The New American articles from May 2007

The New American archives from May 2007

War powers.(Letter to the editor)
May 14, 2007... In respect to "The Last Word," February 19, you correctly state that Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution "gives Congress the powers to declare war." You, however, failed to mention that "the power to declare war" clearly is not a...

Destroying the morale of the border patrol.(Letter to the editor)
May 14, 2007... Months ago e-mail started saying that two Border Patrol agents were in big trouble for shooting a fleeing Mexican national. I thought, "Good, serves 'em right. Just because they're big-shot government men doesn't give 'em a license to...

Approves of "just war".(Letter to the editor)
May 14, 2007... In response to the February 5 article "How Much Time on the Front Line" in which you advocate removing our troops from Iraq and quote Congressman Ron Paul to make your case, I ask, "What would be the fundamental difference in trying to stop a...

Iran Supreme Court: it's OK to kill the "morally corrupt".(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... The Iranian Supreme Court has overturned the convictions of six men found guilty of murder in a ruling that suggests that the Iranian government believes that Muslims may kill in the name of Islam. The exonerated men are members of the Basiji...

Padilla trial, "light on facts," gets underway.(Jose Padilla )(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... Jury selection for the trial of accused "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla began in April for a case that may prove difficult for prosecutors. U.S. News & Worm Report noted on April 23 that the charges against Padilla will not include specifics...

NAFTA Superhighway stalls in Texas.(Free Trade Agreement, 1992, United States-Canada-Mexico)(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... The Texas state House of Representatives has taken the first step in stopping construction of the controversial Trans Texas Corridor, a key element of the so-called NAFTA Superhighway. In a measure that passed the House on April 10,...

Centralizing power in the EU.(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... Two years after both French and Dutch voters turned down a constitution for the European Union in national referenda, the EU is moving to implement a revised constitution, this time bypassing the referenda process. According to William...

Oklahoma takes a stand on illegal immigration.(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... The immigration debate is heating up around the country. While President Bush works hard to push a comprehensive immigration reform bill through Congress before the end of the year, and some members in the United States Congress work diligently...

Vermont Senate calls for Bush's impeachment.(George W. Bush)(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... The Vermont Senate on April 20 voted 19-6 for a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. In so doing, it became the first state legislative body in the country calling for impeachment proceedings...

The trials of Donald Vance.
May 14, 2007... Donald Vance has received this year's Ridenhour Truth Telling Prize for his account of his capture and detention in Iraq. The Ridenhour Prize is named after Ron Ridenhour, who, after returning to the United States from Vietnam, distributed a...

Global warming--a national security threat?(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... A group of distinguished retired Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps brass writing for the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA) has concluded that global warming represents a threat to the future security of the United States. In a report...

Laying pro-life groundwork.
May 14, 2007... The Supreme Court has upheld a partial-birth abortion ban by a 5-4 vote, and a careful reading of the opinion reveals that Gonzales v. Carhart is a solid work of jurisprudence that not only protects babies from partial-birth abortion but also...

UN chief adds his voice to global-warming hysteria.(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... "Projected changes in the earth's climate are thus not only an environmental concern. As the Council points up today, issues of energy and climate change can have implications for peace and security." During the first-ever UN Security...

President claims reduction in border crossings.(George W. Bush)(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... "When you're apprehending fewer people, it means fewer people are trying to come across." President George W. Bush seems to think that fewer apprehensions means there are fewer illegal immigrants crossing into the United States. Couldn't it be...

Noted Republican foresees problems for any GOP presidential candidate.(Mickey Edwards)(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... "It's not that I have any particular problem with the people who are running for the Republican nomination. I just don't know how they can run hard enough or fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of the Bush administration." Former...

Senate leader believes the Iraq war has been "lost".(Harry Reid)(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... "I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense, and--you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows--know that this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme...

Candidate continues to back war effort.(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... "I just returned from my fifth visit to Iraq. Unlike the veterans here today, I risked nothing more threatening than a hostile press corps." Republican presidential candidate John McCain told cadets at Virginia Military Institute that...

Talk-show host labels fear of North American Union "groundless".(Michael Medved)(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... "This paranoid and groundless frenzy has been fomented and promoted by a shameless collection of lunatics and losers; crooks, cranks, demagogues and opportunists, who claim the existence of a top-secret master plan to join the U.S., Canada and...

Texas congressman claims fear of North American Union is real.(Ron Paul)(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... "It's amazing to me how many people outside of Washington are very much aware of the plans with this North American Union, at the same time they are in total denial in Washington, except for the few behind the scenes who are laying the plans...

Monitoring Americans: since 9/11 the United States has been putting in place the infrastructure needed to complete the construction of an all-encompassing police state.(SURVEILLANCE STATE)(Cover story)
May 14, 2007... In New York City they show up out of the blue, unannounced and unexpected. Dressed all in black, gloved hands clutching menacing assault rifles or short-barreled shotguns, heads covered with storm-trooper helmets, they clamber out onto the...

Preserving America's freedom: grass-roots activists score a major victory in the effort to forestall a North American Union with the passage in Idaho of a resolution opposing further continental integration.
May 14, 2007... The architects of the fledgling effort to create a North American Union (NAU)--the joining of the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a union like the European Union--didn't count on JoAn Wood. A legislator serving in the Idaho House of...

Talking with Duncan Hunter: Congressman Duncan Hunter, one of the few Republican members of Congress to vote against both the NAFTA and CAFTA trade agreements, answers questions about U.S. trade policy and more.(Interview)
May 14, 2007... Interview of Congressman Duncan Hunter Congressman Duncan Hunter of California is one of the few Republican members of Congress with the distinction of having voted against both the NAFTA and CAFTA trade agreements. His congressional...

Why Bush wants TPA extended: President Bush wants Trade Promotion Authority for the sake of "free trade," but there is a growing grass-roots resistance to the harmful consequences of his trade agenda.(TRADE PROMOTION AUTHORITY)
May 14, 2007... Without action by Congress, the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) powers of the president will expire at midnight on July 1. This authority, formerly known as Fast Track, was first extended by Congress to President Nixon with the Trade Act of...

Orwell was right--and wrong: George Orwell's 1984 accurately portrays many aspects of totalitarianism, but this tale of "Big Brother" is not without its flaws.(George Orwell)
May 14, 2007... Author George Orwell's old neighborhood is looking, well, positively Orwellian these days. According to a recent article in London's Daily Mail, 32 closed-circuit TV (CCTV) cameras keep the commons under constant surveillance within 200 yards...

Recycling project.
May 14, 2007... Soon after Chuck and Teri Maier moved to Valencia, California, from Louisiana in 2004, their daughter, MacKenzie (whose nickname is Mac) was diagnosed with Stage 4 neuroblastoma, a cancer of the sympathetic nervous system that carries a...

Homeless center robbed.(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... Last January, thieves broke in to the Solid Ground center in Roseville, Michigan, an agency that works with homeless people, and stole practically everything the center needed to operate. When word of the theft reached the local community,...

Helping "preemies".(neonatal intensive care)(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... Mckenzie Brodnik was born six weeks prematurely 19 years ago at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. When she was taken to the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit, Mckenzie was given only a 10-percent chance of survival. ...

Pilot protects woman.(Adam Kinzinger)(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... Lieutenant Adam Kinzinger is an Air National Guard pilot from Bloomington, Illinois, but between flying refueling missions over Afghanistan, he is stationed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. One night last summer, Kinzinger was walking to his car on a...

Unsteady foothold in the new world: four hundred years ago, Jamestown endured hardship and near ruin before succeeding as the first permanent English settlement in America.
May 14, 2007... The men of the Virginia Company had been in Virginia less than 10 weeks, having settled on a marshy spit of land along the Powhatan River they called Jamestown, when things began to go badly. Two of the three ships under the command of...

Chew on this.(robbery)(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... When two armed robbers entered the Sunrise Breakfast Shop in Philadelphia, the owner, Jason Lee, "grabbed the revolver he always kept under the counter and hid it under his apron before getting down on the ground," reported the Philadelphia...

He hates a thief.(Newman Jackson)
May 14, 2007... Newman "Ted" Jackson, an 80-year-old WWII veteran living in Orangeburg, South Carolina, woke at 2 a.m. on February 20 to his dog's barking. He grabbed a pistol near his bed just as an armed man burst through his bedroom door. The intruder...

Looking over trouble.(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... Mike Wilbanks owns Joe's Pawn and Bargain Center in Oklahoma City. He was in his office working on February 19 when an excited employee rushed into his office to tell him the place was being robbed. Wilbanks grabbed a pistol, looked out...

Impotent horror.(crimes against the person)(Brief article)
May 14, 2007... On March 4 at about 3:50 p.m., a crowd in Jackson, Mississippi, watched in horror as a man repeatedly stabbed a woman who was lying on the ground. But even as the crowd looked on, they did almost nothing to help her. People yelled at the...

Weighing the tax burden.
May 14, 2007... ITEM: "It's budget season in Washington, and this year there is some welcome substance to the usual prattle about fiscal discipline and responsibility," commented the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger for April 3. "Democrats in both the House and the...

Thoughts about Virginia Tech.
May 14, 2007... Virginia Tech student Cho Seung-Hui went on a rampage, killing two individuals in a dormitory before casually walking to another campus building and killing 30 more, then himself. His murderous act ranks as the worst shooting spree in our...

War with Iran likely.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the editor)
May 28, 2007... Regarding "The Last Word" by William F. Jasper in your March 19 issue, dealing with the likelihood of a war with Iran, THE NEW AMERICAN deserves many congratulations again for highlighting the government's denials of intent to go to war with...

War in Iran not likely.(Letter to the editor)
May 28, 2007... For 28 years the United States has been helping the Iranian regime. Carter helped overthrow the Shah; Reagan sold them weapons: Bush the elder hurt Iraq badly; Clinton lifted trade restrictions; and our current president deposed Saddam and the...

Advises getting out of Iraq.(Letter to the editor)
May 28, 2007... First of all, I am very opposed to the "occupation" in Iraq, mainly because we can't afford it. Secondly, there is no "war" that we are fighting there. We won that war in a few weeks in 2003, and it was over--even officially declared as...

Correction.(Correction notice)
May 28, 2007... In "Preserving America's Freedom" in our May 14 issue, we incorrectly stated that Attorney George Detweiler "agreed that the [anti-North American Union] measures in both Idaho and Missouri laid the groundwork for future efforts to halt the...

Six foreign-born Muslims arrested in terrorist plot.(Inside Track)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... Six foreign-born Muslims were arrested May 7 in New Jersey and charged with a plot to "kill as many American soldiers as possible" at Fort Dix. The group, which reportedly had been under federal surveillance for 17 months, was arrested as the...

Mexico: migration rate to U.S. tops death rate.(Inside Track)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... Since 2000, Mexico has been losing more people to migration to the United States than to death, according to a report by Mexico's demographics agency released on May 3. The government study found that an average of 577,000 people migrated to...

World leaders eulogize Boris Yeltsin, ignore his bloody legacy.(Inside Track)
May 28, 2007... Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin was laid to rest in Moscow's Novodevichye Cemetery on April 25, as world leaders--past and present--bid a solemn farewell. Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev,...

IPCC says more regulation can stop global warming.(Inside Track)(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... On May 4 the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report on global warming, this time focusing on strategies to mitigate the growth of greenhouse-gas emissions. The latest report is in keeping with the...

Border agents to serve in Iraq.(Inside Track)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... The U.S. State Department has contracted a private firm called DynCorp to recruit 120 veteran law-enforcement members with border-security experience to relocate to Iraq. According to the Houston Chronicle, these officers would serve as mentors...

Kansas Tornado reveals national guard shortage.(Inside Track)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... On May 4, a massive tornado demolished the town of Greensburg, Kansas. The tornado--the worst the United States has seen since 1999--resulted in the death of 11 people and displaced hundreds others as 95 percent of the city was completely...

Top "Campus Outrage Award" goes to college cross removal.(Inside Track)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... The Collegiate Network's 10th annual Campus Outrage Awards picked the College of William & Mary's President Gene Nichol as the 2007 winning nominee for most egregious action in 2006. In October 2006, Nichol secretly ordered the removal of a...

United States moves toward integration with EU.(Inside Track)(European Union)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... The United States and the European Union have signed on to a new transatlantic partnership intended to harmonize regulatory standards between the two governments as part of globalization. As summarized by the BBC, "The pact is designed to boost...

Super Corridor stalls in Texas.(Inside Track)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... The Texas House, by the lopsided margin of 139 to 1, gave final approval on May 2 to a two-year moratorium on toll-road leases with private groups. The Senate had approved the measure 27-4 a week earlier. If it becomes law, it would temporarily...

She protests that she never was a hero.(QuickQuotes)(Private First Class Jessica Lynch )(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... "The story of the little girl Rambo from the [West Virginia] hills who went down fighting was untrue." Former Private First Class Jessica Lynch testified before a House Committee about the distorted information that the U.S. government had...

Former Iraq veteran can't make sense of the Iraq war.(QuickQuotes)(Paul Rieckhoff)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... "The president can say we're a country at war all he wants. We're not. The military is at war. And the military families are at war. Everybody else is shopping." After spending a dangerous tour of duty in Iraq in 2004, former infantry...

Another attack on gun ownership.(QuickQuotes)(Senator Frank Lautenberg)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... "This bill would allow arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights on mere 'suspicion' of a terrorist threat." A measure introduced by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) would deny suspects the right to own a weapon. It drew objections from...

Former CIA chieftain claims attacking Iraq was always the plan.(QuickQuotes)(George Tenet)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... "There never was any serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat." Claiming that the Bush administration was anxious to invade Iraq even before 9/11, former CIA director George Tenet...

No long-winded answer this time.(QuickQuotes)(Senator Joe Biden)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... "Yes." Asked by host Brian Williams of NBC if he would be able as president to discipline himself to listen rather than resort to verbosity, presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.) surprised everyone with his one-word response.

Back to work while being treated for cancer.(QuickQuotes)(White House press spokesman Tony Snow)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... "Don't think about dying. Think about living." After his five-week absence and while still receiving treatment for colon cancer, White House press spokesman Tony Snow delivered a message for anyone suffering from the disease.

World bank leader under a cloud.(QuickQuotes)(Paul Wolfowitz)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... "I will not resign in the face of a plainly bogus charge of conflict of interest. I do not believe that doing so would serve the interest of the world's poor who are supposed to be the first concern of us all." After ordering promotion and...

Texas lawmakers block forcible vaccination against sexually transmitted virus.(QuickQuotes)(Senator Glenn Hegar)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... "There was no public testimony--why we were jumping so fast into a vaccine that was not for a true communicable disease." State Senator Glenn Hegar sponsored the bill that overturned Governor Rick Perry's order. In the Senate, the measure...

Making our schools safe: the Virginia Tech shooting rampage highlights the vulnerability of our schools to gun violence, but the answer to the problem is not more gun-control laws.(CULTURAL VIOLENCE)(Cover story)
May 28, 2007... At about the same time Cho Seung-Hui was shooting to death 32 unarmed students on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, a different scenario was unfolding near Waynesburg, Kentucky. Venus Ramey had had equipment stolen from the...

Beyond the gun-control debate: this reflection on the Virginia Tech massacre looks beyond the gun debate to the importance of cultural morality in reducing senseless crimes of violence.(CULTURAL VIOLENCE)
May 28, 2007... The toll of the Virginia Tech shooting was 33 human beings dead and dozens of others injured. The loss of so many innocent youths to a madman was heart-rending. Making matters worse, if that's possible, was the manner of their deaths. Some were...

Internet crackdown: to do business in China, American companies have to play by Beijing's rules, even if doing so puts innocent people in jail.(CHINA)
May 28, 2007... For Wang Xiaoning, a political activist in Communist China, the fateful knock at the door came on September 1, 2002--an otherwise peaceful Sunday morning. According to the account provided by Luke O'Brien of Wired News, the phone rang that...

Inviting our own problems: Robert Sanchez talks about the flaws in employment-based visa programs, including the threat they pose to American workers, the U.S. economy, and national security.(Interview)
May 28, 2007... Americans have regularly been forced by their employers to train the foreigners who would be taking over their jobs. Fox News reported on a particularly tragic example of job displacement that took place in 2003: "Kevin Flanagan, a computer...

From foreign follies to freedom: Congressman Ron Paul's new book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom, exposes America's foreign-policy follies and espouses the Founding Fathers' wisdom as the key to freedom.(Book review)
May 28, 2007... A Foreign Policy of Freedom, by Ron Paul, Lake Jackson, Texas: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, 2007, 372 pages, paperback. (For ordering information, see page one.) In the scandal-a-day culture of the Beltway, Congressman...

Wounded students hold off killer.(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)
May 28, 2007... Derek O'Dell, a 20-year-old biology major, was in a German class in a second-floor Virginia Tech classroom. Hearing a gunshot, he turned his head and witnessed the terrible effects of a bullet striking the head of a male classmate. Incredulous,...

The standoff continues.(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)(Virginia Tech Shootings)
May 28, 2007... Zach Petkewicz is a 21-year-old senior math major at Virginia Tech whose story is similar to that told by Derek O'Dell. On the fateful morning, he was in a classroom inside Virginia Tech's Norris Hall when he heard sounds from outside the room...

A professor gives his life.(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)(Virginia Tech Shootings, Liviu Librescu)
May 28, 2007... Liviu Librescu had already lived a life filled with danger and challenges before he became a professor of engineering at Virginia Tech. Librescu, who was 76, survived the Holocaust as a child when his Jewish family was imprisoned by the...

John Wayne: Mr. America: a look back at John Wayne on the 100th anniversary of his birth reveals that he clearly understood the potential for Hollywood to be a positive influence on American culture.(HISTORY--AMERICAN SPIRIT)(Biography)
May 28, 2007... When John Wayne died 28 years ago, Japanese newspapers declared, "Mr. America Is Dead." One would have thought the Japanese would handle Wayne's death differently or not at all, given the merciless shellacking he gave the Japanese in two of his...

No escape.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(defense attorney Scott Hidnert shoots and kills a thief)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... On March 1, defense attorney Scott Hidnert was at his office until almost 10 p.m. because the phone lines in the office were being worked on. When the Miami, Florida, attorney did go to his car, which was parked in a gated parking lot, he...

By herself.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(Theresa Wachowiak shoots attacker in self defense)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... Theresa Wachowiak lives alone in Augusta, Georgia. She is 56 years old. On April 26 at about 3:30 a.m., Wachowiak's neighbor, 19-year-old Justin "Brent" Haynie, entered her house through an unlocked door and put a knife to her throat. When...

Canine alarm.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(self defense)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... According to WRAL.com, when James Wiggins' dog barked on March 9 at his Fayetteville, North Carolina, home, he looked outside and saw two men wearing black masks coming up to the house. He immediately went and got a gun from his bedroom and was...

Unseen scream.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(self defense)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... An unidentified Natchez, Mississippi, man was lying in bed when the window in his bedroom was busted out and a man outside yelled a threat to him and told him to lie on the floor. The homeowner didn't comply, however. He grabbed a pistol and...

Right, even when wrong.(EXERCISING THE RIGHT)(self defense)(Brief article)
May 28, 2007... On April 21, Damon Wells, a concealed-carry holder from Mount Pleasant, Ohio, went to the store across the street from his house to get some popcorn and cigarettes. As he returned home, two boys, Arthur Buford and an unidentified accomplice,...

Paying tribute to Kim.(Correction, Please!)(Kim Jong Il)
May 28, 2007... ITEM: An article in the Houston Chronicle for April 19, headlined "N. Korea Demands Food Aid," reported: "North and South Korea formally opened economic aid talks Thursday, after a delay caused by Pyongyang's insistence that Seoul pledge food...

Send CEDAW back to the grave.(THE LAST WORD)(United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women)
May 28, 2007... Like vampires from B-grade horror movies, UN treaties refuse to die; they keep coming back to plague us again and again... and again. Thus it happens that the UN CEDAW (pronounced see-daw) treaty has once more crept out of its crypt to wreak...