To whom much is given...

Every generation must answer when liberty calls.

As Memorial Day approaches, I'm reminded that liberty is cherished most by those whose sacrifice was greatest. That said, I also believe that each generation will be held accountable for the opportunities they were entrusted, and that vigilance is required in every era for those who would live free.

With these imperatives in mind, two areas that demand our attention this month involve decisions that will be made in the U.S. Senate (this week), which address:

1) Re-instituting the process that allows for a simple majority to end a filibuster
Using this practice, minority democrats have taken the unprecedented step of blocking appellate court nominees from a vote on the Senate floor. Through delay and obstruction they hope to preserve future appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court for themselves. Traditional-values voters are urged to contact their U.S. Senators immediately to demand an up or down vote on these conservative judicial nominees.

2) Approving of the President's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations
As demonstrated by the "Oil for Food" scandal, genocides in Rwanda and Sudan, and unchecked nuclear proliferation, the UN will never operate as an effective deliberative body for maintaining world order unless American leadership is forthright in asserting a foreign policy based on the advancement of liberty and justice. John Bolton, an extraordinarily well qualified career diplomat, is the right man for the job at this critical juncture. And now is the time to advise your Senators that you recommend his appointment.

Bottom Line: Any compromise with the liberal left, which prevents an up or down vote on the appellate court nominees, is the equivalent of sacrificing another generation of infants on the alter of expediency, of debasing the institution of marriage, of surrendering our national sovereignty to international courts. And any compromise with the liberal left, which prevents the President from working with his chosen UN ambassador, effectively eviscerates any hope of diplomatic progress and any option short of armed conflagration.

You are invited to review articles by Pat Buchanan and David Limbaugh on these important topics, and then requested to contact your Senators (e.g. in FL, Martinez @ 202-224-3041 and Nelson @ 202-224-5274) to make your recommendations known. Finally, to consider the prophetic significance of this generation's challenges, Jack Kinsella's commentary is also a must read.

In the spirit of liberty,

Roy J. Tanner



Nuclear option in a religious war

Posted: April 27, 20051:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

As the world mourned the passing of John Paul II, who never ceased defending the right to life of the unborn, a thought occurred. If George W. Bush had nominated John Paul II to a federal judgeship, every Senate Democrat would have voted to kill his nomination, and filibustered it to death if it ever reached the Senate floor.

For the convictions of John Paul II, rooted in the teachings of Christ and the church – on abortion, homosexual unions, stem-cell research, Terri Schiavo, women's rights – are all extremist by the standards of the Democratic Party.

Which underscores a point: The Left has succeeded in imposing a social revolution on America only by its seizure and control of the least democratic and most autocratic branch of the government, the judiciary. But now that bastion of liberalism could fall. Thus, all the sound and fury of the establishment and media over the "nuclear option" being considered by the Republican Senate.

What does that option entail? If a federal judicial nominee is approved in committee and sent to the floor, he or she will get a vote. A minority bloc of senators will not be allowed to kill every Bush appellate or Supreme Court nominee by talking it to death. The nuclear option means majority decides. How radical is that?

In this fight, there is no small humor in seeing liberals who preach pure democracy defending the club Strom Thurmond and his Dixiecrats used to use to beat civil rights bills to death. Liberals – who welcomed priests, nuns, rabbis and ministers at peace rallies – are now denouncing, as a violation of church and state, "Justice Sunday" at Louisville's Highview Baptist Church, where Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist spoke to advance the cause of giving the president's judges a vote.

Can this be the same Democratic Party whose nominees have campaigned for decades from the pulpits of black churches?

Bush is having his problems selling Social Security reform and John Bolton to be U.N. ambassador, but the nuclear option looks like a winner for the White House and GOP, if they don't go wobbly.

Majority Whip Mitch McConnell says he has the 51 votes. Vice President Cheney says he will be in the chair to break any tie. And while Minority Leader Harry Reid is howling about Frist being a "radical Republican" for speaking at a church, Joe Biden is talking compromise. He is offering to accept some nominees, if Bush will jettison the rest. The GOP response should be: No deal.

The Democrats' retaliatory threat? All Senate business will be shut down if Republicans exercise the nuclear option. But this is a bluff or a threat of suicide. Should Senate Democrats walk out or go on a sit-down strike because Bush nominees win a majority vote, Democrats will become a national joke and set themselves up to be blamed for every congressional failure between now and November 2006.

The Democrats are issuing an ultimatum they cannot carry out without killing their party. Have they forgotten what happened to Newt Gingrich when, after he shut down the government, he said he did not like the way he had been treated by having to walk out the rear door of Air Force One? That is what Senate Democrats are inviting with their threat to halt all Senate business.

The importance of the Judges War to the Bush legacy, the GOP agenda and the nation is not easily overstated.

For decades, radical secularists like William Douglas, Earl Warren, William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall and Harry Blackmun have abused their power as Supreme Court justices to impose their values and views on a society that opposed or even detested those values and views. We have seen voluntary prayer, Bible-reading and the Ten Commandments purged from public schools; the pornography industry, once a sordid criminal enterprise, given First Amendment protection; and children forcibly bused across town on judicial orders because of the color of their skin. We have seen abortion, once a crime in 50 states, declared a constitutional right, followed by the discovery that the Constitution protects homosexual sodomy, though Jefferson equated it with rape.

We are no longer a democratic republic. The Supreme Court picks what cases it will hear, what laws it will permit to stand, what rights it shall invent. We overthrew a rule of kings. Now we are oppressed by a rule of judges.

The nuclear option is a way to change the composition of the courts, but this is a project of years. In the near term, the needed remedy remains for Congress to remove from U.S. court dockets all moral and social issues that the Founding Fathers believed should be decided by the people through elected representatives. It is in the power of this Congress to overthrow this judicial dictatorship and restore our lost republic. They must not fail.

No compromises. Exercise the nuclear option.

Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of the new magazine, The American Conservative. Now a political analyst for MSNBC and a syndicated columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national television shows, and is the author of seven books.




Enough is enough: Bolton must be confirmed

Posted: April 26, 20051:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

If Democrats weren't afraid to admit the real reasons they are obstructing the nomination of John Bolton to be our next United Nations ambassador, they wouldn't be interposing such embarrassingly lame objections as "John Bolton once yelled at an insubordinate subordinate."

But they are afraid, because their true objections have nothing to do with Bolton's temperament or even his temper, other than that it has sometimes been directed at wimps advocating the wimpish policies liberals adore.

Democrats oppose Bolton's nomination because Bolton is a no-nonsense proponent of President Bush's foreign policy, is critical of the direction – though not the existence of – the United Nations, and is bullish on America.

You see, Democrats refuse to accept the public's rejection of their foreign policy and national security message in November and are acting like they are the ones with the mandate. Here they are asserting a mandate with 47 percent of the vote, and they complain when President Bush claims one after winning a clear majority.

Since they refuse to acknowledge President Bush's victory, they surely don't want to allow him to appoint officials who would carry out his agenda. Mr. Bolton would do that, and do it aggressively and unapologetically, thus he must be opposed – at all costs.

So if Democrats want to talk about Bolton's dressing down of Christian Westerman for his rank insubordination in trying to subvert Bolton's position concerning Cuba to the CIA, by all means, let's bring it on.

Indeed, Bolton should have tarred and feathered the guy if reports of what he did – not just undermining Bolton, but later lying about it, then complaining like a sissy after being properly rebuked – are even half true.

Democrats ought to be made to explain why Bolton was wrong for upbraiding Westerman and how they would have handled the matter differently. Perhaps Sens. Clinton, Kennedy or Biden should be asked to give us a seminar in how not to display one's temper when one's subordinate undermines one's work.

Better yet, maybe they should explain how Bolton's alleged reprimand of Westerman was less genteel and civil than their routine exhibitions of disrespect toward President Bush's judicial nominees, or Secretary Condoleezza Rice, or Mr. Bolton, for that matter.

And while conservative Republicans are about the business of taking on these Senate Democrat hypocrites over these bogus temperament issues, it might not be a bad idea for them to call to the carpet those in their own party – like Sens. Voinovich and Hagel – whose consciences have been touchingly aroused. It would mightily please the conservative senators' constituents if they would show a little indignation on the floor of the Senate, not just at the obstructionist Democrats, but the pretend Republicans as well.

But after accommodating the Democrat charade to inquire into these "stunningly" irrelevant and diversionary allegations against Bolton, the Republicans should flush out the Democrats on their true agenda and force a robust, quite public, and very conspicuous debate over their real objections to Mr. Bolton.

Instead of always being caught with their pants down and on the defensive, Republicans should take the offensive and make Democrats confess that what they're really exercised about with Mr. Bolton is that he: 1) doesn't want to abolish the United Nations but make it effective again under American leadership; 2) is not a disciple of their idea of multilateralism, meaning he doesn't think we should subordinate American interests to the whims and corruption of countries like France and Germany; 3) doesn't share their idolatry of Fidel Castro and Cuban Communism and doesn't believe we should cater to the tyrant; 4) is an ardent advocate of American sovereignty; 5) is an unabashed foreign policy hawk; and 6) is not an ally of anti-Bush, globalist, pacifist, liberal career bureaucrats at the State Department.

If and when this substantive debate occurs, Democrats ought to be forced to explain why they believe Bolton's criticism of the United Nations is a disqualifier to his ambassadorship. Why is his criticism of the United Nations tantamount to his hating the United Nations any more than their constant trashing of America vis-a-vis other nations is proof of their lack of patriotism? Couldn't we just once turn their specious logic against them?

Yes, this is a fight Republicans should welcome and one – along with the one over judicial nominations – they should take to the American people. President Bush won, and unless congressional Republicans in sufficient numbers start acting like it, they might as well not be there.

It's not enough for them to vote in favor of Mr. Bolton and the president's other eminently qualified nominees. It's time they got vocal and doggedly aggressive in their defense of these men and women who have been sacrificed at the altar of the Democrats' politics of personal destruction.

Attorney David Limbaugh is the author of the pull-no-punches expose of corruption in the Clinton-Reno Justice Department, "Absolute Power." Autographed copies are available in WorldNetDaily's online store.



Boiling Point . . .

Prophecy - Signs
Monday, May 09, 2005
Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor

Recently, the Bush administration approved an Israeli request for 100 laser-guided bombs capable of destroying underground bunkers. There is no doubt in the administration's mind exactly what the Israelis plan to do with these weapons.

Iran is getting too close to becoming a nuclear threat and the Bush administration is still too far away from a solution for the Israelis to sit on their hands.

The deal, valued at $30 million, would transfer 100 GBU-28s and associated equipment and services to Israel. The Pentagon notified Congress on April 26 that the GBU-28 bomb would include BLU-113A/B penetration warhead, WGU-36A/B guidance control unit, FMU-143H/B bomb fuse and BSG-92/B airfoil group guide.

The GBU-28, first deployed in the 1991 Gulf war, is designed to penetrate hardened command centers located deep underground.

The laser-guided GBU-28 weighs 5,000 pounds and uses a 4,400-pound penetrating warhead. During tests in the 1990s, the GBU-28 demonstrated a capability to penetrate more than 20 feet of concrete or 100 feet of earth.

The Israeli air force would use the GBU-28s on its F-15 aircraft fleet. Israel's F-15I fleet, procured in the late 1990s, is reportedly capable of striking targets a thousand miles away.

It is worth noting that the Pentagon isn't sending bombs from the existing US inventory, but said it would come from 'new procurement'. That is more significant than it sounds.

There have been a lot of improvements to both the GBU-28 and to bunker construction technology since the early 1990's.

The Pentagon decision to procure the GBUs from 'new procurement' means that the Israelis will have the full advantages of improvements made since -- presumably incorporating non-conventional capabilities, like what are often called mini-nukes.

If it comes to an airstrike, the Pentagon wants to make sure the Israelis get it done right the first time.

According to European diplomats furiously working towards some kind of diplomatic solution, talks with Iran are on the verge of collapse.

On Tuesday, Tehran accused the United States and other nations of "using a fear of nuclear weapons to deny peaceful nuclear technology to developing nations" in an effort to win support from non-aligned nations at the twice-per-decade Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Conference at the UN.

The conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty enters day five this morning. Like every other global effort sponsored by the UN in the 21st century, it has accomplished nothing, breaking down into squabbles between the 'have' nations and the 'have-nots'.

As of this morning, the conference still hasn't even finished working out its agenda.

Tehran continues to stall the global nuclear conference, hoping it will adjourn without addressing the nuclear-fuel cell issue until its next meeting in 2010.

While Israel continues to make its not-so-secret contingency plans for an airstrike against Iran, Syrian intelligence units have been quietly infiltrating Palestinian 'refugee' camps inside Lebanon.

Syrian intelligence has worked closely with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist forces entrenched in the Bekaa Valley for a decade, shuttling Iranian military supplies from the Damascus airport to Hezbollah camps for the past decade.

Members of the Lebanese parliament say Syrian military officers began to transfer Syrian units from their headquarters in Beirut to Palestinian bases as soon as heavy pressure began for a withdrawal from Lebanon.

In 1982, the PFLP-GC established bases in Lebanon used largely for training and storage of Katyusha rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and light weapons. Neither Lebanese police nor army units have been permitted to enter the bases.

The threat posed to global security by a nuclear-armed Iran is just one of many emerging threats -- threats emerging so quickly that it is hard to catch a breath in between.

North Korea continues to openly conduct tests of its expanding arsenal of medium and long-range missiles, in defiance of international conventions.

Last year, a North Korean missile overshot Japan, demonstrating Pyongyang's ability to strike the Japanese home islands. Last week, it tested a medium-range missile that it brought down sixty-five miles inside the Sea of Japan.

Word of that test came just days after a top U.S. military intelligence official told a U.S. Senate committee that North Korea has the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear weapon.

According to US intelligence, Pyongyang nuclear missile range includes Japan, most of Europe and the west coast of the United States. And Kim Jong Il is believed to be just crazy enough to order a launch.

Setting down the strategic overview of the situation is sobering, even terrifying. The simple facts are these:

Iran cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. Period. And North Korea cannot be allowed to keep theirs. Period.

Iran will not back down to threats, and it has no intention of honoring any agreements arising out of a diplomatic 'solution'.

Tehran is betting that it can stall until it can announce it has a nuclear weapon, counting on the threat of a nuclear counter-strike to keep Israel and the United States at bay until it can develop a permanent nuclear deterrent that will make it virtually untouchable.

North Korea is counting on its successful missile tests to convince the West it already has such a deterrent.

The United Nations is powerless. It is hopelessly corrupt, has lost any serious credibility, and appears destined to join the League of Nations on the scrapheap of history.

The United States' conventional military capabilities are stretched to the limit by the war on terror. Recruitment is down, weapons stockpiles depleted, and it remains vulnerable to a sneak EMP attack.

Iran recently tested a missile capable of detonating a nuclear warhead from low orbit. One detonated over the United States could throw the US, technologically, back to the 1880's for months, if not years.

The Russians continue to cultivate dependent satellite states across the Islamic Middle East, while the Chinese are increasing their saber-rattling over Taiwan.

The European Union's continued existence is threatened by an expected defeat of the proposed constitution by French, German and British voters, further destabilizing the global order.

At the center of the maelstrom is tiny Israel. A single decision from Jerusalem to launch against Iran's nuclear facilities would be enough to set off the fuse.

Meanwhile, back in the States, the headlines are all about 'peace and safety' as the Department of Homeland Security announces that the threat assessment level is lower than at any time in the past four years.

"But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape." (1st Thessalonians 5:1-3)

People get up in the mornings like they always do. They go to work, come home, plan their weekends, plan their vacations, contribute to their 401k plans, argue about the solvency of Social Security thirty years hence, in short, going about business as usual.

"And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all." (Luke 17:26-27)

But in the back of everybody's mind is the question. Is this really it? Can it really be possible that these are the last days?

It is at least believable enough for TV executives to begin devoting whole television series plots to the possibility. A TV series like 'Revelations' would never have gotten off the ground ten years ago.

Today, it is part of an emerging entertainment genre -- 'the antichrist is coming. . . the antichrist is coming . . . !'

Which reflects the seemingly nonchalant attitude by the world about the possibility that these really ARE the last days. They know . . . but they really don't believe it.

"Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." 2nd Peter 3:3-4

As any long time reader of the Omega Letter has already noticed, the strategic global assessment as it exists, today, May 6, 2005, is a perfect match for the strategic global assessment outlined by Bible prophecy for the last days.

From the perspective of the natural, it is a dismal picture of impending chaos unlike anything the world has ever experienced. That pretty much sums up the way Jesus described the events that are clearly poised to unleash themselves upon the earth.

"For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be." (Matthew 24:21)

But to the true Church, what appears to be impending doom is evidence of impending redemption. "And when these things BEGIN to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh." (Luke 21:28)

It is evidence that God intends to keep His promises as outlined in Scripture, and among those promises is the one made by Jesus Christ to the Church.

"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions: if IT WERE NOT SO, I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I WILL come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." (John 14:1-3)

The Apostle Paul gives previously unrevealed details about how Jesus intends to receive the Church unto Himself, saying,

"Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." (1st Corinthians 15:51-53)

"For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." (1st Thessalonians 4:16-17)

The world is rapidly approaching the boiling point, and unless a way is found to release the pressure, the final scenario outlined by Scripture for the last days is exactly the same scenario outlined by any reasonable secular threat assessment.

If the Tribulation is that close, then the Rapture is even closer. So, go ahead. Bring it on.

We're almost outta here!

"Wherefore comfort one another with these words." (1st Thessalonians 4:18)