Where do you stand in the new Culture wars?


ONE VOICE;

ARE YOU A PHONY LIBERAL?

(Answers the questions below either Yes or No. No peaking at the answers at the bottom)


1.) Is it allowable for Muslims to be homophobic because of their culture?

2.) Should forced Marriage for women be illegal?

3.) Is it acceptable to women to be forced to wear a veil?

4.) Is anti-Semitism and threats of death a legitimate response to American and Israeli Polices?

5.) Given the threats of use, Should Iran’s Regime be allowed to acquire a nuclear bomb?

6.) Can you be a people’s champion if your people have no choices and can’t get ride of you?

7.) Are opposition Political Prisoners justified?

8.) Is exclusively foreign born Al Queda in Iraq and its attacks on Iraqi’s justifiable in their being a legitimate resistance organization?

9.) Is Ayaan Hirsi Ali too critical of Islam?

10.) Should have the Dutch Government have taken away her security?

11.) Should Salman Rusdie have written about the Koran in the way that he did in The Satanic Verses?

12.) Are Freedom of speech, assembly and freedom of religion or atheism universal Human Rights?

13.) Is it okay to ban other religions or the non-religious from Holly Sites?

14.) Can Honor killings or genital mutilation of women be placed in a cultural context, as legitimate?

15.) Is it acceptable to call for, seek and or demand the death of those who are disagreeable to you by way of your culture, religion and or other measures of identity?

ANSWERS (V)
V
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V
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Answers
1) No, 2)Yes, 3)No, 4) No ,5)No, 6)No, 7)No, 8)No, 9)No, 10)No,11)Yes,12)Yes,13)No, 14)No, 15)No, 16)No.


Check your Phony Liberal Meter?

If you were 50% or greater CORRECT by answer guide above;


YOU ARE A TRUE PROGRESSIVE!

Totalitarianism and Communalism is well suited for you.



If you were 50% or greater INCORRECT by answer guide above;


Oh Dear, you are A PHONY LIBERAL

Immediately self deport to California or Massachusetts, Tehran, Russia, China, Venezuela and or Cuba, where Phony Liberal really do reside.


That is all!!

ONE VOICE;

Why perhaps the intellect of Hewitt Moonbattery is apropos exampled in this new age of Doomocrats, often more so each day proving equally inept and impotent in power.

Reports: Stephen Colbert Presidential Choice of 2% of Democrats

The late-night South Carolinian I am French not a redneck Jon, I am antisemitic, Stewart created Republican pretender, ranks behind Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards — BUT AHEAD of Gov. Bill Richardson, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Sen. Mike Gravel.

He is in a statistical dead heat with Sen. Joe Biden — 2.7 percent for Biden versus 2.3 percent for Colbert, a virtual tie in a poll with a five percent margin of error.

What does that really say about the Doomocracy movement that has hijacked that once proud party of Democrats, eh?

Among Republicans, however, in obviously a more mature view of reality in the real world, HE IS DEAD LAST — behind not only the front runners like Rudy Giuliani and former Gov. Mitt Romney, but also marginal candidates like Reps. Tom Tancredo.

Even that nut root poster child, emphasis on whiny poster child, RON PAUL is ahead of the SC redneck Frenchy. The last of the last, moonbat of moonbats, whom it seems saw the same UFO Kucinich did, when he “heard the UFO voices” saying he could be President.



If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names in the refined "Hewitt intellect of Moonbattery.”


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,304717,00.html


Moonbattery
1.n. Law. The unlawful, unnecessary verbal and mental attack of one person on another, with the intention of bringing about a harmful or offensive conversion to liberalism often using the methodology of [U[Hewitt[/U] steeped in illogic idioms using Appeal to ridicule, and or both, Reductio ad absurdum.


Liberalism
1. n. Now-defunct 19th/20th century Protestant Christian heresy.
2. n. Logic, a.k.a. Reductio Ad Absurdum.

Hewitt
1. v. To speak in a patronizing manner, as if repeatedly explaining to a brain-damaged child why he can’t have an ice cream.

Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to the absurd")




That is all!!

ONE VOICE; but whose counts most, is the question.

IT would seem the voice of Al Queda, the Taliban and of Radical Terror driven Islam, have an idea THERE IS A MILITARY SOLUTION in Iraq, Afghanistan and in their Terrorist Global War on the rest of the non-Islamic world.

Yet; it seems the west and in particular that component of the Doomocracy's doom and gloom mongers look for a more defeatist approach, than the Jihadist have ambitioned for some reason?


Neutered A pologetic Trolling Obstructionist

Stirrup: 'No military solution in Afghanistan'

By Richard Holt

Last Updated: 1:07pm BST 25/10/2007

There is no military solution to the struggle against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, according to Britain's most senior armed forces leader.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../25/wafg725.xml

Afghanistan is lost, says Lord Ashdown

By Tom Coghlan
Last Updated: 3:33am BST 25/10/2007

Nato has "lost in Afghanistan" and its failure to bring stability there could provoke a regional sectarian war "on a grand scale", according to Lord Ashdown.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../25/wafg125.xml

Obama: No Military Solution in Iraq

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070822/D8R5TPFG0.html

Doomocrat Rep. Barbara Lee, California: There is "No Military Solution" to the Iraq War!

July 18, 2007

No Military Solution To Iraq

Hillary Clinton

Mr. President, the description of the problems that are currently existing in Iraq and in the region by my friend and colleague is not only accurate, but unfortunately, an indictment of the policies of this Administration. What has been described in terms of the instability in Iraq and the consequences for further conflict are ones that I take very seriously.No military solution to crisis in Iraq, says UN chief



There is no military solution to the crisis in Iraq and everybody must be brought into a political settlement that could include talks between US forces and insurgents, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday.

Reid: Iraq War lost, U.S. can't win
Anti-war liberals in House reluctant to mount opposition to Iraq funding bill



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18227928/

These guys seem to think there is a military solution in Iraq and Afghanistan, I ponder why nobody has told these bad guys that there are no such solutions in either place?

Could all denial mongers who think it is all about us and what we think or do and wish. Those who monger, if we just leave they, will merely stop, cease, and go away. Would you carry the same message of failure's defeat and doom directly to these bad guys personally. Perhaps then they will believe it like your Nut Root moonbats.

They seem to have not gotten the memo and or spin talking points, it seems?

Please wait for a reply, if you would be so kind?

I ponder in your true denial mongering “wisdoms” perhaps when visiting them an up to date Life Insurance premium would be apropos!









Click below- Very Graphics!!!!

http://www.undermars.com/images/mars1223.jpg


Morass Spewing Negative Bellowing Communalists

Collaborating N eurotic’s Network

Collective’s B allyhooingSystem

Blimey B uggeringCollectists


That is all!!

ONE VOICE;

Neutered A pologeticTruncatedObstructionist

Emasculated U tilitarians

Yet, I ponder, is this but more evidence of NATO’s and particularly its EU components evolutional reliance on self absorbed utopianism, to the affective of irrelevance in world affairs.

The key question for Americans now and in the future, having spent 62 years, untold billions in Treasure, while stationing over 17 million, with an average annually of 292,000 American Soldiers to serve and protect Europe, have we always really been alone, actually destined to be forsaken when the going gets tough by these once European red meat eaters no threat converts to cow tow vegetarians?

Yet now in our hour of need we see those 62 years of alliance pretense, is but wisp and nod with turned back acting in deafness when we ask for help.

It seems these no threat sunshine allies and cave dwelling winter friends of self-serving alliances ever more act as emasculated utopians living in a manse of culture and wisdom, like their brother collectivist, our new age American Doomocrats, both esteemed in the traditions of “ me first, no, not me, values of the honor less.

Those values of the sighted blinds who by deed and response, act evermore in unreliability, disloyalty and in emaciated integrity to and for everyone but themselves making both worth nothing in the end to America, yet, dubiously work hard to make America worth something to them, when conveniently needed by them.


Nato stretch spurs force rethink

Nato defence ministers have agreed to scale back ambitions for a 25,000-strong rapid reaction force to intervene in world crises.

Existing military commitments have sapped troop levels and prompted Nato members to withdraw force pledges.

Separately, Russia's defense minister told the meeting concerns about a US missile shield remained, despite US attempts to allay Moscow's fears.

Nato chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer urged both "friends" to keep talking.

The US has made several overtures to Moscow in its bid to smooth Russian feathers ruffled by the plans for the defense system, part of which would be based in Europe.

On Tuesday US Defense Secretary Robert Gates had said activation of the European shield could be delayed until there was "definitive proof" of a missile threat from states such as Iran.

However on Thursday Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said those efforts were not enough and Moscow was "sticking to its position".

But he said talks about the plans would continue.

"It seems to me that the Americans are starting to better understand our concerns and we welcome that," he said.

The US is currently negotiating with Poland and the Czech Republic - Russia's former Warsaw Pact allies - to base, respectively, 10 interceptors and a radar on their territories.

Map of US missile defence systems

Continuing tensions between the two powers were underlined, reported news agency Associated Press, by an unusual practice run by two Russian Tupolev 160 strategic bombers on Thursday.

The planes flew along the Norwegian coast and then south, until within about 190km (120 miles) of the Dutch resort of Noordwijk where the Nato meeting is taking place, before turning back, the agency reported.
Force reduced

On the final day of talks Nato ministers also agreed to ask commanders to scale back plans for a rapid reaction force - the Nato Response Force - the brainchild of former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The force had been conceived as a pool of up to 25,000 soldiers from Nato nations, ready to respond to crises within five days.

The smaller force will still seek to meet the same objectives, but with fewer soldiers. It is not clear how many.

The BBC's Rob Watson in Noordwijk says Nato members simply do not have enough soldiers, mostly due to the pressure of the operation in Afghanistan, and demands from the UN and EU for peacekeepers.

Many Nato countries - the US apart - have been cutting their defence budgets for years, with many now spending less that 2% of GDP on defence, our correspondent reports.

Apparently, in a sincerely likely insincere belief that there is not a clear and present danger to any in Europe. OR, as leaches sucking life blood from another so they can live a more contemptible life, relying habitually as if an addict on the assumption that Big Brother that Imperialist evil America will bell their ragged cheap arse out, if they get in a pince, eh?

But despite the setbacks, Nato officials seem pleased with the two days of talks, he adds.

There have been informal offers of limited reinforcements for the mission in Afghanistan and much talk by ministers, both in public and behind closed doors, of the need for the alliance to hang together in Afghanistan - or risk failure there.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7062455.stm

Afghan burden tasks Nato allies

Tensions over Nato's mission in Afghanistan are clearly far from over, though the message from Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was one of reassurance.

Speaking at a meeting of Nato defence ministers in the Dutch seaside resort of Noordwijk, he dismissed the idea that the mission was facing a crisis, and said some Nato countries had now offered to contribute more.

Despite a resurgent Taleban and pressure on some Nato governments - such as the Netherlands and Canada
- to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan, the Nato chief insisted the alliance was making good progress there, and would see the job through.

Although the US stepped up the pressure at the meeting, there were no offers of major reinforcements, though up to nine nations may now be willing to increase their contributions.

However, what seems to be promised are more soldiers to help train the Afghan National Army (ANA) rather than to take the fight to the Taleban, as the US would like.

Sharing the burden

America wants more nations to help with the war-fighting aspect of Nato's mission.

The US currently supplies half the overall foreign forces in Afghanistan, some 15,000 of them working on the Nato mission in the south, while Britain is the next largest contributor, with 7,700 troops fighting fierce battles with the Taleban in Helmand Province.

Some member-countries, such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain, are constrained by so-called national caveats, which restrict where they can station their forces and whether or not they are allowed to fight.
German troops, for example, are confined to the relatively peaceful north in a non-combat role.

German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung announced at the talks that his country would triple the number of military trainers embedded with Afghan units to more than 300

France promised to send several dozen extra trainers to Uruzgan Province, where Dutch troops are based.
Solidarity appeal

Betraying a hint of the tensions underlying the meeting, Mr Jung rejected US calls for the German trainers to accompany Afghan units into the south, and criticised US calls for Nato allies to provide more troops.

"We need security and reconstruction and development: that is the wider concept," he said.

"That's why I think these calls simply for more and more military involvement are misguided."

So are Britain and the US being asked to do too much, while others do too little? Jaap de Hoop Scheffer insists not.

"They're shouldering an important part of the burden, given the fact that in the southern part of Afghanistan where they are, the going is tough from time to time," he said.

"I keep saying that the fewer national caveats the better, and the more financial and military solidarity the better."

Wavering

Britain itself sent out a strong message at the meeting that Nato must stick together as an alliance, if it is not to lose its credibility - and that nations wavering about long-term commitment must be supported and kept within the fold.

The Dutch, for example, have 1,600 troops in Uruzgan province, but are under pressure at home to bring the troops back when their current commitment ends next autumn.

If the Dutch leave, that could have a knock-on effect on Canada, where opposition parties are keen to bring their troops' war-fighting contribution around Kandahar to an end.

Experts warn that time is running out to get it right, with reconstruction in Afghanistan progressing more slowly than expected, and the Taleban regaining some hold in the south, in parts that the ANA is not yet able to protect.

Nato commanders on the ground have also said they need more troops and equipment, though the secretary-general said that 90% of what had been promised had been delivered.
'Corrosive' divisions

Dr Paul Cornish, security expert at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, believes this mission is a crucial test of Nato's will.

"What you're seeing is some member states of Nato saying 'we're part of this mission, and we want the overall thing to achieve its goal but we won't take the risk that others are taking'," he said.

"That is divisive and it's corrosive at the heart of Nato, so there are some very fundamental problems that are being taken very seriously indeed at the highest levels."

Despite the tensions, though, Nato's allies are still agreed on one thing: the mission in Afghanistan cannot be allowed to fail - because as well as Afghanistan's future, Nato's credibility, too, is at stake.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7061061.stm

Brown call to share Afghan burden


Pressure intensifies

National caveats currently prevent some countries - such as Germany, Italy, France and Spain - from either fighting, or from being based in the more dangerous provinces.

Meanwhile, US, UK, Canadian and Dutch troops are unhappy about bearing the lion's share of fighting a revived Taleban, the BBC's Caroline Wyatt says.

Robert Hunter, a former American ambassador to Nato, said: "If things get worse, pressure - particularly by the US on other allies - will intensify.

"The next time there's a problem in Europe it may be hard to get the Americans to ride to their rescue," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Britain's 'delusions of grandeur'

Britain is suffering from a "folie de grandeur" which has led to its armed forces being overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to historian Corelli Barnett.

He told a seminar at Churchill College, Cambridge on Thursday - held to celebrate his 80th birthday - that British commitments "were, and are, the lasting legacy of our transient world hegemony in the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras".

"At the present time," he said, "the British army and its air support are just too small to fight simultaneous large-scale guerrilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, a case of true overstretch. That is why our commitment in Iraq is being gradually cut back."

This always iconoclastic military writer has constantly argued that Britain's economic standing did not and does not justify its claim to be a major power. He accused Britain's current and recent leadership (and Tony Blair in particular) of following in the footsteps of the British elite that wanted to be "house prefects to the world".
Savile Row suits

He castigated the prime minister who took Britain to war over Suez in 1956, Anthony Eden. "He could no more imagine Britain giving up her inheritance as a great power because she was hard-up than, for a similar reason, having to exchange his Savile Row suits for ready-made reach-me-downs...

"In Eden's view, 'our world-wide commitments are inescapable.' Gordon Brown and David Cameron would probably say the same today. Tony Blair certainly did."

He scoffed at Britain's obsession with being at the "top table" and for not understanding its inferior role to that of the United States.

Corelli "Bill" Barnett was speaking to an audience that included former senior politicians, military figures and civil servants, all of whom had been involved in the various defence reviews that have taken place since 1957.

In these reviews, governments tried to tackle the issue of what role Britain should play on the world stage and how to pay for it.

All agreed that with the end of the Cold War, Britain's armed forces are back in the business of expeditionary warfare - that is, the projection of armed force just about anywhere in the world.

Agreement...

Some agreed with Corelli Barnett that this was wrong. The former Conservative Defence Secretary Sir John Knott, who was in office during the Falklands war in 1982, said he accepted that Britain was suffering from delusions of grandeur. "Yes we are. I agree with Corelli Barnett. It is nonsensical. We're doing far too much."
Another former Conservative Defence Secretary, Lord King, was not so sure. "It is very difficult politically to move from the top to the second table and keep public support for the armed forces. We ought to be prepared to play a part as a prosperous nation. We are right to contribute in Afghanistan. We do have some ability in that field, as part of a coalition," he said.

Lord King added that he had recommended to David Cameron that a future Conservative government should hold four-yearly defence reviews to overcome the stops and starts of the past.

...and disagreement

Some disagreed with the Barnett thesis. General Sir Mike Jackson, formerly Chief of the General Staff, told me: "We might have been suffering from delusions in the 1960s, but not now. We are among the four or five richest countries. Do we want to retreat into a fortress Britain and pull the duvet up over our heads and hope the bogeyman goes away?

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Peter Harding urged that Britain should continue with its present role. "If you are what you are, you have a responsibility. We should act in our enlightened self-interest and we are worth our weight in gold in coalitions."

Another of Corelli's Barnett's targets was Britain's Trident nuclear missile system, which the government recently decided to renew. He called programme "the supreme example of overstretch stemming from folie de grandeur".

Here, he found little support. The former British ambassador to Paris, Sir Ewen Fergusson, got a few laughs when he said he doubted if the British wanted the French to be the only nuclear-armed nation in Europe.

At the end, I asked Corelli Barnett about the discussion. He appeared unimpressed that fundamental questions had not been asked over the years. "Nobody gets down to question the givens," he said.

The arguments will go on. Britain is planning two aircraft carriers that will clearly increase the country's expeditionary capability. Sir John Knott declared they were "unaffordable" at the estimated cost of £12 billion. But General Jackson said firmly: "I am a carrier man."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7063374.stm


That is all!!

One Voice;

Doomocracy, a leadership of the inept bankrupted by their values and ideals of failure, doom, and gloom!

Democrats To Shorten Their Work Week

October 27, 2007 7:30 AM
Posted By:Pam

Remember when Hoyer promised to increase the work week in Washington? Well forget that:

Shortly after winning a majority last year, Democrats triumphantly declared that they would put Congress back to work, promising an “end to the two-day workweek.” And indeed, the House has clocked more time in Washington this year than in any other session since 1995, when Republicans, newly in control, sought to make a similar point.

But 10 months into the session, with their legislative agenda often in gridlock with the Bush administration and a big election year looming, the Democrats are now planning a lighter schedule when the 110th Congress begins its second year in mid-January.

The House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, told fellow Democrats this week that the House would not be in session next year on Fridays, except in June for work on appropriations bills.



They are there, but they are still a do-nothing-Congress.

I loved the reactions to the shorter work week:

“Is this a reward for our accomplishments in 2007?” asked Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican whip.

And on Friday, President Bush once again hammered Congressional Democrats, accusing them of failing to meet basic responsibilities like approving annual budget bills and confirming his nominee for attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey.

“This is not what Congressional leaders promised when they took control of Congress earlier this year,” Mr. Bush said. “Congress needs to keep their promise, to stop wasting time, and get essential work done on behalf of the American people.”

What is it that the Democrats want you to look at for comfort:

The Democrats, by contrast, say that after 10 months of putting in longer days and weeks, they have made significant gains. They cited legislation, including an increase in the minimum wage and new ethics and lobbying rules, as well as in the nitty-gritty work of House committees, which they say has provided much-needed oversight of the Bush administration and will also set the stage for an ambitious agenda next year.

And they blame Mr. Bush and Republicans for Congress’s low approval ratings, which they say will only help the Democrats expand their majority in 2008.

Ethics? Are they serious? Really? Go talk to Flip about ethics. He’ll let you in on their Hsu size!

And you want to blame the Republicans for your low numbers? If they were high, would you be be giving the Republicans credit for that? Nope. They just don’t get it. People wanted a change in 2006. They were promised a change. What they got was more of the same if not worse.

More reaction at memeorandum

Leadership, driving the bus from the back seat?



D'Oh: House Panel Screw-Up Reveals Whistleblower Email Addresses
By Paul Kiel - October 26, 2007, 10:07PM

Here's a whoops with a capital W.


This summer the House Judiciary Committee launched an effort to collect tips from would-be whistleblowers in the Justice Department. The U.S. attorney firings scandal had shown that much was amiss in the Department, and with the danger of retaliation very real, the committee had set up a form on the committee's website for people to blow the whistle privately about abuses there. Although the panel said it would not accept anonymous tips, it assured those who came forward that their identity would be held in the "strictest confidence."

But in an email sent out today, the committee inadvertently sent the email addresses of all the would-be whistleblowers to everyone who had written in to the tipline. The committee email was sent to tipsters who had used the website form, including presumably whistleblowers themselves, and all of the recipients of the email were accidentally included in the "to:" field -- instead of concealing those addresses with a so-called blind carbon copy or "bcc:".

Only the email addresses were exposed; none of the names or other identifying information of the whistleblowers was revealed. The blunder, however, was noticed by a number of people who had used the website form and received today's email. One disgruntled recipient replied to the entire list of whistleblowers angrily complaining about the snafu; two others forwarded the committee email to TPMmuckraker with similar complaints.

Compounding the mistake, the committee later sent out a second email attempting to recall the original email; it, too, included all recipients in the "to:" field, according to a recipient of the emails.

A committee spokesperson emailed the following statement in response to TPMmuckraker's questions:

The tip line was created to be a confidential method for Justice Department employees to provide the Judiciary Committee with information that might aid the Committee in its ongoing investigation of politicization at the Justice Department. Because of the confidentiality agreement, the Committee will not discuss any emails sent on this tip line. A technological error in a recent communication inadvertently disclosed certain email addresses. The Committee has not begun its review of the emails, and does not know if any of them are in fact from Justice Department employees as opposed to private citizens expressing more general views. The Committee apologizes for any concern this error may have caused, and is making every effort to protect the confidentiality of those who chose to provide information on the tip line.

It's not immediately clear whether the mistake will lead to the exposure of those who had contacted the committee. There are more than 150 recipient addresses revealed in the email. Some of the email addresses appear to be transparently fake, but there's also, much more troubling, a vice_president@whitehouse.gov carbon copied on the email, which is the public email address for Vice President Dick Cheney. In other words, an email containing the email addresses of all the whistleblowers who had written in to the committee tipline was sent to public email address of Vice President Cheney.

The purpose of today's mis-sent email was, ironically enough, to announce careful new procedures about to be put in place by the committee for reviewing the tips received through the committee's website. No one on the committee or any staff has reviewed any of the tips, pursuant to an agreement reached between committee Democrats and Republicans. Only "Members of the Judiciary Committee, and Committee staff specifically designated by the Democratic Chairman or Ranking Republican Member, will have access to the e-mails, and they are prohibited from removing any e-mail from Committee offices," today's email read. "This message is also to advise you that you have three business days... to notify us if you wish to withdraw your e-mail rather than have it reviewed by the Committee under these procedures."

The email can be read below the fold:

Subject: Important notice re House Judiciary Committee tip line, e-mails

You are among the people who have submitted e-mails to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on its Web site tip line for Department of Justice employees to report allegations or concerns regarding possible wrongdoing involving the Department. This message is to inform you that the Committee is now ending the tip line and has voted to approve procedures governing the confidentiality of the e-mails received.

Under these procedures, only Members of the Judiciary Committee, and Committee staff specifically designated by the Democratic Chairman or Ranking Republican Member, will have access to the e-mails, and they are prohibited from removing any e-mail from Committee offices. Any broader disclosure of any e-mail would first require a vote of the Committee to authorize it. It would be the Committee¹s intent to consult with the sender of any e-mail before any such vote takes place.

This message is also to advise you that you have three business days until 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, October 30 to notify us if you wish to withdraw your e-mail rather than have it reviewed by the Committee under these procedures. If you so notify us, your e-mail, along with any records pertaining to its submission, will be destroyed. If you do not so notify us, we will conclude that you have agreed to submit your e-mail to the Committee under these procedures.

Any request that an e-mail be withdrawn should state in the subject space "PLEASE WITHDRAW E-MAIL," and should include in the body of the request the e-mail address under which your e-mail was submitted, if different than the one used to make the request to withdraw. It should also specify the date and time, if known, or the approximate date and time, that the e-mail was submitted.

Thank you for your interest in the Judiciary Committee¹s work



110th Congress: Weak, In Review

From Harry Reid stonewalling earmark reform to Nancy Pelosi's fishy dealings, the most honest, most open, most ethical Congress in history is off to an inauspicious start.

Senate Democrats: Opposition For Opposition's Sake

One of the guests (maybe Rudy?) on the post-speech Hannity & Colmes Wednesday night made the point that several Democratic leaders have called for a troop surge in recent months, but that when the President adopted the strategy, that party's members uniformly lamented it. He made the point that if the President had proposed a reduction in forces, many of them would just as happily have found themselves trumpeting a surge as the only remedy and wondering solemnly why this President just. Doesn't. Get it.
The opposition for opposition's sake mindset shone through brilliantly last night, in the course of struggling over the Senate ethics reform bill.

Yesterday on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Harry Reid was caught pulling out every stop to kill his own party's plan for earmark reform.
...
To Speaker Nancy Pelosi's credit, House Democrats recently passed ethics legislation that included provisions making earmarks more transparent. ... The ethics reform offered by Senate Democrats contained none of these tougher earmark provisions. So Senate Republicans, led by South Carolina's Jim DeMint, cheekily took the identical language of the House earmark bill and offered it as an amendment to the Senate version. Numerous Democrats instantly denounced it, apparently unaware (or unconcerned) that the language had been sponsored by Ms. Pelosi.
...
When Senator DeMint then moved to have his amendment accepted by voice vote -- which is customary -- Mr. Durbin objected. The effect of these procedural run-arounds was to give Mr. Reid more time to twist a few more Democratic arms into killing earmark reform.

By our deadline last night, he still hadn't succeeded, though Senate sources told us that Mr. Reid was considering filing for cloture on the entire ethics bill, thereby foreclosing a vote on the current DeMint amendment. If he prevails, voters will know just much "fiscal discipline" to expect from the new majority.
Maybe Senate Democrats did indeed read through, carefully consider, and pass an honest judgment about "DeMint's" amendment. If so, then they're not so much blind opposers as pork-happy anti-reformers. Either way, not precisely the way they sold themselves during the campaign.

How many hours left in the 100 anyway? I don't know how much more of this swamp-draining we can handle. Thank goodness they took Monday off for football. Maybe we can convince them to take the rest of the college basketball season off as well.


That is all!!

DA-Doomocracy and Hilda-Beast Socialized Health Care;

A vision of Euro-Socialism evident in its new frontier of mediocrity and ineffectiveness!!


From The Sunday Times
October 28, 2007

Quack Michael Moore has mad view of the NHS

The fourth estate has always had a bad name, but it seems to be getting worse. Journalism should be an honest and useful trade, and often still is. But now that journalism has more power than ever before, it seems to have become ever more disreputable. In recent years it has been brought lower and lower by kiss-and-tell betrayals, by “reality” TV, by shockumentaries and by liars, fantasists, hucksters and geeks of every kind, crowing and denouncing and emoting in a hideous new version of Bunyan’s Vanity Fair.

Outstanding among these is Michael Moore, the American documentary maker. He specialises in searing indictments, such as Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine, and has, without a doubt, a genius for it. Although his films are crude, manipulative and one-sided, he is idolised by millions of Americans and Europeans, widely seen as some sort of redneck Mr Valiant-for-truth.

Nothing could be further from the truth. His latest documentary, Sicko, was released in cinemas last week. Millions of people will see it and all too many of them will be misled.

Sicko, like all Moore’s films, is about an important and emotive subject – healthcare. He contrasts the harsh and exclusive system in the US with the European ideal of universal socialised medicine, equal and free for all, and tries to demonstrate that one is wrong and the other is right. So far, so good; there are cases to be made.

Unfortunately Sicko is a dishonest film. That is not only my opinion. It is the opinion of Professor Lord Robert Winston, the consultant and advocate of the NHS. When asked on BBC Radio 4 whether he recognised the NHS as portrayed in this film, Winston replied: “No, I didn’t. Most of it was filmed at my hospital [the Hammersmith in west London], which is a very good hospital but doesn’t represent what the NHS is like.”

I didn’t recognise it either, from years of visiting NHS hospitals. Moore painted a rose-tinted vision of spotless wards, impeccable treatment, happy patients who laugh away any suggestion of waiting in casualty, and a glamorous young GP who combines his devotion to his patients with a salary of £100,000, a house worth £1m and two cars. All this, and for free.

This, along with an even rosier portrait of the French welfare system, is what Moore says the state can and should provide. You would never guess from Sicko that the NHS is in deep trouble, mired in scandal and incompetence, despite the injection of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

While there are good doctors and nurses and treatments in the NHS, there is so much that is inadequate or bad that it is dishonest to represent it as the envy of the world and a perfect blueprint for national healthcare.

It isn’t.

GPs’ salaries – used by Moore as evidence that a state-run system does not necessarily mean low wages – is highly controversial; their huge pay rise has coincided with a loss of home visits, a serious problem in getting GP appointments and continuing very low pay for nurses and cleaners.

At least 20 NHS trusts have even worse problems with the hospital-acquired infection clostridium difficile, not least the trust in Kent where 90 people died of C diff in a scandal reported recently.

Many hospitals are in crisis. Money shortages, bad management, excesses of bureaucrats and deadly Whitehall micromanagement mean they have to skimp on what matters most.

Overfilling the beds is dangerous to patients, in hygiene and in recovery times, but it goes on widely. Millions are wasted on expensive agency nurses because NHS nurses are abandoning the profession in droves. Only days ago, the 2007 nurse of the year publicly resigned in despair at the health service. There is a dangerous shortage of midwives since so many have left, and giving birth on the NHS can be a shocking experience.

Meanwhile thousands of young hospital doctors, under a daft new employment scheme, were sent randomly around the country, pretty much regardless of their qualifications or wishes. As foreign doctors are recruited from Third World countries, hundreds of the best-qualified British doctors have been left unemployed. Several have emigrated.

As for consultants, the men in Whitehall didn’t believe what they said about the hours they worked, beyond their duties, and issued new contracts forcing them to work less. You could hardly make it up.

None of these problems mean we should abandon the idea of a universal shared system of healthcare. It’s clear we would not want the American model, even if it isn’t quite as bad as portrayed by Moore. It’s clear our British private medical insurance provision is a rip-off. I believe we should as a society share burdens of ill health and its treatment. The only question is how best to do that and it seems to me the state-run, micromanaged NHS has failed to answer it.

By ignoring these problems, and similar ones in France’s even more generous and expensive health service, Moore is lying about the answer to that question. I wonder whether the grotesquely fat film-maker is aware of the delicious irony that in our state-run system, the government and the NHS have been having serious public discussion about the necessity of refusing to treat people who are extremely obese.

One can only wonder why Sicko is so dishonestly biased. It must be partly down to Moore’s personal vainglory; he has cast himself as a high priest of righteous indignation, the people’s prophet, and he has an almost religious following. He’s a sort of docu-evangelist, dressed like a parody of the American man of the people, with jutting jaw, infantile questions and aggressively aligned baseball cap.

However, behind the pleasures of righteous indignation for him and his audience, there is something more sinister. There’s money in indignation, big money. It is just one of the many extreme sensations that are lucrative for journalists to whip up, along with prurience, disgust and envy. Michael Moore is not Mr Valiant-for-truth. He is Mr Worldly-wiseman, laughing behind his hand at all the gawping suckers in Vanity Fair.

Don’t go to his show.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/c...icle2753620.ece


Out-of-hours care is failing patients, say GPs


Last Updated: 2:07am GMT 31/10/2007

Many family doctors believe out-of-hours care has got worse and patients are losing confidence in the system, according to a poll yesterday.A total of 60 per cent of GPs think standards have dropped since primary care trusts took control in 2004, the survey said.That year, a new contract allowed doctors to opt out of round-the-clock care in return for a salary drop of around £6,000 a year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../31/ngps131.xml

Patients 'denied intensive care'

Patients with chronic lung disease are being denied intensive care treatment because doctors are too pessimistic about their chances, research suggests.

A British Medical Journal study of 800 patients admitted to intensive care to help them breathe found survival rates were higher than doctors predicted.

It suggests patients may not be admitted when they would benefit from treatment, the researchers warned.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease causes 30,000 deaths a year in the UK.

COPD is an umbrella term for a range of conditions including chronic bronchitis and emphysema.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7073557.stm

NHS cancer plan is 'ineffective'

Rates of avoidable deaths from cancer in England and Wales are not falling as fast as the NHS Cancer Plan predicts, a report warns.

Between 1999 and 2005 the decline in deaths from cancer which should have been treatable slowed year on year, analysis by think-tank Civitas shows.

The figures suggest the £2bn injection in funding in cancer services is not having an impact, they concluded.
But experts said it was too soon to see the effects of extra spending.

The report looked at deaths from certain conditions that should not occur if effective health care is available and the cancers are caught early.

For cancer this includes bowel, skin, breast, cervix, testicles and Hodgkin's disease and leukaemia.

The report found that between 1999 and 2005, avoidable deaths from these cancers fell by 15% and avoidable deaths from heart disease fell by 34% - figures which are generally in line with the rest of Europe.
"Treatable"

But they found some "concerning" trends in cancer deaths.

The five-year period 1999-2004 was the only period since 1979 in which the rate of decrease in avoidable cancer deaths has been less than in the previous one.

And the cancer mortality rate in England and Wales was still higher at 25.5 per 100,000 population in 2004 - than European countries such as France, Austria, Sweden and Finland.

Report author, James Gubb, director of the Civitas Health Unit, said the trend was particularly alarming given the intense focus and extra funding cancer care has received since the introduction of the NHS Cancer Plan in 2000.

"It's impact has apparently been negligible at best."

He said the additional funding may not have been spent in the right places.

"Some of the money was probably used to update equipment which was outdated but staff increases have come in the wrong areas so we have new diagnostic equipment sat in boxes."

Professor Martin McKee, an expert in European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the assessment of the changes in cancer deaths that had happened in recent years was an accurate representation.

But he added: "In terms of attributing findings to changes in expenditure, it's far too soon to say.
"It's going to take time, especially with cancer."

"Much of the new money simply got us back to where we should have been."

Richard Davidson, director of policy and public affairs at Cancer Research UK, said the report was only a snapshot of seven of 200 forms of cancer.

"The latest research shows that UK cancer mortality rates have fallen by 12% over the last decade so it would be misleading to suggest that the Cancer Plan has been ineffective.

"Cancer mortality is falling and survival is increasing but there is still work to do."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7073826.stm

'Serious flaws' in UK health care

People in the UK face longer waits for non-emergency surgery and struggle to see GPs out-of-hours compared with other western countries, a survey says.

But they are the least likely to have problems with medical bills and insurance, the poll of over 12,000 patients in seven countries showed.

Experts said the study, carried out by the Commonwealth Fund, a US think tank, presented clear challenges to the UK.

The government said care was improving, but it was aiming to be the best.

Some 55% of UK patients said they had had difficulty getting access to GP care on weekends and nights.

This was worse than Germany, the Netherlands and New Zealand and comes amid mounting criticism of the arrangements within the NHS.

A new GP contract, which started in 2004, allowed family doctors to opt out of providing out-of-hours care.

But the changes, which has seen private firms take on the role in many places, have been accompanied by a rise in complaints.

The UK also has the worst record for waiting times with 15% having to wait for more than six months for elective treatment.

Canada was the next worst on 14% and the Netherlands the best with 2%.

It is not the first time waiting times in the UK have been compared unfavourably with those in other countries.
When Labour came to power in 1997, it made hospital waits a major priority and by next year ministers have promised that no-one will wait longer than 18 weeks for treatment.
Waiting

Over half of those quizzed also said "fundamental changes" needed to be made to the system, with 15% saying it should be completely rebuilt.

These were similar figures to the other countries with the exception of the US which was much higher and the Netherlands which was lower.

However, UK patients were the least likely to have problems paying medical bills. Just 1% said they had had difficulties, compared to 19% in the US and 8% in both Australia and New Zealand.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "Over the last 10 years there has been record investment in the NHS.

"That money is paying for more staff and better pay, 1m more operations a year, over 100 new hospitals and improved access to healthcare."

But she added: "Delivering the highest quality of care for all, as good or better than any country in the world, must be a fundamental goal of the NHS."

Patients from Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK and the US were questioned.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7071660.stm



Mitt Romney: I won't let US go the way of UK

By Toby Harnden in Nashua, New Hampshire

Last Updated: 2:07am GMT 31/10/2007
The United States is in danger of becoming a "second-tier" nation like Britain and other European countries if Hillary Clinton wins the White House, according to Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential contender.Although he gave a Hallowe'en warning of a "house of horrors" if Mrs Clinton is elected, the main bogeyman for the former Massachusetts governor's stump has become Europe, with Britain's national health service being singled out for special mention.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../wromney131.xml

That is all!!

Doomocracy- One Voice;

Let the taxing and vote ferreting entitlements, begin!!

In an ironic display of cause and effect, this week in Washington the House passed legislation to increase taxes on domestic mining and increase government assistance for workers when American jobs are exported overseas.

The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act imposes an 8 percent gross tax on all new mining claims made on federal lands, matching Germany’s world record for the highest mining tax in the world and jeopardizing the current and future domestic sourcing of minerals that are critical to our nation’s economic well-being and security.

In addition to imposing the world’s highest royalty on mineral production, this legislation would also retroactively levy a 4 percent gross royalty on existing mines where business plans and investments have already been made without accounting for this after-the-fact cost.

With doubtful legality, this provision is the legislative equivalent of one party changing the terms of a contract after it has already been signed.

In doing this is not the federal government abusing its power to change the negotiated terms of these agreements clearly unfair, and should we oppose it. No industry can or should be expected to operate with such regulatory uncertainty, and the net effect of all of these provisions will simply be to encourage companies to take their business overseas.

The United States must establish policies that encourage business investment in order to remain competitive in the global economy and prevent American jobs from being exported. And to remain competitive in the global economy, our nation has established free trade agreements that ensure that American products can be exported with little or no tariffs as we simultaneously agree to similar arrangements with the corresponding nation’s imports.

While the benefits of free trade are spread throughout our economy, a small percentage of jobs are lost due to free trade if America is not competitive enough in the global marketplace. In these instances, the Federal government provides Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) to help American workers transition to good jobs with good wages.

On Tuesday, House Democrats passed the Trade and Globalization Assistance Act, which vastly expands the TAA program with an additional $8.6 billion over 10 years. The program already receives approximately $18,000 per displaced worker, raising the question of why the Majority Party feels the need to greatly expand this program.

And therein lies the self-fulfilling prophecy. As taxes are raised on American businesses, our nation becomes less competitive in the global marketplace and companies move overseas, displacing American works and creating the need for additional assistance programs.

With an agenda of greater taxation and expansion of government, these policies are quite simply wrong for America. Instead, we should support lower taxes to encourage business investment and ensure that American jobs and American products remain competitive with the rest of the world. Especially in these times when American workers are proven to be the most productive in the world even with a long disadvantage of over priced currency competition. Should we not take advantage of that proven production capability in a time when our workers and many shuttered up industry can now have a currency price advantage, when our strong currency has long acted as the tool that exported Americans Jobs and shuttered the doors of many of its industries.
Let the Europeans and Asians,now eat the cake for a change to their currency disadvantage and our overwhelming productivity advantage.
If we bring our 185,000 troops and shutter our many bases in Asia and Europe, we gain another advantage, from an ever proving unreliable alliance, like NATO. They in their emasculated state of purposeful military weakness, will then have to divert monetary resources, now covered in a security blanket by the American tax payer, from an already over extended Socialist Welfare system. A system of ever increasing Brussels expunging Emasculated Unitarian Mediocrity of entitlements, growing massively for both new found émigré and Natives, alike. Entitlements that are already expanded in promises this socialism cannot, nor will not ever be able to keep.


Internet Tax Ban

Unfettered from taxation and government regulation, the Internet has become a revolutionary medium for business, education, research, news, entertainment, and much more. Without question, a tax-free Internet is good for America, and consumers and businesses across our nation support a permanent ban on Internet taxes as a long-term solution to the current temporary tax prevention patches Congress uses to keep Internet access free from taxation.

We should fully support a permanent ban on taxing the Internet, and we should encourage our Congress, as over 240 of them have already done in cosponsoring the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (H.R. 743), introduced by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA). By ensuring that no American will ever be taxed for simply accessing the Internet, this important legislation would provide certainty to businesses and consumers alike.

However, even as the latest Internet tax prevention patch set to expire November 1st, the Majority Party Leadership refused to consider this common-sense, bipartisan legislation, opting instead to pass a mere 4-year extension of the current tax moratorium and rejecting two compromise proposals from House Republicans to extend the tax ban for eight years or six years.

Within just hours of the tax ban expiration, on Tuesday the House rushed to accept Senate-authored legislation to extend the Internet tax moratorium for seven years. While being out of step with most in Congress who continue to strongly support a permanent tax ban, there is some positive events that have slipped by this inept Majority Leadership, in that President Bush did signed the Senate-authored legislation into law on Wednesday, ensuring immediate tax protection and closing the door on Internet taxation for at least seven years.


Economic News

Today, the Labor Department announced that 166,000 new jobs were added to our economy in October, exceeding market expectations and marking the highest job growth in five months. The unemployment rate remains steady at 4.7 percent. That is 52 straight months of positive employment growth accompanied equally by 46 months of Wage advancement.

Last month’s robust employment gains build on news released earlier this week of strong gross domestic product (GDP) growth. On Tuesday, the Commerce Department announced that the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 3.9 percent in the third quarter, which is the fastest pace in 1½ years. Furthermore, a 3 percent increase in consumer spending strongly contributed to the third quarter economic gains.

While the housing and credit industries are undergoing market corrections, this week’s economic announcements underscore the fact that our overall economy remains healthy. One of the greatest inhibitors to economic growth is increased taxation of American enterprises, including increased taxes on capital gains, dividends, and business partnerships as proposed under the Democrats’ tax increase plan that the majority Leadership, but not even a majority in their own party seek in their 3.5 Trillion Dollar tax increase proposals on Americans and American Business.

We should demand and remain committed to supporting pro-growth policies that will fuel job creation and build upon our nation’s strong economic growth. By supporting market-based solutions and providing tax incentives for business investment, we can ensure that American enterprises remain competitive globally.


Amerio-Euro-skeptic media stands, oops falls, to attention!



[B]Harvard: Positive Newspaper Stories on Dems- 58.8%, Positive for Repubs- 26.4%

If even Harvard University says that the Media overwhelmingly favors Democrats in their coverage, you've got to finally accept that it is true. The MSM loves Democrats and hates Republicans. It's just that simple. Investor's Business Daily gives us the low down on the gushingly positive coverage that the MSM bestows upon their favored political party by reporting the results of the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy from Harvard ("hardly a bastion of conservative orthodoxy" as IBD quips). The survey found that the "media are sympathetic to Democrats and hostile to Republicans."

"DUH!"

Democrats are not only favored in the tone of the coverage. They get more coverage period. This is particularly evident on morning news shows, which "produced almost twice as many stories (51% to 27%) focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans."

The most flagrant bias, however, was found in newspapers. In reviewing front-page coverage in 11 newspapers, the study found the tone positive in nearly six times as many stories about Democrats as it was negative.

It's always nice to get one of your main premises proven correct and this survey does just that. Here is how the stats broke down:

Newspapers

Democrats -- 58.8% Positive, 30% Neutral, 11.3% Negative

Republicans -- 26.4% Positive, 34% Neutral, 39.6% Negative

Network Evening News

Democrats -- 39.5% Positive, 43.4% Neutral, 17.1% Negative

Republicans -- 18.6% Positive, 44.2% Neutral, 37.2% Negative

Cable News

Democrats -- 33.9% Positive, 40.6% Neutral, 25.5% Negative

Republicans -- 28.7% Positive, 40.9% Neutral, 30.4% Negative

NPR's "Morning Edition"s

Democrats -- 41.2% Positive, 52.9% Neutral, 5.9% Negative

Republicans -- 30% Positive, 50% Neutral, 20% Negative

PBS News

Democrats -- 8.3% Positive, 66.7% Neutral, 25% Negative

Republicans -- 0% Positive, 77.8% Neutral, 22.2% Negative

The newspapers stats very much confirm my own thoughts on that industry and TV is no surprise, either. But, I'd also like to point your attention to the PBS stats where you can see that the survey didn't find a single positive story about a Republican on PBS. Zero. Nada. The big goose egg.

Folks, this is our state sponsored broadcast agency paid for by YOUR taxes. Yet, they couldn't find one single Republican to do a positive story about? Half the electorate is not being represented by this agency that those voter's taxes pay for? Imagine that!

Just one more reason why we should instantly end their funding. Don't we live in a Representative Democracy? Shouldn't our taxes go to benefit us all equally? Well, PBS does not benefit half those who pay for it.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-h...iased-democrats

Just like so many reports before it, a joint survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy — hardly a bastion of conservative orthodoxy

— found that in covering the current presidential race, the media are sympathetic to Democrats and hostile to Republicans.

Democrats are not only favored in the tone of the coverage. They get more coverage period. This is particularly evident on morning news shows, which "produced almost twice as many stories (51% to 27%) focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans."

The most flagrant bias, however, was found in newspapers. In reviewing front-page coverage in 11 newspapers, the study found the tone positive in nearly six times as many stories about Democrats as it was negative.

Breaking it down by candidates, the survey found that Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were the favorites. "Obama's front page coverage was 70% positive and 9% negative, and Clinton's was similarly 61% positive and 13% negative."

In stories about Republicans, on the other hand, the tone was positive in only a quarter of the stories; in four in 10 it was negative with even grossly fewer focuses on Republican Candidates individually.

The study also discovered that newspaper stories "tended to be focused more on political matters and less on issues and ideas than the media overall. In all, 71% of newspaper stories concentrated on the 'game,' compared with 63% overall."

Television has a similar problem. Only 10% of TV stories were focused on issues, and here, too, Democrats get the better of it.

Reviewing 154 stories on evening network newscasts over the course of 109 weeknights, the survey found that Democrats were presented in a positive light more than twice as often as they were portrayed as negative. Positive tones for Republicans were detected in less than a fifth of stories while a negative tone was twice as common.

The gap between Democrats and Republicans narrows on cable TV, but it's there nonetheless. Stories about Democrats were positive in more than a third of the cases, while Republicans were portrayed favorably in fewer than 29%. Republican led in unfriendly stories 30.4% to 25.5%.

CNN was the most hostile toward Republicans, MSNBC, surprisingly, the most positive. MSNBC was also the most favorable toward Democrats (47.2%), Fox (38.8%) slightly less, the most critical.

The anti-GOP attitude also lives on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition." There, Democrats were approvingly covered more than a third as often as Republicans. Negative coverage of Democrats was a negligible 5.9%. It seemed to be reserved for Republicans, who were subject to one-fifth 20% of the program's disparaging reports.

Even talk radio, generally considered a bastion of conservatism, has been relatively rough on the GOP. On conservative shows, Obama got more favorable treatment (27.8%) than Rudy Giuliani (25%). Sen. John McCain got a 50% favorability rating while Mitt Romney led the three GOP candidates with 66.7%.

The PEG-Shorenstein effort is only the latest to conclude that the mainstream media tilt left.

Others include Stanley Rothman and Robert Lichter's groundbreaking 1986 book "The Media Elite"; "A Measure of Media Bias," a 2005 paper written by professors from UCLA and the University of Missouri; and Bernard Goldberg's two books, "Bias" and "Arrogance." All underscore the media's leftward leanings.

The media, of course, insist they are careful to keep personal opinions out of their coverage. But the facts tell another story — one that can't be edited or spiked.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.a...278808786575124

That is all!!

One Voice;

Polling America, is it those polled, or, perhaps the Polling which confuses, like the indoctrinating media bias show in studies in the previous post??

LEAD, FOLLOW or GET THE F*CK OUT OF THE WAY, who knows, obviously something's not clear in the polls of selective bias and queries that may inject more confusion than clarity, in indoctrination, perhaps!!!

Despite the president’s low performance ratings, a slim 53 percent majority say he is still a powerful player in Washington considering the failure of the Democratic Congress to override Bush’s recent health care bill veto. Some 35 percent think he is a lame duck president.

More than 7 of 10 Republicans (73 percent) think Bush is still powerful compared to 40 percent of Democrats.
Turning to Congress, the poll shows that even fewer Americans are satisfied with lawmakers than with the president. Some 25 percent say they approve of the job Congress is doing while more than twice as many — 54 percent — disapprove.

A 58 percent majority of Republicans disapprove of the Democratically-controlled Congress, as do 57 percent of independents and 48 percent of Democrats.

Furthermore, 45 percent of voters say the country would be better off throwing out most members of Congress and starting over with new people.

Which is to say, when asked, less likely properly and in clarity by media often as bias as not, we are told we respond, as an echo, asking a shadow to dance, in a soundless room, sightless in our perpetual fog of ambiguity, always assuming there is substance, never seeing any, in the end, much different, from era to era, or, one group or the other, really?

Of course that seems to apply mainly to someone else’s representative, because 50 percent think their own representative deserves to be re-elected.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,305156,00.html

That is all!!

One Voice;


Indoctrinate U, that new age paradigm of relativist’s religion and zealotry for entitled universalism. Where only the good, by act and deed, are bad, and, the bad are, well, good, by implied denial of existence, adjunctive now here, it seems, by fear mongering.

Mongering now that “this dominance of bad men denial” might actually exist, thus if so, it destroys the doom-o-cracy’s investitures in failure, denial and a hope for a hidden co-premise of a socialist world utopia.

Here in this NY Times venue of Indoctrinate U enabling, is a parley of its logic, by one of many mainstream enabler’s, that religion of zealot creed in elitist’s snake oil marketing in hidden co-premise hope for utopian socialism.

That doomocracy faith, long lived in elitist’s Chamberlain like faux blood splattered realities. Where it stands silent in the context of here and now world reality. This effeminatus paradigm of elitists superiority, who rationalize, as if somehow its unproven idiom, is or will triumph over a world, dominate in blood splattered masculine evil, merely in or by, word, thoughts and rationally alone, as opposed to its ant-elitist antagonist’s of assumed ignorance, these masculine doer’s, who fight and bleed, in the real world reality of evil men’s existence.

That, and this Times balderdash of (E)masculated (U)niversalism, seething in the usual hyperbola of Reductio ad absurdum, that religion of Indoctrinate U’s incestuous zealotry for Schadenfreude. As often as not, expunged in views of hidden Dysoptian doublethink demagoguery, is what Indoctrinate U enablers like this are all about, hidden false co-premises voiced in half-truisms of informal fallacy.

NY TIMES, by El Rich, Krugerman's, Pentateuch,

Noun + Verb + 9/11 + Iran = Democrats’ Defeat?

WHEN President Bush started making noises about World War III, he only confirmed what has been a Democratic article of faith all year: Between now and Election Day he and Dick Cheney, cheered on by the mob of neocon dead-enders, are going to bomb Iran.

*Neo-radical Moveon–ism code, for the superior enlightened made more in despondence at successes, that substance of failure of their opposition, thus far.

But what happens if President Bush does not bomb Iran? That is good news for the world, but potentially terrible news for the Democrats. If we do go to war in Iran, the election will indeed be a referendum on the results, which the Republican Party will own no matter whom it nominates for president. But if we don’t, the Democratic standard-bearer will have to take a clear stand on the defining issue of the race. As we saw once again at Tuesday night’s debate, the front-runner, Hillary Clinton, does not have one.

The reason so many Democrats believe war with Iran is inevitable, of course, is that the administration is so flagrantly rerunning the sales campaign that gave us Iraq. The same old scare tactic — a Middle East Hitler plotting a nuclear holocaust — has been recycled with a fresh arsenal of hyped, loosey-goosey intelligence and outright falsehoods that are sometimes regurgitated without corroboration by the press.

* 1, Daily Kos pandering wincing of lies and bellows for impeachment, more code for the righteously enlightened only.

Mr. Bush has gone so far as to accuse Iran of shipping arms to its Sunni antagonists in the Taliban, a stretch Newsweek finally slapped down last week.

*2 As if the physical evidence discovered and show, in America’s veteran’s Graveyards and those surviving Iranian EFP’s, in VA and Military, were not meritorious enough evidence of Iranian, through proxies killing of Americans with Iranian supplied weapons. Like in th eusual hubris of the left’s Indoctrinate U, I support the troops and those that kill them too.

Back in the reality-based community, it is Mr. Bush who has most conspicuously enabled the Taliban’s resurgence by dropping the ball as it regrouped in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Administration policy also opened the door to Iran’s lethal involvement in Iraq.

[B]*3, the Usual Indoctrinate U fashionable hubris of self inflated presumption, giving effeminate and ineffectual NATO a pass on failures if any, and Radical Islam and in proxy Iran, full credit for yet unearned successes. Now that is the false co-premise of the enabler’s usual one side reality flamed in half-truism’s of informal fallacy.

The Iraqi “unity government” that our troops are dying to prop up has more allies in its Shiite counterpart in Tehran than it does in Washington.

Yet 2002 history may not literally repeat itself. Mr. Cheney doesn’t necessarily rule in the post-Rumsfeld second Bush term. There are saner military minds afoot now: the defense secretary Robert Gates, the Joint Chiefs chairman Mike Mullen, the Central Command chief William Fallon. They know that a clean, surgical military strike at Iran could precipitate even more blowback than our “cakewalk” in Iraq. The Economist tallied up the risks of a potential Shock and Awe II this summer: “Iran could fire hundreds of missiles at Israel, attack American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, organize terrorist attacks in the West or choke off tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s oil windpipe.”

*4, This is clearly denial and fear mongering, copulated in unity, in false alternatives, as if, with Nukes, Iran could not do all this and more with far more deadly and destructive outcomes and ability.

Then there’s the really bad news. Much as Iraq distracted America from the war against Al Qaeda, so a strike on Iran could ignite Pakistan, Al Qaeda’s thriving base and the actual central front of the war on terror.

B]*5, Again fear mongering in absolutes of false alternatives, as if Pakistan, this long festering epicenter of all Radical Islam’s deadly consequences, in one way or the other, were NOT always on the verge of ignition in this Terrorist War on the World (TWW) before 9/11, and afterwards, as well.[/B]

As Joe Biden said Tuesday night, if we attack Iran to stop it from obtaining a few kilograms of highly enriched uranium, we risk facilitating the fall of the teetering Musharraf government and the unleashing of Pakistan’s already good-to-go nuclear arsenal on Israel and India.

A full-scale regional war, chaos in the oil market, an overstretched American military pushed past the brink — all to take down a little thug like Ahmadinejad (who isn’t even Iran’s primary leader) and a state, however truculent, whose defense budget is less than 1 percent of America’s? Call me “effeminately” a Pollyanna, But I don’t think even the Bush administration can be this crazy.

*6, This is the absolute core mantra and idiom of Indoctrinate U, denial mongering and false diversions. It is core Doomocracy in absolution fashioning of that disproved Chamberlain logic. The one so often splattered in the blood of false hopes and utter dependence on the irrational acting and being rational.

It is an idiom that presume hope and utter reliance on the possible being impossible, and the presumption of lies of threat, are but an illusion, and there is no threat at all that can not be rationalized to conclusion. Last, time 60 million humans paid for this error of omission and illusion in such fuax reliance on hope and rationality alone. How many will pay the price this time, when the enablers of Indoctrinate U, are wrong again?

Let there is nonetheless a method to all the mad threats of war coming out of the White House. While the saber- rattling is reckless as foreign policy, it’s a proven winner as election-year Republican campaign strategy. The real point may be less to intimidate Iranians than to frighten Americans. Fear, the only remaining card this administration still knows how to play, may once more give a seemingly spent G.O.P. a crack at the White House in 2008.

* 7, Far left Moveon code warning. Made in fear and delusion. In an unsaid premise saying, “I am afraid we may have invested to much in failure, doom, gloom and cynical illusions of media spewing despondency, if the Terrorist War on the World, should fail and be defeated.”

Whatever happens in or to Iran, the American public will be carpet-bombed by apocalyptic propaganda for the 12 months to come. Mr. Bush has nothing to lose by once again using the specter of war to pillory the Democrats as soft on national security. The question for the Democrats is whether they’ll walk once more into this trap.

You’d think the same tired tactics wouldn’t work again after Iraq, a debacle now soundly rejected by a lopsided majority of voters. But even a lame-duck president can effectively wield the power of the bully pulpit. From Mr. Bush’s surge speech in January to Gen. David Petraeus’s Congressional testimony in September, the pivot toward Iran has been relentless.

* 8, Moveon and Daily show, Kos double speak and demagoguery but again in hidden premises that we have a lot to fear from our over-investment in illusions of despondent disunity and over exposure to Radical Islam’s success. If it fails and Americans decide in wisdom afar from our Elitist visions, that unity is far better than investments in failure and gloom, we are doomed, in own gloom, I fear.

Reinforcements are arriving daily. Dan Senor, the former flack for L. Paul Bremer in Baghdad, fronted a recent Fox News special, “Iran: The Ticking Bomb,” a perfect accompaniment to the Rudy Giuliani campaign that is ubiquitous on that Murdoch channel.

* 9, Contextual distortions of seething hubris in a hidden unspoken ast media in many forms, especially evident in this failing NY Time news rags who today annpunced another 8% decline in readership, whose ubiquitous fronting of Indoctrinate U doomocracy bias makes this disguised fear of effectiveness self evident as to why such a thing is needed inthis one voice media mongering we have these days.

The former Bush flack Ari Fleischer is a founder of Freedom’s Watch, a neocon fat-cat fund that has been spending $15 million for ads supporting the surge and is poised to up the ante for Iran war fever.

*10, Oddly spun as if a balance to the media and Democratic pandering to the far left Socialist at Moveon and the Daily show and Kos, were not needed as another voice some Americans would prefer in alternative.

Especially in balance views where a majority do not share this Indoctrinate U vision of a Utopian Emasculated Universalism, modeled on this self destructing and drowning EU, big brother approach of socialist dictation, growing more so unacceptable to most Europeans, and always especially to most Americans.

There are signs that the steady invocation of new mushroom clouds is already having an impact as it did in 2002 and 2003.

A Zogby poll last month found that a majority of Americans (52 percent) now supports a pre-emptive strike on Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.

*11, Coded warning, now we should be afraid. Our investment in America’s failure and our red press drumbeats of disunity and despondence, seems to be failing, these fools are not listening to us. Why, I am uncertain, surely it is not that we are not rational in superior intelligence? Na, their just ignorant sheep easily manipulated by anyone, oddly, but not by our network of media dominated red press Indoctrinate U nut-roots, for some reason.

In 2002 Senators Clinton, Biden, John Kerry, John Edwards and Chris Dodd all looked over their shoulders at such polls. They and the party’s Congressional leaders, Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt, voted for the Iraq war resolution out of the cynical calculation that it would inoculate them against charges of wussiness. Sure, they had their caveats at the time. They talked about wanting “to give diplomacy the best possible opportunity” (as Mr. Gephardt put it then). In her Oct. 10, 2002, speech of support for the Iraq resolution on the Senate floor, Mrs. Clinton hedged by saying, “A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war.”

We know how smart this strategic positioning turned out to be. Weeks later the Democrats lost the Senate.

*12, A warning in fear that my god, could they defeat us even in our superiority of rational thought and righteous substance again, hell yes, and I warning you it possible, we could have already invested in our own failure by being so gloomy in doom.

This time around, with the exception of Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic candidates seem to be saying what they really believe rather than trying to play both sides against the middle. Only Mrs. Clinton voted for this fall’s nonbinding Kyl-Lieberman Senate resolution, designed by its hawk authors to validate Mr. Bush’s Iran policy. The House isn’t even going to bring up this malevolent bill because, as Nancy Pelosi has said, there has “never been a declaration by a Congress before in our history” that “declared a piece of a country’s army to be a terrorist organization.”

In 2002, the Iraq war resolution passed by 77 to 23. In 2007, Kyl-Lieberman passed by 76 to 22.

* 14, We, on this far left perhaps do NOT grasp how slick and disingenuous a true politician and political machine has to be to get elected so it can lie and deceived Americans as much as we assume is only a dominion of Right wingnuts.

Then again, we have had our arses handed to us so many times, we just don’t get it, that Americans, by in large, do not get us, nor want us as their voice and their vision for America. The Slick Willy Clinton’s truly get that.. Dumb nuts!!

No sooner did Mrs. Clinton cast her vote than she started taking heat in Iowa. Her response was to blur her stand. She abruptly signed on as the sole co- sponsor of a six-month-old (and languishing) bill introduced by the Virginia Democrat Jim Webb forbidding money for military operations in Iran without Congressional approval.

In Tuesday’s debate Mrs. Clinton tried to play down her vote for Kyl-Lieberman again by incessantly repeating her belief in “vigorous diplomacy” as well as the same sound bite she used after her Iraq vote five years ago. “I am not in favor of this rush for war,” she said, “but I’m also not in favor of doing nothing.”

Much like her now notorious effort to fudge her stand on Eliot Spitzer’s driver’s license program for illegal immigrants, this is a profile in vacillation. *15 ( same as * 14) And this time Mrs. Clinton’s straddling stood out as it didn’t in 2002. That’s not because she was the only woman on stage but because she is the only Democratic candidate who has not said a firm no to Bush policy.

That leaves her in a no man’s — or woman’s — land. If Mr. Bush actually does make a strike against Iran, Mrs. Clinton will be the only leading Democrat to have played a cameo role in enabling it. If he doesn’t, she can no longer be arguing in the campaign crunch of fall 2008 that she is against rushing to war, because it would no longer be a rush. Her hand would be forced.

Mr. Biden got a well-deserved laugh Tuesday night when he said there are only three things in a Giuliani sentence: “a noun and a verb and 9/11.” But a year from now, after the public has been worn down by so many months more of effective White House propaganda, “America’s mayor” (or any of his similarly bellicose Republican rivals) will be offering voters the clearest possible choice, however perilous, about America’s future in the world.

*16, A choice clearly obfuscated in fear of being foundout, as them empty ideals of enabler’s Indoctrinate U, whose ineptness having won the majority, is only measurable by how lowly viewed they are, than is even the Evil anti-Christ Bush and all that bad and evil Neo-Con’s. Doomocracy obfuscations in fear of exposure that are 10 to 12 percent less popular than ven the evil one, who stills impacts agenda from the higher perch than these pretenders of visions so vested in America’s failure and dogma of gloom and doom.

Potentially facing that Republican may be a Democrat who is not in favor of rushing to war in Iran but, now as in 2002, may well be in favor of walking to war. In any event, she will not have been a leader in making the strenuous case for an alternative policy that defuses rather than escalates tensions with Tehran.

Noun + verb + 9/11 — also Mr. Bush’s strategy in 2004, lest we forget — would once again square off against a Democratic opponent who was for a pre-emptive war before being against it.

*17, A clear warning to far left of left in the doomocracy, made a voice of uncertainty and fear of once gain not ept at delivering what America wants, not from well common vision of strength and assuredness.

http://rich.blogs.nytimes.com/

That is all!!

One Voice;

To our animated purveyors of convenient understanding when suitable, those anals of syntax and Hyperbola. Who oddly in left brain demented majority of opposition willfully and self frustratingly 'overshooting' or 'excess' feigns of ignorance, intolerance and attention deficit disorders. In no doubt indoctrinated wisdom of all knowledge is found in 8 word sentences and or 30 second sound bites, always requiring, to be audible, literate and intelligent, a syntax anal-ism of immaculate conception.

I give you a world class document to ponder in your faux over zealot limitations sought in “suitable” convenient truths, how anal such arguments and freights are in context of having real and substantiate meaning.

Misspellings in the U.S. Constitution


The Constitution was written in 1787 in the manner of the day - in other words, it was written by hand.

According to the National Archives, the version we are most familiar with today was penned by Jacob Shallus, a clerk for the Pennsylvania State Assembly. In the document itself are several words which are misspelled.

Far from the days of spell checkers and easy edits, these misspellings survive in the document today.

Only one, though, is a glaringly obvious mistake. In the list of signatories, the word "Pennsylvania" is spelled with a single N: "Pensylvania." This usage conflicts with a prior spelling, at Article 1, Section 2. However, the single N was common usage in the 18th century - the Liberty Bell, for example, has the single N spelling inscribed upon it.

Another mistake, though less obvious, is a common one even today: the word "it's" is used in Article 1, Section 10, but the word "its" should have been used.

The most common mistake, at least to modern eyes, is the word "choose," spelled "chuse" several times. This is less a mistake than it is an alternate spelling used at the time. The word is found in the Constitution as both "chuse" and "chusing."

Finally, at that time, the American spelling of words was inconsistent at best, and several words are spelled in the British manner. These words are "defence," "controul," and "labour." In America, we would today write these words as "defense," "control," and "labor."

Most of the misspellings are in the original document, which was written hastily after the Convention concluded. Aside from one use of British spelling in the Bill of Rights ("defence" in the 6th), the amendments are all error-free. The authors of the latter amendments all had the benefit of time to better proofread their work, and the benefit of a standardized American dictionary.

New students of the Constitution often see one more thing that raises eyebrows: the use of capital letters in the original text. Some have even gone so far as to say that capitalized words in the original Constitution have some sort of special significance above and beyond the non-capitalized words. This is only true in that most of the non-standard capitalization is done to nouns. Again, this was an issue of style, and is similar to the way German capitalizes nouns - they are simply capitalized, and that's all. The words "People" or "State" has the exact same significance and meaning as "people" and "state". Many modern transcriptions of the Constitution remove this extra capitalization without changing the meaning of the document.

Nick Levinson has examined the reprinted copies of the Constitution in several authoritative sources and compared the transcriptions to the copy of the Constitution on file at NARA. For a list of discrepancies he detected, visit his website.

http://www.usconstitution.net/constmiss.html

The Constitution:

Has Anyone Proofread Our Copies?

By Nick Levinson*

Not very well.

People act partly on what the Constitution says, what attorneys say it says, what the courts say it says — and, it turns out, what top publishers say it says.

Schoolchildren are taught the Constitution’s words. Write “We the People” and most of the public will recognize your flourish. Cheap almanacs serve it up in full text.

Professional renditions, however, on which judges, lawyers, and professors of law rely without a second thought, are the epitome. We being duly diligent, we expect these sources to be thoroughly correct. Stoically right.

Hah.

Concrete Failings

No less than the United States Code, United States Code Annotated, United States Code Service, United States Statutes at Large, United States Code Congressional and Administrative News, the Federal Register, pamphlets from the Senate and the House of Representatives, Black’s Law Dictionary, the interpretive Constitution Annotated from the Library of Congress, and the Keepsake Edition once autographed by Supreme Court justices — all these had discrepancies.

I did this research primarily in 2002 and 2003.1 I plan to leave its updating to other researchers. Perhaps the publishers of these renditions would be pleased to update the research themselves.2 One may presume that corrections won’t have occurred without an examination, and corrections are urgently needed.

Punctuation, capitalization, spelling — and, if that’s not enough, some entire words are wrong. In total, over a thousand discrepancies abound.

There’s more. Footnotes are oft absent when explanations would turn errors into valid decisions. If an editor believes an element of drafting was meant to convey a certain content and edits the final rendition accordingly, a note is warranted and probably required for accuracy and scholarship. But absent explanation or excuse, errors stay error.

The only Constitutional rendition that probably is error-free is on the National Archives web site, specifically the set of High Resolution images, showing original handwriting. Even that until recently included only twelve of the twenty-seven amendments, the rest having been displayed until then in a retypeset rendition.3

I didn’t bother checking the dime-store paperbacks. We expect them to be mistaken in places.4 Surely no lawyer would base a brief on one of those. If we want to be right, we know where to turn. Don’t we?

At least one pocket edition was in use by a High Court justice. Did anyone check it?
You probably assume these books are correct. You have common sense. These publishers — I don’t know.

Electronic services, from two publishers of hardbound sets cited above, overlap the books. Cost control theory suggests that one file would generally be used to produce all media, albeit with a tradeoff of propagating any errors widely. And if different files are being used, that risks introducing new errors.5

Vagueness can hide errors. Citations drawn from electronic research reputedly rarely declare their true sources, preference being given to citing prestigious, traditionally stitched books while omitting parallel citations. It’s the modern version of the problem with advance sheets, when judges revise opinions. How many users openly cite advance sheets or update quotations when replacement volumes arrive? Will anyone check whether their online sources are correct, or whether their Constitutions are right? And if hard copy sources are cited when electronics are used in fact, resulting in error, the wrong publisher may be blamed, or, worse, the lead citing author may be faulted. Thus, everything significant citing anything that has parallels online may, for practical purposes, be untraceably and incurably infected with error.

One hopes that writings have enough textual redundancy that readers catch errors as nonsense. One hopes that all errors look like nonsense. But they don’t. And many writers fairly succeed at concision, reducing redundancy and thus concealing errors.

But not all is lost. Now the more venerable publishers can peruse a public database of hard copy faults, the same one you can see:

http://www.GeoCities.com/Nick_Levinson/law...rdg/Appx_00.htm

What’s more, in 1787 humans had foibles. They erred, too.

Write It 14 Times and Earn Your Keep

The framers didn’t write just one master and fax it to the states.

Four large pages were laden with writing, as was the Bill of Rights.6 I doubt any of the 14 sets, 13 plus the Federal, were printed on a press. Virginia’s copy of the Bill of Rights, photographed in Life magazine, was handwritten.

All that wrist-work left room aplenty for slips of the pen. The original set that remains in Federal custody, and presumably is the most supremely authoritative of all, had errors. The Secretary at the time described several corrections in a lengthy note directly on the fourth page of the original.

Literacy wasn’t exactly wall-to-wall back then. Authors often misspelled family names, never mind getting everything right. And they, at least, were authors. Three quarters of the country’s adults, give or take, couldn’t sign their own names.7 If we’re lucky that a quarter were literate at all, we couldn’t demand a very high standard from those who were. Pretty good would have to do.

Which raises the question about why the best copy wasn’t left with the Federal government: — Actually, maybe it was.

When writing 13 copies for the states, upon seeing an error in the middle, would a scribe have mindlessly made more mistakes? Wouldn’t someone have decreed it wiser to cease inking errors before multiplying the damage by 14? If writing all day meant some errors were likely, why add deliberate errors, too? How would it look for a new national Congress to propagate bad writing in its single most vital pronouncement of law?

You could argue for precision, but that’s where cameras are good, and Kodak and Xerox weren’t in business yet. The scribes would’ve been under pressure, because the easiest way to get the copies to the states would’ve been to give them to the delegates, and they were leaving soon. There was no thought of FedEx-ing revisions later. The discussion would’ve been short, the outcome obvious. Where there’s a quill, there’s a way. We can imagine what they wrote.

Maybe someone will open states’ archives, and we won’t have to imagine anymore.

The States Ratified What, Exactly?

Did all the states ratify the same Constitution?

The later admissions to the union probably did, telecommunications having improved. But in 1787 the long-distance carrier of choice was the horse. That could discourage proofreading.

Proofreading would’ve been easier said than done. If any newspaper printed the whole Constitution, using that without checking it against a handwritten copy would have left the newspaper’s accuracy in question, especially germane as many publishers were partisan. No; proofing would have to be done with the authentic original, miles away. But anyone proposing that would have had to grapple with the logistics.

Pity the proofreader. Whoever had that chore needed time and money. If they couldn’t snag a stomach-rattling stagecoach or sail the storm-ripped Atlantic, hoofing it into muddy streams and across slanted mountain scree would have to do.

Horses weren’t fast when routes were long. Mileage varied with the oat supply. Terrain conditions, autumn and winter weather, riders’ moods, and snakes a-hissing impeded schedules. Horses probably didn’t feel kindly toward whips and spurs and the men who loved them.

Would a legislator have made an extra copy by hand, proofread it character for character, made decisions about calligraphic ambiguities and other uncertainties, clambered aboard a favorite horse, traveled for up to a fortnight, sought food, shelter, and veterinary care for two along the way, sat in front of the original Constitution, proofread against it character for character, made decisions about calligraphic ambiguities and other uncertainties, collected their notes and analyses, ricocheted atop a saddled spine for up to another two weeks seeking food, shelter, and veterinary care for two along the way back, and, upon discovering part of their notes obliterated by mud and rain, dissembled to their legislative colleagues and leaders about what they purportedly had or had not found?

Personally, I doubt the Constitution was proofread by horse.

Legislators fixing to deliberate at their capitol had to come from around the state, but couldn’t leave home right away, if they were to get a feel for constituents’ concerns and avoid abandoning the harvest before the frost, back when harvests were less frequent. Then, they had to get to the capitol in order to debate and decide. They had no time for diddly stuff.

Did debaters desist while a colleague busily proofreading was beyond hollering range? Who stops debating even today just because their data might be a little short? Doubtless, they were comfortable relying on what they had in hand. Decisions could be made, alliances fashioned, factions hardened, and eggs thrown and left to dry long before any neigh-sayer clippety-clopped into town with news about grammar and spelling, not an electrifying subject. Right now, you can dismiss many a dispute by calling it “just semantics.”

No legislator would have tolerated missing capitol happenings so he could contemplate commas. Instead, any absentee would have been someone rather inconsequential who could be spared, but who still would have had political credibility with legislators pro and con. Otherwise, upon return, any inconvenient news could be ignored. Secretaries today have had that experience. Cabinet Secretaries have had that experience. Messengers can testify that being ignored is more humane than being shot, but just as effective.

Headhunters for inconsequential proofreaders doubtless scratched most names off. Women were told to stay home. No frigid three-week journey with both legs on the same side of a galloping horse would do for a wife and mother, when a husband and his manly friends heard about it. Older men over 65 would’ve oft been thought too frail to bounce on boulders. African Americans, called Negroes when slavemasters chose politeness, weren’t supposed to read.8 Any politician sponsoring a traveler too contra custom could probably forget about being reelected.

Rural people were almost all of the population, by nearly 15 to 1,9 but the action was at the capitol, and legislators would likely pick someone with whom they had worked. That’d be someone proximate, because long commutes were probably rare and trust would be critical, and trust is scarcer when it depends on communications longer than a stone’s throw. I’m not convinced a descendant of English Mayflower ancestry would have taken up a German, Iberian, Welsh, Scottish, or Scotch descendant’s offer of help, never mind one from a tribal Indian. Regardless of origin, whoever would go had to be literate; most weren’t. Almost any adult still left was probably otherwise occupied.

At the maximum, Delaware had perhaps 13 acceptable proofreaders; Massachusetts, nearly 6,400 (the most populous city being the capital); New Jersey, just four; Georgia, ten.10 Would Georgia have trusted a Massachusetts type? With states yielding sovereign rights to a stronger central government, one state wasn’t about to believe what another state spun. No one cared to be robbed of rights. And, presumably, no one would miss the chance to lobby and line up colleagues for their view, or miss a high-profile vote on the Constitution itself.

Ratification was rather rapid, considering what they were considering. Georgia ratified the original Constitution in three and a half months, Massachusetts nearly a month later, in a close vote. New Hampshire ratified the first ten amendments within four months of submission, South Carolina in slightly less.11 Among elected officials, that wasn’t the time to disappear. Whether to persuade or merely to proofread meant choosing between stardom and tedium.

It could be that no one went. When few are available, other priorities may claim their time.

Nonetheless, assume arguendo that at least one state did it. We’d want to know whether anyone filed a report of proofreading discoveries, whether the report was accurate, and whether it was implemented.

We can only surmise about that history, but we have a modern comparison.12 Until C-SPAN started telecasting Congressional discourse, transcripts heading into the Congressional Record were reportedly often rewritten by Congressional members’ staffs, whose jobs were to protect their bosses’ jobs. The Congressional Record is essentially determinative for Federal floor debates on intent. If our official records were severely mangled just decades ago, you could wonder whether they were any better centuries ago.

Any interest legislators had in augmenting archives in those days likely took a back stool to nation-building, public relations, running farms and businesses, and getting reelected. Newspapers were smaller then, carrying less news per month, making for less transparency. And with fewer people back then, fewer could be aides, resulting in fewer records, less attention to detail, and less checking.

I wouldn’t be sanguine about that.

Proofreaders Arise!

We could reproofread every twenty years.13 Epistemological standards and the content of our knowledge improve over time.14 Historians review their findings; scientists reconsider hypotheses. Lawyers who specialize find utility in rereading basic law of their fields every year or so, even without specific research goals.

In olden days, a page of cold type occasionally crashed to the floor. Nowadays, a computer file crashes. Either event could rearrange our Constitution. Gross errors aren’t so bad; they’re seen quickly. Subtle errors slip through. We must catch them ahead of a court’s cryogenic glare in a crucial ruling. Methods of proofreading are thus ripe for review.

It’s boring work, proofreading.15 Slough it off one too many times on the same serf’s back and they start counting the days till they get another job.16 That dissipates any desire to protect the publisher’s long-term interest. This may be unrelated, but one 58-word clause in USCS, just one clause, had 24 divergences.17

Notice, in the appended lists, how many errors are homophonous. They sneak through more readily when word-checking is rushed and no one enunciates each character.

How much you should pay for proofreading depends on how much diligence you want, or how much is due. Two listeners plus one audible reader are more accurate (all else equal) and cost more than one or two people doing it all. Some evidence indicates that the listeners should be separated in order to increase their total accuracy rate.18 Character-by-character recitation, stating whether capitalized and if italicized, is more accurate and takes longer than word-by-word, maybe thrice as long, maybe much more.19 In general, avoiding being hasty improves rates of error capture.20 The Constitution, of course, is worth it.

Imagine, as I have, modern editors toiling away at the words of this supremely august text. They are precisians first; that is why they were hired.

I see two editors, one above, one below. The assignment is given: Copy the text. So proceeds the underling, inscribing from an unimpeachable publication.21 The work product is duly transmitted to the overseer of all scribes.

The overseer, knowing whom to trust and not having all day, spot-checks here and there. Pulling yet another entirely certifiable authority from a handy shelf, a couple of errors are found, and the supervising editor corrects those with pride, promptitude, and pluck.

The Editor Superior tells The Peon that the scribing was well done and that only a couple of errors were found, which have now been corrected, and thanks are offered all around. The exact errors are unidentified, thus preventing the lower editor from defending the composition, thus not challenging the supervisor, who’s pleased. Nothing is said about exactly which authorities were relied upon by each editor. That might open the speaker to a question of competence, and why touch that?

Thus, they fail to coordinate upon what authority they will rely.

You can confirm this in the appendicular lists. Some content is entirely error-free in all renditions; whereas thirty-six fragments differ in seven to thirteen renditions each.22 Evidently, publishers shared many of the same errors.

Now, in effect, in our hypothesized situation, we are disclosing the failings of both editors, and they are impressive, indeed. But suppose we didn’t insist on hanging the entire list in public view like laundry.23 Suppose we quietly slipped our lists to the editors without telling anyone else. What, in our scenario, could we expect to happen next?

The High One Above would tell the Mere One Below to look into allegations of error. This gives a double problem to the inferior one, who has no tenure. More important than the accuracy of the Constitution (anyone can handle that) is the need to stay employed. Thus inspired, the subordinate will note a quandary: If the editor in the teensy cube reports to the Editor With the Corner Acreage that there are 162 errors not counting captions, won’t it be easier for the Editor In the Clouds simply to fire the editor of no moment? That would show all the powers-that-be that something was done, thereby preserving high majesty despite the facts.24 That’s why public scrutiny is handy.25

One lesson for proofreading: Editors at all levels should agree — in advance — on precisely which sources constitute proper authority for any text.

Another lesson: Be transparent with alleged errors and differences of opinion. Supervisors should list them, so editors beneath can challenge or accept each one. That will let editors, both above and below, learn. Learning is a good thing.

Another: Hesitate to cut corners.

Conceptual editing also needs review.26 If a judgment call shaped the text, the judgment should be transparent. A note will be apropos. That no competitor among publishers saw fit to attach a note to the same hook is irrelevant. Let the judges and advocates hash out the final decisions.

Proofreaders, while proofing notes already present, can identify where new notes are needed. So, their managers should listen to their suggestions.

Here’s where one note would have helped:

Your Right to Compulsory Praeess

That’s in the handwritten original. It’s not a known form of praise, nor of prowess.27 Later publishers thought the Sixth Amendment drafters meant “process”. But how come no one tells us why they transmogrified praeess into process? Footnotes are perfect for explaining such decisions.

If a linguist ever finds praeess on an Anglo-Saxon tablet, we may need to reconsider what the framers were thinking. Until then, accurate quotation will help level the playing field.

Ramifications

Could a clash among circuits and state courts be due to a textual conflict? Might not finding an error in one court’s quotation of the Constitution and applying its announced reasoning result in a new conclusion, instigating a collision with another court? Old decisions newly colliding might make interesting appeals. The opportunity to distinguish case law, even established case law, justifies compiling misquotations evincing judicial misunderstandings.28

This isn’t about the intent of the framers, the spirit of anything, or the need for interpretational flexibility to accommodate modernity. This is about plain words and syntax.

But can you challenge state ratifications for nonidenticalness? Suppose a transcription error impacts a cause today. Wouldn’t the judiciary conclude that it’s a bit late? Perhaps not, but antiquity has weight in law. Any ability to question the text presumably existed since it was written. Compelling indeed would the argument have to be that would persuade five justices to heave two centuries out. And wouldn’t Wyoming, Texas, and Alaska care to be amici, believing that the first thirteen ratifiers were on the same page29 and therefore that those who ratified in the nifty days of telegraph and Boeing were right to rely on the unitary text widely thought to be perennially proper?30

If enough ratifications are fatally flawed (and almost all could well be), then no Congress, no President, and no Supreme or inferior Court lawfully exists, or ever did.31 We can, holding our breaths, refresh our reading of the Articles of Confederation, assuming they’ve been proofread.

Specific ramifications can be drawn from some textual differences; see an appendix for a few. You might realize more.

Linguistics Obscure

Not only inferential differences from punctuation and word choices, but spelling and perhaps capitalization errors can ramify in dialectal semantics.32 E.g., the words control and controul33 mean the same thing unless there was a subtle difference if one was historically used in contexts in which the other was not, researching which point may require more than just the best dictionaries.

Language evolves slowly in the mouths, pens, eyes, ears, fancies, and memories of people who live in a society with many overlapping subcommunities, dialectal and substantive, including lawyers’. Even if one spelling is universal, a new spelling is born and gradually becomes commoner, whilst the older gradually disappears from any but historical reference, with changes arising unevenly in subcommunities. Context controls.

Dictionary compilers seem to solidify the language as of a date of publication. However, the primary ones don’t. They don’t prescribe; they describe. They collect the better evidence still available, accept readers’ submissions of more, and draw expert conclusions.34 Evidence is always incomplete, rendering all definitions tentative, some more so than others. Just as physicists will not guarantee the law of gravity, only that they know no better explanation for the data, linguists can never be absolute about their conclusions, and the evidence for gravity is heavier.

Linguistic research will rarely be worth your effort, until you have an extraordinary case with not much else on which to peg a win, but that may not stop an opponent who finds an opening.
Besides That, What Other Laws?

Are any laws accurately transcribed?35 One hopes so. So strong is the hope that few of us take the major time needed to check. Opponents aren’t checking. Why should we?

Municipal and state codes might deserve even more scrutiny than Federal collections.36 The smaller the government, all else equal, the less able it will be to afford pursuing accuracy.

And antiquity might be unavailable as a counterargument, since most statutes and regulations are younger than key Constitutional provisions. Effectively, counsel may choose which set of rights and obligations obtains by choosing to point out that a rendition is discrepant or choosing utter silence, knowing that no judge can keep current on every bit of law without help. How convenient.

A few years ago, I looked at a municipal statute. The city has people enough to repopulate ten states, and it has contracts and litigation befitting its size. The codified statute did not conform to the amending text previously enacted. One hopes the code publisher heard about the error even though I said nothing.

Codification judgments, too, may be erroneous. I uncovered a miscodified Federal provision. It was properly codified at its initiation, but part was repealed, and what was left, as potentially very influential, should have been repositioned or cross-referenced. The government agency responsible for its on-the-ground implementation almost certainly forgot about it. And I liked it forgotten.

Codes enacted as positive law often permit previous statutes to continue in effect for causes pending at codification, preserving rights. Have any rights been forgotten? How about obligations? Other codes may be prima facie evidence of the underlying statutes. But prima facie evidence is rebuttable; and purportedly conclusive evidence can sometimes be gotten around. Given the numbers of Constitutional errors uncovered, how perfect are the tax statutes?

Uncodified statutes fall through the cracks. In codifications limited to enactments that are deemed to have general and permanent applicability, some notable laws are elided.

Annual pacing of code publication seems to have bounded the permanence of a law as being a minimum of a year and a day. If a legislature doesn’t specify at least that duration of effectiveness, specify enactment as positive law within a code scheme, or amend an existing code, the provision it enacts probably won’t make it into a code, not even into a note.

At first blush, this makes sense. There may be too much temporary law for economical publishing, and they do appear in chronological series in print, wit