Another letter to the Patriot-News editorial staff.  Sometimes, these even get published.  If this one does, it will ignite a firestorm.

"Cynthia Tucker writes that immigration reform will be "ugly" because, as President Obama has said, "any form of pathway for legalization for those who are already in the United States is unacceptable."  Yes, Mr. President, and Ms. Tucker, some of believe the law should be enforced.  Our country is flooded with illegal aliens, and this situation can't continue, because we can't know if illegal immigrants might be criminals, mentally ill people, or carriers of contagious diseases.  This latter possibility has become more worrisome recently with the news that there is a worldwide swine flu epidemic raging, and deadly swine flu is not what we need here now, or ever; we have enough of our own problems.

Unfortunately, the current system of simply returning captured illegal aliens to their homeland at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer isn't working.  They simply return as soon as they can.  Discouraging these lawbreakers is therefore going to require tougher measures.  Let's start instead by giving them one warning, so that the first time they come here illegally, we fly them home with the warning not to come here again without permission, while collecting a sample of their DNA.  

Each time illegals are captured, their DNA can be compared with a database of previous lawbreakers to see if this is their first time.  If it isn't, they can be deported again - just as soon as they pay back the taxpayer by working off their debt in a labor camp.  There is precedent for this in our country.  Many states, particularly in the South, have required prisoners to work off their debts to society by building roads, for example.  I've heard numerous politicians and other public figures state that we desperately need to rebuild our infrastructure, including highways and other roads.  These illegals could work on these kind of projects until such time as it is deemed that their debt to the U.S. taxpayer has been satisfied.  Then, and only then, they'll be sent back again to their country.

This plan kills a couple of birds with a single stone: it deters illegal immigration while providing needed labor at low cost for rebuilding highways and other roads.  It seems like a good, workable plan to me, which probably means it has little or no chance of ever becoming reality."

Liberals would have us believe that lack of federal government regulation caused the financial market meltdown last year, with Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns taking unreasonable risks with investors' money.  In particular, they fault these firms for investing in derivative securities based on, among other financial instruments, high-risk mortgages, and they say that government regulation could and would have prevented them from going astray.

But what do Wall Street types think about this?  Most of them have been fairly close-mouthed about it, probably because they fleeced the feds for billions of dollars in bailout money and don't want to kill the goose that's laying the golden egg.  However, a few days ago the Massachusetts Attorney General's office released transcripts of a conversation between convicted broker/swindler Michael Madoff and officials of the Fairfield Greenwich Group, a company accused as acting as a "feeder fund" (using another, "master" fund to invest assets investors have place with the feeder for safekeeping) for Madoff's "master" fund.  Fairfield has just settled with the state for $8 million without, presumably, admitting guilt, for its role in the scandal, but what the transcripts reveal about Madoff and the Securities and Exchange Commission is much more interesting.  

The conversation was Madoff's attempt to coach Fairfield executives in their dealing with a 2005 SEC investigation into Madoff's investing practices.  Much of the conversation focused on how Madoff decided where and when to invest, the two key decisions any fund manager faces, and the details he provided to Fairfield actually outlined a reasonable investment strategy - had it been real.  Anyone who wants to read about it can find the transcripts here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Fairfield_Exhibit_1.pdf

The details are gory unless you're a financial geek, but what Madoff tells Fairfield to say would have made sense to someone in that industry, as Madoff outlined how he was using models to invest using 95% confidence intervals for returns on investments.  Unfortunately, the models Madoff described to Fairfield were bogus, and it ultimately developed that Madoff wasn't really investing at all.  He was operating a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme, whereby money obtained from recent investors was used to pay off people who had invested earlier.  Even more unfortunately, the SEC failed to recognize the scam for what it was.

But Fairfield's coached testimony ultimately convinced the SEC investigators that all was as it should be, just as Madoff said it would.  He accurately predicted that "the [Securities and Exchange] Commission has no idea what the hell is going on" so that Fairfield didn't have to worry.  After all, "you don't have to be too brilliant with these guys."  Apparently, Madoff's low opinion of the people who were investigating him was well justified.

Then, however, Madoff revealed another reason why the SEC might roll over on his scheme, besides the fact that its investigators were ignorant of financial derivatives.  He went on to add, "these guys they work for five years at the Commission [and] then they become compliance manager at a hedge fund."  So they don't want to dig too deeply into these funds' strategies and maybe make them mad, because they want one of the companies to hire them in a few years.  That's understandable, since these civil servants are lucky to be making over $100,000 a year, while a hedge fund compliance manager can make many times that on Wall Street.  Still, anyone who thinks these SEC investigators are protecting the individual investor is dreaming, as liberals frequently do.  And supposing that increased regulation will be the cure for Wall Street chicanery, or even honest mistakes, is purely the stuff of which fantasies are made.

I mentioned all of this to a liberal of my acquaintance, and wouldn't you know that this person's take on the situation was that it was all the Republicans' fault that the SEC isn't more vigilant, because it was Republicans that stripped the SEC of its investigative clout.  Of course, Madoff's been running this scam since the early 1990s, when that good Republican Bill Clinton was President, but why let facts get in the way of your fantasy?  It's so inconvenient.

The moral of this story, then, is that regulation isn't the answer.  Not only is it not the answer, it can actually make the situation worse, by providing the illusion that all is well in the investing world because the feds are looking out for the individual investor.  Folks, they're not looking out for you, and your best defense is to become a smart investor, or at least know who you can trust based on reputation, and forget the regulation.

Another letter to the editor of the Harrisburg Patriot-News:

"I see where mind-reading columnist Thomas Friedman claims that many Republicans "just want President Barack Obama to fail."  He must be using his ESP, because although some Republicans have predicted Obama will fail and that it will be his downfall, I have yet to see where any have said they want him to fail.  It's also possible that Friedman is delusional, like so many other liberals, because, among other things, he also refers to Obama as a "centrist," which his record shows he clearly is not.

I can only speak for myself, but I believe I do speak for most Americans - Democrats as well as Republicans - when I say that I hope our country does well enough to remain the greatest country in the world.  I also hoped that in the 1970s, however, when the mis-administration of one James Earl Carter turned us into a second-rate power.  Unfortunately, Carter's policies were guaranteed to fail, and all the hope in the world couldn't have and didn't change that fact.  So it will be with Obama's disastrous policies of government intervention in the marketplace and appeasement of terrorist-sponsoring states such as Iran.  I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not wrong.

American business will ride the engine of entrepreneurship to win in the global business arena,  not by having the taxpayer subsidize health insurance.  We will also not win in the globalized economy by making our businessmen slaves to treaties designed to prevent "global warming" when those treaties, like the Kyoto Accords, place no comparable burden on China or India.  The Indians and the Chinese aren't foolish enough to sign anything like that, so why should we be?  Most international corporate managers, eastern financiers, and technology entrepreneurs understand this quite well, and the ones who don't will soon be reminded of how true it is.  Meantime, Tom Friedman should take his ESP act to the circus, where it belongs."

Van "The Man" Jones, Barack Obama's "Green Jobs czar,"  resigned just after midnight Sunday morning, saying he had to quit because "opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me."  This vicious smear campaign consisted of quoting outrageous statements he'd made in the past, including posting videos to You Tube showing him actually making those statements.  As a matter of fact, I saw several sites refer to Jones as "the One-Man You Tube Channel" for all the videos concerned citizens posted there recording him uttering his left-wing extremist rantings.

I thought it might amuse my readers to reprint some of his lunatic ravings, so here's a sampling from the Fox News website:  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,546602,00.html.  For some reason, I was unable to find any of these transcripts on any of the mainstream media websites.  I wonder why?

"The white polluters and the white environmentalists [italics are mine] are essentially steering poison into the people of color's communities because they don't have a racial justice frame."  It doesn't sound to me like this fellow's colorblind, as his President claims we should be.

"Right now we're saying we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to some kind of eco-capitalism where, you know, at least we're not - you know - fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet.  Will that be enough? No, it won't be enough. We want to go beyond excess and exploitation and oppression altogether, but that's a process."  This is a recurring theme with Jones:  pollution is oppression that is especially directed at minorities.

Jones also made at least one derogatory comment about Republicans and compared President Bush to a "crack addict" in some of his more controversial rants, and it turns out he also signed a petition calling for an investigation into the Bush administration for orchestrating the 9/11 attacks.  In the lexicon of the far left, this is known as Bush "MIHOP" (Made It Happen On Purpose) (as opposed to LIHOP - Let It Happen On Purpose), and it marks Jones as a far left "truther" - short for someone who "wants to get the truth out" about what happened on 9/11/01.  Jones may be the first conspiracy theorist White House special assistant ever.

So Jones is gone and, predictably, many on the left are upset.  Says one Ben Mangan, a greenie writing a guest column in the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday, "I was sad, but unsurprised to read the news that Van Jones decided to resign his post..."  Perhaps more surprisingly, though, I'm sad, too.  "Why?," you ask.  It's simple, really.  This guy was a poster boy for the excesses of the left.  Hearing and seeing what he has to say, one can easily picture conservatism as a barrier against the nutty leftists who are coming out of the woodwork as part of the Obama Administration's attempt to reshape our great country as a socialist "paradise."  That would be worth a lot of votes to our side.  Let's face it; Jones' misstep here wasn't his leftist rants.  His mistake was being too honest about what he, on behalf of the Obama Administration, was going to try to accomplish.

You see, environmentalism isn't about protecting the environment. It started out that way, as the air in many large cities and the rivers near them were polluted to the extent that they presented a health hazard to many of their inhabitants.  40 years later, those threats are largely eliminated, and with everyone's awareness raised, efforts to prevent a re-occurrence are ongoing.  But the real goal of environmentalism was and is to engineer a government takeover of the means of production.  The left intended to accomplish this goal using the American public's fear of possible "eco-disasters" to get them to vote for legislators and government executives who would pass laws giving the federal government what amounted to regulatory veto power over how private corporations operated.  Combine these restrictive environmental regulations with pro-union laws mandating a union presence in every company and affirmative action laws and you have enabled the government to dictate how they do business, the essence of both socialism and fascism.  

Enabling a government takeover of the private sector was viewed as a good thing by the left, because it would enable them to have "enlightened" government agencies dictate their do-gooder, "caring" policies to corporations, relieving their stockholders and board of that burden.  Unfortunately, with government able to dictate such policies at will, there wasn't likely to be much concern with such trifles as cost-effectiveness and customer service; such things tend to be the province of a company's stockholders and customers.  And ignoring these concerns would, ultimately, make America a much poorer place overall, with leftist interest groups and not efficiency driving the economy.  Fortunately, most Americans know enough about economics to understand the truth of this, and they drew the line at voting for candidates known to favor inefficient "green" policies such as over-engineering the fuel economy of American-made automobiles.

However, the left wasn't done, not by a long shot.  Their next attempt at eco-fearmongering came in the late 1970s, when leftist climatologists began to raise an alarm over the impending onset of "nuclear winter," which they were predicting based on the supposed rapid decline of the average global temperature.  The alleged cause of this cooling was particulate matter produced by autos and industries burning fossil fuels.  This soot was supposedly blocking sunlight and causing global cooling.  By the mid 1980s, it was obvious that average temperatures were actually rising, so the new climate crisis du jour became "global warming," again supposedly caused by autos and industries burning fossil fuels, but this time carbon dioxide and not soot was the culprit.  Carbon dioxide, you see, is a "greenhouse gas" which if present in the atmosphere allows ultraviolet radiation from the sun to penetrate down to the ground.  Once the Earth absorbs that radiation, however, it's re-radiated as infrared back into the atmosphere, and since carbon dioxide traps IR radiation, the Earth will warm up.  One can see this effect on Venus, where atmospheric carbon dioxide causes the surface temperature to approach 900 degrees Fahrenheit, but on the other hand, the Venusian atmosphere is over 99% carbon dioxide.  Here on Earth, it's currently about .0036%, up from .0027% about a century ago.  While it's believable that this increase is due to industrial and automotive activity, it's not believable that such a minute rise in carbon dioxide level is causing some kind of major warming phenomenon, at least not to sane observers.  Furthermore, there's no empirical, laboratory evidence that this could be the cause of any significant warming to counter this common-sense conclusion.

Now, though, average temperatures are down slightly over the last 10 years, making it one of the coolest decades in the last century, which would also tend to make one believe that the slight rise in carbon dioxide levels over the last 150 years or so aren't having much, if any, impact.  But the liberals, who can't give up if they hope to achieve their socialist goals, have tacked once again and again renamed the crisis, this time as "global climate change."  Finally, they've reached a point where they're safe from contradiction, because of course the Earth's climate is changing.  We know it is because it's always changing and always has been, whether or not man has been present.  Therefore, no sane person believes that people have enough impact to affect it much one way or the other.  Liberals, most of whom actually are sane, in spite of appearances, don't believe it either, but they slyly hope to get us to buy into this myth to achieve their goal of giving government domination of the private sector.

Barack Obama, as a typical left-wing liberal, shares this agenda.  That's why he appointed Van Jones as his Green Jobs czar - to help advance it.  Unfortunately, Jones isn't quite the politician Obama and his liberal pals in Congress are.  They understand the need for incrementalism and "compromise" when usurping our freedom; Jones was naive and deluded enough to think most Americans will see the "wisdom" of his positions.  But they don't, and that was his mistake.  Van the Man told the truth about what Obama Administration officials and liberal members of Congress say only in private, and for that, unfortunately, he had to go.  I say "unfortunate" because he would have served as a warning to the average American of the dangers liberal Democrats pose to our freedom.  But don't expect that the libbies have given up.  They'll never give up, which is why the next "Green Jobs czar" appointee will be someone with the exact same point of view.  The only way to change things is to vote against liberalism and eco-terrorism in 2010 and 2012.

I saw another wonderful piece of "balanced journalism" on CBS' 60 Minutes last Sunday.  You know 60 Minutes - the television news program that epitomizes the principle of fairness, especially towards conservatives and businessmen - right?  The piece that caught my eye was one comparing certain types of investing, specifically hedging with derivative investments, to casino gambling and bookmaking.

More specifically, CBS correspondent Steve Kroft was up in arms about a type of derivative investment called credit default swaps, which the program defined as (quoting from the 60 Minutes website transcript), "essentially side bets on the performance of the U.S. mortgage markets and some of the biggest financial institutions in the world - a form of legalized gambling that allows you to wager on financial outcomes without ever having to actually buy the stocks and bonds and mortgages."  This is, at best, a half-truth, and it maligns a whole industry based on the mistakes of a few investors.

I want to talk about derivatives here to dispel the notion that they're nothing but "legalized gambling."  It's true that it's not necessary for an investor to actually own a stock or other asset (such as a house) to invest in it using a derivative.  "Derivatives" are so named because they "derive" their value from the performance of something else - the performance on an individual financial instrument, a whole group of such instruments, or even, as Kroft correctly noted, the outcome of a sporting event.  Derivatives are, in fact, a bet of a sort, but so is insurance.  Properly used, both can hedge against market downsides by bringing together both "bulls" and "bears" and spreading the risk associated with investing over a larger group of investors.  It was the sporting event analogy, however, that Kroft used to get the most mileage out of his claim that derivatives are gambling.

Kroft interviewed Eric Dinallo, former insurance superintendent for the state of New York, who said, "It's legalized gambling. It was illegal gambling. And we made it legal gambling...with absolutely no regulatory controls. Zero, as far as I can tell."  Well, it's true there wasn't much regulation of derivatives, because the financial wizards of Wall Street were supposed to know how to use them.  (If you don't like that, you can thank Bill Clinton, who signed the measure to reduce regulation of derivatives into law instead of vetoing it.  But I, for one, don't blame Clinton.  He's not responsible for any foolish investments.)  Kroft offered his opinion that "it sounds a little like a bookie operation,"  to which Dinallo replied, "Yes, and it used to be illegal. It was very illegal 100 years ago."  Clearly, neither Dinallo nor Kroft understands either derivatives nor bookie operations, but someone who's been an insurance commissioner should know better.

Bookies aren't gamblers, at least not usually.  They try to ensure that they have roughly the same amount of action on both sides of a sporting contest, so that whoever wins, they get a percentage of the total amount wagered.  They do this most often by creating "favorites" and "underdogs" using a "point spread."  For a bet on the favorite to pay, they have to "cover" the spread - win by at least that many points - otherwise, people betting on the underdog win their bets and the favorite bettors lose.  The spread acts as a handicap giving the perceived weaker team an edge designed to get an equal number of people betting on each team.  The bookie then pays off the winners and collects from the losers the amount they bet plus a service charge or "vigorish," say 10%, which is how bookmaking makes money.  In this case, with an equal number of bettors wagering on each team, the bookie collects 5% of his "action" no matter who wins.  The bookie is therefore not gambling, unless he makes himself a handicapper and shades the spread one way or another deliberately trying to get more action for the team is believes is more likely to not cover his handicapped spread.  When this happens, the bookie is indeed gambling, but most are content to collect their half of the vig, in most cases about 5%.

Most hedge fund managers are also content to collect the vig.  A typical fund manager is trying limit losses by guaranteeing minimum or maximum prices for an asset he holds.  He can do this by either "going long" to enable maximum gain while guaranteeing at least a minimum payoff or by "selling short" to limit his downside while guaranteeing at least a minimum gain.  He can also combine these positions with bond purchases, put and call options, and a host of other contracts to achieve whatever financial goals he has.  The possibilities are literally infinite, including ensuring a range of returns that will fall between a desired minimum and maximum.  This isn't gambling, folks, because, just like the bookie matches people with positions on both sides of a sporting contest, the financial market is matching investors with positions on all sides of the market.  Financial markets are a lot more complex than sports gambling, but the principle is the same.

Of course, also just like the bookie, the fund manager can decide he wants to become a handicapper.  This is what happened when AIG, Bear-Stearns, and many other now-failed financial institutions decided that there was no downside to the mortgage market and adjusted their credit default investments accordingly.  Unfortunately for them, there's always a downside in any market; it's inevitable.  However, just like there are still winners when the bookie turns handicapper, there were winners in this game as well as losers.  It's always that way, and no amount of government intervention or regulation can change that.  The only thing government involvement will change is who wins and who loses, with the winners skewed towards those who can purchase the most influence with government representatives.  It shouldn't be that way.  What should happen is that the people who make bad decisions pay the price instead of being rescued from their foolishness with government bailouts.  So let's stop impugning an entire industry for the mistakes of a few, as was implied by this 60 Minutes segment.  Let's allow the market drive this process and stop bloviating about "legalized gambling."  It's the right thing to do.

I was going to quit beating this horse because I thought he was quite dead, but while watching the Ted Kennedy interment ceremony, I overheard one of his eulogizers at Arlington refer to him as a "good Catholic."  Come on now, a good <em>Catholic?</em>  This comment, which I only heard, so I didn't see who made it, is as unreal as Governor Schwarznegger extolling Kennedy's "character."  It made me realize that the horse had been resurrected one last time.

Put aside his drinking, womanizing, and cheating at Harvard, among many other sins.  He may well have repented them; only God knows that.  But one thing it seems fairly certain he didn't repent was his role as one of the leading proponents of abortion in this country.  Of all his sins, this one was the worst, and it needed forgiveness the most.  We can only pray that God was able to do that.

Kennedy also had a substantial fortune inherited from his family that included an estate on Cape Cod, a yacht he sailed there extensively, and numerous other estates and luxury items.  In spite of his supposed concern for the poor, I never saw him offer to sell any of those things in order to give money to the downtrodden.  No, he wanted to give them other people's money, in clear contravention of biblical injunction:

"And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." - Matthew 19:24

Far be it for the Kennedy family to endure the hardship that comes with not having a home on Cape Cod or a yacht to sail.  Better instead for the common man to pay taxes so that they can feel good about themselves.  This really is the last time I write on this topic, but these are things that needed to be said.  There's no way, in light of these facts, that Kennedy was anything like a good Catholic.  He needs our prayers, but we can't give him or his legacy our approval.

I get some amusing drivel from libbies on my blogs, but the animal rights crowd comments are always the most entertaining.  I just got one on my Patriot-News blog.  Here's the comment:

"Do everyone a favor and go back to never commenting on sports issues, your comments are very offensive to those of us who have respect for the life of ALL the innocent creatures God created.Do you have a dog? Because if you did and it had been one of those stolen by Vick's crew to use as bait, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

And here's the usual perspicacious reply:

"...and never post comments on here again that make it obvious that you're either mentally challenged or mentally ill or, more likely, both.  Your comments are <em>very offensive</em> to those of us who know that humans are superior to animals:

'Let us make man in Our image, in Our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.' - Genesis 1:26

You're mentally challenged because your reading comprehension is low:  "...while I think fighting dogs is a despicable crime, amounting to nothing less than torturing animals..."  You're mentally ill because you think, obviously, based on the content of your post, that fighting dogs is a worse crime than killing unborn humans:  "...animal cruelty, while detestable, doesn't even exist in the same universe as crimes against people."  That's a true statement to all but the <em>sickest</em> individuals.

As far as you telling me what to post, guess again, boy.  It's my blog and I'll post what I want.  On the other hand, if you continue to post comments that are both stupid and offensive, I'll have them deleted.  Now go and have a nice day in whatever hole you occupy."

Time isn't my favorite newsrag just for nothing.   They have some of the funniest columnists to be found anywhere, and one of my favorites is Joe Clown...er, sorry, Klein.  Joe's at his absolute funniest when he pretends to be a centerist; Joe, you see, is pretty far left, but by posing as a "moderate," he can present his fringe arguments as "reasonable" and have some hope of convincing us that they are.

Joe's latest effort at making us laugh hysterically is in last week's issue of Time, where he states that "he's been critical of the left on numerous issues in the past."  See there, he's a reasonable moderate.  Actually, Joe has been more critical of the left's tactics rather than their stances on issues, such as their "insistence on marginally relevant public option" that has "enabled the right's 'government takeover' disinformation jihad."  Bad move, libbies.  You should have just gotten your foot in the door with government-mandated private coverage.  There'll be plenty of time later to have government take over the whole program once you've gotten people used to surrendering their freedom.

But while that's funny, it's not really the punchline for this particular article.  No, Joe then takes conservatives to task for allowing themselves to be taken over by "nihilists and hypocrites more interested in destroying the opposition and gaining power than in the public weal."  No, there's no possibility that conservatives could be legitimately concerned that the Obama administration could be interested in having government take over health care; that's just a red herring proposed by opportunistic righties looking to embarrass the President and kick him out of office.  Well, Clown does concede that there's a "legitimate [my italics], if wildly improbable, fear that Obama's plan will start a process that will end with a health care system entirely controlled by the government."  Except for the part that says "wildly improbable" I'd swear he's been reading my blog.

But here's the real hoot.  Clown asserts that while Republicans are "opportunistic liars," he credits the Dems with being mostly "honorable public servants who make their arguments based on facts."  And to support his argument, he cites as examples Russ Feingold and Dennis Kucinich!  Let's take a look at the real facts, shall we?

Russ Feingold is a man who doesn't understand the simple English of the First Amendment to the Constitution:  "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech..."  As a result, he co-sponsored a notorious bill to limit political speech by imposing funding constraints on it.  Granted, he had some help from the Republicans on this one, to their discredit.  But there's no possible reading of the facts that changes what the First Amendment says.  Feingold also called for President Bush's censure in both 2006 and 2007 for his alleged mismanagement of the Iraq war and for his alleged "assault" against the Constitution.  In the real world, the Iraq War, while it hasn't been easy or quick, has implanted democracy into the Middle East somewhere besides Israel.  My opinion is that this will eventually stabilize the Arab world and lead to long-term peace in that region.  That is just an opinion, but the fact is that so far it seems to be moving in that direction.  So much for Russ Feingold and the facts.

Then there's Dennis "UFO-man" Kucinich.  Kucinich doesn't think, as Feingold does, that President Bush is necessarily a criminal; he thinks that it's more like Bush is mentally ill.  On the other hand, Kucinich does concede that if "there isn't something wrong with him, then there's something wrong with us."  Dennis sees UFOs.  I'll leave the reader to decide which one has something wrong with him, and who knows what "facts" look like.  Dennis is also another leftist politician who can't read plain English.  I know this because he wants to ban guns in clear violation of the Second Amendment:  "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."  There's no possible reading of the facts that changes what the Second Amendment says, either.  These stances along with his other nutty positions on energy, farming, space, and the economy clearly mark him as someone not in touch with the real world, so how could he even know what the facts are to argue them in the first place?

Finally, I want to revisit, in honor of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, the pack of lies he spewed while pioneering the practice of "borking" a Supreme Court nominee:

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is - and is often the only - protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy... President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice."

So, according to Clown, the left "makes their arguments based on facts," except, of course, fringe lefties.  So I guess we know where he thinks Teddy stands.  But not Joe Clown, nosirree.  He's a moderate, unbiased journalist, reporting the truth, which is that the left deals in facts and the right deals in "outright lies."  Riiiiight.

The accolades continue to pour in for the late Senator Ted Kennedy, most of them focusing on how well he got along with politicians of all political persuasions.  Adoring MSM commentators focus on such bipartisan legislative successes as the "No Child Left Behind" Act of 2001 and the "Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization" Act of 2003, two of the more recent bills cosponsored by Kennedy with colleagues from across the aisle.

I'll say again that I don't wish to speak ill of the dead, but we need to inject some reality into this discussion.  This is the same Ted Kennedy who, in a hyper-partisan move in 1987, invented the term "borking" to describe the process whereby a party holding the majority of Senate votes uses half-truths or even lies to smear the reputation of a qualified Supreme Court nominee proposed by a President of the opposite party.  Kennedy's target for this campaign was one Judge Robert Bork, a distinguished jurist nominated by President Reagan to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.  Bork, as an advocate of "original intent," which means that judges use the founding fathers' intended meaning which is embedded in the Constitution to make their decisions, was adamantly opposed to the judicial activism of the courts over the preceding, at the time, 30 years.  He believed that legislating is for legislators and not judges, and that courts had embarked on a course of action since the late 1950s which was circumventing the will of the majority of voters.

Kennedy, of course, as an activist liberal himself, was having none of this.  In a nationally-televised speech, he uttered the following scurrilous statement about Bork's record and intentions:

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is - and is often the only - protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy... President Reagan is still our President. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice."  Conservatives were, I believe, so stunned by these calumnies that they were slow to respond with the truth, and so an outstanding legal mind was lost to the Supreme Court.

And speaking of hyper-partisanship, as recently as 2004, when junior Massachusetts Senator John Kerry was the Democrats' nominee for President, Kennedy led the fight to change the law in the first place to require an election in the event of a Senate vacancy.  He and his fellow state Democrats did this to prevent then-Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, from directly appointing a senator in the event of a vacancy due to Kerry's election as President. At the time, he argued that for the governor to make the appointment would violate voter sovereignty.  Now, however, with Democrat Deval Patrick serving as Governor of Massachusetts, Kennedy sent a letter just prior to his death suggesting the law be changed to allow the Governor to appoint an interim U.S. senator rather than wait up to five months for a special election.

Of course, Patrick will appoint a good Democrat - one sympathetic to the "need" for government intervention in the free market - which could be vital to President Barack Obama's attempt to socialize the $2.5 trillion healthcare sector if it enables Senate Democrats to reach a 60-seat majority and block any Republican maneuvers to stall its legislation.  This hypocritical move was seen for what it was by virtually everyone, even Massachusetts Democrats, and is unlikely to succeed.  Still, it shows Kennedy for what he really was:  cooperative when he needed assistance from across the aisle to enact his liberal programs, even settling for part of them when necessary, but a partisan bully when his side controlled the legislative process.  It's unfortunate and probably telling that many Republicans were so anxious to work with him to undermine their own principles, but be that as it may, let's at least deal with the truth.

I can't remember when the Patriot-News last used one of my perspicacious letters, but I'm going to keep trying to confront the leftist nuts they seem determined to publish.

"It's a mystery to me how a supposedly mainstream publication like the Patriot-News can continue to publish columns by an obvious fringe leftist like Paul Krugman.  Krugman's hatred for the free market and the American way of life is exceeded only by his love for socialism and government programs.

"Reagonomics" produced a record 28-year run of unprecedented prosperity which was interrupted last year by an unfortunate downturn, a decline in the economy that would have lasted maybe a year or so but for the panicked intervention of a huge government "stimulus" package.  Now, we're about to be saddled with enormous debt, debt which can only, when the economy finally gets moving again, result in record inflation to match the record deficit.  Voters who should have known better elected the people who have perpetrated these outrages; now, they'll have the opportunity to remember how and why liberals always wreck the economy, to what will I'm sure be their sincere regret.

Krugman ironically quotes FDR on "bad economics" in a statement he made in 1937, the start of the second downturn of the 1930s that's come to be known as the depression within the depression.  Some people, like Krugman, will never learn because reality means nothing to them when it conflicts with their preconceived notions.  The rest of us, however, should take this experience to heart and vote for people who ensure that government performs only its constitutional duties, which do not include monkeying with the most successful economy in the history of the world."

Oh, wait, it was last month that they published one of my letters.  I'm sooo forgetful.

The last male of the second generation of Kennedys - the political generation - Senator Edward Kennedy, has just succumbed to the inevitable, dying from brain cancer at age 77.  While I was staunchly opposed to Kennedy's liberal agenda, I never wish for someone to die.  I only wish the people of Massachusetts had voted him out of office decades ago, but then that was probably too much to hope for.  Now, of course, the accolades are rolling in, just as they always do for a recently departed famous person:  liberal lion, great compromiser, architect of meaningful legislation, etc.  All have some grain of truth, especially if you consider "meaningful" to be the same as "liberal", but probably the most outrageously untrue epitaph was offered by a Republican, of all people.

Governor Arnold "RINO" Scharznegger of California has said of Kennedy that he was, "a man of great faith and character."  I don't know about the faith part - only God knows that - but character??  Let's remember that here's a man who, on July 18, 1969, drove away drunk from a party on Chappaquiddick Island with a woman not his wife, intending, apparently, to have an affair with her.  Somewhere along the way to Edgartown, he took a wrong turn (drunks will do that) and drove over the side of the Dike Bridge just before 1:00 A.M.  Kennedy managed to escape the vehicle, which was overturned in the water, but his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, was unable to escape.  Her drowned body was found by fishermen just after 8:00 the next morning.

After Kennedy left the scene of the accident without rescuing Kopechne, his route back to the party took him past four houses from which he could have telephoned and summoned help; however, he didn't do so.  He was never able to fully explain why he didn't, nor why he tried to pretend the incident never happened.  He simply returned to his room and woke up the next morning, resuming his life as though nothing was wrong.  The discovery of Kopechne's body changed all that, of course, but Kennedy was never even charged with a crime, let alone forced to spend time in prison for manslaughter as any ordinary, non-Kennedy peon would have had to do.  It seems safe to me to assume that Kennedy was trying to cover up his attempt to have an affair with Mary Jo, which led him to allow her to drown in his car, but I guess we'll never know for sure, and you can bet forgiving liberals will be quick to point that out.

On March 30, 1991, Kennedy was involved in another drinking- and sex-related incident, this time with a couple of his nephews.  One of those nephews, William Kennedy Smith, allegedly  tackled and raped a woman he picked up in a bar in the vicinity of the Kennedy estate swimming pool as she struggled to fight him off. The police report said she suffered bruises and abrasions and fractured rib.  Smith was charged and brought to trial in a most un-Kennedy-like fashion, but order was restored when he was acquitted.  I guess we'll never know the truth about this incident, either, since Uncle Teddy successfully orchestrated a cover-up on Billie's behalf.  Liberals, however, can forgive a good "progressive" like Kennedy any indiscretion.

I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but there's a pattern here of drinking, sex, and violence that seems inconsistent with the accolade of good character.  Perhaps we should simply remember Kennedy as a legislator who pursued his "progressive" legislative agenda with vigor and some success.  Oh, but wait, I didn't want to speak ill of the dead...

Recently, I've published several articles highly critical of the Obama Administration's and Congress's attempts to "reform" our health care system.  That's because the Democrats are determined to sneak in, one way or another, so-called single payer health care coverage, whereby the government provides health care insurance as a last resort.  The Dems insist this insurance will be cheaper than that provided by private health insurance companies, as indeed it probably will.  The government can always hold down costs by dictating low payments to doctors for various procedures.  They already do this with Medicare, and to heck with the doctors' need to make enough money to pay back the large student loans they took out to get through medical school.  The problem with this plan is that eventually the government health insurance, since it will undoubtedly be cheaper, will squeeze most if not all private insurers out of the market, leaving the government as our health care monopolist.  Anyone who's familiar with MediCare and the VA health care system can only guess how bad this would be.

Even when the Dems deny they're after single-payer government health care - anymore - they tout the need to mandate insurance coverage for all Americans, which will be subsidized for people who can't afford it.  But there are at least some people, young adults in good health, estimated to be as many as 25% of the Americans who have no health insurance coverage, who are voluntarily declining to be covered because they feel they have better uses for their money.  In a free country, how can we force them to pay for coverage?  

On the other hand, there are few simple changes we could make to the laws concerning health insurance that would go a long way towards ensuring that everyone who wants coverage can get it at the least possible cost.  First, it's currently illegal for residents of a state to acquire health insurance from another state, effectively granting insurance companies a monopoly on health insurance within their state.  A federal law allowing insurance companies to sell policies to individuals and corporations in other states would effectively eliminate in-state monopolies and force health insurers to compete with each other on a regional and national basis.  This measure will ensure that all Americans will have access to the maximum number of insurance plans, and the resulting increase in competition will force insurers to lower prices and offer a wider variety of services.

Second, to give Americans an incentive to purchase health insurance, the federal government could offer tax credits, or at least deductions, if credits prove to be too expensive, for health care contributions.  Individual Americans would surely see the logic of taking advantage of these tax benefits to invest in health care.  At the same time, the loss of revenue from these individual tax benefits could be made up by taxing employer health care contributions.  I realize that such a measure would be unpopular with a large segment of the population - tax increases always are - but the reality is that employer benefits such as this constitute a very real form of income and should be taxed as such.  For example, if your employer contributes $5000 to your health care plan each year, it's the same as if you received $5000 from him in extra wages and invested in a health care plan yourself - except in the latter case, you'd have paid taxes on it first.  With this new system, you'll receive the wages from your employer instead and claim a tax credit, or at least a deduction.  This will have the effect of shifting the burden of providing health care insurance from employers to individuals.  Given the fact that many employees of small businesses already have no employer-provided health insurance, this can only be a good thing.

Finally, the health care tax credit could be used to provide an incentive to contribute to health insurance savings accounts, which could be built up when individuals are young and healthy and require little care for use when they're older and more in need of more extensive health care.  Individuals could enhance their contribution rate by accepting higher deductible health insurance, which has commensurately lower premiums, and giving the difference into the savings accounts.

Together, these initiatives - providing increased competition and availability of insurance by eliminating the out-of-state restrictions, providing tax incentives, and establishing a system of medical care savings accounts - will transform the American health care system.  And the beauty of it will be that it will use the free market to accomplish it.  Given that the market enables individual buyers to express their preferences by "putting their money where their mouth is," that can only be a good thing.

Another wasted effort for the editors of the Harrisburg Patriot-News.  They should hire me to be a columnist, but I'm not holding my breath.

"Guest columnist Dr. William R. Davidson apparently hoped for Americans to provide the President with backbone, but instead they've provided him with brains.  Dr. Davidson is the one who vastly underestimates the American people if he thinks they're going to fall for implementing a government health care plan.  Seniors have seen how well Medicare works, and veterans have had more than enough experience with VA health care to not want to foist that system onto the general public.

Average Americans understand quite well how government-provided health care works, and they're the ones, not "powerful interests vested in the status quo" or "vigilantes," whoever they might be, that are preventing passage of any bill that puts the feds in the health insurance business.  If socialists like Davidson want to resurrect "single payer" health insurance at the state level, more power to them.  Better to have it wreck the economy of one state, as Wisconsin is currently considering doing, than the economy of the whole nation.

Does Davidson really believe for one second that providing health care insurance for an additional 47 million people who don't pay for it now, including illegal aliens, is going to be cheaper?  Not only is it possible to rebut that argument, it's easy.  Physicians should really stick to the business of healing and leave economic matters to economists. "

Ever notice that there are some people who always think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence?  Their car, their house, or even the spouse/significant other are never good enough for them, but a new car, house, or spouse/SO will surely make their lives complete.  These people act like children, even though they may nominally have been adults for many years.  Their focus is completely on their wants and needs, and taking responsibility for their lives and the impact their actions have on the people around them is a concept completely alien to them.  They bounce around from partner to partner as each new relationship begins with so much promise, only to sour when the reality of being involved with someone else and the messy details of his or her life finally takes its toll.  Ever notice how many of these people are politically liberal?

These are the descendants of the "if it feels good, do it" generation raised in the 1960s.  It's not uncommon for one of these children, especially the male kind, to marry, have children, and begin a normal family life, only to discover that it's a drag having responsibilities to his wife and kids.  There are diapers to change, bills to pay, doctor visits to make, and all the other tedious tasks that go along with raising a family.  Suddenly, there's no more time for fun in the form of fishing trips, parties, and golf outings, because there's no time or money for those things anymore.  To the Peter Pan liberal, this situation becomes intolerable, causing him to look for a new partner who is more "fun" than the current spouse.

I ran into someone just like this at a family outing recently; let's call him "Joey."  Joey dumped his wife - call her "Ellen" - of over 10 years a few years ago, leaving her to raise their two young kids.  It seems Joey, who spent 3½ years at a prestigious Eastern university before dropping out a semester short of graduation to work at a series of relatively menial positions, was getting tired of having Ellen telling him he needed to quit partying and get serious about his life (and their lives).  Once rid of Ellen, Joey found a new love - call her Mary - a woman who seemed to be willing to have all the fun Ellen didn't want to have anymore.  Now, while Joey says he still loves Ellen, and always will, he is "in love" with Mary.  She "completes him."

I wasn't at all surprised, when conversation turned to politics, to hear Joey describe himself as a "raging liberal."  Of course he is.  As I mentioned above, while not all men with the "Peter Pan" syndrome or something similar are liberals, the vast majority are.  Modern liberals, as opposed to real, classical liberals, have adopted the philosophy that individuals aren't really responsible for anything they do.  Peter Pans aren't responsible for abandoning their families; their families are responsible for being abandoned because they're such party poopers.  It' a very short step from feeling that way about themselves to taking the position that no one is really responsible for their actions - the modern liberal position - and that government should therefore help them out of whatever dilemma they find themselves in, no matter what the cause.  This is what constitutes "caring" to liberals, and it's no wonder most Peter Pans adopt that philosophy wholeheartedly.

If you try to suggest to Joey and other liberals that people really are responsible for their actions, and that individuals should be responsible for the consequences, the debate ends because you are "filled with hatred" and "uncaring" and therefore unworthy of debating.  How could some uncaring person who's filled with hatred have any valid points or policy recommendations, after all?  There's no need to debate with someone like that, so the liberal wins by default, at least in his own mind.  Unfortunately, if the liberals are also able to convince enough voters that they've settled these debates, they can use that tactic to win in the political arena, as they did for almost five decades.  The unfortunate truth is that the American public is the real loser.

Chronologically adult men who refuse to grow up and accept responsibility for their lives used to be the ones considered losers:  ne'er-do-wells who refused to do right by their families.  But times have changed.  Now, these people are considered, by the elite, at least, who constitute many of their number, to be self-fulfilled individuals who have "marched to their own drummer."  Thumbing their noses at societal norms geared towards the nuclear family and raising well-adjusted children, they wreak havoc on their offspring with self-indulgent behavior.  And, yes, they are mostly liberal politically.  The liberal philosophy just suits their needs so well.

As for "Joey" he recently announced that he and Mary are engaged.  They're to be married in a year or so, and when they are, how long do you suppose it will be before Mary starts to "nag" about Joey's self-indulgence to try to get him to tone it down and pay more attention to his home life?  Or will Mary turn out to be one of those rare wives - a female Peter Pan who will party hearty right along with him?  Time will tell, but if not, we can be pretty sure our pal Joey will soon be looking again for someone who "completes" him.

Liberals are such children.

Another letter to the editors of the Harrisburg Patriot News.  Some people just won't give up.

"How is it possible that a professional economist believes, as Paul Krugman says, "true socialized medicine would undoubtedly cost less, and a straightforward extension of Medicare-type coverage to all Americans would probably be cheaper than a Swiss-style system," when even an extension of Medicare would mean paying for health care for millions of Americans who don't pay for themselves now?  The first lesson any economist learns is that there's no free lunch.  It's also the first lesson forgotten by liberals.

As for the Swiss-style health care system, as Krugman himself says, "everyone is required to buy health insurance."  So much for living in a free country.  Liberals know what's best for us, so they'll force us to buy something we might not want or even need.  Krugman also says about the Swiss system, "insurers can't discriminate based on medical history or preexisting conditions and lower income citizens get government help in paying for their policies."  O.K. Paul, we get that you "care" about these people and so will tax the "rich" to pay for their benefits, but stop pretending it will cost less.  Oh, and by the way, who "cares" about all the hard-working Americans who will have to pony up billions more in taxes to fund this system?

Finally, Krugman offers up VA health care as a shining example of quality government care.  As someone who's used VA health care from time to time, I can tell you that while it may be low cost, it's far from quality.  Just ask any veteran who's used it.

How is it possible that a professional economist believes there are free lunches?  He doesn't.  He just believes in lying."