Own a nice home in a good area? Don't bother to settle in, if a corporation or developer might want to build on your land. The Supreme Court declared that it's perfectly alright for your local government to take your property away and give it to someone they feel can generate more tax dollars or jobs from the site, in a stunning blow to individual rights last week. Better start schmoozing with your local politicians, if you want to keep your home. They have the power to take it away from you at any time.

The concept of "eminent domain" has been with us from the start, limited by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which states: "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." The guaranteed right to own a piece of land was the prime reason many immigrants came to America in the first place, fleeing countries where all land was seen as belonging to the government. In America, the government could only take your land for public use... until now.

What is "public use?" Obviously, something owned and used by the public, like parks, roads, sidewalks and bridges. Public buildings, perhaps, like libraries, schools or courtrooms. "Public use" meant exactly that. Over the years, however, it's become more common to use eminent domain to take some property for less obviously-public usage, transferring it to private owners. Government officials have transferred abandoned or disused private property, mostly in inner cities, to developers with plans to rebuild and revitalise the area... developers who, no doubt, contributed to the election campaigns of those same local officials in many cases. Corrupt local officials have even gotten occupied and useful property condemned so it could be bought cheaply, on occasion. In most cases, tax revenues from those formerly "blighted" properties have increased -- how many tax dollars does an abandoned warehouse generate, anyway? -- and new jobs often created as well. So the purpose of eminent domain has slowly expanded from public USE to public BENEFIT, although that's not what the Constitution says. But no one cared about that -- corporations were making money, government was making money, and people were finding jobs.

All was right with the world... until some began to wonder why only blighted inner-city areas could be turned over to corporations for improvement. Why not more... desirable property? If increasing the tax revenue from a piece of land is a good thing, then why limit it to abandoned or disused land in areas no one wanted? So the city of New London, CT decided to turn over some 90 acres of prime waterfront property to private developers, who plan to build office complexes, upscale housing, and a marina on the site.

Unfortunately, 15 homes on part of that property belonged to people who didn't want to sell, for one reason or another. They disputed the use of eminent domain to force them to sell to a private corporation. So the homeowners took the case to court, represented at the Federal level by the Institute for Justice (a Libertarian civil liberties group). First the Connecticut Supreme Court, then the US Supreme court ruled that the mere possibility of generating higher tax revenues or jobs qualifies as "public use" under eminent domain, allowing local governments to forcibly transfer property from one private owner to another. The old saying, "a man's home is his castle" no longer applies in America. As in the countries our forefathers came here to escape, the government can dispose of "your" property as it sees fit.

The interesting twist on this case is how the US Supreme Court justices voted. The Liberals on the court -- John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, along with "wild card" Anthony Kennedy -- all voted in favor of government seizure of private property for transfer to another private owner. The Conservatives -- William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, joined by perennial swing-voter Sandra Day O'Connor this time -- voted against the action. In her dissent, Justice O'Connor wrote, "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms." She also wrote, "As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result." Doesn't this decision show the Liberals squarely on the side of Big Government and greedy corporations against the "little people" trying to protect their homes? The mask slips from time to time.

All is not lost, however. Justice David Souter owns a home in the town of Weare, New Hampshire, as it happens. A company called Freestar Media, LLC has filed a bid with the local Board of Selectmen to seize that particular property and turn it into a revenue- and job-generating hotel. In a letter to the Code Enforcement Officer or Weare, Logan Darrow Clements affirms: "The justification for such an eminent domain action is that our hotel will better serve the public interest as it will bring in economic development and higher tax revenue to Weare." If three of the five selectmen agree, the Lost Liberty Hotel (featuring the Just Desserts Cafe and a permanent museum to the loss of freedom in America) will be built on the site of Souter's home. And I'll be packing my bags to visit the town of Weare. I hope the hotel has an indoor pool. And, of course, internet access.

To whom can Souter appeal to prevent the loss of his own home to the eminent domain decision he himself made? Perhaps the Protection of Homes, Small Businesses, and Private Property Act quickly introduced by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) will help him retain his property. And if not... exactly where do the other Justices who voted with him live, again?

The US House of Representatives has passed a proposed Constitutional amendment that will prohibit one of the favorite activities of the hate-America crowd: trashing the American flag. The proposed amendment reads, "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." If the measure passes the Senate by a two-thirds vote, then 38 states (3/4) must ratify it within seven years.

Until 1989, 48 states already had laws prohibiting the desecration of our national symbol. There was also a Federal law to the same effect passed in 1968. All of that was thrown out by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision saying that burning the flag is a kind of "free speech," thus protected by the First Amendment. The only way to overturn a Supreme Court decision is to amend the Constitution itself, and that may finally happen after several attempts. But is it really necessary?

Desecrating the most widely-recognised symbol of America, in my opinion, is not any kind of speech at all. The Supreme Court was wrong. It's the opposite: the end of speech, the end of debate, the end of principled opposition. Those who do so make it clear that there can be no compromise or argument with them. Once you think that burning or besmirching an American flag will make your point, your argument is already lost. If you can't express your point of view in words, it probably isn't worth consideration anyway. Anyone who burns an American flag is, in effect, symbolically setting fire to America. They're willing to seek our destruction in order to get their way. Trashing the American flag, the one symbol all Americans can claim as their own, is not merely unpatriotic... it's anti-patriotic.

Let them burn the American flag if they want to... just allow real Americans to defend it appropriately. They can make no clearer statement to the effect that they hate America and everything it stands for than that. Our flag, and our country, have been through a lot worse than having some hemp-smoking hippies declare their everlasting hatred of us. We should make it clear to them, in turn, that disrespecting the American flag will automatically lose the support of all true Americans for whatever their lost cause is. Causing harm to the flag only hurts them, not America.

There's no reason to change the Constitution to protect the flag. What we really need is a federal law giving Americans the right to rescue a flag from desecration by any means necessary, short of causing death or permanent injury. I wouldn't mind seeing a bunch of America-bashers interrupted in their flag burning by a gushing firehose or a string of firecrackers going off, would you?

So Ed Klein comes out with a torrid Hillary-bashing book, chock full of personal anecdotes, juicy gossip and accusations, pretty much guaranteed to destroy Hillary Clinton's carefully-crafted political persona. Don't expect to see me dancing in the streets waving a copy, though. I'm not buying it -- literally or figuratively. Something about it just smells fishy.

Many of the accusations in The Truth About Hillary seem too deeply personal to be called anything but personal destruction: she's a lesbian, Chelsea was conceived by rape, and so on. It's distasteful tabloid fodder at best, even if it all turns out to be true. As much as I don't want Hillary Clinton holding any sort of office whatsoever, I don't believe ripping her personal life apart in public is the way to defeat her. I'll continue to base my opposition on her Marxist background and destructive political agenda, thanks.

If nothing else, we've seen how personal attacks often backfire on the attackers, as happened when Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for Governor of California. When opponents exposed him as having groped women on movie sets, the backlash actually increased his support. The constant negative attacks on President Bush probably didn't help John Kerry's 2004 Presidential campaign as much as the George Soros/MoveOn.org "BushisHitlerandhelookslikeachimp!" crowd hoped, if at all. But exposing someone as a victim of rape? That's incredibly low, in my opinion, even if -- especially if -- the story's true. And what has Chelsea done to merit that sort of cruel attention? If we believed that using Dick Cheney's daughter to attack him was wrong, then we have to believe the same applies to Chelsea Clinton.

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings."

Did an Air America radio commentator say that, using airtime bought by George Soros? Was it an al-Jazeera "journalist" railing against the Great Satan? A Democratic Underground poster, perhaps? Was it the laughable figure of a sign-waving war protester standing on a street corner somewhere? No... sad to say, that was a United States Senator comparing American soldiers to Hitler's Gestapo, Stalin's KGB, and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. That was Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, assaulting the US military on behalf of the terrorists held at Gitmo, saying that our troops have no concern for human beings. Durbin may come from the Land of Lincoln, but he lives in the Land of Quisling.

Dick Durbin is the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, the Democratic Senate Whip, put in that position by his fellow Democratic leaders. Now when we say that Democrats are working to undermine America's military and are taking the enemy's side in the War on Terror, no one can say, "oh, that's just a few fringe wackos." No, that's the official leadership of the Democratic party attacking our troops and giving aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime! How many times will Durbin's words be replayed by our enemies to ramp up anti-American feelings, recruit more terrorists and give heart to those already fighting us? How must American troops feel, knowing that the Democrats consider them comparable to the worst examples of inhumanity and brutality to exist in the last hundred years? Is that how Democrats "support our troops?" What Durbin said was unconscionable, indefensible, and about as un-American and unpatriotic (yes, I will say it) as anything I've ever heard. Even an abject apology couldn't begin to repair the damage he has caused. And yet... not a single one of his fellow Democrats has repudiated his words.

So what unimaginable horrors had been visited on the poor, hapless prisoners to upset Dick Durbin so? Were they tortured to death, maimed, starved and broken? Were they slaughtered by the millions, as Durbin would apparently have us think? Well, the reality is "just as bad," I suppose. According to the email he received, which Durbin has not released to the public, some prisoners had their air conditioning turned up too high, and others had it turned too low. I wonder whether Nazi death camps even had air conditioning; I know they had heat, in the form of ovens. Some prisoners wore chains and were kept in uncomfortable positions. Imagine that. Some were scared by nearby dogs. Not eaten alive by dogs, mind you: scared. Some were made to stand for hours, had women invading their personal space, and had loud music blared in their ears. I've been to clubs like that. Oh, the inhumanity.

Some prisoners had to listen to rap music and Christina Aguilera songs. Alright, maybe that part could be classified as "brutality." However, these are the same prisoners who are given Qur'ans (by the US government; isn't that a violation of the "separation of Church and State?") and far better food than they've ever had, like honey-glazed chicken and lemon-baked fish. These are the same prisoners whose religious rights are so well respected that guards are not allowed to walk near their cells during prayer times, lest the squeak of their shoes disturb the prisoners while they're praying for our deaths.

Compare that to conditions in actual Nazi POW camps where Americans were held during WWII. In the camp known as Stalag IX, for instance: "Over 4,700 American POWs were far more than the camp could handle. The food was terrible and rationed in insufficient quantities. Many of the captives were too weak to greet their liberators. Many corpses remained exposed and unburied. For each 160-person barrack, [there was] only one cold water tap, and one hole in the ground for a toilet. The barracks were so overcrowded that the prisoners had to take turns sleeping, in bunks and on the floor in lice-infested straw." Sure, I can see where Durbin and the rest of the Liberal Democrats who've never been there could mistake that for Gitmo. Let's not even get into the millions who died of malnutrition, brutality and overwork in Soviet gulags. Let's not mention the millions who were brutally slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in their takeover of Cambodia and deliberate regression of that country to the Stone Age. If Durbin and his ilk want to see a closer analogue to their killing fields and gulags, all they have to do is take a peek over Gitmo's wall into Castro's Cuba.

Liberals complain that we haven't proven the Gitmo detainees are terrorists, so we should let them go free. Some Liberals even believe the detainees have rights under the Constitution to be given lawyers and a speedy trial in a US court of law. The fact is that the US Constitution does not apply to foreigners, especially enemies, just as the Geneva Conventions do not apply to terrorists. This is a war, not an episode of Scooby Doo. At no point will Osama bin Laden say, "I would have won, if it wasn't for those pesky Bush and Cheney kids" before being marched off to jail. We don't have to give the enemy a speedy trial if that would conflict with national security. Anyone who lifts a hand against an American soldier is the enemy by his own choice. I know that's a hard concept for Liberals to understand, but it's a hard world, and a hard war. One that we could easily lose, if we allow Liberals to dictate our conduct.

In order to claim protection under the Geneva Conventions, participants must fight wearing a recognisable uniform or badge, fight under officers who can be held responsible for them, carry their weapons openly, and -- perhaps most important -- fight according to the rules of war laid out in the Geneva Conventions themselves. The Geneva Conventions are not meant to be a handicap to decent people -- they're meant to be a deterrent to keep rogue nations from breaking those rules. If one side of a conflict decides not to fight according to Geneva Conventions, then they forfeit their protection as well. The two are locked together -- that's the rules. Yet Liberals continue to claim that we -- not the terrorists who deliberately murder innocents -- are uninterested in laws and human rights.

We're all for human rights, more than any other country has ever been in the entire history of mankind. But we're fighting an enemy who isn't. We're fighting an enemy that has gladly used their own children as suicide bombers, and deliberately targets children. We're fighting an enemy that will settle for nothing less than total global domination by their twisted version of Islam. We're fighting an enemy that cannot be bought off or reasoned with. Note to Liberals: if you want to play patty-cake with those inhuman barbaric bastards, gamble with your own life. Don't do it with mine, or those of my friends and family.

Every weakness we show is one that will be ruthlessly exploited to destroy us. Every consideration we show the enemy is one that will be turned against us and used to murder more innocent Americans. Osama bin Laden admitted that his plan to destroy the US really began when he saw us run away after a mere 18 casualties at Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993. "Our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger," he said in a 1998 ABC interview. "After a few blows, [America]... rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace, dragging the bodies of its soldiers."

Liberals are against keeping probable enemies locked up "indefinitely" without a trial. The most humane and safe thing we can do to anyone who is a likely enemy is to lock him up, and sort them all out after we have utterly broken the back of al-Qaeda and the other international terror groups. We cannot try them now, because every piece of information that gets out -- and believe me, it WILL get out -- is like a gun aimed at an American's head. If you're a Liberal, maybe that doesn't bother you as much as the thought that the UN -- mostly comprised of dictators itself -- might disapprove. Maybe you can make a moral equivalence between keeping probable terrorists locked up and endangering innocent lives. Maybe you're all nuanced and multicultural and morally self-righteous and so on. But I'm not. If there's even a chance of an innocent American being put in harm's way by granting these people any sort of legal rights, then forget it. I'm against it. Keep them locked up, out of harm's way.

Some people claim that the detainees at Gitmo should be set free because, after several years, they can't give up any more useful intelligence. Those people forget that al-Qaeda's "trademark" is planning operations up to six years in advance. If we let them out, or give any hint of what they've talked about, or even discuss who they are, all the future plans they have given up to us could be rendered useless. Liberals don't seem to understand the cell organisation of groups like al-Qaeda. Since there is little contact between cells, others might not know that a cell's been disrupted and its members arrested... until they do make contact, and give themselves away. Slowly but surely, by keeping those who have been arrested incommunicado, al-Qaeda is being taken apart.

People like Dick Durbin and NY Congressman Charlie Rangel, who said of the Iraq war, "This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed," only advance the cause of our enemies. They don't do America any good, and they don't do America any justice. They trivialise the true horrors that Americans have paid in blood to face and defeat in the past; they slap every member of the US military, past and present, in the face with such comparisons. They hand the enemy propaganda material in a vain attempt to repeat the public relations victory Liberals enjoyed over America in the Vietnam War. 

Future visitors to the 9/11 memorial that's planned for the rebuilt World Trade Center site won't learn what we learned that day. They won't learn about terrorists murdering defenseless civilians in the name of their vicious version of Islam. They won't learn about the horror, the grief or the pain we all felt, or how we came together as a united nation... at least, until we began to fight back. They won't learn how ordinary Americans rose to the stature of heroes, or the reasons for our determination to root out terrorism wherever it is found. They won't learn what we learned at all; they won't feel what we felt. That's not politically correct, you see. Instead of a memorial honoring the dead, both the innocent victims and the brave men and women who died trying to save them, visitors will "learn" that America "deserved" what we got. That's right: the 9/11 memorial itself is being hijacked by Liberals.

Debra Burlingame, sister of flight 77's pilot Chic Burlingame (the plane that hit the Pentagon), revealed the horrible truth in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial. As a member of the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, she is privy to the plans that have been kept secret from the rest of us. "Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world," Ms. Burlingame wrote. "They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world." Abu Ghraib -- the sorry story of a few soldiers exceeding their orders and being duly punished for it long before the media blew the whole episode out of proportion -- is somehow the Left's "answer" for 9/11. Murdering thousands of innocent people by deliberate design, they seem to feel, is nothing compared to a couple of rogue guards putting underwear on the heads of captured enemies.

The editorial continued, "The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona." This is Liberal moral equivalence at is worst -- trying to pass off 9/11 as something those people who died deserved for the awful "crime" of being Americans. It's a version of history combined from the twisted visions of Osama bin Laden and Ward Churchill (the America-hating professor who vilified 9/11 victims by referring to them as "little Eichmans.")

Who's behind this evil scheme? Who is trying to minimise the meaning of 9/11? Who's trying to "Blame America First?" Why, the usual suspects, of course. The same Liberal icons who fund organisations like MoveOn.org and who have bought the once-great Democratic party at wholesale prices. Tom Bernstein heads the IFC (International Freedom Center), the group responsible for the World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex. He also happens to be the president of Human Rights First. Bernstein's organisation worked with the ACLU to file lawsuits against America on behalf of the terrorists held in Gitmo, demanding that they be granted all the rights and privileges of the Americans they conspired to murder. That's the man selected to tell us that 9/11 was all our fault, on the very spot where that sort of self-flagellating apology to the killers has the least right to exist. The rest of the crew, as listed by Ms. Burlingame, includes:

- Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the world-wide "Stop Torture Now" campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld's refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is "irresponsible and dishonorable."
 
- Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.
 
- Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." This is the same man who participated in a "teach-in" at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus." The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner's statement warning that future discussions should not be "overwhelmed" by the IFC's location at the World Trade Center site itself.
 
- George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib "hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."

9/11 was an attack on every American. Every one of us felt the shock when the terrorists finally declared war in a way no one could mistake. Al-Qaeda's previous attacks on the USS Cole, the embassies at Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Khobar Towers and Riyadh went unanswered. Even their first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 (in partnership with Saddam Hussein) was largely ignored, treated as a mere criminal act, forgotten once a few low-level scapegoats were arrested.

On 9/11, the targets were not soldiers or sailors, and they weren't in some dangerous far-off country. They were ordinary Americans, here at home, living their ordinary lives. Every American -- if only briefly -- realised that any one of us might have been attacked, merely for being Americans, and most of us remember that we still could be. We remember that we are Americans, heirs to a great experiment in freedom and democracy that our enemies hate simply for its existence. We want no excuses or apologies for our enemies' behavior. We want no multimedia attacks on the morale of our own military forces. All we ask is that the dead be remembered, not as pawns in some Liberal scheme to Blame America First, but as innocent victims of terrorism. All we want is for their memorial to be unsullied by some politically-correct offering of appeasement to their murderers. They deserve a true memorial, a fitting tribute, not this travesty.

This plan to hijack the 9/11 memorial is nothing less than an insulting stab in the back to every person who died that day, as well as every member of the US military who has died in the War on Terror, fighting to prevent a repeat. It's difficult to tell who's worse anymore: the terrorists who attacked us and murdered over 3,000 people, or the Liberals who want to use their memorial to advance their own personal agenda.

For more information: http://takebackthememorial.com

Most people find Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean's seemingly mad attacks of late hard to understand. He has called Republicans "evil," brain dead," "corrupt" and "liars." He has also said that Republicans are "not very friendly" people who "behave the same" and "look the same" and "never made an honest living in their lives." Trying to stir up racial and religious tensions (the bread-and-butter of Democrats), Dean also accused the GOP of being "a white Christian party," although he fits that description himself -- as do the other major leaders of that party, as well as most of the people they put in high positions when they're in power. In fact, it fits the majority of the country, too, 77.1% of Americans being white and 76.5% calling themselves Christians as of 2001. Certainly this "revelation" that he's a white Christian who looks like all other Republicans must have come as a surprise to party Chairman Ken Mehlman, who happens to be Jewish. It probably also came as a surprise to Condoleeza Rice, Elaine Chao, Carlos Gutierrez, Alberto Gonzales, Norman Mineta, Alphonso Jackson... and that's just a few members of Bush's current Cabinet.

Howard Dean was supposedly elected to his position due to his fabled fundraising skills. Although he did very well raising money over the internet for his failed 2004 presidential campaign, he has been unable to duplicate that success for his party as a whole. Through the end of April 2005, the DNC raised $18.2 million, while the much less vicious RNC fundraising attempts raised $42.6 million in the same time period. So what's Howard Dean doing -- is he really running around insulting three-fourths of the country, stirring up anger and hatred, and doing his best to sink his own party out of sheer malice? Why is he still the head of the DNC, if that's the case? There's actually a good reason for Howard Dean's hate-filled tirades: Hillary Clinton.

While Dean has been doling out red meat to the Liberal base with both hands, presumptive 2008 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has been subtly shifting her position to the right on important issues. In an interview on WABC radio, she attacked the Bush administration's loose border policy. "I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants," she said. Of course, this is a blatant lie, since she has co-sponsored plenty of bills designed to reward illegal immigrants for breaking our laws. She has also embraced pro-life advocates, telling abortion supporters that both sides of the debate should find common ground. This sudden shift is at odds with her 100% lifetime rating from NARAL (National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League), a stridently pro-abortion group. On issue after issue, Hillary is attempting to divorce herself from her Liberal record, in preparation for her presidential campaign. And Dean is giving her the room she needs to run to the right.

Howard Dean's job is to keep the anger- and fear-driven Liberal base from abandoning the Democratic party before 2008. That's got to be as difficult as herding cats. As long as he keeps pouring on the vitriol, playing to the far Left lunatics (known as the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party" to Deaniacs), they will stay on the plantation and vote as they're told. Hillary knows she needs the moderate Democrats in addition to as many moderate Republicans and others she can fool in order to win in 2008, but can't lose the loonies, either. She can't afford to let the party split, as they show every sign of doing. So she plays to the moderates as Dean keeps the base in line.

We'll just have to see how long they can keep up the song-and-dance act. The way Dean's been scaring the stalwarts in his own party, he may be forced to tone down the rhetoric before long. It's too bad for them that Vaudeville's dead.

Starting in high school, I played a then-popular game called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons for many years. Players take the part of characters in a fantasy setting, while one player in the group presents situations, problems and enemies for the others to encounter and deal with. Part of the game, which pits the players as heroes battling evil foes, involves one's ethical alignment. Unlike real life, morality in the game is easily codified.

There are basically two polarities, Good versus Evil and Law (meaning order) versus Chaos. The first pair is self-explanatory. The players' characters are generally the good guys, and the game is played out like a fantasy novel written spontaneously by the group. Law and Chaos, however, are harder to explain. Lawful characters tend to have strict codes of behavior and put the larger goals before personal satisfaction, whether they also happen to be Good or Evil. Chaotic characters are the opposite -- self-centered and focused on achieving personal aims, or mostly interested in gratifying momentary whims. Such people can also be Good or Evil. There is also neutral moral ground between these pairs of opposites. A character could be purely selfish (Chaotic), unconcerned with whether his behavior is Good or Evil. Another could strike a balance between Law and Chaos, and still be Good.

Most of the moral alignments are easy to understand. One can imagine Lawful Evil enemies as fanatical devotees to an evil cause in a fantasy world, or members of a highly-organised crime syndicate. Chaotic Evil foes might be killers on a random murder spree, with no long-range plans. Chaotic Good characters might be portrayed as those who move from place to place, taking on Evil wherever it can be found, like Caine in Kung Fu.

Lawful Good characters, however, are the most difficult to play. The tendency for neophytes is to portray them as naive comic-book hero types. These square-jawed idiots would foolishly believe the promises of bad guys to reform, time after time. Played this way, they would try to talk the most evil, depraved killers into surrendering peacefully, never suspecting that the bad guys are only playing for time. Their own strict adherence to their code of behavior can be used to trick them over and over again. They never break the rules, no matter what, not even to accomplish an important goal or save lives. It often falls to someone else to do what's needed when the moral quicksand of his own code traps the badly-played Lawful Good character. There's a phrase used to describe a Lawful Good character played that ineptly: Lawful Stupid.

Liberals believe the United States should be Lawful Stupid in the War on Terror, as if it were just a game. They still insist that we be guided by the UN, despite the fact that three of the permanent members of the Security Council were in Saddam's back pocket. In the case of Iraq, they demanded that we believe Saddam actually got 100% of the vote in a fair election, and that he really was only able to destroy his illegal missiles a few at a time. Liberals openly sympathise with any opposing nation that happens to be weaker than the US in one way or another... which pretty much means all of them. Worst of all, they vehemently oppose any action of ours that has a chance of harming a non-combatant -- while our enemies deliberately hide behind those innocents as they plan and launch their attacks. Then the Liberals complain because the attacks were not prevented.

Consider their fascination with Guantanamo Bay, or Gitmo, where members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban are housed. Liberals insist that these murderous scum, the kind of people who kidnap and kill journalists and innocent workers on video, blow up schoolbuses full of children, explode car bombs in crowded marketplaces, and fly hijacked passenger planes into office buildings should be treated the same as suspected jaywalkers or litterbugs under the law. They believe every terrorist deserves a speedy trial with full legal representation and protections, just as though they were American citizens, while the war is still being fought. How stupid would that be? Even during WWII, we waited until the war was over to try captured Nazis -- and that was done by military tribunal, not in a civilian law court. (Nazi POWs were kept in camps like the one in Alva OK, which housed nearly 5,000 prisoners by February 1945.)

Despite the fact that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to terrorists because they don't fight under them (part of the qualification), Liberals demand they be treated as honorable prisoners of war, if not as American citizens. Liberals grow faint with horror at the idea that some US soldiers might not treat dangerous terrorists with quite the same care and deference they might show their own grandmothers. While our government works to gain needed information from them and prevent them from returning to the fight (as many released terrorists have done or expressed interest in doing), Liberals are more concerned with making sure they're not uncomfortable in any way. They attack the Bush administration for treating the enemy as... well, the enemy. Much of it is politically motivated, however. Amnesty International, hiding behind a mask of pious neutrality, recently called Gitmo a "gulag," referring to the Soviet mass work camps for political opponents, in which many prisoners were worked to death under brutal conditions. They must have simply forgotten to reveal that Amnesty International's top leaders just happen to be heavy contributors to Democratic candidates.

We're not "Lawful Stupid," and cannot afford to act that way. We know who the good guys are, and who are the bad. We understand that in time of war, rules must sometimes be changed, sometimes bent and occasionally broken. Keeping a few terrorists locked up in Gitmo is nothing. Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War, allowing possible spies and saboteurs to be arrested and held without trial for the duration. During WWII, Franklin Roosevelt interned thousands of families of Japanese descent (as well as Germans and Italians) to prevent spies from leaking information. Unlike the Gitmo detainees, the people in those situations were American citizens, civilians, non-combatants with Constitutional rights! While few would argue that the suspension and internments were altogether good, no one can claim that they weren't seen as necessary to preserve national security and win the war. Comparing Gitmo to either event is like holding up a lit match to the sun, and complaining that the match is too bright.

As much as Liberals hyperventilate about the rights of prisoners in Gitmo being violated, the fact is that under American and international law, they don't have any. They're not being tortured, as Liberals claim (which would be wrong), but they are being interrogated. Terrorists are often made to stand in uncomfortable positions, yelled at, threatened and deprived of sleep. I've had jobs like that, with lousy pay into the bargain. The latest information is that some Gitmo guards did, in fact, mistreat copies of the Qur'an that the prisoners were generously allowed to have... when the detainees themselves weren't "using a Quran as a pillow, ripping pages out of the Quran, attempting to flush a Quran down the toilet and urinating on the Quran," according to an investigation by Gitmo commander Brigadier General Jay Hood. In the most "terrible" incident, a guard "urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into the cell block," where the prisoner stated that it got on his Qur'an. Watch the Left -- the same people who call a crucifix dunked in urine "art" -- celebrate this incident, which was likely an accident, as though they had uncovered the Rape of Nanking.

Everything that happens to the Gitmo prisoners will be revealed and painstakingly dissected for centuries, just as historians still discuss Lincoln's habeas corpus suspension and Roosevelt's internment today. Now, as then, the important thing is that we still have a country in which to hold that discussion. If we play strictly by some abstract rules stipulated by Liberals, while terrorists are free of constraint, we will be fighting this war in the stupidest possible manner. Without a doubt, we will lose. Can we afford to do that? Is this just a game?

No poor words of mine, struggling to express my appreciation for those who have given their lives for our country, could ever compete with those offered by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863. At the dedication ceremony for the new cemetery there, he tried to put into words his belief that those who give their lives in the cause of freedom leave those who remain with the solemn duty to ensure that the sacrifice was not in vain. In the end, some greater good must be served by war in order to fulfil that duty.

That concept means even more today, in a war where the enemy deliberately targets innocent civilians, and none of us can be completely safe until all of us are made safer. Though some try to separate the war in Iraq from the rest of the War on Terror for ideological reasons, even they cannot deny that our military brought freedom and hope to millions, there and in Afghanistan. The entire Middle East is undergoing a dramatic change for the better, because of what they did there. We owe it to those who have died not to turn our backs on the cause for which they fought, or the people they freed.

Every time some newsreader, pundit, politician or protester counts the number of our dead in Iraq, they ignore those who have died in Afghanistan, and they ignore what all those men and women -- living and dead -- have done for the region as a whole. War has a price, but it also achieves an aim. They hope to use that number to instill despair and defeat, but it should only make us more determined to see this thing through -- to continue fighting tyranny with democracy, oppression with freedom, and terror with hope. To do otherwise would dishonor their memory. Abraham Lincoln understood that their memory must be honored, and that their loss must bring determination.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

- Abraham Lincoln

I don't think I'll ever be able to use the phrase, "I've seen it all" again. I thought I had, until a United States Senator burst into tears at the mere thought that mean ol' John Bolton might be somewhat blunt when speaking to the dictators' representatives at the United Nations. "I'm afraid that when we go to the [Senate] well, that too many of my colleagues -- [voice breaking] -- that too many of my colleagues are not going to understand that this appointment is very, very important to our country," Ohio Republican George Voinovich sobbed. Give that man a handkerchief and a spinal replacement, please.

Sure, the last thing we need is an ambassador that actually represents American interests and intentions at the UN. We don't want an ambassador who agrees with Kofi Annan that public confidence in the UN is fading and reform is needed. It's perfect just as it is -- corruption, sex scandals, inaction on genocide and all. We need an ambassador that will coddle terrorist-supporting nations, sympathise with dictators and congratulate countries that make lucrative deals with international criminals -- the way France, Russia and China did with Saddam. We need to be gentle with those who represent repressive autocratic regimes, because they're really very sensitive inside. That's what we need!

More to the point, we need to let the Democrats dictate who our ambassador should be, even though they're in the minority. We should have an ambassador whose main concern is being nice to everyone, someone who prefers talking about problems to solving them. That's the only way to gain the love and respect of despots, which is America's most important goal. If we're just really nice to dictators, tyrants and warlords all the time, no matter how they treat us or their own people, then they'll truly love us -- you'll see.

Sorry, Liberals, that was all sarcasm. However, it does describe the thought processes of people who worship at the altar of the UN. We don't need any of those things. Frankly, we don't need the UN -- but there are people around the world who do. What the UN needs is John Bolton -- a man who will honestly represent the President, a man who will not fear to speak the truth as he sees it, a man who can be as blunt or (as his record shows) as diplomatic as the situation requires. A man, in short, who can get the job done. The United Nations needs reform, not appeasement. You don't reward bad behavior; it must be curbed.

Voinovich's breakdown came hard on the heels of assurances that John Bolton's nomination was going to be "smooth sailing" after the betrayal of yet another Ohio Senator, Mark DeWine. DeWine was a Republican member of the group that made the so-called "compromise" -- the deal that was supposed to restore order and cooperation in the US Senate. Those who made the deal said they were trying to achieve "comity" -- an "atmosphere of social harmony." What they actually got was comedy -- and the joke is on us, the American people. Despite the fact that we voted for a Republican President as well as a Republican majority in the House and Senate, a group of latter-day Neville Chamberlains (including DeWine) decided to hand the Democrats veto power over Presidential nominations. They lost no time in exercising this power, filibustering John Bolton before the ink on the deal was even dry. Ohio, what have the rest of us done to you that you send not one, but TWO spineless faux-Republicans to represent you in the Senate?

Of course, Bolton will end up being confirmed as UN ambassador. The filibuster was just a test of power by the obstructionist Democrats. (Yes, it was a filibuster, despite the "mainstream" media scurrying to find alternate terms for it like "delaying the vote." Why else would a cloture vote need to be taken?) Once again, the character assassination was nothing more than the de rigueur Democrat attempt to cast a member of the Bush administration in the worst possible light, to undermine both his and Bush's credibility. Haven't we seen enough of this sort of thing, during the "debates" on every single person Bush has nominated to any position?

Politicians like Senator Voinovich, siding with the Democrats, claim to be concerned with the message America is sending to the world. What kind of message does it send when he appears more concerned for the sensibilities of dictators than how to best represent American interests? Those who kowtow to the United Nations often repeat idiotic slogans like "speak truth to power," but when a man like John Bolton is put in a position to do just that, they cry foul. And some just cry.

UPDATE: Check out the website ConsoleGeorge.com!

So a group of Republican Senators have decided that getting favorable media attention is more important than preventing the Constitution from being violated by obstructionist Democrats. Not surprisingly, their leader was John McCain , long known as a RINO -- Republicans In Name Only. The Democrats have promised to filibuster judicial nominees only under "extraordinary circumstances" -- vague words that leave the Democrats free to decide what they think may constitute extraordinary circumstances.

We all know what that means. Any judge that fails to pass the Liberal Litmus Tests -- promising to uphold abortion on demand and not oppose gay "marriage" -- will be considered "extreme" and filibustered to death. This violates the Constitution, which specifically calls for the "advice and consent" of the Senate for a President's nominees. The Senate gets to vote yes or no on each nominee, not prevent a vote from being taken by using a "house rule" that covers discussion on motions and bills. A President's appointments are not ordinary Senate business like motions or bills! Any Senator who allows appointees to be filibustered is willfully violating the Constitution, and will never get my vote for any office, ever.

On a side note: before you Liberals start yelling the talking point du jour, "Abe Fortas," get the facts straight. Both parties delayed Fortas' nomination to Chief Justice for a matter of days while allegations of corruption were being investigated. When it turned out that Fortas would lose even if a vote were taken, LBJ withdrew the nomination. Fortas later stepped down from the bench amid a cloud of ethical violations. If anyone -- Democrat or Republican -- has evidence of corruption or crime committed by any of Bush's nominees, then they should go right ahead and delay the vote while the allegation is being investigated. THAT would be considered an "extraordinary circumstance." Not swearing to advance the Liberal agenda of the party that's out of power is not an "extraordinary circumstance." Yet that's exactly what will happen.

When the American people vote a party out of power in the House, the Senate and the White House, it's because their agenda is not wanted. Republicans have gained a majority in every branch of government, including state governorships and legislatures, since 1994. The only branch of government not directly controlled by the people is the judiciary... so the people have voted for those who would appoint and confirm the kind of judges they want. And certain weak-willed Republicans, who are afraid to act as though their party keeps winning because they might not get invited to the best cocktail parties, have surrendered to the losing party without a shot being fired. They continue to thwart the will of the American people, as expressed in election after election, just to gain a few favorable words in the "mainstream" media and a few points in the polls. And frankly, it's disgusting. We all lose by straying from Constitutional principles. There can be no compromise with unconstitutional actions.

The elephant in the room that no one's talking about is the next round of Supreme Court nominees. It's no secret that Chief Justice Rehnquist, a strong Conservative and strict Constitutionalist, is suffering from thyroid cancer. When he steps down, as he inevitably will, the Democrats will declare any nominee to the ideological right of Joe Stalin "extreme" and be free to filibuster until the cows come home. The rest of the Supreme Court judges aren't getting any younger, either. How many "extraordinary circumstances" are we going to hear about in the next few years?

There have been times and places in which a tiny minority controlled the majority, and it's never been pretty. We recently rectified such a situation in Iraq, where the Ba'ath party, supported by the Sunni minority, kept the majority of the people in virtual slavery. If we allow the minority Democrats to hold a virtual veto over the judiciary, while the judiciary continues to interpret laws and legislate from the bench according to Liberal sensibilities, we might as well stop pretending to live in a Republic where the people have a say in their own government.