Choices

The slogan “pro-choice” has been very helpful for those supporting abortion during the past three decades since Roe v Wade. People who call themselves pro-choice on this most controversial of issues can claim to be personally against abortion, but open to allowing others to have one if they choose. Their “mind my own business” approach is very American and, as such, has wide support. Supporting people’s right to choose, however, may prove a double-edged sword for pro-abortion groups. Recent advances in medical imaging technology are threatening their denial that what is being aborted isn’t human life and that abortion is about a woman’s control of her own body. It’s becoming more and more clear that there’s another body involved and abortion kills it.

How many times has a pregnant woman shown you an ultrasound image of her baby? Just about everyone has seen several by now. How many times did the mother say, “Would you like to see an ultrasound of my fetus?” My guess is never. When a pregnant woman is going to have an abortion, she calls what she’s carrying is a fetus if she talks about it at all. Otherwise, it’s a baby. Every year, the images are less blurry and it’s more and more difficult to deny that the image is that of a tiny human being just like us. Such images make their right to choose abortion vastly more difficult and that’s a big problem for the abortion industry.

On May 15th, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford signed a bill into law which requires abortion clinics to notify a woman seeking an abortion that she has the right to see an ultrasound image of her child one hour before the abortion. According to Lifesitenews.com: “Only [South Carolina] and Oklahoma require the one-hour waiting period after the ultrasound to give women a chance to reflect on the information without feeling pressured to continue with the abortion. In South Carolina an ultrasound is mandatory if the baby's gestational age is estimated to be 14 weeks or older or is unknown, according to state regulations. The ultrasound remains optional before 14 weeks of pregnancy.”

Women who have been brainwashed by radical feminists into believing that what they’re aborting is just a lump of tissue don’t make an informed choice. Activist groups who call themselves “pro-choice” like the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) should favor provisions that inform women of what their choices are, but instead they fight these statutes vehemently. “A woman has already made an agonizing choice before showing up at an abortion clinic and this law would put them through more unnecessary anguish,” they argue. What they don’t take into account, however, is the anguish many women feel for the rest of their lives after abortions. According to a 2004 study of Russian and American women, “65% report symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder they attribute to their abortions.” Suicide rates are many times higher in women who have aborted. One hour of reflection required by South Carolina may save a lifetime of torment.

Women need as much information as possible to really make a choice. According to the May 16th Elliot Institute News:

A survey released by Feminists for Life of America has found that many college students who become pregnant are unaware of resources available to them or don't have access to good resources. FFL president Serrin Foster noted that when pregnant students look for resources, ‘either they can't find them or the resources are inadequate or expensive.’ One pregnant student noted that without resources, ‘it sure doesn't feel like I have much of a choice.’ . . . [S]tudents who become pregnant are often immediately referred for an abortion by campus health center officials and are not given any information about other options or resources. [Other] surveys have found that lack of resources or support, and pressure and coercion from others, are leading factors for abortion.

Coercion indeed. The leading cause of death for pregnant women in America is homicide and several of these murders have gotten wide national attention. For too many pregnant women, the choice isn’t theirs; it’s someone else’s. Too often it’s the man who fathered the child or the under-aged girl’s abuser who is really choosing the abortion, not the mother. If people insist on being pro-choice, they should go all the way and insist that enough information is available for a women to really know what she’s choosing.

Being Catholic

Reactions to Pope Benedict XVI’s recent visit prompted reflections of how it is to be Roman Catholic in America. I was born a Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrat and that heritage is a big part of me whether I like it or not. And, “like it or not” sums up how I felt about it while growing up - part of me liked my heritage and part of me didn’t. Eleven years of Catholic education shaped me from ages seven to eighteen. I had little choice about going to Catholic schools while my friends attended public schools. My parents insisted on it and I resented it. I was deprived of some things - my high school had no girls for example - but there were compensations. Those nuns, brothers and priests did whatever it took to keep me in line - including many a whack in the head - and that was good for me. I might have gotten into much more trouble if I’d gone to the public schools with my friends. They certainly did.

After graduation from high school, I began my decade as a heathen. For about ten years, I didn’t go to church at all except for weddings and funerals, and doubted nearly everything I’d been taught. It was as if I had to reject it and then take back only what I came to believe for myself. I say nearly everything because I’ve always agreed with the church’s position on social issues, especially abortion, homosexuality and our obligations to the poor. Everything else was pretty much up for grabs. I even allowed myself to entertain doubts about whether there was a God at all. That seemed necessary for me to accept fully that, yes, He really does exist. More than that - He knew me before I was even conceived.

When my children were old enough to ask questions about God, my wife and I decided to bring them to church right in our community. The Lovell United Church of Christ was the only game in town and a lot of good people were members. The two ministers there at the time became good friends. The wider UCC was quite liberal, however, and becoming ever more so while I was moving in the other direction, both spiritually and politically. Gradually, I gravitated back to the Catholic Church and have been attending regularly again for about twenty years in Fryeburg, Bridgton and North Conway. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Fryeburg is my home church.

While I was away from the Catholic Church, it had liberalized as well. Boston’s St. John’s Seminary had been co-opted by homosexuals and graduated most of the priests who sexually assaulted all those altar boys, bringing the American Catholic Church its greatest scandal. Bishops and cardinals who oversaw other seminaries similarly corrupted covered up for the predatory homosexual priests they produced. The problem is that most of those bishops and cardinals are still in office. As the scandal was breaking in 2002, the rector of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC, Monsignor Eugene Clark said from the pulpit: ''In some seminaries in the United States, known homosexual young men have been accepted as candidates against every rule of church wisdom and church requirements. One need say no more of this as a breeding ground for later homosexual practice after ordination, and the manifest danger of man-boy relationships.''

Although many were glad that Pope Benedict addressed the clergy sexual abuse scandal, I was disappointed that he referred to it as a pedophile problem and not a homosexual priest problem, which it clearly is. I was also dismayed to see Cardinal Egan play such a prominent role during the pope’s mass at Yankee Stadium because he’s one of the most notorious enablers mentioned above.

He annoyed me with his speaking voice. Contrasting sharply with Benedict’s humility, Egan was theatrical. He seemed like he was paying less attention to what he said than to how he said it. It was a painful reminder that Rome should have overhauled the American Conference of Catholic Bishops [and cardinals] after the scandal broke and didn’t. Benedict is a reformer, but seems to prefer a quieter and slower reform where many Catholics like me would have preferred an immediate and thorough housecleaning.

As a cardinal himself, Benedict wasn’t shy about enforcing Catholic orthodoxy, so I hesitate to question his courage. He has bravely confronted Islamofascist resurgence and has dressed down administrators of Catholic colleges and universities in the United States who have strayed far from Catholic teaching. As leader of a two-thousand-year-old institution, he doesn’t rush things. I’m impatient, but he obviously is not.

Multicultural History

Every week I’m reminded of my love/hate relationship with the US History textbook used in my class. It blatantly panders to America’s public school teachers who favor politically-correct interpretations of history. That’s what I hate about it - and it’s also what I love about it. The book’s bias is easy for my students to recognize, and I can contrast it to my own conservative bias which I acknowledge very early in the school year. The book does not acknowledge its bias, purporting to be an objective account of events. It’s an easy foil.

I use the text mostly for students to read and answer discussion questions as homework, which we correct in class. In its coverage of the Vietnam War, one two-part question asks: “Why did civil war break out in [neighboring] Cambodia?” and “What were the results of the war?” As I walk around the room checking homework, a student volunteer acts as “assistant teacher” using the teachers’ edition to go over the questions and answers. He or she will read a question, listen to various answers from students, and then read the “correct” answer. As for what caused the Cambodian Civil War, the teachers’ edition gave the answer as: “US/South Vietnamese forces bombed and attacked Cambodia's bases; as Cambodians took sides, civil war erupted.” The clear implication is that America started it.

As for what the results of the war? The “correct” answer was: “Communist Khmer Rouge won; more than a million Cambodians died." They weren’t worked to death or murdered by the communists. They just “died.”

The first time I heard that I was appalled and I asked the student to repeat what the teachers’ edition said. President Nixon was no prize, but he didn’t start the Cambodian Civil War when he ordered US forces into North Vietnamese and Viet Cong sanctuaries there, and he didn’t cause the Khmer Rouge to murder millions of Cambodians either. Communists own that. It’s part of their dismal legacy around the world in the twentieth century, but the three historians who wrote my textbook seem deliberately blind about the evil effects of communism wherever it has been applied. They define it as: “an economic system is which all wealth and property is owned by the community as a whole.” Sounds fine when put in those terms, no?

Contrast the text’s definition with Random House’s (2006) definition: “a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.” Based on about ninety years of applied communism around the world and tens of millions dead as a result, which definition is most accurate?

Communism’s first application was in Russia after Bolsheviks took control of the revolution and instituted the Soviet Union. The text’s harshest criticism of their depredations is a description of how Americans were shocked “when the Soviet government did away with private property and attacked religion.” Then it covers the first Ukrainian famine saying: “Despite disapproval of the Soviet government, Congress voted $20 million in aid when famine threatened Russia in 1921. American aid may have saved as many as 10 million Russians from starvation.”

The text doesn’t speculate about why the Soviet government would “disapprove” aid to its own starving people. Neither does it mention that Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin engineered a “famine” in Ukraine ten years later to purposefully starve 7 million Ukrainians when they resisted “community ownership” of their farmland.

What about the Soviet Union’s military repression of eastern Europe after World War II? When the text begins its coverage of the Cold War, students are asked: “Why did tensions develop among the Allied Powers?” The “correct” answer is: "The US and Britain distrusted the Soviet Union's communist government; the Soviets, also distrustful, feared invasion." There’s no moral superiority in America’s $12 billion rebuilding of western Europe under the Marshal Plan compared to the Soviet Union’s virtual enslavement of eastern Europe.

Like it or not, that’s the multicultural, morally equivalent theme permeating nearly every textbook used in America’s public schools. No culture may be depicted as superior to any other culture, even when it is.

Outing the Democrat Left

Ordinary Americans, including many long-time
Democrats, are getting glimpses of how the left sees our country and they’re shocked. Guess they didn’t understand that a sizable portion of the Democrat Party is just plain crazy and hates America.

“No-no-no! Not God bless America! God damn America!” shouted Barack Obama’s minister, friend, and spiritual advisor - the Reverend Jeremiah Wright in a sermon recorded on DVD for sale by his church. Then he told Bill Moyers on PBS that when the media broadcast sections of that sermon and others like it, he was victimized: “I felt it was unfair. I felt it was unjust. I felt it was untrue. I felt for those who were doing that, were doing it for some very devious reasons,” said the Reverend last week.

Devious reasons? Using the video Wright himself was selling to show Americans how people at Obama’s church think? How is that devious? Because it may cause people to remember what Michelle Obama said in February that, because her husband is running for president: “For the first time in my adult life, I’m proud of my country.” She’s been an adult for more than twenty years. Has she been ashamed of her country up to now? Why? Americans are thinking about this. Evidently she was very comfortable sitting next to her husband in church and listening to Wright’s sermons.

Wright said America is trying to kill black people by introducing AIDS and drugs into black neighborhoods and deserved the September 11th attacks. Barack Obama said he didn’t know Wright preached any of this. Americans wonder how he could sit in Wright’s church for twenty years and not know it.

Obama is friendly with fellow Chicagoan William Ayers, who bombed the Pentagon, the US Capitol, and New York City Police Headquarters in the 1970s. Ayers summed up his terrorist group’s guiding philosophy thusly: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents." He wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001 claiming that he wished he’d bombed more - that he didn’t do enough. He is Obama’s buddy too and contributes to his campaigns. He thinks America is evil and he’s a tenured education professor at the the University of Illinois. How can Obama be friendly with a guy like that? Easily. The Democrat Party is loaded with people who admire terrorist bombers - as long as they’re left-wing terrorist bombers. That’s you see so many Che Guevara posters in their homes and offices - including Barack Obama’s Houston office.

Remember: Ayers’ students at the University of Illinois are studying to become public school teachers. He molds the faculties in public schools all across that state - teaches them how to teach - and teachers’ unions are the biggest supporters of the Democrat Party nationally - just ahead of trial lawyers (Ayer’s wife, and fellow terrorist, Bernadette Dohrn teaches at Northwestern Law School). Most of the $400 per year I paid in dues to the National Education Association went to Democrats and that’s why I quit. Too many of America’s public school history teachers have a view of America very similar to those of the Reverend Wright and William Ayers and they’re teaching your kids. Most Americans have not been aware of all this. Now it’s being rubbed in their faces and they’re not liking it.

When Hillary criticizes Obama for associating with someone like William Ayers, Obama’s campaign points out that Bill Clinton pardoned left-wing terrorists just like Ayers. Americans are thinking: “Wait a minute. You mean both Democrats running for president associate with people like this?” The answer, of course, is “Yup. You betcha,” and Americans are starting to get it. That’s why Democrat Party Chairman Howard Dean wants it all to stop.

Not me though. I want it to continue as long as possible.

Conservative Congressman in Maine?

As a conservative in Maine, I’ve accepted that liberals run things here - for now anyway. Most Republicans are liberals too. Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are known nationwide as RINOs - Republicans In Name Only. First district Republican congressional candidate Dean Scontras, however, is different. He’s definitely not a RINO, not by a long shot. Although a young man, Dean Scontras is a small-government, conservative Republican from a mold I thought had been broken long ago in this state. There’s no one else like him running and he expects to win. He’s confident. He knows what he thinks and believes he can convince voters that he’s right. After chatting with him for more than an hour at the new Magic Lantern, I came away believing it too. If a conservative can get elected in southern Maine, Dean Scontras is that person. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but after interviewing him face-to-face, I believe he can pull it off.

Scontras is the only congressional candidate addressing illegal immigration, unless you count Ethan Strimling, who actually likes Governor Baldacci’s sanctuary-state policies. Scontras is firmly against them. He believes a crackdown on employers who hire illegals, along with a curtailment of their welfare benefits, will persuade most of them to go home.

Scontras alone is unequivocally pro-life and even supports a Constitutional Right to Life Amendment. He’d rather see the Supreme Court reverse Roe v Wade, which he considers inherently flawed. His Republican opponent, Charlie Summers, doesn’t even list abortion on his web site. As for his Democrat opponents? No need to comment.

Gay marriage? Scontras would watch how the courts deal with the Defense of Marriage Act and hopes they view it as constitutional, but if not, he would support a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

Regarding national security, Dean Scontras is one of the most knowledgeable candidates I’ve interviewed including five who were running for president. He understands the threat we face and speaks about it plainly. He knows Iran funds Hezbollah and Hamas and wants Israel gone. He supports Israel’s right to exist and isn’t confident that the United Nations will do what’s necessary to protect it. He would support a joint US/Israeli effort to stop Iran should the UN continue to drag its feet. He didn’t seem thrilled about Bush’s decision to go into Iraq, but he supports the surge and seeing the policy through to victory.

Scontras believes the United States is dangerously dependent on foreign oil, but he’s realistic about how to mitigate that. “We know the Chinese government is drilling off the coast of Cuba,” he said, and he would allow US oil companies to drill under the Gulf of Mexico and ANWR. “You do the math on this, and even with all the alternative energy sources we’re talking about [cellulose-based or corn-based ethanol, etc.] it isn’t going to replace even 10% of our reliance [on petroleum] . . . I’ve doubled back on myself and said, you know, it sounds good, and Maine should take a part in [national efforts to produce ethanol with our wood resources], but is it going to resolve our reliance on foreign oil? No. It’s just not.”

He believes the Second Amendment is unambiguous - that it grants citizens the right to have guns, period. He disputes justices like John Paul Stevens who, according to Scontras, “say the Second Amendment isn’t really about self defense. It’s really about building militias. To me as a Second Amendment guy, this is a no-brainer. There are things in the Constitution I struggle with, but this is not one of them,” he said.

“Okay, so it is for personal protection?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” he said.

I asked him what he thought about Democratic efforts to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine which would force stations broadcasting conservative programs to give equal time to liberal programming. “The free market is the Fairness Doctrine,” Scontras said. “If the free market dictates something and consumers buy it, whether it’s talk radio or something else [leave it alone]. The Fairness Doctrine is inherently unfair from a fair-market perspective.”

“Why did you decide to run for run for Congress?” I asked.

He said he has always been interested in public policy. He studied it at UMO and in graduate school at Georgetown. “I went into business and I loved that - that was fun - but my wife will tell you, I can go out and campaign all day long and into the weekend, but when I was at work, it was like at five o’clock I was done. I truly love doing this.”

“The Republican Party is up against the wall right now. I think it needs some new leadership, some new voices. I’ve got some hope in the party nationally, but in this state, it’s like the Boston Red Sox of the 70s and 80s - every time the Yankees come to town everybody puts their chins down. I don’t care what kind of lead you’ve got, you know you’re going to lose in the end. That’s the leadership of the state [right now]. You’ve got to think to win first and then go win.”

“So you think you can win in the First District?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. Absolutely. I know I can win now. I’ve debated some of these folks. When it turns to the economy, you look - these people I’m running against here in Maine have had a hand in crafting this economy. According to Forbes Magazine, it’s third worst economy in the country. It’s the second most taxed state. Our young people are leaving during their prime earning years and they’re not coming back. We’ve got all the wrong economic indicators. Our entitlement programs are so big people are coming from out of the country and in the country to get [them]. We’re $200,000,000 in the hole and everybody I’m running against says, ‘Hey look - I’m an authority on the economy.’ Look what they’ve done to the economy here in Maine.”

I’ve known many politicians and my internal BS alarm is finely tuned. During the three hours with Dean Scontras, it never went off. This guy is the real deal and I believe he can win.

Am I A Bad Person?

Does it make me a bad person when I take pleasure in another’s misfortune? Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on the person. Schadenfreude is a German word meaning “pleasure from misfortune” and I’ve been feeling it a lot lately. Was I happy to read that ultra-liberal New York Governor Elliot Spitzer was forced to resign after being charged with hiring prostitutes? Darn right. It’s partly because his politics and mine are polar opposite, but it isn’t just that. Barack Obama’s politics are opposite mine as well but I wouldn’t feel as much schadenfreude if he were publicly humiliated the way Spitzer was. Spitzer has a hyper-arrogance that Obama didn’t seem to possess, so when I learned about the former’s demise, I heard myself saying, “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy” instead of a more neutral, “Oh. I see.”

When the Mainstream Media played clips of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s outrageous sermons over and over, I felt it again. Whose misfortune was I taking pleasure in then? Well, it was hurting Barack Obama’s campaign that his longtime friend, pastor, and spiritual mentor was espousing crackpot ideas, but that wasn’t why I felt it. I wanted Obama to finish trouncing Hillary before he self-destructed. Obama was taking heat for keeping his membership in, and his contributions to a church in which people cheered as Pastor Wright blamed “White America” for the September 11th attacks, and blamed the US government for introducing AIDS and drugs to kill off black people. However, that wasn’t it either. Not entirely. It was the Democrat Party’s misfortune I was taking pleasure in, because it is comprised of people who either believe such crazy ideas as Wright was spouting, or of people who refrain from correcting them when they’re expressed. That’s what was being rubbed in the face of every American who watches the news. Democrats were forced to take a hard look at the victim mentality they have watered and fertilized for the past forty years.

That’s why Obama had to make the big speech about “race.” Winning the Democrat nomination depends on his maintaining the image of a black man who isn’t obsessed about being a victim, who is beyond all that. He had to put some distance between himself and what the Reverend Wright preached. Conservatives like me don’t think he did that successfully but Democrats do, so he’s still their man for now. That prompted more schadenfreude because it means Obama can still take the nomination away from Hillary. It’s her misfortune I’m taking pleasure in as well as the Democrat Party’s.

My schadenfreude got even stronger when, shortly after Obama’s big speech, the Mainstream Media broadcast three of Hillary’s speeches in which she described how in 1996 she allegedly had to run with her head down from her plane to a waiting car to avoid sniper fire. Then the MSM showed actual film of her and her entourage doing nothing of the sort on the tarmac of a Bosnia airport. They played those embarrassing clips over and over to leave no doubt in any voter’s mind what an abject lie she had been telling. That was a wonderful, heaping helping of schadenfreude. There have been so many other opportunities to expose her like this during the past seventeen years but the MSM refused to pull the trigger on her. That they’re finally doing it as she runs for president made it that much sweeter.

Then Hillary went on Jay Leno’s program and tried to joke about it but she flopped. That was nice too, but it got even better when after the story had largely died down, her slick husband Bill resurrected it when he lied about Hillary’s lie. Hillary had to tell him to shut up. I was thinking, “It just doesn’t get any better than this.” What does the credit card company say in its ads? “Priceless.”

Now we hear that Obama was pandering to elite leftists at a fundraiser in San Francisco saying small town Americans are angry and bitter. We’re typical white people clinging to our guns and our religion and our resentment of illegal immigrants because we don’t know any better. Then the rabidly-anti-gun Hillary told a story about her dad taking her behind a cottage and teaching her “to shoot when I was a little girl.” Then Obama says Hillary is all of a sudden “talking like she’s Annie Oakley.” Then Hillary criticizes Obama’s remarks about us typical bible-thumping, gun-nut honkies and gets booed by Democrats in Pennsylvania.

I just can’t wait to see what happens next - and it looks like it’s going to continue like this for four more months until the convention! Like I said: it doesn’t get any better than this.

Am I a bad person for enjoying it all? A little naughty perhaps but heck, I’m human.

The Pure Of Heart

They’re superior to you and me in every way. They’re smarter, more tolerant, and they care more than we do about everything. Luckily, they’re also patient with us. They’re thoroughly nice. They ride bikes while you and I pollute the atmosphere with our vehicles. They want to bring us around to their way of thinking and feeling gradually and they want to spend our money to fix everything for everybody. They know many of us will object because we’re stubborn, but they won’t give up easily and they will prevail.

People at National Public Radio (NPR) also know how to pronounce things better than you and I do and it shows how smart they are. They’ve gotten together with the National Geographic Society and published a map of the earth to show us how we’re ruining the whole earth by driving our cars, our trucks and by mowing our lawns. We’re loading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and killing polar bears, but they’re not mad at us because they know we just don’t know any better. So they’re trying to educate us, bring us along. Only after they’ve convinced us about the wisdom of their world view will they restrict usage of our lawn mowers and snow machines.

They care a whole lot more about frogs than you or I do too. If you hear the peepers soon where you live, then you can rest assured that the Green/Caring/Audubon/NPR people will do everything they can to preserve every last one of those frogs and the mud puddles they swim in. They know greedy landowners don’t care a whit about toads and salamanders and only care about exercising their property rights regardless of how many worms or beetle larvae may be dismembered as they scar Mother Earth with their development projects. These are the kind of people who make Gaia cry. People who care, however, been patrolling the woods looking for vernal pools to map out and preserve. They’re passing ordinances in towns all over New England to prevent landowners from building anything within hundreds of feet of precious vernal pools.

The state of Maine has also passed legislation to prevent development near any vernal pools. Greedy property owners who thought they had a few building lots on the land they inherited or invested in for retirement will find out that they may not become developers at all. When they go to apply for a permit, they will instead be informed that they have become stewards of frog and salamander habitat and it’s their responsibility to make sure nothing ever happens to those precious amphibian eggs they inherited along with the land.

Of course it’s hard to go into the woods during spring anywhere in the state of Maine without having to walk around or hop over a vernal pool. Most disappear in summer and fall, but if they’ve been documented by some of the caring people who have been trying for years to inventory them, their very existence will keep Maine from being changed. We may be one of the poorest and highest-taxed states in the country, and we may have had an stagnant economy for the past several years while other states have been growing significantly, but we can be proud of the fact that frogs and salamanders are safer here than nearly everywhere else. Taxpaying humans may be disappearing in Maine, but amphibians will be just fine.

Some of those greedy landowners are not proud to be stewards of amphibians. They’re angry that caring people have passed this vernal pool legislation while they weren’t paying attention. They think their Fifth Amendment rights have been violated where it says: “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation” and they’re talking about filing law suits.

Hopefully, the Green/Caring/Audubon/NPR people will convince the courts that amphibians are much more important than taxpaying citizens and the peepers will be saved, but we’ll just have to how this plays out. President Bush has appointed many judges who only see what’s written in the Constitution and don’t want to help. There may still be enough judges on the courts appointed by the previous administration, however, who understand that our founding fathers weren’t as smart as they are. These judges are Green/Caring/Audubon/NPR people too and they see our Constitution as a living document that can be added to if necessary for very important reasons like saving frogs. They won’t be swayed by the arguments of greedy, uncaring landowners with their out-date ideas about property rights. They’ll listen to other Green/Caring/Audubon/NPR people who care way more than greedy property owners because their hearts are pure.