under the guise of “hate crimes” legislation.

Just hours after the White House issued a veto threat Thursday, the House voted to add gender and sexual orientation to the categories covered by federal hate crimes law.

As noted previously on Lone Star Times, this bill will make it a crime for a pastor, rabbi, priest or imam to say that the Bible says homosexuality is a sin if by chance someone within earshot then commits a crime against a homosexual.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the only openly gay man in the House, presided over the chamber as the final vote was taken.

It’s fitting that a guy that once had a gay prostitution ring running out of his house would be in charge of a vote limiting religious speech.

“It does not impinge on public speech or writing in any way,” countered Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., pointing out that the bill explicitly reaffirms First Amendment and free speech rights.

Of course, one of his fellow committee members admitted in the hearings on this bill that it would indeed affect religious speech.

Will President Bush veto this bill? You can help by contacting your representative, senators and by writing and calling the White House. At some point in time, we must stop the slow and steady march of liberalism in the United States or we will be stripped of all freedom.

Honest assessment in public of President Bush’s efforts as chief executive can be difficult because of the rather strident nature of his opponents. It is impossible, after all, to balance a ledger with those who will give no credit for anything to a man they hate. But what will Bush’s legacy actually be? It is a valid question, and examining the record could be instructive. Let us try to take a level-headed look.

Economy

The economy is probably one of the President’s strongest suits. Despite terrorist attacks on the nation and a resulting recession, the American economy has rebounded and remains strong years later. Mainstream liberal media may attempt to say otherwise, but very low unemployment and strong stock markets indicate a generally healthy economic picture. There have been stumbles along the way, but Bush’s tax reductions remain a shining conservative accomplishment.

Compassionate Conservatism

This initiative of the President must be regarded as a failure. Whatever the initial reasons for the attempt, Bush’s plan to sell conservatism as “mean” and needing his brand of fiscal “compassion” largely flopped. His efforts such as “No child left behind” and extensive reaching out to Congressional Democrats only resulted in more and more spending and no political capital gained with his opponents. Some Republicans, and the President must be numbered among them, continue under the delusion that hard-left Democrats like Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi can be gotten along with, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.

Political leadership

Closely related to the “compassionate conservatism” failure, is Bush’s overall political leadership failure. Despite having both houses of Congress under Republican control for years, Bush made little effort to unify this coalition to achieve anything. Indeed, it continues to appear that the President is more interested in making friends with Democrats who hate him than those in his own party. Congressional Republicans were thus left to their own devices, resulting in a multitude of policy directions and conflicts, with little effort from Bush to sort it all out. This disarray allowed Congressional excesses to get out of hand, with nary a presidential veto to stop it. Ballooning spending, corruption, and no leadership left the Republican Party extremely vulnerable in the 2006 elections, and they were duly massacred by Democrats despite the Left’s complete lack of an electoral vision other than “Bush is evil!” While nothing is for certain, it seems highly probable that this mess could have been avoided with energetic leadership from the White House. Bush simply must take most of the blame for failing to lead a Republican House and Senate on to greater things than Mark Foley, bloated budgets, and an election drubbing.

Immigration

Two words: Total failure. There is simply no way to sugar coat this issue. President Bush favors near-open borders and assertions to the contrary are denying the reality on the ground. Thousands of illegal aliens stream across our border with Mexico every day and next to nothing is done about it. The President pays lip service to securing the border, but his claims of success are laughable. Drugs, human smuggling operators, weapons and possibly even terrorists are entering the country on a daily basis and Bush’s response is to simply legalize the flood by making them “guest workers.” This is not a Democrat/Republican issue, it is simply one of right and wrong. We have borders and we have laws, neither of which are being enforced with anything like a serious commitment. The President’s flippant attitude is therefore responsible for making a mockery of both our laws and our border. Immigration related crime, cultural divisions, and much human suffering can therefore be laid directly at his feet. President Bush may consider taking the blame “work Americans won’t do” but on this issue, to paraphrase Harry Truman, “The peso stops here.”

War On Terror

This aspect of the Bush presidency and its effect on his legacy is a complex one. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan remain ongoing, with those in Iraq especially troubling. Americans were buoyed by initial success, and were supportive of Bush’s need to take action, but we have since become very suspicious of what has turned into a four year-long battle of attrition with a sly, shadowy enemy intertwined with the general population of Iraq. Stymied by a lack of security progress, Iraq is at a crossroads with a great danger of becoming another Vietnam for the United States. Given recent Democrat attempts to undercut the war effort, there is a distinct possibility that we could re-live the political and military disasters of the 1970s all over again. Such an outcome would hardly reflect positively on historians’ accounting of the Bush Administration, but there is still time for change. While the President gets credit for responding militarily to 9/11, he must nevertheless take the blame for a too timid prosecution of what should have been an all-out war. The hallmarks of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan over the long term have been hesitation and indecision instead of crushing force and fear-inspiring power. The world political gains made early on by our success have thus been allowed to whither away in the face of continued violence in Iraq. There is still time for President Bush to salvage operations in Iraq and prevent another Vietnam, but the task is a formidable one. Final judgment for Bush and the War On Terror, must therefore be postponed.

This accounting is necessarily a tentative one. The President’s term in office has not yet expired, and much could happen between now and his return to the ranch in Crawford. The future of Iraq naturally looms large in any calculation of Bush’s place in history, but that future is still undecided. The President has generally done well in his stewardship of our economy, and led the nation in responding to the dark days after 9/11, but there have been serious shortcomings as well. Perhaps Bush will ultimately go into the history books as a president of unachieved potential.

How would you like a boss that refuses to defend you, even before any investigation has concluded? Be glad you’re not a cop in LA.

Bratton did not try to defend the actions of his officers, reports CBS News correspondent Steve Futterman. Instead he promised a complete and very public examination of Tuesday night’s events.

In case you missed it, in one of the amnesty marches on May (communist) Day, the crowd turned violent, hurling rocks and bottles at officers. When the officers tried to disperse the mob, television crews were pushed out of the way. That’s a no-no in today’s media.

“All I thought they would do was line up and march and say ‘get out of here,’” said KCBS reporter Mark Coogan, one of those beaten. “You didn’t have to whack people or fire at people with rubber bullets.”

Well, Mr. Coogan, when the police line up and tell you to “get out of here” and you don’t, what do you think is going to happen? You think they are just going to stand there and let anarchy reign? Are you going to hear the officers say, “Sure, go ahead, throw those rocks and bottles, we’ll just stand here”?

It appears that the chief agrees with Mr. Coogan, his officers deserve to be pelted for doing their jobs.

Seven officers suffered minor injuries, and another was pushed off his motorcycle, Bratton said.

Yet he isn’t going to defend them. Hey, I hear Johnny Sutton is available to prosecute the injured officers. Pathetic. Perhaps Chief Bratton can team up with Al Sharpton to bring justice to the people.

Probably not but it is encouraging to see him talking about tax cuts and spending reductions again.

Gov. Rick Perry renewed his push Wednesday for additional property tax cuts and tighter restraints on state spending, acknowledging that those efforts have been slow to catch on during the first four months of the legislative session.

Slow to catch on? A bit of an understatement to say the least. Tax cuts, spending reductions and appraisal cap discussions are about as popular in this legislature as Sheryl Crow is with Mr. Whipple.

“If the session were to be over with today, we could point to precious few accomplishments on behalf of the taxpayers,” Perry said. “Outside of continuing the property tax cuts of the last session and passage of budgets in the two chambers, budgets that don’t spend every dime available, taxpayers have pretty much been shut out.”

But once again, Darth Vader rears his ugly head to stop any talk of tax reductions.

“I want to provide as much tax relief as we can,” Dewhurst said. “But it appears at the present time . . . absent a dramatic upturn in our revenues, that we wouldn’t have the money to balance our budget and provide a $7 billion a year reduction in local school property taxes for the next biennium if we were to send that $2.5 billion back.”

Does this guy really think he can win the governorship? And is anyone besides me tired of politicians using the argument that it is better to stockpile money today than it is to “give it back” and raise taxes if and when the economic collapse occurs?

At any rate, it is better to hear the governor talking about tax cuts than it is to hear him talking about unproven vaccines or taking land for a giant toll road through the middle of Texas.

Can you ‘ear me?

OKAY, I HEARD YOU.

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