Since our constitution was ratified in 1876, the congressional redistricting provision found in Article V, Section 44, has always provided, as it does today, that the General Assembly shall redistrict the congressional seats “[w]hen a new apportionment shall be made by Congress.” There is no language empowering the General Assembly to redistrict more frequently or at any other time. To reach the result that the Secretary of State and the General Assembly would have us reach, we would have to read words into Section 44 and find that the General Assembly has implied power to redistrict more than once per census period.

We cannot do that, however, because another section of the original Colorado Constitution makes it clear that the framers carefully chose the congressional redistricting language and that this language gives no implied power to the General Assembly. Article V, Section 47, of the original 1876 Constitution addressed legislative redistricting, and originally stated that “[s]enatorial and representative districts may be altered from time to time, as public convenience may require.” The phrase “from time to time” means that an act may be done occasionally. Had the framers wished to have congressional district boundaries redrawn more than once per census period, they would have included the “from time to time” language contained in the legislative redistricting provision. They did not.

STEPHANOPOULOS: "Congresswoman Musgrave, [Andrew Sullivan] brings up the issue of civil unions. There's been some question about the scope of your constitutional amendment, which is designed to ban marriage. Would it also, in your view, outlaw and prevent any state from recognizing civil unions that are not called marriage?"

REP. MUSGRAVE: "Civil unions could be legislated. It preserves the state's rights to do that."

SULLIVAN: "Untrue."

REP. MUSGRAVE: "... And Barney knows, we know that you can go through the legislative process in each individual state and go for gay marriage ... [Gay groups] couldn't win in the legislative arena so they've shopped around for sympathetic judges and they hit the jackpot in Massachusetts and this ruling is very narrow ..."

STEPHANOPOULOS: "But we're talking about ..."

SULLIVAN: "The amendment I've read, (and) this is an attempt to put into the Constitution of the United States not just banning gay marriage but banning all the "legal incidents thereof," quote-unquote, which means they would get rid of all domestic partnerships anywhere in the country, all civil unions anywhere in the country. They would dictate to every state in the Union what they could or couldn't do and what they mean."

REP. MUSGRAVE: "That's just not right."

SULLIVAN: "It is. I've read the amendment you wrote."

REP. MUSGRAVE: "That's just not right."

SULLIVAN: "Are you telling me at once you support civil unions?"

REP. MUSGRAVE: "It preserves states' rights to decide."

SULLIVAN: "Where does it say that? [Hands Musgrave a copy of her proposed amendment] Here it is."

REP. MUSGRAVE: "What I do support is the state deciding that."

STEPHANOPOULOS: [Asking Musgrave] "What about the language on legal incidence?"

REP. MUSGRAVE: "The intent of the Federal marriage amendment is to have a Federal definition of marriage and to prevent states from exporting gay marriage."

REP. FRANKS: "I'm reading [your] amendment. Here's what the amendment says. As Andrew said, [reading directly from the amendment] it 'shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidence thereof be conferred' upon unmarried (people). It says nothing about states' rights, your argument that it reserves ..."

REP. MUSGRAVE: "Two-thirds in the House, two-thirds in the Senate, and 38 states get to decide."

REP. FRANKS: "It's not in here about states' rights, Marilyn ... Nothing in here allows Massachusetts to make its own decisions or Vermont on civil unions. You say it reserves these to states' rights. It doesn't say that anywhere in here."

REP. MUSGRAVE: "We'll discuss this through the process."

"... the Bush administration -- which likes to portray itself as the inheritor of Reagan-like optimism -- actually has a Nixonian habit of demonizing its opponents.

"For example, here's President Bush on critics of his economic policies: 'Some say, well, maybe the recession should have been deeper. It bothers me when people say that.' Because he used the word 'some,' he didn't literally lie -- no doubt a careful search will find someone, somewhere, who says the recession should have been deeper. But he clearly intended to suggest that those who disagree with his policies don't care about helping the economy. And that's nothing compared with the tactics now being used on foreign policy.

"The campaign against 'political hate speech' originates with the Republican National Committee. But last week the committee unveiled its first ad for the 2004 campaign, and it's as hateful as they come. 'Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists,' [the ad] declares.

"Again, there's that weasel word 'some.' No doubt someone doesn't believe that we should attack terrorists. But the serious criticism of the president, as the committee knows very well, is the reverse: that after an initial victory in Afghanistan he shifted his attention -- and crucial resources -- from fighting terrorism to other projects."

"I'm all for good manners, but this isn't a dinner party. The opposing sides in our national debate are far apart on fundamental issues ... It's the duty of pundits and politicians to make those differences clear, not to play them down for fear that someone will be offended."

"[Washington, D.C.'s former Congressional delegate Walter] Fauntroy, meanwhile, suggests that gay matrimony would harm the black community by weakening the traditional function of marriage. 'I'm unalterably opposed to anything that redefines marriage as anything other than an institution for two purposes, the socialization of children and the perpetuation of the species,' he said.

Fauntroy has yet to explain how gay couples who raise children fail to properly socialize them. In addition, it's hard to look at the census data, which show a gradual but steady increase in the number of black families headed by married couples -- plus, alas, the horrific number of black children born out of wedlock -- without concluding that the species is perpetuating itself just fine."

Hatch launched an investigation after Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., protested what they said was the theft of memos from their servers. The memos, concerning political strategy on blocking confirmation of several of President Bush's judicial nominations, were obtained and reported on by The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times.

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Hatch said that, at his direction, two federal prosecutors assigned to the committee had conducted interviews with about 50 people.

More memos are leaking from Democrat senators. Folks, this is a doozy. Republicans aren't this good. They don't know how to go into all these Democrat strongholds and steal this much stuff. This has to be leaks. This has to be Democrat staffers leaking.

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When it comes to the judiciary committee I will bet you that there are some staffers, liberal Democrat staffers working for these senators who cannot believe what they are hearing these senators say about minorities. You know, these staffers are the true believers. They carry the staff and the flag into battle. These senators are being very two-faced in private e-mails and memos, calling Miguel Estrada dangerous because he's a Latino. Senator Kennedy called a black female from California, Janice Rogers Brown, a Neanderthal not fit to be on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. You probably have some people on the staff saying, "I can't believe I'm hearing this." These people would never call minorities Neanderthal. So there's probably somebody that's leaking in there.

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You know, the word "mastermind" and Kennedy just don't go together, yet fourteen internal documents from a Senate computer system illustrate Kennedy's leading role in the current judicial battle and how he orchestrated the Democrat filibuster. Now, some reports of these memos say they were leaked, and others say pilfered. I say they've been leaked. An investigation has been launched into how the memos became public. They're not going to look into what the memos say, but how they got out!

"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the Constitution of any State, nor State or Federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

At the moment, there's no evidence to suggest that the memos were stolen.

Democrats allege that the memos were hacked out of Democratic computers but have no proof that that actually happened.

In addition, the only names that are blacked out on the memos are those of Democratic staffers. If Republicans had stolen the documents, why would they go out of their way to protect Democrats?

And the memos end in April of this year. But if the GOP had hacked into Democratic files, it seems likely that they might have been most interested in post-April materials relating to ongoing filibusters. Yet there's no such recent stuff in the memos.

All in all, the "apparent theft" of the memos is probably not a theft at all. An "apparent leak" seems more likely.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) announced last night that a committee aide has been suspended after an internal investigation determined that the aide had accessed sensitive Democratic computer files that were leaked to the press.

"The bottom line, it seems, is that it is tiring to suppress racial prejudice. Furthermore, this has impact on a person's subsequent attention and performance. It is rather similar to the depletion of a muscle after intensive exercise."

* Despite their loss of manufacturing jobs, cities in the Rust Belt have added net jobs (although probably not many high-wage jobs) over a period when West Coast metro areas are bleeding jobs.

* San Jose has ranked dead last in U.S. job growth for urban areas in each of the past three years. Hard hit by the meltdown in Internet-related businesses, metro San Jose entered the 3rd quarter of 2003 with 96,000 fewer jobs than it had exactly five years before.

* Over this same period, 1998 to 2003, job losses in other West Coast cities have been severe: Seattle (-14,000 jobs), Portland (-18,000 jobs) and San Francisco (- 50,000 jobs).

In Iraq, a ruthless dictator cultivated weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. He gave support to terrorists and had a relationship with al Qaeda -- and his regime is no more.

About 250 Zimbabweans have died in political killings since the competition for power heated up, in 2000. According to Amnesty International, 70,000 incidents of torture and abuse took place in Zimbabwe last year alone. The government's most pervasive form of intimidation is also its most effective: the denial of food. While international aid groups try to feed Zimbabweans in rural areas, city folk must buy their maize and wheat from the sole distributor—the Grain Marketing Board. In order to get food they are often forced to produce a ruling-party membership card or to chant such slogans as "Long live Robert Mugabe!," "Down with whites!," and "Down with [opposition leader] Morgan Tsvangirai!"

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"Mugonomics," as Mugabe's brand of economic policy is known in Zimbabwe, addresses the symptoms of economic collapse, such as food and fuel shortages, but ignores the underlying causes. Inflation in Zimbabwe is expected to surpass 800 percent by year's end. Unemployment is at 70 percent. Zimbabwe has its own dollar, but the highest (and rarest) currency denomination, a $Z 1,000 note, cannot buy even a loaf of bread. Most transactions require hundreds of $Z 50 and $Z 100 bills. When Tsvangirai was arrested, several men were needed to carry his bail money to the Harare high court in huge cardboard boxes. Newspapers advertise "money rubber bands" and electronic money counters that "count 1,500 bills per minute."

Because the rate of inflation is astronomical in comparison with the interest rates offered by banks, Zimbabweans are desperate to withdraw their savings in order to spend the money while it still has value. The banks say they would be happy to oblige—but they don't have the cash.

The government has so little foreign currency that it can't pay to import the ink and the paper needed to print more bills or bills of higher denominations. In July desperate Zimbabweans began sleeping outside banks so as to be there when the doors opened. But because the banks limited the maximum withdrawal to the equivalent of $2.50, patrons were rewarded for a night's wait with just enough money to cover their bus fare home.

OK, look, how could you NOT think that it might POSSIBLY be a good idea under SOME CIRCUMSTANCES to DISARM Saddam Hussein by military force? In what freaky bizarro world does that constitute support for a unilateral invasion without provocation? And is there any doubt who among the front runners was the most consistently against Bush's war?

"The way to privatize schooling is to give parents tax-financed scholarships, or vouchers … Pilot voucher programs for the urban poor will lead the way to statewide universal voucher plans. Soon, most government schools will be converted into private schools or simply close their doors."

"Eventually, middle- and upper-income families will no longer expect or need tax-financed assistance to pay for the education of their children, leading to further steps toward complete privatization. Vouchers could remain to help the truly needy."

Fully 81% of Republicans say they like the job that Bush is doing; only 31% of Democrats do.

About 300 public school employees from Houston, Fort Bend, Brazosport and other school districts rallied at DeLay's Stafford office, blaming the House majority leader for not bringing to a floor vote House Resolution Bill 594, the Social Security Fairness Act.

The Act, which has enough votes to pass in the House, would allow teachers and other government employees who have had other jobs to receive full Social Security benefits. DeLay has said the bill could bankrupt Social Security.

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Teachers who pay into the Teacher Retirement System receive that pension fund upon retirement but do not receive full Social Security benefits even if they paid into it and are vested, Texas Federation of Teachers secretary-treasurer John O'Sullivan said at the rally. Spouses and children of teachers do not receive full Social Security benefits either, he said.

HR 594 would allow teachers and their families to receive full Social Security benefits upon retirement or disability in addition to the teacher pension.

The bill has 277 co-sponsors in the U.S. House, including 23 from Texas, with a majority needed to pass. DeLay has the power to prevent a vote, said John Cole, president of the Texas Federation of Teachers. Texas is one of 12 states that considers teachers public servants and requires them to live off their teacher pensions, even if they had other careers before or afterward, he said.

Death penalty opponents often cherry pick the cases to be outraged about, taking advantage of low public awareness of the details. Well, here's a case where we know the guy's guilty, where we know he deserves it -- if anyone does -- and the public is very informed about the facts of the case. Let's have the opponents denounce this execution with the same passion they reserve for cases where the public is less up-to-speed on the details.

"Ideologically, Bush is the son of Reagan; stylistically, he's the son of Nixon," said Greenberg, who teaches at Yale and just published a book on Nixon's image titled "Nixon's Shadow."

[edit]

Bush, for example, structures his White House much as Nixon did. Nixon governed largely with four other men: Henry A. Kissinger, H.R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman and Charles Colson. This is not unlike the "iron triangle" of aides who led Bush's campaign and the handful of underlings now -- Cheney, chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr., national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and communications director Dan Bartlett -- who are in on most top decisions. Nixon essentially ended the tradition of powerful Cabinets in favor of a few powerful White House aides -- a model Bush has followed.

The most striking similarity is in the area of secrecy and what Nixon staffers called "managing the news." Nixon created the White House Office of Communications, the office that has become the center of Bush's vaunted "message discipline."

Then, as now, journalists complained about a lack of news conferences. In turn, the administration complained of "instant analysis and querulous criticism." Those words, from Vice President Spiro Agnew, were close to Bartlett's complaints about "analysis" and "commentary" in newspaper articles.

And while watchdog entities such as Congress's General Accounting Office and the Sept. 11 panel have complained of the Bush administration's withholding of information, a National Press Club panel accused Nixon, before Watergate, of "an unprecedented, government-wide effort to control, restrict and conceal information."

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

As Americans gather during Thanksgiving week, we honor our families, and we recognize the family as a source of help, hope, and stability for our citizens and for our country. [Excellent start!]

Strong families make our Nation better. They teach our children values and help them become responsible citizens. We must encourage families to be loving and compassionate, [to be] generous and supportive, and to serve and help others. [I'm a little persnickety about parallelism; you can decide for yourselves whether it should say "to be" or not "to be."]

On this Thanksgiving week, we also pay respect to our brave military families[, except for the gay ones,] whose loved ones are on active duty, many on the front lines of freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan. These families[, including the gay ones,]provide a bond of love and encouragement to our men and women in uniform as they defend liberty and protect our Nation [debatable that that's what they're actually doing, but I guess that's the official line].

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States [and by Katherine Harris and her voter-purging cronies], do hereby proclaim November 23 through November 29, 2003, as National Family Week. I invite the States, communities, and all the people of the United States to join together in observing this week with appropriate ceremonies and activities to honor our Nation's families[, except the gay ones].

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-first day of November, in the year of our [who's "we," Keemosabi?] Lord two thousand three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-eighth.

GEORGE W. BUSH

FALWELL: ...I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen.

ROBERTSON: I totally concur, and the problem is we've adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government, and so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do, and the top people, of course, is the court system.

FALWELL: Pat, did you notice yesterday that the ACLU and all the Christ-haters, the People for the American Way, NOW, etc., were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress, as they went out on the steps and and called out to God in prayer and sang 'God bless America' and said, let the ACLU be hanged.

The idea is to forge deployable brigades or whole divisions out of units of engineers, military police, civil affairs officers and other specialists critical to postwar operations.

[edit]

As a further sign the issue is receiving high-level attention, language is being drafted for the Strategic Planning Guidance -- the classified document that provides a basis for Pentagon budgeting and programming -- that would direct military authorities to explore setting up a stability operations force.

A September study by the Pentagon's Office of Stability Operations outlined how a brigade-size force of about 5,000 troops could be organized. Another study, sponsored by Cebrowski and completed earlier this month by a National Defense University team, called for a larger force of two division-size elements -- one active-duty, one reserve -- totaling about 30,000 troops.

If joined with some infantry and aviation elements, for instance, it could be used for small-scale interventions in Africa and elsewhere, the official said.

As Congress rushes to conclude its 2003 session, Republican leaders are trying to garner votes for controversial legislation by loading the bills with billions of dollars in added costs that analysts said would expand the budget deficit for years to come.

"The U.S. budget is out of control," the Wall Street investment firm Goldman Sachs & Co. warned Friday in its weekly newsletter to clients.

[edit]

All those actions come in the face of a federal budget deficit already projected to rise from a record $374 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 to close to or above $500 billion in the current fiscal year.

"The only thing I can tell you is evidently the word 'tomorrow' no longer exists in the vocabulary of otherwise responsible members of Congress," said Warren Rudman, a former New Hampshire Republican senator and long-standing budget hawk. "They are acting as if there is no tomorrow."

[edit]

Even conservatives who support tax cuts have begun to note the imbalance. Government spending now totals $20,000 per household, a level not seen since World War II, said Brian Reidl, a federal budget analyst with the Heritage Foundation. Meanwhile, taxes total $17,000 per household.

After seven years of disappointment, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tried last week -- and failed again -- to get the Senate to end the practice of secret "holds" to delay or block action on legislation and nominations.

Under their proposal -- supported by Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, and Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), guardian of Senate rules and precedents -- senators could use holds but would have to identify themselves within three days in the Congressional Record and on the Senate calendar. They also would have to tell their leadership in advance.

Despite a Republican objection that killed their proposal for this year, Grassley and Wyden vowed to try again next year, predicting they eventually will prevail.