The Education Gap - Poverty-Consequence?

An insightful and thought-provoking column regarding the “education gap” by Marty Solomon, former University of Kentucky professor, appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader of 29 June. The thrust of his piece had to do with the irreversibleness of the gap in learning among public-school students that exists because of the financial factor, i.e., that students from poor backgrounds achieve at far lower levels than those from more affluent ones and will continue to do so.

Solomon mentions a number of reasons for this circumstance that accrue to the financial aspects affecting the family of the student and consequently the student himself, such as the need for poor parents to work at multiple jobs, thus depriving the child of their time for both encouraging him to study and helping him academically, although many such parents lack the background to be of much help academically. Solomon does not mention that the gap is probably most recognizable as obtaining between African-American students and those of other races, especially those of whites and Asians.

Solomon correctly points out the fact that taking teachers from the best schools in affluent areas and inserting them in the worst schools in the poor areas would not significantly address the problem. He essentially makes his entire case on the basis of rich vis-à-vis poor. There is significant validity to this claim, though it doesn’t go far enough in explaining the problem. In Kentucky, the futility of this approach (placing the entire burden on the educator) was seen a few years ago in the legislature’s law-rescinding deletion of the eight Regional Centers staffed by top educators designed and mandated as part of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 in an effort to provide top-quality help for poor schools throughout the state. Notwithstanding state financial constraints, the centers would have been continued if they had been successful.

Feeding into the rich/poor issue – and actually far more significant as a reason for the gap – is the sociological side of the problem. This actually translates into the diverse approaches to “family” within ethnic groups, the primary premise being that the nuclear family – father, mother, their biological children – is best suited as the vehicle guaranteeing success in education for the children. Seventy percent of births in the black community are illegitimate, i.e., with no documented father, the result being the “single-parent household” from the get-go. This household is most often poor, for obvious reasons, and reeks of the neglect inherent in particularly a father’s abrogation of his natural responsibilities as provider, disciplinarian, encourager, etc. The mother is often promiscuous, bears other illegitimate children, and subsequently neglects her responsibilities, as well, even though she may work hard.

In 1960, the rate of illegitimacy among blacks was 23.6% of births, meaning that more than 75% of black families could be assumed to be headed by a man and wife. Now, that illegitimacy rate is 70%, probably much higher in places like New Orleans, the logical conclusion being that currently only 30% of black families or fewer are headed by both parents. Whites have also gotten into the act, with illegitimacy rates increasing from 3 percent in 1960 to 28.5% in 2002 and probably 30% by now, for a probable increase of 900%. Besides connoting a perverse lifestyle, these figures explain in large part why millions of youngsters are damned educationally and economically. They lack the most important kind of support – that of the family.

Solomon is right in asserting that educators shouldn’t hammer themselves – at least unduly – over the fact that poor youngsters do poorly in school. They can’t undo in six hours on 176 days a year the damage done by parents whose priorities 24/7 on 365 days a year are “self first,” the devil take the hindmost.

A model for thought – Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Born into abject poverty and abandoned by his father at age one and abandoned by his mother at age 7, he was sent to live with his grandfather, who, unlike in most cases, instilled the learning/work ethic into the boy. The rest is history. The big difference in his life had little to do with education/pedagogy per se, but with his support system. Solomon should have at least mentioned the sociological aspect, especially since it contributes directly to financial matters, which he sees as defining.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

Saddam's WMD - Too Old?

Now that elements of WMD – and quite a few of them – have been found in Iraq, the democrats and others are providing the stock boilerplate answer, namely, that the weapons have degenerated to the point that they could no longer pose a threat even if used. According to the reports, the weapons were found in various places. Inspector Kay spent some time there but couldn’t find them, so the next best thing is to simply say they’re outdated, etc. The best way to approach the subject is simply to take a look at the Bluegrass Army Depot, just five miles from Richmond and only 30 miles from the highly populated area of Lexington, Ky.

The installation encompasses approximately 14,600 acres, composed mainly of open fields and wooded areas. The installation is used for the storage of conventional explosive munitions as well as assembled chemical weapons. The depot primarily is involved in industrial and related activities associated with the storage and maintenance of conventional and chemical munitions. The conventional ammunition area consists of 852 igloos filled with ammunition with several tons additionally stored outside. The Depot's mission of conventional munitions has remained very active since World War II. Located within the heart of this highly secure area is the chemical limited area (CLA), with even more security. The three types of chemical agents at Blue Grass Chemical Activity include a blister agent, known as “mustard,” which began arriving in the 1940’s and two nerve agents, GB and VX, which began arriving in the 1960’s. The “mustard” blister agent is designed to incapacitate, while the GB and VX nerve agents are deadly.

These WMD vehicles are up to 65 years old and are yet so dangerous that the Army and Senator McConnell and others have been arguing for years about some way to neutralize them. So…the crap about the rusted WMD in Iraq is just that…CRAP!!! The weapons were there in 2003 and they’re there now, besides which, it seems fairly consensual among those who know that the rest of Saddam’s cache was transported away before the war, probably to Syria, so the stuff is still around the Middle East, and no telling how much is still in Iraq. There was no LIE in 2003 by Bush, Powell, or anybody else.

Plans for destruction of the weapons at Bluegrass have been made and discarded for years. A new system was just recently put on hold. The stuff can’t be transported on either highways or railroads for very obvious reasons, and so it has to be destroyed on-site, and folks in central Kentucky don’t enjoy the prospects. The installation is one of four such facilities in the nation, and people who live near them are not amused. It’s doubtful that Inspector Kay would put one in the trunk of his car and take it home. The WMD were not all in one place in Iraq, and they could still be scattered everywhere, and even Kay said Saddam was ready to start production again. Saddam’s WMD couldn’t be or have been anywhere near as old as that stored at the Bluegrass Army Depot, so anyone swallowing that stuff about the WMD in Iraq not being dangerous probably is too dumb to come in out of the rain and lacks the skill to open an umbrella, as well.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark.

House Resolution 861

One can only wonder what forces drive the legislative process in Washington, D.C. On 16 June, House Resolution 861 was approved in the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 256-153, with only 14 republicans and 10 democrats not involved in the voting. A total of 214 republicans voted for the resolution, with three against; a total of 42 democrats voted for the resolution, with 149 against. It would be well at this point to see what the resolution involved so one can make up his/her mind as to the reasonableness of the document and attempt a judgment as to why the vote was so rabidly partisan:

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) honors all those Americans who have taken an active part in the Global War on Terror, whether as first responders protecting the homeland, as servicemembers overseas, as diplomats and intelligence officers, or in other roles;

(2) honors the sacrifices of the United States Armed Forces and of partners in the Coalition, and of the Iraqis and Afghans who fight alongside them, especially those who have fallen or been wounded in the struggle, and honors as well the sacrifices of their families and of others who risk their lives to help defend freedom;

(3) declares that it is not in the national security interest of the United States to set an arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq;

(4) declares that the United States is committed to the completion of the mission to create a sovereign, free, secure, and united Iraq;

(5) congratulates Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and the Iraqi people on the courage they have shown by participating, in increasing millions, in the elections of 2005 and on the formation of the first government under Iraq's new constitution;

(6) calls upon the nations of the world to promote global peace and security by standing with the United States and other Coalition partners to support the efforts of the Iraqi and Afghan people to live in freedom; and

(7) declares that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the noble struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary.

Items 1, 2, 5, and 6 are eminently predictable, against none of which any of the solons would dare to vote…or at least the ones with enough sense to come in out of the rain or enough skill to open an umbrella. So…the rupture between the two parties has to do with items 3, 4, and 7. The titular head of the Democrat Party is Senator John Kerry, who barely missed being elected president in 2004. According to the Malone Report, Kerry made this statement recently to a group pf activists in Washington: "I believe we need a hard and fast deadline, not an open-ended commitment of U.S. forces, so that we shift responsibility, and demand responsibility from the Iraqis themselves." The vast majority of House democrats apparently agreed with Kerry, as seen in their vote, thus seeing Item 3, which is in direct contradiction of President Bush’s policy, as unacceptable.

One wonders what the people in the rest of the world think about this circumstance, especially in light of the fact that democrats constantly caterwaul about the bad image this country allegedly is disclosing to the world populations, thus conditioning them on a daily basis to think ill of this country whether they know anything about it or not. This is the Vietnam Kerry who traveled to Paris in 1971 and met with folks on both sides of the Vietnam conflict, and in July of that year held a press conference in D.C. at which he said essentially that American POWs would be returned on a date certain if President Nixon would just set a date for withdrawing troops from Vietnam, thus, of course, surrendering and trusting the enemy to keep its word concerning the POWs. Sound familiar? Notwithstanding the fact that setting a withdrawal-timetable would empower the enemy to stand down and wait its chance to foment a horrific civil war, Kerry exhibits the same “la-la-land” war strategy that he thought was terrific 35 years ago…and the House democrats swallow this stuff, apparently – at least most of them if definition by association is operative. Weird!

Turning their backs on Item 4 meant that most House democrats screamed to the world that this nation will not keep its stated commitments and consequently is not to be trusted. They also said to the world that the opposition party that might win back the House this year is ready to make a grand sellout of Iraq, tuck its tail, take its marbles, and truck on home. The irony connected to this justifiable conclusion is that in Iraq, through the good offices of this government and its Coalition partners, there already is a free sovereign state with a complete representative government – after three nationwide elections – and security being acquired gradually each day. The recent killing of al Zarqawi, top terrorist guru and operator, is part of the proof of this, not to mention that Iraqi people will soon take over a section of southern Iraq that has been the preserve of some of the Coalition partners for years now.

In turning their backs on Item 7, most of the House democrats attempted to apply the coup de grace to worldwide civility and hope by asserting that this nation perhaps will stand down in the war on terror, the devil take the hindmost, the hindmost being all the smaller/weaker nations that depend on the USA for furnishing a glimmer of freedom. The non-Muslim folks in those nations understand that the term “infidel” applies to them as much as it does to Americans, so they see this country as perhaps the last, best hope that the beheaders-in-the-name-of-god will not come after them, as they’re instructed to do in their “holy book,” the Qu’ran. They understand the lessons of the Sudan, where the Islamic fascists who run the government have systematically attended to the genocide of hundreds of thousands.

So…the House has voted, and the democrats have only shame for their portion.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark.

DNC Memorandum #17

From the Office of Dr. Howard Dean, chair, Democratic National Committee

*** It has come to the attention of the DNC staff that some volunteers are expressing exuberance over the death of al-Zarqawi. Depending on location (certainly not Massachusetts or California), this may be permissible publicly, but please be advised that Zarqawi’s death comprises a setback for the party, since there are among the uneducated and the unwashed (almost everybody in the nation) the presumption that his death has been accomplished by the republican administration. It has, of course (but do not admit this), and so staffers are directed to immediately change the subject when Zarqawi or even bin Laden are mentioned. Bin Laden has been thoroughly marginalized, so there is little capital to be gained by mentioning, as our media colleagues did immediately upon news of Zarqawi’s unfortunate bombing, that ObL is STILL alive and threatens the entire world from his cave in the mountains.

*** Congressman Murtha is being approached in the interest of writing a White Paper explaining in detail that American GIs are committing atrocities in Iraq at the rate of some ten or twelve a day. When you receive this document, read it carefully and be ready to defend it when you use it in your town-meetings if someone asks for specifics. As yet, there are only a couple of instances or so where an atrocity has been proven, but, unfortunately, the offending GI(s) have been punished, leaving no viable position based on government laxity. Since specifics have already been noted in the media, simply mention “Abu Ghraib” and steer the discussion in that direction, but do not mention that no one was hurt at that location. As for the scenes at Abu Ghraib, much lewder depictions are seen regularly on TV sitcoms and soap operas in this country, not to mention the Internet, so just talk about emotional distress…without mentioning that the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were murderers of women and children, of course. Senator Kerry may agree to help Congressman Murtha, since he is on the record (Meet the Press) as claiming that Americans have been raiding Iraqi homes in the midnight hours and making nuisances of themselves. If anyone mentions Kerry’s 1968 Christmas in Cambodia, make it clear that the senator insists he never said he was there and that he won’t say it again.

*** The hanging of themselves by three prisoners at Guantanamo is the juiciest bit of campaign bubbly that has dribbled (little joke there) into the country’s awareness in months. Make it a point to indicate in town-meetings that these men were driven to despair by the American hoodlums who guarded them, but obviously not well enough to protect them from themselves. Do NOT mention that these decedents were killers of women and children. Senator Durbin is being approached for another White Paper to be used in town-meetings, one that will explain the senator’s comparison of American GIs with Stalin’s Gulag guards, Hitler’s Storm Troopers, and Pol Pot’s keepers of the killing fields. Incidentally, it may be well to conduct town-meetings exclusively in the appropriate places rather than in homes or, especially, in bars, the latter always the venue of choice. People too far into their cups often slur their speech and some even say nice things about the republicans. This is particularly problematic when these meetings are televised.

*** Please be advised that Senator Clinton has requested that staffers never attempt to identify her positions on any issues. Her stances are always contingent upon location/audience, not a very different circumstance from that of most office-holders, with the possible exception of President Bush, who is likely to blurt out the truth no matter where he is. Also, Senator Biden, an announced candidate for 2008, has made it clear in a private communication that he takes positions on the basis of the “poll du jour” (a little French there for the Canadians), since he insists that a president must define leadership by follow-ship, i.e., find out what the people think and then do it. So far, his polls have indicated the need for a 90% tax increase when he is elected, but that would be unpopular, as he stated in his communication, so he has asked the DNC to take a low-profile approach to his candidacy until he has figured out how to successfully crunch the numbers.

*** Please refrain from gloating with regard to Republican Congressman Cunninghams’s trip to the Big House. This approach worked well until Congresswoman McKinney attacked that policeman, Congressman Kennedy tried to drive into the House chamber at 3:30 a.m., and Congressman William Jefferson was filmed in the parking garage accepting all that money, later found in his freezer among the frozen chicken nuggets. Also, try to destroy all the pictures of those National Guard trucks stuck in Congressman Jefferson’s front yard while he threw stuff into them from a second-story window of his house, after Katrina hit New Orleans. Those trucks were supposed to be used to help the citizens get out of New Orleans, or deliver water or whatever. In any case, the congressman has said he didn’t use those trucks and won’t use them again. In connection with the Jefferson matter, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has refused to make a poster showing her with her foot in her mouth while trying to say “No one is above the law.” She will, however, retract her statements about the FBI having no right to search a congressman’s office, especially if he shows signs of having either hundred-dollar-bills or chicken nuggets melting in his back pocket.

*** State Secretary Condoleezza Rice is a scheduled speaker at the annual clambake of the Southern Baptist Convention this week in Greensboro, N.C. She will be speaking in a church, so this should give staffers an opportunity to make huge political capital about the “religious right” and how these people threaten the very core of the Constitution. These Baptists number about 16 million and forge a huge voting bloc, therefore, much should made of this fact, especially at the time the president has just insisted once again that marriage should be a man-woman thing, thus depriving all the homosexuals, lesbians, transgenderites, transsexuals, cross-dressers, incest-practitioners, and pederasts their rights, either actual or desired…the right to the “pursuit of happiness” thing. The secretary has insisted that she is not a candidate for 2008, but use your own judgment as to how to play this, depending upon your location. Do NOT – repeat – DO NOT mention Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Jackson, Edwards, Lieberman, Sharpton, and other democrats in connection with this, since they campaigned vigorously in African-American churches and have never accounted for the offerings/contributions/collections/honoraria/whatever made available at those times.

*** Important Note: Impeachment planning underway, with Ramsey Clark (on loan from Saddam) as lead attorney.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark.

Kentucky Politics - the Damnedest?

It’s unlikely that even Kentucky – at least government-wise – has formerly been through what it has experienced in the last few years. Starting during the previous governor’s term, the legislature made it a habit not to pass a budget, so Paul Patton was left to approve the checks and carry on business according to his own design. This habit on the part of the legislature continued into Governor Fletcher’s term, leaving him to do the same, notwithstanding that the state Constitution mandates the passing of a budget by the legislature during each biennium. In the legislative session just ended, and after a court ruling necessitating it, the legislature finally passed a budget at the right time. The legislatures’ dereliction of duty – fueled, as always, by 138 sets of eyes on the next election cycle – was reprehensible and actually points to malfeasance.

The peccadilloes – personal and otherwise – of Governor Patton, some of which replicated by Governor Fletcher, also point to malfeasance, though corruption in state government is more expected than surprising in Kentucky. Patton came upon hard times personally when his dalliance with a woman not his wife became a matter of public awareness. It was a disgusting affair of trysts in motels and was also fraught with overtones of favoritism and outright corruption. Then, Patton, shortly before leaving office, managed to pardon four indicted persons – two in his administration and two in Louisville’s union-labor infrastructure – for crimes that amounted to felonies (vote fraud) and for which significant prison time could be expected upon convictions. He obviously could not risk testimony that could touch him.

Governor Fletcher has not been beset by personal problems, but he has gone down the “pardon road” regarding indicted officials, thus removing a number of players in his administration from the threat of – almost entirely – simple misdemeanors, malfeasances involved with awarding positions in state government. His pardoned colleagues, most or all of whom he has fired, played fast and loose with the system, just as the democrats had been doing for decades…but the republicans got caught, mostly on the evidence connected with – of all things – e-mails.

It hasn’t helped that the logic connected with the misdemeanors would have meant that a handful of matters that should have been brought to the attention of some personnel or ethics agencies in the government was turned on its head, with the matters actually going to the office of the Attorney General, instead. Attorney General Stumbo has made it clear that he would be interested in running for the governor’s seat in 2007 if the current governor should become “unpopular.” He seems to be seeing that the governor does, in fact, become unpopular, running an essentially “misdemeanor-show” out of his office.

After about a year of thrashing about and seeing much of his work go up in the smoke of pardons, with the State Supreme Court making the pardons practically tamper-proof future-wise, the A-G has finally gotten around to indicting the governor himself. So, is the governor’s popularity on the wane? Of course! One wonders if plans were made in advance for the prosecutions by the A-G, who had run the House for years, knew exactly what to expect from an incoming administration – whether democrat or republican – and just set everyone up. Only the “Shadow” knows, but the betting is that there’s a smoking gun somewhere and that it will never be discovered, but, if so, probably would smell only of “politics as usual” rather than illegalities.

It can and does become weirder. Governor Fletcher recently took himself off to Florida for a vacation, so Lieutenant Governor Pence did what any lieutenant governor worth his salt might do – announced that he will not run on the ticket for reelection with the governor in 2007, and threw in his resignation as chief of the Justice Department, in the bargain, effective 31 July. He has not definitely ruled out running for the gubernatorial spot in 2007. Coincidence? According to the State Constitution (Sec. 72), “… The duties of the Lieutenant Governor shall be prescribed by law, and he shall have such other duties as delegated by the Governor.” So, did the lieutenant governor, by quitting the job assigned to him by the governor, actually betray his Constitutional responsibilities? Of course, the lieutenant governor was a federal prosecutor who sent a gaggle of elected officials and bureaucrats (mostly democrats) to the Big House (the speaker for quite a long time) in the early 1990s, so – give him credit – he may actually have been offended by the pardons. The plot thickens.

That was enough politics for a while, but the governor, basking in the sun before the hurricanes made their annual hit on Florida and not liking what he heard, suggested that the lieutenant governor consider resigning his post, notwithstanding that the post is a Constitutional office and that he, though part of a ticket headed by the governor, was elected actually by the people in 2003. The lieutenant governor declined, of course, so Governor Fletcher left his vacation temporarily to visit the state republican-party central-committee clambake held last week and announced that a new candidate for the second spot was already lined up and ready to go. The new candidate, Robbie Rudolph, just happened to be in charge of the state’s finances (a job he will give up) and executive secretary of the Cabinet. His being wealthy didn’t hurt the cause, either. He is a proven “giver,” having contributed almost $350,000 to the opposing/losing campaign featuring him as the lieutenant governor candidate in 2003.

Politics in Kentucky may or may not be the damnedest in the country, but they must be near the top (or bottom) in that category. The governor, having vowed not to pardon himself, has his lawyers motioning in court to have the AG removed from prosecuting him, but the matter hasn’t been resolved, and the truth probably is that most folks wish the whole nine yards would just go away. In any case, the year 2007 will be great for entertainment value. With the lieutenant governor and the attorney general possibly snapping at his heels (though the AG carries heavy baggage – palimony stuff, for one type), the governor and his new running mate are at least off to a start. Of course, the money already raised for a Fletcher-Pence campaign may now be in dispute, so what is there to do? Stay tuned.

Oh yes…at first the governor said he had no plans to fire the lieutenant governor from his post as Justice chief…then, a few days later, did just that – fired him.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

Haditha...a Perspective

The mantra of the mainstream media these days is “Haditha,” the town located some 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, where, according to some reports, U.S. Marines murdered 24 Iraqis in cold blood last November. According to the British publication The Guardian, the town is run entirely by insurgents in a sort of Taliban-like manner, and public beheadings are just part of the everyday routine. The matter is under investigation by the U.S. military, but some prominent democrats, such as Pennsylvania Congressman Jack Murtha, have already passed judgment on the Marines, accusing them of the murders.

Murtha’s charges resemble those of Senator John Kerry back in 1971, when he accused American GIs of committing atrocities in Vietnam and even went to Paris, by his own admission before a Senate committee, to parley with the enemy for whatever he considered proper, but actually undercut this country’s effort to end the conflict. More recently, the senator has accused Americans of invading private Iraqi homes in the middle of the night and committing atrocities there. Partisan politics has so invaded the nation’s capital that conduct as unseemly as this on the parts of both men is common.

As soon as this affair – whatever it was – was made an item throughout the world, the mainstreamers went into action, bringing up such terms as No Gun Ri and My Lai, the former connected to alleged atrocities by American GIs in the Korean Conflict, when an unknown number of refugees fleeing northern troops were killed in transit in the area of a railroad overpass, and the latter in Vietnam, for which Lieutenant William Calley was the only American GI to serve time as the result of a conviction.

The Korean War had just begun in July 1950, when American troops were hastily sent from Japan to forestall an attempt by the communist-controlled North to overcome the South. The intelligence concerning the circumstances necessitating the flight of fearful Koreans was not good, although that probably had little to do with what is alleged – and still only alleged – to have happened. The GIs had received the instruction that all natives in hostile areas were considered hostile until definitely proven friendly. This meant that it was possible – or probable – that northern troops could be expected to infiltrate groups of innocent civilians as they fled, the result being the virtual assassination of American and South Korean soldiers.

The My Lai incident in March 1968 has been thoroughly publicized and involved the deaths of some 300 civilians. It came about as a result of the “search and destroy” edict that had been programmed by the U.S. military, and, of course, was promulgated for the same reasons that obtained in the No Gun Ri episode, i.e., that the enemy was everywhere, was undistinguishable, and posed a stab-in-the-back threat to Americans and South Vietnamese troops. If The Guardian account is accurate (no reason to disbelieve it), the affair at Haditha almost exactly paralleled these two events, since insurgents, who looked like all other Iraqis, could be anywhere and posed the same kind of threat.

The loss of innocent life is never acceptable, but it could well be that the current generation of media-types are so inured to relatively small events (or so anti-administration driven), as compared to huge losses of innocent life, that they are unable/unwilling to present anything within the proper perspective. For instance, there has been constant carping on the events at Abu Ghraib prison, for which several American GIs have received punishment (jail) and a brigadier general demoted, even though there was no loss of life there or even personal injuries. The fact that nobody got hurt seems not to register with reporters/commentators when they are in full-attack mode. Abu Ghraib stuff has worn thin, however, so Haditha was a veritable mother-lode of good fortune for the media, even featuring “cold-blooded murder,” as Murtha and probably Kerry would have it.

Of course, it may be that the current generation of media-types are so naïve that they can’t imagine anything untoward happening in situations in which people are attempting to kill each other, or that the best-laid plans in time of war not only often, but almost always, go astray. One has only to think of the surprises (weather and defenses) at Normandy 62 years ago this month, when the allies invaded France and began the end of World War II, terminated just under a year later. In terms of civilian casualties/fatalities, one remembers the decision on both sides in that war to make the bombing of cities not only acceptable but necessary – mostly to destroy military objectives but also to damage morale and consequently hasten war’s end – in the interest of gaining victory. The Germans laid waste to English/Scotch cities – especially London – in the “blitz,” the night bombings from September 1940 to May 1941, resulting in some 43,000 dead civilians and 1.4 million made homeless. While 60,000 civilians died in Britain, 650,000 German civilians died in the bombings. Think of that in terms of Haditha.

The British and American air arms responded in kind. Hamburg, Germany, was bombed 187 times during that war, but was virtually destroyed on just a few days and nights in July-August of 1943 – some 50,000 dead civilians and 900,000 homeless (deadly firestorm-bombing). In February 1945, Dresden, in east-Germany, was destroyed when it was full of refugees fleeing the Russians. Estimates of 35,000 to 100,000 dead were made, and the infrastructure of all the bombed cities was decimated. Indeed, the end of the war was accomplished in August 1945 when the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan – some 130,000 dead in Hiroshima alone.

The Nazis in that war accounted for 11,000,000 civilian deaths, 6,000,000 Jews alone. Some 80 or so American GIs taken as prisoners of war were gunned down by German troops in gangland style in December 1944 near Malmedy in Belgium. At Oradour-sur-Glane, France, the Germans killed 642 civilians in June 1944, herding the men into barns and shooting them, and herding women and children into a church, shooting them and then burning the church and the town. In Lidice, Czechoslovakia, all men and boys over age 16 (172 of them) were killed by the Germans and the women and children sent to concentration camps, where most of the women died. The town was totally destroyed and removed from the map. The atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers against civilians throughout the Far East in the 1930s-40s were stupendous in both number and kind.

None of this is offered as an explanation/excuse/reason for the 24 deaths at Haditha. It is merely to open a window so that everyone can understand that “things happen.” This is true every day in a normal atmosphere such as that enjoyed in this country at present, but it happens in spades and is virtually inevitable in areas and times of profound abnormalities…such as at Haditha, in situations where/when men are expected to use the best split-second judgment possible while trying to stay alive. Media-types need to remember this…if they can…or, if they will. As they report/comment, however, they should remember that their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and great-uncles were forced to respond according to war-plans and in split-second-situations like those at Haditha. Should they call these men murderers…or guarantors of their freedom?

And so it goes.

Jim Clark.

Power of Eminent Domain - When?

There’s a place for government action that sometimes impinges upon the rights of citizens, one such being the exercising of the “power of eminent domain,” the taking of property with appropriate remuneration to the owner for the purpose of establishing facilities for the common welfare thereon or therewith. Such facilities could include such things as roads, buildings, and parks. This action is perfectly legal, subject to an offended party’s access to the courts, and not infrequently exercised.

The “Kelo Case” in Connecticut last year brought the subject front and center, however, when a municipality exercised its eminent-domain power to take property not for public use, but for use by private concerns in the interest of profitability to the entrepreneurs and tax-enhancement for the government. The matter made its way to the Supreme Court, which amazingly ruled in favor of the city of New London, thus requiring the owner involved to give up the personal property. Without question, the interests of the businesspeople involved, as well as those of the government, will be more than well-served – they will be grandly enhanced; however, where does that leave the property owner? There are other such cases in the works now, one of them outlined in the Fox-News Hannity-Colmes program the other evening.

An unusually interesting eminent-domain case has been an on-and-off-and-on matter in Lexington, Ky., since 2003. Notwithstanding that probably 95% of all municipalities in the nation own (either built or bought) and operate their water companies, this city (280,000 population) did not build its own water-supply company years ago and has never owned it. It’s owned by the Kentucky-American Water Company, which was purchased a few years ago by RWE, a German outfit that operates water companies in many places.

Suddenly, there was panic in some quarters – especially among some of the city’s best-heeled citizens – engendered, at least allegedly, by the fact that a German company had immediately become enabled to somehow cut off the city’s water supply on a whim – or as an act of…whatever – and that something had to be done. These folks set up an organization for the purpose of seeing that the city become the owner of the water company – even through the power-of-eminent-domain route, if necessary. A handful of them even “loaned” something like $750,000 to the city to cover the costs of instigating action, and a property-appraisal firm was employed. The water company made it clear that its facility was not for sale and in subsequent negotiations even offered some prime land (a beautiful park leased by the city at a dollar a year) to the city.

The kicker in all this has to do with the electricity required to operate the water company. Its supplier, Kentucky Utilities, was sold a while back to Louisville Gas and Electric, the company furnishing power to Louisville, Ky., which in turn was sold to a company in Great Britain. In 2000, LG&E was acquired by Powergen plc of the U.K. Then in 2002, Powergen plc was acquired by E.ON, headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany. So…not only the water supply in Lexington is controlled by a German company, but so is the power supply. Yet, the folks agitating for water-company ownership offer no exception at all to the German-ownership of the power supply, even though not a gallon could be pumped from the Kentucky River or purified without the use of electricity.

This brings back the question of ownership of the water company. In March 2003, a city consultant said Kentucky-American was worth between $157.7 million and $352.8 million. The council authorized the mayor to negotiate with the company. She learned again that the water company was not for sale. In July 2003, the City Council voted to move forward with condemnation proceedings against Kentucky-American, and the city filed a petition for condemnation in Fayette Circuit Court. In November 2004, four anti-condemnation candidates were elected to the council, swinging the majority against condemnation, and the Council nullified condemnation, after close to a million dollars had already been spent on the effort.

The agitators for local control conducted a successful petition drive to have the question placed on the ballot for a referendum by the voters. On June 17, 2005, Council sent the ordinance restarting condemnation to the Fayette County Clerk, who declared that a condemnation vote would be held Nov. 8, 2005. The water company, of course, filed suit, and on August 26, 2005, Fayette Circuit Judge Thomas Clark ruled that the citizen-initiated petition process was legal and set the election for November. The water company filed suit with the Court of Appeals to stop the election and was successful, but in May 2006 dropped the suit, allowing for the ballot to put the question in November. The consensus is that it takes about seven years and millions of dollars to complete the process upon which the voters will embark if they vote for condemnation. Of course, the water company may have decided that the ballot process is flawed and an adverse outcome can be held up in court for years.

There may still be questions, since Kentucky American Water provides water and related services to more than 310,000 people in 10 Central Kentucky counties. Do these people have a say in the process? If this becomes a question, it could go all the way to the Supreme Court, as did the Kelo case. The city has no system for operating water delivery to its citizens and those in the other counties, but in the event of a city takeover, how will those users in other counties be affected? Who or which institutions stand to profit? Under private ownership, the company is responsible to the Public Services Commission for the setting of rates, etc. Under municipal ownership, the city apparently will need to set up a water district, in which case what will be its parameters?

The most important question, however, is simply that of the “taking.” The water company is probably among the best in the state and is owned by investors. There is no complaint about its performance, and its rates are not out of line. Indeed, it must apply to the state’s Public Services Commission for a rate-change. The city is not equipped to run the company, has no legitimate reason for acquiring it…unless there’s a financial angle, the city becoming the private investor similar to the private entrepreneurs in the Kelo matter. Therein probably lies the rub, especially since the city, as in other areas, could well mismanage and cause deterioration to a system (and thus enhanced financial burden to the taxpayers) that is topnotch now. Used logically and in the public interest, exercising the power of eminent domain is necessary; however, if it is used to take that which belongs to one person or agency just to bring profits – either public or private – to another, a line would seem to have been crossed.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark.

Arlington

There’s no greater act of humaneness than the giving of one’s life to enhance or preserve the welfare of another. The observance of Memorial Day has from its official beginning been – and remains – the exclamation point attached to that thought. It grew out of this country’s darkest days, the 1860s, when Americans fought each other in a deadly civil war for causes in which they believed. During the Civil War, 1861-65, an average of 340 Americans died each day, more than the average of any war before or since, even World Wars I and II, during which the average number of American deaths per day was 320, over a period of 4.5 years of actual combined combat. These are mind-boggling facts, as are the facts regarding any armed conflict, including those in Afghanistan and Iraq today.

One need only to be just cursorily aware of the conditions under which most of the people of the world live in order to appreciate both the freedom and the lifestyle maintained in this country primarily by its military strength and the will of its people to support it. In a most profound way, notwithstanding the statements of the fainthearted to the contrary, peace is the absence of war, and the absence of war on these shores is guaranteed by those who keep it at bay through their willingness to make the sacrifices inherent in peace-keeping.

Unfortunately, peacekeeping sometimes means disturbing the peace. Disturbing the peace means inevitably that lives will be lost as brave warriors “lay it all on the line”…and lose it. In this season, those who have made the ultimate sacrifice are honored, and rightly so. The tragedy, however, does not end on the battlefield. No…it reaches into the homes and the families of those left behind when a loved one makes that ultimate sacrifice. The playing of “Taps” at the grave of a fallen warrior denotes the ending of a life in the service of the country, but in a real sense those plaintive notes signal the beginning of heartache for those who are reminded daily of the empty chair, the times around the table, the singing of the hymns, the everyday things of life no longer shared with that special someone or that beloved family.

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington is, in a way at least, the paradigm of many national cemeteries across the country, as well as U.S. cemeteries in nations throughout the world. Some are exclusively dedicated to the graves of GIs who have given all; others form small parts of local cemeteries; some are also inclusive of family members of those who died in service to their country. All are reminders that freedom is never free, but must be claimed and secured by whatever means necessary in every generation. Unfortunately, maintaining this security nearly always requires that some make the ultimate sacrifice. Thus, Arlington is the reminder.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark.

Herald-Leader Gone Ape!

Christian Patterson is a “guest columnist” for the Lexington Herald-Leader. In his column of 18 May, he asked the question, “How do we want the world to see our state?” Presumably he figures that the folks in Niger (literacy rate – 17.6%) are waiting with bated breath to see how the folks in what Patterson seems to think is a back-woodsy state are getting along these days. However, he mentions some of the native Kentuckians who bid fair to make the state’s reputation soar in the eyes of the world – folks like Tara Conner, recently crowned “Miss USA” (gasp, the most notable news lately, according to Patterson); Heather French Henry, Miss America a while back; George Clooney and his father, Nick Clooney, recently spotted touring Darfur with cameras whirring like mad; and actress Ashley Judd.

All of those folks have been very successful in their chosen fields, and, mentioned as they are with such things as the Kentucky Derby and the Kentucky Horse Park, give Kentucky an aura, in Patterson’s view apparently, that actually approaches the attributes of a halo. Either now or at one time or another those folks have been or are in the entertainment field, thus possessing high profiles that say what, exactly, about Kentucky? Nothing. Every state in the union has produced entertainers, and most of the states don’t let the rest of the states forget it, as if entertainment somehow is made of the stuff of progress.

This is not a pejorative picturing of entertainers and entertainment, integral and important elements in the society. They serve a useful purpose, even if only in terms of recreation and publicity. Clooney called attention to Darfur and presumably will allocate considerable sums of his wealth to that benighted region, a la Bill Gates and his millions in behalf of doing something about AIDS. If he doesn’t, he should just shut up, pack the cameras, and head back to Tinseltown.

Absent from Patterson’s screed was mention of coal miners who risk life and limb to make a grimy-faced living deep underground, where most folks would fear to tread, or other workers who take it a day at a time but make their lives work. Most egregiously, he didn’t mention the 45 GIs from Kentucky who have given their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is what the world should see in Kentucky, the graves of those who in just recent years have gone beyond the superficial level of entertaining or the practical level of just making a living to put their lives on the line for people like Patterson, who is enamored of celebrity but apparently devoid of the ability to discern what’s important and who makes it that way.

After a few paragraphs of this incidental and totally unimportant fluff, Patterson got to the meat of his column…quote: When a college in Kentucky expels a student merely for being gay, the message sent to the nation is narrow-minded intolerance for any person who is not a straight, white, conservative, Christian-right, Republican-voting American. It’s easy to see from where Patterson has slunk (under some rock) – using the hate-speech route he employs magnificently – to where he is going, namely, to the socio-political minefield he thinks he has laid out for those he hates, the straight, white, conservative, Christian-right, Republican-voting Americans. He didn’t bother with tact…he just attacked straight-on like the generic brand of buffoon who paints with a brush wide enough to exclude most everyone from being tagged as human beings…except himself, of course, perhaps a homosexual, liberal, atheistic, Green-oriented, non-voting person of color, who is what? Certainly not an American, since he has outlawed them and identified himself as none of the above!

Patterson refers to the fact that a homosexual attending the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Ky., a Baptist school where, as stated in its student-handbook, homosexual behavior is not tolerated and can lead to expulsion, outed himself on two Web-sites on one or both of which were pictures of young men kissing each other and a description of his “dating life.” The young man had already suggested on the Web that he would likely be transferring, but by his action gained the 15 minutes of fame that eventuated in media opportunities as far away as New York, where he could spread the “darkness” of his benighted state, stuck as it was in the throes of virtual barbarism, Neanderthal-mentality, nihilism, and most any other vile ism.

Patterson probably hates the entire military, too, since homosexuals, when they are outed, either by themselves or in some other way, are discharged immediately. This means he considers the leaders, from the president as the commander-in-chief right on down through the Department of Defense and each service to the lowest ranks as straight, white, conservative, Christian-right, Republican-voting Americans, and therefore insufferable bigots who make the whole nation, especially including Kentucky, into one mass of homophobio/religio/racists To Patterson, apparently, sexual perversion ought to be a drawing card for the state. Where the Herald-Leader scrounges up these “reality-challenged” purveyors of non-thought is a mystery.

Patterson continues: When I spent a semester studying in England, the only reference that most Londoners had for this state was Kentucky Fried Chicken. Many thought of us as eating nothing but KFC. Is that supposed to prove something? Is he trying to say that Londoners are so dumb that they can’t read geography books…or that they don’t give a fig about Kentucky, which is the way most Kentuckians probably feel about London? Perhaps. Laughable!

In explaining how to make Kentucky appear great, Patterson had this to say: I did so by educating them on famous Kentuckians such as Muhammad Ali, who is the most recognizable public figure in the world… . The most recognized public figure in the world? Egad! Kentucky is to be judged on the basis of a resident who made his living literally trying to beat out other people’s brains? That’s what boxing is all about – the destruction of man’s main organ, the brain, that differentiates him from the beast and turns him into a bloody pulp. If he dies in the process…so what! That which is called murder out in the alley is called sport in the ring…and this is what Patterson says should point folks to Kentucky. The Herald-Leader is known for its celebration of this kind of garbage as well as its putdown of straight, white, conservative, Christian-right, Republican-voting Americans. More’s the pity.

So…Patterson thinks the winner of a beauty contest is the most notable news lately in Kentucky. Rubbish! The most notable news lately has to do with the nine Kentuckians killed in the war on terror in April and May, one of them, Sgt. Robert Ehney, buried just the other day in Lexington. One could hope that people with some common sense can see why Kentucky is a good place, not least among the reasons being those 45 graves, monuments to greatness. Patterson should get a life. Better…he should slink back under the rock, mouthing his hate speech as he crawls among his own.

And so it goes

Jim Clark

The Libya Connection

Diplomatic relations have been reestablished between this country and Libya. This is due in large part to the fact that Libyan strongman Muammar al-Gaddafi [other possible spellings], who has run the country since 1969 (military coup…what else?), decided to throw in the towel in 2003 vis-à-vis the race for nuclear weapons, probably having seen what was happening in Iraq and deciding it would be better to join the USA than fight it. Also, the Libyan government in 2003 finally got around to paying the survivors of those killed in the crash in Scotland of PanAm #103 in 1988 (triggered by terrorist operatives from Libya), thus making instant multimillionaires out of them. Gaddafi’s government also agreed in 2003 to pay compensation to the survivors of those killed in a flight over Niger in 1989 as the result of the work of Libyan agents.

The move is a wise one for this country, strategically and economically. According to Mbendi, a South African news organization located in Capetown, Libya has proven reserves of 29.5 billion barrels of oil and a production capacity of 1.4 million barrels per day. Italy, Germany, Spain and France account for 74% of Libya’s exports. Libya also has the problem of needing new technology to get its oil out of the ground – technology already used in this country. The Libyan economy is based on oil, the manipulation of which accounts for 75-90 percent of its state revenues. Particularly at this time of highway robbery in the oil market, allowing U.S. corporations to enter the country and do what’s necessary, thereby helping both countries immensely, makes good sense, especially since the eco-freaks in this country delay every homegrown opportunity to produce more oil by scaring the bejabbers out of the population (and a constantly freaked-out Congress) with the scare tactics associated with “killing the world.”

In addition to the oil factor, there is the matter of friendly terms with a nation situated perfectly vis-à-vis national security for both this country and Libya. Located directly across the Mediterranean Sea from Italy and about halfway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Suez Canal, Tripoli, the Libyan capital, is the ideal calling station for U.S. Naval ships. Other Libyan seaports could also be an important factor. In time, there may be an opportunity, if deemed important enough, for establishing air bases, though Gaddafi probably thinks most days about the time President Reagan had his palace bombed with the intention of getting rid of the man. This was in answer to various terrorist activities carried out by Gaddafi, and in particular for an attack by Libyan planes on American naval forces in international waters in 1981. There were other attacks by Libya on American forces, as well…sort of like the “Barbary pirates” affair that was short-circuited by President Jefferson in 1803-05, when he raised a navy that tore up the pirates’ dollhouse and prepared an army that was ready also to invade North Africa with troops.

This is also important with regard to the other nations in the Mediterranean/Middle East area that are watching Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. These include the other North African nations, such as Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco, as well as Turkey, Greece, and Lebanon, all within striking distance of Iran, an announced nuclear wannabe and whose president has vowed to erase Israel entirely. Could anyone believe this madman would actually stop with Israel? Saudi Arabia finances terrorism routinely and Syria probably is in possession of Saddam’s WMD. Libya abuts Sudan, where the extremist Muslim government there has been participating in genocide in South-Sudan and the Darfur region for years. So…whether their governments express it or not, the people in these countries – Moslems all, at least nearly – should be happy to see a stabilizing presence like the United States in their pond. They will express their hatred of this country openly (as all good Moslems must do), but be thankful inwardly. They will also look at what’s happened in Afghanistan and Iraq and realize that “holy war” will be answered with hellish results produced by a nation in which life is considered sacred and the slaughtering of innocents intolerable.

Sadly, this reestablishment had hardly been announced on the 15th before NPR had located someone (probably one of the new millionaires) affected by the Lockerbie, Scotland, crash to appear on its All Things Considered late-afternoon news program to vent his rage nearly 18 years after the fact because Gaddafi hadn’t formally apologized for the crash, as if that would change anything. This bit of media-foolishness has been in operation with respect to the survivors (many of them also instant millionaires, courtesy of the U.S. government) of the 9/11 victims every time that subject has been broached, such as about every day during the Moussaoui hearings recently concluded. Much, if not most, of the time, they vent against the administration for allowing 9/11 to happen, notwithstanding the fact that Bush had been in office less than nine months and that the Attorney General’s office during the Clinton administration had effectively gutted any connection the FBI might have had with the CIA, thus perhaps leading to the culprits before the fact.

This is not to say that these folks are not entitled to their outrage…they certainly are. But, everyone has to move on, and the constant carping, especially in light of this government’s determined stand to set things as right as possible, has now become unseemly. Almost as many Americans have been killed in the Afghanistan and Iraq actions as were killed on 9/11, but there isn’t a constant stream of their survivors paraded on camera and/or in print every day to exhibit outrage. They are seen, certainly, but nearly always as supportive of the country, even though their lost ones died as a result of choice to serve and take risk rather than by accident, i.e., simply being in the right place at the wrong time.

It is to be hoped that the constant whining and caterwauling by a media that is openly and consistently hostile to the administration will be accorded the heed it deserves – none. All the propagandists in both the media and the democrat party should be put on notice that the nation’s security comes first, even at some sacrifice. Actually, this notice has been given, the polls showing that two-thirds of the population approves of the latest-exposed surveillance plans put in operation in 2001 and that 51% approve of the president’s overall handling of terrorist surveillance. Even Congress realized this in its renewing of the Patriot Act a few months ago. Notwithstanding all the grandstanding that may take place over the Libya connection, let the nation move on and profit from that link to a former enemy.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark.

General Hayden and the CIA

There’s been the usual brouhaha in Washington since the nomination by the president of General Michael Hayden to be the CIA director – the reason: (gasp) Hayden is in the military. Notwithstanding the fact that six of the 19 CIA directors who have served since the establishment of the agency in 1946 have been members of the military, the oohs and aahs by democrats in the main but some republicans, as well, have been occasioned by the thinking that the CIA is a civilian agency and should not be run by a military person. Carrying this logic further, one might conclude that the Department of Defense is a military agency and should not be run by a civilian, but it is always headed by a civilian, Donald Rumsfeld currently, and the thought that the DoD would ever be run by a GI is…well, unthinkable. So…go figure. Obviously, if it’s okay for a civilian to run the DoD, it’s just as okay for the CIA to be run by a military person…probably better that way, since the two agencies are entwined strategically in the matter of protecting the country.

Hayden comes with credentials that could hardly be equaled, much less surpassed by anyone in the nation, in or out of government. Even though his military career in the Air Force has been in the field of intelligence, he has functioned in the civilian side, as well. Indeed, he has served as the director of the National Security Agency, one of the most important jobs, civilian or otherwise, in the nation. Ironically, when he was nominated last year for the job of Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, he was introduced to the Intelligence Committee in the Senate by Democrat Senator Barbara Mikulski, a member of the committee then and now. This is a part of a press release from the senator’s office of 14 April 2005:

“General Hayden’s most impressive accomplishment is his leadership of NSA at a critical time in the Agency’s history. His tenure there has been transformational. He inherited an agency that needed to be changed: from analogue to digital and from Cold War orientation to looking at multiple threats, and that change needed to happen at breathtaking speed. General Hayden led NSA through serious technological crisis in 2000, he streamlined the organization and made it more responsive, he looked for the best people and the best ideas while recognizing the value of his employees and turning to private sector when necessary to get cutting edge technology.

“At the NSA, General Hayden has adapted strategy to keep pace with rapid advances in global communications, demystified the Agency without declassifying activities, provided a more public face for NSA mission and built support among American people. Members of this committee are well aware of the historic accomplishments of NSA and the future challenges the agency must confront, including: exploding volume of global communication and increasing sophistication of our enemies’ ability to deny us information.”

These two paragraphs are only part of a description by Mikulski that made Hayden practically an oracle in the intelligence community. She ran down a list of his achievements in postings/operations throughout this country and the world that gave notice of a person eminently well qualified to head any intelligence operation. She ended the press release with this sentence: “I heartily endorse the nomination of Lt. Gen. Hayden as Principal Deputy DNI.” Therein may lie the rub. Mikulski is doubtlessly caught on the horns of a dilemma. As a democrat member of the Intelligence Committee, headed by Republican Pat Roberts, with Democrat Jay Rockefeller as ranking member for the democrats, she must make up her mind if what she said a year ago still stands. She sits with democrats Carl Levin, who can be expected to be against anyone nominated by the president; Diane Feinstein, no friend of the administration; and pit bull Russ Feingold, whose most recent claim to fame was his silly attempt to get the Senate to censure the president. Some senators on the Judiciary Committee didn’t even show up for the hearing on the censure resolution…the rest, except Chairman Specter and to a lesser extent Vice Chairman Leahy, stayed only the few minutes necessary to get in on the act.

Feingold’s latest gripe has to do with the “foreign-end wiretap-program” that was largely engineered by Hayden while he was at NSA and explained to the ranking members of the Senate and House committees on intelligence, as the program progressed…without any exceptions taken to it at any time. This quote appeared in a release from Feingold’s office earlier this year: “The President must be held accountable for authorizing a program that clearly violates the law and then misleading the country about its existence and its legality. The President’s actions, as well as his misleading statements to both Congress and the public about the program, demand a serious response. If Congress does not censure the President, we will be tacitly condoning his actions, and undermining both the separation of powers and the rule of law.” Since Rockefeller was in on those briefings, one wonders if Feingold thinks the ranking member’s elevator doesn’t reach the top floor. Ah…well, Feingold and Feinstein also sit on the Judiciary Committee and recently watched as they and their democrat colleagues failed to stop either John Roberts or Sam Alito being confirmed to the Supreme Court.

The hearings on the Hayden nomination should be interesting, not least because the wiretapping issue was front and center in the hearings regarding Alito earlier this year. The program was probed to death at that time, though its detractors constantly rail that it’s somehow illegal. Actually, it’s an “inside the beltway issue,” anyway. Most Americans, if they’re aware of this effort, in the first place, seem to give it little thought, realizing that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear…even if a mistake is made. So far, no one has stepped forward to allege such mistake, though the program has been in place for some time. As the architect of this new method of surveillance, critical now when time is a vital issue militating against the red tape required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in monitoring calls suspected to involve vital information relative to public saftety, Hayden is the ideal choice to head the CIA.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

Yet Another Attack by Herald-Leader on UC

The Lexington Herald-Leader renewed its attack upon the University of the Cumberlands in its issue of 07 May, featuring another condemnatory “news” article on the front page above the fold, with headlines designed to draw attention to “reporter” Frank Lockwood’s latest diatribe against the school, located in Williamsburg, Ky. UC administrators expelled student Jason Johnson in early April after Johnson had “outed” himself on two Web sites as a homosexual, presenting pictures of men kissing each other and even describing his “dating life,” or some such thing. Apparently, he had already decided to transfer to another school and may not have figured that UC would expel him so near the end of the school-year.

Homosexual behavior is prohibited at the school, along with other behaviors such as drinking, fornication, etc. Johnson knew this, of course, so his “outing” of himself served a purpose perhaps known only to himself, though it opened the opportunity for that “15 minutes of fame” thing. The account was carried by newspapers and TV throughout the country. The school receives some of its funding from the Kentucky Baptist Convention and holds to traditional Baptist beliefs, makes no apologies for its stands, and has not backed away from its position in the Johnson matter, though it allowed him to send in the course work necessary for him to receive credit for his studies.

On seven out of nine consecutive days during a period in April, the paper placed accounts relating to the school on the front page above the fold with huge headlines accompanied by reams of space on both the front page and inside the “A” section, along with huge pictures. It also provided free advertising in its “news” section of a “protest rally” to be held 19 April near the school’s campus and drawing people from throughout the state, supposedly to make the issue an operation of practically unparalleled protest-grandness. Indeed, Williamsburg officials were so concerned that they called in law-enforcement elements from the surrounding area in preparation for what was feared to be an unruly anxious-to-be-arrested group of dissidents. The rally fizzled completely, and it seemed that there was about one officer for each protestor.

The initial thrust of the Lockwood hatchet-piece had to do with the fact that the school actually takes charge of its student publication, thus allowing young minds to do the writing and older minds to do the editing and furnishing the judgment of what will and will not see print. The paper is owned by the school, of course, is a learning activity, and is subject to the regulation of the proper school officials. The students do not own the paper, just as they do not own the classrooms or any other equipment furnished by the school and operated by the proper staff/faculty. They participate in the journalistic activity as learners, not teachers. Part of the learning process has to do with encouraging thought and incentives by students, but tempering everything with maturity and experience furnished by professors/administrators, such things also observed by the students.

Lockwood brings in the usual suspect organization expected to criticize the school, the American Association of University Professors, which last year described a "climate of fear" among faculty. According to Lockwood, AAUP investigators said professors appear to "enjoy academic freedom in their classes in teaching their subjects" but that faculty members "do not feel free to address topics of college concern in any forum." Therein lies the gripe. The school expects excellence on the part of teachers in the classroom, but expects education and not campus politics to disrupt the process of learning. This would be a good rule at any school. By extension, of course, the students are also not expected to run the school. The AAUP became involved at the request of a professor who had resigned after it was discovered he had established a Web site unrelated to the school but used as a vehicle for criticizing the school. In the fallout, two professors were actually involved and the AAUP, which has no connection with the school, attempted unsuccessfully to represent them. The entire report is available on the Internet.

The newspaper may be rankled because UC President Jim Taylor apparently doesn’t care a fig about what it thinks…or what anybody else or most institutions think. Lockwood and his employer should realize that UC is a Baptist-related school and as such is quite different from state institutions. Chapel attendance is compulsory at UC, whether the student likes it or not. The education effort is couched within the framework of faith, and there are rules to be obeyed, even to the matters of dress and hair-style. Dorm-rooms are susceptible to examination at any time and there are strict rules concerning behavior in the dorms. The newspaper sees this as another damnable “diversity issue,” but apparently can’t understand the difference between public and private institutions.

Even with regard to governmental institutions, the case precipitating this latest H-L attack is a case in point with respect to the military and homosexual behavior. Here is a DOD document from 1998: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness) April 1998: On February 28, 1994, after extensive hearings in Congress, the enactment of a federal statute, and coordination with Congressional Oversight Committees, the Department of Defense instituted its current policy on homosexual conduct in the military. As required by the federal statute (10 U.S.C. § 654), the DoD policy provides that engaging in homosexual conduct is grounds for discharge from the military. Congress expressly found that service by those who have a propensity to engage in homosexual conduct creates an unacceptable risk to morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion, and that the long-standing prohibition of homosexual conduct therefore continues to be necessary in the unique circumstances of military service. The reasons given for foreclosing homosexual behavior in the military apply at UC, with the added reason that such behavior is expressly and stringently condemned in the Holy Bible.

According to Lockwood, one-third of the freshman class leaves the school at the end of that first year. Obviously, the two-thirds who remain know precisely what to expect. Since both they and the administrators/staff/teachers know precisely what to expect, they can count on being on the same page. This gives a no-nonsense cohesion to the educational process that makes it superior to that which obtains at many, if not most, schools namely, that rules and regulations mean something, that there’s a premium to be placed on morality, and that the faith is important. People who can’t live with that are invited to go elsewhere. Actually, Lockwood’s article probably is the best advertising the school could possibly hope for.

As for placing UC on the front page in order to castigate and ridicule it yet again, worth noticing is the fact that the main front-page-above-the-fold story occupying the 04 issue of the Herald-Leader was an inordinately important account regarding the juicy pickup in business for strippers during Derby Week in Louisville…complete with a huge cheesecake picture of two almost-clothed entrepreneurs. Now, THAT’S NEWS! Perhaps the editors at the paper need some professionals to look over their shoulders and do a bit of censoring. That kind of stuff might be expected from a staff made up of high school sophomore boys.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

Darfur & the Europeans (Wimps?)

The USA is the country the rest of the world loves to hate. While it’s busy ridding the world of butchers like Saddam and bin Laden, there’s little doubt that all the UN delegates are blaming the good ol’ USA for not “doing something” about Darfur. Without question, the Muslim-controlled government of Sudan is perpetrating genocide on those in the Darfur region just as it did against the southern Sudanese, mostly Christians and animists, a few years ago. This is another example of why the civilized people in this world must band together and neutralize any government anywhere that is controlled by the maniacal imams and their “super-religious” henchmen, known euphemistically as government officials.

There’s a catch. As much as the leaders in this country, as well as many of its citizens, want to “do something” about Darfur, the USA is already “doing something” to neutralize the Islamic insanity that drives these efforts at genocide. It’s putting its military in harm’s way every day, as it has since October 2001, in an effort to stop the butchers, while other members of the UN, gliding along and watching the show, are sitting on their big, fat behinds and patting themselves on their respective fat backs for having the good sense not to get into the fight. In other words, the UN is made up mostly of wimps whose self-interest is their only interest.

And the wimpishness has to stop. This country, with troops serving second and third tours overseas, is stretched too far already. It, along with Britain, has done more than its share. If the EU countries, especially Germany and France, had had the guts back in 2001 and later in 2003 to join the effort to take out the Islamic madmen, things would be much different today. Instead, France, for instance, was actually breaking the sanctions against Iraq and doing business with the evil Saddam. Kofi Annan’s outfit at the UN, including his son, was on the take…maybe he was in on the action, too. Who knows? There’s nothing like a juicy kickback to help one make decisions. But the chickens have come home to roost.

How serious are the leaders of countries such as Germany and France, the Old World countries whose people consider themselves the most civilized in the world? Are they ready to put their money where their usually open mouths are? They’d better be ready because the Islamic madmen have their eyes on Old Europe, and, indeed, those countries become more Muslim every day. In fact, they are apt to cower the general populations on most any day, as has been proven recently especially in France by the riots.

Germany has 284,500 active troops. France has some 259,000 active troops. Together, these countries are capable of putting over half a million troops into action any time they see fit, though they will caterwaul about being unable to “do something” until the UN decides what to do. This will happen roughly…never. Not like the old days when they had to police their colonies, these countries don’t need many of their troops anywhere but at home. So…why not “do something” about Darfur, using the troops already trained to go there, kick the Islamic butchers back into their caves, and set the people free?

Is there precedent for this? Indeed there is. When the UN wouldn’t go along in ridding the world of Saddam, leaving that entirely to the Americans and Brits and a handful of other nations with contingents too small to be of much significance (no matter how earnest), this country and its coalition partners took on the job on their own. So…the Germans and the French and the rest of the Europeans – who have decided they can get along very well together, even using the same money – can now take advantage of the opportunity presented by their togetherness to “do something” about Darfur, and in the bargain “do something” for the whole world, namely get rid of another bunch of governmental thugs.

They can do this with a minimum of expense, especially when considered in light of the tremendous financial outlays made by this country in behalf of making the world a lot safer. Whereas this country has had to send its military nearly halfway around the world to make the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, Europe only has to cross the Mediterranean and Libya to get to Darfur and make the fight anywhere in Sudan. With their sophisticated weaponry and technology, they could and would sweep the Sudanese murderers away with hardly any threat to their own forces. Sudan has 104,800 active troops. Throw in most of the 53,000 troops from the Netherlands, 194,000 from Italy and 150,700 from Spain. These form the number of active troops those countries boast. So, counting the French and Germans, there are well over 900,000 active troops available in just those five European countries. Surely the Europeans could come up with half that number, 450,000 or so, to take on the small Sudanese army,

primitive by comparison.

What’s so hard about this scenario? Nothing. All it needs to make it work are some hardheaded leaders in Europe who actually care enough. One would think that the knowledge of Adolf Hitler and the Germans causing the deaths of 11,000,000 civilians – ordinary people – before and during World War II would be enough to remind Europe that civilized people can and should exercise their civility in order to help the most vulnerable. Will they do it? Not likely. Don’t bet the farm. They’ll caterwaul that the USA isn’t “doing something,” and then they’ll return to their TV sets. From this corner comes the hope that this will not be the case and the hope of being proven wrong.

Some might wonder why fellow UN suspects Russia (1,212,700 active troops), and China (2,255,000 active troops) are not included in the effort to “do something” in Sudan/Darfur. And then, there’s North Korea with 1,106,000 troops for grand total of 4,573,700 military guys to bring peace to Darfur…from communist countries. Bit of a problem with this: Since there’s oil in Sudan, the leaders of these communist nations, by definition, could collude to simply take over all of Sudan or choose up sides and fight it out to get that oil. Either way, the message for the rest of the world would not be good.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse?

There’s a certain sadness connected to how one views the work of the people he helps elect to the legislature, whether on the local, state, or national level. The legislature and governor have just finished their biennial 3-month session, and already the governor is planning for a special, expensive session to take up small-business matters that should have been easily handled in the regular session just ended. The biennial short-session will be conducted next January, so why not simply wait until then? Well…only one month is not enough to handle just the rhetoric and regional bickering that necessarily accompany a session, let alone actually handle a matter of importance.

One is reminded of the failure of subsequent legislatures to straighten out the mess of mid-90s legislatures that, with the collusion of governors, managed to run all but one of the health insurance companies out of the state. There was the famous (or infamous) special session called just before Christmas a few years ago when the legislators met and made speeches to each other for a couple of weeks or so, collected their Christmas present from the governor (pay and per diem and anything else not nailed down), and departed to buy gifts with their ill-gotten gain while lots of fellow citizens still didn’t have health insurance and lots more worried about heating their houses.

Last year, the Muhammad Ali Center, a $54 million facility designed to glorify the boxer – indeed, to beatify the man, at least in Islamic terms, was dedicated in Louisville. The state of Kentucky, using taxpayer funds, ponied-up $10 million for the project, state officials, elected and otherwise, thus establishing their approval of Ali as a far-greater-than-life personage who supposedly has brought inordinate respect to the state, known by some wags as the land of beautiful horses and fast women, perhaps not too inaccurate a hedonistic description, considering its coupling with this garish Louisville monstrosity honoring a man who made his living by attempting to turn other men’s brains into jelly through administering to them great pain.

State funds: $10,000,000! How much in health resources could that amount buy? Ali’s family just sold 80% of the swag to be made off of his name for a paltry $5 million to a company specializing in exploiting celebrity. In 2004, in the city-budget of Louisville was an expenditure of $80,000 to be used in creating a statue of Ali, whose name also appears on what used to be historic Walnut Street but now is Muhammad Ali Boulevard. The people’s money wasted by officials duly elected to do the business of governing…disgusting!

The governor and legislature combined this year to manage a waste of some $75 million for helping to build a new gymnasium in Louisville, notwithstanding the fact that Freedom Hall is in perfectly good shape and seats well over 19,000 people for basketball games. Rupp Arena in Lexington seats about 23,000, so what’s the big deal? At the University of Kentucky, a new practice gym at about $30 million and said to be built only with private funds, has been finished, thereby taking up a lot of parking spaces on a campus where the parking situation is critical. Thirty- million in private funds? Does that include UK athletic department funds that might have been spent on academic enterprises that will help ALL students instead of a handful who can run fast or jump high?

In the midst of this wastefulness, the legislature, though the budget was ready for action in plenty of time to override any line-item-veto by the governor, chose to act only when there would not be sufficient time to do so. After all, this IS an election year. So…the governor was left to work his will and he made some substantial cuts, some guaranteed to cause fury, such as at the University of Louisville, where academic concerns – not that gym – were of great importance. Much needed funds for improving the dams on the Kentucky River and thereby easing the water-shortage problems in times of drought for places such as Lexington, with its population of 280,000 or so, were vetoed by the governor. It was okay to throw away $75 million in Louisville, where there’s plenty of water in the Ohio River, but not okay to spend some $15 million where it is drastically needed. Go figure. The beauty of it all for the legislature was that it left the governor swinging in the wind, and has to take no blame for the pet pork that got dropped. Only…some of it was not pork.

Wimps…that’s about as good a term as any for legislators who either have self-interest at heart or simply lack the courage to stand for making correct common-sense judgments.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark