SEASON OF CHOICE? Planned Parenthood, mocking Holy Scripture, is selling T-shirts and holiday cards featuring a "Choice on Earth" theme instead of "Peace on Earth." Timed to coincide with the celebration of Christ’s Nativity, the campaign would be bad enough if it supported choice, Christian critics say, but Planned Parenthood is actually pro-abortion, not pro-choice. "Has Planned Parenthood spoken out against [Communist China’s forced-abortion and one-child] policies? Has it advocated ‘choice’ in China? Has even one Planned Parenthood official criticized Beijing for its anti-choice, pro-abortion campaign?" asked World Net Daily columnist Joseph Farah. "No." Farah also points out that "Planned Parenthood gets some $200 million a year from taxpayers." In fact, international Planned Parenthood has pointed to China’s family planning program as a model. CHANGES AT 1600: Chris Henick, right-hand man to White House political maestro Karl Rove, revealed he is leaving the Bush Administration for undisclosed options—possibly, he hinted, working with Hollywood on patriotic films about 9/11 and the war on terrorism or running the expected ’03 gubernatorial campaign in Mississippi of former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour. Henick’s successor in the Rove shop is fellow conservative Barry Jackson, now head of the White House’s Office of Strategic Initiatives and formerly top aide to Rep. John Boehner (R.-Ohio). Jackson’s present job will be filled by Pete Wehner, longtime chief aide to former Secretary of Education William Bennett. ALTER EGOS: The new chairmen of the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have both selected their closest political associates to serve as operating heads of the two GOP campaign bodies. NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) tapped Sally Vastola, who was his top aide in Congress and while he was county legislator, state assemblyman and Erie County GOP chairman, to be the full-time director of the campaign committee. Similarly, Sen. George Allen (Va.) turned to Jay Timmons, who managed his races and ran his office while he was governor and senator, to oversee the NRSC while he is chairman. KOOKY AUTHOR COMING HERE: The Associated Press reports that left-wing wacko and conspiracy theorist Thierry Meyssan, French author of The Frightening Fraud, is planning to kick off an American book tour in New York City. In the book, Meyssan suggests the September 11 attacks were devised by a faction of the U.S. military and that the Pentagon was hit by an American missile, not a hijacked airliner. The American subsidiary of the book’s French publisher, USA Books, says that he could launch the tour as early as this month. The publicity blitz is likely to include interviews with several major TV news shows that have expressed interest. Lt. Col. Ken McClellan, a Defense Department spokesman, expressed disgust. "Certainly there’s a market for any sort of trivialization of history," he said. "That doesn’t make it less of a tragedy." Meyssan’s book is selling briskly in his home country. His website says that the U.S. Army and the National Science Foundation have tried to simulate the September 11 attack on the Pentagon and failed. "But the incapacity of the scientists to reconstitute the official version demonstrates a contrario that it is scientifically impossible," it says. The website, www.reseauvoltaire.net, is named after Voltaire, from whom Meyssan is spiritually and intellectually descended. FOLLOWING STUDENTS: On December 11, the Justice Department announced the final rule implementing the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), mandated by Congress to track the one million foreign students and "exchange visitors" who stay in the United States each year. "SEVIS will allow the United States to ensure that foreign students and exchange visitors who have entered our nation to study in our schools actually enroll in those schools," said a press release. All schools must comply by Jan. 30, 2003, though not all information about students who were enrolled before that date will necessarily make it into SEVIS until Aug. 1, 2003. IS ANYONE LOOKING? How do the liberals get away with it? Here’s columnist Thomas Sowell December 11 on our failed city schools: "Most–if not all–metropolitan school systems in this country have been controlled by the Democrats for decades. Yet the dismal failures of these schools never seem to cost urban Democrats any votes, least of all among minority voters, whose children’s chances in life are destroyed in those schools before they ever reach a college or an employer."
