Emails received by gov's office; Popkey on judges

The Idaho affiliate of the American Family Association

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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Bryan Fischer, Executive Director

For a printer-friendly version of today’s Update, please visit our website, Idaho Values Alliance.

YOUR EMAILS HAVING AN AFFECT ON SUPREME COURT APPOINTMENT

We asked you yesterday to contact the governor’s office and express your desire for him to appoint a strict constructionist – that is, a judge who will apply the law rather than make the law – and a judge who will serve out his final term, so that the choice of his replacement will be left to the voters, as the constitution specifies, rather than to an appointed commission.

Your response has been noted by the governor’s office. I received this email from a member of the alliance yesterday:

I called the Governor’s office today and I was told that they had received a large number of letters voicing disapproval of the strategic retirements of Schroeder and Trout … I thought you might encouraged to hear that this little stunt … has aroused some real opposition.

Thank you for weighing in on this important matter! Since these early retirements have deprived voters of their constitutional right to select the next Supreme Court justice, communicating our wishes to the governor is our only option of influencing the outcome.

Together, we, as the Idaho Values Alliance, are making a difference in Idaho’s public life.

If you haven’t yet sent an email to the governor’s office, here is the link to our action alert with the pertinent information:

IVA Action Alert: Contact Governor's office about Supreme Court appointment

POPKEY IGNORES CONSTITUTION, DOES HATCHET JOB ON CONSERVATIVES

Although this will come as no surprise to regular readers of the Idaho Statesman, in the last week Dan Popkey has written two particularly irresponsible columns.

The first, printed in today’s Statesman, expresses his approval of Idaho Supreme Court justices who retire early, so that the choice of their replacements can be taken out of the hands of voters. He fawns over retiring Justices Gerald Schroeder and Linda Copple Trout, saying they are “class acts” for circumventing the state constitution they took a sacred oath to uphold.

In fact, Popkey makes no mention at all of the constitution’s unambiguous declaration, “The justices of the Supreme Court shall be elected by the electors of the state at large” (emphasis mine).

In fact, he actually chastises Justice Wayne Kidwell, the last justice who served out his final term rather than retire early, for “cutting out the Judicial Council.” Popkey is apparently blithely unconcerned that early retirements cut the voters out of the process entirely, even though the constitution guarantees their right to choose their own justices.

The truth of the matter is that if we are to be governed by laws and not by men, it doesn’t matter which process a columnist or even a sitting justice thinks is best. The constitution is clear on the matter, and if Mr. Popkey and Justices Schroeder and Trout don’t like it, it would be better for them to set about amending the constitution rather than ignoring it.

Last week, Popkey, in his continuing vendetta against conservatives, wrote a hit piece targeting both Congressman Bill Sali and former state senator Gerry Sweet, who served as Sali’s district director during the first several months of Sali’s tenure.

Here are several of the errors of fact and innuendo in Popkey’s piece:

Mr. Sweet was not fired by Rep. Sali, as Popkey implied and as the title of his column stated. Mr. Sweet’s resignation was his own decision entirely. Popkey made the assertion that Sweet had been forced out, despite multiple attempts on the part of Rep. Sali’s staff to make sure he had the facts. This willful disregard of the truth is not an endearing quality in a journalist.

Mr. Sweet did not leave his position earlier than anticipated because Mr. Popkey was asking embarrassing questions, as Popkey implied. Mr. Sweet’s final day was set before Mr. Popkey began writing his column, and was not moved up by his poking around.

Rep. Sali’s scheduled appearance at a gun show was not in fact orchestrated by Mr. Sweet (who was an exhibitor at the gun show) as Popkey stated, but scheduled by another member of Rep. Sali’s staff, who rightly felt that a visit by Rep. Sali’s to his constituents and fellow Second Amendment supporters was perfectly appropriate.

Rep. Sali’s visit to the gun show was explicitly cleared by the House ethics committee, meaning there would have been no ethical problem even if Rep. Sali had decided to attend.

In order to avoid any potential accusation of impropriety, Rep. Sali chose not to attend, but the facts, the truth, and journalistic ethics couldn’t stop Mr. Popkey from his appointed rounds of groundless attacks on conservatives.

We’ve often made the observation that conservatives rarely trust anything they read or hear in the old media – unless the old media says something harsh about a fellow conservative, at which point they seem to blindly accept old media declarations as gospel truth. Mr. Popkey’s shoddy and irresponsible attack on Rep. Sali and Mr. Sweet ought to serve as further evidence that conservatives should be skeptical of anything they read in his columns about their fellow conservatives.

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BONUS BYTES

Ø In what is either the death knell for Rudy Giuliani or the Republican Party, three leaders of prominent pro-life groups said yesterday that they could not support the his presidential aspirations because he is an abortion supporter. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention (the SBC is the second largest denomination in the U.S., after the Roman Catholic Church), Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition all said there is simply no way they – or the bulk of their supporters – will vote for a pro-choice candidate. Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and American Values president Gary Bauer have already made similar public pronouncements. A Giuliani nomination will almost certainly doom the GOP to defeat in ’08, and likely fracture the party, perhaps beyond repair. (Pro-Life Leaders Won’t Vote for Rudy Giuliani Over Abortion)

Ø The church, it turns out, is the bulwark of marriage in urban America. A recent analysis of available data by the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study indicates that urban African-American and Latino parents who attend church frequently are significantly more likely to marry before the arrival of children and are more likely to experience higher levels of relationship quality. Say the researchers, “The church attendance of fathers is a particularly powerful predictor of marital behavior and relationship quality.” Since 83% of children born out of wedlock are born into fragile families, research again confirms that the Judeo-Christian religious tradition is not a threat to America’s public life but its last, best hope. Defending religious liberty and supporting the faith community is an essential part of preserving a healthy, vibrant, and stable society and doing what’s best for the most vulnerable citizens among us, our children. (Center for Marriage and Families » Religion, Race, and Relationships in Urban America)

Ø A critical vote for marriage in American will take place tomorrow in Massachusetts. If at least 50 representatives vote tomorrow in favor of a proposed marriage amendment, it will go to voters in November of 2008. At last count, 57 lawmakers were intending to vote for it. If voters pass the amendment in ’08, the amendment will reverse the court-ordered legalization of gay marriage in the Bay State in 2003. The Democrat governor is looking for ways to postpone the vote. (CitizenLink: A Call to Prayer: Marriage Under Fire in Massachusetts)

Ø A Missouri man has been sentenced to life in prison for knowingly exposing a sex partner to HIV. The woman has been given two years to live by her doctors. Overall, he exposed at least eight women to the virus, and has had “numerous” other unknown sexual contacts since he first tested positive 16 years ago. The prosecutor said, “It’s fairly clear he is a very dangerous individual.” This incidentally confirms the health risks involved in homosexual behavior, as the CDC has indicated that the highest single risk group for contracting HIV consists of men who have sex with men. Homosexual behavior is far too dangerous and unhealthy for any sober society to endorse or normalize. (FOXNews.com - Man Sentenced to Life in Prison for Exposing Woman to HIV - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News)

Ø Utah voters apparently will make the final decision this November on whether the state will implement the nation’s first universal school choice law. State lawmakers voted this spring to allocate up to $3,000 for every school-aged child to be used at the school of the parent’s choice, whether public or private. The education establishment, naturally, came unglued at the thought of true parental choice in education, and the Utah Supreme Court has ordered the fight to be settled by placing it before voters. (CitizenLink: Utah Voters Will Decide If School Choice Program Stays)

Ø Economist Walter Williams argues persuasively in favor of school choice – rather than the current monopolistic system in which tax dollars may only be spent in government schools – on grounds that monopolies are never in the best interest of consumers, which in this case are parents looking for the best educational opportunities for their children. Competition in the phone industry has given consumers a wide variety of choices and lower prices than when phone service was a monopoly heavily regulated by the government. Who, he says, would want one grocery store to be granted an exclusive monopoly in your city? Consumers would be deprived of choices, pay higher prices for their food, and enjoy lower quality customer service as that store would have no incentive to do things to retain customer loyalty. He correctly suggests that the solution to America’s education problems is not more money but more choice. The IVA will support efforts to introduce more parental choice into Idaho’s education system, including lifting the cap on charter school expansion and creating education tax credits to assist with the cost of private education. (Townhall.com::Competition or Monopoly::By Walter E. Williams)

Ø Based on his extensive experience in America’s penal system, Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship says the last thing we need is to allow gay prisoners conjugal visits, as California is planning to do. The biggest problem in today’s prisons is homosexual sex, which often involves homosexual rape and triggers most prison fights and stabbings. So now the state of California is giving “official sanction (to) behavior that is demonstrably dangerous in a prison environment.” (BreakPoint: Predictable Consequences)

Ø Unfortunately for Al Gore and other rabid environmentalists, it turns out that the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro have not been vanishing due to global warming. In fact, they have been diminishing for more than a century, and most of the retreat occurred before 1953, well before the hysterics over global warming began. Said one climatologist of the snows of Kilimanjaro, “It is certainly possible that (Kilimanjaro’s) ice cap has come and gone many times over hundreds of thousands of years.” The disappearance of the mountain’s ice is driven by solar radiation, since the air around it is rarely above freezing. (Kilimanjaro's shrinking snow not sign of warming | Science | Reuters)

Ø It turns out that the ethanol industry is an environmental nightmare, “dirtying air and water supplies across the heartland.” There are currently 119 working ethanol refineries in the U.S., with another 77 scheduled to go online soon. Yet more than 60 percent of existing refineries have been cited by state or federal agencies for clean-air violations in the last three years. Said one expert, “Ethanol has been dramatically oversold as a green energy source.” The EPA is now preparing a new rule that will allow ethanol refineries to emit 150 percent more pollution than they currently do without penalty, and thus will be allowed 250 tons (!) of emissions per year. Since many ethanol plants are located in areas without significant air pollution, the risk is that “they’re dirtying the air where the air is already clean.” (Ethanol Accused of 'Green Pollution'; Ethanol Industry, Congress Accused of Bending Rules -- 06/13/2007)

Ø Latest headline in the battle against global warming:

Canadian resort reports second snowiest winter on record...