RIDGE CLEAR: After Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge reiterated the Bush Administration's position that local law enforcement agencies should help enforce the nation's immigration laws, Rep. Charlie Norwood (R.-Ga.) reiterated the necessity of getting Congress to pass his own bill to help that happen. "For too long, folks in Washington have used the inefficiency of the INS (and now ICE) as an opportunity to play politics instead of help the badly out-manned federal agency. That's simply got to stop," he said February 11. Norwood's CLEAR Act would give state and local police legal and financial incentives to assist the feds in enforcing immigration laws.
FREEDOM'S HEROES: The shock of 9/11 may have faded, but the respect for military servicemen and firemen that it engendered continues. Freedom Alliance, headed by USMC Lt. Col. Oliver North (Ret.), promotes military service and aids the children of fallen military members. The Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund was honored on Jan. 29, 2004, by the family of fireman Stephen Siller, who died helping others on 9/11. "Stephen Siller was an American hero who gave his life to protect and defend his fellow citizens. We are honored and grateful to Stephen's family and the Let Us Do Good Children's Foundation for including the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund as a recipient of their extraordinary generosity," said Tom Kilgannon, president of Freedom Alliance. A Stephen Siller Tunnel To Towers Run was held in New York City on Sep. 28, 2003, and $50,000 of the money raised will go to Freedom Alliance.
BAN IT: The South Dakota state house passed a bill (HB 1191) by vote of 54 to 14 that would ban abortion from conception on in the state. Abortionists could receive five years in prison for killing an unborn child. State Rep. Matt McCaulley sponsored the bill. Said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, which helped draft the legislation, "This is new and unique legislation that has never been considered by the Supreme Court." Says the center, "In the preamble to HB 1191, the legislature determined that based on the best scientific and medical evidence, life begins at fertilization and that South Dakota's Bill of Rights applies equally to born and unborn human beings. The bill also finds that abortions impose significant risks to the health and life of the pregnant mother, including significant risk of suicide, depression and other post-traumatic disorders." Senate passage and the pro-life governor's signature are expected-followed, undoubtedly, by unconstitutional nullification of the measure by the federal judiciary.
BRING BACK THE 1ST: Speaking of things unconstitutional, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" bill continues to compromise free political speech in this country. Though the U.S. Supreme Court said that's okay, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R.-Md.) wants to roll back at least one of the worst aspects of the McCain-Feingold "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002," which was signed by President Bush even though he doubted its constitutionality. Bartlett's "new bill would repeal the outrageous provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that bans non-PAC-funded issue advocacy groups' references to federal candidates in broadcast advertisements during the 30 and 60 days before primary and general elections," said Bartlett's office. McCain-Feingold prohibits groups from mentioning candidates for federal offices in ads during those time periods even if the ads do not advocate the election or defeat of the candidates.
SLIGHT THAW? Communist China's human rights record may be deteriorating over all, but for the first time since the Communists took over, new churches are being constructed in Beijing. "Two Christian churches are rising in the Chinese capital for the first time since the Communist Party took power. . .," the Associated Press has reported. "According to the official party newspaper People's Daily, no Christian churches have been built in Beijing since Mao Zedong's Communists vanquished Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists in the 1949 civil war and cracked down on religious expression." But the move could be part of the government's newly aggressive effort to control Christians, rather than exterminate them, by herding them into state-sanctioned churches. "There is no indication that the approval of two new churches in the capital signals any change in policy. . . . More likely, it represents an effort by an increasingly savvy leadership to entice Chinese Christians into joining the state-backed faith, thus making them abandon their underground congregations and rendering them less of a threat," said AP.
