LIE OF THE WEEK: 12-28-2007

Heritage Foundation research fellow Lisa Curtis on the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto:

"Bhutto symbolizes everything that's anathema to the extremists. They want a Taliban-like theocratic state in Pakistan, and she stands for democracy, modernity and change.''

THE TRUTH: Bhutto was twice elected prime minister of her country and was then removed from office for corruption. She stood for democracy only in terms of gaining power and nothing else. It was a mistake for the Bush administration to back her as an alternative as Musharraf is losing his grip on power. Continuing to stand for her memory as her party resorts to propping up her son as the next leader of her party is yet another foreign policy blunder among the many of the current administration and it doesn't look they will learn their lesson before leaving office.

COLUMN: 12-26-2007

The paragraph below is a reprise from the 10/31 column, but it's necessary because the media continues to accept Hillary Clinton's propaganda of being the "most experienced" candidate with "35 years" of political experience. This lie needs to be quashed once and for all.

She claims to be the candidate of experience, but her experience as First Lady of both America and Arkansas shouldn't count as true executive experience and so her only actual career experience is that of a lawyer for a very short period followed much later by 8 years in the US Senate. The lowest common denominator here is that she is the most experienced Washington insider politician, which explains why she is the front runner with party insiders and media across the country. That is exactly the wrong kind of person to run America at this critical point after having other insiders drive our country towards an extremely wrongheaded foreign policy and towards becoming a third world country in terms of our economy.

LIE OF THE WEEK: 12-21-2007

Arizona Senator McCain on his history in Washington:

"I've never done any favors for anybody - lobbyist or special interest group - that's a clear, 24-year record."

THE TRUTH: Senator McCain is clearly much much cleaner than the vast majority of his colleagues in terms of campaign cash influencing policies. However, he has gone along with his party on many bills that are completely unacceptable in terms of their benefit to special interests and their harm to the interests of the American people. Hopefully, a McCain presidency will reflect his statements 100% of the time and not just most of the time when he is not going along with the corruption of his party.

COLUMN: 12-19-2007

The controversy in the media about former Governor Mike Huckabee's television ad with the "floating cross" in the background is ridiculous at best and discriminatory if the worst interpretations are accepted. It's clear that Huckabee's campaign is focused on winning the Christian vote and symbolism such as this is an obvious ploy in that direction. Bringing it up in the media as an unacceptable hidden message is evidence that those media outlets believe that faith should not play a role in politics. Every American has the right to use their faith to aid in their decision-making process and that is not any kind of violation of the intended separation of church and state. These media outlets need to step away from their secular bias and allow Americans to practice all of their freedoms in the political process.

LIE OF THE WEEK: 12-14-2007

Clinton spokesman Jay Carson on Senator Clinton apologizing to Senator Obama for members of her campaign claiming he was unfit due to his teenage drug use:

"Having been on the receiving end of unfair attacks for years, she doesn't think this is what the campaign should be about. She told him she wanted to win the presidency, but not through tactics like that."

THE TRUTH: The Clinton campaign machine is infamous for using every possible underhanded tactic to get elected (and especially to increase their campaign coffers) and Senator Obama should take them to task on this situation. A fake resignation by a campaign adviser who supposedly responsible for these attacks should not be accepted because it's clear that the Clintons will reward these people if and when they are back into power. This is further proof that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be one of the worst possible outcomes of the 2008 election.

COLUMN: 12-12-2007

Vladimir Putin is an authoritarian dictator. His selection of a figurehead successor so that he can maintain power as prime minister should be the trigger for every decent nation to cut off all ties until he restores democracy and freedom to his country, especially the political freedoms of the opposition parties and the press freedoms of independent journalists. Unfortunately, the business interests in most countries don't want to risk their financial investments in Russia and will pressure their governments to tolerate Putin's abuses until we pass a point of no return and Russia returns to it's previous status as a superpower that promotes oppression.

LIE OF THE WEEK: 12-07-2007

President Bush on the National Intelligence Estimate showing Iran discontinued their nuclear weapons program in 2003:

"The NIE provides an opportunity for us to rally the international community -- continue to rally the community to pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its program."

THE TRUTH: This NIE was nothing but a complete refutation of the Bush administration's recent policies towards Iran. It's clear that the US intelligence community stepped up in publishing this report as aggressively as possible to avoid being responsible for another misguided war being started by the members of the Bush administration who are doing everything in their power to rush to war before their time in office runs out. If they showed this amount of political courage on a regular basis, America as a whole would be much better off in the long run.

COLUMN: 12-05-2007

Now that the National Intelligence Estimate has been released showing that Iran actually has no active nuclear weapons program (and hasn't for at least 4 years), we should ignore the babble from both sides of the political aisle and actually rethink our strategy towards them. Our history of foreign policy towards Iran over the last 55 years has been one short-sighted blunder after another. From our CIA-funded revolution in the 1950's to install the oppressive authoritarian rule of the Shah to the mismanagement of the hostage crisis and wrong-headed reaction to the popular revolution in 1979, we should actually deal with the situation at hand rather than focusing on historic propaganda. Iran has a more democratic form of government than almost all of our allies in the middle east and we should be encouraging them to move further towards democracy by reforming the non-democratic aspects of their society (especially the ultimate control of the supreme leader over the democratically-elected president and legislature). Unfortunately, our lobbyist-controlled members of congress and president appear to be moving towards the same types of policies that benefit a few influential groups at the expense of the American people and our values and there doesn't appear to be any chance of changing this until we finally remove the corruption of money from our legislative and election processes.