Proclaiming that "we will end the Bush Administration's war on science," the Democratic Platform promises to "lift the current Administration's ban on using federal funding for embryonic stem cells." The genuinely pro-life Republican Platform calls for "a ban on human cloning and a ban on the creation of or experimentation on human embryos for research purposes."

The 2008 Democratic Platform stridently toadies to the feminists on all their issues. The Platform reaffirms support for the Equal Rights Amendment (which was declared dead by the Supreme Court 26 years ago), enforcement of Title IX (which has canceled hundreds of men's college athletic teams, thereby costing us dearly in the recent Olympics), passage of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (which would use a UN treaty to keep abortion legal), and the Violence Against Women Act (which puts a billion taxpayer dollars a year into the coffers of the radical feminists).

The Platform reiterates the phony feminist slogan that "women still earn 76 cents for every dollar that a man earns." That figure includes women who have spent many years out of the workforce and, of those who do have jobs, about a third work only part-time.

The Platform promises to "expand" the Family and Medical Leave Act. "Expanding" means forcing employers to pay wages to employees who are on extended leave at times of their own choosing.

The Democratic Platform goes all-out in recognizing the support of their gay rights constituency. "We support the full inclusion of all families, including same-sex couples, in the life of our nation, and support equal responsibility, benefits, and protections."

The Platform adds, "We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act." Overwhelmingly passed in 1996 to prevent judges from forcing other states to validate Massachusetts' same-sex marriages, DOMA was one of the most popular laws ever passed and it was even signed by Bill Clinton.

Most of the Democratic Platform consists of promising benefits that will cost already burdened taxpayers aplenty. There's no mention of how these extravagant handouts will be paid for.

For example, the Democratic Platform enthusiastically endorses the incredibly extravagant worldwide handouts in the bill sponsored by Barack Obama called "the U.S. Millennium Development Goals, which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015." The Platform promises to "double our annual investment in meeting these challenges to $50 billion by 2012."

The Democrats' mindset is that "we need stronger international institutions." So, the Platform promises to "create a $2 billion Global Education Fund ... with the goal of supporting a free, quality, basic education for every child in the world."

The Democrats want the government to take care of American kids from birth through college. "We will make quality, affordable early childhood care and education available to every American child from the day he or she is born," and "we will provide all our children a world-class education, from early childhood through college."

The Democratic Platform is full of proposals to raid the pockets of John Q. Taxpayer and reduce the American standard of living. This includes "an economy-wide cap and trade program," a plan to "reduce oil consumption by at least 35 percent, or ten million barrels per day, by 2030," and designing legislation based on the belief that "global climate change is the planet's greatest threat."

These expensive plans will require a giant expansion of government money and government jobs. The Democrats must have had this result in mind when they promised they "will make government a more attractive place to work."

There is much more expensive foolishness in the Democratic Platform, but the plank that takes the cake is: "we oppose laws that require identification in order to vote or register to vote." That sounds like the Democrats are planning on winning the 2008 election by stuffing the ballot box.

by Phyllis Schlafly
September 12, 2008

http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2008/sept08/08-09-12.html

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This decision provides a roadmap for how Congress should withdraw jurisdiction from judicial supremacists in other fields, too. The Second Circuit decision is a sweeping affirmation of Congress's power to stop future and pending lawsuits in federal and state courts.

This ruling broke an alarming trend of judicial supremacy and stopped outrageous lawsuits that tried to impede the sale of guns because of illegal acts committed by New York City residents and others. Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg was left empty-handed in his attempt to sue businesses concerning crimes committed by residents of his city.

The lawsuit cited the harm from gun sales while ignoring evidence that the benefits far outweigh the harm. The trial court sided with Bloomberg, but the appellate court said "no" and put an end to the nonsense.

Congress had legislated the basis for this decision by passing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) in 2005. The PLCAA protects against a "qualified civil liability action," defined broadly to include almost any lawsuit brought against a gun manufacturer or seller based on "the criminal or unlawful misuse" of a firearm distributed in interstate commerce. On the day it was signed into law by President Bush, gun manufacturers moved to dismiss this case, and the Second Circuit has now enforced the law.

The appellate court rejected an argument that this law denied access to the courts. New York City can and does sue all the time, but Congress properly rejected the ridiculous notion that the city could sue businesses over a typically beneficial product that was later used illegally.

Should General Motors and Ford be held liable for crimes committed by drunk drivers, or baseball bat suppliers be sued for criminal beatings inflicted with their products? Of course not, and it was an outrage that courts even entertained such actions against gun manufacturers and suppliers.

If Congress had not effectively withdrawn jurisdiction, gun manufacturers would be reluctant to produce guns and many might go out of business. This intimidation would deter the lawful sale of guns.

That's exactly what the gun-control advocates have long wanted: legislation from the bench that they could not persuade real legislatures to pass. A majority of legislators, who are elected, see the absurdity of gun control and recognize the valuable self-defense function of guns.

The role of judges should be (as Chief Justice Roberts repeated in his confirmation hearings) like that of baseball umpires: calling the balls and strikes, but not changing how many strikes constitute a strike-out. Judges should interpret ambiguous laws fairly but not legislate from the bench.

Gun control has become so unpopular that not even the Democratic presidential candidates dare brag about their views. Instead the anti-gun crowd hopes to get what it wants from supremacist judges.

The misuse of the courts to obtain a result contrary to the will of the American people should not be allowed on other vital issues. Congress should also take away from judges issues such as the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments, the Boy Scouts, and the definition of marriage.

Take another example. Federal courts should not entertain lawsuits by illegal aliens against local ordinances that enforce our immigration laws.

This refreshing gun decision by the Second Circuit signals the way for Congress to return the judiciary to its proper place in our constitutional separation of powers system. In the previous Congress, the House did pass bills to curb court mischief about the Pledge of Allegiance and the definition of marriage, and now it's time for the Senate to step up to the plate and take action against judicial supremacists.

May 21, 2008
by Phyllis Schlafly
http://mail.hughes.net/cp/ps/Main/login/Authenticate?s=1211409060068&v=1211409060068

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The redundancy of Brown's outrageous semantics was oppressive. His speech used the word global 69 times, globalization 7 times, and interdependence 13 times. He referred to Kennedy 19 times, lavishing fulsome praise on John F. ("his influence abides everywhere"), Robert (he sent forth "ripples of hope"), and Ted ("one of the greatest Senators in more than two centuries").

Brown rejected the traditional concept of national sovereignty, which means an independent nation not subservient to any outside control, telling us to replace it with "responsible sovereignty," which he defined as accepting what he calls our global "obligations." Hold on to your pocketbook.

Brown admitted that his "main argument" is that we must accept "new global rules," "new global institutions," and "global networks." Brown's global rules include massive U.S. cash handouts and opening U.S. borders to the world.

Brown's use of well-known American political phrases was tacky. He tried to morph FDR's New Deal into a "New Global Deal," and JFK's New Frontier into "the New Frontier is that there is no frontier."

Brown even slipped in an attempt at thought control: "Americans must learn to think inter-continentally." He declaimed, "We are all internationalists now."

Using the rhetorical device of inevitability, Brown warned us that his vision of the globalist future is "irreversible transformation." He wants to "transcend states" and "transcend borders" as he builds the "architecture of a global society."

Brown peddled the nonsense that the peoples of the world "subscribe to similar ideals." He tried to tell us that all religions (Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists) have "common values" and "similar ideals." No, they certainly do not.

Brown wants to increase the power of the United Nations to become the source of "an international stand-by capacity of trained civilian experts, ready to go anywhere at any time," and even be able to exercise "military force." Americans do not intend to cede such authority to the corrupt UN.

The silliest part of Brown's ponderous speech was his claim that "a global society" is "advancing democracy widely across the world." In fact, he doesn't even practice democracy in his own country.

Brown refused to allow the British people to vote on whether or not they want to accept the European Union (EU) constitution. He acquiesced in the plot of the constitution's author, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, to put the EU constitution into effect by calling it a treaty so it did not have to be voted on by the people.

Brown was chicken about the treaty subterfuge and did not permit a photographic record of his participation. He sent his Foreign Secretary to perform the official treaty signing in front of cameras.

The EU constitution, now called the Treaty of Lisbon, requires all signers to surrender their sovereignty and democracy to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and judges in Strasbourg. The EU constitution takes away England's right to pass its own laws, forces England to surrender more than 60 UK vetoes of EU decisions, and gives the EU bureaucracy and tribunals total control over England's immigration policy.

Instead of a self-governing nation whose democratic system was developed over centuries, England is now ruled by what Margaret Thatcher called "the paper pushers in Brussels."

Brown made his globalism speech emphatic by repeatedly invoking the words "New World Order." The New World Order Brown tries to con the United States into accepting would mean taxing Americans for foreign handouts so immense they would make the Marshall Plan look puny, global warming rules to drastically reduce our standard of living, and putting American workers in a common labor pool with the world's billions who subsist on less than $2 a day.

Gordon Brown invited us to march forward to globalism "where there is no path." He's correct that there is no path on which we can expect globalism to lead us to a better world; in fact every path toward global government is a surrender of our liberty and our prosperity.

Gordon Brown should go back home and study up on how Americans refused to accept orders from King George III.

by Phyllis Schlafly
April 30, 2008

http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2008/apr08/08-04-30.html

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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It is bad enough that the United States has been hemorrhaging millions of manufacturing jobs that are critical to sustaining our middle class. It's even worse that government policies are deliberately outsourcing jobs that are critical to our national security.

All during the Clinton and Bush Administrations, U.S. negotiators signed trade agreements that allow foreign competitors to create and maintain unfair border-tax schemes that massively discriminate against U.S. manufacturers and service providers, and give foreign competitors a dramatic advantage in the U.S. market. The principal border-tax scheme used against us is the Value Added Tax (VAT).

When foreign manufacturers export their products to the United States, the Value Added Taxes they paid are generously rebated by their governments. Isn't that cool! General Motors, Chrysler and Ford would surely be in better shape if the U.S. government rebated the heavy U.S. taxes they have paid.

But that's only half the story. When U.S. manufacturers try to sell their products in foreign countries, they are required to pay border taxes not only on the value of the product itself, but also on the value of all transportation, insurance and other costs.

The bottom line is that these border-tax schemes heavily subsidize the products other countries sell to us, while erecting a high tax barrier against our goods when we try to sell overseas. The combination of foreign governments' export subsidies and import taxes amounted to a $428 billion disadvantage to U.S. manufacturers and service providers in 2006.

My late good friend, the well-known Senator Everett Dirksen, used to quip about government policies by saying, "A billion here, a billion there, and soon we'll be talking about real money."

The border-tax problem does, indeed, involve real money. In 2006, it was four times as costly as the Iraq war (VAT: $428 billion; Iraq war: $101 billion, according to Congressional Research Service figures), and two times greater than the U.S.-China trade deficit ($232 billion). The United States has no mechanism to stop or offset this foreign border-tax racket, which creates a severely unlevel playing field. Our complaints and petitions to the World Trade Organization have fallen on deaf ears.

But how could we expect any better treatment? We are only one vote out of 152, and most of the other countries don't like us anyway. This border-tax subsidy started shortly after World War II. U.S. officials, steeped in a Marshall Plan foreign-handout mentality, agreed to allow France to protect its domestic market, going and coming, by border-tax subsidies and taxes. What followed was monkey-see-monkey-do. Other countries found they could play the same anti-American game. Today, 149 countries use the border-subsidy-and-tax scheme to discriminate against U.S. products. In addition, the foreign border-tax rates have grown and grown. France's border tax rate of 2 percent in the late 1940s has risen to 19.6 percent today, and the average for all 149 countries is 15.5 percent.

These figures show that the push for the United States to lower or eliminate our tariffs is one of the costliest con jobs ever perpetrated on Americans. We cut our tariffs in the name of "free trade," but 149 foreign countries simply replaced their tariffs with approximately equivalent border taxes benignly called "Value Added," and then doubled the indignity by handing out subsidies to make their products more saleable in U.S. markets.

The American people rose up with a mighty roar a couple of years ago to kill the Bush Administration deal to outsource control of 22 East and Gulf Coast port operations to Dubai Ports World, which is controlled by a Middle East government. We are looking for a similar grassroots uprising to kill the deal to outsource the building of aircraft essential to our national defense.

America's industrial base is a vital part of our national security. We can't afford to put it under the control of foreign governments. The French tanker-aircraft deal should be a Red Alert about the unfair treatment of Americans by various trade agreements and contracts. Then, perhaps we can build momentum to protect what's left of our manufacturing base and middle-class jobs by establishing a level playing field for foreign trade.

by Phyllis Schlafly
April 2, 2008

http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2008/apr08/08-04-02.html

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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