Since Howard Dean announced the end of his bid to become the next President, his supporters have been left out in the cold, in a manner of speaking.  Most "Deaniacs", as they were dubbed, weren't and never will be part of the Democratic party, which Dean once referred to as "the Republican wing of the Democratic party."  Their reaction to and support of Dean was an intensely personal thing, not a party thing.  To expect them to simply roll over and endorse an Establishment Democrat would be ridiculous.  As one Deaniac put it in a message on Dean's web site a few days before Dean dropped out of the race, "If the Democratic establishment thinks it can tap dance on top of our heads with an old hag from Washington, we will teach them a lesson."  Another wrote, "The establishment wants, craves nothing more than to drive Governor Dean from the race, and for his supporters to either go away or line up behind their anointed special interest puppet candidate John Kerry."  A third said, "I can not see myself voting for Kerry. He makes me sick."  Something tells me that these people are not about to meekly vote for whoever the Democratic candidate happens to be.

So there's an angry mob of independent voters out there, and the Democrats have as little hope of capturing them as the Republicans do.  Where will they go?  Who will these people vote for, if they vote for anyone at all?  Who has a chance at capturing the Angry Anti-Establishment voting block?

Tomorrow, Ralph Nader is expected to announce that he's running for President once again, as an Independent.  Normally, that would garner about as much interest as the candidacy of Mickey Mouse, although many Democrats blame him for siphoning off just enough votes to deny Al Gore the Presidency in 2000 (well, that's one of the many reasons they offer, desperately avoiding the truth -- that Gore lost).  Nader managed to garner a total of 2.74% of the overall vote, or 2,882,955 total votes.  Are the Democrats so worried about so few votes, and so sure that the votes will be "stolen" from them?  Terry McAuliffe, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is busy urging Nader not to run, and desperately urging everyone who can contact Nader to urge him not to run.  It's not about choice for the voters, you know; it's about beating George W. Bush.  Ed Gillespie don't seem as worried about the Libertarian party, which is often seen as siphoning votes from the Republicans.

If I were advising Nader, I'd tell him to harness the Dean Machine in any way he could.  A Nader/Dean ticket just might be the first third-party candidacy with a chance to win even one electoral vote since John Hospers.  Of course, Hospers only received that one vote because a rogue elector decided to switch his vote from Republican to Libertarian, but 1972 was a wacky year.  Nader has already decided to run, and can possibly tap the fanatic base of Howard Dean by offering him a Vice Presidential slot.  Though Dean has dropped out of the race, he has not yet thrown his support to one of the others still fighting to be the Democratic candidate yet.  I just can't see him pulling a Wesley Clark and kissing up to John Kerry (so soon after bashing him) by saying "Sir: Request permission to come aboard."   That was sort of embarrassing to watch, even for a non-Democrat like myself.

On the other hand, after watching all the Democratic candidates trying to speak intelligible Spanish in front of a Hispanic audience, and watching several of them grovel to the NAACP for missing a fundraiser, I don't think Democrats know the meaning of the word "embarrass" anymore.

What would the Liberal reaction be if other laws in California were simply declared null and void, based on nothing more than personal whim and a convoluted interpretation of the law?  If, as San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom claims, he has no responsibility to uphold the law (Proposition 22) because he feels it conflicts with California's Constitution, then perhaps California's restrictive gun laws -- which conflict with the US Constitution -- should be abolished as well.

For the last several days, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has been issuing "marriage" permits for same-sex couples in an act of "civil disobedience"... in other words, a deliberate and flagrant violation of the law by the man elected to uphold it.  The pieces of paper his office hands out are completely worthless -- the poor saps might as well print them out at home and save the license fee.  On 7 March 2000, California voters -- not the legislature working against "the will of the people" -- passed Proposition 22 by a 61% to 39% direct vote.  The entire text of Prop 22 is: "Only marriage between a man and a women is valid or recognized in California."  That's it -- no legal mumbo-jumbo, no wordy caveats, just a plain and simple statement.  And the people of California spoke, and what they said was, "Hell, yes!"

To Liberal elitists, however, the people don't matter.  Their wishes don't matter (they don't know what's good for them).  Their votes matter, but only because you have to gather a certain number of them to gain power.  Mayor Newsom, in his infinite wisdom, decided that since he doesn't agree with the Constitution of the State of California, which he swore to uphold, it doesn't apply.  On 10 February 2004, after only two months in office, he ordered County Clerk Nancy Alfaro to begin issuing marriage licenses altered to remove all references to the sex of the applicants.  Two days later, before the first illegal license (I believe I've discovered a new oxymoron!) was issued, a lawsuit was filed requesting an emergency order blocking the Mayor from taking the law into his own hands this way.  Two judges have so far declined to uphold the law and prevent Newsom from issuing the false licenses or performing "marriage" ceremonies for people of the same sex, though Superior Court Judge James L. Warren did "agree to order the city to either 'cease and desist' issuing the disputed licenses or to come back to court on March 29 and explain why they haven't."  Meanwhile, the "wedding" march plays on... and on... and on.

Now let's compare and contrast. 

In 2001, Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Judge Roy Moore, unveiled a massive granite monument featuring the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama State Courthouse building.  He was immediately reviled and attacked by the ACLU and other Liberal groups.  Though the Ten Commandments is not a part of any one religion (it's part of at least three -- the various forms of Christianity, Judaism and Islam), Moore was criticised for imposing "his version" of Christianity on people.  The Alabama Supreme Court is not Congress, and did not make any law.  However, Moore was reviled for violating the "separation of Church and State" clause Liberals discovered hidden in the First Amendment during the Everson vs. Ewing Township Board of Education  case of 1947.  (I still don't see how you can hide as many words in the phrase, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" as Liberals claim to have discovered over the years.  Perhaps the Founders were fond of invisible ink.  Notice, too, how Liberals never have anything to say about those who violate the second part of that phrase.)  Moore was finally ordered by the United States Supreme Court to remove the monument. When he refused, he was removed from the bench, and rightly so, for he violated the law.  Olivia Turner, executive director of the Alabama ACLU, stated, "If Chief Justice Moore can decide which federal court opinions he wants to comply with, then nobody's rights are safe from any state officials who disagree with the law." 

So where is the ACLU now, with Mayor Newsom violating the law, ignoring court orders, and lying to thousands of homosexuals by telling them they're legally married when they aren't?  For that matter, why aren't the environmental groups complaining about the waste of thousands of "marriage" licenses that aren't worth the paper they're printed on?  Why aren't they flooding the streets waving signs (painted on cloth, no doubt), saying "Newsom Lied, Trees Died"?  For that matter, why aren't gay rights activists outraged at being lied to?  Do all Liberal groups automatically agree with Mayor Newsom that if you don't like a law, you don't have to obey it?  If so, then why didn't they agree with Judge Moore for doing the same thing?  We'll even ignore the fact that 77% of the citizens of Alabama supported Judge Moore's stance while 61% of Californians oppose Mayor Newsom's. This is about upholding the law.

It seems that it all boils down to Liberals supporting the laws they want to obey, and feeling justified in violating those they don't.  But such anarchy is no way to run a country.

Iran is at a critical time in its history.  Pro-democracy forces are finally making headway against the iron-fisted religious rule of the mullahs, led by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  For the first time, more difficult since Iran was taken over by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, there is a chance for the Iranian people to achieve democracy by overwhelming popular demand.  President Bush has been openly supporting the rise of democracy in Iran and other countries.  A recent letter from the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI) to President Bush praised him for his steadfast support of democracy worldwide.

On behalf of the Iranian Student Movement and the Iranian Diaspora around the World, especially our oppressed countrymen, we extend our sincerest appreciation for your leadership and efforts to promote long term peace and democratic rule in the World.  We also want to use this opportunity to express, once again, our deepest gratitude for your consistent and open support of our people in their quest for true freedom and democracy. 
Indeed, your tireless support of our subjugated and tyrannized people has touched millions of Iranians and they view you as an ardent defender of freedom and a source of hope.  As one of the few world leaders that fully appreciates and openly supports the aspirations and goals of our subjugated country, we extend our thanks.  Let us assure you, as you plan for the conquest of Mars, that you have already succeeded in conquering the hearts and souls of millions of Iranians.  It is, therefore, imperative that you are re-elected this November, and you can count on our constant support, and votes, in the upcoming election.

If only there was a "truth in advertising" law for political campaigns... and if only we could force the Democrats to obey it! Would their campaign ads look something like this?

Vote Democrat!  We'll fight to reduce the CIA and decimate the military, then attack the President when the CIA can't provide correct information and the military is spread so thin we have to call in the National Guard and Reservists!

Vote Democrat!  We'll base our next campaign on mere accusations of thirty-year-old minor wrongdoings, instead of the issues at hand! When we're proven wrong by mountains of documents and eyewitness accounts, we'll demand more and more proof! Forget that "innocent until proven guilty" garbage! As a bonus, we'll make sure that the White House spends more time digging through old microfiche records than running the country and protecting you from terrorists!

Vote Democrat!  When a third-rate filmmaker who's a known fraud makes a baseless accusation against the President, we'll turn it into a major campaign issue, slamming the voters with it in every media outlet as well as the floor of Congress! We'll make such a mountain out of that molehill, even Colin Powell will be forced to deliver smackdown!  On the other hand, when a journalist reports an ongoing investigation by Time and ABC into a serious and recent character issue with our favorite prospective candidate, we'll squash the story so no one hears about it!

Vote Democrat!  We'll authorise the use of military force in Iraq because public opinion demands it, then vote against the money needed to fund it once the troops are already there! Also, we'll publicly attack the National Guard after sending them to war, saying that serving in the National Guard isn't really being in the military!

Vote Democrat!  We'll tell you we're the party of human rights, then do everything possible to repudiate a war which freed twenty-five million people from tyranny and brutality!

Vote Democrat!  Even though we fully agreed with UNSCOM in 1997 and UNMOVIC in 2003 that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction right up until our troops entered Iraq, we'll try our best to make the case that the President lied to us about it instead of the other way around!

Vote Democrat!  We'll force America to abide by a quota system for racial minorities and women in education and employment, while castigating Americans for being divided by race and sex!  Let hypocrisy be our watchword!

Matt Drudge, the internet muck-raking journalist who became famous by breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal, may be repeating history today.  On his web site, the Drudge Report, Drudge posted a story alleging an affair between John Kerry and -- what else? -- an intern.

In 1988, Gary Hart's Presidential bid was derailed because of a similar scandal.  News of an affair between Hart, then the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and Rice, an actress and model, was broken by the Miami Herald.  Within days, the disgraced Senator from Colorado withdrew from the race.

Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky was revealed a decade later -- the latest of a long string of allegations of misconduct by the former President.  He was so vigorously defended by Democrats that he was never removed from office after being impeached for lying under oath before a Federal Grand Jury.  He was only the second President to suffer impeachment.  (And if you thought of Andrew Johnson just now instead of Richard Nixon, you earn extra points.  Nixon at least had the grace and respect for the office of President to resign.)

All the history lessons aside, this story -- assuming its veracity, which I'm sure we'll discover in the coming days -- forms a fairly telling "litmus test" for Democrats.  

Should John Kerry be elected to the Presidency, he'll have to swear a vow to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.  When John Kerry (who claims to be a Catholic despite his views on abortion and gay "marriage" -- that is to say, about half of the time) married Teresa Simões-Ferreira Heinz, he undoubtedly spoke a vow to remain faithful to her. 

Leaving all the religious implications and imprecations involving marriage aside, can a person who would break one solemn promise be trusted to keep another?  Will the Democrats continue to support Kerry as they did Clinton, or will they drop him like a hot potato, as they did Hart?  How Democrats react to this story -- if it turns out to be true -- will tell us all we need to know about whether morals even matter to them anymore.

Personally, I expect we already know the answer.  They'll stand behind anyone they think has a chance to beat President Bush, morality be damned.

In a press conference today, Scott McClellan (chief White House spokesman) revealed the President's military pay records from 1972.  Those records should have disproved beyond a shadow of a doubt the oft-repeated accusation, soon to become a focus of the Democratic smear campaign against him, that G.W. Bush was AWOL from the Air National Guard or deserted for a few months during that time.  The briefing that was televised, however, was actually the second briefing on the subject.  The first briefing went a little differently, and another press conference had to be held.  However, I just happen to have a transcript of the first briefing, and will reconstruct for you what really happened.

"These documents outline the days on which he was paid. That means he served," said McClellan, holding up a thick packet of military pay records.  "I think these documents show that he fulfilled his duties."

Watching Tim Russert grill President Bush on the subject of Saddam's WMDs, I couldn't help but consider the irony: that the man who led the fight against one of the world's worst dictators is himself being treated like a criminal.  Why?  Because he dared to win that war and will probably win the upcoming election.

Russert tried over and over again to trick the President into saying that he, Bush, had decided to remove Saddam from power all by himself, with little or no evidence of wrongdoing, and against the advice of the CIA and Congress.  Does that approach even make any sense, when Congress overwhelmingly approved the Authorisation for Use of Military Force in Iraq in October 2002?  President Bush even apologised for giving the exact same answer no matter how many different ways Russert phrased it, but there really is only one answer to the question, "why did you say that Saddam had WMDS?"

And that answer is, "because almost every piece of evidence said that he did."  Saddam's people said he did (once they escaped the country).  Saddam's relatives said he did (once they escaped the country).  The experts working under the United Nations said that he did.  Saddam said he didn't, but the UN inspectors kept on finding banned weapons anyway.  You can only hear someone say, "oh, yes, I forgot about THAT" so many times before you stop believing him or her.  Somehow, Bush's detractors seem to suggest that he should have gone to Iraq himself and led UNMOVIC inspection teams instead of relying on their documentation and reports from nearly every intelligence service in the world.  Or, perhaps, simply waited until Saddam's weapons capabilities were proved beyond a shadow of a doubt by a cloud of death floating over Jerusalem.  Or New York City.  Does anyone doubt that they would then scream that he'd failed to protect us?

If you smell smoke, hear a fire alarm, and hear people in the hallway yelling, "Fire!", how long do you wait to gather more evidence before you conclude that yes, the building is in flames?  Do you wait until you wake up in the burn unit of the local hospital (if at all), or do you get your friends and family out of the building? If one person out of hundreds says, "I'm not yet fully convinced there's a fire," do you keep waiting, risking the lives of so many others, ignoring the mountain of evidence that the fire is real?  That's precisely what the Left seems to claim President Bush ought to have done.  They applied no similarly high standard to Mr. Clinton, of course, when he bombed Baghdad and an aspirin factory in Khartoum, and invaded Bosnia.  No one claimed to have been misled.

Many have spoken even more definitely about the existence of Saddam's WMDs based upon the exact same evidence as President Bush saw.  In 1998, Secretary of State Madeline Albright said, "Saddam's goal... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed."  National Security Advisor Sandy Berger said, "(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983."   Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Tom Daschle, John Kerry and others wrote a letter in 1998 urging the President "to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs".  President Clinton did so (Operation Desert Fox), and told Larry King in 2003:

...Let me tell you what I know. When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know.

In October 2002, John Kerry said, "I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force - if necessary - to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."  Kerry also stated, "The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new.  It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons.  He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation."  Kerry also said, "(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein.  He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime.  We all know the litany of his offenses.  He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation.  ...And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction.  That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm."

John "Flip" Kerry, the odds-on favorite for the Democratic Presidential nomination, is singing a different tune these days.  Former head of the Iraq Survey Group David Kay has reported not yet finding large stockpiles of those weapons Kerry himself railed about just months before the liberation of Iraq began.  (Kay reported that everyone he spoke to sincerely believed that Saddam had such weapons, by the way.)  Kerry's now backpedaling faster than a bicyclist approaching a cliff, saying, "We were misled not only in the intelligence but misled in the way that the President took us to war."  Obviously, he doesn't include President Bush in that "we", though they had the same information upon which to base decisions.

But how do Kerry and the rest of the Democrats ascribe their own hawkish position on Saddam's WMDs six years ago to the "evil machinations" of President Bush only one year ago?  Was the same intelligence not just as wrong then, if it was wrong at all?  And how do they explain their vicious attacks on President Bush's veracity when no such outrage was aimed at Bill Clinton for citing the same intelligence analysis?  As President Bush told Tim Russert in his interview, "It's politics."

In case you haven't been following the news, or have been so traumatised by Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" that you've switched to the Weather Channel for a while, a serious miscarriage of justice recently occurred in Florida.  In fact, that's too mild a phrase. What happened in Florida was a horrible tragedy that could easily have been avoided.

An 11-year-old girl named Carlie Brucia was kidnapped and murdered, apparently by a man who should never have been seen outside of a jail until she was in her thirties.  Her real killer, however, was the justice system that somehow let her murderer walk free after repeated arrests and convictions.

37-year-old Joseph Smith appears to be the man seen in a surveillance video, wearing a mechanic's shirt with a name patch on it, showing tatoos on his arms that match Smith's.  He's definitely the man who escaped justice so many times that it seems as though it must be a typo or mistake, as reported by AP News.

Smith has been arrested at least 13 times in Florida since 1993.
He served 17 months in prison in 2001 and 2002 for heroin possession and prescription drug fraud. Eight days after he got out, he was arrested for cocaine possession and placed on probation for three years. He also got probation for aggravated battery in 1993 and heroin charges in 1999.
A state correction official, Joe Papy, said that a probation officer had asked a judge on Dec. 30 to declare Smith in violation of his probation because he had not paid all his fines and court costs.
Papy said Circuit Judge Harry Rapkin declined to find Smith in violation, which could have returned him to jail. The judge defended his decision Friday, saying the probation officer never sent him the evidence he requested that Smith had willfully refused to pay.

Because the justice system was excessively tolerant of this animal, an 11-year-old girl is dead.  How many more like him are walking the streets because we lack a consistent, national "three strikes" law such as California and 25 other states have, and because the ones we do have aren't being enforced?  (The Federal three strikes law requires that the third offense, at least, be a Federal crime.)  In 2002, the Mercury News "reviewed the case histories of all 181 individuals in Santa Clara County whose third strike was non-violent and found that 173 had been convicted of multiple violent acts, many predating the three-strikes law. Their rap sheets contain scores of robberies, rapes, sexual molestations, serial burglaries, assaults and other hard-core criminal behavior."  Under this law, a convicted third-time criminal recieves 25 years to life, period.  The California version doesn't mandate that the third offense be a violent crime, unlike the others; even non-violent crimes like burglary can qualify one for incarceration.  And according to California officials, the law works, though the Supreme Court has been kept busy upholding it against challenges and no two states have the same three strikes law. 

Florida instituted a three strikes law of its own in 1999.  It is unclear to me why it wasn't used to put Joseph Smith where he belonged: serving his 25-to-life sentence instead of (allegedly, true) killing an innocent child.  After the arrest for cocaine posession eight days after his last release from prison, his third (possibly fourth) drug charge in just three years, why was he given only probation?

Though the Left hates to admit it (you're a "warmonger" if you mention it), America is in the middle -- actually, just the beginning -- of a long, hard, tough war.

The war actually began on 26 February, 1993, when al-Qaeda operatives entered the US (with assistance from Iraqi intelligence) and set off a truck bomb in the parking garage of the World Trade Center. The one-sided war continued for years, with al-Qaeda attacks on the barracks at Riyadh in 1995, Khobar Towers in 1996, the two US embassy bombings (Dar es Salaam and Nairobi) in 1998, the attack on he USS Cole in 2000, and finally the incidents that woke us up and changed the way we viewed the war on 9/11. Most of us are still awake, but by no means all of us.

For eight years, we pretended that the war was just a series of unrelated crimes.  We pretended that there was no Enemy, no network of terrorists planning ever-larger attacks on us and our way of life.  Lulled into a false sense of security by Bill Clinton's mishandling of terrorism, we ignored the most insidious threat we've ever faced as a nation until those terrorists forced us to acknowledge them.

Now it's an election year, and the Democrats want to regain power. They want to return us to that false sense of security in which we pay no attention to the hazy inner workings of the government.  It's kind of tempting, isn't it?  Who wants to live with the reality of terrorist threats every day?  Who volunteers for that (besides, of course, the Israelis)?  Just get rid of George W. Bush, the Democrats pledge, and all will be well.  You can all relax!  We'll take care of you.  Wesley Clark even went so far as to promise no more terrorist attacks, if he becomes President.  John Edwards is a trial lawyer not even finished his first term as Senator; to plunge him into the forefront of an international war would be to commit national suicide.  And as for John Kerry, the current Democratic front-runner, according to his own web site:

Kerry recognizes that a global security effort and the war against terrorism require active participation of the international community.  As President, John Kerry will move quickly to rebuild American alliances and define a global security strategy that is collective, not imperial, inclusive not exclusive, and cooperative not unilateralist. 

Let's ignore for the moment the fact that nearly every country in the world is already assisting us in the war on terror, including France, Germany and Russia.  Let's ignore for the moment the fact that if you handed Kerry a map and asked him to point out the countries that are part of the "imperialistic" American empire, he'd have to take a pass. Let's also ignore for the moment the fact that over sixty countries are a part of the Coalition that is helping Iraq move towards a democratic form of government for the first time ever (48 at the time Saddam was forcibly removed from power), utterly demolishing the "unilateralist" lie. 

In the recent Democratic debate in South Carolina (29 January), John Kerry stated: