right ear, The

NOT THE PITS: Atlanta-area conservatives are talking about City Council President Rob Pitts as a good choice to succeed current liberal Mayor Bill Campbell, whom term limits will force out in 2002-if a federal investigation into the misuse of city funds doesn't get him first. Though a Democrat a necessary qualification for becoming mayor in Atlanta-Pitts combines a pro-business attitude with moderation on the race issue, which Campbell has exploited to the maximum. Both are black. Pitts recently indirectly attacked Campbell by calling for state troopers to shore up Atlanta's police department, which now has 400 vacancies on the force.

TOO BUSY Still trying to prevent his almost inevitable disbarment, President Clinton's lawyers have offered some interesting excuses for why they did not contest the contempt citation for perjury issued by Judge Susan Webber Wright last year (the prejury citation is the central element in the disbarment proceedings). In an August 29 filing before the Arkansas Supreme Court, the lawyers-teams of which had the time to launch numerous unsuccessful lawsuits to try to prevent the President's impeachmentsaid that Clinton did not contest the contempt citation because "the President's time is almost wholly preoccupied with the duties of his office, both now and for the foreseeable future. . . The President and his counsel have in other fora . . . disputed allegations that he knowingly and intentionally gave false testimony under oath." Said Matt Glavin, president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, which has led the charge to disbar Clinton, "Mr. Clinton's response today is entirety unresponsive and inadequate-clearly holding in contempt the serious work of the Arkansas court and the Arkansas Supreme Court Committee on Professional Conduct. . . . Since 1929, not one committee disbarment prosecution has been overturned by the Arkansas Supreme Court:'

DON'T PANIC: On its front page August 19, the New York Times reported that open water was found at the North Pole for the first time in 50 million years. Then, on August 29, the paper had to correct the story but did so on an inside page. The fact is, the Times admitted, that the Arctic is 10% open water during a typical summer. The correction cap the day after scientist. Fred Singer debunked the Times reporting in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

TOWARD TRADITION: "When I was growing up," Don Feder told this year's Toward Tradition conference on September 10, "people didn't have to be told to love their country." The theme of this year's conference was 'Toward a New Alliance," and he and other speakers decried the Balkanization of America along racial lines. Rabbi Mayer Schiller insisted that the left is much more than a political movement. Instead, it should be called "the Revolution, capital R," which "involves all aspects of public and private life" and wants to destroy the indispensable `"spiritual foundation" of our society. He decried the "kvetch and retreat" policy of the Republican establishment in the face of the Revolution's onslaught. Toward Tradition President Rabbi Daniel Lapin said the struggle today is between a philosophy "that says man is primarily animal and one that says man is primarily spiritual." (See the interview with Rabbi Lapin in next week's HUMAN EVENTS.)

SACREBLEU: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may ban all real chase in America, that is, the kind made from raw milk instead of manufactured and vacuum-packed using pasteurized milk. Pasteurization, say real cheese proponents, destroys the liveliness and subtlety of the taste of cheese. Despite the fact that not a single outbreak of illness in the United States has been linked to raw milk cheese-which has been regularly consumed in Europe for centuries by everyone from kings to peasantsfederal regulators may intervene anyway because pasteurization makes the growth of microorganisms in cheese less likely. Sales of raw milk cheeses, such as Gruyere, Cheshire, some forms of Cheddar, Manchego, and the princely Roquefort, have been growing in the United States.

CAN'T SPEND IT: Nearly half of the schools participating in Milwaukee's private school-choice program had to return money to the state last year, according to the American Enterprise Institute. Under the program, low-income students are given vouchers to attend private and religious schools. As hard as they tried, the private schools just couldn't spend the $4,894 they were given to educate each of their school choice children. St. John Kanty School, the lowest-cost school in the choice program, spent $3,096 to educate each student last year. School administrator Lois Maczuzak explained, "We don't have to pay for a huge administration and a lot of red tape:' Meanwhile, Milwaukee public school officials are preparing to approve a 2000-01 budget that comes to about $9,500 per student.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Sep 22, 2000
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