lt. Frederick Roussey, who first investigated sexual abuse accusations against Blackwell, testified that he had found evidence that others also had been victimized. His testimony drew an objection from Mr. Ravenell, and Judge Berger ordered testimony about other purported victims stricken from the record.
    Prosecutors initially declined to charge Blackwell when Mr. Stokes first raised the accusations a decade ago. The once-popular and highly respected priest was stripped of his church authority after he acknowledged having a sexual relationship with a teenage boy in the early 1970s. The Vatican defrocked him in October.
    Robert Martin, 50, said he was the 14-year-old high school student Blackwell abused when the cleric was a seminary student in the 1970s. Mr. Martin flew to Baltimore from his home in Baton Rouge, La., to support Mr. Stokes. "It's a great day. I wanted to see justice done, and it has been," Mr. Martin said, tears welling up, after the verdict.
    Warren Brown, who defended Mr. Stokes during his trial on charges of attempted murder, stood by Mr. Stokes' side on the courthouse steps and praised his courage.
    "Dontee stood in the gap for all those who were afraid to come forward," Mr. Brown said. "Dontee stood for all the other victims."
    The Archdiocese of Baltimore said Blackwell's convictions "were independent of the processes and standards employed by the Catholic Church, which revoked his faculties to function as a priest several years ago and dismissed him from the clerical state in 2004."
    Archdiocese spokesman Sean Caine declined to comment further.
    The Stokes case came to light in the midst of a national scandal over sexual abuses involving Catholic priests. Mr. Stokes confronted Blackwell and demanded an apology. Mr. Stokes shot him three times, in the left hip and hand, when Blackwell did not respond.
    Mr. Stokes was acquitted of attempted murder in December 2002 after saying he had an "out-of-body experience" but was convicted on gun charges. Jurors in that case sent Circuit Judge John Prevas a note urging leniency. Judge Prevas sentenced Stokes to 18 months on home detention.
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R050219Va   Lesbian pastor scolds House
 

By Christina Bellantoni
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

RICHMOND -- A lesbian pastor from Northern Virginia yesterday accused delegates of discriminating against homosexuals during her prayer to open the House session.
    "Holy One, convict those who are using their power not to lead or to guide but to harm gay and lesbian citizens, a small minority within this commonwealth," said the Rev. Debra Peevey, pastor of the Journey of the Heart Ministries in Reston.
    "We need to be reminded of what unites us, not pitted against one another. A house divided, you have warned us, cannot stand," she said.
    Delegate Brian J. Moran, Alexandria Democrat, had invited Miss Peevey to deliver the opening prayer, which is a daily tradition performed by leaders of different faiths from across the state. Mr. Moran said he did not know she would be making such remarks.
    Delegates bowed their heads as she began her prayer, but once she began calling them "partisans" and "ideologues," many lawmakers in the Republican-controlled chamber looked up in surprise.
    Some said they could not recall such a prayer ever being given in the chamber.
    Mr. Moran described her prayer as "thought-provoking," but several of his colleagues said they did not appreciate Miss Peevey's remarks.
    Delegate Christopher B. Saxman said Miss Peevey's "lecture" was "unfortunate," noting that it was the first time in his three-year legislative career that he stopped praying during the opening prayer.
    "It's supposed to be a time when we don't have politics on the floor," Mr. Saxman, Staunton Republican, said. "This is not the time and place for it. It's the one time of the day that you can stop and reflect without partisanship and the bickering."
    Miss Peevey said she opposes some of the measures the House has approved, such as a state constitutional amendment that would define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, a bill that would require officials to ask persons seeking to adopt if they are homosexual and a proposal for a license plate advocating traditional marriage.
    "I have just been so angered by their complete lack of regard for the dignity of all of the citizens of the commonwealth," Miss Peevey told The Washington Times after the prayer. "It has been so hard watching them and it's just been so hateful. I just wanted to step up in love and show them they have no justification to be hateful."
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R050215L   Senate Rule 31 violated

    The so-called "nuclear option" looms over the Senate ("Specter wary of 'nuclear option,' "Page 1, Feb. 8). Everyone agrees that recent filibusters of judicial nominees are unprecedented in at least one particular respect: Nominees have been filibustered all the way up to the end of the congressional session, when their nominations then expired. This never has happened before.
    Democratic senators have characterized this treatment as a "rejection" of the nominations. For example, Sen. Richard Durbin, the minority whip, has stated on the Senate floor that the "nominees ... were rejected by the Senate last Congress." Likewise, Sen. Charles Schumer has made this announcement: "To nominate judges previously rejected by the Senate is wrong."
    Thus, the Democratic minority in the Senate has openly attempted to use the Senate's filibuster and cloture rules not just to extend debate on nominations, but to "reject" those nominations. No one disputes that the nominations have been forced to lapse without an opportunity for a simple-majority vote.
    Although this recent Democratic tactic may be legitimate for legislation, it is not consistent with the Senate rules for nominations, which require that cloture and filibuster procedures may not be used to reject a nomination. Senate Rule 31 says nominees can only be "confirmed or rejected" on condition that there is a simple majority vote; then the expired nomination is "neither confirmed nor rejected." Clearly, an attempt to reject a nomination by a minority filibuster is against the Senate rules.
    The Senate rules do allow nominations to lapse at the end of a session — for example, if the Senate has not had adequate time to consider the nomination and if the Senate would like to start fresh at the beginning of the next session. The Senate rules also arguably allow nominations to be filibustered, ever since Rule 22 was amended in 1949. However, Rule 31 plainly demands that the filibuster procedure not be used to "reject" a nomination so as to avoid the final question spelled out in that rule.
    These recent judicial nominations lapsed improperly, when the Senate minority attempted to answer the final question as to whether the nominations would be approved or rejected without addressing the requirements of Rule 31. Whatever may be the constitutional issues here, there is a plain violation of Senate Rule 31. Although changing the text of Senate rules is a valid option, why not just implement or enforce Rule 31?

    ANDREW T. HYMAN
    Ansonia, Conn.
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R050215L   Stop whining

    As a former resident (during college) and an enthusiastic regular visitor, I can attest to the innumerable charms of the Shenandoah Valley and its people. I fondly remember how my seat in psychology class was positioned so that the nearby window framed a daydream-inducing mountain view. My roommates and I leased a house across from an active dairy farm on the basis of a handshake with the landlord. I can understand how folks from, say, New York, might fall in love with life in the Valley. It was and is a wonderful slice of God's creation.
    What I can't understand is why such people would be so mean or clueless as to want to undermine a primary source of the Valley's character ("Bible lessons on school time raise eyebrows," Page 1, Saturday). A long-standing tradition of many Valley parents is to include private religious training as a weekly part of their children's public education. Rounding out education in this manner strengthens the moral fabric of the community and helps deter the societal coarsening so prevalent elsewhere.
    Contrary to one newcomer's complaint, the Bible classes are not in public schools. For 30 minutes a week, elementary-school children are escorted during the school day to voluntary lessons at area churches. This vital supplement infuriates people who seek to destroy what strengthens their community's moral fiber. So they whine that children not participating in the Bible classes are stigmatized and that all the children are disadvantaged by this "loss" of academic time.
    These are very selective whines. When it comes to the stigma of students opting out of the progressivist agenda — say, sex ed — the concern of the progressivist advocates evaporates. Though new lessons cannot be introduced to the children not attending Bible class, this time can be productive: Students can work on homework, read a book or have a book read to them.
    The complaints are red herrings, ineffectively disguising the arrogant intolerance of people who strive to strip away what differentiates a Shenandoah Valley community from an urban jungle. Commenting that tradition must evolve (whatever that means), one of the newcomers reveals both her contempt for the values of her neighbors and her desire to impose upon her newly adopted community the morally neutral homogeneity that she claims is "just part of modern life." This is a cancer that must be thwarted.

    SAMUEL R. LEWIS
    Oak Hill, Va.
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R050216L   Tent 'revival' or 'survival'

    The article "Church leaders support gay ties" (Metropolitan, Feb. 9) suggests that certain churches believe in the "big tent" concept.
    But is it a big MASH hospital tent, where the spiritually sick and wounded come to be healed, or is it a big circus tent, where sin, perversion, etc. are welcomed, condoned, celebrated and legitimized?

    ROBERT BOUDREAUX
    Waldorf, Md.
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E050217L   Root of D.C.'s truancy problem

    Your remarkable report "Almost a quarter of D.C. students were truant" (Page 1, Tuesday) helps explain why D.C. students test at the bottom of all U.S. states.
    It should be evident that the root of this problem lies in homes more than in schools. You also reported that corrective actions were under way to decrease truancy. Sending great numbers of disinterested children back to school and penalizing parents of truants treat the symptom, not the problem. I fear that just forcing truants back into school will further deteriorate the learning atmosphere for those students who want to learn.
    Truants' parents have not motivated their children to learn. I suspect that many of those same families have multiple other forms of dysfunction (lack of discipline, poor English, crime, alcohol and drug abuse, impaired health) and that the parents would be regarded as having poor parenting skills. The truant children will go on to raise the next generation of generally dysfunctional children.
    I hope that, rather than sentence parents of truant families to jail or fine them, the courts will require extensive parenting-skill training and that the District will offer this free to any adult or adolescent that wants it.
    Hopefully, this would become part of compulsory high school curriculum. Helping train better parents will have a wonderful long-term benefit in the areas of crime, physical and mental health, employment and D.C. government administration, as well as education.
    Rather than funding school vouchers, Congress should help the District become a leader in parenting-skill education. Society in general needs some new mechanisms (carrots and sticks) to motivate young people to learn and use better parenting skills.

    JAN POLISSAR
    Bethesda
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R050220E   A senatorial bottleneck

How many times must President Bush successfully appeal to American voters to elect a Senate that will resume the post-World War II American political tradition of granting an up-or-down vote to a president's judicial nominees who enjoy majority support in that body? Despite voters' positive responses to the appeals by Mr. Bush during the 2002 campaign, when Republicans recaptured control of the Senate, and the 2004 election, when voters increased the GOP Senate majority from 51 to 55, Democratic senators have given every indication they will continue to wage an unprecedented, systematic filibuster campaign to deny up-or-down votes for appellate-court nominees who would be easily confirmed by majority votes.
    In 2002, Mr. Bush traveled across the nation campaigning against Democratic judicial obstructionism. The delaying tactics prevented votes for several appellate nominees, including U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle, Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen and Miguel Estrada, all of whom were nominated in May 2001, less than a month before Democrats regained majority status after Sen. James Jeffords left the GOP. Voters responded in 2002 by re-installing a Republican majority, which would prevent Democrats from bottling up nominees in committee or failing to schedule a floor vote.
    In 2003, Mr. Bush renominated Messrs. Boyle and Estrada, Justice Owen and other appellate nominees who had been denied a floor vote by the Democratic-controlled Senate during the 107th Congress. Having lost their majority in 2002, Democrats then resorted to extraordinary tactics during the 108th Congress (2003-04). In an unprecedented obstructionist campaign orchestrated by then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and enforced by his whip, Harry Reid, Democrats repeatedly engaged in filibusters to prevent the Senate from conducting up-or-down votes for appellate-court nominees, all of whom would clearly be confirmed by a majority of senators. For Mr. Estrada alone, who would have been the first Hispanic appointed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Democrats voted seven times in 2003 to deny cloture, which would have ended their filibusters and led to an up-or-down vote. Sixty votes are required to invoke cloture. For Justice Owen, Democrats thwarted four attempts to invoke cloture. And that is just the tip of the obstructionist iceberg.
    The Democrats' filibuster campaign has been exceptional in both scope and intensity. During the 108th Congress, for example, the president submitted to the Senate 34 nominees for the appellate courts. Despite a Republican majority in the Senate, where only a simple majority vote is required for judicial confirmation, Democrats managed to thwart the confirmation of 16 of those 34 nominees. Against 10 of the nominees, Democrats waged their filibuster campaign, denying them an up-or-down vote. Each of those 10 nominees would have been confirmed by a majority vote if Democrats had not filibustered. Twenty cloture votes involving the 10 appellate nominees were held during the 108th Congress, and Democrats successfully prevented the invocation of cloture each time.
    Until 1949, cloture could not be invoked on nominations. Thus, before 1949, nominations could be -- and occasionally were -- talked to death by a filibuster. From 1949 through 2000, however, cloture was sought on only 13 judicial nominations, 12 of whom were eventually confirmed. (Only Associate Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, whose 1968 nomination to be chief justice was briefly subjected to a bipartisan filibuster before it was withdrawn after a single cloture vote, failed to be confirmed. And with 19 Democratic senators voting against cloture, there is no evidence that Fortas would have received majority support in the Senate on an up-or-down vote.)
    Throughout the 2004 election year, Mr. Bush responded to the Democrats' filibustering campaign by appealing to voters to increase the Senate's Republican majority and to defeat Mr. Daschle, whom the president rightly accused of obstructionism. Mr. Daschle lost, and the GOP majority increased by four members.
    On the heels of Mr. Bush's own re-election, which he won by 3 million votes in a campaign where the future of the nation's federal courts was a central issue, the president has resubmitted the names of 12 circuit-court nominees, seven of whom were filibustered during the last Congress and five of whom were otherwise delayed by Democratic obstructionist tactics. Seemingly, however, the electoral price paid by Mr. Daschle has made little impression on the vast majority of Democratic senators, who need to muster 41 of their 45-member caucus (including the ostensibly independent Mr. Jeffords) to continue their unprecedented, systematic campaign of obstruction against circuit-court nominations.
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M050214E   Columnists' errors, CNN's treason
 

By Marvin Olasky

Web only

    A journalistic scandal involving payment of thousands of dollars has received massive attention in the mainstream media. One concerning the exchange of 30 pieces of silver has not, so far.
     In January and early February, four American journalists came under fire to various degrees, as indicated by the number of Lexis-Nexis mentions during the month beginning Jan. 8: Armstrong Williams, 1,133; Maggie Gallagher, 238; Michael McManus, 43; Eason Jordan, 12.
     Let's start with conservative columnist Williams, who found himself in trouble after news reports revealed he quietly took $241,000 from the U.S. Department of Education to promote its policies on his syndicated television and radio shows and newspaper column. Journalists called him a stealth propagandist, and his syndicate dropped him. A spokesman for Williams said he had no comment: "He's about getting his business back in order. ... Things have just gotten a little out of control."
     Indeed they had. Williams erred and has been damned in the press, but he strongly believes in improving education, particularly in inner cities, and let's hope he'll be back in some fighting capacity, this time with all financial information disclosed.
     Two other conservatives who write syndicated columns, Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus, have also been outed for receiving $21,500 and $10,200, respectively, from the Department of Health and Human Services. Liberal journalists initially lumped the two in with Williams, but HHS was paying them for expertise, not punditry.
     McManus, for example, is the president of Marriage Savers, which has helped churches in many cities to cut the divorce rate by adopting a "Community Marriage Policy," and HHS was paying him to help organize other cities. He told his readers: "In retrospect, that was a clear conflict of interest. It was not by intent, but by omission. I am truly sorry. I ask your forgiveness."
     That should be granted. Both columnists acknowledged that they should have disclosed their payments when they wrote columns supporting HHS marriage programs -- but their situation as experts was clearly not that of a columnist paid to publicize, and the mainstream media feeding frenzy ended during the first week of February.
     The frenzy over a far more serious breach should have begun then, but did not. CNN's Eason Jordan, who had previously come under scrutiny by media ethicists when he acknowledged that his network covered up crimes of Saddam Hussein to protect its employees in Iraq, told an international audience on Jan. 27 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that U.S. troops had murdered some of the 63 journalists killed in Iraq since the war began.
     Davos officials through Feb. 8 refused to release a video of the remarks, but Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who sat on the panel with Jordan, reported that the CNN head said "he knew of about 12 journalists who had not only been killed by American troops, but had been targeted as a matter of policy."
     Jordan offered no evidence, and his accusation, which he may have tried to take back later, was too much for Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who was in the audience and said he was "outraged by the comments."
     Bloggers have reported the story extensively, often accusing Jordan of giving aid and comfort to terrorists and their appeasers. This is the type of story that's harder to cover than one in which dollars clearly change hands, but it may be a more subtle form of bribery. Fox is beating CNN in the United States, but CNN is No. 1 around the world and wants to stay that way. What better way than to kiss up to Europeans and Middle Easterners than by telling them what they want to believe about those awful Americans?
     The establishment media, instead of circling wagons to protect one of their own, should investigate. If anyone has evidence of soldiers knowingly targeting journalists, let's hear it. If there is no evidence, Jordan should clearly and loudly apologize, and CNN should stop giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
     Marvin Olasky is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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M050214E   Lies and network news
 

By Oliver North

At least 10 journalists have been killed by the U.S. military. And according to reports I believe to be true, journalists have been arrested and tortured by U.S. forces.
    — Eason Jordan, CNN executive vice president.
    CNN describes Eason Jordan as its "chief news executive" who provides "strategic advice to CNN's senior management team." In November, he offered the above murderous assessment of America's military to a group of Portuguese journalists and got away with it.
    On Jan. 27, he apparently made a nearly identical outrageous, unfounded accusation at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. This time he got caught — not by his colleagues in the so-called mainstream media — but by "bloggers" in attendance.
    Ironically, Mr. Jordan, who also chairs the CNN Editorial Board, made his most recent unsupported claim of U.S. military war crimes in a panel discussion titled "Will Democracy Survive the News?" The short answer is: "not if democracy has to depend on people like Mr. Jordan to report the news."
    And therein lies the problem — not just with Mr. Jordan's calumny about our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen and Marines, but with his colleagues in the so-called mainstream media. The CNN executive's slander went unreported — and apparently unchallenged — by other press potentates who heard him accuse America's military of deliberately targeting and killing journalists in Iraq. Worse still, other "leaders" in the Fourth Estate now rush to Mr. Jordan's defense. David Gergen, editor-at-large for U.S.News & World Report and moderator of the discussion in Davos, now says Mr. Jordan had recently been to Iraq and was "caught up in the tension of the moment," and "deserves the benefit of the doubt."
    Why? Aren't news reporters supposed to thirst for truth? Isn't there some standard of proof or corroboration required before someone in the "news business" makes such a horrific accusation? Furthermore, why should any member of the media in attendance be let off the hook for not immediately jumping up and demanding proof of Mr. Jordan's unsubstantiated charges?
    Such damning accusations, if true, would make Abu Ghraib look like petty larceny. Yet, Mr. Jordan has offered no evidence of the putative war crimes — nor, apparently, ever proffered any witnesses or evidence of such crimes in Iraq or anywhere else.
    Fortunately, not everyone at Davos was as favorably disposed to Mr. Jordan's reckless claims as his media colleagues. Left-of-center U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, released a statement that he was "outraged" by Mr. Jordan's comments and is "tremendously proud of the sacrifice and service of American military personnel." Liberal Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, claims he contacted Mr. Jordan and demanded "specifics." Mr. Frank said he would pursue the matter if there were credible evidence. At this writing, Mr. Jordan has yet to accept the congressman's offer.
    Mr. Jordan has claimed his Davos comments were taken out of context. Howard Kurtz, who covers the media for The Washington Post and hosts a weekly media program on CNN, quotes Mr. Jordan, ostensibly his boss at CNN, as saying, "I wasn't as clear as I should have been on that panel."
    That should be easy to prove. Though the panel discussion was "off-the-record," the event apparently was videotaped — another fact we would not know but for the "bloggers" who were there. Messrs. Jordan, Gergen, Kurtz, et al. should call for the videotape's release so we can see who challenges and who applauds Mr. Jordan's charges against our military. But CCN is unlikely to call for release of the videotape.
    According to Rony Abovitz, the Forum-sponsored blogger who first broke this story to the world, Mr. Jordan "repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience and cause great strain on others."
    According to Mr. Abovitz, Mr. Jordan's charges met with approval from Arab attendees "who applauded and called him 'a very brave man' for speaking up against the U.S. in a public way amongst a crowd ready to hear anti-U.S. sentiments."
    There is a lesson in all this, and not just for CNN but for all the media. Eason Jordan's disparaging duplicity wasn't exposed by the barons of broadcasting or the potentates of print, but by "amateurs" — bloggers — the same "unwashed masses" who brought down Dan Rather. These e-mailing, Web-surfing, call-'em as you see-'em bloggers are the electronic equivalent of the pamphleteers who brought about our Revolution.
    Today bloggers "pass the word" faster than an official spokesman can draft a denial. They are the small "d" democrats of the new "news business" — and more believable to many than what is presented on the tube or in the paper.
    To the bloggers, it's clear that if Dan Rather worked for CNN he would still have a job. Apparently, the network that bills itself as "the most trusted name in news" has even lower standards of proof than CBS.
    Next year, the World Economic Forum will again assemble its elite, self-anointed "business, political and intellectual leaders" at the posh Swiss Alpine resort to sip champagne and discuss Orwellian ideas for making "the world a better place." They should ask Mr. Jordan to return and answer a somewhat different question: "Will CNN 'News' Survive Democracy?"

    Oliver North is a nationally syndicated columnist, founder and honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance, and host of "War Stories" on the FOX News Channel. The opinions expressed above are his own and do not reflect the views of FOX News.
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O050214C   Tolerance fetish
 

By Mark Steyn

Here are three small news items from around the world you might have missed:
    (1) An unemployed Berlin waitress faces loss of welfare benefits after refusing a job as a prostitute in a legal brothel.
    (2) A British court ruled a suspected terrorist from Algeria cannot be detained because jail gives him a "depressive illness."
    (3) 17-year old Jeffrey Eden of Charlestown, R.I., has been an awarded an "A" by his teacher and the "Silver Key" in the Rhode Island Scholastic Art Awards for a diorama titled "Bush/Hitler and How History Repeats Itself."
    A trio of itsy-bitsy little stories from the foot of Page 27 of your daily paper, if they made it at all. But they're as revealing about the course of the war as anything going on in Iraq.
    The Germans, in the bad old days when their preferred field of combat was France rather than Fraulein Helga's government-regulated bondage dungeon, used to talk about "wehrwille" — war will. America, Britain, Australia and a select few other countries have demonstrated they can just about muster the "war will" on the battlefield. On the broader cultural front, where this war will be won, there's little evidence of any will.
    The waitress forced into prostitution by the government pimp is, at one level, merely an example of the unintended consequences that follow every legislative initiative. But at another, it's the logical reductio of the modern secular welfare state. Like all those European utopias John Kerry wants America to be more like, Germany has a permanently high unemployment rate and, as a result, penalizes those who refuse to take available jobs — like providing "sexual services." The welfare office in Gotha ordered a 23-year-old woman to audition for a job as a "nude model."
    As Queen Victoria is said to have advised her daughter on her wedding night, lie back and think of England. Now the welfare office says lie back and think of Germany. And why not? When you cede to the state the responsibility for feeding, clothing, housing you, for your parents' retirement and your own health care, it's hardly surprising they can't see what the big deal is about annexing your sex life as well. If a welfare state were a German S&M club, the government is the S and you're the M. The "security" of welfare is not usually quite such literal bondage, but it always is metaphorically.
    When the Germans legalized their whorehouses, they thought it showed how relaxed and enlightened they were. Al Qaeda types take a different line: They think it's a sign the West is decadent and weak and cannot survive. And they have a point: Government forcing women into prostitution is just the latest example of the modern secular state's internal contradictions.
    That British court judgment is another. SIAC, the United Kingdom's anti-terrorist court, found in 2003 that the 35-year old Algerian man in question had "actively assisted terrorists who have links to al Qaeda." But he was released from Belmarsh Prison because of his "depressive condition." I would be depressed if I were a terrorist: The Afghan camps are gone, the Great Satan has liberated Iraq, and Osama re-emerges from his three-year sabbatical only to release a floppo "Vote Kerry" video recycling a lot of lame Michael Moore gags. The more Islamists in a depressive condition, the better. Maybe if they get sufficiently depressed, they'll stop being terrorists and become trainee accountants or male hairdressers.
    But this surely illustrates the impossibility of fighting terror as law enforcement operation. By Western standards, every Islamic terrorist is "depressive" — for a start, as suicide bombers, they're suicidal. Mr. Kerry, you'll recall, thought terrorism should be like prostitution — a nuisance. But, if these court judgments are any indication, it seems to be more like German prostitution — they're free to do what they want, and with the full backing of the legal system.
    In such a world, it's good to know we still have the guts to finger the real bad guys. Thus, when Chariho Regional High School art teacher Lynn Norton set her pupils the task of expressing an idea three-dimensionally, Jeffrey Eden immediately thought of a diorama comparing George Bush to Adolf Hitler. You might think that should be disqualified on the grounds that characterizing Mr. Bush as Hitler is about as two-dimensional as you can get, and it's less a diorama than the diarrhea of leftist rhetoric, as poured forth by millions of moveon.org drones and nude Marin County feminist protesters and European activist puppeteers.
    But there's always room for one more, and Jeffrey's schoolmarm was thrilled at how he did it so cutely, draping a swastika on one side and the Stars and Stripes on the other, and putting in little plastic soldiers — Nazi and American, though who can tell the difference, right? — and then adding his own penetrating observations on both Mr. Bush ("Saddam had no affiliation with the Taliban") and his predecessor as Fuehrer ("Hitler's own justification was his own hatred." Hmm. What a testament to Rhode Island "Social Studies").
    Well, Jeffrey is 17. One day, with a bit of luck, he'll realize Mr. Bush isn't Hitler. If he were, Jeffrey would be in the Bush Youth doing patriotic exercises in shorts every morning and singing the special Texan lyrics to the "Horst Wessel" song, and he wouldn't have time to do dioramas of dissent.
    But what are we to make of everyone else in this sorry story? The art teacher who gave him an "A." The 15 judges in the Rhode Island Scholastic Art Awards who awarded him their "Silver Key." The proprietor of Alperts Furniture Showroom in Seekonk where the winning "art" work is proudly displayed. Are no grown-ups left in Rhode Island?
    I am not worried about Iraq. As they demonstrated Jan. 30, the Iraqis will be just fine. The Western front is the important one in this war — the intersection between Islam and a liberal democratic tradition so mired in self-loathing it would rather destroy our civilization just to demonstrate its multicultural bona fides. It's not that young Eden knows nothing, but that neither his teachers, judges nor furniture showroom owners do.
    But our enemies know us very well, at least in courtroom strategies and canny manipulation of the "tolerance" fetish.
    It's an open question if the West will survive this twilight struggle: Europe almost certainly will not; America might. On the other hand, the psychosis to which much of the culture is in thrall may eventually reach a tipping point into mass civilizational suicide. And then the new barbarians will inherit, and young Master Eden will end his days pining for the rosy-hued nostalgia of the Bushitler tyranny.

    Mark Steyn is the senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc. Publications, senior North American columnist for Britain's Telegraph Group, North American editor for the Spectator, and a nationally syndicated columnist.
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L050216C   Stemming stem cell research
 

By Cal Thomas

Massachusetts' Republican Gov. Mitt Romney has infuriated Harvard scientists by declaring opposition to stem-cell research on embryos created for this purpose.
    "Some of the practices that Harvard and probably other institutions in Massachusetts are engaged in cross the line of ethical conduct," Mr. Romney told the New York Times.
    In a telephone conversation, Mr. Romney told me he thinks the Harvard scientists have "pulled a bait-and-switch." At first, he says, they agreed enough stem cells could be obtained from discarded embryos at fertilization clinics, which did not present an ethical problem to him because these embryos would be destroyed anyway. The scientists now lobby for creating and cloning embryos simply for experimentation, which he opposes.
    The radically "pro-choice" New York Times, which rarely credits any pro-lifer with standing on principle, suggests Mr. Romney may be taking this position to curry favor with social conservatives to facilitate a pursuit of higher office.
    It is difficult to take such cynicism seriously when one considers Mr. Romney's wife, Ann, has multiple sclerosis, a disease that backers of stem cell research claim might be cured if they are permitted to do what they wish to embryos. That the Romneys would put principles ahead of self-interest is rare in politics.
    Mr. Romney says medical and scientific authorities have told him that enough stem cells exist or can be obtained from fertility clinics and other sources to avoid therapeutic cloning and the destruction of embryos created specifically for this type of research. "Creating human life for research and human experimentation is ethically wrong," he told me.
    The governor's problem " indeed, the greater problem " is that culture has moved beyond objective truth. Science has effectively declared itself god and scientists its high priests. What scientists say they can achieve is all that matters. Anyone not bowing to their claims is labeled a heretic and must suffer the kind of denunciation, ostracism and rejection once reserved in old horror movies for "mad scientists."
    This is why the slippery slope analogy applies in cases such as stem-cell research. Having abandoned an Author and definer of life, it quickly becomes possible and then probable that any value attached to a living thing " particularly a human being " is simply a matter of individual or societal whim. Such values, like a fluctuating stock market, may change at any moment and for any reason, or no reason.
    A society that readily tolerates 45 million legal abortions (and counting) and feels a need to "do something" about the financial "burden" of the sick and elderly is unlikely to be morally aroused by the destruction of embryos, even for cloning and other experimental purposes. Besides, aren't we killing in order to live? Isn't the goal of healing diseases and lengthening life worth any cost? Only in a world where the self is deified and nothing stands in the way of getting whatever will give us pleasure and make us "happy."
    If a horror like partial-birth abortion does not shock our moral sensibilities, it is unlikely destroying human embryos, which have sufficient chromosomes to become fully developed babies, will get our attention.
    Mr. Romney's comments came after a bill was introduced to clear up ambiguities in Massachusetts law and allow such research. It's difficult to predict what the mostly Democrat Massachusetts legislature will do, though some members stand with the governor in opposing therapeutic cloning and research on embryos created to be killed.
    Perhaps a majority will come to their senses after considering how we got to this point and where we would be headed if the few remaining protections for human life are removed.
    Do legislators want scientists to decide by themselves what is right, moral and ethical just so this grisly business can be done for profit and "prestige" in Massachusetts? It is unlikely legislators would grant such unrestricted power to any other profession or industry.
    If Mr. Romney wins this battle, he will have done so on principle. Perhaps his stand will serve as an example of what can happen when a politician puts more noble things ahead of self-interest.

    Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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O050220C   Myth illogical
 

By Alan Reynolds

The AARP claims to represent us seniors, but more often it just lectures us relentlessly. One such sermon in the AARP Bulletin, opposing any addition of choice and ownership to Social Security, boasted "groups like AARP that oppose [privatization] will spend millions of dollars to sway opinion." Apparently, it plans to waste thousands of words, too, and without much concern about accuracy.
    When it is not trying to sway our opinion against the White House, AARP tries equally hard to sell us various financial services, in exchange for big kickbacks. The latest AARP Magazine contains a record number of annoying insert ads that fall on the floor when you pick it up. They advertise, among other things, AARP Auto Insurance from the Hartford, AARP Life Insurance from New York Life, AARP health insurance from United Health Care and mediocre mutual funds from Scudder. If Eliot Spitzer is still obsessing about "conflict of interest," perhaps he should take a look.
    AARP Magazine features "Myths and Truths About Social Security" by "the magazine's Social Security expert" Karen Westerberg Reyes. I was not surprised to find their expert audaciously redefining truths as myths and myths as truths.
    Even the undeniable truth that "private accounts will give individuals more control" is magically redefined as a myth. Why? "People already have control over their money when they invest in private pensions, IRAs and 401(k) plans." Well, some people have employer-provided pensions, but most do not. Many could invest in an IRA but need to save for other reasons (the kids' college or down payment on a home).
    It is difficult to save much after 12.4 percent of their paychecks go into a Social Security slush fund to be distributed in ways politicians find expedient. Unlike any personal savings, individuals have zero control over Social Security. They can't even draw it down more quickly in a terminal illness. They get nothing if they die early.
    AARP takes the easily demonstrable truth that "individuals will get higher returns with private accounts" and somehow redefines it as a myth without mentioning a single fact.
    Since 1900, the average return on stocks was 6.3 percent a year, according to the Bridgewater Group, but only 1.4 percent on U.S. bonds. Rather than mentioning such bothersome facts, the author alleged: "In the current Social Security system, the risk is near zero.... That's because U.S. Treasury bonds don't crash when the stock market does." That condenses several myths into just two sentences.
    Anyone who tells young people there is "near zero risk" of a very bad deal from Social Security is a sham fortuneteller. The future return will depend on the payroll tax, the age at which benefits are paid, the formula for determining benefits and how benefits are taxed. All four variables have been changed many times -- always toward making younger people pay more and get less -- and much tighter squeezes are being proposed as ways to "save" Social Security (at the expense of younger Americans).
    Social Security never guaranteed anyone anything. To prove that, AARP advocates what the author mythologizes as "small adjustments" or "a tune-up." In truth, these "adjustments" involve raising taxes and reducing benefits, thus reducing the return. Nobody knows whose taxes will be raised the most and whose returns cut, so the political risk from Social Security is far more unpredictable than the market risk of investing in a balanced mutual fund.
    The risk of a negative return on Social Security taxes is very high for younger college-educated people who work too many years and save too much, because they will be seen able to "afford" higher taxes and not "need" benefits.
    The AARP writer's second big myth was that the Social Security risk is near zero is "because U.S. Treasury bonds don't crash when the stock market does." That statement is a mixture of myths within myths.
    Nearly all Social Security taxes fund an immediate transfer payment from workers to pensioners. True, the ephemeral surplus will collect a little interest income for a few more years, but the amounts are trivial compared to payroll taxes.
    The claim that Treasury bonds do not crash "when the stock market does" implies a dangerous myth -- that Treasury bonds have never crashed. In reality, the value of bonds goes down whenever interest rates go up. The yield on 10-year Treasuries rose from 6.2 percent in 1971 to 13.9 percent in 1981, for example, so Treasury bonds lost about half their nominal value during a time of high inflation.
    In any event, the comparison between stocks and bonds is invalid because those choosing personal accounts would be allowed to invest in Treasury bonds, while Social Security will soon be too broke to do so.
    Other myths rely on such unbiased sources as New York Rep. Charlie Rangel, former Clinton official Peter Orszag and some indecipherable gibberish from gadfly Barbara Kennelly.
    Readers are told Social Security "is in better shape today" than ever. But nobody claimed the central problem -- the number of seniors will double in three decades -- had anything to do with "today." AARP sees no problem because "workers today are more productive, earn higher wages and plan to stay in the work force longer -- all factors that will help fill the future gap." That is a devious way of saying today's young people can afford to pay higher taxes and won't need benefits because they'll just keep working.
    That may not sway the opinion of young people. It won't help fill the gap, either, because all those factors were taken into account when estimating that gap.
    Don't worry, says AARP, because in 2042 "the system will still bring in enough revenue to pay nearly 75 percent of benefit amounts." Those who plan on retiring then may not be swayed by AARP's insistence they won't need private accounts to offset a cut in benefits that just begins at 27 percent in 2042, with deeper cuts in following years.
    In excusing such blatantly one-sided propaganda, AARP claims to "gather members' ideas from phone calls, letters [and] e-mails." Yet it has never gone out of its way to gather my ideas, and may have neglected yours, too.
    If anyone wants to offer AARP some better-informed ideas, AARP's address is 601 E. Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20049. Telephone (888) 687-2277. Its Web site is www.aarp.org.
    Meanwhile, it's time for older people who care about their kids and grandkids to mail back their AARP cards to the address above, and boycott products and financial services advertised by this big-spending propaganda shop. Enough is enough. In fact, it's too much.

    Alan Reynolds is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and a nationally syndicated columnist.
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H050220C   AIDS mutation menace
 

By Cal Thomas

News of a potentially virulent strain of HIV invading and infecting a new generation of homosexual men should come as no surprise. There have been years of growing laxness on the part of homosexuals increasingly complacent about AIDS and engaging in risky behavior.
    This inhibition has been fueled by Internet liaisons and inhibition-lowering drugs -- rather than behavior modification or lifestyle transformation. Now AIDS workers are "dismayed," the New York Times said in a Feb. 15 story.
    This isn't like the terrorist threat the country faced before September 11, 2001, in which government and the media largely ignored warning signs. Twenty years ago, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop sounded the alarm about what could happen if people didn't change their behavior by either remaining celibate, using condoms or altering their lifestyles.
    At the time, Dr. Koop said he doubted a vaccine could be produced to cure HIV because of the virus can mutate so often. He said he did not expect a cure in this generation and perhaps for a very long time, if ever.
    In a telephone conversation from Dartmouth College, where he teaches, Dr. Koop said while "It is never too late to take steps to rein it in" and we in America are "affluent enough to treat it," most of the rest of the world is not. AIDS cocktails must be taken on an exact schedule, he said, "and in places like Botswana, no one has a watch." Plus, the new HIV strain resists almost all anti-retroviral drugs.
    Dr. Koop said when he was surgeon general he tried unsuccessfully to get government to act on sodomy in prisons, which he called widespread. Sodomy in prisons, he told me, "reaps its own reward. No one tells the wife or partner of a freed inmate that he is HIV-positive, and so he infects his family and they can infect others."
    While data and their interpretations vary as to whether homosexuals are more promiscuous than heterosexuals, those at greatest risk for contracting and spreading this new virulent HIV strain are extremely promiscuous. They hook up at "sex parties," engage in anal sex without condoms and often use crystal methamphetamines to enhance their sexual experience in sex marathons with multiple partners.
    In New York, some veterans of the war against AIDS propose a new approach to the spread of risky sex. They want to track down people who know they carry the virus but have sex anyway, spreading the disease.
    Charles Kaiser, historian and author of "The Gay Metropolis," told the New York Times, "A person who is HIV positive has no more right to unprotected intercourse than he has the right to put a bullet through another person's head."
    This attitude follows two decades during which telling anyone he should stop doing something because it harms himself and others earned a "homophobic" label. Not many people could stand up to such condemnations and so most remained silent. Those who refused to change their risky behavior blamed the Reagan administration for not "doing enough" to fight AIDS.
    "Safer sex" campaigns have been tried before -- at San Francisco bath houses and "glory hole" facilities and similar places in New York and other cities. Initially there were some admirable results of greater awareness of risks in "unsafe sex" and how uninfected "partners" were jeopardized.
    But soon the messages were ignored and risky behavior resumed. "Suicide missions" have been reported of uninfected men knowingly having sex with HIV-positive men, believing infection confers a certain societal cachet.
    "Behavior remains the key," says Dr. Koop.
    After two decades of hearing that changing homosexual behavior is nearly impossible and conversion to celibacy or a heterosexuality is a sham, getting people to consider behavioral change will be increasingly difficult, like finding the miracle vaccine Dr. Koop doubts is around the corner.

    Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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E050215   Bill targets colleges' liberal bias

WESTERVILLE, Ohio (AP) — College sophomore Charis Bridgman tends to keep quiet in class if she thinks her professor might disagree with her Christian-influenced ideas.
    The 19-year-old says schools such as Otterbein College in suburban Columbus should be a place for open discussion, but she thinks some professors make students afraid to speak up.
    "They might chastise me or not even listen to my opinion or give me a chance to explain," she said.
    Professors would have to include diverse opinions in classrooms under legislation being pushed in Ohio and several other states by conservatives who fear that too many professors indoctrinate young minds with liberal propaganda. Such measures have had little success getting approval in the other states.
    "I see students coming out, having gone in without any ideological leanings one way or another, coming out with an indoctrination of a lot of left-wing issues," said bill sponsor Sen. Larry Mumper, a former high-school teacher whose Republican Party controls the legislature.
    The proposal in Ohio to create an academic "bill of rights" would prohibit public and private college professors from presenting opinions as fact or penalizing students for expressing their views. Professors would not be allowed to introduce controversial material unrelated to the course.
    Professors dismissed the bill as unnecessary and questioned whether its supporters had ulterior motives, such as wanting more conservative professors.
    Similar legislation failed in California and Colorado last year, and the Georgia Senate passed a resolution, which is less binding than a bill, that suggests adopting such rules. The California bill, which would affect only public schools, has been reintroduced and faces opposition from professors and student groups. An Indiana bill is nearly identical to Ohio's.
    The Ohio legislation is based on principles advocated by Students for Academic Freedom, a District-based student network founded by conservative activist David Horowitz.
    "It doesn't matter a professor's viewpoint," Mr. Horowitz said. "They can be a good professor, liberal or conservative, provided they pursue an educational mission and not a political agenda."
    Mr. Mumper said he is concerned that universities are not teaching the values held by tax-paying parents and students.
    He questioned why lawmakers should approve funding for universities with "professors who would send some students out in the world to vote against the very public policy that their parents have elected us for."
    A faculty group or school committee could oversee complaints from students who think their grades were affected by a professor's bias, Mr. Mumper said.
    Joe White, a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said students could use perceived discrimination as an excuse to refuse to learn.
    "We're not supposed to teach for their comfort," he said.

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O050214    Conservatives, morals linked in poll
 

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Americans have come to perceive conservatism as a stronghold of traditional ideas: According to a new Harris poll, the public believes conservatives support moral values and oppose same-sex "marriage," homosexual rights and abortion.
    And liberals provided almost a mirror image of the findings.
    According to a survey of 2,209 adults in mid-January, 85 percent said conservatives opposed same-sex "marriage." When asked the same question about liberals, 78 percent said the group would support same-sex "marriage."
    Another 81 percent said conservatives opposed homosexual rights while 82 percent said that liberals would support the same issue.
    In addition, 77 percent said conservatives opposed abortion rights and 84 percent said liberals supported those rights.
    "In the past, conservatives were often labeled as unkind or hard-hearted, mostly because liberals were espousing the feel-good issues du jour, popular among Hollywood stars and other vocal figures," said Ian Walters, spokesman for the Virginia-based American Conservative Union.
    The public was receptive and comfortable with typical liberal causes, he said.
    "But then September 11 brought with it the awful reality that America was vulnerable to attack, that there was evil in the world. Conservative values, which protect our way of life, became more acceptable and accessible to many Americans after that," Mr. Walters said.
    The Harris poll showed that the ideologies were not so diametrically opposed when it came to moral values — though there is still a sizable point spread.
    The poll found that 78 percent felt conservatives supported moral values, while 54 percent said the same about liberals. A further breakdown of the question showed that 28 percent felt liberals actually opposed moral values, while 10 percent said the same about conservatives.
    The conservative cause has received a drubbing on occasion, though.
    For example, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition" — a joint study released two years ago by psychologists from the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University and the University of Maryland — found that "common psychological factors linked to political conservatism" included "fear and aggression, dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty avoidance and need for cognitive closure."
    The researchers said they were not passing judgment, but faulted conservatives because they wanted an "idealized past and condoned inequality."
    Meanwhile, the Harris poll found that 70 percent said conservatives supported cutting taxes while 39 percent believed the same thing about liberals.
    The issue of gun control brought out mixed reactions: 50 percent of the respondents said conservatives opposed gun control while 40 percent said they supported it; 10 percent were unsure.
    Sixty-three percent said liberals supported gun control, 24 percent said the group opposed it and 13 percent were unsure.
    Some urge the public to examine the nuance of political labels, lest they become "epithets" rather than an apt reflection of political beliefs.
    "We may be 'conservative' on some issues and 'liberal' on others, but it's the specifics that matter, not the labels," said veteran New York-based sociologist and pollster Leo Bogart, who initially suggested to Harris that it measure what political labels "mean to people."
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R050214    Frist has necessary votes to change filibuster rules
 

By Charles Hurt and Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Transcript of Washington Times interview with Sen. Frist

    Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he has the 51 votes needed to change Senate rules and make it easier for Republicans to overcome Democratic filibusters against President Bush's judicial nominees, but he hopes such a change won't be necessary.
    "We need to restore the over 200-year tradition and precedent of allowing every nominee of the president who has majority support an up-or-down vote on the floor of the United States Senate," Mr. Frist told The Washington Times on Thursday.
    "It's consistent with the Constitution, where we are as a body to give advice and consent, and the only way we can give advice and consent is an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate."
    Mr. Frist said he has not made a decision on whether he will force the rule change the first time that Democrats filibuster a nominee.
    The Tennessee Republican is entering his second term as majority leader after having led his party to a four-seat gain in the Senate in November's election. His first term was marked by a series of Democratic filibusters, varying from judicial nominations to the energy bill.
    And although some on the right have criticized him for appearing to move too cautiously, he was willing to take some chances, including breaking with tradition by traveling to South Dakota to campaign against his counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.
    On Election Day, Mr. Daschle was defeated by Republican John Thune, who helped expand Mr. Frist's majority.
    Judicial nominations and Social Security reform are the two dominant issues looming over the 109th Congress, said Mr. Frist, sitting in his Capitol office moments after 18 Democrats and one independent joined 53 Republicans to approve the most sweeping tort-reform measure in a decade.
    Mr. Frist said that bill, which was stalled in the last Congress by Democratic filibusters, is an example of how this new Congress might be different.
    "We started with a bill that has — as demonstrated by the vote a few minutes ago — strong bipartisan support yet in a different environment could not be passed," he said. "With the 109th Congress, some new people and a new spirit and a commitment of leadership on both sides of the aisle, we had the first success."
    Mr. Frist said despite the filibusters, the past two years were marked by successes — including earning the title of "the most pro-family and pro-life" Congress in 30 years.
    "We started with the partial-birth abortion; we did pregnant women being two victims; we did the ban on human patenting, which we did in the omnibus. We introduced marriage — or the Senate did — proactively, before the House did and before many people were talking about it."
    He said it remains to be seen whether the next two years earn the same title, but he said the agenda is pro-family.
    "You'll notice in the top 10 bills, S.8 was the Child Custody Protection Act. It's a strong, pro-family bill. You'll notice that Joint Resolution No. 1, which sends a signal, is that marriage is a union between a man and a woman," he said. "That's sending certain signals that we demonstrated in the last Congress we'll deliver on, not just signals, not just posturing."
    Mr. Frist said that a major challenge this year will be passing a budget at the spending total proposed by Mr. Bush and that his goal is for the Senate to pass its version by March 21. He said the Senate can follow through on Mr. Bush's call for a 1 percent cut in nondefense, non-homeland security discretionary spending.
    "It has not been done in the last 12 years — and even before that, that's how long I've been here," he said. "And therefore, it is a huge challenge, it's going to require leadership by the president and by leaders in our body."
    As for immigration reform, another of Mr. Bush's agenda items this year, Mr. Frist said he does not have a set of principles at this point, but the issue likely will be pushed to next year.
    "I'll be supportive of at some time addressing it in this Congress. Given the fact that we only have 139 legislative days this year, it would be challenging to do, but again the timing hasn't been set."
    He said he was pleased with passage of the Class Action Fairness Act, but was conscious of the more intractable issues facing the Senate and had blunt words for his Democratic colleagues.
    Asked about the so-called "nuclear option" of changing Senate rules to bar filibusters against executive nominations, Mr. Frist said that would be a "constitutional option."
    "The nuclear option is what they did to me last year when they changed the precedent," he said.
    But although he warned in the opening session that he is ready to employ the option, he said last week that he won't necessarily do it at the first filibuster against a judicial nominee.
    "The specific decision has not been made," he said. "I've got some pretty clear alternatives to use and, again, I'll just continue to appeal to the other side."
    Mr. Frist was unyielding in his criticism of Democrats, who almost without exception have opposed Mr. Bush's Social Security reform proposals by saying the system is not broken and doesn't need to be fixed.
    "I think it is absurd for the other side of the aisle to argue that there's not a problem," he said. "I think it is absurd for the other side of the aisle to stick their heads in the sand and hide."
    Mr. Frist, who has announced that he will not run for re-election in 2006, would not speculate on his political future and the possibility of a 2008 campaign for president. Whoever is the candidate, Mr. Frist said he can't predict how the campaign should be run, because "trying to predict in four years where the electorate's going to be, I think, is impossible."
    • For a complete transcript of the interview with Mr. Frist, click on www.washingtontimes.com.
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H050215    FLORIDA   Group launches drive for gay 'marriage' ban

    ORLANDO — A group with ties to conservative Christian organizations yesterday officially launched a petition drive aimed at writing a ban on same-sex "marriage" into Florida's constitution.
    To put the amendment before the voters in November 2006, Florida4Marriage.org must collect 611,001 valid signatures by next February. It the signatures are collected, the Florida Supreme Court would decide whether the amendment's language meets state requirements before it goes on the ballot.
    Florida already has a law prohibiting same-sex "marriage," but the group's leaders said an amendment is necessary to stem challenges from "activist" judges.
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H050215   Physicians look for link in resistant HIV strains
 

By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

AIDS viruses isolated from two patients on opposite sides of the country are being tested to determine whether either could be the source of a rare, highly dangerous strain of HIV that is resistant to most drugs and has been detected in a homosexual man in New York City.
    At least one of the viruses is from an East Coast man who probably had sexual contact with the New York man in October and who was known to be infected with HIV before that time.
    A sample of his virus has been sent to a laboratory in San Francisco for comparison with a virus isolated from an AIDS patient in San Diego, who apparently also was infected before the New York man, said Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in Manhattan.
    The genetic makeup of the San Diego virus, which was discovered while searching through records at the lab Virologic Inc., closely resembles that of the New York man, who told health officials he had sex with hundreds of men in recent weeks while taking crystal methamphetamine, Dr. Ho said.
    The Manhattan research center has been conducting tests in collaboration with the New York City Health Department. Dr. Ho said some test results seeking to determine the source of the virus might be available in a week.
    Investigators "need to know what's going on with the sex partners" of the New York man, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the nation's top AIDS experts, said in an interview yesterday.
    "It's very worrisome" if the man's partners also are suffering with HIV infections that are resistant to most of the anti-retroviral treatments on the market and that rapidly progress to full-blown AIDS, because it could mean that those complications are "inherent in the virus.," Dr. Fauci explained, adding that it is too early to know "with only one patient."
    Tests conducted in New York showed that the strain of HIV infecting the New York man, whose case started the investigation, was resistant to 19 of 20 licensed anti-retroviral drugs and advanced to AIDS within a few months.
    "The issue is that when you get a strain [so] resistant to most anti-retrovirals, you have to keep an eye on it," Dr. Fauci said.
    But he called it "premature" to say the man is battling a "supervirus."
    "It's unclear whether this individual just can't handle that virus very well," because his immune system further was weakened by drug use or genetics or because he is battling a far more potent disease-causing organism, the federal scientist said.
    Dr. Michael Bates, vice president of clinical research at Virologic, which has conducted its own tests of the New York man's HIV, echoed those sentiments.
    "We just don't know" if it's a supervirus, he said, even though Virologic scientists also found it to "be resistant to three out of four classes of AIDS therapies" and found the virus to "use a receptor that has been linked to accelerated immune destruction and rapid progression to clinical AIDS."
    What's still unknown, Dr. Bates said, is how much the New York man's behavior or genes contributed to the strength of his virus. He said drug use could be an important factor, because it could contribute to less discrimination with regard to sex partners and thus "favor transmission" of the virus.
    Dr. Bates also said it's vital to track down people with whom the New York man had sexual relations. If it's an especially fierce virus, he said, "We'd expect to see it in other partners."
    New York health officials are tracing the man's sex partners, but say the man acknowledges that he does not know all their names. To date, they have located about a dozen, a city spokeswoman said. But she could not say how many donated blood specimens to epidemiologists or what the results were.
     One piece of good news yesterday was ViroLogic's identification of an "entry inhibitor drug" known as Fuzeon as an option for the patient.
    "We don't know to what degree this patient" will improve, he said, but he is receiving a "very intense regimen."
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R050215   Bush resends judicial picks
 

By Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush officially resubmitted to the Senate yesterday 20 judicial nominees, including seven U.S. Circuit Court nominees whom Democrats filibustered in the last Congress.
    "I'm pleased that the president has renominated these excellent women and men to serve on the federal bench," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican.
    "I'm hopeful that Democrats will work with me to get up-or-down votes on each nominee," he said.
    Mr. Frist said he hoped to confirm the nominees, or at least give each a final vote on the Senate floor, through diplomacy. But he told The Washington Times for an article printed yesterday that he had the 51 votes needed to change Senate rules to ban filibusters against executive nominees — a threat that colored the Democrats' reactions yesterday.
    Diplomacy is not likely to work, said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, who told reporters last month that if Mr. Bush renominates the same judges, the Democrats will block them again.
    "To replay this narrow and completed debate demonstrates the Bush administration's failure to craft a positive agenda for the American people," Mr. Reid said yesterday after the renominations were announced.
    Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee, said, "The president looks like he is still more interested in picking fights than in picking judges."
    Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said Mr. Bush "has again chosen confrontation over cooperation and ideology over moderation."
    "The president's words about wanting to reach across the aisle to work with Democrats are ringing a little hollow at this point," he said. "Democratic senators cooperated in confirming 204 of President Bush's judicial nominees in his first term, and we were able to reach the lowest judicial vacancy rates in 16 years."
    Democrats have filibustered 10 of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees. Three have withdrawn their names from consideration, and the remaining seven were resubmitted yesterday.
    The seven are Priscilla Richman Owen for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; David W. McKeague, Henry W. Saad and Richard A. Griffin for the 6th Circuit; William Gerry Myers III for the 9th Circuit; William H. Pryor for the 11th Circuit; and Janice Rogers Brown for the D.C. Circuit.
    Also resubmitted yesterday were five other Circuit Court nominees on whom the Senate Judiciary Committee did not vote or on whom the Senate took no floor action, but had not been filibustered. To break a filibuster requires a "cloture" vote to end debate, which requires 60 votes to pass.
    Mr. Bush also resubmitted eight U.S. District Court nominees who were not confirmed during his first term.
    Changing Senate rules has been termed the "nuclear option" by Democrats who are warning of a political meltdown in the Senate if such a move is taken.
    "The nuclear option is aptly named because it will blow up the Senate," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat. "We don't know if Senator Frist has 51 'yes' votes, but it would be a tragedy for the Senate and for the country if he does. It would reverse almost 200 years of history and dramatically change what the Senate has always been."
    Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said earlier that he too hoped to avoid the "nuclear option," which Republicans have dubbed the "constitutional option." He also declined to say whether he supported employing the rules change.
    "I'm not going to jump off that bridge until I come to it, and I hope I don't come to it," Mr. Specter told The Washington Times earlier this month.
    Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican and member of the Judiciary Committee, said that for 200 years, judges have passed on a straight majority vote, by which all of the filibustered nominees would be confirmed.
    "It would make no sense to require Republicans to be elected by a 60 percent vote, while only requiring 51 percent of Democrats," he said. "The Senate should reject the double standard that Democrats have created for confirming President Bush's nominees and restore our constitutional and traditional standards."
    In the last election, Republicans picked up four Senate seats, and one major campaign tactic was to charge the Democrats with obstructionism — blocking the judicial nominees and policy initiatives of Mr. Bush and the Republican majority.
    Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, who lost his seat, was the leading target of that tactic.
    "The American people sent a strong message on November 2 against the obstructionist tactics that, unfortunately, we saw all too often in the past four years," Mr. Cornyn said.
    "I'm hopeful that the will of the American people has been made clear to the obstructionists and that these 20 nominees will receive swift up-or-down votes, as all judicial nominees deserve," the Texan said.
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H050216   ARKANSAS   Huckabees convert to covenant marriage

    NORTH LITTLE ROCK " Thousands of couples joined Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and first lady Janet Huckabee in renewing their wedding vows at a Valentine's Day ceremony supporting the state's voluntary covenant-marriage law that makes divorce more difficult to obtain.
    "There is a crisis in America," the Republican governor told a crowd of 6,400 at an arena Monday night. "That crisis is divorce. It is easier to get out of a marriage than [to get out of a] contract to buy a used car."
    Before the Huckabees renewed their wedding vows, they signed legal papers converting their 30-year marriage to a covenant marriage.
    A covenant marriage requires counseling before the parties wed and before they seek a divorce. A covenant marriage also requires a two-year wait before a divorce becomes final, except in cases of adultery, abuse or imprisonment.
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R050216   Robertson's priority

    Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, said yesterday that the three top issues in U.S. politics today are "judges, judges, judges."
    Mr. Robertson, in a luncheon address at the National Press Club, said the Supreme Court "has morphed into a superlegislature" and usurped the role of Congress.
    "I just want Congress to be Congress," he said in response to a question. Earlier, in his prepared remarks, Mr. Robertson said that "people of faith feel ostracized and helpless" as unelected judges rule by "fiat" on abortion, homosexual "marriage" and other moral issues.
    The 1988 Republican primary contender said he supports the so-called "nuclear option," in which Senate Republicans would rule by a majority vote to disallow filibusters of judicial nominations.
    "We were hoping they would bring it up at the beginning of the term," Mr. Roberston said of the rule change.
    Senate Democrats used filibusters " which a supermajority of 60 votes is needed to end " to block a number of President Bush's judicial nominees in his first term.
    "Majority vote and not the filibuster is the American way," Mr. Robertson said.

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H050216   Beyond everything

    "The ACLU has filed a lot of ridiculous lawsuits in its time, but attacking the Boy Scouts is beyond the pale."
    So remarked House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republican, after the House voted to urge the Pentagon to continue its long-standing support of Scouting activities.
    Rep. Joel Hefley, Colorado Republican, introduced the resolution in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking to end Defense Department support for the Boy Scouts and bar them access to military bases. The ACLU argued that the relationship violates the separation of church and state.
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O050218   Soros' donation

    "Millionaire financier George Soros, whose opposition to President Bush's conduct of the war on terror caused him to pour millions of dollars into the effort to defeat the president, made a substantial donation to the defense fund for radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, who last week was found guilty of giving aid to Islamic terrorists," Byron York writes at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com).
    "According to records filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Soros' foundation, the Open Society Institute, or OSI, gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee," Mr. York said.
    "In filings with the IRS, foundation officials wrote that the purpose of the contribution was 'to conduct a public education campaign around the broad civil rights implications of Lynne Stewart's indictment.'
    "Answering questions by e-mail, Amy Weil, a spokeswoman for the Open Society Institute, said the foundation contributed to Stewart's fund because 'it appeared to us at that time that there was a right-to-counsel issue worthy of our support.'
    "Amy Weil told National Review that while the institute initially underwrote Stewart's defense, the foundation's commitment was not open-ended. 'More recently, OSI was asked for additional funding and we turned down that request,' she said."
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O050218   Reed's goal

    Ralph Reed, former Christian Coalition director, announced yesterday that he will run for lieutenant governor of Georgia in 2006.
    Mr. Reed, 43, filed the necessary paperwork earlier this month to begin raising money for the race. In his announcement, he pledged to "work tirelessly" for Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue and other party leaders, the Associated Press reports.
    "It is long past time for Governor Perdue and Republicans in the General Assembly to have a lieutenant governor who is a partner in governance and a philosophical ally," he said.
    The current lieutenant governor, Democrat Mark Taylor, is expected to challenge Mr. Perdue for re-election next year.
    Mr. Reed was executive director of the Christian Coalition from 1989 to 1997.
    Mr. Reed led the Georgia Republican Party from 2002 to 2003, during which Republicans elected their first governor since Reconstruction. Both houses of the legislature have since come under Republican control.
    Mr. Reed also was in charge of President Bush's Southeast campaign last year.
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R050218   OHIO   Christian band says school discriminated

    TOLEDO " A Christian rock band banned from playing at a public school assembly filed a federal lawsuit against the suburban Toledo district yesterday, claiming discrimination and violation of their right to free speech.
    Rossford High School officials in December canceled the band Pawn's performance at an anti-drug assembly. Board members said they feared a lawsuit if they allowed a religious performance in a public school.
    School officials declined to comment on the lawsuit by the band, which is represented by the Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville, Va., center that deals with church-state issues.
    Band members said in the lawsuit that they did not intend to play any songs at the assembly that referred to religion and had agreed to stick to the anti-drug message.
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R050218   Judge dismisses charges against anti-gay protesters
 

By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A Philadelphia judge yesterday dismissed all charges against four men of a Christian evangelical group who were accused of trying to disrupt a homosexual rights event in the fall.
    "Court of Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe quickly and summarily dismissed the charges on the grounds that prosecutors had failed to make even a minimal showing of any criminal conduct," said Brian Fahling, a senior trial attorney for the American Family Association (AFA), which represented the defendants.
    In an interview after the hearing, Mr. Fahling said Judge Dembe held that "First Amendment rights are fundamental" in a democracy and that the "preaching and singing" by the four men at the rally, OutFest, were "classic First Amendment activities."
    The men " Michael Marcavage, Dennis Green, James Cruse and Mark Diener " belong to a religious group called Repent America. Each had been charged with felonies, including inciting to riot, ethnic intimidation and criminal conspiracy, in connection with the Oct. 10 protest.
    OutFest is a celebration of National Coming Out Day, which encourages homosexuals to proclaim their sexual orientation publicly. The city of Philadel