AmericaWantsToKnow.com

Katie Couric blames everybody

2008-07-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

CBS News anchor Katie Couric complained to the Israeli press in Tel Aviv Monday that "many viewers are afraid of change."

Maybe it's all those drills they made us do in school, you remember, when the teacher would scream, "Walter Cronkite has retired!" and we all had to get under the desks.

"I find myself in the last bastion of male dominance," Ms. Couric continued, "and realizing what Hillary Clinton might have realized not long ago: that sexism in the American society is more common than racism, and certainly more acceptable or forgivable."

Let's just call a halt to this kind of thing. Let's not shout "Sexism!!" every time an accomplished woman falls short of a high professional goal.

Katie Couric is an exceptionally talented broadcaster who was wildly miscast as an evening news anchor, who took the job knowing it didn't play to her strengths, who believed the CBS executives when they said they wanted to do a new kind of evening news show.

She didn't look past the big contract and the ego boost to see that the CBS executives were promising her something that was never going to happen. CBS was never going to allow the Evening News to turn into a showcase for a personality.

"I'm not doing today exactly what I've been brought to do," Ms. Couric said Monday, "my chance to express myself is fairly limited in the 22-minutes format."

The executives made the mistake of thinking they could overcome a certain demographic group's dislike of news programs by hiring an anchor who's very well-liked by that demographic group.

But those people still don't like news programs, and they're not going to like Katie Couric much longer if she doesn't stop calling them sexist and saying they're afraid of change.

America Wants to Know keeps an assortment of psychics and fortune-tellers on the payroll, which might explain how we were able to predict this outcome very early in the post, "Bob Schieffer's Elegant Exit."

You might also like to read the October 2006 post, "Saving Katie Couric," along with "The coming bloodbath at CBS News," "The logical conclusion of CBS News" and "Saying something nice about Nancy Pelosi."

Copyright 2008

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The innocent tomatoes

2008-07-20T17:27:00.000-07:00

Last week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that its June 7th warning about salmonella-contaminated tomatoes was completely mistaken.

There was never anything wrong with the tomatoes.

The FDA said the reported cases of salmonella poisoning that had been blamed on tomatoes may have been caused by peppers, or possibly cilantro.

Nobody got sick from tomatoes, except the tomato farmers who lost an estimated $100 million dollars when the FDA issued its terrifying warning that contaminated tomatoes could be fatal to children and the elderly.

Certainly the FDA is doing its very best to protect the public, and surely a lot of well-meaning, reasonably competent people looked at the data before making a mistake and causing catastrophic harm to farmers who were totally blameless.

Speaking of catastrophic harm, officials at the Department of Justice just agreed to pay former Army scientist Steven Hatfill almost $6 million to settle his claim that they violated his privacy, and destroyed his life, by telling the press he was a "person of interest" in the still-unsolved 2001 anthrax-in-the-mail case.

Dr. Hatfill was as innocent as a tomato.

So was Richard Jewell, whose life was destroyed when law enforcement officials told the media he was "the focus" of the FBI's investigation into a bomb at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

Certainly the FBI is staffed by well-meaning and reasonably competent people who were trying their best to protect the public from danger.

Sometimes well-meaning people make mistakes, especially when they're afraid they might be blamed for a lot of people dying.

On Monday the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War Two will begin at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, and last week U.S. Judge Thomas F. Hogan ordered the Justice Department to stop stalling and give the Guantanamo detainees their day in court after more than six years of detention. "The time has come to move these forward," Judge Hogan told Justice Department lawyers, "Set aside every other case that's pending in the division and address this case first."

Officials in the Bush administration are not happy. They have labored to keep the detainees out of the U.S. courts, where they say there is a risk that dangerous terrorists might be released on some legal technicality. The administration says the president has a duty to protect the American people from terror attacks.

Actually, the president's oath is to protect and defend the Constitution, not the public safety, but let's not go off on a tangent.

The point here is that sometimes the government gets it wrong.

The reason our system of justice has all those "technicalities," like habeas corpus and the right to confront witnesses, is that the Constitution guarantees an accused person the opportunity to make the government prove its case in a public trial. Otherwise the power of government can too easily destroy the lives of innocent people.

Even if you believe, as some judges do, that the Guantanamo detainees are not entitled to the protections of the Constitution, you have to recognize that sometimes the government makes horrible mistakes. For the Guantantamo prisoners, there will be no crusading reporter or Innocence Project lawyer to dig out the facts and free them one day. The war on terror is shrouded in secrecy, and that means errors can go undetected forever.

So bear in mind, when the trials of the Guantanamo detainees finally begin, that we don't know whether any of the prisoners have been wrongly accused.

They might be terrorists.

They might be tomatoes.

Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You may be interested in the earlier post, "The trouble with waterboarding."

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Hillary refund update

2008-07-15T01:26:00.000-07:00

The New York Observer reports today that Senator Hillary Clinton has sent her donors a letter asking for permission to keep the money -- up to $2,300 per person -- that they donated for the general election, so she can spend it on her 2012 Senate campaign.

The mailing includes a form for donors to sign and return if they want to authorize the rollover, but not, apparently, a form to sign if they want an immediate refund.

"If we do not hear back from you by August 28, 2008, we will automatically refund your contribution," the letter says.

That gives Senator Clinton six weeks, plus processing time, to come up with the money if, as we suspect, she spent the general election donations illegally on the primary campaign.

Watch for a hurricane-strength tantrum if Senator Obama continues to refuse to send out an e-mail to his supporters asking them to kick in a few bucks to pay the Clinton campaign debt and "unify the party."

Did you catch Terry McAuliffe on Andrea Mitchell's MSNBC show last week talking about all the Democratic candidates in the past who didn't release their delegates before the convention, and insisting that the party always has a roll call vote?

Well, don't worry if you missed it, you're certain to have plenty of chances to hear it again.

The Clinton team is giving every indication that they're ready and willing to pout and throw things during the convention next month. "You don't want a situation where anybody feels they've been cheated," political consultant Tad Devine told the Wall Street Journal.

No wonder Senator Obama moved his acceptance speech to a bigger stadium. He has to hand out an extra 50,000 tickets just to make sure he has a friendly audience.

Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Obama's big move," "Hillary's 'No Refunds' Policy" and "Why Hillary Won't Go."

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Why the Screen Actors Guild should go on strike

2008-07-13T05:35:00.000-07:00

California Governor and Screen Actors Guild member Arnold Schwarzenegger offered Friday to mediate the contract dispute between motion picture and television producers and the Screen Actors Guild. He said he's waiting to be asked, but neither side has contacted him.

We might as well tell you that America Wants To Know is the daughter of an actor, the late Dave Shelley (1931-1989), and for a lot of reasons, the prospect of a Screen Actors Guild strike makes us really, really sad.

Actors' strikes are not like other strikes. Actors can stay on strike for a horrifyingly long time because most of them are not giving up their sole paycheck. Even though they can't perform in TV shows and movies, they can still work under their commercials contract; they can do regional theater under their Actors Equity contract; and they can collect residuals for TV reruns, payments that were won for them by earlier generations of striking actors.

So they can carry those picket signs in front of 20th Century Fox until half the studio employees in Hollywood join Ed McMahon in foreclosure proceedings.

And they might.

The kind of people who give up on longshot goals have already gotten out of show business.

Still, the prospect of the Screen Actors Guild going on strike for residuals from Internet use is particularly depressing.

As we wrote when the Writers Guild walked out on strike, the Internet is not quite the pot of gold that everyone expected.

Anyone in the newspaper business or the music industry can tell you the miserable truth about the Internet: Everybody using it wants everything uninterrupted and free, and they'll click right over to anybody who gives it to them. There's no habit. There's no loyalty. There's no geographic or national boundary. And there's certainly no need to get up out of the chair and cross the room to change the TV channel. The era of the captive audience is over.

But there's still the rosy projection, the perfect math of multiplying the total number of Internet users by the tiny little fraction who would have to click on or watch an ad in order to generate millions or billions of dollars.

Here's the trouble with perfect math: Sometimes nobody clicks and nobody watches.

So we'd like to suggest to our longtime friends at the Screen Actors Guild that they throw away the idea of residuals for Internet use and instead fight for a provision in the standard contract for a lump-sum upfront payment to cover anything the studios ever do with that performance online.

"What? After the way they screwed us on network shows that went into syndication? Do you know how much money Barbara Eden didn't make on 'I Dream of Jeannie?'"

Yes. Yes, we do.

We also know what some of those hard-won residual checks really look like.

This is a picture of America Wants to Know's dad with Loni Anderson and the future governor of California in the 1980 TV movie, The Jayne Mansfield Story:

Really, that's the governor:

Here's Dave Shelley with Farrah Fawcett and Robert Stack in the 1975 TV movie, Murder on Flight 502:

And with Tom Bosley in the 1979 TV movie, The Triangle Factory Fire:

And with Angie Dickinson in the 1982 TV series, Cassie & Co.:

We can't even imagine how much money the studios and production companies have spent on accounting and payroll services to send out the hundreds of thousands of residual checks for movies and TV shows run on cable and in syndication or sold on home video.

Residuals are forever, but as time goes on, the payments get lower and lower. Occasionally the price of the first-class postage is more than the amount of the check.

Yet the expense of the bookkeeping must be tremendous. And as complex as it is to track every airing of every show on every worldwide broadcast and cable outlet, the intricacies of tracking Internet viewing might make cable and syndication look like mud pies in the backyard.

America Wants To Know would be willing to bet that the studios are more reluctant to agree to the bookkeeping than they are to the payments.

So if the Screen Actors Guild is going to walk out on strike, we hope they do it to get actors a meaningful upfront payment for Internet rights to their performances, and not to win some hypothetical trickle of residual payments from a medium that has yet to demonstrate any real earning power for anybody on it who's not a porn star or a poker table.

We wish the Guild good luck in its contract negotiations. Actors are indispensable, and it's always nice to see Hollywood forced to recognize it.

Copyright 2008

Editor's note: Susan Shelley wrote a history of the Screen Actors Guild's successful 1978 commercials strike, which can be read online at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/strike.htm.

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What the White House is hiding

2008-07-12T18:07:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, former White House deputy chief of staff and top adviser to the president Karl Rove defied a subpoena from Congress and refused to show up at a hearing of a House Judiciary subcommittee.

Mr. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, told the committee that Karl Rove can't be compelled to give congressional testimony related to his official duties as a presidential adviser, which is what White House Counsel Fred Fielding told Mr. Luskin, which is what the Justice Department told Mr. Fielding.

Looks like everybody who works for President Bush is in agreement on this point: The Constitution protects the president from unwelcome questions asked by Congress.

Of course, there's no possibility that they really believe that.

President Bush and his team have demonstrated in the past that they know perfectly well there's no such thing as executive privilege, or any other privilege, that protects the executive branch from oversight by Congress. (See our 2005 post, "Senate Republicans fire the big gun," and our 2006 post "Rep. Heather Wilson pries open the White House.")

The Bush administration is simply luxuriating in the political reality that Democrats don't want to risk the political damage they might incur if they launch aggressive hearings and talk about impeachment.

And Congressional Republicans would rather defend the president than stand up for the institutional authority of the U.S. Congress and the principle that no one is above the law.

That's unfortunate.

Because now the only way you can know what the White House is hiding is to read America Wants To Know.

We think it's all about Jack Abramoff.

On September 4, Jack Abramoff is scheduled to be sentenced for his part in a Washington corruption scandal that has already resulted in the convictions of something like a dozen people, including former Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio, a Republican.

Mr. Abramoff, currently in prison in Maryland for an unrelated Florida casino boat fraud, has been cooperating with investigators.

So has his former partner, Adam Kidan, whose prison sentence for the same fraud case was just cut in half. Prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Paul Huck that Mr. Kidan has been cooperating in several investigations.

And we probably haven't heard the last of Italia Federici, the former Abramoff associate whose decision to cooperate with prosecutors last December won her a sentence of two months in a halfway house instead of prison time and coincided with Senator John McCain's still-unexplained decision to hire criminal defense attorney Bob Bennett.

Speaking of coincidences, there was a fire in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney's political director, Amy Whitelaw, around the same time.

It's not clear how much contact Dick Cheney had with Jack Abramoff and his associates because the White House has refused to turn over visitor logs that would show how many times anyone came to see the president or the vice president or Karl Rove. Earlier visitor logs showed that in April of 2001, Jack Abramoff visited Dick Cheney's assistant for domestic policy, Cesar Conda, and five days later an Abramoff associate was appointed to a powerful job in the Department of Labor.

Cesar Conda is now a lobbyist with a firm called Navigators, and the former Abramoff associate, Patrick Pizzella, is still Assistant Secretary of Labor.

You might not know that Jack Abramoff's former assistant, Susan Ralston, went to work in the White House as an assistant to Karl Rove, and that when she was later asked to testify before a congressional committee, she asked for immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony, citing her right against self-incrimination.

Remember, nobody's being prosecuted for lobbying. The Abramoff investigation is about corruption.

The Washington Post reported back in 2005 that Jack Abramoff had boasted two years earlier of his direct contacts with Karl Rove on behalf of Tyco International, a conglomerate that wanted to remain eligible for federal contracts even though it had relocated to Bermuda to save on taxes.

"A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, said Rove 'has no recollection' of being contacted by Abramoff about Tyco's concerns," the Post reported.

It begins to look as if any public relations damage that the Bush administration sustains from stonewalling could be nothing compared to the kind of damage it will suffer if Karl Rove is immunized and forced to testify.

This would explain the White House's blanket refusal to allow any former aide to respond to any kind of Congressional subpoena. By insisting that they can't be ordered to answer questions about anything, they prevent any questions about the specific questions they don't want to answer.

We were going to call in one of our on-staff fortune-tellers to peer into a crystal ball and tell us when the Justice Department will announce new indictments resulting from the testimony of all the cooperating witnesses in the Abramoff investigation, but then we realized a six-year-old child could figure it out.

Expect the indictments right after the November election. Watch for the pardons to be signed on January 19th.

We won't be surprised if Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are both on the list.

Copyright 2008

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Jesse Jackson helps out

2008-07-09T23:47:00.000-07:00

The Reverend Jesse Jackson was caught on camera saying he'd like to cut Barack Obama's nuts off for the way the senator has been talking down to black people.

Well, that was a lucky break for the Obama campaign.

If not for Rev. Jackson's astonishing mistake -- once you're wired up with a microphone in a television studio, somebody can hear everything you say whether the red light is on or not -- everyone might be talking today about Senator Barack Obama's outrageous and insulting remarks about Americans who speak no language other than English.

On Tuesday, Senator Obama was speaking to a town hall meeting outside Atlanta when he told a crowd that foreign languages deserve more emphasis in American classrooms. "It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here," the senator said. "They all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup.”

On Wednesday, Senator Obama spoke at a town hall meeting in Powder Springs, Georgia, and told parents, "You need to make sure that your child can speak Spanish."

Did Barack Obama really just say he's embarrassed by the American people, and that the American people speak the wrong language to get by in their own country?

It's a good thing everybody's talking about Jesse Jackson cutting off his nuts, or somebody might have noticed.

Copyright 2008

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Obama's big move

2008-07-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

Politico reports today that the television networks may cut back their coverage of the Democratic National Convention in August because of the additional expenses they're going to incur now that Senator Barack Obama has decided to give his acceptance speech in a football stadium.

Senator Obama decided just last week that he'd rather speak at Invesco Field at Mile High, which seats 76,000, than at the Pepsi Center in Denver where the convention will be held. The Pepsi Center, an indoor arena, is about one-third the size.

Certainly there are many good reasons for Senator Obama to do this, but there might be one more that hasn't crossed your mind yet.

Today in the New York Times, Patrick Healy reports that Senator Obama's donors are not reacting well to his suggestion that they contribute to Hillary Clinton's primary campaign in order to help her pay off something like $23 million in debt.

"Not a penny for that woman. Or her husband," one donor wrote in an e-mail.

Since making her announcement that she is suspending her campaign, Senator Clinton has been in negotiations with the Obama campaign for assistance with her financial problem. It's not clear exactly what leverage she holds over Senator Obama, but she has taken the unusual, maybe unprecedented, step of asking Washington superlawyer Robert Barnett "to help structure a political relationship between them for the general election."

At the moment, her campaign is in a state of suspension. She has not released her delegates. She has not refunded $23 million in donations she received for the general election.

What has been going on in those negotiations, described as "so delicate" by the New York Times?

Has Hillary Clinton hinted that she could ruin Senator Obama's pretty TV pictures at the convention with some kind of delegate walk-out or counter-demonstration?

What does she have, eighteen hundred delegates? Something like that?

This is a picture of Invesco Field at Mile High:

Hillary Clinton's delegates could form a parade in the aisles at that place and it still wouldn't be as long as the line for the bathrooms.

No wonder Barack Obama beat her. She plays poker. He plays chess.

Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "Why Hillary won't go"

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Analyzing the president's handwriting

2008-07-07T23:16:00.000-07:00

The Times of London reported today that President Bush posted a message on a "wishing tree" in a Tanabata ceremony at the G8 summit in Japan. His handwritten note was hung in the branches of a black bamboo tree.

President Bush wrote, "I wish for a world free from tyranny: the tyranny of hunger, disease; and free from tyrannical governments. I wish for a world in which the universal desire for liberty is realized. I wish for the advance of new technologies that will improve the human condition and protect our environment."

Because President Bush has an unusual handwriting, America Wants To Know called in our on-staff psychic medium and asked her to contact the spirit of Dr. Hugo von Hagen, the noted graphologist and author of the 1902 book, Reading Character from Handwriting.

After half an hour of trumpets and tambourines flying pointlessly around the room we sent her home and just read the book ourselves.

The first thing we noticed about President Bush's handwriting is that it's large. "Large handwriting indicates enterprise," Dr. von Hagen wrote, "desire to do great things, nobility, pride."

It's apparent from the writing that the president uses heavy pressure with his pen. "Resoluteness, will power, obstinate diligence," Dr. von Hagen says.

We also noticed that the president's writing is slightly chaotic, not even and harmonious. Dr. von Hagen advises that "unharmonious" writing indicates "weak character, hard work to keep himself under control."

Do you see how the baseline of the writing is kind of wavy? If you drew a line under each letter in the word "wish," for example, you'd have almost a zig-zag instead of a level baseline.

Dr. von Hagen says that's a sign of unfaithfulness.

The letter "t" is crossed very low almost all the time. That indicates "perseverance and resistance," Dr. von Hagen says, and the long letters, "g" and "y" are "more developed above the line than below," indicating "idealism, mental and spiritual interests strongest."

Spooky, isn't it? Wait, it gets better.

We might have been forewarned about the federal budget deficit if we'd known that when "writing is drawn out wide" it indicates "immoderation, superficiality, generosity, carelessness," and when "words have much space between each other," it's an indication of "waste."

One of the most striking features of the president's handwriting is the way the letters in his words are frequently not connected. You can see that there's a space on each side of the "i" in "wish" and a space between the "y" and "r" in the word "tyranny." There's a space after the "g" and before the "m" in "governments" and if you look closely you can see many more.

This is what Dr. von Hagen says about that:

"Writers who never connect their letters, but always leave them separated, have no deductive powers, but have very much intuitive instinct instead. They judge largely by their sense of feeling. Such natures are rather difficult to get along with, they are always hard to convince, very nervous and sensitive and they often show stubbornness to a marked degree. When words and letters are more or less connected or disconnected, the graphologist must always weigh carefully the average number of connections or disconnections before passing his opinion. The more connections between letters, syllables and words, the more logic, sense of reality and adaptability are possessed by the writer."

And the fewer connections between letters, syllables and words, the less logic, sense of reality and adaptability.

Hey, we have no one to blame but ourselves, the book's been out since 1902.

Copyright 2008

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Starbucks cut from cheerleading squad

2008-07-06T14:25:00.000-07:00

One of America Wants To Know's greatest disappointments in life was the sad realization that most people never really get out of high school.

It is astounding to us how many grown-up people in this country make their decisions, big and small, based not on any independent judgment or objective standard of value, but just on some deep-down desire to be one of the cool kids.

Alas, "cool" is ever-unattainable to those who seek it. "Cool" is the attitude of not caring what anybody else thinks.

So if you're seeking it, you're already disqualified.

But that doesn't mean companies can't capitalize on the yearning to be cool.

"Starbucks was a cool brand," trend expert Jim Carroll told Reuters on Sunday, "and then all of a sudden it's not a cool brand."

Life is, like, so unfair. Like, totally.

Starbucks announced last week that it will close 600 stores and lay off 12,000 employees. Signs of trouble have been in the air. Not too long ago the company closed all its stores for several hours in order to re-train its employees in quality control and customer service.

Of course, quality control and customer service were never the attraction at Starbucks. Anyone who was out of high school could have told them that, as comedian Jackie Mason did in his dead-on, pound-on-the-carpet-funny style. (Click here to read it or here to watch it or here to buy his book.)

No, the attraction of Starbucks was that it was cool. That's why people paid four dollars for coffee in a paper cup and sat on those uncomfortable chairs for hours staring broodingly into their laptop screens.

It was the Left Bank at the strip mall.

But then, something went terribly wrong.

Starbucks ceased to be cool. Suddenly people on Internet dating sites were writing things like "Anyplace but Starbucks" under the heading of "Perfect first date."

What did them in?

"There's this new global consciousness that is out there that can suddenly shift," Jim Carroll explained.

Oh.

That clears that up.

Copyright 2008

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John McCain's weekend off

2008-07-06T05:15:00.000-07:00

For some reason, the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States did not make a single public appearance over the Fourth of July weekend.

Not one.

Not one parade, not one speech, not one fireworks show, not one baseball game, not one picnic, not one VFW event.

Nothing.

He stayed in one of his houses in Arizona, in the air conditioning, and relaxed. All weekend.

Senator Barack Obama attended a parade, a picnic, and his daughter's tenth birthday party. He gave interviews to People, Essence and Parents magazines and to TV's "Access Hollywood." He spoke to the National Education Association convention by satellite from Montana and flew to St. Louis to give a speech about values to the African Methodist Episcopal Church conference. And that was just through Saturday afternoon.

As comedian Argus Hamilton observed, if John McCain were in the NBA, there would be a point-shaving investigation.

America Wants to Know can think of four possible reasons that, individually or in combination, might explain Senator McCain's decision to skip any public observance of Independence Day:

-- He's not smart.

-- He's not well.

-- He doesn't want to win.

-- He thinks he can't lose.

Republican lawmakers and campaign strategists have expressed some frustration over the shapeless campaign and shifting message of McCain's operation. Republican consultant Nelson Warfield compared the candidate to a quarterback who hasn't called the play yet.

It looks pretty bad for the Republicans.

Of course, it's early, and anything could happen.

It makes you wonder if John McCain knows what's going to happen.

Did you know that Senator McCain was briefed in advance about the top-secret Colombian military plans to rescue the hostages held for over five years by revolutionary terrorists?

Do you suppose Senator McCain has been briefed about some U.S. military operation to go after terrorists between now and November?

Or worse, do you suppose Senator McCain has been tipped off to some pending orange-alert terror hysteria that will be triggered by the Bush administration's prosecution of terror suspects, timed precisely to assist the GOP in November?

That would be cynical.

Would it work?

It's far from certain that the fear of terrorism would help the McCain campaign more than the Obama campaign. At one time it was easy to argue that one cause of terrorism was weakness shown by a Democratic administration. But six years into the war in Iraq and seven years into the one in Afghanistan, that argument looks a little frayed.

The Republicans might try it one more time. Senator McCain sure is campaigning like a man with an ace up his sleeve.

A presidential candidate has to be pretty cocky to blow off the Fourth of July.

Copyright 2008

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Defending capitalism

2008-06-29T18:18:00.000-07:00

America Wants to Know received a polite note last week from a Missouri State University student who said he disagreed with what we had written in our November, 2007, post, "Barack Obama explains socialism." He said he wanted to engage in a blog debate, a "calm, rational, give-and-take discussion," about the merits of socialism.

If you're interested, you can watch from a safe distance at SusanShelley.com or at TehJuggernauts.blogspot.com.

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The right to the death penalty

2008-06-25T13:19:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today that the people of Louisiana do not have the power under the U.S. Constitution to have a law which imposes the death penalty on child rapists.

You may or may not agree with the majority's opinion that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment makes Louisiana's law unconstitutional.

But you should know one thing.

The people of the United States never consented to have the Eighth Amendment, or the rest of the Bill of Rights, restrict the powers of the state governments at all.

The Bill of Rights never was intended or understood by lawmakers to apply to the states. This is a change in the structure of the U.S. government that was made entirely by the U.S. Supreme Court, without a constitutional amendment.

The question is not whether a child rapist can be sentenced to death. The question is who decides whether a child rapist can be sentenced to death.

The U.S. Constitution reserved the power to make that decision to the states.

In a series of rulings during the 20th century, the Supreme Court usurped the power.

When you read news stories that include sentences such as "The court struggled over how to apply standards laid out in decisions barring executions for the mentally retarded and people younger than 18 when they committed murder," bear in mind that the Constitution never gave the Supreme Court the authority to have that struggle or make those decisions.

The Constitution left the power to decide criminal penalties for state crimes in the hands of the states.

You might be interested to read the earlier posts, "What you don't know about the death penalty" and "The cat, the bag and Justice Scalia."

If you're really interested in this subject, you'll find the whole story, footnoted and bibliographied, in "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing: A History of the Incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment, Why It's a Problem, and How to Fix It." Read it online at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm or pick up a hard copy, it's published as an appendix to the novel, The 37th Amendment.

Copyright 2008

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Hillary's "No Refunds" policy

2008-06-23T22:13:00.000-07:00

America Wants to Know welcomes all the donors to Hillary Clinton's general election campaign who have found our earlier posts ("Hillary Clinton and the big refund" and "Why Hillary won't go") by searching the Internet to find out when they can expect to get their money back.

Bad news, campers.

Not only is Senator Clinton not rushing to refund your general election contributions, she is still soliciting contributions for the general election on her web site.

This is what the contribution form looked like on HillaryClinton.com this evening:

Notice anything odd? Look closer:

It appears that if you go to HillaryClinton.com and give the campaign $4,600, Hillary Clinton will take it.

Over on the Frequently Asked Questions page of the web site, the campaign offers this helpful Q&A:

What is the maximum amount that I may donate?

Per federal law, an individual may contribute a maximum of $2300 to a candidate per election cycle. The primary elections and general elections are considered two separate cycles. So you may contribute a total of $4600, with the first $2300 going to the primary election and any subsequent contributions going to the general election.

We've said before and still believe Senator Clinton already spent the money she collected for the general election and has been falsely reporting that money -- $23.3 million at last count -- as cash on hand.

We could certainly be wrong about that.

After all, it would be crazy and reckless to spend the general election money on the primary. To do something so blatantly illegal, you'd have to think you could never, ever be caught at it. You'd have to think there was absolutely no way that you could lose the Democratic primary race.

Because if you lost the Democratic primary race, you'd be in real trouble.

So much trouble, in fact, that you'd probably double down during the last month of the primaries, even if it meant you were plunging deeper and deeper into debt.

To take a risk like that, you'd have to be the kind of person who has total confidence that you can get away with anything, especially if it borders on a gray area of the law.

This is an excerpt from attorney David Kendall's biography on the web site of his law firm, Williams & Connolly:

He began representing President and Mrs. Clinton in November 1993, in what was ostensibly a small savings and loan matter involving Whitewater Development Company, Inc. He went on to represent the Clintons in a variety of matters, including Independent Counsel, Senate, House of Representatives, FDIC, RTC, and bar counsel investigations, civil litigation, and the 1998-99 impeachment proceedings, and currently represents them in three civil matters.

So far, so good.

Tuesday's Washington Post reports that Senator Clinton just sent an e-mail to her supporters asking them to go to her web site and contribute money to help her pay off more than $22 million in campaign debt. "I hope you will continue to stand with me and support me by going back to HillaryClinton.com," she wrote.

Maybe the Clinton team simply forgot to update the web site to reflect the fact that Senator Clinton isn't going to be the Democratic nominee this fall and therefore can't accept contributions for the general election.

Maybe the webmaster quit when the paycheck was late and nobody else knows how to work the thing.

Maybe if you entered your credit card number and clicked the button, you would get an error message saying you can't donate more than $2,300.

We don't advise you to try it.

We don't think you'll get your money back any time soon.

But if you've got a refund coming from Senator Clinton's general election account, her web site still says you can contact the campaign at:

Hillary Clinton for President
4420 North Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22203
Headquarters: 703.469.2008
Fax: 703.962.8600

Good luck. Let us know how it goes. We'll be happy to post your stories.

Copyright 2008

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Tabloid update: "Clinton Only 1 Year To Live!"

2008-06-23T01:13:00.000-07:00

Just because we know you're Googling to find it, and not because we think it's worth your time, we bring you this update on the Globe tabloid's cover story, "Clinton Only 1 Year to Live!"

The Globe dug up a "life span expert" by the name of David Demko, who calculates that Bill Clinton's "lifestyle factors" will send our 61-year-old former president to "an early grave."

Mr. Demko's patented "Death Calculator" takes off a few years here and there for stress, heart disease and promiscuity, leading him to predict that President Clinton will die approximately ten years ago.

President Clinton is fine. He's not sick. He's not dying. Nothing's wrong.

As any number of retired Republican politicians can tell you, reports of his demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Copyright 2008

John McCain on Marilyn Monroe

2008-06-23T00:16:00.000-07:00

The presumptive Republican nominee for president, Senator John McCain, spoke to Bob Sansevere of the St. Paul Pioneer Press for Sunday's paper. It was one of those get-to-know-the-candidate on-the-lighter-side interviews.

Asked to name his favorite actress, Senator McCain said, "I think Marilyn Monroe still is one of the great actresses of our time."

Marilyn Monroe?!

Senator McCain doesn't come to us for advice, but here's some anyway:

"Meryl Streep." "Helen Mirren." "Kathy Bates."

Marilyn Monroe?!

Yes, we know, she studied with Lee Strasberg. She did some extraordinary work on film. We're not going to say anything derogatory about Marilyn Monroe.

But a Republican presidential candidate can't say publicly that his favorite actress is Marilyn Monroe. For one thing, she was an unapologetic bombshell sexpot. For another, she departed for that great Oscar party in the sky in 1962. That's forty-six years ago, for those of you who went to school in Los Angeles.

Forty-six years ago is just about when Barack Obama was born.

In one thoughtless answer, John McCain managed to make himself look old, horny, and like a JFK-wannabe.

So we would just like to ask the delegates to the GOP convention one last time:

Are you sure you don't want to nominate Ron Paul for president?

Copyright 2008

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Cyd Charisse, 1921-2008

2008-06-19T00:28:00.000-07:00

The spectacular Cyd Charisse died Tuesday in Los Angeles, and we'd just like to note something we once heard her say in an interview.

Miss Charisse said Hollywood musicals died because movie censorship ended.

She explained that after the Hays code was adopted in the early 1930s, Hollywood censors kept actresses very covered up, except in musicals.

That's a picture of Cyd Charisse, respected dancer.

This is a picture of Lili St. Cyr, scandalous stripper:

The Hays code was abandoned in 1968, and the studios no longer needed all those dancers and singers to cover up the fact that what they were really selling was a good long look at the female form.

America Wants To Know salutes Cyd Charisse, whose unsurpassed talent helped Hollywood hide the truth from a nation of censors.

She was something.

Copyright 2008

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Tabloid update: Bush! Cocaine! Clinton! Mistress!

2008-06-17T00:09:00.000-07:00

America Wants To Know promised to keep you up-to-date on the supermarket tabloids, because if you don't do your own grocery shopping you'll miss all this entertainment, and we wouldn't want that to happen.

The Globe's June 16th cover screams "Bush on Cocaine in White House!" but inside, there's not much sustenance for the hungry scandal-hunter. The story is a lot of baseless speculation that "the use of illegal drugs" along with "boozing," "could explain" everything from the invasion of Iraq to the president's crumbling marriage.

The only substance in the story is a quote from former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. McClellan writes that he overheard Bush, back when he was governor of Texas, tell a supporter that he couldn't remember whether he had tried cocaine or not. "We had some pretty wild parties back in the day," Bush allegedly said, "and I just don't remember."

The Globe didn't call any of the people who do remember, like Asleep at the Wheel's Grammy-winning front man, Ray Benson, who once told an interviewer, "I know a lot more about the president's past than I'll talk about. He wasn't a friend of mine, but I knew the circles he ran in. I knew the people on Sixth Street he hung out with."

America Wants to Know would never doubt the word of Brother Ray Benson.

We also don't doubt the Globe's characterization of the president's marriage as "almost destroyed" by his "boozing" and his "close relationship with Condoleezza Rice." We take note that when Laura Bush took off for a surprise trip to Afghanistan, the president took Condoleezza Rice to Camp David for the weekend and they returned to Washington looking very refreshed....

We also note the first lady's pointed upstaging -- or is it bigfooting? -- of the Secretary of State in Paris Thursday at the donor conference for Afghanistan. Mrs. Bush gave the opening remarks, accompanied by a glitzy visual slideshow of photographs of herself on her Afghanistan trip.

No other speaker was given visual aids, the AP reported.

And Secretary Rice's remarks to the conference were bumped to the less-desirable post-lunch time slot.

Well, that's the way it goes when you're the other woman.

Not every woman puts up with that kind of treatment, as we see in the National Enquirer's June 23rd issue. You can't miss it, it's the one with the cover that screams, "Clinton Mistress Revealed!"

The Enquirer says it can now disclose the name of the woman with whom Bill Clinton had a long affair, starting shortly after he left the White House and continuing right up to the point when the woman realized that he wasn't going to leave his wife, he was instead going to campaign for her.

The woman is Julie Tauber McMahon, a wealthy divorcee who met Mr. Clinton in 1998 at her father's house, which President Clinton was borrowing for a little vacation.

Her father, Joel Tauber, is a major Democratic donor.

Bill Clinton was doing a donor's daughter.

You know, the Clinton Presidential Library really ought to have a wing devoted to Farmer's Daughter jokes.

But never mind about that now, the point is that Mr. Clinton allegedly began an affair with Julie Tauber McMahon sometime after he left office and moved to Chappaqua, where she lives just five miles from his house. He reportedly became something of a mentor to her three children, infuriating their father. The Enquirer says it got the story from one of Julie McMahon's family members, who passed a polygraph test.

Alas for our former president, the fabulously wealthy Ms. McMahon dumped him when she realized he was never going to leave his wife. The Enquirer says Mr. Clinton reacted by going on a "wild sex binge" and "was so out of control that even his closest pals were disgusted by his hound-dog antics."

According to the Enquirer's source, our 61-year-old former president "turned to a string of wild sexual encounters to lick his wounds."

Okay! More than we want to know!

Maybe you'd rather hear the gossip from across the pond, where Prince Charles' attractive forty-something private secretary, Elizabeth Buchanan, has resigned after second wife Camilla reportedly grew tired of seeing her at Prince Charles' side during official functions.

"Camilla simply loathed her," an old colleague told London's Daily Mail.

Perhaps Ms. Buchanan's resignation had something to do with the Globe's May 19th story of "Charles & Camilla's Secret Separation," which reported that "palace insiders" were predicting that the future king of England and his second wife would divorce by the end of the year. The couple "have been living apart for the past six weeks, following a furious final showdown over her boozing," the Globe said.

The Globe's story is full of sparkly little gems about Camilla's affection for "Gordon's gin and tonic" and her constant complaints about the "shackles of royalty."

Meanwhile, the Globe says, "Prince Charles is holed up at Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire during the royal couple's trial separation" while "Camilla has been living at her old country home, Ray Mill House, in the village of Lacock."

That's really the name of the village, don't look at us.

We're just trying to save you a trip to the supermarket.

Copyright 2008

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The $300,000 rape joke

2008-06-14T15:49:00.000-07:00

Today, Senator John McCain panicked and canceled a fundraiser scheduled for Monday at the home of Texas oilman Clayton Williams, a man who has already gone to the trouble of pressuring his friends and associates into donating $300,000 to John McCain's presidential campaign.

What, you may be wondering, could send a man like John McCain into a panic?

It was a couple of questions from ABC News and the Washington Post about something Clayton Williams said when he was running for Texas governor in 1990.

Mr. Williams was hosting a campaign event on his West Texas ranch and he made a joke about the weather.

"As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it," he said.

It was just a tasteless stupid sex joke.

There's no law against tasteless stupid sex jokes, and there won't be, not as long as Hollywood has two United States Senators.

He wasn't even talking about women. He certainly wasn't talking about his opponent, Ann Richards.

It was just a joke.

America Wants To Know does understand that it's obnoxious to suggest that rape can be enjoyable as long as you're in the right frame of mind.

We won't link you to the IMDB.com pages of ten thousand movies from the 1930s through early 1960s that say otherwise.

We understand, not every rapist is Clark Gable.

But you should understand that Clayton Williams is eighty-six years old.

America Wants To Know has always had a personal sexual harassment policy that grandfathered out any man born before World War II.

Anyone younger should know better, but anyone older can call us "Sweetie" and tell sexist jokes and we're not going to court over it.

John McCain was born in 1936, but he's running for president, and not everyone will cut him as much slack on these things as we will.

Feminist sensibilities are like a foreign language to a man born before World War II. Senator McCain has studied and studied and he's trying, really he is, to get the accent just right. He desperately wants the votes of the women who supported Hillary Clinton.

But he has no earthly idea what they think about anything.

So when ABC News and the Washington Post raised the question of Clayton Williams' insensitive comments -- from eighteen years ago -- John McCain panicked and pulled the plug on Monday's fundraiser.

He's not giving up the $300,000 that Clayton Williams has already raised for him. Not yet, anyway. Not until he's absolutely sure that women are upset about Mr. Williams' comments.

And he's not all that sure.

He has no idea, actually.

We're happy to give Senator McCain some free advice on this subject.

Senator, you'll never get the votes of Hillary Clinton's supporters, not even if you stand on your head and deliver a baby through your navel on national television.

Hillary Clinton was supported by every woman who has ever been hurt and insulted and chose to stay in the relationship anyway.

They love Hillary Clinton because she's smart and talented and respected and she made the same choice. She makes them feel better about themselves. She makes their self-esteem go right through the roof.

Universal health care is just window-dressing.

If John McCain wanted to win over the votes of Hillary Clinton's supporters, he shouldn't have left his long-suffering first wife for a beautiful young rodeo-queen heiress with blonde hair.

They hate that.

So here's some free advice for the Obama campaign: See if you can talk Barbara Walters into hiring John McCain's first wife to co-host The View.

And here's some free advice for Clayton Williams: Ask John McCain for your $300,000 back and tell him to get lost. Next time, back a candidate who knows how to win a damn war!

Copyright 2008

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Return of the Medicine Show

2008-06-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, America Wants to Know posted the recipe for President Reagan's favorite White House eggnog, and to all the thousands of people who clicked on it, we would like to say, "You're welcome! Hope it helped."

If you remember, we prescribed President Reagan's eggnog for anyone who was enduring the holidays with an empty chair at the table.

And now, the America Wants to Know Traveling Medicine Show is back in town, just in time for Fathers Day.

Do we have a sleeping potion for you!

We've been doing a little research into Prohibition-era cocktails (really, it was research) and we discovered something called an Alabazam.

If you're having trouble sleeping, skip those heavily advertised prescription drugs and try this:

Alabazam

3 ounces brandy
2 teaspoons Cointreau (or Curacao or Triple Sec)
1 teaspoon white sugar
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon Angostura bitters

Mix all ingredients, shake or stir with ice until chilled, strain and serve.

That's a double, by the way.

Sleep tight!

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The race for First Lady

2008-06-12T14:37:00.000-07:00

A new Rasmussen Reports poll released Wednesday says Michelle Obama is viewed unfavorably by 48 percent of white voters and Cindy McCain is viewed unfavorably by 48 percent of black voters.

The cable networks should be happy. The only thing better for ratings than a cat fight is a race war.

Fortunately for Michelle Obama, she's acquainted with somebody who has a warehouse of focus-group research that can help her.

Did you know that Oprah Winfrey's show began as a local daytime talk show in Chicago?

Did you know that her local show replaced (and obliterated) a local daytime talk show that had been hosted by a Regis-style white guy and a succession of blondes who all looked a lot like Cindy McCain?

Did you know that Oprah was so successful at winning over the daytime TV viewers of Chicago -- a city that for all its Land-of-Lincoln rhetoric is more than a little bit segregated -- that she was able to negotiate for ownership of her syndicated show, eventually making her one of the wealthiest women in the world?

Oprah Winfrey has mastered the art of convincing her audience that she's just like them, even though she's smarter, more ambitious, more determined and more focused than any of them will ever be.

It probably helps that she gives away cars.

Somebody at the Obama campaign should call the FEC and check into that.

Copyright 2008

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Ron Paul spends it

2008-06-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

One thing you have to say for Ron Paul: he looks ahead.

If it seemed to you during the primary campaign that Ron Paul was raising a lot of money and spending HARDLY ANY OF IT on advertising to GET HIS MESSAGE OUT, it may be because he had judged the primaries unwinnable and had a different strategy for his revolution.

Today the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that Rep. Paul has booked the Williams Arena in Minneapolis on September 2, the second day of the Republican National Convention, which will be held nearby at the Xcel Energy Center.

The Williams Arena holds about 14,000 people.

That's just inside, of course.

Ron Paul's campaign spokesman, Jesse Benton, said the plan is to "send a message to the Republican Party" with the daylong event.

The message, if you haven't been following Rep. Paul's campaign too closely, is that the American people would like their freedom back.

Ron Paul believes the United States is spending too much on overseas military operations all around the world and that at least a third of that money can be better spent at home keeping programs like Social Security and Medicare solvent without raising taxes or cutting benefits.

Ron Paul believes the war in Iraq was a mistake and it's time to admit it and bring the troops home.

Ron Paul believes in small government, free trade, a humble foreign policy, and liberty. He believes we should follow the U.S. Constitution, including the part that says we don't go to war without a declaration of war by Congress.

Over at the Xcel Energy Center, the rest of the Republican party will be defending the war in Iraq, warrantless wiretapping, unlimited detention without legal process, enhanced interrogation techniques, and the probable necessity of war with Iran.

If Barack Obama wins the November election and a Democratic surge knocks Republicans out of their seats in the House and Senate, watch for Ron Paul to form the core of the new Republican party, which is really the old Republican party. Low taxes. More freedom. No military adventures.

Then all we'll have to do is amend the Constitution for privacy rights, and we'll be a free country again.

Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Ron Paul's good question" and "Ron Paul's tea party."

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Barack Obama gets younger

2008-06-08T15:02:00.000-07:00

Have we ever seen Barack Obama wear jeans in public before?

Can't recall it.

Today the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee went for a bike ride along the lake shore in Chicago with his family. Perhaps for the first time in this campaign, he allowed himself to be seen in public wearing jeans and a casual shirt.

He looks really, um, young.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But it's hard to escape the conclusion that the Obama campaign has shifted its visual language now that 60-year-old Hillary Clinton is out of the race and 71-year-old John McCain is the opponent.

It appears that Senator Obama and his pollsters have calculated that voters would prefer a candidate who's older than 46 but younger than 71. And now that there is no candidate in the race who is older than 46 and younger than 71 (Ron Paul's still in, technically, but he's not younger than 71), they've concluded that voters are a lot more frightened of 71 than they are of 46.

So the senator was out in public today wearing jeans and riding a bicycle, recorded by cameras and sure to be seen in somebody's campaign commercials.

He's the picture of youth and fitness.

Or he's the picture of youth and inexperience.

He's the image of vigor and new ideas.

Or he's a college student home for the summer with his ideas and his laundry.

Place your bets.

Copyright 2008

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Hillary Clinton's malfunctioning wardrobe

2008-06-08T05:19:00.000-07:00

Apparently, no one is going to say a word about Hillary Clinton's latest ping-pong fashion shift, because everyone is afraid of being called sexist and shallow.

America Wants To Know is not afraid. We're always proud to be called shallow and as for sexist, well, you'll just have to take our word for it that we have a sponsor's exemption from that charge.

And so, we would like to say a word about Hillary Clinton's malfunctioning wardrobe.

On Saturday, Senator Clinton arrived at the National Building Museum to make a concession speech and end her presidential campaign. She was dressed in a sleek black pantsuit.

Maybe you're not old enough to remember, but when Hillary Clinton ran for the U.S. Senate in 2000, she wore a sleek black pantsuit every single day. Usually she threw a pastel sweater over her shoulders and tied it in front to get a softer color next to her face.

In the Senate, Hillary Clinton typically showed up for work in a subdued, dark-colored pantsuit that called no attention to itself.

And then she ran for president.

Suddenly New York's junior senator was a walking Technicolor screen test. Some days she looked like a traffic cone. Red. Yellow. Orange. Some days she looked like an Easter egg. Turquoise. Pink. Blue.

What was that all about?

Her supporters are presbyopic, not color-blind.

Every day in America, dozens of professional women are on television looking perfectly well-dressed without crashing through your TV screen like a spilled vat of tempera paint.

And now that Hillary Clinton's race for president is over, she's back in the sleek black pantsuit. On Day One.

It is beyond our mortal powers to explain it. This is a job for Shakespeare. Or Mr. Blackwell.

We would like to call your attention, however, to a sentence from Saturday's New York Times story on the end of the Clinton campaign: "Mrs. Clinton variously tried presenting herself as the friend having conversations with the American people, then the experienced hand and tough warrior before settling on working-class heroine," Peter Baker and Jim Rutenberg wrote.

It's an eerie echo of something Hillary Rodham wrote herself in a letter to a friend during her college years: "Since Xmas vacation, I’ve gone through three and a half metamorphoses and am beginning to feel as though there is a smorgasbord of personalities spread before me,” young Ms. Rodham wrote in April 1967, “So far, I’ve used alienated academic, involved pseudo-hippie, educational and social reformer and one-half of withdrawn simplicity.”

Crowded in there, isn't it?

Well, at least they've all got something to wear.

Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Hillary Clinton and the 'basic bargain'" and "Michelle Obama is good."

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Why Hillary won't go

2008-06-04T12:40:00.000-07:00

Give Hillary Clinton credit.

She's not stupid.

In order to figure out what Hillary Clinton is doing right now, as supporters puzzle over what she is thinking, it's a good idea to assume that she is doing the smartest thing, and then work backwards to figure out the circumstances that would make her non-concession look like the wisest course of action.

Using this technique, America Wants to Know has deduced that Hillary Clinton raised over $22 million for the general election and spent it in secret on the primary, illegally.

This is the first year that candidates for president were permitted to raise primary funds and general election funds simultaneously, so this is the first year that an unsuccessful presidential candidate was faced with the prospect of refunding millions of dollars to donors at the conclusion of the contest.

Unsuccessful candidates typically wrap up their campaigns with a fair amount of debt.

Hillary Clinton's campaign debt has been reported to be as high as $40 million, including more than $11 million that she loaned to herself from her personal funds.

Under federal election law, she has until the conclusion of the Democratic national convention in August to pay herself back. Otherwise she has to write off all but $250,000 of the money she loaned her campaign.

Ouch.

Still, the Clintons have made a lot of money over the last eight years, more than $109 million according to the tax returns they released during the campaign.

Let's assume for the moment that the money she loaned her campaign is not the problem.

Last night, thirty minutes after Barack Obama locked up the Democratic nomination for president, Hillary Clinton stood at a lectern in a basement room and made the case that she is the strongest candidate in November. She pleaded with TV viewers to go to her web site and donate to her campaign.

This was just hours after she told New York's congressional delegation that she would accept the nomination for vice president on Barack Obama's ticket.

Today she told her supporters that she is not yet ready to concede defeat and release them to endorse Barack Obama.

"It makes no sense," Rep. Charlie Rangel told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell this morning.

Doesn't it?

If Hillary Clinton secretly spent the $22 million she raised for the general election, then filed false reports with the Federal Election Commission showing that the general election money was segregated and untouched in a separate account, she has committed a crime.

Let's assume for the moment that this is true.

On the day she gets out of the Democratic primary race, she owes that $22 million to the donors who gave it to her for the general election.

That means she has to come up with that money between now and then.

Let's assume she doesn't have $22 million lying around the house. It's not just what you earn, it's also what you spend that determines your financial health.

Now let's look again at Hillary Clinton's allegedly senseless arguments yesterday:

-- She went before the TV cameras, acted as if the primaries were just beginning, and asked TV viewers to donate money to her campaign.

-- She smiled as the crowd chanted "Denver! Denver!" around her, and she congratulated Barack Obama on "the race he has run," without admitting that he won the race and the primary campaign is now over.

-- She said she would accept the nod for vice president, which would mean she would be running in November, which would allow her lawyers to argue that she can legally spend the funds she raised for the general election.

It all makes sense now, doesn't it?

Surely you don't believe the first viable female presidential candidate is so emotional that she needs time to sort out her feelings because this has been such an overwhelming experience.

Give her a little credit.

Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "Hillary Clinton and the big refund."

Criminalizing California

2008-05-17T18:51:00.000-07:00

Two California men are looking at mandatory 20-year prison sentences after a federal jury in Fresno convicted them Thursday of running a medical-marijuana operation.

California voters legalized medical marijuana in 1996. However, the federal government believes its own law banning marijuana takes precedence over anything the people of California might decide, in their looney and liberty-loving way, to put on the state ballot and pass overwhelmingly.

In fact, the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reserves to the looney and liberty-loving people of California the power to legalize marijuana, because the Constitution does not give the federal government the power to ban a substance that is made, distributed and used within state borders.

That's why, back in 1919, Prohibition required a constitutional amendment.

Perhaps anticipating the argument, federal prosecutors in this case made a special point of noting that the business run by Luke Anthony Scarmazzo and Ricardo Ruiz Montes was illegal under California law as well as federal law.

"California's medical marijuana law clearly sets out that making a profit selling marijuana is illegal," U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott told reporters.

Anyone who has ever run a business in California can tell you that the state takes a very dim view of making a profit.

Regardless, the U.S. Constitution doesn't give the federal government the power to do what it has been doing under the Controlled Substances Act for thirty-some years, which is usurp the power of the people of each state to pass their own laws regulating matters of general health and welfare.

You might be interested to read "Marijuana, Prohibition and the Tenth Amendment" at www.SusanShelley.com.

Copyright 2008

Notes:

The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

The 18th Amendment, ratified in 1919, declares, "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited."

The 21st Amendment, ratified in 1933, states, "The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed."

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