NEW INS COMMISSIONER: On November 25, President Bush named Michael Garcia as Acting Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Garcia, assistant secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement, spent nine years as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. attorney in New York City beginning in 1992. He helped prosecute four terrorists for their role in the al Qaeda bombing of two American embassies in Africa, four terrorists for the World Trade Center bombing, and Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and two others for their plot to blow up a dozen American passenger planes. Said Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, "Mr. Garcia is one of America’s top terrorism prosecutors and will lead tough enforcement of our immigration laws to protect Americans from terrorism and secure our homeland." Garcia will preside over the INS’s dissolution and the integration of its functions into the new Homeland Security Department.
DISCHARGE FLAP: Enforcing the military’s policy against homosexuals, the Army discharged nine trainees at the Defense Language Institute, prompting a bit of a ruckus from liberals who complained that the military needs more people who speak Arabic and other languages important in the war against terrorism. Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness noted that such dismissals would happen less often if the military resumed the screening-out of homosexuals at enlistment time, a policy dropped by the Clinton Administration, which instituted the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy. "The law, however, still authorizes restoration of that question at any time by the secretary of Defense. . .," Donnelly noted. "The most important question to ask about the homosexual students dismissed from the Defense Language Institute is why they were allowed to enter in the first place."
BANKRUPTCY REFORM REVISITED: Just before Congress adjourned, Rep. Joseph Pitts (R.-Pa.) successfully led the charge to remove from the bankruptcy overhaul bill a controversial provision designed to bar abortion protesters from filing bankruptcy. With the provision gone, the Senate refused to clear the bill, and many businessmen, who have been trying to pass the bankruptcy reform for years, were not pleased. Pitts, however, agrees with the need for the bill and has pledged to help craft a new measure in January that can be passed by the Republican-controlled Senate early next year. "There still has to be action taken," Pitts spokesman Gabe Neville told HUMAN EVENTS, "since the number of personal bankruptcies has quadrupled since the present laws on the issue were enacted in the 1970s."
MISSISSIPPI VICTORY: In a step designed to end state courts’ rampage against business, Mississippi GOP Gov. Ronnie Musgrove signed a bill December 3 that will restrict the exorbitant jury awards that the state has become notorious for. The tort reform bill puts caps on punitive damages in product liability cases, among other reforms. In October, another new law capped damages on medical malpractice awards in an effort to stem the tide of doctors and insurance companies leaving the state. "What we have signed is something that will give a fair, level playing field to our system in Mississippi," said Musgrove. "A message has been sent to the world about doing business in Mississippi." Unfortunately, the new bill does not cap damages for pain and suffering. Mississippi courts have handed out seven judgments of $100 million or more in recent years.
RAINES TOO MUCH: Even Newsweek thinks that the New York Times’ new executive editor, Howell Raines, is too much. Raines has stepped up the Times’ aggressive campaigning for fashionable leftist causes, creating unease among the Times’ liberal staff. For example, in the past three months, noted the December 9 Newsweek, the Times ran an astonishing 32 pieces on the issue of forcing the Augusta National Golf Club to admit women. (Needless to say, the Times has not conducted a campaign to force Smith College to admit men.) The latest Times article, run November 25, appeared on the front page and criticized CBS for not jumping on the bandwagon. "The story spanked the TV network that has a contract to air the Masters for ‘resisting the argument that it can do something to alter the club’s policy,’" said Seth Mnookin in Newsweek, "although it was unclear who-other than the Times-was making the argument." Newsweek reported that Raines "once said the Reagan years ‘oppressed me because the callousness and the greed and the hardhearted attitude toward people who have very little in this society.’"
