*PBA PASSES: On October 21, the Senate voted 64 to 34 to ban partial-birth abortion in the United States. This the first federal legislation since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to regulate an abortion procedure. Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine voted against the ban, as did Rhode Island Republican Lincoln Chafee, who could face a serious primary challenge in 2006. Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who has recently started voting pro-abortion on a regular basis, skipped the historic vote. This should give Texans some pause, as she is reportedly considering a run for governor. President Bush has vowed to sign the bill into law.
*BITTER ENDERS: Pro-abortion forces are dead-set on keeping legal an act tantamount to infanticide that even Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Tom Daschle of South Dakota voted to prohibit. Said Gloria Feldt of Planned Parenthood: "This ban makes no exception for a woman's health. It's unconstitutional and we will pursue every legal option, including a federal lawsuit, to prevent it from taking effect."
*ALAS, LIEBERMAN: Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a presidential candidate who was once considered somewhat socially conservative for a Democrat, voted against the partial-birth abortion ban.
"I strongly support a women's right to choose," said Lieberman. "This bill, which the Republican leadership is again railroading through Congress and which the President is sure to sign, is about politics, not sound policy. The last time a bill like this was signed into law, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. There is no reason to believe that won't happen again. As President I will do everything I can to uphold Roe v. Wade."
*WORKERS WORLD RETURNS: Workers World Party, loosely associated with North Korea, and the Committees of Correspondence, close to Castro's Cuba, are organizing a Washington, D.C. rally on Saturday, October 25 to protest the U.S. war against terrorism. The two ultra-left groups began organizing the defense of the "axis of evil" within days of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Saddam's defeat was a setback for them, but they are trying to rally tens of thousands to come to Washington.
*DEAN DOWN? Democratic Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri may be turning the tide against former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (the left's most recent darling) in the race to win the January Iowa caucuses.
"Two new polls of likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers indicate Howard Dean has peaked here and that Richard Gephardt has dug himself out of a summertime hole to reclaim his position as the front-runner in the state," reported David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register. "There's also interesting evidence showing Gephardt's centrist views on Iraq are more in tune with rank-and-file Democrats here than Dean's strong anti-war positions." A Democracy Corps poll put Gephardt at 27% and Dean at 26%, whereas a WHO-TV poll put Gephardt at 27% and Dean at 22%.
*SORRY, CHARLIE: It turns out that retired Army Gen. Wes Clark took another very un-Democratic stand before he decided to run for President as a Democrat: He supported the Navy's now-closed bombing range at Vieques Island in Puerto Rico. Clark told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2000, "I fully support every possible effort to continue the training at Vieques." Clark supporter Rep. Charles Rangel (D.-N.Y.) told the New York Post October 22: "I hope that when he's elected, over a drink I can give him Hell over Vieques."
*DOWN ON BROWN: Predictably, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats came down on California Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown at her October 22 confirmation hearing. President Bush has nominated the staunchly conservative Brown-who has been called "Clarence Thomas in a skirt"-for a seat on the federal appeals court in D.C., a possible stepping-stone to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Reported the Los Angeles Times October 23, "Three years ago, Brown described herself . . . as a 'true conservative' who believes that 'where the government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates. . . . The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.'" Said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California: "Your speeches are extraordinarily intemperate for a sitting justice." Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who last week voted to keep partial-birth abortion legal, called her views on government "despicable."
