The View From Highland Ranch
By John McCormick
Bring in the Clowns
Another week; another seven days when I have to restrain Jack so he won't kick down the gates in frustration and all because he keeps reading the news. At least we were able to cut off his CNN subscription!
The most dangerous terrorist prisoners in the world are supposedly being held at our base in Cuba.
What could be a more secure place to build a prison for these people who, with a mere code word, could trigger a terrorist attack? After all, our base is surrounded by the military forces of the biggest threat to the citizens of this country in the entire hemisphere, if we don't count California actors with inflated egos and about 2/3 of the elected representatives in Washington. If it skipped your notice, Cuba threatens us by demonstrating that a communist state can't even feed its own people and, despite that, by making some fine cigars.
But while we spend billions of dollars and hundreds of American lives fighting invisible terrorists in Iraq, it took weeks of complaints from Senator Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) to get the military to even take a serious look at just how well those prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are being secured. It turns out that their chaplain spent years living in Syria (our declared enemy in the Mid-East) and was recently caught ministering to the afflicted by carrying around secret documents including detailed plans of the prison, schedules of guard patrols, and names of some interrogators.
What Army Capt. James Yee intended to do with all that information may be open to debate but I can't think of any reason for smuggling those papers out of Cuba that would be good for the U.S.
Then there's Senior Airman Ahmad Halabi, a translator who is accused of carrying more than 180 messages back and forth from the prisoners and emailing them to Syria.
Probably just a coincidence, but Halabi was born in Syria.
OK, we all know there are bad guys and espionage isn't unknown even by Americans born in Virginia, so why wasn't anyone put in charge of watching those prisoners and the people who were meeting with them every day?
Were the people in charge of these prisoners trained by the same FBI people who knew there was a high-level mole in the government and hounded an innocent CIA employee for years while the head of FBI's counterintelligence unit was actually the one who precisely fit the profile of a traitor?
Will we EVER get straight answers from the government about ANYTHING? Will they ever find anything so absolutely critical, so vital to our national security that they actually take the sort of precautions that the average 10th grader could think up in a few minutes?
I guarantee that we'll never get full medical and drug coverage from the government unless or until someone passes a law that everyone has to get the same quality coverage as every elected official in Washington.
This was also the week a federal judge decided that, since it's already illegal to make harassing calls to judges, it was safe for him to overturn the no call list that 50 million Americans joined in an effort to get through just one dinner without some SOB calling and trying to sell them a timeshare.
The telemarketing association is saying that people are making too big a deal out of those calls but I notice that none of their spokespersons give out their home numbers or addresses.
Just a few weeks ago a spammer (the Internet version of a telemarketer) in Australia was outed and he got so many death threats that he decided spam wasn't a nice way to make money and closed his business in just three days.
And, speaking of spam, not that fine meat-like product from Hormel Corp. that no one admits to liking but which everyone has in their pantry, but the message-like junk that fills your e-mail box, California just passed a law imposing a fine of up to $1 million on spammers, per incident! I'm moving my mailbox to California.
I doubt either the "do not call list," which, if you were unlisted before, now makes your number available to pollsters, politicians, and beggars, or the anti-spam law, will have much real effect. The companies will just move operations overseas. Where is Torquemada when we need him?
The telemarketing industry's claim that the list restricts free speech is absurd on the face of it, although I don't expect extremely isolated federal judges to understand what life is like out here in the real world.
The First Amendment is designed to protect jerks like me, giving us the right to tell the truth as we see it whether people like it or not. But in my defense, you aren't forced to read me. In fact, many high school students and even graduates are fully protected from my ideas by an education so poor that they actually CAN'T read this column without a dictionary at their elbow.
At least we have the comfort of knowing they have a swimming pool and therefore won't be drowning in knowledge.
The First Amendment doesn't give me the right to knock on your door and start reading my column to you, or telephone you every five minutes and demand that you listen to my column. It doesn't even give me the right to demand that schools educate kids well enough that they would be able to understand it the outrageous school taxes I pay give me that right.
The First Amendment gives telemarketers the right to speak their peace but not to monopolize the telephones people pay to have installed in their homes so they can keep in touch with friends and families.
If telemarketers were really concerned about The First Amendment, then they wouldn't be afraid to give out their own phone number.
Especially since many telemarketing "deals" seem to target the elderly, poor, or less educated, I have limited sympathy for people who can't find any better job than to work as telemarketers. I suspect that if high school students were forced to work two weeks as telemarketers and two weeks as fast food counter workers every year starting in 10th grade their test scores would soar and the number of applicants for more schooling would surge beyond the capability of colleges and trade schools to handle.
No students were ever "taught" anything; they only "learn" and they must be motivated to learn. I can't think of a better motivation than to see what sort of job they can get without a good education. Very few engineers, certified mechanics, or machinists work part time as telemarketers to make ends meet.
The election campaign is back on in California, so there's a good chance the next governor will speak broken English and not because he's Hispanic - that would have made perfect sense, considering the large Spanish-speaking population there.
If an English speaker is in office, then 43 percent of the population can't understand him. If a heavily accented Hispanic is elected then about 50 percent can't understand him, and if a woman is elected (no, I won't touch that; I may be crazy but I'm not that stupid).
But if AAArnold is elected, no one will understand him. HMM, perhaps he is the best candidate for the job after all.
My money's on Gary Coleman. At least he can honestly say he's looking out for the little guy, making him by far the most honest politician in California.
Perhaps AAArnold could appoint him mini-gov. if the big guy's elected.
Copyright, 2003 John A. McCormick, Inc.
