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June
Don’t get caught flat-footed in front of the press! Below is a quick rundown of today’s “must reads.” – John T. Doolittle, House Republican Conference Secretary
The Morning Murmur – Thursday, June 29, 2006
1. Texas redistricting upheld - Washington Times Op-ed
In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court yesterday mainly upheld the 2003
Republican-controlled legislature's redistricting of Texas' congressional
map. If Democrats wish to return Texas to their control, they'll have to do
it the old-fashioned way -- through elections.
2. Shy boy whose fate could change history - Times UK
What happens to kidnapped Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit will almost
certainly determine whether the region is plunged into a new cycle of
violence, or whether the Middle East peace process can somehow be revived.
3. Misunderestimated - Wall Street Journal Op-ed
Although balancing energy needs with the environment is always hard, the
prohibition on offshore extraction cannot be justified.
4. Berkeley places impeachment measure on November ballot - Associated Press
The left-leaning city of Berkeley will let voters decide whether to call for
the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on the
November 7 ballot.
5. Bush's Decency Highlights Democrats Incivility - Real Clear Politics
Democrats aren't able to
put politics aside. They're too angry with President Bush for everything
from winning the election in 2000 to having the gall to monitor terrorists'
phone conversations.
For previous issues of the Morning Murmur, go to www.GOPsecretary.gov
FULL ARTICLES BELOW:
1. Texas redistricting upheld - Washington
Times Op-ed
June 29, 2006
In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court yesterday mainly upheld the 2003
Republican-controlled legislature's redistricting of Texas' congressional
map, if not exactly with enthusiasm. The justices decided, for the most
part, that what the Republicans did in Texas was not unconstitutional simply
because it gave them a solid majority in the congressional delegation after
the 2004 elections -- an outcome which was more representative of Texas
politics anyway. Gerrymandering is not pretty, but whereas Democrats sought
to gain a shortsighted partisan victory, the court wisely chose to let the
system be.
Yet there are plenty of caveats in the 120-page ruling to ensure that the
issue is far from decided. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy
said, "In sum, we disagree with appellants' view that a legislature's
decision to override a valid, court-drawn plan mid-decade is sufficiently
suspect to give shape to a reliable standard for identifying
unconstitutional political gerrymanders."
Note the caveat: Justice Kennedy remains open to a "reliable standard" by
which to judge whether a gerrymandering case is unconstitutional. Although
he doesn't give any guidelines to what the standard is, his language is like
an open invitation to lawyers to come up with one. Similarly, Chief Justice
John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito also appeared unwilling to reject the
possibility of unconstitutional gerrymandering, finding only that a testable
standard "has not been argued in these cases."
In a split decision the Court stopped short of upholding the Republicans'
dismantling of the heavily Latino community in District 23. Again writing
for the majority, Justice Kennedy said that Republican-created District 23
deprived Latino voters of an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice
as he says is required in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, even though
the Republicans tried to compensate by creating a new Latino-dominated
district elsewhere. (It should be noted that the 23rd District is
represented by Henry Bonilla, who is himself a Latino.)
The new district, he wrote, didn't satisfy Section 2 because it grouped
Latinos of "disparate needs and interests,"a conclusion based mostly on the
fact that the Latinos in question were not of the same economic class. This,
as New York University Law Professor Rick Pildes has noted, is "a major,
major innovation" for the court, since it seems to take into account not
only the ethnicity of a minority but also its socioeconomic status. Justice
Roberts put it right when he wrote that "It is a sordid business, this
divvying us up by race."
The political fallout from yesterday's decision will be relatively light.
Instead of rewriting the entire congressional map of Texas, the legislature,
it seems, will only have to redo District 23 and by extension the
surrounding environs. If Democrats wish to return Texas to their control,
they'll have to do it the old-fashioned way -- through elections.
http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20060628-094628-2466r.htm
2. Shy boy whose fate could change
history - Times UK
By Richard Beeston and Ian MacKinnon
Until he was captured by Palestinian militants last Sunday there was little
to distinguish Gilad Shalit from the thousands of other teenagers doing
military service in the Israeli army.
He was raised, the middle of three siblings in a small community in the
rolling hills of northern Galilee, near Israel's border with Lebanon. His
father, Noam, is a manager at the Iscar machine tools company; his mother,
Aviva, works at the Society for the Protection of Nature. His brother is a
college student and his sister is at high school.
Friends describe Gilad as studious, good at physics and a little shy. But
they say he is quite determined in his own quiet way, and that when he was
called up a year ago he volunteered to join a combat unit. His elder
brother, Yoel, 21, is a student at a polytechnic in the northern Israeli
port of Haifa. He has a younger sister at high school.
Today the future of the Middle East could hang on the fate of this otherwise
unremarkable 19-year-old.
What happens to Corporal Shalit will almost certainly determine whether the
region is plunged into a new cycle of violence, or whether the Middle East
peace process can somehow be revived.
If Corporal Shalit is killed while in the hands of militants linked to Hamas,
any prospect of a rapprochement between Israel and a Hamas-led Palestinian
Government will vanish for years to come, perhaps for ever.
Israel will seek revenge against those it holds responsible - not only on
the Hamas leadership in Gaza but also against the group's more militant
exiled leaders in Beirut and Damascus. But should Israel's military pressure
- or a deal to swap Palestinian prisoners for the soldier - persuade Hamas
to release Corporal Shalit, surprising possibilities could open up.
Largely obscured by the kidnap drama, Hamas made a potentially historic
concession on Tuesday by implicitly recognising Israel in a deal with the
mainstream Fatah movement that could lead to a government of national unity.
Even as it was publicly squaring up to Israel over the captured soldier,
Hamas was opening a back door to peace talks with Israel.
Last night the omens were not good. Somewhere in Gaza's refugee camps,
probably in a makeshift underground cell, the missing soldier was being held
under tight guard.
Ehud Olmert - a Prime Minister without the distinguished military past of
his predecessors Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak, Binyamin Netanyahu and Yitzhak
Rabin - cannot afford to show even the slightest sign of weakness in his
dealings with people his Government regards as terrorists.
Corporal Shalit may be an unremarkable young man, but as a soldier his
wellbeing matters hugely to his countrymen. The military plays a huge role
in every Israeli life, for a small country with a large conscript army.
Everyone has a close relative or friend serving in the armed forces. That is
why no Israeli can fail to be moved by the smiling face on the front pages
of their newspapers, and by the ordeal of his family.
It is also why it is axiomatic that every Israeli Government must do all in
its power to secure the safe release of captured soldiers and repatriate the
bodies of the dead.
"Bring Gilad Back," said the headline in the Yediot Ahronot daily, echoing
the prayers of his family, whose modest home in northern Israel has been
besieged by television crews.
The magnitude of the crisis is being felt at the highest levels. Corporal
Shalit's kidnapping was raised yesterday by the White House and European
Union.
Since the second intifada erupted almost six years ago, nearly 4,000
Palestinians and more than 1,000 Israelis have been killed in a vicious
cycle of suicide bombs and military retaliation.
The identities of most of the dead have long been forgotten by the outside
world, but Corporal Shalit - whatever his fate - is destined to be
remembered for a long time to come.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2248285,00.html
3. Misunderestimated - Wall Street
Journal Op-ed
When it comes to tax policy these days, the most powerful branch of
government seems to be the unelected computers at the Joint Tax Committee
and Congressional Budget Office. Those are the agencies that tell Congress
how much tax cuts will "cost" the Treasury in lost revenue. And what's
standing in the way of the Senate repealing the death tax this year, for
example, is their $600 billion boogeyman estimate of lost federal revenues
to the Treasury over 10 years.
But what happens when the computers go haywire? A new study from the
American Shareholders Association examined the 10-year forecast for economic
growth and federal revenue collections for the period 1997-2006. And over
these years, it found, the CBO underestimated tax revenue collections by a
cumulative $800 billion. To paraphrase President Bush: That's a pretty
severe misunderestimation.
The forecasting faux pas is actually larger because those estimates excluded
the impact of at least three major tax cuts (in 1997, 2001 and 2003) that
subsequently passed Congress. These tax cuts were estimated by the wizards
at Joint Tax to deplete federal tax collections by an additional $1.24
trillion through 2006, according to the Shareholders Association study.
So if you add those together, CBO and JTC have managed to underestimate
revenues by $2.04 trillion over the past decade. Here's one way to
appreciate how large this error is: It would be as if CBO forgot to count
all the federal income tax payments made by every resident of Florida for an
entire decade. Tied to their outdated forecasting models, these agencies
refuse to acknowledge that there is any Laffer Curve effect from changes in
tax rates that help the economy grow and revenues increase. Thus CBO also
managed to project a decade ago that the U.S. economy would be $1.3 trillion
smaller today than it actually is.
Forecasting future growth is never easy, but that's all the more reason for
Members of Congress not to make themselves policy slaves to these estimates.
Republicans have promised time and again to fix the models, but they always
flinch when the Democrats who first sponsored these models object. So after
12 years of GOP control of Congress, our nation's tax policy is still
dominated by computer models that never get it right.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115145995757892652.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
4. Berkeley places impeachment measure on
November ballot - Associated Press
The left-leaning city of Berkeley will let voters decide
whether to call for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney.
The City Council voted Tuesday night to put the advisory measure on the Nov.
7 ballot. The move is symbolic because only Congress has impeachment powers.
Some cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, have passed resolutions
calling for impeachment, but supporters say Berkeley would be the first city
asking voters to decide.
Only 5 percent of Berkeley voters are registered Republicans and Democrat
John Kerry received more than 85 percent of the city's vote in 2004.
The measure says the administration violated the Constitution with illegal
domestic spying, justified the Iraq war with fraudulent claims and illegally
tortured citizens.
The city will spend $10,000 to put the measure on the ballot.
"The whole idea is to start a grass fire surging up on this issue,"
Councilwoman Dona Spring said. "We hope other cities put this on the ballot
as well. Just in the Bay Area we could get 2 or 3 million votes, which would
be a very powerful statement."
http://news.bostonherald.com/national/view.bg?articleid=146160
5. Bush's Decency Highlights Democrats
Incivility - Real Clear Politics
By Seth Swirsky
One of the first things George W. Bush did after his inauguration on
January, 2001, was invite Senator Edward M. Kennedy - along with his entire
family - to the White House for a special screening of "13 Days," the
hagiographic dramatization of Kennedy's brothers John and Robert's handling
of the Cuban Missile Crises. Bush, famous for his bipartisan outreach during
his eight years as governor of Texas (where he garnered 69 percent of the
votes in his 1998 reelection), was beginning his presidency by reaching out
again.
The symbolism could not have been more obvious. With the newly elected
"compassionate conservative" hosting the aging lion of liberalism, Bush was
keeping a campaign promise to be a "uniter, not a divider" and taking the
first step to, as he promised, "return dignity" to the office.
Soon after, Bush pushed his attempts to unify America beyond symbolism by
inviting Kennedy, the quintessential liberal and a longtime advocate of
education reform, to the White House again, this time as a full partner in
drafting the vital "No Child Left Behind" legislation.
Two years later, Kennedy repaid the president's generosity of spirit and
action by taking the floor of the U.S. Senate to accuse him of being a liar
by claiming that Bush had "cooked up the war (against Saddam Hussein's
regime) in Texas." While Kennedy had every right to voice his passionate
dissent of the war, his incivility toward the president stood in stark
contrast to Mr. Bush's high-mindedness. When asked to respond to Senator
Kennedy's no-holds-barred, no-proof-required attack, President Bush said, "I
don't think we're serving our nation well by allowing the discourse to
become so uncivil." The styles could not be more obvious: it was class
versus crass.
It wouldn't be the only time prominent Democrats behaved rudely toward a
president who treated them with respect. On June 14, 2004, President and
Mrs. Bush invited Bill and Hillary Clinton to the unveiling of their
portraits in the East Room of the White House. A few excerpts of the
president's welcoming address once again show Bush to be a man with a warm
heart and generous spirit:
"President Clinton and Senator Clinton, welcome home. It's great to see
Chelsea. The fact that you survived your teenage years in the White House...
speaks to the fact you had a great mom and dad. Thank you all for coming
back...We're really glad you're here. As you might know, my father and I
have decided to call each other by numbers. He's 41, I'm 43. It's a great
pleasure to honor number 42. We're glad you're here, 42...Mr. Rodham did
have the joy of seeing his only daughter become America's First Lady. And I
know he would not be surprised to see her as she is today, an elected United
States Senator, and a woman greatly admired in our country."
Since that evening, Senator Clinton has repaid the president's kindness
towards her and her family by saying, among other mean-spirited things: "I
sometimes feel that Alfred E. Neuman is in charge in Washington" and "I
predict to you that this administration will go down in history as one of
the worst that has ever governed our country." (The last said on Martin
Luther King's birthday, a day that should symbolize a coming together of
parties and people of diverse viewpoints).
The kindness President Bush showed former President Clinton takes on extra
meaning when one remembers the cynical words Clinton had for then-governor
Bush when Bush was running for President in 2000: "The message of the Bush
campaign is just that, I mean: 'How bad could I be? I've been Governor of
Texas. My daddy was president. I owned a baseball team.'" Only last year,
Clinton went on to abrogate the unwritten rule between ex-presidents of not
speaking ill of them, especially when overseas (no less, when we're at war).
Clinton told a group of Arab students in Dubai that the United States made a
"big mistake" when it invaded Iraq. Did the ex-president not know that his
condemnation of the war, spoken in the heart of the Middle East, could
damage the morale of the brave Iraqi people and frontline American troops
who risk their lives everyday in the name of democracy? Clinton earned
$300,000 for speaking against America's interests that day.
Despite both Clintons disrespectful comments, President Bush offered a
contrast in style few could miss. During his 2006 State of the Union
address, he offered nothing but gracious good humor when he said his
father's "two favorite people" - Bill Clinton and himself - were turning 60.
As laughter filled the Senate chamber, the camera recorded a stone-faced
Hillary Clinton. At the very least, a polite smile would have sufficed,
allowing Americans to see that their leaders can put politics aside for but
a moment.
But the Democrats aren't able to put politics aside. They're too angry with
President Bush for everything from winning the election in 2000 to having
the gall to monitor terrorists' phone conversations. Even after the
president shared credit with the Democrats on the reduction of crime and the
lowering of welfare rolls and teenage pregnancies, the Democrats - in
keeping with their "if it's bad for America, it's good for Democrats" theme
- applauded enthusiastically only when Bush mentioned the failure of social
security reform. Class versus crass.
The contrast becomes even clearer when one expands the field to include the
First Lady and she who would be queen, Theresa Heinz Kerry. Can anyone
imagine the dignified Laura Bush telling a newsperson to "shove it" or using
the term "scumbags" in a taped interview as Heinz Kerry did during the 2004
campaign? Class versus crass.
And even as the body of Coretta Scott King lay in state, the Democrats could
not resist using her funeral as a way of being uncivil to President Bush.
Who can forget the Reverend Joseph Lowery choosing to eclipse what should
have been a heartfelt eulogy in order to remind the audience that "We know
now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there"? Or, ex-President
Jimmy Carter,choosing the reflective occasion to hurl gratuitous remarks in
the president's direction? Once again, President Bush took the high road,
embracing Lowery and speaking dignified, respectful and healing words about
Mrs. King. Class versus crass.
The president's demeanor, standing as it does in perfect counterpoint to
that of his political adversaries, is one of the reasons Republicans control
the House, the Senate and the White House, and, I predict, will continue to
do so. Americans prefer nice people, because they recognize that a thriving
civilization requires civil people.
President Bush had it right when he said, "America is a great force for
freedom and prosperity. Yet our greatness is not measured in power or
luxuries, but by who we are and how we treat one another." Now that's class.
Seth Swirsky is a hit songwriter and best selling author. He can be reached
through his site, Seth.com.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/06/bushs_decency_highlights_democ.html
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