The New American articles from December 2003

The New American archives from December 2003

Gorbymania and the Communist clenched fist.(Letters To The Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... "Gorbymania!" by William F. Jasper is excellent (THE NEW AMERICAN, November 3 issue). I am convinced the Communist conspiracy is worse than the conspiracy of our financial and other leaders, since I don't think Communism will settle for a...

Bush pro-UN.(Letters To The Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... "Behind the Deception" by William F. Jasper (THE NEW AMERICAN, November 17 issue) offers strong evidence about President Bush and his support of the UN. However, there is one important question that all those who think the President is anti-UN...

The Founding Fathers and God's Laws.(Letters To The Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Your article "God's Laws and the State" (September 22 issue) featured the idea that the Founding Fathers would be appalled by the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama state judicial building. Unfortunately, our Founding...

Terrorists Among Us.(Letters To The Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Concerning your article "Terrorists Among Us" in the September 22, 2003 edition of THE NEW AMERICAN: I contacted the New York Governor's office and the New York State Parole Board about rescinding the decision to release Kathy Boudin....

Abortion pill tragedy.(Insider Report)
December 1, 2003... On September 10, Holly Patterson of Livermore, California, visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in Hayward to secure an abortion. The unmarried teen, who had recently turned 18, was six to eight weeks pregnant but had not told her parents. She...

Home-schoolers graduate to good citizenship.(Insider Report)
December 1, 2003... After decades of lending off critics who claimed home-schooled children would become dysfunctional hermits, home-schooling parents can finally point to a recent study proving these critics dead wrong. The study was conducted by the National...

Turner/Cronkite on Iraq/UN.(Insider Report)
December 1, 2003... The cover of our October 21,2002 issue warned that the pending war with Iraq, for the ostensible purpose of "Overthrowing Saddam," was actually "a ploy to empower the UN." In our last (November 17) issue, Senior Editor William F. Jasper clearly...

Debate over arsenic levels.(Insider Report)
December 1, 2003... In the waning days of the Clinton administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved a new standard for the level of arsenic allowed in drinking water. The old standard, which had stood for decades, allowed up to 50 parts per...

Supreme Court or world court?(Insider Report)
December 1, 2003... On October 28, the Atlanta-based Southern Center for International Studies presented Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor its World Justice Award. During her acceptance speech, O'Connor expressed concern that the High Court has seldom...

WTO dictating U.S. trade policy.(Insider Report)
December 1, 2003... The World Trade Organization (WTO) has recently flexed its global regulatory muscle over U.S. economic sovereignty. On November 11, the WTO ruled that President Bush's steel tariffs violate WTO rules. According to the WTO's edict, the European...

Engineered extinction: government policies threaten our jobs, economy and national security by destroying America's basic resource industries--mining, forestry, farming and ranching.(Jobs)(Cover Story)
December 1, 2003... Imagine an America of closed factories. shuttered offices, and millions of unemployed blue-collar and white-collar workers. Imagine a United States of America that is no longer the leader in any major industrial or technological sector--a U.S....

Fueling the wildfires: California's deadly wildfires show that federal land management policies for the supposed protection of the environment are, predictably, having the opposite effect.(Environment)
December 1, 2003... The federal eco-saviors... have created ecological disasters of near-apocalyptic proportions. Tens of millions of acres of once-beautiful forestland have been transformed into charred moonscapes and dying, bug infested, overgrown tinderboxes...

Punishing "thoughtcrime": the reaction to Howard Dean's passing remark about the Confederate Flag offers a sobering illustration of the P.C. commissars at work.(Political Correctness)
December 1, 2003... In the former Soviet Union, it was common for subjects to be arrested and sent to the gulag for expressing "anti-Soviet" views. Cuban poet Armando Valladares, author of the memoir Against All Hope, survived more than 20 years in Castro's gulag;...

The will to survive.(The Goodness Of America)
December 1, 2003... At around 4 p.m. on October 7, Texan Melinda Lopez took a break from her duties aboard the shrimp boat Ike and Zack in the Gulf of Mexico, some 70 miles off Galveston. She climbed into some soft netting stored on a shelf-like structure at the...

Putting the patient first.(The Goodness Of America)
December 1, 2003... On October 7, a gas main ruptured outside George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. The resulting street fire forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients, physicians and nurses from the hospital. Cardiothoracic surgeon Bryan...

Postal hero.(The Goodness Of America)
December 1, 2003... Letter carrier Rodger Parker of Cordova, Tennessee, has delivered mail from the post office in nearby Germantown for about two years. In October 2002, he was on his way home from work when a truck ahead of him veered off the road and plunged...

Kazan vs. Stalin's liars: for more than 50 years, the Hollywood Left and its co-conspirators in academia and the media have conducted a vicious vilification campaign against film great Elia Kazan.(Hollywood)
December 1, 2003... First-hand experience of dictatorship and thought control left me with an abiding hatred of these. It left me with an abiding hatred of Communist philosophy and methods. It also left me with the passionate conviction that we must never let...

Col. Clark and his "long knives": with fewer than 200 men, Col. George Rogers Clark conquered much of the American West during the War for Independence. And he did it without losing a single man.(History--Struggle For Freedom)
December 1, 2003... Colonel George Rogers Clark had led his Kentucky riflemen 170 miles across the marshes of southern Illinois toward a planned assault on the British Fort of Sackville in the village of Vincennes, on the banks of the Wabash River in present-day...

Robbery foiled.(Exercising The Right)
December 1, 2003... At about 10:30 p.m. on August 30, a masked man armed with a handgun entered Old National Liquors in southwest Atlanta, Georgia, and announced a robbery. Unbeknownst to him, an off-duty sheriff's deputy was in the store at the time. The lawman,...

Humans and bears.(Exercising The Right)
December 1, 2003... Three recent incidents involving humans and bears underscore the crucial importance of being armed when facing enraged wild animals. The first incident ended in tragedy because the humans were unarmed. Lethal encounter: In early October,...

After hours.(Exercising The Right)
December 1, 2003... George West owns the Shop and Tackle convenience store in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Shortly before midnight on October 5, West was asleep in the closed store when a stranger began banging on the door. Claiming that his car had overheated, he asked for...

China in space.(Between The Lines)
December 1, 2003... ITEM: Florida Today waxed enthusiastic over Communist China's recent space launch. The "Chinese 'taikonaut' returned safely to Earth... after a 21-hour orbital flight that put the world's most populous nation into a very exclusive club: It is...

Insurance and government.(Between The Lines)
December 1, 2003... ITEM: ABC News reported on Oct. 24: "The Institute of Medicine found that 18,000 Americans die each year because they don't have health insurance.... There is universal access to treatment via hospital emergency rooms, but a trip to the E.R....

Our world-class debt creators.(The Last Word)
December 1, 2003... If an auto repairman estimated the charge for his work would approach $2,500, you would probably feel a lot better if the final tab didn't even exceed $2,000. The cost still made a painful dent in your bank account, but you also know it could...

Misunderstanding unemployment.(Letters To The Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 15, 2003... As a longtime TNA reader, I have to take issue with Professor Hans Sennholz ("Understanding Unemployment," November 17 issue). First of all, I have little faith in anyone writing on the manufacturing economy, if they haven't served a...

Excellent issue.(Letters To The Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 15, 2003... Thank you for your excellent cover story in the November 17 "Deception & War" issue. It is the best article on the war that I have ever read. Your book review on Treason, Hans Sennholz's economic article, and the profile on Frederic Bastiat...

Drugging our elderly.(Letters To The Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 15, 2003... I really look forward to getting each issue of your magazine. I found the story on giving our school kids Ritalin especially interesting. ("Drugging Our Kids," August 25). When I read that the schools receive a lucrative federal subsidy it made...

Iraq war was intended to boost UN.(Insider Report)
December 15, 2003... The Bush administration took great pains to assure the American people that the war against Iraq had to be fought because Saddam Hussein's government a) possessed weapons of mass destruction, b) was building a nuclear weapons capability, and c)...

NYC public school system edits Jesus out of history.(Insider Report)
December 15, 2003... Don't like history the way it happened? Just declare certain portions of it null and void. That appears to be the approach taken by the New York City public school system, which since 2001 has forbidden schools from displaying Christian...

Guantanamo Bay power grab.(Insider Report)
December 15, 2003... In mid-November the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal to lower-court rulings affirming the government's right to hold indefinitely more than 650 foreigners as terrorist suspects. Most of the detainees are held at the U.S. Navy base at...

School for scandal.(Insider Report)
December 15, 2003... "Another month, another mess at Harvey Milk High School," lamented the November 8 New York Daily News. "Just two months into its existence as the city's high school for gays and lesbians, Harvey Milk's reputation is being soured by its...

The right won the culture war?(Insider Report)
December 15, 2003... Judicial Jacobins in Massachusetts have approved homosexual "marriage." An elected chief judge of the highest court in Alabama--the proverbial buckle of the Bible Belt--has been thrown off the bench for keeping a Ten Commandments monument in...

USA or PRC?(Insider Report)
December 15, 2003... "Lately, I find myself worrying about my adopted country, the United States," wrote Chinese emigrant intellectual Liu Baifang in an October 26 Los Angeles Times opinion column. "I'm alarmed that dissent is increasingly less tolerated, and that...

"Metrosexual" chic.(Insider Report)
December 15, 2003... Previously in THE NEW AMERICAN (see "TV or Not TV? Not!" in our November 17 issue), we described the newly minted category "metrosexual," a term describing normal men who are polished, well groomed, sophisticated, tasteful--but for some reason...

Home schooling is wrong target in child abuse case.(Insider Report)
December 15, 2003... When New Jersey state officials discovered four foster children in poor physical condition--allegedly underweight and underdeveloped-the media immediately locosed attention on the fact that the children were home-schooled. The New York Times...

FBI's pro-homosexuality double standard.(Insider Report)
December 15, 2003... Gene Robinson, the militant homosexual activist disguised as an Anglican priest, recently became the first open homosexual elevated by that church to the office of bishop. Shortly before his elevation, Robinson addressed a gathering of...

Morality matters: if America continues to shed the values of her Judeo-Christian heritage, she will surely follow ancient Rome into bondage. Freedom cannot long coexist with moral depravity.(Morality)(Cover Story)
December 15, 2003... The history of ancient Rome is the classic example of the descent from virtue into corruption, from the moral restraint of republic to the intemperance of empire. Many Roman historians and commentators living in the early decades of imperial...

Mass. Supreme Court runs amok: when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court gave homosexual couples equal legal standing with traditional marriage, it crossed the line from judging law to making law.(Culture War)
December 15, 2003... Every elementary school student is--or used to be--taught that the legislative branch of government makes the laws, the executive branch enforces the laws, and the judicial branch judges whether the laws of the legislature have been broken or...

FTAA falters on road to 2005: the recent negotiation impasse at the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Miami shows that the globalist plan to merge the hemisphere can still be stopped.(Hemispheric Government)
December 15, 2003... Plans to merge 34 countries of North and South America and the Caribbean into a supra-national government modeled after the European Union hit some snags at the recent hemispheric summit in Miami. However, the Bush administration is continuing...

The FTAA's controlled opposition: the rent-a-mob that descended on Miami provided a familiar service: scaring away responsible opponents and further justifying the police state build-up.(Hemispheric Government)
December 15, 2003... The motley collection of protesters who came to Miami to demonstrate against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) has become a familiar sight at these confabs. As usual, the weird menagerie included a mixture of the prosaic, the...

Pistol-packing preacher.(Exercising The Right)
December 15, 2003... The Reverend Phillip Mielke is pastor of the Big Lake Community Chapel in Big Lake, Alaska. Concerned about security at the church, Rev. Mielke installed baby monitors linking the building to a bedroom in his home across the road and motion...

Dumb and dumber.(Exercising The Right)
December 15, 2003... On September 29, South Africa's Pretoria News reported what it described as "a case of dumb and dumber" when two thugs "armed with toy guns tried to hold up a Mamelodi man armed with a 9mm pistol on Sunday [September 28]." The two would-be...

Timely trip to gun range.(Exercising The Right)
December 15, 2003... Temesha Greene and her two sons live in Portsmouth, Virginia. Earlier this year, after becoming concerned about her neighborhood's safety in the wake of several breakins, she bought a .40-caliber handgun. At around 11 p.m. on August 9,...

Resolutely pro-life.(Making A Difference)
December 15, 2003... Many medical entities, such as the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have caved in on the crucial issue of abortion. They have largely abandoned the physicians' original Hippocratic Oath...

Sign of the times.(Making A Difference)
December 15, 2003... For more than a decade, Johnie Heard of Taylor, Michigan, has lived in low-income government housing owned by the city. She tends children in her home for a living. After Heard began displaying in one of her windows an 8-inch sign with the...

Anti-hunter antifreeze?(Making A Difference)
December 15, 2003... Old World Industries, Inc. (OWI) is the nation's second-largest manufacturer of antifreeze. The current rebate program for its Peak brand products and Sierra antifreeze runs through January 3, 2004. Consumers were given the option to "donate my...

This sewer sweeper wore blue: best known for his role on The Honeymooners, actor Art Carney also starred on stage and screen. His career proved that good entertainment can be both wholesome and enjoyable.(Entertainment)
December 15, 2003... Those old enough to remember Art Carney and Jackie Gleason giving TV audiences a weekly dose of remarkable humor know that television does not have to be politically, morally and culturally offensive. While news of Art Carney's passing on...

Crucifying The Passion: Mel Gibson's yet-to-be-released film about the passion and crucifixion of Jesus Christ has been the target of vicious attacks, but the smears may be backfiring.(Hollywood)
December 15, 2003... The silver screen is awash with violence and mayhem, perversion and debauchery. Major Hollywood studios have no problem with churning out bloody splatterfests like the recently released Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake or Freddy vs. Jason. They...

The real Jesus of Nazareth: Jesus of Nazareth has had a more profound influence on human history than any person who ever lived.(History)
December 15, 2003... His birthday is celebrated through out the world this mouth. Though he lived on earth only 33 years, today's date is measured from when he was born. Though he lived in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago, more than one billion...

The Byron glacier.(Between The Lines)
December 15, 2003... The Byron Glacier in Alaska is one of hundreds of glaciers that eco-radicals claim are receding due to global warming. Such flawed findings fuel ever more extreme environmental regulations.

Cooler heads needed.(Between The Lines)
December 15, 2003... ITEM: The Weekly Standard for October 27 criticized the Bush administration's global-warming policy. Wrote William Pedersen: "The administration's contention that greenhouse science is strong enough to support the current Bush policy, but not...

Abortion advocates play deadly name game.(Between The Lines)
December 15, 2003... ITEM: The Capital Times (Wisconsin)for November 12 commented: "To much fanfare last week, President George Bush signed the law that now makes it illegal for doctors to perform a type of abortion that foes of abortion like to call...

Promoting Kinsey.(Between The Lines)
December 15, 2003... ITEM: The cover story, "What We Know About Sex," in USA Weekend for November 7-9, was produced jointly with the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. Therein, institute director John Bancroft provides a "prescription...

Not with my children.(The Last Word)
December 15, 2003... "Bring 'em on," blustered President Bush, referring to the Iraqi militants making war on our troops. That was hundreds of American casualties ago. The escalating guerrilla warfare in Iraq provoked a similar reaction from Senator Trent Lott...

Gibson's The Passion.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 29, 2003... I am a longtime fan of your magazine. Having read your article "Crucifying The Passion" (December 15 issue), however, I wish to offer a rarely heard perspective on Mel Gibson's film version of the final hours before Christ's crucifixion. ...

Sexist Honeymooners?(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 29, 2003... Regarding "This Sewer Sweeper Wore Blue'" (THE NEW AMERICAN, December 15), I believe that the honeymoon has clouded your recollection of the marriage. I agree that Mr. Art Carney was a uniquely talented actor. However, The Honeymooners was by...

Unemployment Catch-22.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the Editor)
December 29, 2003... The article by Hans Sennholz ("Understanding Unemployment," November 17) leaves me with a Catch-22 feeling. Of course government regulations have greatly hurt the American worker, but at the same time, if not for some state laws regarding...

Prescription drug subsidies & the gangster state.(Insider Report)
December 29, 2003... "[I]t is the tragedy of all collectivisms that the most unscrupulous and most ruthless member is most likely to rise to the position of leadership, certainly when leadership means power," reflected Dr. J.B. Matthews, one-time director of...

Bush bends to WTO ruling.(Insider Report)
December 29, 2003... In "WTO Dictating U.S. Trade Policy" in our December I issue, THE NEW AMERICAN stated that President Bush would likely abide by the World Trade Organization's edict that his steel tariffs violate WTO rules. Summarizing the real issue, we asked:...

Bringing the war home.(Insider Report)
December 29, 2003... "Preoccupied with the war in Iraq and still traumatized by Sept. 11, 2001, the American public has paid little attention to some of what is being done inside the United States in the name of antiterrorism," noted military affairs analyst...

Abortionist convicted.(Insider Report)
December 29, 2003... Brian Finkel, a Phoenix abortionist who describes his murderous ministrations as doing "the Lord's work" (see "The Abortion Underworld" in our January 15, 2001 issue), was found guilty on December 2 of 24 counts of sexual abuse. "More than 60...

Committing genocide by words alone?(Insider Report)
December 29, 2003... The UN's ad hoc war crimes tribunal for Rwanda has convicted three Rwandan news media executives of genocide, sentencing two of them to life in prison and a third to a term of 27 years. "The power of the media to create and destroy human values...

Hatch speaks to Model UN delegates.(Insider Report)
December 29, 2003... The Regional High School Model United Nations (RHSMUN) convened December 4-6 in Salt Lake City, Utah, for its seventh annual conference. It was attended by some 350 student delegates from the western United States, Canada and Mexico. The...

Hemispheric integration by the installment plan.(Insider Report)
December 29, 2003... When in 1913 Senator Nelson Aldrich (R-R.I.), acting on behalf of a power-hungry elite cabal, proposed a framework for the Federal Reserve, President Woodrow Wilson opposed the plan as inadequate. Wilson ardently sought the creation of a...

Welcome mat for terrorists: with Marxist regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil and Haiti, and Communist movements in other Latin American countries, the FTAA poses an enormous security nightmare.(FTAA)(Cover Story)
December 29, 2003... Could the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, now galloping toward completion, actually spur the spread of Marxist revolution throughout Latin America'? Would a completed FTAA result in the political and economic merger of the United...

Psychoanalyzing the public: the cultural subverters use allegations of mental illness to squelch opposition. They also collect psychological data on Americans to scientifically predict and mold public opinion.(Culture War)
December 29, 2003... It had to happen. A taxpayer-funded study by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation (NIMH-NSF) announced last August that adherents to conventional moral principles and limited government are mentally...

The Conservative Index: our second look at the 108th Congress shows how every member of the House and Senate voted on key issues, including the UN, abortion and prescription drug benefits.(Congress)
December 29, 2003... Our criteria for rating votes (see the sidebar on the opposite page) have nothing to do with who's a Republican or a Democrat. In this index, perhaps more so than others, some liberal Democrats scored higher than supposedly conservative...

House vote scores.(Congress)(Illustration)
December 29, 2003... House Vote Scores Votes: 11-20 11 12 13 14 15 ALABAMA 1 Bonner (R) 20% - - - - + 2 Everett (R) 56 - ? + + + 3...

Senate vote scores.(Congress)(Illustration)
December 29, 2003... Senate Vote Scores Votes: 11-20 11 12 13 14 15 ALABAMA Shelby (R) 50% + + + - - Sessions, J. (R) 30 + - - - - ALASKA Stevens...

Good sport.(The Goodness Of America)
December 29, 2003... Southeast High School in Springfield, Illinois, is one of eight schools that comprise the state's Central State Eight Conference (CS8) football league. Their team name is the Spartans. On October 25, the Spartans ended their disappointing...

Candidate gives refund!(The Goodness Of America)(Brief Article)
December 29, 2003... Jay Todd of Holladay City, Utah, recently retired after three decades as editor of Ensign, a magazine published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This year, the award-winning journalist and author decided to dabble in politics...

Supporting local police.(The Goodness Of America)
December 29, 2003... At about 10:30 a.m. on September 6, a man entered the Wenona State Bank in Wenona, Illinois, and handed a teller a note demanding money. The teller complied, but when the man left the bank and sought to flee in a waiting car, another bank...

Flight at Kitty Hawk: through hard work and private investment independent of government largesse, the Wright brothers achieved one of the greatest technical breakthroughs in human history.(History--American Ingenuity)
December 29, 2003... Wilbur Wright sat glumly in the stern of a small, wooden dinghy watching with growing trepidation the ever-increasing amount of oily water sloshing between the ribs of the tiny craft. A thin man, lean and lanky with a square-set jaw and a...

Owner means business.(Exercising The Right)
December 29, 2003... Benjamin Lee Tate owns Engine Rebuild Specialists, an auto repair shop in a high-crime area of Tampa, Florida. According to the November I St. Petersburg Times, he has a sticker on the door of the establishment that reads: "Sure you can have my...

Woman thwarts carjacker.(Exercising The Right)
December 29, 2003... At about 5 p.m. on October 24, a Boutte, Louisiana, woman who works in the central business district of New Orleans was getting into her Jeep Cherokee at a parking lot after work when a strange man approached. Claiming to have a handgun (it was...

Homeowners vs. invaders.(Exercising The Right)
December 29, 2003... On September 3, Jackson, Mississippi, homeowner Sinartha Bradford heard the glass in his bedroom window being broken by someone who had apparently pulled off the window's burglar bars. As the intruder began climbing into the room, Bradford...

Rottweilers attack llamas.(Exercising The Right)
December 29, 2003... On October 28, the Associated Press reported the saga of Kim Fedje when she checked livestock on her property in Douglas County, Minnesota, a few days earlier. Fedje had heard dogs barking, so her fiance urged her to take her .22 caliber...

Harmful effects of IMF aid.(Between The Lines)
December 29, 2003... ITEM: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has agreed to let Colombia increase "its budget shortfall following the defeat of a [sic] austerity referendum," reported the BBC for November 14. "Plans by the government of President Alvaro Uribe to...

The senior drug deal.(Between The Lines)
December 29, 2003... ITEM: Approval of a major Medicare bill was a political victory for President Bush, reported the New York Times for November 25. "The Senate passed a sweeping Medicare bill... that would add new prescription drug benefits for millions of older...

The free market takes flight.(The Last Word)
December 29, 2003... On December 18, 1905, Orville and Wilbur Wright sent a letter to the U.S. government inquiring as to whether or not the federal bureaucracy would want to purchase airplane technology for military or other uses. Their letter was received by...