PINE BLUFFS - A couple of friends have suggested that this year, John McCain, like Bob Dole in 1996, is a "giveaway candidate" who in losing this time around will surely set the stage for a Republican win in 2012. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Until you begin to think about it.

          There will be many very serious problems with four years of Barack Hussein Obama and the Democrats running things. That the public is already at least partially aware of this, but has not yet completely connected the dots, is seen by recent job approval ratings for this Democrat-led Congress; presently at 13%, according to a combined NBC/Wall Street Journal Survey taken October 4-5. Here are a few of the concerns that I see.

 
That Pesky Supreme Court Issue:

          Say what you will about George W. Bush’s presidency, unlike a few of his predecessors, his father among them, he’s certainly done well with Supreme Court appointments, placing two Justices on the Court who don’t attempt to legislate from the bench. John Roberts and Samuel Alito, appointed during Mr. Bush’s second term, have moved the Court from a liberal body to a more conservative one. However, that spot is tenuous at best, because it depends upon what Anthony Kennedy - who took Sandra Day O'Connor's role as the swing Justice - will do on any given day.

            Four liberal Justices still sit on that Court: John Paul Stevens, who is 88, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75, Steven Breyer, 69, and David Souter, 68.  It is said that Stevens, who once announced he'd not retire while a Republican president occupied the White House, still plays tennis at 88. Ginsburg, 75, works out regularly in the Supreme Court gym. These two oldest Justices — half the Court's liberal wing — will, whether they like it or not, probably be forced to retire during the next presidential administration. Despite Stevens' and Ginsburgs’ apparent vigor, change on the Supreme Court is more likely than not over the next four years. If nothing else, the actuarial tables will catch up with them.

            With five Justices 70 or older by the time the Court meets again in October 2008, interest groups and others are buzzing about the Court's role in the presidential election. One change on a Court that divides 5-4 in key cases can alter the results in a case and affect the law for years.

            I recently read a tongue-in-cheek story that the Justices, concerned about the number of 5-4 decisions they were releasing, met to decide if they could not begin to have at least a few more 6-3 decisions. Their vote? 5-4.

            But predictions of the pundits on the future makeup of the Court depend on three factors — who wins the presidency, who leaves the Court, and who is appointed. Democrat Barack Hussein Obama would surely replace liberal justices with like-minded successors. Just imagine: William Ayers, former member of the Weathermen terrorist underground as a Supreme Court Justice. On the other hand, Republican John McCain, if elected, might fulfill a campaign pledge and put conservative justices on the court in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, who don’t seek to impose their own agenda on the country.

            The problem of liberal judges and the mischief they can cause is highlighted by this recent story out of a federal courtroom in Washington, D.C., where a U.S. District judge, ignoring the fact that there’s a war going on – a war against Terrorists - ordered the release, into the United States, of 17 detainees who have been held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base since 2002 as enemy combatants.
            Luckily, this latest detainee disaster was averted - at least temporarily - when an appellate panel issued a stay the following day so that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit could consider the issue before the status quo changed. Nevertheless, the stark and shocking reality of the initial ruling remains; 17 terrorists released into America simply because a liberal judge decided that they can be tried in our civil courts. Maybe we should ask the judge who made this decision to guarantee their appearances in court by putting them up at his house until then.

            If an ultra-liberal president appoints two liberal justices to the Court, we'll be saddled with them for anywhere from 20 to 40 years. That's too long for the United States to again suffer under a liberal Supreme Court, as we were forced to do under the Warren Court.

The Pro-Life Angle:

Taxes, Taxes, Taxes:

          When you consider these two extremely important social issues, and then toss in Obama’s promise to raise the capital gains tax, which Republicans have fought so hard for years to reduce to its present level in order to benefit those millions of Americans - ordinary Americans who now and then purchase a few shares of stock or make an occasional investment in real estate rental property - to help make ends meet or to put the kids through college; well, I can't go along with the idea that we should not be too concerned about four years of a Democrat in the White House. Nor do I agree with Obama’s vice-presidential nominee, liberal Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), that it’s “actually patriotic” to pay higher taxes.

Think It Over:

          These are crucial times. As Dr. James Dobson, former head of Focus on the Family recently said so eloquently, “Our nation’s future literally hangs in the balance.”

PINE BLUFFS – Conservatives have been yelling “Foul” for years about the liberal bias that infects the mainstream media. Liberal newspapers such as the New York Times the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and others, are the leading purveyors of this bias. Long ago, they abandoned the objective, time-honored journalistic style of simply reporting who, what, when, where, and how, in their news articles, and have introduced their own shallow, often uncomprehending opinions instead of confining their views to the editorial or op-ed pages. They’ve sacrificed journalistic integrity to liberal opinion, and they seek to impose their own world view on us; a Socialistic, Communistic world view, which has been rejected almost everywhere else in America.

          Broadcast journalism has done likewise. ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and PBS come into our living rooms every evening, ignoring their primary mission: objective, disinterested reporting, while slanting the news to the left of the political spectrum.

          Emmy Award winning CBS broadcast journalist, Bernard Goldberg, who was once highly regarded in the television news business, for years appealed to reporters, producers, and network executives for more balanced reporting. But even after publication of his books, Bias (Regnery Publishing Company An Eagle Publishing Company, Washington, DC. 2002), and a year later, Arrogance (Warner Books, Inc., New York, NY 2003), which broke the code of silence pervading the news business and effectively blew the whistle on his own industry, this liberal bias continues unabated. In fact, it’s actually increased, as the media become even more brazen.

            Liberal bias doesn’t simply mean going hard on Republicans and easy on Democrats, although that’s exactly what is done. Instead, it is the result of how these media see the world. John Leo, formerly a contributor to U.S. News & World Report, but now the editor of the Manhattan Institute’s mindingthecampus.com, says this: “The astonishing distrust of the news media is rooted in the daily clash of worldviews between reporters and their readers and viewers.”

            And their worldview IS different from us. A new Gallup Poll confirms that about 82% of Americans are Christians, and more than 80% of Americans attend church at least occasionally and 44% attend church every week or almost every week. These facts are frequently swept under the rug in the mainstream media. That’s because most members of the mainstream media are not churchgoers, do not belong to any religion, and are mostly atheists or agnostics. Some are homosexuals.

          Is it any wonder then that on issues ranging from homelessness to AIDS, reporters simply regurgitate the propaganda of pressure groups they favor, to the detriment of honest reporting?

          And what about the game of Identity Politics? As practiced today, the media pointedly identifies Conservatives as conservative, but don’t identify Liberals as liberal. Many examples abound. Here are just a few:

1. On the media, the Christian Coalition is always identified as a conservative organization. But they never identify the National Organization for Women as a liberal organization, which, of course, it is.
2. Rush Limbaugh is always identified as a conservative talk show host. But Rosie O’Donnell, who while hosting a fundraiser during the Democrat primary for Hillary Rodham Clinton, described Mayor Rudy Giuliani as New York’s “village idiot,” is never described as a liberal TV talk show host.
3. During the Senate impeachment trial of Bill Clinton (yes, he WAS impeached by the House, but the Senate failed to remove him from office), each Senator signed his name in the oath book, swearing that he’d be fair and impartial. Peter Jennings, now deceased, was anchoring ABC’s live coverage. He made sure that his audience knew which Senators were conservative, but made not a single mention of which ones were liberal. As the Senators signed the book, Jennings identified several Democrats, including Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy, two of the more prominent members of the Senate, without mentioning that they were liberal. But later, when Senators John McCain and Mitch McConnell signed, Jennings described them as very determined “conservative members of the Republican Party.” 

     During Clinton’s trial, sophisticated Canadian anchorman, Jennings, identified the conservative Senators because he felt it mattered; that his audience needed to know. But he didn’t identify the liberals because he didn’t think it mattered. Why?

            The reason the media don’t identify NOW as a liberal group, or Barbara Boxer, Ted Kennedy, and Harry Reid as liberal Senators, and even left-wing Democrats as left-wing, is that for the most part, the media elites don’t see them that way. Liberals in the newsroom see liberal views as just plain reasonable, while they see conservative views as, well . . . right-wing, out of the mainstream, unreasonable. No wonder they can’t recognize their own bias.  

          Nowhere has this media closed-mindedness been more evident than in the 2008 presidential campaign, where the Liberal left champions the cause of Barack Hussein Obama over John McCain. In the case of Sarah Palin, Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, the media, especially the TV media, have attacked her unmercifully since her nomination was announced, and will continue to do so, whether or not she trounces Democrat Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) in their only debate on October 2, 2008.

          Anthony J. Sacco, Sr., a writer, licensed private investigator, author of two novels; The China Connection, and Little Sister Lost, and a biography, Echoes in the Wind, holds degrees from Loyola College and the University of Maryland Law School. His articles have appeared in the Washington Times, Baltimore Sun, Voices for the Unborn, the Catholic Review, WREN Magazine and the Wyoming Catholic Register. E-mail him at anthonyjsacco@hotmail.com; visit his website at www.saccoservices.com.