CHANNEL CHOICE HAS SUPPORT: Concerned Women for America (CWA) released a poll May 5 that found that 80% of Americans want cable customers to be able to choose what channels they receive rather than being required to accept whatever packages the highly regulated cable companies offer their customers. CWA found that cable customers do not believe they should "be required to pay for a basic package of programming that might include channels that they don't want to view." Said Jan LaRue, chief counsel for CWA: "American cable customers want to choose what they pay for and nothing else. Having to block out programming you pay for is no choice??¢â???¬ ¦quot;it's a rip-off." The poll also asked those who don't get cable, "Would you be more or less likely to subscribe to cable television if you were able to choose the programming to be included in your basic cable package?" Sixty-six per cent responded that they would be more likely to subscribe, with 39% of those being "much more likely to subscribe." Not only could channel choice enable Americans to save money, but it would allow them to refuse to pay for channels that air blasphemous, pornographic, or otherwise perverse content, as cable channels increasingly do. Americans United for Cable Choice placed a full-page ad in USA Today asking Americans to contact their cable companies to push for channel choice.
SAFE AT WORK: Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) show that worksite enforcement against illegal alien labor continues to be virtually nonexistent. ICE spokeswoman Ernestine Fobbs said that in fiscal year 2003, "approximately 505 arrests were made" of illegal aliens because of worksite enforcement. Against employers in the same year, she said, "15 notices of intent to fine and four criminal cases were presented for prosecution" against those who hired illegal immigrant labor. Joseph Webber, ICE official in charge of the Houston office, created an ongoing dust-up with Rep. John Culberson (R.-Tex.) when he assured local immigrants in late April that ICE was not conducting raids at worksites, churches, and schools. But he was only articulating national ICE policy. "ICE is certainly encumbered by many conflicting messages it gets from Congress," said Rep. Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.). "But Mr. Webber had no duty to go tell this group of people that these laws will not be enforced." Said Rep. Jeff Flake (R.-Ariz.) in promoting his own immigration plan, which would grant amnesty to illegal aliens who pay a fine of $1,500 and then go to the back of the line for legal residency: "We have a de facto amnesty right now. If you get past the border, you might as well take out a mortgage and buy a burial plot."
LOSE AT Mc'S: As the anti-"junk food" film Supersize Me attracts the attention of fawning health fascists, one man decided to try eating exclusively at McDonald's himself to see if he gained anything like the 25 pounds that the filmmaker did. Eating rationally but without going hungry at McDonald's (with the exception of one meal) for two weeks, Dave Orrick lost three pounds. "This prompted the majority of women I told to issue the following statement, separately but in a clearly coordinated campaign: 'I hate you.' My reminders that they live longer and are better equipped to survive the famine that Americans appear to be stocking up for didn't earn me any points," he wrote in the Daily Herald of Chicago.
LET THE BOYS VOTE: House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R.-Ill.) issued a statement May 12 on House Resolution 608, which simply calls for the Department of Defense to speed up mail delivery to troops serving overseas. "Getting mail to our troops in a timely manner is important, and I am glad we are addressing it today with this resolution. [Rep.] Randy Forbes [R.-Va.] deserves tremendous credit for bringing this issue to the attention of the nation. . . . In November, this problem may delay soldiers from casting absentee ballots. This is an intolerable situation."
INERTIA: Rabbi Daniel Lapin on why it has proved to hard for conservatives to preserve America and why we must persevere: "As a moving car resists efforts to modify its movement, so does a human system. If a society is trending in a certain direction, absent any countervailing forces, it will generally continue in the same direction."
