ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JULY 27, 2005
WASHINGTON - - I am having a hard time caring about things. I am blaming this on the heat.
I know I should care more about CAFTA. CAFTA is important to everyone in this hemisphere. (Or at least that portion of the hemisphere that we actually give a darn about, namely us.)
CAFTA will either add or cost us jobs. It will either bolster or depress trade. I am having a hard time caring. In part this is because the other day I swear I heard somebody in line at Starbucks says, "I'll have a decaf CAFTA with 2 percent milk."
I also know the heat is causing me to care less about Karl Rove. Karl Rove has been caught up in the scandal surrounding the outing of an undercover CIA agent.
Almost everybody I know thinks Karl Rove will skate, however. Nobody will bring down Rove, they say. He is too high, he is too smart, and, besides, if he falls from power, who will run the country?
Among the Washington press corps, Rove is widely believed to be the "Boy Genius", the nickname the president has given him.
Rove, however, is 54 and no boy, and way back in back in 2000 I said he was no genius. Anybody who loses the popular vote to Al Gore is no genius as far as I am concerned.
True, Rove and what's-his-name won re-election in 2004, but they had a mole in the John Kerry campaign: John Kerry. There is no other explanation for how that campaign was run.
Anyway, I am having a hard time caring. I am also having a hard time caring about John Roberts (Is that his real name? It sounds fake to me), the AFL-CIO, the housing bubble,
and the energy bill. (I am too tired to think about energy.)
It's the heat. It is sapping the strength of the entire nation. This is not an exaggeration. I have proof. This story recently appeared in my local newspaper. I have changed nothing:
"A man in a nutrition store asked a clerk for a dietary supplement, then pulled out a knife and warned the clerk not to call for help. He took the supplement and fled."
He took the supplement and fled? No demand for money? No "Give me all the flax seed oil and lecithin you've got?"
No, he commits a felony over a dietary supplement. He didn't have the strength, the will, the concentration to ask for anything else.
He undoubtedly will be caught. (He will try this stunt again next time he needs some
echinacea and will get nabbed.) And at his trial, I can guess his defense:
It was the heat.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JULY 25, 2005
WASHINGTON - - I know I should be more outraged by the scandal in Chicago.
According to the U.S. Attorney there, the City of Chicago has hired people based on their political connections and not strictly on merit.
When I was growing up in Chicago, this was called "everyday life."
But today U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald feels that this is a "vast fraud."
Fitzgerald has discovered that "loyalty to certain political groups, alderman and labor unions tended to be decisive" in hiring.
Wow.
If Fitzgerald's name seems familiar, that is because in his spare time he is the special prosecutor who has put a reporter in jail in the Valerie Plame case.
Fitzgerald is so ferocious, especially when it comes to the press, I figure I better fess up before he kicks my door down: I was a teenage patronage worker in Chicago. I got the job strictly on political connections and not on merit.
For one summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I used a three-foot stick with a nail on the end to pick up garbage at Rainbow Beach in Chicago and place the garbage in a canvas bag I wore slung around my neck.
How did I get such a terrific job? I knew a guy who knew a guy.
I knew a community activist who knew the city treasurer of Chicago. The treasurer, Marshall Korshak, dispensed jobs like some people dispense breath mints.
I went down to Korshak's rather grand office at City Hall and he wrote me a letter on his official stationery, put it in an envelope and told me to go down to park district headquarters to get my job.
When I got there, more than a hundred kids were in a line that snaked down the hall. They were all there for jobs. I got in the end of the line and waited.
After about 20 minutes, a passing clerk saw in my hand Korshak's letter with the city seal on the envelope.
He took me by the sleeve and led me to the head of the line and then into an office. "Why dincha say something?" he said, sitting down and writing out my job assignment. "You have a letter. You don't have to wait if you have a letter."
And that day I learned about power and politics and patronage.
So I spent the summer picking up garbage. It would be a terrible cliché to say it was one of the best summers of my life, but it was one of the best summers of my life.
It was outdoor work and, by some strange social reversal, I gained great status by walking around in work gloves and wearing a garbage sack past my friends who were lolling around in bathing suits.
I was earning money. And I was obviously a guy who knew a guy.
People imagine there is always something heavy-handed and forbidding about patronage. That some guy knocks on your door 10 years later and asks you to do a favor for the Godfather.
And, at some levels, that exists. To get a favor, you have to do a favor.
But at my level, at the level of everyday patronage, I was not asked to do anything in return.
And what's the worst anyone could have asked of me? To vote Democratic? Hell, I was living on the south side of Chicago. I wasn't sure voting Republican was even legal.
At the end of the summer, I went back to college with the money I had earned and developed a social conscience. This is one of the drawbacks of higher education.
I eventually I graduated and became a newspaper columnist in Chicago and I wrote columns railing about the evils and unfairness of patronage.
One day, I decided to go see Marshall Korshak, who by that time was retired, to talk to him about all those jobs he had handed out.
He was proud of his accomplishments. "Over the years, I placed thousands of people," he said. "Thousands."
He did not remember, of course, that I was one of the people he had placed. So I told him about it. And, ungrateful cur that I was, I unloaded my guilty conscience on him.
I told him that what he had done for me was not fair, not right. Everyone should have an equal chance for every job, I said, regardless of whom they know.
Korshak gave me a weary smile. "Tell me something," he said. "You did the job? You picked up the garbage?"
"Sure," I said. "I did the job. I did a good job."
"So what wasn't fair?" he said. "As long as the job got done, what wasn't fair?"
That answer is no longer acceptable. Today, you answer something like that and you end up in a federal prison.
I imagine that in the future, there will have to be a committee of experts in Chicago to design a test for garbage picking . This test will have to be free of all cultural, racial and religious bias. And there will have to be people to conduct the tests and grade the tests and review the appeals of the people who flunk the test.
I am guessing the city will need about 50 bureaucrats to do what one guy did by writing a letter.
This is progress. This is inevitable. And I am glad that in the future people will be selected based solely on their skills.
But I'll bet none of them picks up garbage any better than I did.
ROGER SIMON COLUM
JULY 20, 2005
WASHINGTON - - Liberals can forget about blocking John G. Roberts from the U.S. Supreme Court. It simply isn't going to happen.
The U.S. Senate will confirm Roberts - - there will be no filibuster - - and he will probably serve for decades.
I am sure of this for two reasons: Roberts has no long paper trail as a judge and he is bright enough to keep his mouth shut.
True, as a lawyer working in the Reagan administration in 1991 - - he was the principal deputy solicitor general in the Justice Department - - he argued that Roe v. Wade was "wrongly decided and should be overruled", but that is what his client, Reagan, wanted. Roberts will argue he was merely a tool, a hired-gun, a lawyer.
Later, in getting confirmed for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Roberts said, Roe v. Wade was the "settled law of the land."
But how does he now feel about abortion? And how would he vote on it in the future?
We are not going to find out.
And we are not going to find out because the whole confirmation process is a game in which senators yap as much as they can and the nominee says as little as possible.
Not even the President of the United States knows for sure how Roberts feels about abortion. That's right. The guy who nominated him, George W. Bush, has made clear he does not apply a "litmus test" to his nominees. Which is what all presidents now say.
Back on April 5, 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton made campaign history by saying, "I will appoint judges to the Supreme Court who believe in the constitutional right to privacy, including the right to choose."
It was, I thought, honest and refreshing: Clinton was doing away with the pretense that he did not have a litmus test for his nominees.
And, on June 30, Clinton expanded on this by saying: "I think a judge ought to be able to answer a question in a Senate hearing: 'Do you or do you not support the right to privacy, including the right to choose?' "
A week later on July 7, Bill Moyers interviewed Clinton on PBS and endeavored to make sure that not only Clinton but everybody else understood exactly what Clinton was saying.
"Will you see to it," Moyers asked, "if you're elected . . . your first appointee (to the Supreme Court) will be a strong supporter of Roe vs. Wade?"
"Yes," Clinton replied.
"Is that not a litmus test?" Moyers asked.
"It is, and it makes me uncomfortable," Clinton replied, "(but) I would want the first judge I appointed to believe in the right to privacy and the right to choose."
There. He had said it plainly. Then something happened: Clinton got elected.
And at his first formal press conference in March, 1993, he was asked by a reporter: "Mr. President, during the campaign you gave some pretty strong indications that (in choosing) your Supreme Court nominee, you would certainly consider their position on abortion. Is that still the case?"
"Thank you for asking," Clinton said, "because I want to emphasize what I said before: I will not ask any potential Supreme Court nominee how he or she would vote in any particular case. I will not do that."
Huh? What happened? Before getting elected, Clinton said one thing and after he got elected he said another.
I have never understood why presidents don't use a litmus test or any other test they want in nominating people for the high court.
George W. Bush is opposed to abortion. So why shouldn't he pick a Supreme Court justice who is also opposed?
And why shouldn't Bush just ask the guy how he feels, one way or another?
But, Bush says he has not done and will not do that.
"Voters should assume that I have no litmus test on that issue or any other issue," Bush said on Oct. 3, 2000 during his presidential debate with Al Gore. "The voters will know I'll put competent judges on the bench, people who will strictly interpret the Constitution and will not use the bench to write social policy."
In other words, candidates and presidents like to speak in code so nobody knows exactly what they mean.
That way nobody can blame them if things go wrong.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
FOR JULY 18, 2005
WASHINGTON - - You might think the U.S. Senate would be a tad busy these, what with having to get ready for a Supreme Court vacancy and considering Social Security reform (remember Social Security reform?). But the Senate is never too busy to deal with a piece of legislation that has become a political gut-check: a Constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration.
The amendment, which was adopted by the House of Representatives last month, has come before Congress in one wording or another six times in the last 10 years, but has always failed in the Senate. Both the Senate and House must pass the amendment by two-thirds votes before it can go to the states for ratification.
While both proponents and opponents generally agree there has not been a rash of flag burnings in this country recently, the amendment energizes conservatives because it is seen as protecting a sacred symbol of America and liberals who see it is as a weakening of the First Amendment. (In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled by a 5-4 vote that burning an American flag is protected as free speech.)
Proponents believe they are within one vote of passage in the Senate, but not all the senators have revealed their intentions and party affiliation is not always a reliable indicator of how a senator will vote. According to published reports, at least three Democrats - - Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Bill Nelson of Florida and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, all of whom face tough re-election campaigns in 2006 - - will vote for the amendment.
At least one Republican, Bob Bennett of Utah, will oppose the amendment, though a few weeks ago he introduced legislation protecting the flag from desecration. This "wiggle" position - - the Supreme Court might very well strike down such legislation once again - - is also the one suggested by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York.
Bennett's colleague from Utah, Orrin Hatch, also a Republican, is the Senate sponsor of the amendment and told a reporter that senators proposing a law instead of an amendment are "doing that to cover their backsides so people won't be mad at them."
The amendment is only one sentence long - - "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States" - - but leaves unaddressed the knotty problems of defining what constitutes a "flag" let alone a "flag of the United States." (Lots of paper napkins that people use at July 4 barbecues have American flags printed on them. Does wiping your mouth with these napkins and throwing them away constitute flag desecration? But if flag applies only to cloth flags, what if I make up a cloth flag with only 49 stars and burn that? Is that desecrating a "flag of the United States"?)
While the White House plays no Constitutional role in the amendment process, it has endorsed the amendment, and political tea-leaf readers view the outcome as a sign of whether conservative forces really are ascendant in U.S. politics or not.
Terri Ann Schroeder, senior lobbyists for the ACLU, recently told a reporter, "We cannot guarantee that we will win this vote. My concern is that we will wake up the next morning and say, 'Oops, did we just amend the First Amendment?' "
Since the Constitution took effect in 1789, Congress has considered more than 11,000 amendments to it. Only 27, including the Bill of Rights, have ever been ratified.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
FOR JULY 13, 2005
WASHINGTON - - When you think about Christian conservatives, you think of the many battles they fight: opposition to abortion, opposition to gay marriage, and opposition to the teaching of evolution as fact to name just a few.
Now, they have a new cause: opposition to smoking.
A key figure in the national movement turns out to be an activist often associated with progressive public health causes, Vincent DeMarco, who led successful campaigns in his home state of Maryland to get the legislature to adopt handgun control measures as well as raise the tax on cigarettes.
"The faith community played such a central role in our gun control work, that I thought maybe we could do the same with tobacco," DeMarco says.
DeMarco is the coordinator of Faith United Against Tobacco, and a consultant with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, both groups working to prevent teen smoking and to get Congress to give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco.
A bill giving the FDA that power passed the Senate, but has been languishing in the House. (The Supreme Court has ruled that the FDA cannot simply assume the power on its own.)
On Wednesday (July 13) faith leaders of a wide variety, including liberals and non-Christians, met in House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's district on the outskirts of Houston to urge him to back the legislation. DeLay knows well that people of faith have become a powerful force in American politics.
Southern Baptists, who number about 16 million and often champion conservative causes, adopted a resolution last month at their 2005 Southern Baptist Convention to "add our efforts…to work to reduce tobacco use, especially among teenagers."
For some, the anti-tobacco campaign has a scriptural foundation in the teachings of Paul in 1 Corinthians (6:19-20):"Or do you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit…?"
And the Southern Baptist Convention resolution included the clauses: "Whereas, being created in the image of God endows humans with great dignity and inestimable worth…be it resolved that we encourage our churches to redouble their efforts to educate our youth about the dangers of tobacco use….
The faith leaders meeting outside Houston on Wednesday assembled 1,200 pairs of shoes to represent what they say is "the number of Americans who die each day from tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke."
The group will meet again in August to plot further strategy and determine how best to pressure DeLay into supporting the bill.
"The most interesting thing is how this issue has united the faith community," DeMarco says. "From left to right, they want to prevent tobacco addiction particularly among children and are willing to fight for it like David fought Goliath ."
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
FOR JULY 11, 2005
SIMON SAYS:
Pinatas are seldom worth the effort.
Who cares if China buys the American oil company, Unocal? I say make the Chinese buy Amtrak and the Postal Service, too. Let them lose their shirts instead of us.
Oh, grow up and buy a headboard. You're not in college anymore.
Although they are always hilarious in the New Yorker cartoons, do stores still have "Complaint Departments"?
It's a fact: Nobody has ever left a job without taking office supplies.
If you remember when light switches turned on and off with a loud click, you are getting pretty old.
Let me say this right up front: If nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, I will not accept. If confirmed, I will not serve.
I don't believe anybody really uses picture-in-picture on their TV.
Is there anything as good as a frozen margherita?
It is true: the Grand Canyon is one of the few things in life that won't disappoint you.
Do you think the people who drive Hummers realize how much they are loathed?
People who cheat at solitaire will cheat at anything.
How come hotels don't put those "sanitized" strips across the toilets any more? Did too many people forget to take the strips off?
I don't care what anybody says: I still like Jerry Lewis.
A question young singles often ask themselves: If I have a crock pot, do I really need a spouse?
Why do they make the commercials so much louder than the TV shows? Don't they realize it annoys people?
Some day you will clean the tracks of your shower door. But not today.
I have never gotten one, but I have a feeling a pedicure would be worth the money.
Why are hotels spending fortunes providing fancy music systems for their guests when most guests would just prefer a quiet room?
I don't think anybody really knows which way to pronounce desultory.
In "xoxo", which are the hugs and which are the kisses?
Just admit: All these new, fancy smaller SUVs are just station wagons.
Something I learned this week that is probably not worth knowing: the term "duffel bag" comes from the cloth produced in the Flemish town of Duffel..
Paperback Pick of the Month: "The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and The Forgotten Colony That Shaped America" by Russell Shorto in which we learn that we can thank the Dutch for the words boss, cookie, coleslaw and Springsteen.
If you had to, could you put your hands on your high school diploma right now? Would you even know where to look?
There are only two types of people in the world: those who tear the bandage off in one swoop and those who eek it off. They usually marry each other.
Remember pencil boxes? With that little slide thing on top that was supposed to do multiplication tables? Whatever happened to those?
"Being Bobby Brown" on Bravo may be the most astonishing show on television. But not in the way Bobby Brown and his wife, Whitney Houston, intended.
It seems to me the chief purpose of hurricanes is so TV reporters can stand in front of a camera and get wet. If more than one of them gets wet, it's called "team coverage."