Matters of Life and Death

You know that sketchy guy working at the local c-store? The nervous one with the shifty eyes and the strange accent who showed up out of nowhere a couple of weeks ago? The one who works his prayer beads like an abacus to make change for your gas and lottery tickets? You may want to keep a close eye on him (just in case), but according to the latest hysterics, we don't have to worry about him or his friends killing us any more. Why? Because it looks like a great big bunch of us are going down at the hands of some combination of Colonel Sanders, Frank Perdue or my sister, Susan (at Thanksgiving dinner). That's right! Hundreds of millions of us are going to die in a pandemic of something called "Bird Flu." I know exactly what you're thinking: "We spent the better part of four centuries and hundreds of dollars to kill and displace countless savage squatters so we could "Kelo" their land, build malls and refineries, and celebrate it all by spending one good day out of the whole year with our liberal brother-in-law watching over-hyped football games and chowing down on some great turkey with all the trimmings. For what? So we can all be incurably and fatally-sick before we even have our first piece of pie? And all because somebody's pig yakked on a Korean poultry farmer who never washes his hands?" If that's the way it shakes out, so be it, but "Bird Flu" is not high on the list of things that should keep any of us awake tonight (or even the night before Thanksgiving). In life's great dead pool, it's a safe bet that other, more clear and present, dangers will take us out in a more spectacular fashion and in larger numbers.... The signs are there for anyone to read: the Democrats, their many friends in the liberal mainstream media and the United Nations are three good reasons we should all sleep with one eye open. All three have placed their own pursuits of political power and influence over the rest of us above any pretense of principled concern for any American interests anywhere. This week the leadership of the minority (for many good reasons) party joined with the New York Times and the other dimming lights of the left to celebrate the death of our 2,000th American soldier in Iraq. With morbid headlines, historic distortions and outright lies about the conflict, they trivialized the loss of that soldier-hero as "a milestone" in their never-ending debate with the administration about our policy and purpose. Unconvicted murderer and famous drunk Ted Kennedy (D-Dewar's) described the soldier's death as "an auspicious occasion." And when they weren't marginalizing the sacrifice and significant success of our military, they were clucking about Dick Cheney's scooter, openly campaigning for the indictment of Karl Rove and trying to tell the President who and what they want him to install on the Supreme Court. Did these people miss the last election? They lost. The war is on. We've no choice but to win it. And the guy in the White House gets to nominate judges. None of their screams or deceits make a constructive contribution to any debate but it all added up to enough noise this week to drown out the release of the Volcker Commission Report on the UN oil-for-food program. The final report details the top-down corruption of the United Nations (as well as that of many foreign government officials) that kept the UN from doing its duty in the war on terror, most specifically in Iraq. The report provides a stunning, specific and comprehensive case that the United Nations is so rife with corruption that it can't be fixed. We should all be grateful to Paul Volcker for wading around in the East Side cess-pool long enough to get us the information we need to turn the whole toxic dump over to the EPA. As bad as this report might be for many deserving Eurotrash and third-world-all-stars, we're sure that once "Kofis Kash 'n Karry" is padlocked, we'll see a good number of those former UN bag boys working for Howard Dean at the DNC or on the editorial mastheads of The New York Times and Newsweak.... "The King is dead. Long live the King!" Whether we die by downing that tainted drumstick or we die by the bunches for any number of reasons after Hillary's inauguration, we know there's hope for a rich afterlife on the other side. Especially if you're a popular artist. According to the latest rankings released by FORBES, Elvis Presley earned $45 million in 2005, making the late King of Rock 'n Roll the leading moneymaker among dead celebrities for the year. Presley was tagged and bagged in Memphis on August 16, 1977 shortly after his king-sized body was found wedged between a toilet bowl and a wall inside a Graceland mansion bathroom. Did Elvis die of drug abuse, as has long been believed... or did he die-in-distress in the bathroom because he had pounded down a party-pack of poisonous poultry from Popeye's Chicken? It's been 38 years so we may never know, but it doesn't really matter. Thanks to Elvis we know that if you dare and do great things (and do them all with style and flair), dying isn't the end of the world.... Requiem for a Lightweight. The Supreme Court nomination of White House Counsel and longtime personal attorney to the President, Harriet Miers, passed away on October 24 following a four week illness. The official cause of death was listed as "inadequate credentials" with complications from "incomprehensible and unrealistic aspirations." A quiet memorial service for Ms. Miers' ambition was attended by all of her friends and supporters in a very small room at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. Miers is survived by Janice Rogers Brown, 56, of Sacramento, California, Michael Luttig, 51, of Richmond, Virginia and Samuel "Scalito" Alito, 55, of Philadelphia....

Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

What was the President thinking when he decided to hand his unknown and unremarkable 60-year-old personal lawyer, Harriet Miers, a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court? We do know that, in one sneaky stroke of political stealth, the President avoided a showdown with the intellectually-bankrupt left and denied the country a long-overdue and constructive debate of ideas; about the Constitution, the role of the Supreme Court and about many of the most important issues of our times. And he did it by picking a nobody he claims is the most qualified somebody anybody never knew. But we have seen too much of this White House and Senate (and are only too-aware of the stakes involved in Supreme Court picks) to accept Miers' nomination on its face without knowing more about her. So far, the reasons the White House has given us to like Harriet are pretty thin... "She went to public schools and then worked her way through a good, but not great, university" Well, so did I and so did most of my friends, but none of them are qualified to be a Justice on the Supreme Court, and I've already got a job.... "Harriet is good to her mother." Whew, it's a relief to know she's not Lizzie Borden, but we're not sure that's a great credential for the High Court. ..."She's a regular church-goer." So are Jimmy Carter, Pat Robertson and Osama bin Laden, but none of them has ever demonstrated a particularly deep understanding of, or high regard for, our Constitution.... "She's a woman." Then we can do better than Harriet. That's the same old saw that gave us affirmative-action-hire-for-life Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In Ruth's case, it was also used to obfuscate her well-known record as an ACLU acolyte of Karl Marx. But as bad as that record may have always been, at least it was a record. We knew what we were getting with Ruth, we just couldn't stop it. This time, if you really want to name a woman for the sake of naming a woman, then name a woman who's really a woman. Give us Jessica Simpson. Even (and more likely, especially) Ted Kennedy will support the pick. She's younger, a more accomplished professional in her field, and obviously a finer woman by any reasonable definition of the word. She doesn't come with any anti-American baggage. And she's from Texas!.... "I know her heart." Didn't you say that about Vladimir Putin while he was helping Iran build nukes?.... "I ran her by senators from both parties." She's got Harry Reid's endorsement? Well, hey, why didn't you say so? We were worried for a minute there.... "You can trust me." Why should we have to?.... This isn't brain surgery. A majority of people put George W. Bush in the White House twice... and gave him Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate to boot... largely because these critical judicial appointments were too important to be left to moonbats like Al Gore and John Kerry. And we've quietly swallowed a lot along the way. Spiraling spending, sieve-like borders during a terror war, unnecessary compromise with the left and the waffling and treachery of too-clever-by-half, linguine-spined Republican Senators and Congressmen; the list goes on. There are too many good reasons a lot of us who voted for Bush aren't ready to jump on the Harriet Miers bandwagon without knowing more. Trust? We trusted your Dad and we got David Souter. This time we're going to do it the way Ronald Reagan said to do it, especially when the stakes are high: "Trust... but verify." The long arm of the law reached out and grabbed Michael Moore's favorite mom-in-mourning, Cindy al Sheehan, as she and her pals partied and protested recently in the nation's capital. Despite being blown off the front page by killer hurricanes, and now largely-ignored by an increasingly astute and weary public, Cindy was tickled to be pinched. "I haven't been passed around like that since I dropped acid with Crosby, Stills, Janis Joplin and four of Arlo Guthrie's roadies under the stage at Woodstock. The first Woodstock," she giggled. At least one of the unnamed arresting officers was later treated for a nasty rash. The other lost a glove and a watch. Both deny returning Cindy's repeated calls.... Justice remains to be served for acquitted murderer O J Simpson, but he's still looking for it. October 3 marked the tenth anniversary of the day when the football legend walked out of Judge Lance Ito's courtroom a free man pledging to find the murderer of his ex-wife, Nicole, and a waiter named Ron Goldman. Demonstrating the same drive and determination that won him a Heisman Trophy, Simpson has spent countless hours searching the golf courses of South Florida for clues leading to the killer. Sometimes frustrated, but never giving up, "The Juice" has apparently also spent some time staking out the Krispy Kreme hoping to get the drop on the real killer of his children's mother. A rotund Simpson returned to Los Angeles this week to commemorate the past decade by autographing sports memorabilia for a fee at a Tinsel Town horror movie convention. When asked about the progress of his search for Nicole's killer, O J said, "I ain't payin' Fred Goldman a dime and if I ever find the guy who killed Nicole, I'm goin' to cut him deep and bleed him out. And this time, there ain't goin' to be any blood and stuff in my car and house when I'm done." The late Johnny Cochran was unavailable for comment but would, no doubt, have marked the occasion with a glib soundbite.... And in a world that needs far more "Justice" than "Juice" we're all more than a little diminished by the passing of legendary Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal at age 96. In 1945, the Polish-born Jew emerged from four years in twelve Nazi concentration camps (five were death camps), upright at nearly six-feet and weighing just under one-hundred pounds. Simon and his wife, Cyla (also a survivor), lost a total of 89 relatives in the Holocaust. With a promise to his fallen family (and six million other brutally-murdered Jews) that he would "never forget," Wiesenthal embarked upon what would become a life-long and worldwide quest to uncover, capture and convict those who killed his people. Along the way, his efforts delivered the sword to the likes of Adolf Eichmann (the engineer of "the final solution"), Karl Silberbauer (the Gestapo officer responsible for the arrest of Anne Frank) and 1,100 other of the most rotten of war criminals ever. Men like Wiesenthal are rare, and I suppose that's probably a good thing if considered in a certain light. But at the same time, his tenacity and hunger for justice... and his sense of duty to real victims... are inspirations for all of us.