April 07, 2005

The Tom DeLay Scandal Appears to Be Lacking in Actual Wrong-Doing

Tom DeLay is accused of wrong-doing because his wife and daughter worked for him and were paid $500,000 over the past four years.

First of all, is this illegal? It is not:

And Thursday’s Washington Post quoted a lawyer who said that under federal election rules, “It’s clearly legal to pay relatives provided they provide services at the going rate.”

Is it unusual? It is not. The NY Times states that other members of Congress employ relatives on their campaigns:

Several members of Congress, Republican and Democratic alike, have employed relatives on their campaigns…

$500,000 sounds like a lot. But over four years it’s $62,500 per year per person, which is decent money, but not an unusual amount for someone to make.

Given that working with relatives is legal and common practice in Congress, this does not appear to be an abuse of power or position.

Ann Coulter on the Uplifting Power of the Judeo-Christian Tradition

Ann Coulter discusses the incident in which murderer Brian Nichols escaped from custody and took Ashley Smith hostage:

I’ll leave it to the Catholics to explain the theological details, but we have a beautiful pair of bookmarks to the exact same incident illustrating women’s special skills and deficits. The escape and capture of Brian Nichols shows women playing roles they should not (escorting dangerous criminals) and women playing roles they do best (making men better people).

Nichols’ murderous rampage began when he took the gun from a 5-foot-tall grandmother who was his sole guard at the Fulton County Courthouse. It ended when an otherwise unremarkable 26-year-old woman appealed to the Christian conscience of this same violent killer holding her hostage.

At 2 a.m. one Saturday night, Ashley Smith went out for cigarettes while unpacking her new apartment, yet another victory for tobacco pleasure. Returning from the store, Smith was grabbed by a man at her front door, who put a gun in her side and told her not to scream. He asked if she knew who he was. When he removed his baseball cap, she saw it was Nichols, the dangerous fugitive all over television who had escaped custody during his rape trial and had killed four people in the previous 48 hours.

In Smith’s apartment, Nichols bound Smith’s feet and hands and put her in the bathtub. Later, at Smith’s request, Nichols allowed her to hop from the bathroom into the bedroom, where she began talking to him.

In short order, Smith was reading aloud to Nichols from the Christian book The Purpose-Driven Life—in direct violation of his constitutional right to never hear any reference to God, in public or private, for any purpose, ever, ever, ever! For more on this right, go to the “People for the American Way” website.

After reading the first paragraph of Chapter 33 aloud, about serving God by serving others, Nichols—the man pundits were calling an “animal”—asked her to read it again.

Nichols listened to the passage again and responded by telling Smith he was already dead, saying, “Look at my eyes.” But Smith looked and told him God had a purpose for him, perhaps to minister to other lost souls in prison. Smith read to Nichols some more, both from the Purpose book and from another popular book that’s been dropped from all news accounts of this incident: the New Testament. (In the Hollywood version, Smith will be reading from the Koran.)

Ann’s right. The Judeo-Christian tradition has an uplifting effect on people, and this is a great example.

Isn’t the Left Supposed to Be in Favor of Free Speech?

Sometimes it seems like that’s all you ever hear from the Left, is how much someone’s free speech is being violated. So what’s up with all this pie-throwing?

A conservative activist who criticizes what he calls the leftist domination of college campuses was struck with a pie Wednesday night at Butler University.

David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, had just started a lecture at Butler when he was hit.

...It was the second time in a week that a conservative lecturer was hit by a pie at an Indiana university. On March 30, William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, was attacked during a speech at Earlham College in Richmond.

For many on the Left, free speech is for everyone who agrees with them, while they would like everyone else to be not permitted to speak. That’s because they know they can’t win an argument on the facts.