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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (2122)	5/28/2003 10:01:36 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 10965

About the only body in Washington that Democrats are in control of these days is the Democratic National Committee. So rather than convening a summit on the South Lawn of the White House or in the majority wing of Congress to unveil what is being called the "New Democrat" agenda, pow-wow co-hosts Sen. Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico are summoning Florida Sen. Bob Graham and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman - both presidential candidates - and Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln and a number of other influential Democrats to the Capitol Hyatt Hotel on June 17. We're told that the topics of discussion will include developing a "winning message" to retake a majority in Washington, terrorism and the role of U.S. leadership, the "stagnant" economy, and federal and state budget deficits. 'HATE-BAITING' An irate Rev. Jesse Jackson says he is being attacked today much the same way Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was attacked in his day. Playing the race card in defending his large - but questionable - business empire, Jackson says there's nothing illegal about him receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from major organizations, including NASCAR. In an interview with NASCAR Winston Cup Scene, Jackson responds angrily to requests by the National Legal and Policy Center of Washington that the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing end its support to his controversial organizations. "These attacks by the policy center, these are unending attacks," Jackson says. "Dr. Martin Luther King was called a communist, he was called a nigger, he was hated, he was killed. This kind of hate baiting is really a perversion." PUT DOWN YOUR FORK Yes, it's come to this - a Washington conference on Obesity, Individual Responsibility and Public Policy (June 10). And no better time, as the tort system in this country, some fear, is on its way to dampening individual responsibility and threatening the existence of companies whose products may be labeled as fattening. "By some calculations, being overweight is as deadly as smoking," says the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, whose panel of experts will examine that claim and others and their implications for public policy. They'll tell us whether controlling obesity is a matter of government regulation - through taxes and public-disclosure laws - or whether it's a matter of willpower and choice. The panel will also examine the epidemiology of obesity, real reasons Americans are overweight, and "difficulties" with legal and legislative remedies. The Centers for Disease Control reported recently that obesity in the United States "has risen at an epidemic rate during the past 20 years." FICTION WRITERS Sidney Blumenthal, who wrote for The Washington Post and the New Yorker before becoming senior adviser to President Clinton from 1997 to 2001, is author of the new book The Clinton Wars. While his publisher never sent us a copy to review, we have to laugh at a letter sent to the author last week by Craig Shirley, president of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs. "Your latest love paean to Bill and Hillary Clinton is alas error-filled, as evidenced by the untruth you write about me on page 333," the Washington PR mogul writes. "For the record, I never said anything about (homosexual Washington writer) David Brock's lifestyle, as you falsely charge, nor did I ever hear any other conservatives take notice. "Who was your source? Stephen Glass? Jayson Blair?" OLD WARRIORS What does a former White House national security adviser do to keep busy during this time of war and terror? Richard Allen, President Reagan's former national security chief, is helping to rebuild Iraq. He is just one of the heavyweights on an Iraqi reconstruction task force, headed by former ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg, now senior vice president of the global group APCO Worldwide. Kevin McCauley, of O'Dwyer's PR Daily ( www.odwyerpr.com ), says the remainder of the Iraq team includes former Michigan Sen. Don Riegle, one-time chairman of the Senate Banking Committee; five-year Federal Aviation Administration head Jane Garvey; and ex-Rep. Steve Solarz, New York Democrat, formerly on the House International Affairs Committee. CHANGE THE LOCKS The year in which Detroit presented ousted Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein with a key to the city: 1980 -- Harper's Index, June 2003 BELIEVE IT OR NOT Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) has a culinary passion for Spam and persauded the Library of Congress to hold an exhibit on the lunchmeat. When Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) was a child, one of his babysitters was Lynda Johnson, daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) can run 3 miles in about 17 minutes. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) was thousands of dollars in debt when he arrived in the House. He spent two winters without heat because he couldn't afford to fix his furnace. An aunt of sibling Florida Republican Reps. Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart was once married to Cuban leader Fidel Castro. When Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.) was a schoolgirl in Connecticut, President Harry S Truman gave her a ride home from school. Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) was an aide to a Democratic member of the House. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) was so unpopular as mayor of Cleveland that he wore a bullet-proof vest to throw out the first pitch at an Indians baseball game. Sen. James M. Jefford (Republican-turned-independent-Vt.) holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) fought with the Hungarian resistance against the Nazis. He escaped from a Nazi work camp. Rep. Jessie L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) vacuums his office carpet for relaxation. All this and more we culled from the trivia section of "Politics in America 2004: The 108th Congress," just released by Congressional Quarterly and edited by David Hawkings and Brian Nutting. URL:http://www.townhall.com/columnists/johnmccaslin/jm20030528.shtml ©2003 Tribune Media Services

To: calgal who wrote (2122)	5/28/2003 10:05:09 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

The radicalization of middle America Pat Buchanan (archive) URL:http://www.townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/pb20030527.shtml May 27, 2003 \| Print \| Send "A well-heeled audience booed the Dixie Chicks plenty during country music's biggest night of the year Wednesday -- proof that patriotism continues to run deep through America." So writes Jennifer Harper, embedded correspondent of the culture wars for The Washington Times, about the reception given the famous girl group every time their name came up at the Country Music Awards in Las Vegas. "They're still all riled up," writes Harper. Indeed, America is "all riled up," and something is going on out there. Call it the radicalization of Middle America. The Chicks are, of course, still reeling from their slur on President Bush before a London audience in March, when lead singer Natalie Maines blurted, "Just so you'll know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." "It was a pretty negative response," said country music legend Reba McIntyre, who hosted the Vegas event. "I don't think it's over." It was not that Maines had opposed the war but that the Chicks had insulted an American president on the eve of war on foreign soil. Antiwar Brits ate it up, but their countrymen have not forgiven them. "Those 11 words have haunted the Chicks," writes Harper. "They have been boycotted by fans, banned from radio station playlists and included in South Carolina state legislation that called for them to apologize for the remark. One offended group ran over Dixie Chicks CDs with a tractor down in Louisiana." There are other signs that America's patience with what it sees as anti-Americanism, from Hollywood and the Big Media, is running out. Legendary liberal talk-show host Phil Donahue was booed and hooted at the commencement at North Carolina State. The New York Times' Chris Hedges was shouted down and had the microphone plug pulled on his antiwar tirade to the graduates and their families at the Rockford College commencement in Illinois. Two decades ago, singer Anita Bryant lost her contract as the voice of Florida orange juice for leading an anti-gay rights campaign in Miami. Liberals said the former Miss Oklahoma had it coming. But now that actor Danny Glover has been cashiered as the public voice of MCI, after signing an ad supporting Fidel Castro, the Left is no longer laughing. It is wailing and whining about "a new McCarthyism." After Gen. Tommy Franks' Centcom put out its deck of cards of Iraqi war criminals, Newsmax.com decided to created its own deck of cards: "The United Nations of Weasels." Featured are Jacques Chirac as ace of spades, Martin Sheen as the ace of hearts, and Dan Rather, Barbra Streisand and Peter Arnett. The deck is one of the hottest sellers on the Internet. There are other signs Americans are no longer willing to hide their loathing of the Left. That egg on the face of editor Howell Raines of the mighty New York Times, after having been bamboozled and snookered by affirmative action poster boy Jayson Blair, has most of America laughing. When feminist Martha Burk declared she would break the all-male tradition at Augusta National Golf Club by leading a boycott of sponsors of the Master's tournament, and The New York Times took it up as the civil rights cause du jour, Middle America rallied behind Augusta president "Hootie" Johnson. Hootie dissed Martha, ignored her boycott and protests, and carried off the Masters in style. When a Republican governor took down the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina's state capitol and a Democratic governor cut a midnight deal to strip a replica of the battle flag from the Georgia state flag, both pols saw their careers terminated by voters. Children in the South now defy school edicts that forbid them from carrying or wearing replicas of the battle flag. In Pennsylvania, a schoolteacher has risked dismissal rather than take off the Christian cross she was wearing. In Montgomery, Ala., a 5,600-pound granite stone, with the Ten Commandments chiseled on it, sits still in the rotunda of the state judicial building in defiance of court orders. The chief judge of the Alabama Supreme Court, who put it there, refuses to remove it. There is a spirit of rebellion in Middle America, sustained by voices on talk radio, talk TV and the Internet, where the cultural hegemony of the American elite simply does not extend. In the '60s, student radicals, citing Marcuse's dictum that the Right has no rights, shouted down conservatives. Now that these former students occupy the seats of cultural power in America, they seem not to like the new rebellion. What goes around comes around.