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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: willcousa who wrote (544325)	2/23/2004 5:17:18 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 769667

ScrappleFace Edwards-Kerry Debate Still Needs Opponent URL:http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0204/scrappleface.html jewishworldreview.com \| Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards will debate rival John Forbes Kerry as soon as an opponent can be found, according to a spokesman from the Democrat National Committee (DNC). "If it were just the two Senator Johns, they would have to spend an hour talking about their slight disagreements over NAFTA," said the unnamed DNC spokesman. "So we're scouting for someone who could actually present an opposing view on the economy, foreign policy, health care, public education, abortion, homosexual marriage and a host of other issues on which the Senator Johns agree." The DNC spokesman said if the party can't find a Democrat with an opposing viewpoint, the two candidates will simply hold hands and recite policy papers prepared for them by the National Education Association, the National Abortion Rights Action League, the AFL-CIO, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and The New York

To: willcousa who wrote (544325)	2/23/2004 5:17:36 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 769667

George Will URL:http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will.html Rendering politics speechless newsandopinion.com \| Two years ago President Bush, who had called it unconstitutional, signed the McCain-Feingold bill — furtively, at 8 a.m. in the Oval Office. The law expanded government restrictions on political speech, ostensibly to combat corruption or the "appearance" thereof. Bush probably signed it partly because the White House, thinking corruptly or appearing to do so, saw reelection advantage in this fiddling with the First Amendment. And partly because the nation's newspaper editorial writers were nearly unanimous in praise of McCain-Feingold. The editorialists' advocacy of McCain-Feingold could appear corrupt: The bill increases the political influence of unregulated newspaper editorializing relative to increasingly restricted rival voices (parties, candidates and their financial supporters). Last December the Supreme Court found no serious constitutional infirmity in the law because, although the Constitution says Congress shall make "no law" abridging freedom of speech, Congress has broad latitude to combat corruption or its appearance. There is the appearance of corruption when a legislator's views attract contributions from like-minded people, and then he acts in accordance with his and their views. Today McCain-Feingold itself does not just appear to be corrupting. It is demonstrably and comprehensively so. Most campaign money is spent on speech — disseminating ideas, primarily by broadcasting. McCain-Feingold's stated premise was that there is "too much" money in politics — hence, it follows, too much speech. McCain-Feingold's prudently unstated premise was that legislators know — and should legislate — the correct quantity of speech about themselves, the proper times for it and certain restrictions on the content of it. Such legislating may not be corrupt, but it might appear so. And appearances are the essence of ethics, as understood by Washington's ethics industry. Perhaps the White House embraced McCain-Feingold because it doubled to $2,000 the permissible ceiling on "hard money" contributions crucial to the president's reelection campaign. Also, Republican national committees do better than their Democratic counterparts at raising smaller hard-dollar contributions. Supposedly, the principal purpose of McCain-Feingold was to ban large "soft money" contributions to the parties, ostensibly for "party-building" purposes. The delusional assumption of many McCain-Feingold enthusiasts was that when such contributions were banned, the people who had been eager to exert political influence by such contributions would say "Oh, well" and spend their money instead on high-definition televisions. Or something. Actually, McCain-Feingold was moral grandstanding by many liberals who had no intention of abiding by its spirit — or its letter, for that matter — any more than they had abided by existing campaign finance law. To compensate for Republican advantages in raising strictly limited hard dollars, Democrats quickly formed a slew of committees technically disconnected from the party but allowed to receive unlimited soft dollars. Allowed, that is, as long as the committees do not spend money "for the purpose of influencing any election for federal office." Under McCain-Feingold, and for 30 years before it, entities that raise and spend money for that purpose are subject to hard-dollar limits. McCain-Feingold's ban on large soft-money contributions to political parties has spawned many groups, mostly liberal ones, to receive and spend such contributions as surrogates for the parties — groups such as America Coming Together. Ellen Malcolm, ACT's president, says her group aims to increase voter turnout in 17 states crucial to the presidential election in order "to beat George Bush." It appears that she intends to influence a federal election. Nothing wrong with that. Citizens are supposed to do that. But liberals have been the prime movers in enacting laws against doing so with soft money, which organizations such as ACT exist to receive. ACT says it "will coordinate with progressive organizations." But it had better not coordinate with the Democratic Party or candidates. There would be nothing morally wrong with such coordination. It should be a fundamental right — indeed, a civic virtue — for groups such as ACT to coordinate with like-minded political parties. But "coordination" is criminal under McCain-Feingold. House Republicans are now trying to subpoena records of these Democratic groups, clearly hoping to have a chilling effect on them. This is disgusting — but Democrats deserve it because they have entangled America's core liberty, political speech, in an ever-thickening web of regulations they now are evading. On Wednesday the Federal Election Commission, which is now in charge of deciding what speech is legal under McCain-Feingold and Supreme Court ambiguities, issued a ruling — many more to follow — of exquisite opacity. The chairman of the Republican National Committee said it "effectively shuts down" groups such ACT and others. A spokesman for ACT cheerily said the group would continue "to operate robustly and effectively." It is a constitutional obscenity that no one now knows — or, pending many more FEC and court rulings, can know — what political speech is legal in this nation where the First Amendment is no longer even pertinent to protecting such speech.

To: willcousa who wrote (544325)	2/23/2004 5:19:16 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Jewish World Review Feb. 23, 2004/ 1 Adar, 5763 Mark Steyn Very Cute!!!!! :URL:http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0204/steyn.html So which would America rather have: Pretty Boy or Long Face? newsandopinion.com \| Last weekend, George W Bush went to Florida for Nascar's Daytona 500 race. His likely Democratic rival, John F Kerry, did not approve. "We don't need," he declared, in the portentous drone he has been perfecting for three decades, "a President who says, 'Gentlemen, start your engines.' We need a President who says, 'America, let's start our economy.' " Hmm. If this is the best material Senator Kerry's high-price consultants can provide, it is going to be a long, long while from here to November. It's unlikely that any but the most partisan Democrats can stomach nine months of a candidate who is Al Gore without the personal charm and affable public-speaking style. The Massachusetts Senator with the patrician manner and a face as long as his one-liners is the Default Democrat. He is the guy the party's voters fell back on after concluding that Howard Dean, the surging Vermonter, was, in the pithy summation of the union boss Gerald McEntee, "nuts". And McEntee was a Dean supporter. So Democrats decided that Kerry was more "electable". Which he is, next to Dean - in the same way that, if Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe entered the Iowa caucuses, Farmer Bob would be Mister Electable. But, once Saddam had thrown in the towel, you'd start wondering whether Bob Mugabe was really the best you could do. So, having anointed Kerry as the unDean, a significant chunk of Democrats are now looking around for the unKerry. The only guy available is John Edwards, the pretty-boy trial lawyer from North Carolina. He is 50 but looks about 13, which is kind of refreshing after that strange feeling you get a third of a way into Kerry's stump speech that your body's atrophying and crumbling to dust. In Tuesday's Wisconsin primary, Senator Edwards ran Kerry a strong second and came bouncing out on stage, his fabulous bangs (that's "fringe" in British) dancing in the air like a Charlie's Angels title sequence. He said that the voters of Wisconsin had sent a message: "Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear." These words are printed on the wing mirrors of every American automobile, and Edwards meant them as a jocular warning to Kerry: you may be in the driver's seat but I'm closing in fast. He was upbeat and breezy and his line, if only by comparison with the President-who'll-start-the-economy gag, was cute. At that point, over at Kerry HQ, the frontrunner decided it was time to get Pretty Boy off the air, so he walked out and started his victory speech, knowing the networks would cut away from Edwards to him. Not such a smart move. For the television audience, Edwards's solitary minute was entertaining, Kerry's 20 minutes of hollow stump banalities was a sonorous snoozeroo: "The motto of the state of Wisconsin is 'Forward' and I want to thank the state of Wisconsin for moving this cause and this campaign forward tonight here in this great state. Tonight I say to all of America, get ready. A new day is on the way." It may be a new day, but already a lot of us are finding it hard to stay awake. As The New York Times put it, when Senator Kerry "bumped Mr Edwards's own ebullient speech off the air, it was as if a pep rally had morphed into math class". When you are too dull a Democrat even for The New York Times, you've got a problem. On the other hand, if Edwards is the unKerry, he is developing a distressing habit of never doing quite well enough. If Edwards were to come a narrow first instead of a close second, the Kerry bubble would burst: he wins because he's seen as likely to win. Alas, coming a close second is pretty much all Edwards does. He was a close second in Iowa, a close second in Oklahoma, a close second in Wisconsin. The only difference is that coming a close second in an eight-man race in late January is more impressive than coming a close second in a four-man race in late February. Given that on Super Tuesday, March 2, it will be impossible for Senator Edwards to come worse than second, he really has to win something, and he doesn't seem to have the wit or energy to pull those extra few thousands votes that would put him over the top. So the race has come down to a weak default candidate v a glamorous insurgent who is not quite glamorous to insurge sufficiently. Other than that, there is not much to choose between them. Both men are enormously wealthy. Kerry was a blueblood of relatively minor means who married a woman worth $300 million and then traded up to a woman worth $500 million. If I were Teresa Heinz Kerry I'd be worried, now Massachusetts is introducing gay marriage, that hubby may start giving the come-hither look to some of the state's elderly bachelor billionaires. By contrast, John Edwards had a dirt-poor hard-scrabble childhood but managed to sue his way out of poverty. He has made 25 million bucks just from suing tobacco companies. His is an inspirational message: If I can do it, the rest of you haven't a hope in hell. But fortunately I've got a thousand new government programs and micro-initiatives that will partially ameliorate your hopeless mediocrity. (I paraphrase.) My favorite line in the Edwards spiel comes about two-thirds in, when, after outlining the regulatory hell in which he is going to ensnare banks, the pharmaceutical industry, etc, he confides: "But I'll be honest with you. I don't think I can change this country by myself." It's good to know the other 280 million Americans aren't entirely redundant. His basic pitch is that the entire electorate are victims, and his candidacy is the all-time biggest class-action suit on your behalf. Edwards is condescending. Kerry is far too grand to condescend. But both are agreed that America is a vast wasteland of unemployed, shivering, diseased losers. For single-issue guys like me, Edwards barely says a word on Iraq and the war, though I am inclined to think he'd be better than Kerry. The latter seems eager to do whatever Chirac and Kofi want, whereas with Edwards there's always the possibility he will wind up suing the UN Security Council for emotional distress. More importantly, even as he's painting his heart-wrenching portraits of starving children, Edwards is sunny, albeit in a grotesque and mawkish way. And, as a general rule, the sunnier disposition wins (see Bush/Gore, Clinton/Dole, Reagan/Mondale). It is true that in his five years in Washington Edwards hasn't accomplished anything, but then neither has Kerry, and he has been there four times as long. If Pretty Boy wins somewhere, anywhere, on Super Tuesday, the mantle of inevitability falls away from Kerry. If he doesn't, Dems are stuck with the default guy, and by April they're going to be awful sick of him. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes