Extremism and Hypocrisy

The statements I heard from politicians at MLK day events were laughable. Hillary Clinton said Congress was like a southern plantation (How? Are they holding slaves?!!) and Bush was the worst-ever President. New Orleans Mayor Nagin said God was punishing America with hurricanes for the Iraq war (a left version of Robertson?) and that God wanted his city to be majority black (a chocolate city). How outrageous and irrelevant to what Martin Luther King espoused! Why all this divisive talk on MLK day? Actually Nagin's statement was racist. How do you know? Just switch the terms. Imagine the outcry if a white mayor said God wanted his city to be majority white!

Not to be outdone, Al Gore compared Bush's wiretapping of Americans to the FBI's dispicable surveillance of King. Seems Dems just used the day to make extreme political attacks. This criticism of wiretapping suspected terrorists and people talking to them boggles me. Presidents have historically used executive powers for this purpose. People conveniently forget that Democrats Clinton and Carter did. Clinton ordered physical searches without warrants here. Carter ordered electonic surveillance without court orders here. There are times when this is a good idea for national security. Court orders can take too long to get when suspected terrorists are plotting and time is cruical.

Of course these liberals don't have a monopoly on crazy statements or hypocrisy. Pat Robertson made another wild statement a few weeks ago about Ariel Sharon (He said "it may be that Sharon's being punished for giving up Gaza") and that the book of Joel shows that to give land to the Palestians is sin. This last one is a great example of Bible abuse. The book of Joel is not speaking to the middle east situation thousands of years in the future! To twist scripture to accuse Sharon is outrageous. And of course for more hypocrisy, there's conservative Christian leader Ralph Reed who didn't see any conflict of interest asking evangelicals for money to block tribal casinos in the south when he knew another tribal casino was paying his firm for the work (via Jack Abramoff). This casino hired Abramoff and Reed to gain a monopoly. Reed didn't bother telling evangelicals that they were actually encouraging gambling, not where they lived, but just down the road or across the state border!