John Kerry and the "band of brothers"
By Norman Turner

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he
today who sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother…"
King Henry V, Shakespeare

Senator John Kerry has chosen to construct his campaign aura around his record as a "war hero" of the Vietnam unpleasantness. He tries to gather Vietnam veterans to his cause, calling them his "band of brothers," a quote from Shakespeare. This phrase, well known to most former warriors, recalls to most of us, those times when danger was the common threat to us all, and about which we now gather and tell war stories.

To endure Kerry referring to his "band of brothers," while flaunting his medals is irritating to many Vietnam veterans; especially those of us who were in combat there. As the campaign moves along, Kerry is going to discover that there are many of us who will fight against him because he is not our brother at all. (Read the rest here)

Paragraph 5
By Carl F. Worden

It is a simple truth: The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were not written by our Founding Fathers for the good times; when every American harvest was bountiful, when American jobs were high-paying, plentiful and protected, and when our peacetime economy was robust.

No, the Constitution and Bill of Rights were specifically written for the time when our navy would be attacked at Pearl Harbor by Japan, and they were written for that day when airplanes would be flown by terrorists into the Twin Towers, killing 3,000 New York Americans in one shot. Those documents were primarily written for these bad times, the times of national crisis.

The Constitution and Bill of Rights were specifically written to protect Japanese American citizens from being rounded up like animals and imprisoned in horrible internment camps like Manzanar for no better reason than their racial heritage. The Constitution and Bill of Rights were specifically written to protect American citizens like Jose Padilla from having their most fundamental civil rights personally and arbitrarily stripped from them by the president, and from being thrown incommunicado into a military brig without access to legal counsel just because somebody in Afghanistan told American authorities Padilla was a terrorist. Only vicious dictators like Saddam Hussein got away with that kind of thing before. What’s the difference? (Read the rest here)

Wartime Debt. Can We Afford It?
By Ed Henry

What sort of planning is it where Congress and the administration sit down and decide on a budget of $2.2 trillion and a deficit of $307 billion, then tell us that the deficit is really going to be $521 billion instead? What sort of financial wizards plan this when receipts last year were only $1.782 trillion and that was $71 billion below the previous year's federal income?

Federal revenue has been in a downward spiral since Bush took office, but that doesn't stop them from planning bigger and bigger budgets.

Individual income tax receipts for this year are even worse than they were last year and can all be laid at the feet of job losses. The U.S. Treasury Monthly Report for January, four months into the current fiscal year, reports receipts of $298 billion so far when at the same time last year they were $306 billion. (Read the rest here)

Did you miss our last issue? Archive of past issues

NEW!
The Lighter Side of PoL
Humor links and items to lighten your day. Send us your humor contributions!