H.R. 2671 - The CLEAR Act

(What are "political devotions"? Click here.)

Agape Press reports on important immigration reform legislation:

Proposed Bill Lets Local Police In on Enforcing Immigration Law

A Colorado congressman says it's time to stop playing politics, pointing fingers, and passing the buck when it comes to addressing the illegal alien crisis. The Republican lawmaker wants to see state and local law enforcement agencies do more to help address the situation.

Congressman Tom Tancredo, chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, says the United States should not be in the business of "in-sourcing" criminals. That is why he is working hard on a bill called the Clear Law Enforcement for Criminal Alien Removal Act of 2003, or the CLEAR Act.

The representative from Colorado says the CLEAR Act, which was introduced last year to address the illegal alien problem, is gaining momentum in Congress. He feels the bill, if passed, would make it clear that state and local law enforcement agencies have jurisdictional authority to enforce the law.

While the U.S. Border Patrol reports it has a workforce of 9,500, Tancredo says there are only about 2,000 Border Patrol agents in the United States. "That means at any given time, you've got about 650 people on the job throughout the nation, pitted up against the 15 million people who are here illegally and the 500,000 that are already convicted felons who have walked away from the courtroom," he says. . . .

The proposed CLEAR Act would mandate that state and local police investigate and enforce civil immigration laws, and authorize them to investigate, apprehend, detain or remove aliens in the U.S., including transporting them across state lines to detention centers.

The bill currently has 120 cosponsors. Use our Take Action page to make sure your representative is one of them. For more on the threat of open borders in a time of terror, see our March 3, January 23 and January 8 entries.

Federal Non-Discrimination Policy - Race, Religion, . . . Sexual Practices?

The latest alert from the Family Research Council focuses on an under-publicized, unhealthy instance of mission creep in federal policy:

"Sexual Orientation" Should Not Be a Protected Class

During the previous administration, President Clinton issued an executive order making "sexual orientation" a protected class in the federal government's discrimination policy. Clinton's order went way beyond any act of Congress or U.S. law and raised "sexual orientation" to the level of race and religion. This was clearly a move to satisfy the homosexual political lobby.

When Scott Bloch took over as new head of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) for the Bush Administration, he accurately pointed out that "sexual orientation" is not a protected class and directed the OSC to start removing the Clinton-imposed regulation from federal documents.

However, the current White House didn't have the stomach for the public relations battle that would likely ensue. The homosexual lobby began putting pressure on Bloch and eventually forced him to retreat.

Send the White House an email today, and tell them to drop "sexual orientation" from the list of protected classes.

You can find this alert, plus a list of all the Family Research Council alerts here. All include the handy CapWiz form for communicating with the relevant elected officials.


Quality Punditry

Charles Krauthammer offers a workable plan in Iraq is Vietnam not on the ground, but in our heads:

The first George Bush once said he thought the Gulf War would cure America of the Vietnam syndrome. He was wrong. There is no cure for the Vietnam syndrome. It will only go away when the baby-boom generation does, dying off like the Israelites in the desert, allowing a new generation, cleansed of the memories and the guilt, to look at the world clearly once again.

It was inevitable that Iraq would be compared to Vietnam. Indeed, the current comparisons are hardly new. During our astonishingly fast dash to Baghdad, taking the capital within 21 days, the chorus of naysayers was already calling Iraq a quagmire on Day 8! It was not Vietnam then. It is not Vietnam now. . . .

This is no time for despair. We must put down the two rebellions -- Fallujah's and Sadr's -- to demonstrate our seriousness, then transfer power as quickly as we can to those who will inherit it anyway, the Shiite majority with its long history of religious quietism and wariness of Iran. And antagonism toward their former Sunni oppressors. If the Sunnis continue to resist and carry on a civil war, it will then be up to the Shiites to fight it, not for Americans to do it on their behalf.

Hardly the best of all possible worlds. But it is a world we could live with.

The Heritage Foundation has an interesting analysis of How Washington Spends Your Taxes.

(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.)

More on California AB 1925

A TVC alert:

AB 1925 UPDATE: VOTE EXTENDED TO APRIL 16th!!

AB 1925 MAY BE THE TARGET OF LAST MINUTE EFFORT TO KILL OUR BILL!!!

PHONE CALLS, EMAILS AND FAXES ARE A MUST TO ENSURE AB 1925 PASSES THE STATE ASSEMBLY!!

DUE TO LAST MINUTE NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN THE LEGISLATURE AND GOV. SCHWARZENNEGER ON WORKER'S COMP REFORM, THE SCHEDULED VOTE FOR OTHER BILLS HAS BEEN MOVED TO FRIDAY, APRIL 16th!!
WE NOW HAVE ONE MORE DAY TO FLOOD THE CAPITOL WITH PHONE CALLS, FAXES AND EMAILS IN SUPPORT OF AB 1925.

AB 1925 NEEDS A WAVE OF PUBLIC SUPPORT TO ENSURE IT PASSES THE STATE ASSEMBLY!!

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE TVC ALERT:

http://capwiz.com/traditional/issues/alert/?alertid=5526446

YOUR ACTION IS NEEDED IMMEDIATELY
Thank you and God bless!

While TVC's "We WILL stop others from harming themselves" rhetoric grates against my sort-of-libertarian leanings, I do like some of the bills they sponsor. This is one of them.

Bias

The White House correspondents ought to offer a Richard Clarke-like apology to the nation for their behavior at President Bush's April 13 press conference, but don't hold your breath waiting for it. It was as if the president were being questioned by the Committee to Elect John Kerry, and for all practical purposes, it was. Fully nine of the 15 questions were attempts to harvest a sound bite of Bush admitting failure, either as to Iraq or 9-11. The offenders included reporters from the New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, Time Magazine, the AP and, of course, NPR.

The media research center summarized it this way:

White House Press Pound Bush to Admit Errors, Apologize for 9/11

At Tuesday night's presidential news conference, White House corespondents for major national news outlets pounded away at President Bush in an effort to get him to identify errors he's made either before 9/11 or in going to war in Iraq, and urged him to follow Dick Clarke's lead and apologize for the September 11 terrorist attacks. New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller delivered the most obnoxious question of the evening, demanding in an accusatory manner: "Do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for September 11th?" Similarly, John Roberts of CBS News recalled how Clarke offered "an unequivocal apology to the American people for failing them prior to 9/11" and queried Bush: "Do you believe the American people deserve a similar apology from you, and would you be prepared to give them one?"

If you would like to call the news outlets on the carpet for their blatant partisan bias in questioning President Bush, the Media Research Center has a comprehensive database of news and media contact information, available 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.)

California's AB 1925

California's parental rights education bill is to be voted on by the full assembly on April 15. Traditional Values Coalition lobbyist Ben Lopez reports:

AB 1925 NEEDS A WAVE OF PUBLIC SUPPORT TO ENSURE IT PASSES THE STATE ASSEMBLY!!

Currently, I am in Sacramento at the State Capitol testifying and lobbying on a variety of critical bills. However, I have been privately briefed about a potential effort from some liberal Democrats in the Assembly to kill our bill, stopping the progress we made on AB 1925.
You may recall that we reported last week that AB 1925 passed the Assembly Education Committee on March 31st. Ten of the 11 members of the committee voted for our parental rights bill. We were successful in getting 7 liberal Democrats, including Committee Chair Jackie Goldberg (a lesbian and Democrat from Los Angeles) to support of our bill. Unfortunately because the bill received one no vote in Committee, AB 1925 will not be placed on the Assembly's consent file but rather must now go through a formal debate and vote by the entire Assembly.

Because of this, some of the more liberal Democrats will likely conduct debate against the bill. Attempts to even amend the bill to change it might even be attempted. We cannot let this happen!
A lot of time and negotiating went into passing AB 1925 from the Education Committee. You may recall that Senate Bill 71 was signed into law and took effect January 1, 2004 and it removed from law four parental rights provisions regarding schools and education. Our first attempt to restore those provisions back into law was through AB 950, which was killed by the Assembly Education Committee back on January 7th. AB 1925 seeks to restore the one deleted provision we mentioned above.

At the suggestion and promise of committee Chair Jackie Goldberg, I spent weeks working with Goldberg's staff, Senator Sheila Kuehl's staff (Kuehl wrote SB 71) and aides from Assemblyman Ray Haynes office on language that would give us what we were asking for and the votes needed to pass our bill. An agreement was reached which resulted in groups like the ACLU removing their opposition to our bill and got the votes of 7 liberal Democrats on the committee who had voted against our first bill AB 950 but now voted for AB 1925. This agreement must be respected by all other Democrats in the Assembly.

If all 32 Republicans support our bill being carried by Assemblyman Ray Haynes, and the same 7 Democrats who voted for the bill in the Committee vote for it on the floor as well, we will have 39 votes. It takes 41 to pass bills from the entire Assembly so they can move to the Senate. That is why we need you to contact your Assembly Member without delay.

I am personally meeting with as many staff members, legislative directors and Chiefs of Staffs of Assembly Democrats in an effort to get the votes we need to pass AB 1925. But I need you to help me and reinforce the work I am doing her on your behalf.

AB 1925 would still require that schools first notify parents at the beginning of the school year identifying guest speakers or organizations coming into the classroom to address students on HIV/AIDS education and related sexual issues. The notice must list the name of the speaker and the group they are affiliated with. If the school changes the speakers after the start of the school year, they must inform parents of the change no less than 14 days prior to give parents a chance to remove their child from the lecture or assembly.

Remember, schools currently do not have to notify parents about who comes into the classroom to give lectures, show films or talk about sexual issues. AB 1925 seeks to have schools give parents fair notice before speakers and organizations address their child in the classroom.

TVC needs your help in ensuring AB 1925 passes. This is a vital and simple measure that must be restored into law.

Please do not assume others will act for you. We need YOU to take action without delay.
This is a battle we can win. I just need you to support our direct efforts here in the Capitol. Please take action today.

YOUR HELP IS NEEDED!
SPECIAL ACTION TO TAKE TODAY!!!

For All Assembly Members Websites and Emails please go to: http://www.assembly.ca.gov/acs/acsframeset7text.htm

To find your Assembly Member directly click this link and then enter your zip code:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html

TVC also has a CapWiz form for the bill here.

To sign up for California TVC action alerts or to receive the complete AB 1925 alert, which includes fax and phone numbers for the relevant legislators, contact Ben Lopez at blopez@traditionalvalues.org.

(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 "Support The Troops" Project

Freedom Alliance is offering a way to express tangibly your thanks to the troops:

Last year on Veteran's Day, we had more reason to reflect on the bravery of our soldiers and their families than ever before. Historically, we remembered them with parades and ceremonies, but Freedom Alliance, which honors and encourages military service, launched "Support the Troops," and asked Americans to remember our vets particularly the active duty injured soldiers by sending donations of phone cards, gift certificates and magazines to the Freedom Alliance headquarters in Dulles, VA.

"We had the opportunity to tour the amputee facility of Walter Reed Hospital, and while there was no doubt in our minds that these soldiers were receiving fantastic treatment, it was obvious that donations were needed," said Tom Kilgannon, President of Freedom Alliance. "While America has pledged to 'never forget' what our heroic soldiers, firefighters and police did on 9/11, many are unaware of the injuries sustained in Afghanistan and Iraq since then."

A news article was published (November, 2003) that said all but 20 of the 250 beds at Walter Reed were taken up with casualties of the war. Fifty of them had lost limbs, often more than one. The newspaper also said that during the course of the Iraq War, more than 1,875 U.S. soldiers received treatment at Walter Reed, which works out to an average of about 10 a day, 300 a month.

We are currently collecting:

Phone Cards: Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital are from all over the United States, and Walter Reed staff says phone cards are always needed and appreciated.

Clothing Gift Certificates: Many soldiers are admitted with only the clothes on their backs. Please send certificates to clothing stores such as Old Navy or national department stores volunteers will shop for the wounded troops.

Cash Donations are also accepted and are used to meet the special needs of our service members.

Thank you in advance for your support of our men and women in uniform.

You can mail your contribution to:

Freedom Alliance
Support the Troops Campaign
22570 Markey Court, Suite 240
Dulles, VA 20166-6919

Quality Punditry:

Still another superb Victor Davis Hanson piece: The Fruits of Appeasement

Imagine a different November 4, 1979, in Teheran. Shortly after Iranian terrorists storm the American embassy and take some 90 American hostages, President Jimmy Carter announces that Islamic fundamentalism is not a legitimate response to the excess of the Shah but a new and dangerous fascism that threatens all that liberal society holds dear. And then he issues an ultimatum to Teheran's leaders: Release the captives or face a devastating military response.

When that demand is not met, instead of freezing Iran's assets, stopping the importation of its oil, or seeking support at the UN, Carter orders an immediate blockade of the country, followed by promises to bomb, first, all of its major military assets, and then its main government buildings and residences of its ruling mullocracy. The Ayatollah Khomeini may well have called his bluff; we may well have tragically lost the hostages (151 fewer American lives than the Iranian-backed Hezbollah would take four years later in a single day in Lebanon). And there may well have been the sort of chaos in Teheran that we now witness in Baghdad. But we would have seen it all in 1979 and not in 2001, after almost a quarter-century of continuous Middle East terrorism, culminating in the mass murder of 3,000 Americans and the leveling of the World Trade Center.

The twentieth century should have taught the citizens of liberal democracies the catastrophic consequences of placating tyrants. British and French restraint over the occupation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss, the absorption of the Czech Sudetenland, and the incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia did not win gratitude but rather Hitler's contempt for their weakness. Fifty million dead, the Holocaust, and the near destruction of European civilization were the wages of "appeasement" a term that early-1930s liberals proudly embraced as far more enlightened than the old idea of "deterrence" and "military readiness."

(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.)

Check The "No" Box

At CNSNews.com, Peter Flaherty shows us why the presidential campaign fund is just one more government spending fiasco:

Tell the Taxman No to Subsidizing Politicians

You may think that checking "no" on your tax return for the presidential campaign fund means your tax money won't go to candidates with whom you disagree on the issues. Think again. The tax form clearly states that checking "yes" does not increase one's tax or reduce one's refund. So the money has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is the general fund of the U.S. Treasury, financed by all U.S. taxpayers. Those who check yes are simply telling the government to allocate more U.S. taxpayer money to the presidential campaign fund than would otherwise be the case. . . .

True to form, many members of Congress now want to raise the check-off amount to as much as $10. And into what kind of campaigns would this enlarged pot of money go?

This year, both George W. Bush and John Kerry have opted out of the taxpayer funding system, releasing them from the spending limits that comes with it. That leaves candidates like conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche, who has received more than $5 million over the years. Among other things, LaRouche blames the September 11 attacks on "Jewish gangsters" and "Christian Zionists."

Lenora Fulani, an avowed Marxist whose New Alliance Party the FBI deemed "armed and dangerous," has collected $2.9 million. John Hagelin of the Natural Law Party has cashed in to the tune of $1.6 million. Hagelin advocated achieving peace in Kosovo entailed dispatching "Yogic flyers" to generate a "quantum-mechanical consciousness field."

Al Sharpton received $100,000 this year, which he seems to have quickly blown on fancy hotel stays and limo rides. Based on a complaint from my organization, the Federal Election Commission recently announced that Sharpton may have to give back the $100,000 amid allegations that he was ineligible to receive it.

Why should Americans be forced to subsidize the political speech of a bunch of nuts and hustlers?

To qualify for funding, all these fringe candidates have to do is raise over $5,000 in each of 20 states in contributions of $250 or less. The resulting federal matching funds enable them to disseminate their zany notions even farther and wider.

Taking minimum action on this issue is easy -- check the "No" box. But let's not stop there. Use our Take Action page to ensure that your representatives are not among the "many members of Congress" who want to raise the check-off amount to as much as $10. Tell them to nix the question instead.


Quality Punditry:

At OpinionJournal's Political Diary (subscription required), Holman Jenkins highlights the cruel consequences of being "nice" in Iraq:

It will be a long time before the average Iraqi does not believe he risks death or imprisonment for choosing the losing side in any political dispute. The only political judgment Iraqis have been conditioned for decades to make is "Who's stronger?" There's no "good will" that can be won that can solve our problem for us. What we offer--prosperity, democracy and rule of law--may be things most Iraqis desire, but Iraqis will fall into line with our plans not from idealism but from conviction that we are the stronger force. If he's serious about our mission, [President] Bush should seize the opportunity to show with finality that the U.S. military intends to remain the arbiter in Iraq. If not, he might as well figure out who the next Saddam is and hand the place over to him.

At the Washington Times, Pete Du Pont offers some historical perspective: A Bargain at the Pump -- Gasoline is $1 Cheaper Than in 1920.

(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.)

Commend Condoleezza

In this week's column, the always clear-headed Victor Davis Hanson observes:

After eight years of appeasement that saw repeated attacks on Americans, Pakistani acquisition of nuclear weapons under Dr. Khan, and Osama's 1998 declaration of war against every American, we are suddenly grilling, of all people, Condoleezza Rice -- one of the few key advisers most to be credited for insisting on using our military, rather than the local DA, to defeat these fanatics.

Over the last two years, each time a U.S. senator in panicked and wild-eyed passion screamed that we could not win in Afghanistan, she proved resolute and confident. On every occasion that an ex-general, a dissatisfied bureaucrat, or a wannabe journalist-strategist pontificated about what the United States could not do, she was unwavering in her determination to take the war to rogue regimes in the Middle East with a history of hostility against Americans and a record of providing easy sanctuary for terrorists. This present charade would be like holding public hearings on the eve of the 1944 election about the breakdown of intelligence and missed opportunities before Pearl Harbor -- and then blaming Harry Hopkins and Secretary Stimson for laxity even while the country was in the very midst of a two-front war.

If you would like to commend Dr. Rice for yesterday's dignified and professional performance in the face of partisan, rude, smug, harassing questioning by Democrat poseurs, you can contact her by fax at (202) 456-2883 or by phone at (202) 456-9491.

(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.)

Supreme Arrogance

Family News in Focus reports on a House effort to oppose the Supreme Court's bizarre, illegal practice of relying on foreign law in deciding cases before it:

High Court May be Reined In

Some in Congress want the Supreme Court to stop citing decisions by other nations' courts.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently said the U.S. Supreme Court will increasingly rely on international and foreign courts when examining domestic issues. Some in Congress, however, are saying "Not so fast."

U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., has introduced H. Res. 568 to remind the Supreme Court and other courts of a simple fact: Article VI of the Constitution states clearly that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. . . .

H. Res. 568 would not have the force of law, but it would be an official communication from Congress to the Court about the appropriate interpretation of our laws and our Constitution.

The article contains a link to further information on the bill. Use our Take Action page to urge your representative to cosponsor and/or support H. Res. 568.

(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.)

Save Welfare Reform

From Family News in Focus:

Welfare Reform Bill Stalled

Politics threatens to sideline a plan that's been exceptionally successful.

You can thank the welfare reform bill of 1996 for getting a lot of people out of the straitjacket of government assistance and into stable jobs. However, the continuation of that good work is being jeopardized by Senate Democrats who are pushing their own agenda.

Democrats have stalled the legislation over two amendments -- one raising the minimum wage and the other involving overtime pay.

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., a member of the Senate Republican leadership, said there is no excuse for shelving one of the greatest welfare reform successes in history.

"We have a 60 percent reduction in welfare, 2.8 million families moved out of poverty," he said. "And yet there are a great many on their (the Democratic) side of the aisle -- the Ted Kennedys, the Barbara Boxers, and the Tom Daschles -- who simply still don't believe in this program, still want to go back to the old way of doing it."

. . . Tom McClusky, director of government affairs at the Family Research Council, said the Democratic blockade spotlights the extreme ideological divide in Washington.

"I'm not saying it doesn't happen on both sides," he said, "except never (has there been) so glaring an example as the Democrats are willing to put politics before policy and politics before people."

For now, the bill remains shelved. Though Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, said welfare reform will pass at some point, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., is quoted as saying the bill's chances are "nothing -- nada."

The article links to a CapWiz utility you can use to contact your Democrat senators and urge them to end their blockade.

Quality Punditry:

At FrontPage Magaine, Robert Spencer gives helpful insight into the Iraqi Uprising:

From its inception, Islam has presented itself not just as a religion in the Judeo-Christian sense of the term, but as a comprehensive set of laws for the ordering of society, including political life. Pious Muslims generally believe these laws to be the laws of Allah himself, and therefore immediately superior to any societal structures arrived at through elections: you don't vote on the law of God.

Secularism entered the Islamic world only as a Western import, and has always encountered considerable resistance on Islamic grounds -- most notably from radical Muslim theorists who laid the intellectual and theological groundwork for today's jihadist terror groups. The Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, executed by the strongman Nasser in 1966 as a threat to his relatively secularist regime and revered by radical Muslims around the world today as a martyr, heaped contempt on Western notions of freedom as illusory. True freedom, he insisted, could come only from obedience to the laws of Allah, not from the constructs of the secularists, which were ipso facto idolatrous -- and it was every Muslim's duty to wage war against these idolatrous regimes until Allah's laws were obeyed.

Al-Sadr is proceeding from the same assumptions. Until such assumptions are taken seriously, there will be more and more Al-Sadrs.

(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.)

Grab Your Pen, Mr. President

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, reports on the pile of pork headed to George W. Bush's desk:

CCAGW Blasts House for Pork-Stuffed Highway Bill

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) today blasted the House of Representatives for passing the $275 billion Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (HR 3550), which exceeds the ceiling set by the White House. The bill funds thousands of projects in lawmakers' home districts and states and requires Congress to consider adding more money two years from now. House negotiators will now head to conference to hash over differences with the Senate's $315 billion version that passed last month.

"Members of Congress have raided the Treasury without any regard for fiscal prudence," CCAGW President Tom Schatz said. "It is time for President Bush to walk the walk and protect taxpayers from the big spenders in Congress. Barring a miraculous turnaround in conference, this bill cries out for a veto."

Both the House and Senate versions exceed the $256 billion limit set by President Bush. The Senate bill, S. 1072, also calls for adjustments in the tax code to increase revenue. The House companion, H.R. 3550, is partly financed through an increase in the federal gas tax. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and Treasury Secretary John Snow announced the administration's veto threat a day after President Bush submitted his budget to Congress in February. The White House reiterated its intentions on Tuesday. The House measure includes approximately 3,000 parochial projects for home districts--double the number approved in the previous six-year highway bill, passed in 1997. . . .

The bill's generous list of parochial projects include: $15 million to build a road to a gold mine in Alaska; $8,000,000 to replace the Edward N. Waldvogel viaduct in Ohio; $250,000 for Appalachian traditions for the construction of outdoor facilities along the Music Heritage Trail in Josephine, Va.; and $250,000 to construct a transportation museum at a Cleveland high school.

Use our Take Action page to encourage President Bush to make good on his threat.

Quality Punditry:

Run, don't walk to Victor Davis Hanson's website to read his gutsy piece, The Mirror of Fallujah. If he had written it in Britain, he'd be jailed.

I support the bold efforts of the United States to make a start in cleaning up this mess, in hopes that a Fallujah might one day exorcize its demons. But in the meantime, we should have no illusions about the enormity of our task, where every positive effort will be met with violence, fury, hypocrisy, and ingratitude.

If we are to try to bring some good to the Middle East, then we must first have the intellectual courage to confess that for the most part the pathologies embedded there are not merely the work of corrupt leaders but often the very people who put them in place and allowed them to continue their ruin.

So the question remains did Saddam create Fallujah or Fallujah Saddam?

While I certainly don't always agree with him, Christopher Hitchens has proven once again that he's one smart atheist: Fallujah - A reminder of what the future might look like if we fail.

I debate with the opponents of the Iraq intervention almost every day. I always have the same questions for them, which never seem to get answered. Do you believe that a confrontation with Saddam Hussein's regime was inevitable or not? Do you believe that a confrontation with an Uday/Qusay regime would have been better? Do you know that Saddam's envoys were trying to buy a weapons production line off the shelf from North Korea (vide the Kay report) as late as last March? Why do you think Saddam offered "succor" (Mr. Clarke's word) to the man most wanted in the 1993 bombings in New York? Would you have been in favor of lifting the "no fly zones" over northern and southern Iraq; a 10-year prolongation of the original "Gulf War"? Were you content to have Kurdish and Shiite resistance fighters do all the fighting for us? Do you think that the timing of a confrontation should have been left, as it was in the past, for Baghdad to choose?

(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 8
Topic: Nuclear Terrorism

More not-so-great news on the Mad Mullahs' Manhattan Project:

More Bomb-Grade Uranium Found in Iran

VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. atomic watchdog has found traces of bomb-grade uranium in Iran at sites other than the two already named, but diplomats say it is unclear if this boosts U.S. claims that Tehran wants an atom bomb.

"They found highly-enriched uranium at more sites than Kalaye and Natanz," a Western diplomat told Reuters on Friday on condition of anonymity. The diplomat did not specify how many sites, where they were or when the traces were found.

Last year, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported finding traces of uranium that had been enriched to a point where it contained about 90 percent of the fissile uranium atom U-235 at the Natanz enrichment plant and a workshop at the Kalaye Electric Company.

Uranium with such a high concentration of U-235 has few civilian uses but is the ideal purity level for a nuclear bomb. . . .

Iran says its atomic ambitions are limited to the generation of electricity.

I suppose that with this "Barbarians" series I'm starting to sound like The Prophet of Nuclear Doom -- an alarmist. But so be it. Shouldn't someone trip the alarm when there actually is a fire?

The Islamic Bomb today ranks as the gravest threat to Western civilization, with the Barking Lunatic North Korean Dictator Bomb running a very close second.

The issue is not complicated. Anyone, including a rogue state or a terrorist network, can win a war if they possess nuclear weapons and are willing to strike first.

Somewhere between 40- and 50 million Americans have seen Mel Gibson's The Passion since its Ash Wednesday opening. Suppose today each of those good folks decided to send a message to their elected officials, letting them know that they too consider barbarians with nuclear weapons to be the public affairs issue that trumps all others, and that should military action to remove the threat become necessary, they will support President Bush in doing whatever is required.

A hundred years from now, perceptive historians would remember it as the beginning of religious conservatism's successful campaign to save Western civilization in the early 21st century.

Use our Take Action page to send that message to your elected officials, then urge everyone you know who has seen The Passion to put their faith to work and do the same.

(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.)

Broadcast to The Broadcasters

A nifty new feature at CitizenLink:

Talk radio is growing in its reach and influence each day -- good news for conservatives since it is the one medium in which the top voices share our values.

Have you ever wished there was an easy way to contact those voices? To let them know your views on the issues, to suggest topics for them to cover, to send them interesting news you think needs to be reported?

Well, wish no longer. We've created this page as a one-stop shop of contact information for the top five conservative hosts in talk radio: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham and Michael Reagan. . . .

The page includes phone and fax numbers, plus a CapWiz e-mail form for broadcasting one message to all of the hosts with one click.

(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.)

Keep The Internet Tax Free

From Citizens Against Government Waste:

Since the previous Internet tax moratorium expired last fall, the Senate has debated whether to continue that moratorium for two more years or establish a permanent ban on Internet access taxes. Continuing the moratorium only leaves the door open for eventual taxation. The House passed a permanent ban on Internet taxes in September, 2003, and it is critical for our nation's economic growth and the continued development of Internet technology for the Senate to do the same.

Senator George Allen (R-Va.) is sponsoring S. 150, the Internet Tax Non- discrimination Act, which would permanently ban taxes on Internet access services and prevent states or other local governments from imposing discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce.

The Internet has become a vital part of our economy and keeping its use tax- free is essential for economic growth. Taxing Internet access services would hurt low-income Internet users, as well as many small businesses, and reward over- spending by state and local governments. Keeping the Internet tax-free will provide much-needed consumer and business confidence and help force the states to rein in wasteful spending.

Drag out your phone bill and take a look at the taxes slapped on by local, state and federal authorities. Now imagine those added to your Internet service bill. Ultimately the amounts would be higher of course, because the Net would be considered a "luxury," not a necessity like phone service.

Governments, like children, need limits. Now is the time to establish a ban on Internet taxes, before the bureaucrats develop any bad habits that will be tough to cure.

The alert links to a an e-mail utility which includes a sample message to your senators.

(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.)

Throw Out The Trash TV, Part 3

Family News in Focus reports on the push for consumer choice in cable TV programming:

Members of the Senate Commerce Committee last week warned cable operators that new regulations may be in the offing unless consumers are allowed some input into lineup decisions -- and prices come down.

Some consumer groups want an "a la carte" option, which would let customers buy only the channels they want. Melissa Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Parents Television Council, said that's the best option available.

"Right now, there's an inherently unfair system," she said, "where parents are forced to pay for channels they not only don't want but that they find morally offensive."

. . . The Consumers Union said requiring cable operators to offer a la carte programming would unleash the power of the consumers' pocketbook -- which would, in turn, help lower costs, increase incentives for quality fare and give families the power to not pay for extra channels they find objectionable or too expensive.

The a la carte option is the best one for both consumers and the cable industry itself. For the industry, it curbs the trend toward government censorship. For consumers, it removes financial support for channels they find morally objectionable or just desperately dull. (Most basic cable channels fall into one of those two categories, unfortunately.) It was a dark day in my house when Adelphia removed the classic movies channel and gave us SoapNet instead. How about some good, old-fashioned free-market choices?

Quickly, while we have the Senate's attention, use our Take Action page to urge your senator to support an a la carte purchase option.

(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.)

Victory for Unborn Victims of Violence

Focus on the Family's CitizenLink reports on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act's passage:

President Bush has pledged to quickly sign into law the bill classifying preborn children as victims in attacks on their mothers.

. . . Focus on the Family Chairman Dr. James C. Dobson applauded those senators who voted to defend "the most innocent victims in our society."

"Today's vote affirms in law what is common sense to more than 80 percent of Americans," he said. "There are two victims in violent crimes committed against pregnant women."

Carrie Gordon Earll, bioethics analyst at Focus on the Family, said the bill's passage "helps to rectify the schizophrenia in our culture regarding the value of preborn life."

"Either young human life has value in our culture and is worth protecting," she said, "or it's not."

So now, federally speaking, if you're a fetus the only person who can legally murder you is, well, your mom.

OK, sorry. Too sarcastic. We should all rejoice that this bill passed, especially without the two poison pill amendments, one of which was voted down by only a one vote margin.

The full article has CapWiz links you can use to thank all of the senators who spoke on the Senate floor in defense of the unborn.

Some Analysis and Outrage:

Charles Krauthammer's searing rebuke of Richard Clarke is a must read.

Click here for reason number 10,042 why the U.S. should not want to become more like Europe.

(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 7
Topic: Nuclear Terrorism

From the LA Daily News:

North Korea rejects U.S. nuke demand

Saturday, March 27, 2004 - SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea on Saturday rejected a U.S. demand for a "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling" of its nuclear weapons programs, calling it a plot to start a war and overthrow the government.

. . . North Korea's state-run Radio Pyongyang, monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency, said Saturday that it would never accept the U.S. demand that it first dismantle its nuclear facilities.

"Complete nuclear dismantling is a plot to overthrow the North's socialist system after stripping it of its nuclear deterrent at no cost at all. 'Verifiable nuclear dismantling' reflects a U.S. intention to spy on our military capabilities before starting a war," it said.

"'Irreversible nuclear dismantling' is nothing other than a noose to stifle us after eradicating our peaceful nuclear-energy industry," it added.

North Korea says it will allow nuclear inspections and dismantle its atomic facilities only if the United States provides economic aid and written guarantees that U.S. forces will not invade.

The country also insists that it will keep a nuclear program for power generation.

Washington demands that North Korea first dismantle all its nuclear facilities, saying it has previously broken international agreements not to develop nuclear weapons in return for oil and other economic aid.

In a brilliant October 2003 essay, Gabriel Schoenfeld observed that "If Pakistan is a stick of dynamite, North Korea is a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse."

Today the instant question is: does the US have the political will to extinguish that fuse?

The CIA estimates Kim Jong Il now has enough plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons. If his nuclear ambitions remain unchecked, North Korea will soon produce dozens of nukes annually. It currently boasts a missile capable of hitting the US West Coast and is developing one able to reach any US city. Yet, even if its psychopath dictator in fear of massive retaliation elects to refrain from attacking the US, he likely will open a clandestine Nukes "R" Us outlet and sell to any rogue state or terrorist group.

Attempts at diplomacy and appeasement (most notably the Jimmy Carter-brokered Yongbyon Agreed Framework) have proved predictably disastrous. In October Schoenfeld observed that it would be "something of a miracle" if the six-nation negotiations succeeded, and recent developments confirm his prescience.

So, what to do? It is clear preemption, or at a minimum pervasive inspections under the credible threat of preemption, are the only reasonable strategies. Yet a preemptive strike against North Korean nuclear facilities would not be pretty.

In 1981 the Israelis destroyed Iraq's Osirak reactor before it "went critical," killing only one person and creating no radioactive contamination. North Korean facilities, however, contain radioactive elements that would create some level of contamination when attacked. Moreover, some facilities are concealed deep inside mountains, making them difficult to destroy from the air with conventional munitions. And any attack would of course encompass only known facilities.

The US would certainly prevail in any resulting hostilities, but the price of extinguishing the "lit fuse" on North Korea would be extremely high. The price of allowing the fuse to burn to detonation would, however, be inestimably higher. As President Bush noted in a June 2002 address at West Point, the US

. . . can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. The inability to deter a potential attacker, the immediacy of today's threats, and the magnitude of the potential harm that could be caused by our adversaries' choice of weapons, do not permit that option. We cannot let our enemies strike first.

In Romans 14, the Apostle Paul reminds all of us that we will one day "give an account" of our lives before God's judgment seat. I expect believers alive today will be asked the following question:

In the early 21st Century, when communists and Islamists joined forces in a [successful?] attempt to destroy Western civilization with nuclear weapons, what did you do to stop them?

Personally, I'd like to be able to give a good answer.

Our leaders will take bold action only if they are sure the electorate supports it. Use our Take Action page to inform President Bush and your representatives of your support for a preemptive strike against North Korean nuclear facilities, should the regime continue to reject demands for complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of its nuclear weapons programs.

(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.)

Know Any Nascent Republicans?

Focus on the Family and CitizenLink recently launched a new project:

Voter Registration and Education Project Information Center

Come inside and discover the resources that will help you make a difference this Election Day.

This is a crucial year in the history of our country -- with a presidential election coming in November and dozens of other races for important positions at every level of government.

Every vote really will count -- as 2000's impossibly close battle for the White House proved. That's why Focus on the Family and CitizenLink have launched a Voter Registration and Education Project -- to spotlight the importance of participation in the electoral process and to help churches and individuals spread that message to others.

The center includes a CapWiz utility for creating a completed voter registration form, ready to mail. If you know any of the estimated four million Evangelicals who sat out the last presidential election, this would be the first place to send them.

(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.)

Support the House Budget Committee Plan

An alert from the National Taxpayers Union:

Although NTU strongly supports a freeze in overall spending until Congress gets its fiscal house in order by making President Bush's tax cuts permanent and reducing the rapidly rising federal deficit, that option is unfortunately not being considered. President Bush proposed a budget for 2005 that would have increased federal spending by 5.65 percent over the already high 2004 numbers. The Senate Budget Committee then produced a budget that would have made it very difficult to keep most of the President's tax cut package in place, let alone make it permanent.

Fortunately, the House Budget Committee has approved a fiscally responsible budget that should be able to pass the Senate as well. The House budget would curb spending by ensuring that Congress must "pay" for expansion of Medicare or other "mandatory" programs by cutting spending elsewhere; it allows most of President Bush's tax cuts to be kept in place, it reduces the deficit faster than the President had proposed, it accounts for the $50 billion in funding needed for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it keeps a tighter lid on spending than the President's plan. Although the budget proposal still contains $2.4 trillion in spending -- a number that is far too high for taxpayers -- the spending caps and budget enforcement measures, also proposed by the House Budget Committee but contained in separate legislation, make this the best available option by far.

The alert includes a quick and easy e-mailing utility and sample message you can customize.

(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.)

Foggy Bottom's Foggy Morality

FrontPage Magazine reports on another biased annual human rights report on Israel by the U.S. State Department:

Ever since the days when the Carter administration required that the U.S. oversee human rights policies and practices that remain an integral part of the policies of all nations abroad, the U.S. State Department has issued an annual country-by-country report to evaluate the human rights practices of nations throughout the world. By law, that annual report is submitted by the U.S. State Department to the U.S. Congress during the third week of the month of February.

. . . What has consistently characterized these reports has been the tendency of State to rely without question on the reports of left-wing Israeli political organizations. This year's report was no exception.

Why is the State Department unable to find the names of murdered Israeli children in their analysis titled "Country Report on Human Rights Practices, 2003--Israel," released on February 25, 2004? The report, put out to the U.S. and worldwide media, shows a significant bias against Israel and openly is in favor of Palestinians throughout its entire 50 pages.

Consider this, from the introduction, which sets the tone for the entire report:

"Since 1991, the Israelis and the Palestinians made repeated attempts at negotiating peace. Despite meetings between high-level Israeli and Palestinian officials, efforts to resolve the conflict yielded few results..."

Such a statement gives the distinct impression that both sides made equal effort. The reality, which is glossed over, is that during the course of the Oslo process, from 1993 to 2000, Israel met its obligations and turned over significant areas to the control of the Palestinian Authority, while the PA failed to meet its obligations. No less a participant than former President Clinton laid the blame for failure of the process squarely on PA President Arafat. Yet the State Department chooses not even to suggest that this might have been the case.

The article details many more misrepresentations, and is well worth reading in full.

The fog got particularly thick this week when State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the assassination of Hamas founder and "spiritual leader" Ahmed Yassin was "deeply troubling," would increase tensions in the region, and could make it harder to pursue peace in the Middle East.

What should be "deeply troubling" is Yassin's murderous record, which the Israel National News recounts:

[Yassin] oversaw a total of 425 attacks - including the Park Hotel Seder massacre - that killed 377 Israelis and wounded 2,076.

Among the worst Hamas attacks in the past 3.5 years of the Palestinian Authority-initiated Oslo War were the following ten, which ended the lives of a total of 186 people:

June 1, 2001 - Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv, 21 killed - mostly new-immigrant teenagers from the former Soviet Union

Aug. 9, 2001 - Sbarro's Pizzeria in Jerusalem, 15 killed, including the parents and three children of the Schijveschuurder family

Dec. 2, 2001 - Haifa bus, 15 killed

March 27, 2002 - Park Hotel in the midst of the Passover Seder, 30 killed, including six husband-and-wife couples

March 31, 2002 - Matza Restaurant in Haifa, 15 killed, including two sets of a father and two children

May 7, 2002 - Rishon Letzion hall, 16 killed

June 18, 2002 - #32 bus from Gilo, Jerusalem, 19 killed

March 5, 2003 - #37 bus in Haifa, 15 killed

June 11, 2003 - #14 bus, Jerusalem, 17 killed

Aug. 19, 2003 - #2 bus from Western Wall, 23 killed, including a mother and baby; father and son; and four other children

To express opposition to the State Department's bias against Israel, contact the Department and Secretary of State Colin Powell 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.)