27 Mar 98: The House of Representatives has approved a bill that would end funding of international family planning organizations that lobby for or perform abortions overseas. President Clinton, it is widely thought, will veto the measure when he returns from his Africa trip. Whatever side of the abortion issue Americans stand they should question whether the US government should be funding organizations that endeavor to impose any social program upon the people of another country. The federal government has a limited constitutional mandate that does not include spending tax-payer dollars to fund a program in a foreign country that nearly half the American people considers murder.
26 Mar 98: The House of Representatives has voted $1.3 million to finance the preparation of impeachment evidence of President Clinton gathered by Ken Starr. The Democrats are screaming foul and saying that it is all partisan politics. The fact is that the GOP would be too afraid to move ahead with such proceedings if there were not sufficient credible evidence to impeach the president. Democrats are practicing partisan politics by closing their eyes to the mounting evidence that the president asked people to lie under oath in his behalf, that he sexually harassed Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey, that he illegally accepted campaign contributions from foreign governments (China) contributions that influenced foreign policy, that his office violated privacy rights by using FBI files for political purposes, that his administration sold seats on trade missions for campaign contributions, that his administration accepted money from Indian tribes to affect policy on Indian casino gambling, etc…
The names of the two boys involved in the Jonesboro Arkansas shooting deaths of 4 girls and a teacher have been released, Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson. These youths reportedly stole the weapons used in the incident from Andrew's grandfather, Doug Golden. As the tragedy of the situation sinks into the American psyche demagogues will endeavor to paint this as a reason that guns should be strictly controlled. But they fail to see that 300 years of gun rights in this country have not produced such massacres. Second Amendment rights were granted in the Constitution to protect American freedom from the tyranny of an oppressor. This powerful tool of freedom got into the hands of two children that have been warped by a society that has allowed its children too much latitude and too little discipline (by restricting parental control and expanding social education and extending free speech to pornographic and violent venues). The solution is not to take guns away from individuals, but to reform the education and social systems that allowed this mindset to occur.
25 Mar 98: Four young girls - 11 and 12 year-olds - and a teacher were killed in an ambush set by two boys. The you men fired on a large group of students as the group exited a school in response to a fire alarm. Several more students were wounded. The two boys were dressed in camouflage and waited while a third boy pulled a fire alarm to get all the students to exit. The boys picked out girls and teachers. Evidence suggests that they were determined to kill all the girls who had ever "broken up" with them. The scene of this carnage has left the whole country grieving and wondering what would prompt two young men to commit such a heinous act of murder and what could have been done to prevent their actions. Liberals will undoubtedly blame the guns for the crime, but it is the individuals themselves - however young - who are first responsible. Second, American society has grown so permissive that these youth (an 11 and a 13 year old) were able to brag that they were part of gang. One had even pulled a knife on another student the day before. Where were the parents in this? What was the role of Hollywood that glorifies gangs, violence and sex? Where were the schools which have lost all ability to discipline and to teach? This tragedy was the result of a breakdown in morality, and prevention of future like events would be as simple as the application of a little common decency and some societal self-discipline. The Monitor expresses heartfelt sorrow and deepest condolences for the families of the girls: Paige Ann Herring, Brittany R. Varner, Stephanie Johnson, Natalie Brooks and the teacher, Shannon Wright.
24 Mar 98: The California State Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the Boy Scouts are not a business and thus are not subject to anti-discrimination laws. The Boy Scouts were endeavoring to expel 16 year-old twin brothers who refused to profess a belief in God. An additional ruling by the court upheld the Boy Scouts' rejection of an applicant for scout leader who proclaimed his homosexuality. Indeed, the Boy Scouts are not a business they are an organization founded to instill certain principles in young men. By allowing persons not conforming to those principles into the organization we would degrade their ability to perform their function. Men have a freedom of association that allows persons to include or exclude whomever they choose as long as exclusionary rules are based on behavior and not race.
It has been reported that the White House is trying to extend the blanket protection of executive privilege to conversations the first lady had with lawyers. This argument is patently ridiculous. Hillary Rodham-Clinton was not elected president; she has no official position in the government. Her conversations with government paid lawyers is no different than any other private citizen speaking to a presidential advisor.
23 Mar 98: The fires of ethnic strife are heating up again in Serbia, where a province that is 90 percent Albanian is making a move to separate itself from the "Yugoslav" state still controlled by the Serbs. The match was struck when four Serbian Police were gunned down by Albanian militants. The Serbs responded by killing 80 civilians in Kosovo, the province in question. Now a shadow ethnic-Albanian government is holding elections declared illegal by the Serbs. There has been a reported 80 percent turnout by the Albanians in the region. Into the mix, six Americans from an organization called Peaceworkers have been jailed by the Serbian authorities. They have been charged with violating laws that dictate foreign activists must register within three days of entering the country. The Peaceworkers evidently did not follow this rule. They were summarily sentenced to 10 days confinement. There is little question that the politics in the region are complex. Both the Serbs and the Albanians feel they have legal and moral claims that must be settled. The United States cannot set itself up as the arbiter of those claims without infringing on the sovereignty of another nation. As for the American Peaceworkers - although we cannot allow US citizens to have their natural human rights violated, reports from Kosovo show that the Peaceworkers have not been mistreated. If they broke the laws of the established authority in the region, and those laws are within the realm of reason, then we must accept their brief confinement as part of the price they pay for the work that they do. Americans have every right and even a duty to seek justice throughout the world, but we also have an obligation to respect national sovereignty just as we would have our own respected.
