At this point,
what difference does it make?
Hillary Clinton shouted at a Congressional Committee hearing on Benghazi.
In that particular case, the reference was to honesty in government.
Mark Steyn has written brilliantly on the subject. A quick read, well worth your time, here.
Steyn suggested we use Hillary's declaration in the oath sworn to by persons chosen for federal office:
"Do you solemnly swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?"
"Sure. What difference, at this point, does it make?"
I've thought much about this event, and, like Steyn, considered applying it to other events. It can drive you crazy!
I remember a time when I had great respect for "the Federal government". I held the FBI and the CIA, for example, in awe. They were so competent, so smart, so skilled as to be unmatched. As a teen during WW II, if "the government" had instructed me, to paraphrase Col. Allen West, to walk through hell with a can of gasoline, I would have rushed to comply.
In the early 1950s, as a new broadcast engineer, I had great respect for the FCC Field Officers; skilled, devoted engineers, striving to keep our industry first class.
It wasn't until 1959 that my faith in the Federal Government waned. That year I participated in a hearing before an FCC examiner in Washington. There I witnessed the incompetence, the bias, the ignorance of the industry they regulated, the arbitrary nature of decisions, by FCC Washington personnel.
ABC News icon Sam Donaldson recently expressed his irritation with people saying they "wanted to take our country back." Sam doesn't understand what is meant by "our country". He is probably too young to remember when government could be trusted. When, if a candidate was elected to office, you had full confidence in that official, whether you voted for or against them in the election.
Donaldson said "It's not your country any longer", and he was right.
At this point, what difference does it make?
To those of us old people who remember when "our country" stood for truth, honesty, justice, it makes a great deal of difference and we are still determined to take our country back.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
The biggest waste
of government time has to be Congressional Committee hearings. In 1959, I was a witness in a hearing before an FCC Examiner in Washington. I was on the stand for two days. (The Washington definition of a day is four hours... 10:00 am until noon and 2:00 pm until 4:00 pm.) I was grilled by lawyers, not Congressmen, and it was a tough experience.
Congressional Committee hearings do not work that way. Each committee member gets five minutes to question the witness. If they take 30 seconds for the question, the witness will ramble for 4 1/2 minutes and their turn is over. So, they take four minutes to cover all the things they would like to ask; the witness takes 30 seconds to dance around and not answer any questions, and that member's time is up.
Too bad Congress can't figure out what the Founders had in mind when they wrote the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, protecting the right to legal counsel. If you want answers, you better get someone who knows how to ask questions. Instead of giving each member five minutes, let them pool their time, hire an expert and give him an hour.
Yes, I know, that would keep the members from getting time before the TV cameras.
of government time has to be Congressional Committee hearings. In 1959, I was a witness in a hearing before an FCC Examiner in Washington. I was on the stand for two days. (The Washington definition of a day is four hours... 10:00 am until noon and 2:00 pm until 4:00 pm.) I was grilled by lawyers, not Congressmen, and it was a tough experience.
Congressional Committee hearings do not work that way. Each committee member gets five minutes to question the witness. If they take 30 seconds for the question, the witness will ramble for 4 1/2 minutes and their turn is over. So, they take four minutes to cover all the things they would like to ask; the witness takes 30 seconds to dance around and not answer any questions, and that member's time is up.
Too bad Congress can't figure out what the Founders had in mind when they wrote the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, protecting the right to legal counsel. If you want answers, you better get someone who knows how to ask questions. Instead of giving each member five minutes, let them pool their time, hire an expert and give him an hour.
Yes, I know, that would keep the members from getting time before the TV cameras.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
This past week,
as often before, the news has been loaded with some sort of transgression on the part of a sports figure. Too bad there isn't more emphasis on the cheating of politicians.
The football player is charged with some sort of emotional entanglement. Did that story gain him more coverage by sports writers? By TV cameras? Probably. Did it give him more smarts, more quickness, more strength for all those brilliant plays on the field? Get real.
The cyclist, who had best overall time in 147 days of racing in winning the Tour de France seven times has admitted to some kind of blood enhancement. Did that give him the edge? Apparently he thought so or he would not have expended the time, effort and money to do so. Without it, may he have come in second or third in one of those races? Possibly. Would it have made the difference between being a champion and a complete loser? Again, get real.
We are not very tolerant of cheating, to any degree, in our beloved athletes. Cheating has, however, become routine in politics.
Football coach Vince Lombardi said winning is the only thing. Lombardi meant to always strive for excellence. No one ever believed the great coach meant for his players to cheat.
When I ran a broadcast station, I used to tell our announcers that there is no such thing as an unimportant broadcast. Every time you throw a switch to open your microphone, it is the most important moment in your broadcast career.
When athletes have reached the professional level, it is because they have learned to be prepared, alert, and ready to respond professionally every time a ball is snapped, or thrown, or the starter's gun is fired. We don't like it when they cheat, or behave less than professionally. Not just "doping", we don't want spit balls in hands of a pitcher, or sticky gloves on the hands of a wide receiver. But we give politicians a bye.
On a news program this morning, I watched a top political adviser/consultant/whatever, dance around the answers to every question he was asked. Never directly and truthfully answering, but repeating again and again his favored talking points.
In broadcasting, we used to talk about "lite listeners", people who don't listen carefully to what is said, but believe what they thought they heard.The consultant's answers seem to have been tailored to the lite listener. Rhetoric that sounded plausible on the surface, but actually had no substance.
I kept wishing the interviewer would have said, "Sir, you have given me that response three times. Now would you kindly answer my question?"
As with some athletes, politicians now want to win at all costs. Unlike athletes, however, politicians are permitted to cheat. They endlessly stress some irrelevant incident from their opponent's past, to cast doubt about his/her credibility. Lite listeners eat it up. Newscasters refuse to challenge.
Is it any surprise that our government, at all levels, often seems broken?
as often before, the news has been loaded with some sort of transgression on the part of a sports figure. Too bad there isn't more emphasis on the cheating of politicians.
The football player is charged with some sort of emotional entanglement. Did that story gain him more coverage by sports writers? By TV cameras? Probably. Did it give him more smarts, more quickness, more strength for all those brilliant plays on the field? Get real.
The cyclist, who had best overall time in 147 days of racing in winning the Tour de France seven times has admitted to some kind of blood enhancement. Did that give him the edge? Apparently he thought so or he would not have expended the time, effort and money to do so. Without it, may he have come in second or third in one of those races? Possibly. Would it have made the difference between being a champion and a complete loser? Again, get real.
We are not very tolerant of cheating, to any degree, in our beloved athletes. Cheating has, however, become routine in politics.
Football coach Vince Lombardi said winning is the only thing. Lombardi meant to always strive for excellence. No one ever believed the great coach meant for his players to cheat.
When I ran a broadcast station, I used to tell our announcers that there is no such thing as an unimportant broadcast. Every time you throw a switch to open your microphone, it is the most important moment in your broadcast career.
When athletes have reached the professional level, it is because they have learned to be prepared, alert, and ready to respond professionally every time a ball is snapped, or thrown, or the starter's gun is fired. We don't like it when they cheat, or behave less than professionally. Not just "doping", we don't want spit balls in hands of a pitcher, or sticky gloves on the hands of a wide receiver. But we give politicians a bye.
On a news program this morning, I watched a top political adviser/consultant/whatever, dance around the answers to every question he was asked. Never directly and truthfully answering, but repeating again and again his favored talking points.
In broadcasting, we used to talk about "lite listeners", people who don't listen carefully to what is said, but believe what they thought they heard.The consultant's answers seem to have been tailored to the lite listener. Rhetoric that sounded plausible on the surface, but actually had no substance.
I kept wishing the interviewer would have said, "Sir, you have given me that response three times. Now would you kindly answer my question?"
As with some athletes, politicians now want to win at all costs. Unlike athletes, however, politicians are permitted to cheat. They endlessly stress some irrelevant incident from their opponent's past, to cast doubt about his/her credibility. Lite listeners eat it up. Newscasters refuse to challenge.
Is it any surprise that our government, at all levels, often seems broken?
Sunday, January 13, 2013
The Right To Bear Arms
I keep saying it, but no one seems to join me. The United States Constitution is a very simple legal document, fashioned in a way that every American can read and understand. Still there is widespread controversy as to the meaning of certain passages.
The Second amendment is 27 words: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Only the Ten Commandments use verbiage more sparsely "Thou Shalt Not Kill".
Justice Scalia has suggested we seek to understand the framers intentions at the time of the drafting. Such good advice. But doing that requires digging through old texts to find clarifying statements. Where to start?
Happily there are people like Walter E. Williams. Dr. Williams is a member of the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and is currently the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics. His is an amazing American story. While I was born on the eve of the Hoover Administration, Dr. Williams was born on the eve of the second Franklin Roosevelt Administration. Born in Philadelphia in those extremely difficult times, he was raised in a housing project, but literally grabbed his bootstraps and pulled himself "Up From The Projects" - which happens to be the title of his autobiography.
Dr. Williams has done the research for us, and collected the Second Amendment opinions of our most distinguished founding fathers. Find them at:
Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Go to the site, bookmark it, and review it often. I promise you will love reading the quotes.
For example, people often charge that the Second Amendment was intended to apply only to a "militia". Very well. Check out what George Mason said, in Debates in Virginia Convention on Ratification of the Constitution, Elliot, Vol. 3, June 16, 1788:
"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."
For those (including the low-information governor of New York) who now clamor for the confiscation of all American's privately owned guns, Dr. Williams included this ominous quote:
"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing."
-- Adolph Hitler, Hitler's Secret Conversations 403 (Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens trans., 1961)
I keep saying it, but no one seems to join me. The United States Constitution is a very simple legal document, fashioned in a way that every American can read and understand. Still there is widespread controversy as to the meaning of certain passages.
The Second amendment is 27 words: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Only the Ten Commandments use verbiage more sparsely "Thou Shalt Not Kill".
Justice Scalia has suggested we seek to understand the framers intentions at the time of the drafting. Such good advice. But doing that requires digging through old texts to find clarifying statements. Where to start?
Happily there are people like Walter E. Williams. Dr. Williams is a member of the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and is currently the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics. His is an amazing American story. While I was born on the eve of the Hoover Administration, Dr. Williams was born on the eve of the second Franklin Roosevelt Administration. Born in Philadelphia in those extremely difficult times, he was raised in a housing project, but literally grabbed his bootstraps and pulled himself "Up From The Projects" - which happens to be the title of his autobiography.
Dr. Williams has done the research for us, and collected the Second Amendment opinions of our most distinguished founding fathers. Find them at:
Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Go to the site, bookmark it, and review it often. I promise you will love reading the quotes.
For example, people often charge that the Second Amendment was intended to apply only to a "militia". Very well. Check out what George Mason said, in Debates in Virginia Convention on Ratification of the Constitution, Elliot, Vol. 3, June 16, 1788:
"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."
For those (including the low-information governor of New York) who now clamor for the confiscation of all American's privately owned guns, Dr. Williams included this ominous quote:
"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing."
-- Adolph Hitler, Hitler's Secret Conversations 403 (Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens trans., 1961)
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
A Forgotten Anniversary
I have not watched a lot of news this New Year's Day. What little TV I have seen, beside the Parade of Roses in Pasadena, CA, has been re-runs, substitute anchors, and a little fiscal cliff talk.
In fact, had it not been for a column by Ken Blackwell, I would have not remembered that it was exactly 150 years ago today, on January 1, 1863, that President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation! Some may argue that the important date was December 6, 1865, nearly three years later, when the 13th Amendment to The Constitution was ratified, making slavery unconstitutional.
But President Lincoln's proclamation got the ball rolling and is the event most indelible in the minds of Americans. Most people would respond with a blank look if you referenced the 13th Amendment. But, say "Emancipation Proclamation" and everyone knows what it means.
It happened on New Year's Day, 150 years ago! Could not the theme of the Parade of Roses been dedicated to the commemoration of that most significant event in American history, instead of the puzzling "Oh, The Places You'll Go!"?
Does anyone care about 'oh, the places we've been'?
I have not watched a lot of news this New Year's Day. What little TV I have seen, beside the Parade of Roses in Pasadena, CA, has been re-runs, substitute anchors, and a little fiscal cliff talk.
In fact, had it not been for a column by Ken Blackwell, I would have not remembered that it was exactly 150 years ago today, on January 1, 1863, that President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation! Some may argue that the important date was December 6, 1865, nearly three years later, when the 13th Amendment to The Constitution was ratified, making slavery unconstitutional.
But President Lincoln's proclamation got the ball rolling and is the event most indelible in the minds of Americans. Most people would respond with a blank look if you referenced the 13th Amendment. But, say "Emancipation Proclamation" and everyone knows what it means.
It happened on New Year's Day, 150 years ago! Could not the theme of the Parade of Roses been dedicated to the commemoration of that most significant event in American history, instead of the puzzling "Oh, The Places You'll Go!"?
Does anyone care about 'oh, the places we've been'?
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