This week's G8 Summit on Germany's Baltic Coast will feature a variety of leaders from the world's leading democracies to discuss various political, security, and economic issues.  One of these leaders is Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Unfortunately, calling Putin a democratic or republican leader is increasingly a real stretch.

 Higher oil prices are increasing Russia's wealth and geopolitical importance.   However, Putin has decided to use this increasing wealth and importance to take a magical mystery ride back to the bad old days of the Soviet empire.  Putin has sought to crack down on domestic critics having the state seize control of opposition media outlets.  He has reactivated the former KGB's practice of active measures against regime opponents by allowing the assassination of former KGB official and dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London last November using highly radioactive Polonium 210.

For me, the biggest sign of Putin's retrogression to Soviet era policies is his recent announcement that Russia will seek to actively oppose U.S. efforts to build a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe.  Such announcements could make one think it's 1987 instead of 2007 for those of us who remember the ferocious Soviet opposition to President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.  I guess Putin remains stuck in a late Soviet era time warp when it comes to understanding the growing ballistic missile threat the world faces from countries as diverse as Iran, North Korea, and China.

Putin is enthusiastic about pursuing Chechen terrorists but his vigor for going after Al Qaida, Iran, and other terrorist supporting regimes is limited.  He seems more intent on resurrecting the Soviet empire than creating a truly democratic Russia that could be a formidable ally to the west in fighting Islamist terror.  Putin could have engaged in further democratic reforms that would have demonstrated that Russia wanted to be part of the international democratic community.  He could have compelled his country to engage in a long overdue recognition of and accounting for the multiple crimes committed during the Soviet era.  Sadly, he has chosen to keep Russia in an authoritarian mold which has done incalculable disservice to the potential of the Russian people for centuries.

Hopefully, President Bush will engage in some frank Texas conservation with Putin about his abysmal record when they meet at the G8 summit in Germany.

Vladimir Putin has proven unable to shed the KGB apparatchik mentality he spent so much of his professional career in.  He's another example of a Russian leader the west initially put so much misplaced hope in, only to find out that he has chosen to remain imprisoned by the Russian/Soviet totalitarian leadership culture.

Count me as another conservative opposing S. 1348, the immigration bill.  This legislation has some positive features like enhanced border security provisions.  Unfortunately, its drawbacks are far more numerous including its pernicious provisions which would effectively provide amnesty for innumerable illegal immigrants.

The U.S. must remain a nation of laws with these laws applying equally to all citizens and would be citizens.  Title 8 of the U.S. Code already features several hundred pages documenting U.S. immigration law.  It's high time these existing laws were properly enforced against those violating them!

Other nations in the world make better efforts to enforce their immigration laws than the U.S. does and do so because they value the sanctity of the rule of law and the need to maintain societal cohesion.  Could you imagine an American emigrating to Brazil and flagrantly disobeying Brazilian immigration laws and not assimilating into Brazilian society by refusing to learn Portuguese?  Of course not.  Unfortunately, many illegal immigrants, primarily those of Hispanic ancestry, illegally enter the U.S., expect governmental services to be provided to them, refuse to learn English and think they are entitled to the benefits of the American dream.  These blatantly illegal immigrants are aided and abetted by an unholy alliance of businesses who mistakenly believe they need to hire illegal aliens and leftist immigration advocacy organizations who encourage immigrants to disobey the law.

Matters are exacerbated further when conservative supporters of this imprudent legislation, such as South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, launch ad hominem attacks against this legislation's critics by calling us "bigots" or other rhetoric more commonly used by the political and academic left to villify their opponents.  Crying racism is the first refuge of liberal scoundrels and  Graham's attacks only demonstrate the absolute intellectual and political bankruptcy of this legislation's apologists.

We need immigration legislation that promotes immigrant compliance with U.S. laws, provides effective border security, and makes societal cohesion its highest priority.  The critical importance of societal cohesion and the current challenges to it in the U.S. are ably documented in Samuel Huntington's 2004 book Who Are We?:  The Challenges to America's Identy.  Such legislation must not obsequiously pander to business apologists for illegal immigration and their partners in arms from illegal immigrant advocacy organizations such as La Raza.

American immigration policy has been most successful when immigrants have assimilated into the Judeo-Christian and Anglo-Saxon centric vision of national identity.  When multicultural mush becomes the basis for national immigration policy societal balkanization and disintegration are not far behind.  The examples of Rwanda, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and the former Yugoslavia during the past two decades are cogent examples of the dangers of a multicultural society.  We would do well to follow the admonition of Australian historian Keith Windschuttle who says multiracial societies can be successful but multicultural societies are destined to fail.

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is in the news again for shutting down Venezuela's one opposition television station.  Thankfully, a large number of Venezuelans took to the streets to protest their imperious and insecure dictator's attempts to crush what few remaining freedoms that country has.  Chavez seems to reflect the paranoid insecurity of so many dictators.  In our information abundant era, he seeks to squash any form of expression within his country which does not genuflect before his preening personality cult and glorification of "Bolivarian Socialism."  Chavez is symptomatic of to many Latin American caudillos in seeking to blame all of his problems on the U.S. and the mythical apparation known as "gringo imperialism."

Chavez is following his ideological soulmates Fidel Castro and Bolivia's Evo Morales in taking a regressive nostaligic march back in time to embrace unreconstructed socialism and that ideology's abundantly documented political, economic, and moral failures.  Why take hard steps to really improve the lives of your countries people such as spending within your means, respecting property rights, promoting individual liberty, having low to moderate taxes, promoting job creation, and promoting free trade when you can pursue the opposite policies?  It's easier to appeal to anti-American demagogues such as Iran's Amadinejad and Castro and their useful idiot allies in the U.S. like Jesse Jackson, Noam Chomsky, and Cindy Sheehan, than to take positive steps to really improve the lives of those in your country.

If Chavez had any brain matter, he could follow the example of pragmatic and responsible left of center Latin American leaders such as Brazil's Lula or Chile's Michelle Bachelet so he doesn't "tarnish" his soul with  American capitalism.  Unfortunately, Chavez is more likely to follow the examples of Castro, Kim Jong Il, and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe in plunging his country into further dictatorial repression, economic decline, and corruption.  The current rise in oil prices should be reaping positive economic benefits for Venezuela if they had a competent and moral leader stewarding their country.  Unfortunately, Venezuela is becoming an increasingly problematic country due to Chavez's egocentric imbecilities. 

Such salient observations on Chavez' true character will probably keep me from gaining admittance to Venezuela for the foreseeable future.  It's to bad so many Venezuelans have let themselves get seduced by Chavez and his brand of Latino political self-victimization.

Memorial Day is often thought of as the beginning of summer and a long three day holiday weekend in late May.  Here in Indiana, it is usually associated with the running of the Indianapolis 500.  However, Memorial Day is so much more than these superficial events.  We are now in the sixth year of our struggle with Islamist terror.  Over 3,000 Americans have given their lives fighting this evil in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as in other places we may not know about.  While we mourn the dead from all wars fought by this country, we should be especially attentive to those who have lost friends and family members in this ongoing struggle.  We should offer to help them out any way we can and ask for God's benevolent mercy on them.  The numbers of those who die fighting this terror will inexorably increase in the years to come.  As a nation we need to honor their sacrifice and remember that this will be a war whose success cannot be measured in the ways conventional conflicts such as World Wars I and II were.  This is a long term generational conflict that will not result in a surrender ceremony aboard a U.S. naval warship.  The key battles in this war will not occur on battlefields with memorable names like Gettysburg, Normandy, Iwo Jima, or Inchon.  Victory in this war will be long and hard and require our nation to learn new definitions of victory and sacrifice.  It will require having a long-term historical perspective on this conflict that recognizes it is not a conflict in which victory can be achieved through a smart weapon or a mouse click.  It will require breaking the spiritual pretensions of a fanatical messianic enemy and recovering our own unconditional trust in God in an age where so many people mistakenly believe science and technology have "answered" or are the "answer" to the problems of human existence.

Honor those who have died this Memorial Day and steel ourselves for a long protracted battle ahead!

I've enjoyed dissing various liberal Senators in recent postings and it's now time to diss liberal Representatives.  Last November's elections returned the Democrats to power in the House and Senate.  These election results enabled numerous old war horse liberals to assume committee chairs and other positions of power while allowing new liberal stalwarts to pursue their nefarious visions.  One of the old war horses of the House of Representatives is California's Henry Waxman.  Waxman represents his state's 30th district which includes a number of Los Angeles area locales including Hollywood.  He came to Washington in the halcyon Democratic victory of 1974 in the midst of voter outrage over Watergate and has become an troublesome fixture in the House since then.

Waxman serves on two of the House's most powerful committees:  Energy and Commerce and Oversight and Government Reform.  Both of these committees conduct prodigious amounts of oversight of federal agency programs and produce tremendous amounts of documentation of their activities.  As a Government Information Librarian, I assure you these committees crank out a lot of paper and occupy beaucoup byte space on the web documenting their activities.  Some of these investigations are useful but some are dubious.

Waxman now chairs the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.  This committee is concerned with evaluating the management performance of various government programs.  Go to this committee's website http://oversight.house.gov/ and you'll get an idea of its daunting agenda.  Congressional committees have subpoena power which they can use to compel recalcitrant witnesses to testify.  Sometimes that is necessary.
Under Henry Waxman's tenure, this subpoena authority will be used as part of his relentless desire to hound Bush Administration policymakers for real or imagined transgressions.  Waxman is especially fixated over the ongoing conflict in Iraq.  A bizarre obsession of his in this regard is his desire to compel Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify about information she may or may not have received as National Security Advisor concerning potential knowledge about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

Waxman has obviously not read the scores of documentation on the origins of 9/11 and its accompanying intelligence background to know that we're not likely to learn anything new about this tragedy.  Instead, he wants to hound Rice, who has justifiably resisted his pursuits, in order to prove that he's an anal retentive liberal crusader more interested in scoring cheap political points, than actually learning information that would help the U.S. avoid future terrorist attacks.  Unfortunately, as the chair of a powerful committee, Waxman will use his considerable powers to seek to ruin the lives and careers of any official or citizen who crosses his path or somehow incurs his self-righteous liberal indignation.  Americans should take a close look at Waxman over the next two years and decide if they really want such a malevolent power hungry ogre to conduct oversight of federal agency program management.  Waxman's preening arrogance should remind all Americans of the reasons why they took congressional control away from the Democrats in 1994.  Hopefully, his over the top behavior will alienate enough Americans to return control of the House to the GOP in 2008 and, hopefully, by then, the Republicans will recover the fiscal conservatism, administrative probity, and ideological certitude prompting their congressional victory in 1994.

 We have recently been regaled with the rhetoric of former "President" Jimmy Carter claiming that President Bush's policies make him the "worst President in history."  This is extraordinary hyprocrisy coming from a chief executive whose foreign policy and national security "accomplishments" include letting Iran be taken over by a staunchly anti-American and terrorist supporting regime that remains in place today and provides aid and comfort to terrorists fighting us in Iraq, who let Nicaragua come under the domination of pro-Soviet Sandanistas, allowing Grenada to be taken over by a pro-Soviet regime, reducing the American military to its sorriest state since World War II, proclaiming America was over its "inordinate fear of Communism" while allowing the Soviet Union to take over Afghanistan and expand its influence in Latin America and Africa, and allowing Iran's terrorist regime to kidnap American diplomatic hostages and hold them for 444 days.  Jimmy Carter never did have a clue as to what makes the international and Mideast security environment tick.  He still doesn't understand that you can't dialog or have the "peace of Abraham" with genocidal terrorists such as Osama Bid Laden, Iran's theocratic mullahs, and other Islamist gangsters who are hellbent on imposing a Taliban like regime on the Mideast and on the rest of the world.

It's time for Jimmy Carter to shut up and go back to shucking peanuts.

The University of South Carolina in Columbia was the scene of last night's GOP Presidential debate with all ten candidates seeking to make their case.  Ron Paul showed he is the GOP's Dennis Kucinich with his idiotic comment that the 9/11 attacks were the result of U.S. policies in the Mideast.  Paul was rightly rebuked for this by Rudy Giuliani and Paul 's blame America first stance now means that he must be classified as the extremely rare species known as the Noam Chomsky Republican.  John McCain gets the "award" for the second most idiotic statement of the night for saying he would not torture terrorists who knew of additional terrorist attacks in the U.S. even after such attacks occurred.  Senator McCain needs to be reminded that we are not engaged in obtuse philsophical discourse with Islamist terrorists but in a titanic existential struggle for survival.  Thank goodness Mitt Romney had the cojones to praise Guantanamo and argue for its expansion.  I also wish more candidates had the cojones to say they favor torturing terrorists or doing "whatever it takes" to extract information from them.

Mike Huckabee's line about Congress spending money like John Edwards at a beauty salon was the best quip of the night.  I would have liked to seen more mention of specific programs candidates would have eliminated.  Tommy Thomson mentioned an "agent" program at the Centers for Disease Control which he favored eliminating but he didn't describe this program in detail.  There are plenty of programs that could be eliminated from the federal government such as the Agriculture Dept's Rural Utilities Service (is there any farm in America that's not electrified seven decades after the New Deal?)  Is the Tennessee Valley Authority still necessary?  How about regional power administrations such as the Bonneville Power Administration?  Some of NASA's facilities?

Guliani was strong about fighting terrorism but weak on social issues.  Romney gave the most cogent and succinct answer about the dangerous consequences for our national interests about withdrawing from Iraq.

I am leaning toward Romney.  Although I strongly disagree with his Mormon theology, I think his overall policies will be Christian friendly.  I think he's an excellent and succinct communicator and that he'll continue pursuing an aggressive stance against Islamist terrorists.  While he has changed his positions on abortion and gay rights, he's changed them in the right direction.  The next GOP presidential candidate must be someone who's willing to tell Americans that we are engaged in a protracted generations long struggle against Islamist terror and that we should quit whining about the complex and bloody nature of this struggle and wage it until we are victorious!

Nicholas Sarkozy has been elected France's new president.  Sarkozy represents the "conservative" side of French politics which really consists of the Socialist Party and a conservative in name only Gaullist party.  This generally leftist ideological stagnation has plagued French politics since the beginning of the 5th Republic in 1958.  Still, Sarkozy's victory gives some cause for hope.  He has pledged to improve French relations with the U.S. which were damaged by outgoing President Jacques Chirac's opposition to the Iraq War which was motivated by Chirac's desire to maintain French commercial interests in Iraq and prop up France's buddy Saddam Hussein then from anything remotely resembling moral or intellectual principal.

Sarkozy has also made some positive signs on the economic front about opening up France's stagnant economy.  He has talked about repealing France's idiotic 35 hour work week which is a major deterrent to productve workplace performance.  Hopefully, he'll also have the guts to reduce the role of government in French economic life, cut spending and taxes, and get rid of the dangerously protectionist European Union's common agricultural policy.  Sarkozy should also work to ensure that France's Muslims have positive incentive to assimilate into French life such as having the chance to get affordable housing and have high quality education and training to enter the workforce of a 21st century knowledge-based economy.  Hopefully, Sarkozy will also weaken the secularist provisions of France's 1905 constitution which make it nearly impossible to intelligently bring personal religious views into public life.

France has been morally enervated by 20th century existentialism, socialist economics, and a leftwing intellectual culture in recent decades.  To effectively combat Islamist terrorism, it needs to recommit itself to Western Europe's Judeo-Christian heritage instead of engaging in delusions about France's purported "mission civilatrice", quit deluding itself as being the Gaullist alternative to alleged American hyperpower,  and stop engaging in the idiotic fantasy that there is a mythical third way between free market economics and state socialism.

Recently, British newspapers have said Sarkozy has the chance to emulate two relatively recent British Prime Ministers:  Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher.  If Sarkozy chooses to emulate Heath, he will follow in the pattern of groveling before European Union centralism, ideological mush, and socialist stagnation.  If he chooses to emulate Thatcher, he takes the choice of supporting free market economic reform, principled conservative leadership, and standing firm against totalitarian evil.  Hopefully, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan will be the inspiration for Sarkozy's upcoming tenure as French President.

Sometime within the next several weeks, Tony Blair will end his remarkable ten year run as British Prime Minister and turn over the reins of 10 Downing Street to his Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.
British politics are continually fascinating, as are the politics of other British Commonwealth countries.  If I were British, my political philosophy would be Thatcherian Conservative.  Blair has made some remarkable accomplishments.  The British Labour Party, during the heyday of Thatcher in the 1980s, was a virulently left wing party committed to socialism and appeasing the former Soviet Union through unilateral nuclear disarmament.  It is to Blair's credit that he moved his party toward the center and moderated its policies enough that it was able to win power in 1997 after an 18 year Conservative reign that ended with British Conservatives fatigued and plagued by scandal.

Blair has been able to lead his leftist party to three consecutive electoral victories through relatively favorable economic policies, Conservative disarray, and good fortune.  Americans of all stripes, particularly Conservatives, should always be grateful to Blair for taking part in military campaigns against Islamist terror in Afghanistan and Iraq.  His relatively realistic understanding of this struggle and his willingness to take unpopular stands against Labour Party opinion reflects genuine courage. We should also mourn the British soldiers who have given their lives in this just struggle.  Blair is also a skilled orator and debator who is a formidable opponent in the rough and tumble of the British House of Commons.

Nevertheless, Blair's Britain has significant problems.  Crime is way up because of family breakdown, moral relativism, and preening multicultural political correctness that refuses to make individuals responsible for their behavior and maintains imbecilic opposition to the death penalty.  An example of this political correctness in fighting crime is reflected in the British Home Office website http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ which proclaims the agency's mission as building a "safe, just, and tolerant society."  A tolerant society?  Could you imagine an American law enforcement agency spouting such nonsense?  Safe and just are fine but a "tolerant" society is one that is indulgent of morally relativistic criminal behavior.

Another problem with Blair is the continuing growth of the British Government.  Britain's National Health Service remains a bureaucratic monstrosity six decades after its creation and it still fails to provide Britons with quality health service despite expenditures of tens of billions of pounds.  Blair's government actually thought hunting was such a grievous "societal evil" that it ramrodded legislation through Parliament to ban it.
Taxation of industrious Britons has gone up and there has been no tangible attempt to integrate large numbers of Muslims into British society with the July 7, 2005 London bombing and recurring arrests of Muslims in terrorist plots being further indication of the abysmal failure of British authorities to confront the enemy within.

In addition, Blair's ill-advised experiment with devolving authority to Scotland has resulted in the election of a Scottish Parliament that will be lead by the petulant Scottish Nationalist Party that wants Scotland to be independent.  Fortunately, this party just won a bare plurality of seats and shouldn't have the public support to pursue its independence fantasies.  The recent bizarre episode involving so many British marines who were more concerned with being buddies with Iran's terrorist regime, than defending British military honor was also troubling.  An especially galling strike against Blair is his permitting the legalization of sodomite civil unions on his watch.

Gordon Brown, as Blair's successor, is a paternalistic socialist who wants to throw more western money into the foreign debt sinkhole known as Africa.  It's unclear how long Brown will continue Britain's military commitment in Iraq.  The Labour Party is running out of steam as witnessed by the drubbings it took in last week's local government elections.  The Conservatives are making some resurgence, but I'm not sure if David Cameron has the intestinal fortitude to be the tough leader the British need to confront Islamist terror.  Cameron has instilled some new life into the Conservatives but the jury is still out on him and he didn't help himself several months ago when he said that criminal hooligans known as "hoodies" needed to be hugged.

I am an Anglophile and haven't given up hope Britain will regain its moral compass and remain a significant force for good in the world.  However, I don't expect Gordon Brown to be the leader Britain needs to enable it to prosper morally and be an aggressive fighter against Islamist terror.

The frustations we are currently experiencing dealing with Islamist sectarian strife in Iraq are causing critics of this conflict to bring up the spectre of Vietnam to cloud the minds of the public.  Unfortunately, critics of our efforts in Iraq are learning the wrong lessons from the Vietnam War.  The lesson everyone should learn from Vietnam, as applied to Iraq, is not to abandon allies when the going gets tough!  When we left Vietnam we condemned the South Vietnamese to the rule of a tyrannical Communist regime which resulted in the sometimes tragic story of the boat people who left their now Communist state to risk their lives on the open seas.  We also condemned Cambodians to suffer the genocidal holocaust of the Khmer Rouge regime.  We abandoned the Hmong people in Laos to suffer under the Marxist tyranny of their own country which included suffering chemical "yellow rain" attacks.

By leaving Lebanon in 1983-1984 after the Marine barrack attacks by Islamist terrorists we sentenced that country to another two decades of Syrian occupation.  By leaving Somalia during the early years of the Clinton Administration, we sentenced that country to more than a decade of additional anarchic chaos which is ongoing.

Numerous people in Iraq, at great risk and costs to their lives, have supported us and our noble efforts to create a better country.  If we cut and run and abandon them we sentence them to the same grisly fate experienced by the South Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and Lebanese.  It's vitally important that when the U.S. commits its resources and military personnel to combat operations in another country that we carry out that commitment until it is successfully completed no matter the cost!  Islamist terrorists want to throw us and other democratizing influences out of the Middle East so they can impose Taliban like regimes on that area of the world and on other regions.  This week's idiotic congressional votes are telling the Iraqi people an d our enemies that we don't have the guts and moral principle to fulfill our commitments.  These votes tell our relentless and remorseless enemies that we don't have the moral courage to fight them when things get tough and that we will abandon our allies in Iraq like we abandoned the nations and ethnic groups listed above.  They tell potential future enemies in Iran, North Korea, and perhaps China that we don't have the stomach and long-term moral persistence to engage them in potentially protracted and costly struggles.

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, John Murtha and other members of the cowardly terrorist appeasing curs club may be prepared to reconcile themselves to sectarian Islamist genocide in Iraq and wash their hands of America's allies again in Pilate-like fashion.  Americans who care about the commitments their country has made in Iraq should rise up and tell these individuals what intellectual and moral cretins they are for their actions.

Harry Reid inserted his foot into his mouth with his recent declaration that the war in Iraq was lost.  Could you imagine the Senate majority leader in 1942 declaring the war against Japan was lost because of defeats at Wake Island or other locales?  Of course not.  Unfortunately, Contrary Harry is not a statesman looking out for the U.S. national interest.  Harry Reid is a short-sighted prick more concerned with scoring cheap political points and enhancing his Las Vegas neon sign sized ego than finding constructive ways to win the war against terrorism.  To my knowledge, Harry Reid has not served on any national security related committees during his senatorial career.
Even though he has access to classified information, he probably has not authored substantive national security related legislation during his career.  Has he ever bothered to read substantive and classified appraisals of the situation in Iraq written by on location military and intelligence professionals?  Don't bet your lunch money on it.

Harry Reid loves to tell how he grew up in the modest locale of Searchlight, NV.  This community is near Las Vegas and Reid obviously draws his true values and campaign finance resources from that city's corrupt gambling interests.  Reid is way over his head when it comes to making intelligent decisions on how to conduct the war against Islamist terror.  Al Qaida operatives should wear Harry Reid campaign buttons when they go into battle as a token of his tacit support for them which he demonstrated in his recent comment.  Reid has spent a good chunk of his senatorial career fighting federal efforts to create a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain Nevada.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if Reid were forced to live there among the radioactive waste deposits?  It would  be an appropriate legacy for someone who is creating an increasingly toxic operating environment for our forces in Iraq by his idiotic comments.

About two years ago, my wife and I were dining at an Italian restaurant near the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.  Sitting at an adjacent table was contrary Harry and some associates.  It took all my self-restraint not to go over and tell him what a prick he was.  Considering Reid's recent idiotic comments about the situation in Iraq, take a couple moments to email, write, or phone with him at his Washington or Nevada offices and let him know how stupid he is.

Arizona's senior Senator John McCain is running for President and gets the lion's share of media attention.  Senator McCain has some desirable qualities including his strong support for the war in Iraq.  He also has his weaknesses as the abominable McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act demonstrates.

Arizona's other Senator John Kyl is, I believe, better suited for the presidency than McCain.  Kyl has served in the Senate since 1995 and was in the House from 1987-1994.  Kyl currently serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee and that committee's Homeland Security Subcommittee where he has been a stalwart supporter of conservative constitutional principles.  He has served on the Senate's Energy & Natural Resources Committee and currently serves on the Senate Finance Committee where he demonstrated his commitment to conservative fiscal principles.
While in the House, he served on the House Armed Services Committee and he is a highly respected figure on national security issues.

Kyl is a man of sound character and judgment.  He also possesses an intellectually substantive grasp of today's multifaceted and complex public policy issues.  Visit his website http://kyl.senate.gov/ to learn more about this distinguished leader.  Arizonans are fortunate to have him as their U.S. Senator.  Conservatives looking for a serious and substantive presidential candidate from Arizona should give serious consideration to John Kyl.

After years of experiencing defeats in judicial abortion cases, yesterday's Supreme Court ruling upholding a federal ban on partial birth abortion is exceptionally satisfying.  It's good that a bare majority of Supreme Court justices had the intellectual sagacity and moral discernment to uphold some restrictions on abortion.  It's especially delightful to hear abortionists and their apologists wail and gnash their teeth over this important verdict.  The Court's detailed description of the gruesome nature of partial birth abortion is particularly informative and should serve a useful pedagogical purpose for individuals who have a view of abortion as a "sanitized" clinical procedure.

It's to early to say if this will result in the overturning of the intellectually vacuous and morally abominable Roe vs. Wade.  The abortionists and their useful idiots will fight even more ferociously now that their talisman of a "woman's right to choose" has been dealt a intellectual body blow by yesterday's ruling.  This ruling does, however, make it possible to believe that we could see the joyous day when Roe vs. Wade is relegated to the dustbin of history  like the Dred Scott decision.  It's vitally important that we elect a conservative pro-life President in 2008 and a Congress that is committed to pro-life positions.

I share the horror others feel at yesterday's Virginia Tech tragedy and my prayers are with the victims, their families, and friends.  Additional details about this tragedy will undoubtedly be revealed in the days and weeks to come.  It's clear the university's administration did an abominable job in informing students of the first incident.  Relying on email to communicate to the student body and community is absolutely pathetic!  Were university administrators stupid enough to think that all members of their community are looking at their email 24/7?  A campus wide system of loud speakers would have been a much more intelligent and effective warning mechanism.  Va. Tech's president has now revealed that it was a student who was the perpetrator.  It's to early to say what are the best procedures to implement to prevent the occurrence of other tragedies on campuses.

Some things are clear.   University students, faculty, and staff need to recognize that a college cannot be a completely safe environment.  These same individuals need to recognize that life is a precious gift from God and can be revoked at any time.  Human beings are not indestructible!  Two often at secular universities, the reality of God is dismissed or relegated to the sideline.  The appearance of unadulterated evil is dismissed as being a psychological or sociological aberration curable by secularist multicultural socialization.  My biggest prayer is that this will cause university students and faculty to confront the reality of their own mortality, our need to cherish every moment of our lives, and our absolute dependence on God for life and health.  Counseling sessions by ignorant secularist psychologists or vapid quasi religious platitudes by university administrators will not comfort the moral fragility Va. Tech students are experiencing at this time.

Va. Tech university administrators and administrators at other university campuses need to take a long hard look at their souls as they seek to develop truly effective responses to this tragedy.  Relying on technology alone to reduce the possibility of such events occurring won't cut it.  The profound moral implications of this tragedy must also be addressed.  Universities need to quit treating students as customers and resume the role of in loco parentis as they seek to educate their students. 

Students themselves need to come to grips with their own mortality and be aware of their surroundings at all times.  Quit yakking on your cell phones all the time and get over your pathetic baby need to be in 24/7 electronic contact with other people!  Build genuine, effective, and enduring relationships with your fellow students that are not restricted by cell phones, email, or text messaging.  Know your fellow students and what makes them tick and care about them.

If reports are true that the perpetrator of the Va. Tech tragedy was of Asian ancestry, this should also cause university administrators to do more to assimiliate non-American students into American cultural mores.  If true, this incident should also cause university administrators to not be so uncritically accepting of any international student who wants to study at their universities.  These administrators need to look at the mental and emotional stability of these students and weed out any who show tendencies toward using violence to resolve their problems.  Such administrators need to get over their cultural relativism and accept the reality that acceptable behavior in some cultures is not acceptable here in the U.S.

The liberal media and the civil rights victims mentality lobby are riding in full fury over Don Imus' idiotic comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team.  Imus comments were stupid but why in the world does anyone take this bozo seriously or care about what he thinks? Why does the Rutgers women's basketball team think they need personal validation from a crude shock jock like Imus?  The Rutgers women should quit wasting their energy or time worrying about what Imus says or thinks and prove him wrong by being excellent women in their professional and personal lives.

The liberal media, the civil rights victims lobby, and their academic allies, fail to realize that you can't outlaw stupid comments.  You can no more prohibit public expressions of  "racist" or "misogynist" comments than you can stop the rainfall we're experiencing in western Indiana this morning.  Does the First Amendment no longer apply in public discourse?  Are we becoming a totalitarian state where we can't make justified or unjustified criticisms against individuals or "preferred" ethnic or gender groups?  Do we consider the idiotic ramblings of morning radio disk jockeys to be worth creating public controversies over?  Does everything that is said on the media in this country have to be approved by Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson?

Only people who have absolutely no self-esteem will let themselves be paralyzed by derogatory comments made about them by people such as Imus.  Normal people realize that the person or persons making such comments are uninformed fools and get on with their lives instead of wallowing in self-pity like the Rutgers women's basketball team appears to be.