Take a Bite Out of PETA

The Center for Consumer Freedom describes itself as a "nonprofit coalition supported by restaurants, food companies, and consumers" created to defend against the "growing fraternity of ?food cops,' health care enforcers, militant activists, meddling bureaucrats, and violent radicals who think they know ?what's best for you'. . . ."

A cynical industry pressure group? Maybe. Will their actions in opposition to PETA further the spread of moral clarity in the US? Definitely. Their website observes:

Despite its deceptively warm-and-fuzzy public image, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has donated over $150,000 to criminal activists -- including those jailed for arson, burglary, and even attempted murder. In 2001, PETA donated $1,500 to the North American Earth Liberation Front, a criminal organization that the FBI classifies as "domestic terrorists." And since 2000, rank-and-file PETA activists have been arrested over 80 times for breaking various laws during PETA protests. Charges included felony obstruction of government property, criminal mischief, assaulting a cabinet official, felony vandalism, performing obscene acts in public, destruction of federal property, and burglary.

Like millions of other nonprofit groups in the United States (e.g., universities , houses of worship, social service organizations), PETA pays no federal taxes on its income. But few of these other tax-exempt groups share PETA's total disregard for the law. In 2002 PETA collected over $17 million from Americans, avoiding over $3 million in federal income taxes. Because this tax break amounts to a huge subsidy, every American taxpayer is footing the bill for PETA's behavior.

PETA's tax-exempt status was granted by the U.S. government on the basis of the group's willingness to conduct itself in a lawful fashion. We believe that PETA has failed to live up to its end of the bargain, and that the Internal Revenue Service should cancel PETA's tax-exempt status.

PETA is currently under IRS investigation. You can add your name to the Center's petition encouraging U.S. government officials to revoke PETA's tax-exempt status, and use our Take Action page to ask your elected officials to join the effort.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

AB 56: The Education Monopoly's California Power-Grab

The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and other pro-family groups are requesting action on AB 56, a California assembly bill which would lower the compulsory education age from 6 to 5 years of age, and take an incremental step toward a universal preschool program for 3 and 4 year- olds:

AB 56 lowers the compulsory attendance age for entry into school from 6 to 5 years of age. This requirement will apply to all children, whether their parents plan to send them to public school or private school (including private home schools).

AB 56 also makes "free" public preschool available to every child under 5 years of age on a voluntary basis. Should this bill pass, it could easily be followed by legislation to make institutionalized preschool mandatory. Universal preschool has been proposed by legislators in the past and is openly encouraged by proponents of early childhood education.

This bill goes beyond education. It states, "There is a further compelling need in California to ensure that early childhood development programs and services are universally and continuously available for children so that children enter school in optimum health and are emotionally well developed and ready and able to learn.... Therefore, it is the intent of the Legislature to provide.... Universal preschool programs that offer group experiences, developmentally appropriate curricula, and allow for a seamless integration to K-12 education for all children three and four years of age."

Rushing children into formal education will exact a heavy toll on the development of many children and will weaken the role of parents in their lives. This is diametrically opposed to the message parents are currently being given, that parents need to be more involved in their children's lives. AB 56 specifically states, "Children who have secure relationships with family members ... can become self-confident learners." However, parents cannot be more involved when the state either encourages or requires children to be with their parents for less time. Research supports later rather than earlier entry for children for educational development.

Visit this HSLDA page for an analysis of the bill and links to contact information for California legislators. Also, National Review Online has an interesting Q and A on the detrimental effects of preschool/daycare with Brian C. Robertson, author of Day Care Deception: What the Child Care Establishment Isn't Telling Us.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Barbarians With Nuclear Weapons, Part 5
Topic: Nuclear Terrorism

The CIA estimates North Korea now has enough plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons. If its nuclear ambitions remain unchecked, it will soon produce dozens annually and become a Nukes "R" Us, selling to any rogue state or terrorist group.

In addition to the eight declared nuclear nations, two dozen states have research reactors and enough highly enriched uranium to build at least one bomb on their own. The global nuclear inventory comprises more than 30,000 nuclear weapons, and enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium for 240,000 more. Hundreds of the existing weapons are vulnerable to theft.

A nuclear weapon can be created from an amount of uranium a little larger than a softball, and can be easily smuggled across porous US borders or in the 98% of cargo containers not opened for inspection at US ports.

Osama bin Laden's "press spokesman," Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, has announced al Qaeda aspires to "kill 4 million Americans, including 1 million children."

These are the hard facts that confront us in our war to save Western civilization. In a 4000-word essay in the January/February edition of Foreign Affairs, Harvard professor Graham Allison focuses on the Bush administration's need to develop a coherent strategy for combating the nuclear terror threat, and gives a sobering prediction that unless changes occur, a nuclear terror attack on the US within the next decade is "more likely than not."

Allison gives short shrift to the importance of the Iraq war, yet at the same time he offers a workable strategy centered around "Three No's" - no loose nukes, no new nascent nukes, and no new nuclear states. His is not a toothless UN-style appeasement protocol; it includes both the threat and use of military force when necessary. He observes that while enforcement of a doctrine based on the Three No's would be ambitious, it is no more ambitious than enforcement of the Bush Doctrine of regime change in terrorist-harboring states.

Use our Take Action page to advocate to your representatives the adoption of a formal Bush Doctrine of zero tolerance for barbarians with nuclear weapons, employing a strategy akin to Allison's "Three No's."

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Jihad in California

One would think the California Democratic Party couldn't sink any lower than it already has, its elected officials having presided over the destruction of a once-great state, ultimately leading to the recent gubernatorial recall election. But they always seem to find a new low to hit.

In a Jan. 16 FrontPage Magazine article, Steve Emerson exposes California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres' despicable pandering to radical Islamists in an appearance before the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) convention:

The incendiary language and the fabricated allegations used against me since 1994 by various radical Islamic groups were chillingly reminiscent of the language used by Art Torres. In fact, the incitement by Torres was lifted directly from the attacks against me by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group created by Hamas front groups in the United States, the American Muslim Council (a Saudi created group whose leader was just indicted on secretly working for Libya in the US and who had been secretly affiliated with Hamas and Al-Qaeda leaders) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). . . .

. . . That Mr. Torres chose to legitimize a group that supports Islamic terrorism and that he himself parroted the same incendiary rhetoric issued by MPAC and other extremist organizations shows that the murderous deceit that led to 9/11 is still alive and well, at least in California.

You can express your outrage at the links below:

Find and Contact Your California Legislators

Governor Schwarzenegger's Homepage

Contact The California Democratic Party

Bonus Link: To no one's surprise, the American Library Association (aka "Librarians for Totalitarians") has failed to do the right thing in the Cuban librarian affair (see our 12/29/2003 entry).

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Social Security Reform

In a Jan. 14 guest commentary in National Review Online on the Democrats' lack of a plan for Social Security, Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute offers a good summary of the status quo:

Social Security is not only the largest U.S. government program, accounting for 23 percent of federal spending, it is the largest government program in the world. The Social Security payroll tax is the largest tax paid by the average American working family. In fact, nearly 80 percent of us pay more in Social Security taxes than we do in federal income taxes. At the same time, millions of the elderly rely on Social Security for much, if not most, of their retirement income.

The 68-year-old program is also in crisis. In just 15 years, Social Security will begin to run a deficit, spending more on benefits than it takes in through taxes. The federal IOUs in the Social Security Trust Fund are an accounting measure, not real assets that can be used to fund the program. Unless the program is drastically changed, taxes will have to be raised or benefits cut. But taxes are already so high that younger workers are receiving low, below-market returns from Social Security. Cutting benefits would be a severe burden to millions of low- and middle- income elderly.

While the libertarian Cato Institute's foreign policy is myopic and naive, their analysis of domestic issues is often spot-on. The Cato Social Security Alternative, summarized at the institute's Social Security Choice website (www.SocialSecurity.org ) offers a well thought-out privatization plan which could be implemented immediately, if public opinion drove elected officials to do so.

In fact, President Bush has already stated his position that younger workers should be allowed to invest a portion of their payroll taxes privately through individual accounts. With extensive public support, he could lead a Social Security privatization initiative that would not only save the system, but enable workers to retire much, much wealthier than they would under the current socialist model.

Use our Take Action page to let the President and your representatives know you would like to see complete Social Security privatization, along the lines of the Cato Social Security Alternative model.

Bonus Link: A telling quote from a Wall Street Journal article on rebuilding the Iraqi education system.

When American or international agencies wanted to impose progressive education (learn-through-play) in Iraqi schools, we reminded representatives of these agencies that Iraqis had to decide what they wanted to be taught in the schools and how it would be taught.

Hmm. . . . Prohibiting academics from imposing their will, and allowing parents to decide what children are taught and how. How `bout we try that here in the US?

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Home Schooling Under Assault

In her Jan. 14 column, Michelle Malkin targets the nationwide campaign against home schooling waged by liberal political figures and the media. She cites a New Jersey assembly bill - designed to punish home schooling parents for the crimes of the state's own child welfare system - as emblematic of the trend:

Congressman Mark Foley, R-Fla., a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and Co-Chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, noted at a hearing last year that: "Most people treat their pets better than the state of New Jersey has treated its children." The problem is systemic and nationwide. In Foley's state, 7-year-old Rilya Wilson is just one of 500 missing children in the child welfare system who have vanished. In California, Independent Institute research fellow Wendy McElroy reports, children are rushed into dangerous foster care homes thanks to a toxic combination of perverse financial incentives and lack of accountability for social workers' gross misconduct and neglect.

. . . At bottom, Weinberg's bill [mandating yearly health checks and testing for New Jersey's home-schooled children] is a cynical power grab -- something homeschoolers across the country have been fending off as the movement's success has skyrocketed. "This is about legislators interfering with parental rights," Tricia McQuarrie, a South Jersey homeschooling mother of five, told me. "It's Big Brother." Indeed, legislators and the liberal media (witness CBS News' anti- homeschooling hit piece last October) are pushing for increased regulation of homeschooling parents, including criminal background checks, because the grass-roots movement gravely threatens their socialist agenda of promoting dependency. God forbid children be taught by their own parents without oversight from the all-knowing, all-caring, infallible wizards of the child welfare-public school monopoly!

A crackdown on innocent homeschooling families to cure the incompetence of government child welfare agencies is like a smoker lopping off his ear to treat metastatic lung cancer. It's a bloody wrong cure conceived by a fool who caused his own disease.

Use our Take Action page to express to your representatives and media outlets support for the home schooling movement, and your opposition to government regulation of a phenomenon that has proved, in study after study, to produce educated, successful and well-adjusted children.

Bonus Link: One of the best things about home school is that stuff like this never happens.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

San Diego Sells Out The Scouts

The San Diego Union Tribune on Jan. 9 reported:

The city of San Diego has agreed to cancel its lease in Balboa Park with the Boy Scouts, hoping to end the city's role in a 3? -year legal battle with the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Boy Scouts, however, vowed to continue fighting for its 18-acre headquarters even without city support, because it believes its constitutional liberties are at stake. Last month, the group received a letter of support from the U.S. Justice Department, stating the group's predicament raised "substantial concerns" that the group's rights were being violated.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit against the city and the Boy Scouts in August 2000, two months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts could refuse to admit gay troop members or troop leaders. The lawsuit said the city showed favoritism toward a religious organization by leasing the Scouts land for $1 a year.

The city's settlement was announced yesterday, though the City Council made the decision Dec. 9 in a closed session. As part of the deal, the city agreed to pay $790,000 of the ACLU's legal fees and $160,000 in court costs.

The city also agreed to drop its defense of a separate but similar lease of land at Fiesta Island. That matter is still pending in San Diego federal court but could go to trial this year.

In the Bizarro World of the judicial tyrants, a non-sectarian youth organization whose members believe in God magically becomes a "religious organization" and, even more magically, civic support of such an organization becomes a violation of the US Constitution's establishment clause. And for its efforts to fight the crime of open belief in God, the ACLU will be rewarded with nearly $1 million in legal fees to continue its assault on the Boy Scouts and other manifestations of traditional values - values which the Constitution's framers would have overwhelmingly supported.

You can contact the Justice Department here, and ask that it use all its powers to support the Scouts in these lawsuits. You can also express your disgust to the San Diego City Council here, and make a financial contribution to the Scouts here.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

It's 1984 in Britain

BBC "chat show" host Robert Kilroy-Silk has been under relentless fire from a British Moslem pressure group and his own government since publication in the Sunday Express of a piece in which he criticized the Arab world. Unfortunately it seems the only place this column can be read in its entirely is in an abominably formatted press release from the tolerant souls at the Muslim Council of Britian.

Some excerpts from Kilroy-Silk's column:

. . . After all, the Arab countries are not exactly shining examples of civilisation, are they? Few of them make much contribution to the welfare of the rest of the world. Indeed, apart from oil - which was discovered, is produced and is paid for by the West - what do they contribute? Can you think of anything? Anything really useful? Anything really valuable? Something we really need, could not do without? No, nor can I. Indeed, the Arab countries put together export less than Finland.

We're told that the Arabs loathe us. Really? For liberating the Iraqis? For subsidising the lifestyles of people in Egypt and Jordan, to name but two, for giving them vast amounts of aid? For providing them with science, medicine, technology and all the other benefits of the West? They should go down on their knees and thank God for the munificence of the United States.

What do they think we feel about them? That we adore them for the way they murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11 and then danced in the hot, dusty streets to celebrate the murders? That we admire them for the cold-blooded killings in Mombasa, Yemen and elsewhere? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women repressors? I don't think the Arab states should start a debate about what is really loathsome.

But why, in any case, should we be concerned that they feel angry and loathe us? The Arab world has not exactly earned our respect, has it? Iran is a vile, terrorist-supporting regime - part of the axis of evil. So is the Saddam Hussein-supporting Syria. So is Libya. Indeed, most of them chant support for Saddam.

That is to say they support an evil dictator who has gassed hundreds of thousands of their fellow Arabs and tortured and murdered thousands more. How can they do this and expect our respect?

Why do they imagine that only they can feel anger, call people loathsome? It is the equivalent of all the European nations coming out in support of Hitler the moment he was attacked by the US, because he was European, despite the fact that he was attempting to exterminate the Jews - and Arabs.

Moreover, the people who claim we are loathsome are currently threatening our civilian populations with chemical and biological weapons. They are promising to let suicide bombers loose in Western and American cities. They are trying to terrorise us, disrupt our lives. And then they expect us to be careful of their sensibilities?

We have thousands of asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries living happily in this country on social security. This shows what their own people think of the Arab regimes, doesn't it? There is not one single British asylum seeker in any Arab country. That says it all about which country deserves the epithet loathsome.

Given that Kilroy-Silk has said the column as he originally wrote it referred to Arab regimes and not every last individual Arab, and except for an erroneous designation of Iran as an Arab country, exactly what in this piece is untrue? Initially, the head of an Arab organization actually agreed with Kilroy-Silk, but later backpedaled.

Not only has he been suspended from his BBC program, but in an Orwellian twist Kilroy-Silk also faces a police investigation and possible criminal prosecution under the "Public Order Act" for committing the thought crime of accurately describing the Arab world. An excerpt from The Scotsman is chilling:

The Commission for Racial Equality has referred the matter to the police.

Trevor Phillips, head of the CRE, said he expected the MP-turned-presenter to be prosecuted for inciting racial hatred.

Mr Phillips said on Sky News: "Well this is now a matter for the police. What will happen is the police will investigate it, look at the Public Order Act and assess whether this could be interpreted as an incitement of racial hatred. There are clear legal tests for that.

"If it is then it will go the Crown Prosecution Service who will then discuss whether there's a case to be made and if there is a case to be made, Mr Kilroy-Silk will be prosecuted.

"I have to say, if it's deemed not to be a breach of the laws on racial hatred, we will have to have a pretty good look at those laws."

Just out of curiosity, how many radical Moslem organizations in Britain have been prosecuted for "incitement of racial hatred" against Jews under the Public Order Act?

For what it's worth, you can express your outrage over the suspension to the BBC at its contact page. You can also use our Take Action page to ask the US State Department to put down their wine glasses and lodge a protest with the British government against restrictive speech laws that reasonable people would associate with Saudi Arabia rather than a free democracy.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Our Wartime Consiglieri

Robert Duvall has always been my favorite actor, and in a 60 Minutes II interview airing Wednesday night, he also proves that he's not your average Hollywood Useful Idiot when dealing with despotic regimes. The Washington Post reports:

. . . the Oscar-winning performer sharply criticized filmmaker and DreamWorks SKG studio co-founder Steven Spielberg for visiting Cuba in November 2002.

"Spielberg went down there recently and said, 'The best seven hours I ever spent was actually with Fidel Castro.' Now, what I want to ask him, ... 'Would you consider building a little annex on the Holocaust museum, or at least across the street, to honor the dead Cubans that Castro killed.' That's very presumptuous of him to go there," Duvall told Charlie Rose, according to excerpts of the interview released by CBS.

The actor, who won an Academy Award for his role in the 1983 film "Tender Mercies," added, "I'll never work at DreamWorks again, but I don't care about working there anyway."

Spielberg's spokesman says attribution of the remark to Speielberg is "totally false," but the Washington Post article notes

Spielberg spent four days in Cuba, launching a showcase of eight of his movies, meeting with Cuban filmmakers and paying visits to Havana's largest synagogue and a memorial to Holocaust victims at the city's Jewish cemetery.

The Oscar-winning director of "Saving Private Ryan" and "Schindler's List" also dined with Fidel Castro, spending about eight hours with the Cuban leader discussing art, politics and history.

Maybe the quote, which Spielberg's people imply is a fabrication from the state-controlled Cuban press, is "totally false," but it sure doesn't sound like Spielberg spent the eight hours haranguing Castro for the murder, torture and imprisonment he has brought upon the Cuban people for the past 40-plus years.

Let Spielberg know his companies will not see another dime of your money until he renounces, or at least explains, this apparent cozy relationship with Castro. Then purchase or rent "Tender Mercies," and enjoy Robert Duvall in the finest performance ever put on film.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Barbarians With Nuclear Weapons, Part 4
Topic: Nuclear Terrorism

Finally, a bit of good news.

An editorial in yesterday's Wall Street Journal focuses on the new Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) which, in only a few months, has shown itself to be the answer to UN fecklessness in WMD interdiction.

With the help of the German government (no kidding, the German government), the US in a recent PSI operation diverted a freighter bound for Libya and seized thousands of parts for centrifuges, used to manufacture nuclear weapons. Not so coincidentally, last week Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi agreed to open his weapons sites to arms inspections. The Journal notes:

It remains to be seen whether Gadhafi will actually dismantle his program, but at least it's been exposed--no thanks, by the way, to the U.N. agency charged with monitoring such things. Libya's nuclear program was news to the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors somehow missed it entirely--after they'd earlier missed secret programs in North Korea and Iran.

The PSI offers a better way than traditional arms control to enforce global norms in the age of proliferating WMD. The PSI allies--11 and growing--have agreed to interdict shipments of WMD, delivery systems and related materials at sea, in the air and on land. The original 11 . . . have since been joined by Canada, Denmark, Norway, Singapore and Turkey, which are all offering military support. Meanwhile, more than 50 nations have signed on to PSI's principles and may be called on should their help be needed.

But don't mistake PSI for a multilateral institution in the conventional sense. There's no headquarters, no secretary-general, no talkfests--and, perhaps most important of all, no French or Russian veto. "PSI is an activity, not an organization," a senior Administration official tells us. It's an action-oriented group that "needs to be agile and move fast."

As PSI grows, the U.S. official contemplates "dozens of other countries participating" in dozens of different ways. Call it mix-and-match multilateralism. Countries participate or not, depending on the need at hand and on their own capabilities. The one common thread is U.S. leadership.

Use our Take Action page to express your support for this new and effective initiative which the Wall Street Journal characterizes as "a herald of the real new world order, multilateralism with teeth."

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Another Amnesty

In recent columns, Michelle Malkin and Phyllis Schlafly deal with President Bush's misguided proposal to grant legal status and removal of the threat of deportation to millions of illegal immigrants. Malkin notes the proposal would turn the ailing Social Security system into "an international relief fund for illegal alien workers who used counterfeit Social Security cards and stolen numbers to secure illegal jobs." She continues:

Reporter Joel Mowbray, who first exposed this treachery a year ago, noted that this raw deal may well cost overburdened U.S. taxpayers $345 billion over the next 20 years. Probably much more. As we know from experience, Social Security projections are notoriously off the mark.

The bureaucrats call this scheme "totalization." Try total prostration. The proposed agreement is nothing more than a transfer of wealth from those who play by the rules to those who willingly and knowingly mock our own immigration and tax laws. What are we doing promising lifetime Social Security paychecks to day laborers in Juarez when we can't even guarantee those benefits to workers here at home?

Unbelievably, the White House is trying to convince us to embrace this global ripoff because it "rewards work." No, it rewards criminal behavior. The plan will siphon off the hard-earned tax dollars of American workers who may never see a dime of their confiscated earnings and fork it over to foreigners guilty of at least four acts of federal law-breaking: crossing the border illegally, working illegally, engaging in tax fraud and using bogus documents.

Schlafly points to the debacle caused by the prior "one-time" amnesty:

In 1986, the United States granted what was promised to be a one- time legalization - then honestly called amnesty. That sent a message to others to enter illegally and wait for the next amnesty.

The administrations of Presidents Bush I, Clinton and Bush II have flagrantly failed to use our resources "to cope with" those who afterward violated the "process of entry." And so the illegal-alien problem quadrupled.

Not only did the 1986 amnesty transform millions of illegal aliens into lawful permanent residents, but after they became U.S. citizens they could import their relatives. Congress never investigated how many additional millions entered the United States or the massive document fraud that was involved in the process.

Let's put aside for a moment the issue of unfairness to legal immigrants in allowing someone else to jump in ahead of the waiting line, and let's also put aside the obvious national security implications of a policy encouraging illegal border crossings through Mexico by people who could be seeking anything from farm employment to an opportunity to detonate nuclear devices in ten US cities in order to finally bring the Great Satan under the rule of Allah.

There are those on both the left and right who, to serve their special interests, advocate open borders. Those of us who have lived our entire lives in California know the reality of open borders. I urge anyone who lived in the San Fernando Valley 35 years ago to take a drive through it today then try to claim with a straight face that it has benefitted from swelling illegal immigration. US immigration policy has done nothing to improve the lot of Mexico, and has only served to extend its Third World culture across US borders.

As Congress debates the new proposal, let them know you are among the two-thirds of Americans who, according to a Zogby International poll, believe those residing illegally in the US should not be allowed to stay.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Redefining Poverty

Here's some excerpts from the executive summary of a revealing new report on American poverty by the Heritage Foundation:

The average "poor" person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines. The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:

Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.

Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.

Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.

Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

Seventy-three percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.

[Ed. note: So someone like me who owns no DVD player or working dishwasher is what, sub-poor?]

Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.

. . .The good news is that the poverty that does exist in the United States can readily be reduced, particularly among children. There are two main reasons that American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and their fathers are absent from the home.

One point the executive summary does not mention is what an insult such a redefinition of the term "poverty" is to those who are truly poor around the world. We in the pampered West have real problems understanding concepts like "poverty" and "evil," but those who have actually lived with them, like the "New Europe" nations formerly under Soviet domination, know what these terms mean, in a way that we, without the same experience, cannot.

The summary concludes:

Yet, although work and marriage are reliable ladders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both. Major programs such as food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid continue to reward idleness and penalize marriage. If welfare could be turned around to encourage work and marriage, the nation's remaining poverty would quickly be reduced.

Use our Take Action page to ask your representatives to support the completion of welfare reform by enacting laws that encourage recipients to use those "reliable ladders out of poverty" - work and marriage.

Bonus Links:

This week brings another spot-on Dennis Prager column - Jimmy Carter: "Compassion for Mordor".

And for those of us who were wondering. . . "Pat Robertson: God Says Bush Will Win in 2004." Whew, that's a relief.

And finally...

Newsweek's Howard Fineman: "Do you see Jesus Christ as the son of God and believe in him as the route to salvation and eternal life?"

Howard Dean: "I certainly see him as the son of God. I think whether I'm saved or not is not gonna be up to me."

Huh??

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Corporate Thought Police

Christianity Today's January 2004 issue alerts us to a disturbing new corporate trend:

Albert A. Buonanno of Denver had worked at AT&T Broadband for two years. But in a 2001 reorganization, the company directed employees to sign a "certificate of understanding." The document said employees must "fully recognize, respect, and value the differences among all of us," including "sexual orientation."

Buonanno, who attends a Baptist General Conference church, told his supervisor in a letter that he wouldn't discriminate against or harass homosexuals. But he also said he couldn't sign the statement because it contradicted the Bible. Buonanno's supervisor fired him the next day.

The Rutherford Institute, a religious liberties organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia, is representing Buonanno, 47, and a handful of others. They all lost their jobs for refusing to condone employment policies they found biblically immoral.

The culture war over homosexuality in America has moved to a new front--the workplace. Christian observers say millions of employees are being commanded not just to tolerate homosexual behavior but also to respect and even promote it.

This story is a prime example of a new and insidious use of "definition creep" in liberal politics. Historically, "tolerance" was defined as "Allowing without prohibiting or opposing. Permitting." The third edition of the American Heritage Dictionary now lists as its only relevant definition, "The capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others" [emphasis mine].

Of course in a free nation religious believers certainly should be expected to refrain from persecuting homosexuals, but compulsory oaths such as those referenced in the Christianity Today article clearly cross the line from what has been historically defined as "tolerance" of a behavior to what can only be honestly defined as "forced acceptance and celebration."

Use our Take Action page to express to your representatives your opposition to corporate codes that violate employee civil rights by going beyond tolerance to coerced acceptance and celebration of behaviors historically deemed sinful in Judeo-Christian traditions.

You can also give your financial support and encouragement to the Rutherford Institute at this link.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

The Education Monopoly, Part 2

The battle for school privatization is proving to be one of the toughest in the cultural civil war. Its objective is wresting money and power from entrenched bureaucrats and one of the most powerful unions in the nation, entities that will not give up without a vicious fight. Moreover, they have the judicial tyrants overwhelmingly on their side, trial lawyers as their foot soldiers and the Democrat party in thrall. And yet in her recent column, Mona Charen sees reasons for hope, and offers some very interesting data:

The Cato Institute looked at prices of private schools in a number of cities around the country and compared their tuitions with what the government spends on education. In the District of Columbia, for example, the government spends $11,009 per pupil. Forty-five of the District's private schools charged less than that per year, and 39 charged $5,000 or less.

In Houston, annual per-pupil spending by the city and state is $7,098. But 119 of the area's 144 private schools charge less, and 90 percent charged $5,000 or less. In Denver, the government spends $9,919 to educate each pupil per year. Only six of the city's 91 private elementary schools charge that much. The median private tuition is $3,528.

Would that the problem were only obscene amounts of cash being expended in a failed attempt to educate.

In public school, your child will learn a few lessons. They include that sex is no more than a pleasurable bodily function; that nature and the environment should be worshiped; that all cultures are equal, except Western civilization, which is the evil product of a succession of slave-owning white males; that animals should have human rights but fetuses should not; and that religion is benighted mythology, except for Islam, which in California schools your kid will be forced to practice . . . the list is endless.

Use our Take Action page to express to your representatives your support for school vouchers and the ultimate privatization of public education from pre-school to university. (And if you are considering home schooling your child, read this and contemplate the possibilities.)

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Treason's First Cousin

Insight magazine has a detailed article on a story that seems to have dropped off the media radar screen, but shouldn't have.

It is still not known exactly who created the infamous memo that Insight calls a "plan for Democrats to abuse the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) as a stealth weapon to undermine and discredit President George W. Bush and the U.S. war effort in Iraq." Georgia Democratic Senator Zell Miller said of the plan, "If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin. The ones responsible - be they staff or elected or both - should be dealt with quickly and severely, sending a lesson to all that this kind of action will not be tolerated, ignored or excused."

Some key excerpts from the article:

The plot, authored by aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the committee, has poisoned the working atmosphere of a crucial legislative panel in a time of war, Senate sources say. It centered on duping the panel's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, into approving probes that in actuality would be fishing expeditions inside the State Department and Pentagon. The authors hoped to dig up and hype "improper or questionable conduct by administration officials." According to a staff memo, the committee then would release the information during the course of the "investigation," with Democrats providing their "additional views" that would, "among other things, castigate the majority [Republicans] for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry."

In other words, they would manufacture and denounce a cover-up where none existed. The Democrats then would drag the issue through the 2004 presidential campaign by creating an independent commission to investigate, according to the memo.

. . . Asked whether [Democrat staff chief on the Senate intelligence panel Christopher] Mellon wrote the plan, Rockefeller's spokeswoman Wendy Morigi did not attempt to exonerate the staff director. "The senator has not stated who the author of that memo is," Morigi said, "and I don't think he intends to." She spoke with Rockefeller and then called Insight again to say Sen. Rockefeller would not comment.

. . .Rockefeller defended his staff and the outrageous document itself, calling it a "private memo that nobody saw except me and the staff people that wrote it for me." He rebuffed calls from Frist, Miller and others that the staffers responsible be exposed, let alone fired, and instead accused Republicans of stealing the document from his aides' computers. "Mr. Rockefeller refuses to denounce the memo, which he says was unauthorized and written by staffers. If that's the case, at the very least some heads ought to roll," declared the Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Firing Mellon as the staff director for the culprits, the Journal said, would be "a good place to start."

An uncompromised intelligence effort is crucial in any war, but it has never been more crucial than it is now, in an age of barbarians with nuclear weapons who will not hesitate to use them within our borders. Use this link to demand Senator Rockefeller fire staff director Mellon, and expose and fire those who originated this incredibly cynical plot. Use our Take Action page to copy your representatives and the President and encourage them to pressure the Democratic party and Rockefeller on this issue. If we allow issues like this one to die, our country's death may be next.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Pull The Plug on Taxpayer-Funded Bias

On the November 8, 2002 edition of PBS's "Now," Bill Moyers gave the following commentary:

The entire federal government -- the Congress, the executive, the courts -- is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate. That agenda includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to surrender control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine.

Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you like the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming. And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture...

So it's a heady time in Washington, a heady time for piety, profits and military power, all joined at the hip by ideology and money. Don't forget the money... Republicans out-raised Democrats by $184 million and they came up with the big prize: monopoly control of the American government and the power of the state to turn their radical ideology into the law of the land. Quite a bargain at any price.

Did you enjoy that tirade? I hope so. You paid for it.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS and NPR, in 2003 received a $363 million federal appropriation, representing a whopping 45% increase in federal funding in just four years. In return for this largess, taxpayers have received, among other choice moments: obnoxious and biased screeds like the one from Moyers, a TV special that even the ultra-liberal New York Times called an "Islamic infomercial," NPR's blacklisting of premier Islamic terror expert Steven Emerson, and reporter Nina Totenberg's expressed wish that Jesse Helms' grandchildren would get AIDS. Charming.

Even if CPB's outlets had no bias, it would be superfluous. A National Taxpayers Union article puts it well:

When CPB was created in 1967 -- before the Internet, before satellite television, before VCRs or DVDs, before cable TV with hundreds of channels -- a stronger case could be made that there was a public benefit to subsidize other voices and programming. Now, with the media explosion of the past quarter century, there is little justification left for public subsidies.

Why continue to underwrite Julia Child and Emeril Lagasse when viewers can watch the Food Network (where the latter often appears)? Why subsidize history programming on PBS when viewers have the History Channel or can rent history documentaries at their local video store? Along with all the stations on free radio, listeners can tune in over the Internet to hundreds of stations all over the world. And for less than $10 a month, listeners can receive the 100 channels of XM Radio in their cars and homes.

It's time to stop feeding this left-wing dinosaur. Use our Take Action page to ask your representatives to remove all taxpayer funding from CPB and let it prove itself in the free marketplace of ideas, where dinosaurs tend to become quickly extinct.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Cleaning The Public Square

If you're fed up with the increasing use of foul language on prime time broadcast TV, Focus on the Family's website features a page where you can contact all five FCC commissioners to demand stricter enforcement of broadcast indecency laws. Amazingly, the FCC's enforcement bureau has never fined a televison network or station for violating these laws, and the FCC has ruled expletives such as the infamous F-word are acceptable on public airwaves in certain contexts.

If this were a matter of objectionable content on some cable station, I'd say let the free market work -- viewers should use their TV's channel delete and V-chip features, and notify their cable company and the offending stations that they have done so. But stations that use the public airwaves, which are a public trust and a finite resource, should be subject to regulation. For all the reasons we would not want obscenity in the town square, we should not want it on the public airwaves.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

"Who Do You Say I Am, Howard?"

In a recent interview in the Boston Globe, Howard Dean, the presidential nomination frontrunner in the highly secularized democratic party, described himself as "a committed believer in Jesus Christ" and said he expects to include more references to Jesus and God in speeches while campaigning in the south. He offered that. . .

Christ was someone who sought out people who were disenfranchised, people who were left behind. . . . He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything. . . . He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2000 years, which is pretty inspiring when you think about it.

Dean's statement, if transcribed accurately, is conspicuously free of references to Christ's divinity -- something a "committed believer" would be rather likely to work into any public statement of his faith, don't ya think?

As James Taranto observed in his Best of the Web column, "To hear Howard Dean tell it, Jesus Christ was just a socially conscious celebrity, like Princess Diana only less glamorous."

Not that a non-Christian could not do a fine job as president. Off the top of my head, I can think of several prominent Jews with a thousand times the moral sense of our "Christian" former chief executive Jimmy Carter, who by appeasing our enemies put us on the road to a war on Islamic terror. But I digress.

Use this link to ask Howard Dean to -- as a "committed believer" and in the interest of full disclosure to a few tens of millions of Evangelicals who might care about such things -- make a public statement clarifying his beliefs concerning whether Jesus Christ is God. Better yet, use our Take Action page to also e-mail President Bush and request that he put the question face-to-face in the presidential election debates, should Dean succeed in securing the nomination. Now that's must-see TV.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Librarian Decency Overdue

The same American Library Association that opposes Internet filtering to keep pornography and hate sites from the eyes of children now refuses to condemn Fidel Castro for imprisoning, for terms of up to 28 years, ten independent Cuban librarians who were rounded up along with 75 independent journalists, union organizers, economists, human rights workers and other dissidents in last April's crackdown on free speech.

The librarians' sole "crime" was resisting Castro's censorship of ideas, yet ALA policy-making governing council member Mark Rosenzweig smugly pronounces that "we cannot presume that all countries are capable of the same level of intellectual freedom that we have in the U.S. Cuba is caught in an extremely sharp conflict with the U.S. . . . I don't think [Cuba] is a dictatorship. It's a republic" [Emphasis mine]. Some of the directorate and some rank-and-file members agree with the Castro regime that the librarians are guilty as "agents of the US government," hence the ALA refusal to condemn the imprisonments.

At its Midwinter Meeting from Jan. 9 to Jan. 14 in San Diego, the ALA will have an opportunity to reverse its position of silence on this issue, but don't hold your breath. The organization's positions run comfortably in line with far left dogma, prompting one periodical to dub the ALA "Castro's favorite librarians."

Nevertheless, you can express your disgust to the ALA at this link, and use our Take Action page to let your representatives know you oppose the ALA position and support long overdue regime change in that small, enslaved nation just 90 miles from our shore.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Middle East History

For anyone who wants a good understanding of the Middle East and why Israel is an important front in the war on Islamic terror, here are links to two concise and articulate analyses by Empower America and David Horowitz.

Twenty Facts About Israel and the Middle East

The world's attention has been focused on the Middle East. We are confronted daily with scenes of carnage and destruction. Can we understand such violence? Yes, but only if we come to the situation with a solid grounding in the facts of the matter-facts that too often are forgotten, if ever they were learned.

...In sum, a fair and balanced portrayal of the Middle East will reveal that one nation stands far above the others in its commitment to human rights and democracy as well as in its commitment to peace and mutual security. That nation is Israel.

A Middle East History Primer

What is the crime of the Jews that they should not have been welcomed into this unpromising desert -- a tiny sliver of the Turkish Empire -- from the very beginning? What is the crime of the Jews that their infant state should have been attacked by five Arab armies on the day of its creation? What is the crime of the Jews that these Arab states should have continued their war for fifty years without a peace in sight? What is the crime of the Jews that these Arabs should make Jewish women and children the targets of their suicide bombers, and that their leader should call for millions of "martyrs" to plow into the heart of the Jewish sliver to blow up its inhabitants once and for all?

Their crime is that they are Jews....

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(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)