Once again, according to Democrats, all the evils of the world began the day Bush was inaugurated. First they acted as if all bin Laden intelligence began coming in from the time W took the oath of office, to try and deflect anything from The Man Without A Legacy. Now Al Gore is implying that corporate shenanigans began only after a Republican plopped himself in the chair in the Oval Office. In a New York Daily News article, Gore claims, “You see now what it means to have an administration that’s that committed to fighting and working on behalf of the powerful, and letting the people of this country get the short end of the stick.” Is that why W didn’t move to bail out Enron? All his alleged commitment to fighting and working for Ken Lay was manifest in his not bailing them out of their own problems? Golly, I missed that subtlety.

Gore continued, “What we see now is a lack of confidence in our national economic policy, in the integrity of our accounting system, in the way government is being run.” Ah, so then these corporate execs lacked confidence in national policy and the way government under Bush was being run–the same Bush, mind you, allegedly “committed to fighting and working on behalf of the powerful”. So now Al’s saying that these CEO’s were both assuming they’d have the White House working for them, and at the same time lacking confidence in that same administration. And this caused them to hide billions of dollars! Of course! This seeming contradiction in motivations was the source of their greed! And see, it’s not their fault, it’s Bush’s, of course. Under some other administration, where lying was commonplace and the biggest corporate mergers in history took place, this never happened. Man oh man, Al’s blamed everything but tax cuts.

But wait…he does manage to work them in. He insists that these private companies “are not telling the truth about their future liabilities so they can shovel money out to executives at the top. That is exactly what the Bush-Cheney tax plan will do. They are misleading the country about the extent of the liabilities they are putting on us … on you.” See, tax cuts, giving every single taxpayer more of their own money back, is exactly like hiding billions in the Caymen Islands. (Truth be told, it’s spending, coming from both sides of the Congressional aisle, that are causing far, far more future liabilities than the tax cuts ever will. Al, of course, never talks about that.)

Expect to hear more of this nonsense as Election Day draws nearer. Al’s speech featured both internal contradictions and absurd comparisons. That will be the Democrat platform.

This nation was concieved “under God”. Virtually every one of the founding fathers gave God (and in many cases, the God of the Christian Bible specifically) the credit for bringing this nation into existance. Many of the decisions made in the creation of the United States were done with the idea that God made it possible, God’s law was over any law made by man, and therefore that the government and the nation should be “under God”.

The phrase “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance acknowledges that, plain and simple, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court notwithstanding. All these hypothetical questions like “would you think the same thing if the phrase was ‘under Allah'” utterly miss the point. When the 13 original colonies became the United States of America, guided by men who were guided by a Higher Power, they became one nation under God. “One nation under Vishnu” has no meaning, because that religion did not play a role in the founding of this country.

“One nation under God” is not a prayer, it’s an historical fact. One more fact about the religious nature of our country that liberal educators seek to expunge from history.

Today, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of school vouchers, with the 5-4 majority saying that if parents have the true choice, then it doesn’t constitute entangling religion with government.

The minority on the court said that the voucher system does not treat religion neutrally. Pure nonsense. If the voucher system had specifically singled out religious schools as ineligible for voucher money, that would have been the non-neutral stance. As it stands, the Cleveland voucher system lets religious schools play on a level playing field with secular schools. Some complain that the majority of the voucher money goes to Catholic schools and so this is de facto sponsorship of Christianity. This is essentially “blaming” the Catholics for making better schools. We’ve got the Darwinian public schools and the Christian private schools (Catholic, Protestant, etc.) among others. If you want to start a school with a neo-pagan world view, I have news for you. This is still America, and you are still free to do what you think is right. But if nobody comes, don’t blame the Catholics.

The Post’s contention that the decision “continued a trend of the court in recent years to ease the path toward state support of religion” is liberal bias at its subtlest. They deliberately confuse the church/state issue with the freedom of religion issue. The state is not supporting religion, it’s supporting the parents (directly, in the Cleveland case, where the parents physically get the vouchers, not the schools). I also wonder how all those allegedly “pro-choice” liberals are against parental choice. Always make sure you know what choices they deem you worthy of making.

See also: A House of Straw, my essay on why school vouchers are better for everyone. Or better yet, let me keep my own money and do with it as I please. Then the Supreme Court wouldn’t have to get involved.

Does the left hand know what the right hand is writing? At the NY Times, apparently not. Two stories, a day apart, proclaim that Alaska is melting, and then Alaska is freezing! Do we really want to set global climate policy when we really have no idea what’s going on? (Hint: No.)

There’s still quite a large number of people who believe that homeschooling is some sort of radical idea that can’t possibly work on a large scale, and (in spite of reams of studies to the contrary) causes kids to be non-social and under-educated. And of course, these people believe that all this must be regulated by the government. With that in mind, plant your tongue firmly in your cheek and read Lydia McGrew’s scathing satire on the subject: “Homefeeding Children: Threat or Menace?”

The current edition of The Federalist has this great quote in it. It ties in nicely with the previously linked Ann Coulter piece, exposing further hypocracy.

“(Memo to Ari Fleischer who has yet to produce a lucid talking point rebutting the Left’s criticism — here is one: Last week, the Left was criticizing the Bush administration for not telling the public about a pre-9-11 unconfirmed, unsubstantiated, uncorroborated and unspecified threat (see Federalist No. 02-20). This week, the Left is criticizing the Bush administration for telling the public about a post-9-11 unconfirmed, unsubstantiated, uncorroborated and unspecified threat. (But of course, the criticism is not politically motivated….)”

The only explanation I can figure for all this waffling is this: November, 2002. The Dems are throwing everything in their arsenal at Bush, regardless of how ludicrious it is on its face or how diametrically opposed it is to what they said yesterday, and hoping that, come Election Day, it has some staying power with their base (i.e. those for whom what was said last week let alone last year is no longer remembered or relevant). They’ll say that “this isn’t enough” and “that’s too much” (even, as in this case, they’re talking about identical things), but they’ll never says what’s just right. No one can never live up to their mark because they refuse to set one. All the better to criticize (and get re-elected) with, my dear.

Liberal pundits & politicians are still eagerly castigating Bush for not “doing something” after the FBI “Phoenix” memo. As I said before, liberals (and Cynthia McKinney in particular) would not have approved of what would have had to be done to really prevent it. Not convinced? Then let’s find out what they’re doing now, with perfect hindsight. Ann Coulter asks the question, given what Democrats are doing, exactly what do they know now?

Hugh Hewitt asks another question. It’s not what did Bush know, but what didn’t Bush know.

Here’s an editorial from last October that figures in to the brouhaha about what Bush new before 9/11. During the first week of October, 2001, the Washington Post reported that Clinton could have had Osama bin Laden handed to him on a silver platter, courtesy of Sudan, back in 1996. He refused, even after it was already evident he was gunning for America. Richard Miniter of the Wall Street Journal fleshed out the details; what the options were, and what was ultimately done. It includes the words of Clinton administration officials involved in the decision.

Once again, it’s a “both-or-neither” scenario. If Bush is culpable, then Clinton is, and a scandal about refusing to bring a terrorist to justice should’ve been a much bigger deal than complaints about imprecise intelligence. But this is the press, of course, running one negative story about their guy and hoping it would all go away. If Clinton isn’t culpable, then the reaction to Bush is purely political posturing.

The Media Research Center reports that the media have been extremely eager to tie Bush to some scandal, and are using their tunnel-vision (right on cue) to hype the Bush angle on the issue of who knew what before 9/11/01. They continue to report things as though all bin Laden intelligence came in immediately following W’s inauguration. However, the MRC’s report shows one lone media voice is seeing this for what it is. Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas called the whole story “phony” and “bogus”, and said that the media were just so eager for a scandal that they got all excited about it.

Lest one think that the media are always hungry for a scandal, consider this: ABC News reported on the discovery of Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress, physical evidence that Clinton did have “sexual relations with that woman”, in September of that year. Matt Drudge scooped them, though, by beating them to the story 7 months earlier in February. Where was the hunger for scandal (and accurate, timely reporting) then? The vigor with which the media has pursued the “phony” and “bogus” Bush story further shows their unequal treatment of conservatives and liberals.

Newsweek is reporting that eavesdropping on terrorist communications is like “taking a metal detector to the city dump”. There’s so much in terms of real and imagined threats and innuendo, that if the government publicized every potential threat, we’d be so overloaded with cries of “Wolf!” that we’d soon stop listening. Consider how much flak and ridicule Homeland Security has gotten for its color-coded alert status meter. If they can’t get any respect after 9/11 in trying to keep people informed, who’s to say anyone would’ve cared about boatloads of announcements before it?

Update: The media is covering one of the reports to Clinton on the potential for terror attack, but only the one easily hand-waved away. The 1999 report only dealt with personality profiles and what terrorists might be capable of doing. It was not based on uncovered evidence of them actually planning it. However, I’ve heard precious little about the 1995 discover of plans to crash planes into buildings, which would be much harder to defend against if no action was taken. And so far, nothing’s been said about what action was taken, if any. So it’s still a “both-or-neither” scenario.