*MORE THAN PICKERING? As stunned as Senate Democrats last week were over the President's recess appointment of the long-filibustered Charles Pickering to the U.S. Court of Appeals, they would have been more upset if they had known that the administration had talked to some of the other Appeals Court nominees who have been blocked by the Democrats about also giving them recess appointments. HUMAN EVENTS has learned that White House Counsel Al Gonzales telephoned at least one of the other filibustered Bush appellate appointees and asked if the nominee was willing to accept a recess appointment nomination. The nominee reportedly dismissed the suggestion. (Pickering, 66, is expected to retire from the federal bench if he fails to obtain a vote on his confirmation a year from now.)
*BIG PIG: The Senate finally closed the book on the fiscal 2004 budget last week-only four months late. By a vote of 65 to 28, the upper chamber passed an $820-billion omnibus bill that combined in one massive piece of legislation the spending that should have been distributed across seven annual appropriations bills that Congress last year failed to complete.
According to a study by Taxpayers for Common Sense, there are 7,931 earmarked pieces of pork in this hog. All were inserted at the request of individual House members and senators. These items add up to $10.7 billion in squandered tax dollars. The annual budget deficit this year is approaching $500 billion. President Bush is expected to sign the bill.
*'MUPPET BEING STRANGLED': Precise transliteration into something resembling English is probably impossible, but here is how the Associated Press handled former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's now notorious outburst after losing last week's Iowa caucuses: "We're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we're going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House. YEAHHHH!!!"
Deborah Orin of the New York Post described it this way: "In the tirade, a raging Dean swung his fists and vowed to fight on-then hoarsely screamed out upcoming primary states one by one in a building crescendo before letting out a banshee shriek that sounds like a muppet being strangled."
*KERRY'S BOUNCE: Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's impressive victory in the Iowa caucuses led to an immediate bounce in the running for the January 27 New Hampshire primary. But North Carolina Sen. John Edward's second place in Iowa did not immediately transfer into any momentum in New Hampshire. A Boston Globe/WBZ TC tracking poll conducted January 19-20 (margin of error +/-4.9%) showed Kerry moving ahead of Dean. The results: Kerry 27%; Dean 24%; retired Gen. Wesley Clark 17%; Edwards 9%.
*GENERAL GAFFES: Prior to the New Hampshire primary, retired Gen. Wesley Clark seemed to be having the same sort of bad week that plagued Dean in the days before the Iowa caucuses. For starters, he posed for the cover story of the February 3 issue of the gay activist magazine The Advocate.
Asked by The Advocate if he supported same-sex marriage, Clark said, "Whether you call it marriage or not is up to the church or the synagogue or the mosque. And it's up to the state legislatures. I think marriage is a term of art. It's a term of usage. But the legal side of it is not: It's not negotiable." Of the Massachusetts court ruling that legalized gay marriage, he said: "I support whatever the state says. If the state of Massachusetts says we're going to form a civil union but we're going to call it marriage, then as far as I'm concerned, that's marriage."
*BUT I'M THE LEADER! Clark also denigrated Kerry's stellar military record, which included winning Bronze and Silver Stars as well as a Purple Heart, on "Larry King Live" January 19. Former Sen. Bob Dole (R.-Kan.), who won the Iowa caucuses in 1988 and 1996, used a military metaphor to remark that Kerry's success would hurt Clark's presidential bid. "We're discussing here as friends, but I think just politically you just became a colonel instead of a general," Dole said. Clark shot back angrily: "Senator, with all due respect, he's a lieutenant and I'm a general. You got to get your facts on this. He was a lieutenant in Vietnam. I've done all of the big leadership."
*RSC SAYS CUT: In response to President Bush's State of the Union Address, the chairwoman of the conservative 90-member Republican Study Committee (RSC) said that spending cuts must offset Bush's new spending plans. "Tonight, the President put forward many worthwhile new proposals," said RSC Chairman Rep. Sue Myrick (R.-N.C.). "The President has indicated that he will offset some of the cost of these new initiatives with other spending reductions. Conservatives believe that the entire cost of new initiatives ought to be offset with other reductions in spending. Certainly there are old and obsolete things that the government does that we could stop." The RSC reported that its members would soon meet to decide what strategy to pursue in controlling spending this year.
*FRC SAYS PASS IT: Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins doesn't want Massachusetts to legalize same-sex "marriage" before Congress passes a constitutional amendment preserving that institution from the depredations of modern leftism. Said Perkins: "Sixty-four days ago, the Massachusetts State Supreme Court tossed a cultural time bomb into the public square when it ordered the legislature to create homosexual marriages. Disappointingly, this evening in his State of the Union Address, President Bush promised to help the families of America-after the bomb goes off and the damage is done. Now is the time, before the court of Massachusetts imposes same-sex marriage on America, to protect the sacred and irreplaceable institution of marriage." It is widely believed that once Massachusetts permits same-sex marriage within its borders, homosexual rights activists will immediately challenge the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
*NO PRO-ABORTS, PLEASE: Sen. John Kerry (D.-Mass.), who considers himself Roman Catholic, might win the Democratic nomination for President. That could ignite a firestorm of activity on the part of Catholics repulsed by his radical pro-abortion stand. Though not mentioning Kerry, the American Life League (ALL) announced plans on the day after Kerry won the Iowa caucuses to unveil its latest ad campaign, "The Way of La Crosse," which, says the group, "pays tribute to Bishop Raymond Burke of La Crosse, Wis., who recently decreed that Catholic politicians who openly support abortion can no longer receive Holy Communion until they publicly recant their sinful stance."
