Heads Up

HYDE'S "A TEAM" FORMING

"Chairman Hyde and I have asked Judge Rogan to review the lessons and implications of recent House inquiries," Gingrich said in a prepared statement last week. "His experience as a jurist affords him a unique perspective on both due process and basic fairness. He is an excellent choice for his assignment because of the bipartisan respect he enjoys among his colleagues."

"I'm going to look at this from a constitutional and legal standpoint, not a partisan standpoint," Rogan told the Pasadena Star-News last Monday. "This is not about short-term political gains; this is about our country and our history. I have no ax to grind with President Clinton. I would give him the same presumption of innocence that I gave everyone in my courtroom."

"The law requires the House to follow-up on information gathered by the independent counsel and act accordingly after reviewing all the evidence," Rogan said in another statement last week. "I will work diligently to ensure that all members are aware of the importance of due process and bipartisan cooperation."

Well folks, just for kicks, let's see if we can find a pattern developing here. Besides serving as a judge, Rogan also worked for nearly six years as a district attorney in Los Angeles. He specialized in hard- core gang cases.

Now comes a criminal defense attorney named David Schippers. Rep. Hyde, selected Schippers, a 68-year- old Chicago attorney, to lead the impeachment team as chief investigative counsel. Some old timers may still remember that name because, back in the 1960's, Schippers ran the Justice Department's busy organized crime and racketeering section in Chicago. Needless to say, Schippers knows a little about investigating obstruction and cover-up schemes. He's also a registered Democrat.

Continuing on with what could easily become a very hard-hitting team, Hyde them tapped three Chicago investigators: Berle Littmann, a recently retired Internal Revenue Service investigator; another IRS investigator named Al Tracy; and Peter Wacks, a retired FBI Special Agent. Coincidentally, all three are long time associates of former Chicago federal prosecutor David Schippers.

Hillary's opposition research people and "secret police" teams will have a field day with Hyde's new crew, as at least three of them (and Rep. James Rogan) have had long and colorful careers. However, this Chicago Team knew exactly what to expect coming in, and at least two have very thick skins.

Apparently, Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde mean business. Hyde's new investigation team comes with over 100 year's experience dealing with well organized hard-core sleaze. It should also be reiterated that they are all already retired. That is, they have no career to worry about, and hence, do not have to worry about what toes they may step on during this investigation. Between them, they know every dirty trick in the book. So, if Hillary's cabal starts with their normal disinformation campaign, they will soon find that the Chicago Team will probably give back much better than they get -- which, from our point of view, will be great fun to watch.

CONGRESS MUST ACT NOW

Both Dick Morris and George Stephanopoulos gave us a clue as to what is really going on in the back rooms of the White House. Stephanopoulos stated on a recent Sunday Sam and Cokie show that if the Clinton administration is going down, they plan a mutual destruction program to take a lot of other people down with them. Later, Morris informed us that Hillary's cabal of attorneys and "secret police" have been gathering all sorts of personal information on anyone they class as "enemies" of the Clinton administration.

Now, through the good works of Larry Klayman and his Judicial Watch team, it was independently verified that Hillary has been paying non-government investigators to dig dirt on Members of Congress, judges, newspaper reporters, publications, and anyone testifying before Congressional hearings and the grand juries about Clinton administration wrongdoings.

Add to that those 900+ FBI background-check files the White House acquired inappropriately and Hillary's huge database on people, and we see more than just a little mischief in progress. The fact is, the White House is running a full-blown obstruction of justice operation that would make anything that happened during the Nixon administration look amateurish.

Current targets include Congressman Bob Barr (R-GA), who is the point man on Capitol Hill for impeachment. In a fit of real irony, Hillary even had the Federal Election Commission check out Barr's election campaign finances. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) got it from both Hillary's scandal mongers and Hillary's Justice Department. Senator Fred Thompson, (R-TN) uncovered a few embarrassing details on how the Clinton campaign committee laundered communist Chinese money into their campaign coffers, so he was investigated. And let's not forget the early Congressional hearings. Those Republicans got Hillary's aggressive "secret police" and disinformation treatment, too. Meanwhile, Hillary's "secret police" are looking into the judges associated with any of the administration's cases coming up. And, lastly, let's not forget the ongoing public disinformation job they are doing on Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and his group.

Under oath, White House assistant Eleanor Parker told of one of the "opposition research" teams (there is at least one other working at DNC headquarters) based in the Old Executive Building next to the White House. She admitted that the group sifted through public documents to collect personal details on targets. They also used computer research services.

Dick Morris reports that: "The Clinton operation's use of private investigators began in 1992 when over $100,000 of federally subsidized campaign funds were used to pay sleuth Jack Palladino to investigate women rumored to have had affairs with Clinton. His mission? To intimidate them into silence."

Recently, Judicial Watch deposed White House private investigator Terry Lenzer under oath for six- hours. And, finally, the American public got a small glimpse into the workings of Hillary's "secret police," and a little information on how they are actively involved in obstructing justice. Quickly, Judicial Watch verified that Lenzer's client list includes Hillary Clinton and White House operative Mickey Kantor.

As the Washington Weekly reported: "On behalf of Hillary Clinton and on behalf of Clinton's lawyers, Lenzer has investigated virtually every enemy of the Clinton administration, as acknowledged by Lenzer's claims of work-product privilege: Starting with the investigation of 'bimbos' during the 1992 campaign, Lenzer has investigated unnamed judges (between two and five in the past five years, the last one in 1997), Linda Tripp, lawyers Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova, reporters from the American Spectator, The Weekly Standard, and The Wall Street Journal."

The infamous FBI killer Larry Potts is working for Lenzer, as is the disgraced past FBI general counsel Howard Shapiro. Rounding the circle and bringing this story into home stretch, we learn that among Lenzer's clients are the communist People's Republic of China, drug lawyer (and Democratic counsel) Richard Ben-Veniste, and Clinton defenders Ann Lewis and her brother Barney Frank. On top of that, Lenzer has close relations with Steve and Cokie Roberts. Which brings us back to what George Stephanopoulos blabbed about mutual destruction on the Sam and Cokie show. Lenzer's daughter also worked as a White House intern for Stephanopoulos. And, four of Terry Lenzer's employees have left his office and are now working directly for the White House.

Convenient, isn't it! How blatant can they possibly be? Hillary hires a "secret police" investigation team, and the investigator installs his people in the White House where all those FBI files and Hillary's massive database happens to be accessible. So, the investigators have direct access to the Secret Service, FBI and IRS computers anytime they need information. Computer research of targets, indeed!

Clinton's serial sex scandals are becoming hackneyed. As expected, friend of the Clintons, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, threw out Paula Jones' civil lawsuit. But, not before America heard more than enough to know that Bill is fooling with every female he can get his hands on except Hillary. The Red China bribe connection story was effectively killed, too. Between the Thompson Committee and the Department of Justice, they have just about assured that the American public will never learn the full truth of how -- and how extensively -- the communists bribed our government. Most of the other scandals are left to Starr, and whatever he will or will not do.

Actually, we can forget about all that for now. Because, ancillary to all the above scandals is a criminal enterprise that everyone can now easily understand. This one includes abuse of power, violation of personal privacy, intentional defamation of character, and a continuing enterprise called obstruction of justice. The participants are as easy to identify, and the connection lines are as easy to follow, as the interactions between the sleazy antagonists in an Elmore Leonard novel. In other words, a bicameral select Congressional committee investigation into this ongoing conspiracy of obstruction of justice would leave Congress looking as clean as Perry Mason in the eyes of the American public.

The shame to the administration would overwhelm even that amoral bunch.

A GUN IS ONLY A TOOL

This week, they're starting on the danger of citizen-owned guns again. These mush-mouthed hand-ringing buttinskys keep telling America that guns are bad. Guns are making our country a very dangerous land, they say. Guns kill people, they repeat. It's like the frontier days out there all over again, one babble-breath said. Listening to these fugitives from fact, one would think that the nefarious pistol in the drawer next to me is actually lying in wait for me to open the drawer so it can jump out and shoot me.

A few years back I published a well circulated paper detailing the difference in violent crime between the United States and four European countries where guns are closely regulated. No matter that I used "official" FBI statistics, I was immediately chastised for being politically incorrect.

Regardless, here's the basic (offending) data from the 1992 FBI Uniform Crime Report. The numbers are related in incidents per 100,000 population:

Country ---- Murder ---- Robbery
------------------------------------------
U.S.A. -------- 9.3 -------- 263.0
England ------ 7.4 --------- 62.6
France ------- 4.6 --------- 90.4
Germany ----- 4.2 --------- 47.4
Italy ---------- 6.0 ---------- 68.6

If these numbers are taken on their face value, the United States is truly more dangerous than these four European countries. However, a great deal of the crime in the United States is committed by street gang punks and other riffraff in the inner-city. The FBI did not correct for that. However, we still can get some idea of the source of the problem by using their figures for the race of the perpetrators.

----------------Murder---------Robbery
-------------------------------------------
White---------- 5.1--------------126
Black----------43.1------------1,343

All I've got to say about these numbers is that my Black friends and neighbors in Detroit intuitively knew them to be true. It was the liberal press, and of course the politicians, who didn't want to hear this stuff.

The FBI defines justifiable homicide as being "limited to the killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty, or the killing by a private citizen of a felon during the commission of a felony." The FBI reports that, in 1995, there were a total of 383 justifiable homicides by police officers and another 286 by civilians. Most, of course, were justifiable shootings by the use of a handgun.

The FBI identified 7,071 (31.5%) White and 8,285 (36.9%) Black murders in 1995. Another 6,660 (29.7%) were of unknown race.

As politically incorrect as this information may be, these are the facts as per the FBI, an organization currently under the control of liberals. These data are posted on their web page for anyone to see. Yet, journalists and politicians never bother to look.

The FBI report positively identifies 1,157 murders by juvenile gangs alone -- and that is just the ones they know about. They identify another 1,010 murders as drug related. And so on, and so on.

The cold hard fact is that, in the States where people own and use guns the most, there are fewest murders. And it is a natural result, not a statistical anomaly, that as States begin issuing concealed carry weapons permits violent crime immediately decreases significantly. These are easily verifiable facts, available to anyone with a computer. Yet, the political nincompoops in Washington and their clue-less journalist sycophants persist in fabricating and disseminating inaccurate information to the American people. Well folks, it's time we have at them -- politically speaking, of course.

I, for one, do not relish carrying around an extra two pounds of tooled steel when I go out. However, even in the beautiful foothills of Appalachia, that can sometimes be a wise thing to do. Therefore, it must always remain my option.

Towards that end, we (many of us) would like to thank the Kentucky General Assembly, which recently passed HB-318 to help secure the right of all Americans to protect themselves. That bill will allow any licensed person, from any State which issues concealed carry permits, to carry a concealed weapon in Kentucky. It also orders the Kentucky State Police to secure reciprocity agreements with all States that currently issue CCW's so that Kentucky permit holders may carry in their respective States.

Read it and weep liberals. Sometimes, things work as they should.

QUESTIONS FOR LEGISLATORS

Questions such as these can be quite enlightening in an elections year. So, it was suggested that some Heads Up readers may also wish to present these four simple questions to their State legislators, and even to Members of Congress. Therefore, we are making them public.

1.) There are an awful lot of laws, rules and regulations on the books. Do you agree with all those laws? If not, which ones did you work to have removed? Which laws were actually removed? Exactly when can we expect others to be repealed?

2.) The Founding Fathers intended that a wealth of unalienable rights and liberties belong to each citizen individually and are not to be interfered with by government. Generally, these include our natural and individual rights of life, liberty and property. The Founding Fathers intended it to be the expressed duty of all elected officials and bureaucrats to protect these rights and liberties. In fact, part of this duty to the people is expressed in the oath of office taken by all elected officials and public servants upon entering government service. Exactly what, then, did you do to insure the uninterrupted personal freedom of the people of our State?

3.) There were a number of bills recently submitted that would impact negatively on the freedom of the people of our State. In other words, if enacted into law, the bills will act to remove certain personal rights and liberties. Gun laws obstruct our unalienable right to protect self, family, home and community. Some laws, such as those regulating medical services and the purchase of other personal goods and services, affect our right to contract, which is a direct violation of the United States Constitution. Others, such as forfeiture and environmental laws, adversely affect our natural right to private property. Still others, such as traffic stops and stop and frisk laws, directly affect our right to move about in society and function as we please. Did you support bills that adversely impacted on the rights and liberties of the people? If so, please indicate which ones and why.

4.) Over the past decade, government has been our fastest growing industry. More government, of course, needs more tax dollars. Consequently, about 45% of the average family's household income goes directly to taxes and another 10% for hidden costs caused by spurious regulations. What did you do to help remove some of this excessive tax burden from the people of our State? Do you ever intend to roll back government to a more unintrusive level? When will this program begin?

THEY WANT A CRACK-DOWN

McCain's proposed bill would force the tobacco industry to pay the government more than $506-billion over 25 years for "permission" to sell a product that has always been legal in the United States. It also adds $1.10-per pack (Clinton wants $1.50) in new cigarette taxes. Never mind that the federal government already taxes cigarettes over fifty cents per pack.

Listening to the committee hearings on C-SPAN, one quickly realizes that this is not about smoking but about money -- and 'only' about money. Congress is acting like the officers of a conquering army arguing about the dividing of the spoils of war. This time it's cigarettes. But, if we allow this unconstitutional action to go forward, there are already people looking into doing somewhat the same thing with high-content sugar and fat products. What follows that, Sports Utility Vehicles?

According to the Smith Barney Tobacco Research company, cigarettes in America could cost more than $3.56 a pack by the year 2002. That means that, as in Europe, criminal gangs will suddenly find bootlegged and smuggled cigarettes to be a great new profit center. A little Yankee ingenuity will quickly come into effect, and the product will be easy to come by. That is because tobacco farmers' "quotas" are already set very low. Many tobacco farms have plenty of room, and could easily triple or quadruple production without attracting much attention.

There was a time in our American history when legislators honored our United States Constitution. When Congress wanted to tax and regulate a legal product out of existence, they knew that there was only one legal way to do it: Pass a Constitutional Amendment. That happened in 1919 with the Eighteenth Amendment to restrict beverage alcohol.

No place in our Constitution is there any hint of authority for the federal government to regulate any legal product while it is in use within the boundaries of a State. Surely, some of the thousands of attorneys working in the administrative and legislative branches would have noticed that fact. Yet, the do-gooders in Washington persist anyway. The reason being, of course, is they want more of our money to spend on their socialist programs, and increased tobacco taxes seem like a politically correct way to take it.

All the political hoopla over tobacco also provides a great smoke-screen to cover one of the federal government's most visible failures: that Constitutionally mandated duty to protect our nation's borders against the constant influx of illegal aliens and illegal drugs.

Our country is being invaded every day by many thousands of third-world people and tons of illegal drugs. Yet the likes of Clinton, McCain and their Washington elite friends, find it much more expedient and profitable to go after the American public instead.

It's time we "crack-down" on something, all right. Perhaps it's time that We the People crack-down on an out of control federal government. It is time we force the federal government to obey the Constitution, as written.