The New American articles from August 2006

The New American archives from August 2006

Oil companies are gouging.(Letter to the editor)
August 7, 2006... In regard to your June 26 article by Brian Farmer, "Behind the High Price of Gas," in which he defends the record profits of the oil companies, please consider: * Consumers, not just stockholders, do have a fight to be outraged when it is...

4x4, show 'em the door!(Letter to the editor)
August 7, 2006... Article Four, Section Four, of the U.S. Constitution reads: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion." Congressmen, senators, and...

Who's looking out for the United States?(United States. Department of State)
August 7, 2006... Acting in retaliation for the capture of two of its soldiers by the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group, the Israeli government unleashed its military against Lebanon. One of the first targets was the Beirut international...

La Raza conference smears immigration patriots.(National Council of La Raza)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... How's this for sordid hypocrisy? An organization that identifies itself by race and that promotes militant racism denounces as "racist" and "xenophobic" American citizens who merely insist that our government enforce our borders. Translated...

The Specter surrender on wiretapping.(Arlen Specter)
August 7, 2006... On July 13, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) announced a "compromise" agreement with the White House regarding the controversial NSA wiretapping program (which Specter had volubly criticized as unconstitutional). ...

War presidency as limited-term dictatorship.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... According to Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, "Our big wars--and the war on terrorism ranks with the big ones--have a way of starting in the first year of a decade. Supreme Courts, which historically have...

Massachusetts betrayal on marriage.(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... The Massachusetts state legislature on July 12 betrayed voters supporting traditional marriage by voting to postpone putting a marriage initiative on the ballot until (at least) after the November election. And nobody is banking on the...

Mired in Iraq's inter-communal war.(sunni muslims)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Baghdad's Adhamiya neighborhood, a Sunni Muslim enclave in the northern part of the city, has been the site of intense and bloody fighting between Sunni insurgents and U.S. troops. Its Abu Hanifa Mosque was the scene of Saddam Hussein's last...

Falsifying legislative history.(Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief Act of 2005)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Last December, President Bush signed into law a measure called the Detainee Treatment Act, which was intended to prohibit the use of torture in interrogating terrorist suspects. At the time he signed the act, Mr. Bush attached a "signing...

Sudan leader wants no UN forces in his country.(United Nations)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006

UN-related campaign launched against home-schoolers.(United Nations)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... "One of the conditions [for homeschooling] is that the homeschoolers must sign a document in which they promise to rear their children along the lines of the UN Convention on Children's Rights. These parents have not done this. This is why the...

Vatican official urges excommunication for destroying human embryos.(Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... "Destroying an embryo is equivalent to abortion. Excommunication is valid for the women, the doctors and the researchers who destroy [human] embryos." As the powerful head of the Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for the Family,...

He says helmets for motorcyclists should remain voluntary.(Joseph D. Schwenz)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... "Our Founding Fathers didn't write into the Constitution the authority for government to protect us from ourselves. That's why it's not illegal to eat too much, sky-dive, ski, be obese, or not brush your teeth." In his letter to the editor...

Billboard aimed at "sanctuary city".(Project USA, Cambridge)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... "Attention: Illegal Aliens, Cambridge, Mass. is a sanctuary city. For help getting there, contact ProjectUSA.org/NJ-mass transit." The anti-illegal immigration group Project USA is raising money to pay for a billboard in northern New...

Claims about global warming targeted.(Richard S. Lindzen )(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... "Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition." Claiming that there is "no consensus" on global warming, M.I.T. Atmospheric Science professor Richard S. Lindzen strongly...

Honor roll of history's quotable quotes.(Daniel Webster)
August 7, 2006... "Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that...

Coming through! The NAFTA Super Highway: the planned NAFTA Super Highway would radically reconfigure not only the physical landscape of these United States, but our political and economic landscapes as well.(North American Free Trade Agreement)(Cover story)
August 7, 2006... All across America, mammoth construction projects are preparing to launch. The NAFTA Super Highway is on a fast track and it's headed your way. If you don't help derail it, you may soon be run over by it--both figuratively and literally. ...

"The Race" to win America: La Raza ("The Race") presented a moderate image at their recent Los Angeles conference, but the group's ultimate goal is a radical reconquest of the southwestern U.S. for Mexico.(National Council of La Raza)
August 7, 2006... "Anti-immigration forces are afraid.... They are fighting a losing battle and the strategy of fear will fail," remarked an energized Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). "Anti-immigration demagogues...

A first-generation American speaks out! As the son of legal immigrants, the John Birch Society's immigration spokesman Sam Antonio offers a unique perspective on the dangers of illegal immigration.(Interview)
August 7, 2006... Interview of Sam Antonio Sam Antonio, a native of San Diego, California, was recently named by the John Birch Society to be the organization's national spokesman on immigration. Over the past six years, Mr. Antonio has been a full-time JBS...

Border town violence: as illegal immigrants flood the United States, a wave of crimes committed by illegals is crashing into border towns and threatening to engulf our entire nation.
August 7, 2006... Octogenarian Theresa Murray was forced to move. Drug smugglers fired 30 rounds from an AK-47 at Richard Kozak's ranch house. Other ranchers live in virtual prisons. Their problem? Illegal immigrants and drug gangs raiding their ranches along...

UN gun grab goes bust: despite abundant anti-gun sentiment at the UN's recent Small Arms conference, anti-gunners ran into a serious--if temporary--setback.(SECOND AMENDMENT)
August 7, 2006... The gun grabbers were crying in their lattes over how the United Nations Review Conference on Small Arms had "failed" because the conference had not only not led to finalized plans to end civilian ownership of guns, but U.S. government...

America under attack: in Immigration Invasion, John Birch Society President John F. McManus warns that the illegal immigration invasion must be ended if the nation is to survive.
August 7, 2006... John F. McManus, president of the John Birch Society, has long been at the forefront of those bravely opposing the many threats to the United States. Over the past several years, the accelerating problem of illegal immigration has become one of...

Valedictorian's faith.( Brittany McComb)
August 7, 2006... Attendees at this year's graduation ceremonies at Football High School in Las Vegas expressed support for class valedictorian Brittany McComb's biblical references, even if the school administration did not. The committed graduate has also...

Pilot's Last Act.(Jack Francis saves from accident in the right time)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Jack Francis, a 61-year-old private pilot from Brigham City, Utah, was flying home from Jackpot, Nevada, with his wife and another couple on June 4, when he experienced the symptoms of a heart attack. Recognizing that he might not have much...

Coed rescues boaters.(Alana Schutt)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Alana Schutt is a college student who lives on Martha Lake in Snohomish County, Washington. On May 31, Alana was watching three boaters out on the lake, when she decided that something didn't seem quite right. "I could just see their boat...

Delivering just deserts.(robbery attempt on Celiviano De Jesus)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... On May 31, Celiviano De Jesus was making a delivery from Daniello's Pizzeria on West 95th Street in Manhattan to a nearby apartment when a man attacked him, hitting him in the face with a metal bar in an attempt to rob him. De Jesus fought...

Batting a thousand at being a man: Lou Gehrig always stepped up to the plate to meet whatever life pitched his way--even his own impending death--with the integrity, humility, and equanimity of a real man.(Biography)
August 7, 2006... I would not have traded two minutes of the joy and the grief with that man for two decades of anything with another. --Eleanor Gehrig No man is a hero to his wife. The aphorism is rooted in the seventeenth-century proverb, "No man is a...

House call.(Oscar Mitchell rescuing from home invasion)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Two men come to your door at about 1 a.m.; at least one is wearing a shirt from the CenterPoint Energy company. They tell you that they're from the gas company and that you must evacuate because there's a gas leak--but neither you nor your...

Saving his own life.(Brian Starr protects himself from robbery)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... After stopping to get gas and beef jerky after a softball game, Brian Starr began driving away from a Fuel Mart gas station when he glanced in his rearview mirror and saw a strange man in the rear seat of his car, and the man was raising a gun....

Through the wringer.(Karen Foxx kills husband on harrasment)
August 7, 2006... When state's attorney S. Ann Brobst of Baltimore County, Maryland, brought before a grand jury the case of Karen Foxx, a woman who had shot and killed her estranged husband, to determine whether she should go to trial for his death, Foxx's...

No cash and carry.(Mary Todd gets success in handling the intruders)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Mary Todd, of Beech Island, South Carolina, surprised four thugs at her food store on June 16. In the afternoon on that day, she was in her office when three masked intruders entered while a fourth waited in a getaway car. The robbers...

Just saying no.(assailant attacks Kenneth Tucker )(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... A Fort Worth, Texas, man named Kenneth Tucker was attacked by an unnamed assailant for telling the man to leave the area after the man offered beer to underage kids "and began chasing the young girls around the parking lot," reported nbc5i.com....

For a change, enforce the immigration laws.(Correction notice)
August 7, 2006... ITEM: A July 5 Associated Press story reported: "The economy of the country's largest city and the entire nation would collapse if illegal immigrants were deported en masse, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told a Senate committee hearing...

21st-century feudalism.(economic condition)
August 7, 2006... What might Nero have done if he had possessed a 757-200 jetliner? On July 1, in a display intended to rally the GOP-aligned "NASCAR dad" demographic, Dick Cheney buzzed the Daytona International Speedway in Air Force Two at an altitude of 1,000...

Disagrees with Dr. Robinson.(Letter to the editor)
August 21, 2006... Dr. Arthur Robinson states in the article "An Expert Look at the Energy 'Crisis'" (June 26 issue) that hybrid fuel "is pure, politically driven nonsense." He goes on to state, "Using diesel oil to grow corn to make ethanol--that's all...

Ditch voter plan.(Letter to the editor)
August 21, 2006... I couldn't agree more with the article entitled "Assault on the Electoral College" (June 26) by George Detweiler, especially his exposure of the idiocy of, not to mention the blatant unconstitutionality of, the proposed "National Popular Vote...

A win for property owners, setback for Kelo Developers.(eminent domain powers can be used )(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... The Ohio Supreme Court delivered a unanimous and historic ruling on July 26 that is being heralded as a major victory for property rights and a stinging blow to last year's infamous U.S. Supreme Court Kelo decision, which ruled that local...

Presidential obstructionism.(security clearances)(United States. Department of Justice. Office of Professional Responsibility)(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... In July 18 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted that "President Bush personally blocked an internal investigation into the role played by Justice Department lawyers in approving a...

Congress approves U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement.(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... Unlike the dramatic 217-215 CAFTA vote in 2005, the House approved the U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement (FTA) by the relatively large margin of 221-205 on July 20. Although the Senate had already approved identical legislation by 60-34 on June...

Cradle-to-grave federal scrutiny.(United States. Department of Education)(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... In mid-July, the secretary of education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education released a draft of a report calling for "a mandatory registry of all American students throughout their collegiate careers--every course, every step, every...

Hugo Chavez: friendship tour & arms deals.(president of Venezuela)
August 21, 2006... Petro-dollars for guns, fighter jets, helicopters, submarines--and possibly a rotating seat on the UN Security Council. That's the plan behind Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' July-August whirlwind tour of Russia, Belarus, Iran, Vietnam, and...

With Castro ailing, what's next for Cuba?(Fidel Castro)(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... The July 31 Cuban news announcement that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro was temporarily turning over administrative power in the island nation to his younger brother, Raul, as he underwent surgery to repair an ailment that had caused intestinal...

U.S.-Russian nuclear security initiative.(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... On July 15, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, "a new global program to track nuclear terrorists, detect and lock up bomb-making materials and coordinate their...

Were hardcore statements of primary Victor in Utah believable?(Chris Cannon)(Tom Tancredo)(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... "When I heard some of the things Chris Cannon was saying in the campaign, I was thinking I could easily be listening to me talk. It seemed like, by golly, he's finally getting tough on immigration." With personal help from President and Mrs....

Trans-Texas corridor becomes an issue in governor's race.(QuickQuotes)(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... "Texans want the Texas Department of Transportation, not the European Department of Transportation." Pointing to what she calls the "Trans-Texas Catastrophe" as the November election nears, independent candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn has...

Well-known economist decries excessive federal spending.(Douglas Holtz-Eakin)(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... "The long-term outlook is such a deep well of sorrow that I can't get much happiness out of this year." Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office who also served as a White House economist under President Bush,...

Law group chides Bush for his signing statements.(American Bar Association)(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... "The recommendations that we make are an effort to correct practices that, if they continue, threaten to throw the country into a constitutional crisis" As the leader of an American Bar Association task force, Neal Sonnett urged his fellow...

Ex-CIA operative sues Cheney and Rove.(Valerie Plane Wilson )(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... "I and my former colleagues trusted the government to protect us in our jobs [and it] betrayed that trust. I'd much rather be continuing my career as a public servant than as a plaintiff in a lawsuit." After her husband challenged Bush...

Condoleezza Rice's performance targeted.(QuickQuotes)(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... "Like her boss, she does not show any sign of tension over the fact that all of their schemes to democratize the Middle East ended up creating more fundamentalism, extremism, terrorism and anti-Americanism." Columnist Maureen Dowd of the...

Australia invites radical Muslims to leave.(Peter Costello)
August 21, 2006... "If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practices it, then that's a better option. If you want a country which has Sharia law...

The veterinary ethic.(mercy killing)
August 21, 2006... Butch was a one-year-old Rottweiler-boxer mix--he looked like a pit bull on steroids. I came home one day to find him very sick, apparently poisoned. Taking him to a veterinarian, I got the bad news: "He's real sick and he's not going to make...

Escalating war: the dilemma of false alternatives--and why Americans must not let our government entangle us further in the current Mideast mess.(MIDDLE EAST)(Cover story)
August 21, 2006... "We are in the early stages of what I would describe as the third world war, and frankly, our bureaucracies aren't responding fast enough," Newt Gingrich declared. "We don't have the right attitude about this.... This is, in fact, World War...

How did we get into this mess? The prospect of a regional war in the Middle East underscores the lethal futility of our interventionist foreign policy.(MIDDLE EAST)
August 21, 2006... The Israeli military campaign against Hezbollah-infested sites in Lebanon has been carried out "according to a plan finalized more than a year ago," reported the July 21 San Francisco Chronicle. "More than a year ago, a senior Israeli...

The dioxin debate: the EPA maintains that dioxin is one of the most carcinogenic substances known to man. But the National Academy of Sciences casts doubt on that assessment.(Environmental Protection Agency)
August 21, 2006... In summer months, hikers, bikers, and families looking for a nice place for a picnic visit the park where Times Beach, Missouri, used to be. Yet, just two decades ago, the area was deemed unfit for human habitation and the residents of Times...

Presidential power grab: President Bush has been quietly attaching pronouncements to the bills he signs into law. These signing statements amount to a grab for legislative power belonging to Congress.(PRESIDENCY)
August 21, 2006... Republican Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) announced on July 23 that within one week he would have a bill ready that authorizes Congress to sue President Bush in federal court. What could possibly persuade a prominent member of the president's...

Torture survivor tells his story; Dr. Charles Lee survived a three-year ordeal in a Communist Chinese prison. His story of physical and mental torture reveals the true nature of the communist regime in Beijing.(Interview)
August 21, 2006... Dr. Charles Lee of San Francisco, California, was released on January 21, 2006 from a three-year ordeal in a Communist Chinese prison. Dr. Lee is an American citizen and has been since 2002. He grew up three hours north of Shanghai, China....

An alternative to amendments: many Americans, tired of federal courts meddling in their lives, have resorted to trying to add new amendments to the Constitution, but there's a better solution.(CONSTITUTION CORNER)
August 21, 2006... Interest is multiplying both in and out of Congress to use Article III, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution as an alternative to the constitutional amendment process for curbing the excesses of runaway federal courts. The Pledge Protection Act...

America's Mortal Danger: in his new book In Mortal Danger, Congressman Tom Tancredo warns that multiculturalism, immigration, and terrorism threaten to destroy America and the West as a whole.(Book review)
August 21, 2006... In Mortal Danger, by Congressman Tom Tancredo, Nashville, Tennessee: Cumberland House Publishing, 2006, 224 pages, hardcover. (For ordering information, see the ad on the inside back cover.) Nothing grabs headlines like rockets raining on...

Air force "Hot Shot" saves baby.(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)(Lupe Covarrubias )
August 21, 2006... Lupe Covarrubias is a Hot Shot--a firefighter at Vandenberg Air Force Base on California's "Central Coast," midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. One Saturday last May, Covarrubias went shopping with his mother and sister at a Wal-Mart...

North Carolina boy rescues sister.(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)(Jack Whipkey)
August 21, 2006... Over the 4th of July weekend, a family from Turkey, North Carolina, decided to go to nearby Currie Beach, on the Atlantic. Seven-year-old Abigail Whipkey was playing in knee-deep water, careful to follow instructions not to go too far out into...

Bay of pigs betrayal: the betrayal of the Cuban people by the CIA, State Department, and staff members of the New York Times ranks as one of America's darkest foreign-policy moments.(HISTORY--STRUGGLE FREEDOM)
August 21, 2006... For three days the men of Brigade 2506 had fought a relentless battle against Cuba's communist forces in an attempt to break Castro's stranglehold on their beloved country. By the third day of nonstop battle, the situation was nearing the end...

Howling mad.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Kathy Bryan )(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... Animal lover Kathy Bryan of Licking County, Ohio, was upset when she was forced to kill three wolves. On the morning of Sunday, July 16, Bryan heard her three dogs making a ruckus. When she checked into the noise, she saw several wolves in...

Relatively stupid.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Jamal Shihadeh)(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... The Clackamas County (Ore.) Sheriff's Office reported that two neighbors responded to the sound of breaking glass and interrupted two young men burglarizing a store in Beavercreek. At about 11:20 in the evening on July 15, Travis Wilbur and...

When it got deadly, so did he.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Morris Brown)(Robber Zovek Martinez and Michael Highsmith)(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... Morris Brown of Williamsburg, Virginia, was attacked in the city of Newport News by three men. They robbed him, and they beat him, but when it looked as if they might kill him, he opened fire. It was 1:30 a.m. and Brown had just dropped off...

Good customer relations.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... On Wednesday, July 12, David Lineberry, the owner of a Durham, North Carolina, jewelry store, was sitting in his office when he saw two men in his parking lot, one of them armed, approaching a third man, David Baum. Lineberry grabbed his gun...

Boy gone bad.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Jason Roush)(Brief article)
August 21, 2006... Though some criminals thoroughly deserve to be shot, the victims who are forced to shoot the criminals often feel guilt for shooting them. Overcoming the guilt after shooting someone is often difficult, but it's likely more so when one must...

Federal trigger-lock mandate.(Correction, Please!)
August 21, 2006... ITEM: Last year, as noted by the Appleton Post-Crescent (Wis.) for July 19, a bill was signed into law "that required trigger locks on all handguns sold." The law passed "as part of a larger, misguided measure that gave the gun industry...

Lebanon: a case of U.S. subversion.(THE LAST WORD)
August 21, 2006... In 1958, I found myself in the thick of the action in Lebanon. A lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, I was among the several thousand U.S. troops (including Army personnel) who set up positions in and around Beirut in July of that year....