The American Spectator

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Leakology 101

1.4.06 @ 12:01AM

A BETTER ABORTION BATTLE
Re: Paul Chesser's Dakota Difficulties:

You are right on the money. The MSM has a habit of "forgetting" to place the onus on the individual(s) who make poor choices and then fail to live up to the responsibility of that choice. Instead, as you say and I concur, the blame game begins and the pro-life advocates are the "bad guys."

Thank you for telling it like it is.
-- Iris James
Olathe, Kansas

I am just writing in regards to your article, "Dakota Difficulties." I loved it. I am VERY pro-life but unfortunately a lot of pro-life advocates cannot argue with the liberals correctly, along with bringing a certain religious effort into it. I think the pro-life movement will only really get going once we remove the religious arguments. It broadens the movement out and into everyone's world rather than in the cliques of the religious people. I would like to add that in my comments I might have sounded a bit too harsh on religion. I am not attacking religion but the acts and arguments of some religious people.

Thanks for the great article and keep it up!
-- Carissa Lyons

BUCKING ALL STOPS
Re: David Hogberg's Conservatism in Crisis, John Tabin's Prognostications 2006 and Jed Babbin's A Very Unmerry New Year to You:

David Hogberg's excursus into omphaloskepsis seeks to determine the answer to the question of whether current conservatism is in crisis. Along with Messrs. Babbin and Tabin, he leads us to believe that our commander-in-chief may have faults, but, still, he is made of the steely stuff of heroes. I dissent. Perhaps we are reading the entrails of different animals, for I am not as laudatory of this president's performance, not because of Iraq, or legitimate use of wiretaps in the name of national security, but for the fact that with one very minor exception of a throw away sentence, these three gentlemen display a steadfast reluctance to even mention that President Bush's willingness to seal the border of Iraq directly contradicts...nay contravenes...his unwillingness to seal our southern border from a potential terrorist attack, a violation of his oath to defend and protect these United States. Conservatism in crisis indeed!

In early December, I attended the press conference announcing the Hunter-Goode Bill, a proposal that calls for a wall to be built along the US-Mexican border. Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, claimed that more than 150,000 people of suspicious origin had entered the U.S. illegally in 2005 alone; nonetheless, neither Hunter nor Goode expects the bill will come out of the Senate looking anything like what they proposed. Even the questionable Sensenbrenner Bill, which passed the House, does not touch two of the three "magnets" that attract illegal aliens to our shores: welfare benefits and birthright citizenship. It's no secret that the White House will attempt to resolve this House-Senate stalemate by proposing... ready?... a guest worker/amnesty bill early this year. That is why Signor Chertoff, in the name of Homeland Security, has been saddled with the task of selling such an amnesty, although the overwhelming majority of legally present Americans are clearly opposed to it.

Mr. Tabin's comment that the issue of (illegal) immigration has not (yet) affected the Republican Party will come back to haunt him in 2006. If the unexpected second place showing by Minuteman Jim Gilchrist, who ran strictly on the illegal immigration issue in the recent Republican primary in California is a harbinger of things to come, the White House and Republicans are in for a surprise in the congressional elections this year. Both still refuse to listen to those Republican lady volunteers at the White House who field the telephone calls from disgruntled Americans. They, alone it appears, know the profound depth that this issue has on the American public.

In his book, The Path to Rome, Hillaire Belloc wrote: "...and certainly men who know that the mere truth would be distasteful or tedious commonly have recourse to metaphor, and so to those false men who desire to acquire a subtle and unjust influence over their fellows..." If conservatism is in crisis, and there are many who believe it is, then a full and robust debate about the impact of illegal immigration on our national security must be aired. I do not believe this will happen soon, but I know where final accountability rests. To paraphrase the words on the desk of one president who accepted as his duty and responsibility what befell his country: the buck stops there.

Happy New Year,
-- Vincent Chiarello
Reston, Virginia

PRECIOUS FLUIDS
Re: James G. Poulos's How to Stop Worrying and Love Gazprom:

Why does the West persist in not seeing the smoke still rising from the ash-heap of history, where the "corpse" of communism was tossed a while back? And why does Russia belong in the "Western orbit"? We do not have that much in common, historically speaking. That we appear to be attacked by the same enemy is all that unites us. What strong bonds those!

Russia (as part of the Soviet Union) helped train and finance the terrorists who now seek our demise, not because they thought it was a good way to pass the time, but because they sought our demise as well. Is that all changed now? Putin was, and still is, a KGB thug. The idea that he cares about entering into some kind of alliance with the West is only believable to the point where Russia benefits, and the West does not. We have forgotten that unlike personal foes, old geopolitical enemies can rise from the dead.
-- Mark Pettifor

Gazprom is a salubrious reminder of the nature of socialism. Gazprom on, I say.
-- David Govett
Davis, California

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Religion, Abortion, Global Warming, Books, Law, Iraq, Russia, Israel, NATO, North Korea, Socialism, Communism, Conservatism, Immigration