The New American articles from December 2005

The New American archives from December 2005

The Bill of Rights: first ten amendments to the constitution.
December 12, 2005... Article I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the...

Posse Comitatus interpretation.(Letter to the Editor)
December 12, 2005... "Militarizing Law Enforcement?" (October 17 issue) criticized the proposed use of U.S. military law enforcement over civilians as a violation of the Posse Comitatus law of 1878. But the precedent has already been set by the National Guard...

The Big Lie.(Letter to the Editor)
December 12, 2005... Prior to WWII, Joseph Goebbels, that arch-Nazi, taught the world that if you tell a lie, and tell it big enough and often enough, it will be taken for truth. At the same time, the Japanese used the words "Japanese East Asia Co-Prosperity...

Refutation clarification.(Letter to the Editor)
December 12, 2005... Thomas R. Eddlem's article "Good Luck Finding the Truth Here" (October 31) was an excellent refutation of the smear, lies, and ugly disinformation exhibited in George Clooney's cinematic refuse regarding the late Senator Joe McCarthy. However,...

Putin puts terror chief back on a pedestal in Moscow.(Vladimir Putin, Felix Dzerzhinsky)
December 12, 2005... "We stand for organized terror." So declared Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the Soviet Union's dreaded secret police, the Cheka, forerunner of the KGB. In 1918, he launched the massive campaign of arrests, executions, and torture known as...

GM cutting North American operations.(General Motors)(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... General Motors, which in 1955 became the first American corporation to make over one billion dollars in a year, announced that it intends to close nine manufacturing plants in North America and reduce production in three others. All told, it...

Tales of the Chinese psychiatric gulag.(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... After 13 years of detention in Beijing's Ankang hospital for the criminally insane, Chinese dissident Wang Wanxing, 56, has been allowed to emigrate to Frankfurt, Germany, to join his wile and daughter. Wang was arrested in 1993 for...

Chinese spy ring arrests are the tip of the iceberg.
December 12, 2005... Two Chinese-American brothers and their wives were arrested in southern California on October 28 for conspiring to steal sensitive information about U.S. Navy warships and smuggle it to China. On November 15, a federal grand jury indicted both...

Iraq's goals are not our goals.(prisoner abuse)(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... As if we needed more proof that President Bush's plan to make Iraq into the U.S. of the Middle East is failing, the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division discovered that Iraq's Interior Ministry has been operating a torture facility. The Interior...

Al-Jazeera gets English voice in America.(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... Al-Jazeera, the Arab broadcasting network infamous for its broadcasts of Osama bin Laden's video messages and other anti-American and radical Islamic diatribes, is launching an English-language network with a major base in Washington, D.C. In...

President Bush showers Mongolian Reds with praise, aid.(George W. Bush)(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... President George Bush stopped in Mongolia on November 21 during his China trip to praise Mongolia's "democracy" and to drop off $11 million in U.S. aid, the first installment of a larger package still to come. "You are an example of success for...

The Wal-Mart economy.(INSIDER REPORT)
December 12, 2005... The economic research firm Global Insight, in a study commissioned by Wal-Mart, concludes that the "rock-bottom" pricing approach used by the retail chain "has filtered into the U.S. economy and kept a lid on inflation," reported a November 4...

All work, no pay, makes George's day.(George W. Bush)
December 12, 2005... After Hurricane Katrina rained destruction on residents of the Gulf Coast, President Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act for the area. The act requires employers to pay local prevailing wages for labor used to complete government contracts. He...

Wind farm near Texas won't be blocked by the high and mighty.(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... "This is Texas. We don't have Walter Cronkite and Ted Kennedy whining about their backyards." Referring to ongoing resistance to a proposed wind farm near Martha's Vineyard, the Massachusetts island playground for the rich and famous,...

Observation regarding the patriot act.(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... "For more than four years, the Patriot Act has been described by critics as a civil-liberties-shredding abomination--an abuse of power that could have been avoided if only Congress had bothered to read the thing before rubber-stamping it into...

No backing down after calling for troop withdrawal from Iraq.(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... "This is not a war of words. This is a real war where people are getting killed. [Also] fifteen thousand have been wounded, and half of them are desperately wounded." In a follow-up television appearance several clays after his call to...

A year after a peaceful change of government, Ukraine's people fear the future.(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... "The fairy tale written on Independence Square now calls to mind a murder mystery. Only the victim isn't a person--but hope." A leader of the 2004 protests that led to overturning a flawed election and the eventual rise of Ukrainian reform...

CAFTA invites "nearsourcing," not outsourcing.(Free Trade Agreement, 2004, United States-Central America-Dominican Republic)(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... "Touting themselves as the 'new Asia,' pro-business and investment organizations across Latin America are talking about the benefits of 'nearsourcing.'" In an article appearing in USA TODAY, Danna Harman notes that executives from Dell,...

Conservative remains wary of Supreme Court.(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... "What is there to be jubilant about? We have a Supreme Court that has been essentially lawless in so many respects for decades now, and a lot of work has to be done to restore it to its proper role." While attending a Federalist Society...

At least someone remembers that China is led by militant communists.(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... "What I am worried about is we are going to end up facing a communist military backed by a capitalist industrial base of enormous power." As President Bush prepared to head to China where he planned to negotiate trade deals, Rep. Duncan...

The UN's desire to control the Internet: UN pirates sailed into Tunis this November 16-18, looking to take the helm of Internet supervision from U.S. hands.(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)(Cover Story)
December 12, 2005... Do you treasure the freedom to wade out into the vast sea of information that is the Internet and surf the World Wide Web? Then look out for what is coming over the horizon: a fleet of ships is bearing down on you and your little...

Bird flu: the Bush administration has been creating irrational fear about the dangers of avian influenza just so that they can "save" us from it through restrictive governmental powers.
December 12, 2005... The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and hence clamorous to be led to safety] by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. --H.L. Mencken Though the H5N1 virus, better...

Discovering the world of Narnia: Narnia Beckons, the new family album and picture book, provides a fascinating glimpse of Narnia--and of the life and ideas of the man behind the beloved children's series.(Narnia Beckons: C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe--and Beyond)(Book Review)
December 12, 2005... Narnia Beckons: C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe--and Beyond, by Ted Baehr and James Baehr (Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005), 184 pages, hardcover, illustrated large format, $24.99. Available from...

Lewis on living our last day.(C.S. Lewis)(Brief Article)(Interview)
December 12, 2005... From C.S. Lewis's last interview, with Sherwood Eliot Wirt of Decision Magazine, May 7, 1963: Wirt: What do you think is going to happen in the next few years of history, Mr. Lewis? Lewis: I have no way of knowing. We have, of course,...

The conservative index: our second look at the 109th Congress shows how every member of the House and Senate voted on key issues, including foreign aid, the Patriot Act, and CAFTA.(CONGRESS)
December 12, 2005... House Vote Descriptions 11 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations. This mammoth social-welfare appropriations bill (H.R. 3010) would provide a total of $601.6 billion in fiscal 2006 for the Labor Department ($14.8 billion), the Education...

House vote scores.(CONGRESS)(Illustration)
December 12, 2005... House Vote Scores Votes: 11-20 11 12 13 14 15 ALABAMA 1 Bonner (R) 20% - - - - - 2 Everett (R) 22 - -...

Senate vote scores.
December 12, 2005... Senate Vote Scores Votes: 11-20 11 12 13 14 15 ALABAMA Shelby (R) 30% - - - - - Sessions, J. (R) 40 + -...

Stubbornness and gunfire.(robbery)(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... A York City, Pennsylvania, storeowner was shot by thugs who attempted, but failed, to rob his store. On September 26, three robbers entered Kendal's Grocery and Jamaican Cuisine to rob the store. The store owner, Kevin Winter, wouldn't...

Not enough time for crime.(robbery)
December 12, 2005... In January, a Saline Township, Michigan, woman had a run-in with criminals, and she made sure that they were apprehended by the police. Now, the criminals have been sentenced, and she is already dreading the day when they'll be released. ...

Convenient to have a gun.(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... When police arrived at a Charlotte, North Carolina, convenience store for their 52nd time since the beginning of the year, they learned that a robber had failed in his robbery attempt, according to an online story on News14Charlotte.com. ...

Jumped from behind.(robbery)(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... According to an article in the Vindicator (Ohio), an 83-year-old man fended off an attacker in his home. Walter Swita, of Youngstown, had been robbed and beaten six weeks earlier, and so he had begun parking across the street from his...

Wise man among wise men: James Wilson was so knowledgeable on the subject of government that he was generally regarded as the most erudite of all the learned Founding Fathers.(HISTORY--GREATNESS OF THE FOUNDERS)
December 12, 2005... A fellow delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia made the following assessment of James Wilson's gifts: "Government seems to have been his peculiar study, all the political institutions of the world he knows in detail,...

Prep school for life.(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)(John Massey's Redemption Christian Academy)
December 12, 2005... Back in 1965, John Massey, then a 17-year-old basketball star at Philadelphia's Southern High School, lacked focus. He was a young black man with neither a goal nor a game plan for his future, so he dropped out of school. "I quit school,...

Teenager helps pregnant attack victim.(Adam Silvis )
December 12, 2005... Seventeen-year-old Adam Silvis was riding an ATV through a wooded area of Wayne Township, Pennsylvania, when he saw a woman's seemingly lifeless legs sticking out of some brush and another woman trying to cover the body. Sizing up the...

Private initiative outperforms FEMA.(Federal Emergency Management Agency)(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... Lily Duke is a resident of Algiers, a neighborhood of New Orleans across the Mississippi from the best-known parts of the city. She evacuated just before Hurricane Katrina struck, and then she was prevented from returning home after the storm....

Myths about inflation.(Correction, Please!)
December 12, 2005... ITEM: The New York Times for November 4, 2005, reported: "While the Fed chief sounded optimistic about the economy's prospects, Greenspan, who leaves early next year after 18 years, made clear that the Fed is keeping a close eye on high energy...

In California, no girl is safe!(THE LAST WORD)
December 12, 2005... In California, no girl is sale. Most parents in the Golden State don't realize it, but they have been stripped of their right and ability to protect even their very young daughters against sexual predators. rapists, and abortionists. That is...

Always ahead of the curve.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the Editor)
December 26, 2005... Your Sept. 19 "20 Years of Truth" issue really brought home a realization: I see an article in another news magazine or newspaper and I say to myself, "I've known about that for about a month now, where have they been?" Or someone will start...

CAFTA Shenanigans.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the Editor)
December 26, 2005... Possibly you heard the story about the citizen who was concerned about the national debt, so he went to see his congressman to urge him to push for balancing the budget. The congressman looked at him in shocked surprise and said, "I spent 5...

Caterpillar on a roll.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the Editor)
December 26, 2005... So Condoleezza Rice "has emphatically declared her support for the Second Amendment, saying it is just as important as the First Amendment" ("Letters to the Editor," September 5). Great! To give credit where credit is due is a virtue that...

Corrections.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Correction Notice)
December 26, 2005... CORRECTIONS: In "Opportunity to Excel" in our Nov. 14 issue, the photo showed Mayumi and Charlie Pierce at Contra Costa Community College, not UC Berkeley. Also, in "From Debt to Dispossession" in our Nov. 28 issue, the number of bankruptcy...

Schwarzenegger's "gay"-lesbian agenda.(INSIDER REPORT)(Brief Article)
December 26, 2005... After suffering an overwhelming defeat of all four of his "year of reform" measures in the November 8 special election, California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, decided he had to shake up his cabinet. His appointment of Susan...

Silencing the shepherds.(INSIDER REPORT)
December 26, 2005... The Sunday prior to the 2004 presidential election, Rev. George F. Regas of Pasadena's All Saints Episcopal Church preached a sermon denouncing the Bush administration's doctrine of "preemptive war." While it was clear to even the casual...

Bush administration's global penal system.(INSIDER REPORT)
December 26, 2005... "Rendition is a vital tool in combating transnational terrorism," insisted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a December 5 statement prior to departing for Europe. "Renditions take terrorists out of action, and save lives." ...

Louisiana urges Congress to adopt Constitution Restoration Act.(INSIDER REPORT)
December 26, 2005... After decades of passive acquiescence to outrageous judicial activism by the federal courts, Congress has recently awakened to its power, under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, to limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme...

CIA leaves U.S. soldiers blind against terrorists.(INSIDER REPORT)
December 26, 2005... "Two former CIA allies in Afghanistan are now fearsome warlords responsible for killing scores of American troops in the escalating border war," the New York Daily News reported in a December 2 article. The article, entitled "Ex-CIA allies...

Bush explains "strategy for victory in Iraq" to CFR gathering.(INSIDER REPORT)(Brief Article)
December 26, 2005... In 1998, President Bill Clinton became the first sitting U.S. president to address the Council on Foreign Relations, although five previous presidents had spoken to the group before or after their White House terms of office. On December...

USAID shuns use of lifesaving DDT to control malaria.(INSIDER REPORT)
December 26, 2005... Siding with radical environmentalists and the United Nations, President Bush signed on to the UN Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (known as the POP Treaty) in 2001. This has been a global death warrant for millions of people at risk...

FBI punishes whistleblower in Tampa terror case.(INSIDER REPORT)
December 26, 2005... The FBI badly botched a terrorism investigation in Florida and then falsified documents to cover up the error and retaliated against an FBI whistleblower who tried to expose the wrongdoing. Those were the findings of a draft report by the...

Business publication agrees with John Birch Society Slogan.(Brief article)
December 26, 2005... "The thinking that inspired those bumper stickers that read 'Get The U.S. Out Of The U.N. And The U.N. Out Of The U.S.' is legitimate." A lead editorial for the November 25, 2005 Investor's Business Dally lauded U.S. Ambassador John...

CFR poll shows dramatic increase in disapproval of the UN.(QuickQuotes)(Council on Foreign Relations)(Brief Article)
December 26, 2005... "Public views of the United Nations have become much more negative over the past four years. Only about half (48%) now express a positive opinion of the U.N., down from 77% four years ago." The latest quadrennial poll conducted jointly by...

Stem-cell opponent states his case very clearly.(QuickQuotes)(John Weaver of Sacred Heart Church)(Brief Article)
December 26, 2005... "Human embryos are not potential human beings. Human embryos are human beings with potential." Because he believes that the use of embryonic stem cells involves creating life to destroy it, deacon John Weaver of Sacred Heart Church in...

Congressman refuses to alter his call for quick withdrawal from Iraq.(QuickQuotes)(Brief Article)
December 26, 2005... "Our military and their families are stretched thin. Some of our troops are on their third deployment. Recruitment is down, even as our military has lowered its standards. [They] captured Saddam Hussein and captured or killed his closest...

Top meteorologist says record hurricane season a natural climate development.(QuickQuotes)(Gerry Bell)(Brief Article)
December 26, 2005... "It's not related to global warming." Warm ocean water, an absence of high-level winds that customarily dilute hurricane strength, and the unusual presence of strong winds blowing east from Africa, caused lead meteorologist Gerry Bell of...

Liberal democrat points to deficiencies in Darwinism.(QuickQuotes)(Bob Beckel, Intelligent design (Creationism))(Brief Article)
December 26, 2005... "Despite the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community that evolution is the sole explanation for all living things, these scientists have yet to prove the theory conclusively. Not only are there still gaping holes in the evolutionary...

Afghanistan has become the World's Leading Opium Producer.(QuickQuotes)(Brief Article)
December 26, 2005... "The threat is definitely there that the country will become a narco-state." When a UN report claimed that 87 percent of the world's opium comes from Afghanistan and that income from the drug trade was the equivalent of more than half of...

The search for truth: there is but one truth, parts of which are being discovered by scientists and parts of which are being described by theologians; and the quest for truth, whether through science or religion, can only lead to God.(SCIENCE & RELIGION)(Cover story)
December 26, 2005... It takes a very cold winter night, somewhere far away from the lights of a city, to truly make the spectacle of the universe visible to the naked eye. It is the kind of cold that threatens to freeze the lungs and promises frostbite to those who...

The Padilla Shuffle: preempting a Supreme Court challenge it couldn't win, the Bush administration has preserved its unconstitutional power to imprison U.S. citizens at presidential whim.(ON THE HOME FRONT)
December 26, 2005... Jose Padilla is an ex-convict, a former urban gangster, and a convert to the most radical variant of Islam. He may well have been part of a conspiracy to "murder, kidnap, and maim" people living abroad, as the federal government alleges in an...

Redemptive rendition of Narnia: the Disney/Walden Media adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is not only entertaining, but clearly retains the deeper truth of C.S. Lewis's inspirational novel.(Movie Review)
December 26, 2005... Almost 100 million people have read The Lira1, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in a publishing universe where most books sell less than 10,000 copies, according to the publishers. The book is credited with leading many people to know Jesus Christ...

Imperishable visions: an exhibition of Fra Angelico's work at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art prompts viewers to reconsider where we are artistically, culturally, and even personally today.(PURITY IN ART)
December 26, 2005... To the painter Fra Angelico, said a French historian, was reserved "the glory of fixing, in a series of imperishable visions, the religious ideal of the middle ages--just at the moment it was about to disappear forever." Now, for the first time...

Why does God allow calamities? Starting with the aftermath of the Asian tsunami, 2005 was a year of disasters, forcing many to ask how God could permit such tragic events. Theology suggests some answers.(FAITH)
December 26, 2005... The year 2005 may well be remembered as the year of the mega disaster. As the year started, the world was still struggling to cope with and understand the devastation unleashed by the tsunami on Southeast Asia. Since the tsunami that killed at...

Guardsmen help girl.(Basira Jan)
December 26, 2005... Basira Jan is a little six-year-old girl from Afghanistan. Before last spring, she did not seem to be the picture of good health--she was very frail and weighed barely 35 pounds. Basira tired easily, and whenever she exerted herself, her skin...

Church youths "chill out".(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)(fund raising for homeless people)
December 26, 2005... On the night of October 29, when overnight temperatures in Minnesota are generally more winter-like than fall-like, almost two dozen youth members of New Horizons United Methodist Church in St. Cloud spent the night in cardboard boxes on the...

Proactive firefighters.(Edward Mahoney, Jr. and Walter J. Grace, Jr.)(Brief article)
December 26, 2005... Usually, firefighters wait at the firehouse until someone sends in an alarm, but two firefighters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, were both the "first callers" and the "first responders" at a fire on November 1. Deputy Chief Edward Mahoney,...

The "Old Fox" fools the hounds: General George Washington, referred to as the "Old Fox" by Britain's Lord Cornwallis, employed innovative measures to outsmart the British and win the Battle of Princeton.(HISTORY--STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM)
December 26, 2005... The situation could not have been worse for George Washington's army and the patriot cause. Battered and beaten in a succession of battles surrounding New York City, Washington's army of Continental troops, state militias, and volunteers had...

Wake-up calls.(night intruders)(Brief article)
December 26, 2005... In separate incidents, a couple of Texas homeowners proved to be trouble for burglars last October. Clyde Buchanan of East Oak Cliff got out of bed at 1:30 a.m. on October 24 to get a drink, but he got more than he expected. When he was...

The lady's got a gun.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Susan Buxton self defence)
December 26, 2005... A 66-year-old woman flushed out a criminal from inside her house and put a load of lead in him as he flew out the door. In the hour before midnight on Tuesday, November 8, police chased a man speeding in a truck in Arlington, Texas. The...

Pro tem trouble.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Mayor pro tern Audwin Samuel assaulted)(Brief Article)
December 26, 2005... Beaumont, Texas, Mayor pro tern Audwin Samuel was assaulted in the driveway of his home on November 3. Samuel was on his way home from his law office late at night when he noticed that he was being followed by men in two cars. He pulled...

He'll face judgment.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Andrew Lackey for murder of Charlie Newman)(Brief Article)
December 26, 2005... An 80-year-old man was killed, but he managed to wound his attacker, precipitating the arrest of a suspect. Halloween night turned out to be the last night on Earth for 80-year-old Charlie Newman, a WWII and Korean War veteran. Newman was...

The ACLU's agenda.(Correction, Please!)(American Civil Liberties Union)
December 26, 2005... ITEM: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer for November 4, 2005, in a piece headlined "In many ways, ACLU is back to basics since 9/11," carried an interview with Anthony Romero, executive director off the American Civil Liberties Union. "Romero, 40,...

The joy of Christmas past.(THE LAST WORD)
December 26, 2005... The classic 1947 Christmas movie, Miracle on 34th Street, is the story of a man named Kris Kringle, who gets himself hired as Macy's department store Santa, then directs parents to whichever store carries the objects of their youngsters'...