Why Bristol Palin Is Different

Ever since Sarah Palin revealed that her unmarried teenage daughter Bristol was pregnant, conservatives have been struggling with what liberals see as a contradiction between our fierce opposition to unwed motherhood and our support for Palin and family values. Now comes word that the wedding is off and conservatives once again are having difficulty explaining why Bristol Palin is different from other unwed mothers.

During the campaign Focus on the Family's James Dobson largely ignored the difficult unwed mother question and congratulated her on not having an abortion. Party of Death author Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out that she was not technically an unwed mother yet because she was engaged, unlike Murphy Brown, even though that didn't quite work out in the end. Others took a Kübler-Ross journey from denial to anger to acceptance.

When some liberals attacked conservatives for being hypocritical, future New York Times columnist Ross Douthat brilliantly exposed their own hypocrisy. "Suppose that social conservatives hadn't rallied around the Palin family after news of Bristol Palin's pregnancy broke," he wrote. "If anything remotely like this had happened, all we'd hear is satisfied chirping about how the response to Bristol Palin's pregnancy proves, once and for all, that social conservatives don't give two figs about the rights of the unborn; what they really care about is controlling women's sex lives and reinforcing patriarchal norms, full stop…. They're mad that religious conservatives aren't fitting neatly into the stereotypes that liberals have spent years cultivating." In other words, liberals would have attacked us even if we had responded the way they thought we would based on what we have said in the past, so by responding in a completely opposite way we proved how hypocritical they are. But although Douthat gleefully pointed out liberals' hypocrisy, he seemed reluctant to point out why conservatives were not being hypocritical even though the answer was staring him in the face.

Why is Bristol Palin different? She is different because she is a conservative.

It's different when unmarried teenage mothers come from conservative, wealthy Christian families. Although it would be preferable if her child had a father, even a white trash one, she will still be able to raise her child with the kinds of values that liberals, poor people, gays and non-Christians would not be able to give to their little bastard children who are destined to become our future criminals. Why are conservatives so reluctant to point out this obvious fact?

The problem with Murphy Brown, who was famously attacked by Dan Quayle in a speech written by Lisa Schiffren, was not just that she was an unwed mother but that she was a liberal unwed mother. As a liberal and a fictional character she would not be able to raise her child with good, conservative, Christian, nonfictional values. And the problem with Rep. Loretta Sanchez, whom Schiffren attacked for having a child before she married her fiancé, is that she is a liberal and her child is doomed to grow up without any values at all. But Schiffren, who supported Sarah Palin, seemed reluctant to point out this important difference, writing, "Being 18 and a single mother is only a little easier for a pretty, middle-class girl than it is for less well-protected girls from those parts of our society where marriage and involved fathers disappeared a couple of generations ago" and finally concluding "all I have to say is, 'poor girl.'" Instead of appearing so tentative, which just made many readers why she hadn't gone after Bristol with the same vehemence that characterized her attacks on a liberal fictional character and a liberal congresswoman, Schiffren should say out loud what all conservatives are thinking: Being an unwed mother is different when you're a conservative.

Kathryn Jean Lopez has been one of our strongest advocates for the need for children to have two parents of the opposite sex, which is why, like Sarah Palin, she is opposed to gay marriage and supports a Constitutional amendment banning it. But instead of noting that Bristol Palin's child will grow up without a father, she wrote, "Let the girl live in peace with her child." Her reaction was similar to the response she had when the Vice President's lesbian daughter Mary Cheney decided to have a baby: "Unless Mary Cheney asks to be a spokeswoman on the issue, folks ought to leave her alone." And yet when she wrote about lesbian Rosie O'Donnell's efforts to adopt a child, Lopez felt compelled to point out her "concerns about instability, sexual-orientation confusion, and emotional problems." What is the difference between Mary Cheney and Rosie O'Donnell? Again, it's obvious. Mary Cheney is a good conservative woman who will no doubt teach her children that they shouldn't become lesbians like their mother and Rosie O'Donnell is a foul-mouthed liberal who will teach her children that homosexuality and bestiality are acceptable lifestyle choices.

Some conservatives have attacked Bristol. Debbie Schlussel claims that conservatives should be "intellectually honest," and expresses the bizarre notion that we should apply the exact same standards to conservatives that we apply to liberals. "If one of Barack Obama's daughters was a single mother, we conservatives would be legitimately all over it. Or if her name was Sha'niqua," she writes. (I'm not sure why she believes the situation would have been different if Sarah Palin had given her daughter a black-sounding name.) Schlussel then blames the fact that Sarah Palin is a working mother for her daughter's pregnancy, which is absurd because Palin supporter Phyllis Schlafly proved long ago that you can work and still be a good mother as long as you are a conservative. Robert Stacy McCain also condemned Bristol harshly, writing, "A child's misconduct always reflects poorly on the family" and then went on to denounce girls who would not date him when he was single because they were "snooty, stuck-up, cliqueish, insufferable demanding, with a high-handed and disdainful way of dealing with people beneath her status, having a self-important attitude," which is of course understandable because what girl from a good family wouldn't have wanted to date McCain when he was single, but again I'm not sure what the relevance is to Bristol Palin although it might be something he would want to explore in therapy.

Although some Palin supporters have expressed disappointment with such views, many conservatives seem to be reluctant to write about this subject at all. Why aren't more conservatives standing up and defending Bristol Palin? Why can't we unequivocally state there should be different standards for liberals and conservatives? One of the problems with liberalism is that they believe everyone is the same and that all morality is relative. But if there is anything that conservatives reject it is the idea of moral equivalency. When America tortures a terrorist suspect that is not the same as when a terrorist tortures someone. Killing civilians in a war or accidentally executing the innocent is not the same as abortion. Denying gays the right to marry is not the same as outlawing miscegenation. Giving corporations tax cuts is not the same as welfare. David Vitter and Larry Craig are not the same as Bill Clinton. Liberals are always trying to confuse us by making false analogies but conservative ideology is based on rejecting false equivalencies and making important distinctions. So we shouldn't be reluctant to say that indeed it is different when a conservative teenager has a child out of wedlock and an inner-city liberal teenager does. We should have the courage of our convictions and not play the liberal game of moral equivalency. Instead of trying to explain away Bristol's pregnancy we should be defending it, holding her up as an example of the difference between liberal teenage unwed mothers and conservative teenage unwed mothers. Because just as it is true that, as Richard Nixon once said, "When the President does it, that means it is not illegal." when a good Christian conservative has a child out of wedlock, that means it's not immoral.

Update: Lisa Schiffren responds with a very thoughtful email: "I see this a little differently than you do. I agree with Kathryn that there is a difference between a grown woman in a position of power (Rosie, Murphy (fictional, but..) and Sanchez), and a private citizen, like Cheney, and even more so like Bristol Palin who got pregnant at 17. If she had committed a felony she would have been punished lightly. As it is, she is a kid who made a mistake and will pay a lot for it -- in the public eye for reasons not of her creation. The other women are role models, who exert cultural influence -- and the first three made a big point of rationalizing and justifying their actions. I don't know about the liberal/conservative divide. I think it matters some, but not ultimately. Religion matters more. And personal grit more still. A large, supportive family helps. If I sounded tentative, it is because I think that we, as a society, have so screwed this up that it is hard to see a way back to a norm of marriage before babies."

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Brown v Board of Education's Original Intent

In his confirmation hearings Chief Justice John Roberts affirmed his support of Brown v. The Board of Education, a decision that has often been misinterpreted by judicial activists. Finally, more than 50 years after the Brown decision, Justice Roberts has revealed in his opinion for the 5-4 majority in Parents Involved v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1 what Brown really meant. "Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin," he wrote of the cruel injustice of white children being told they could not attend the black schools of their choice. In the wake of Brown liberals only compounded this injustice by forcing black children to go to school with white children even if they didn't want to. In the name of equality hardly anyone got to attend the schools of their choice. Although the decision in Parents Involved generated 185 pages of opinions, Roberts has conveniently boiled down the true meaning of Brown in a sentence that could fit on a bumper sticker: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.''

Brown v. The Board of Education overturned Plessy v. Ferguson which upheld the segregation of railroad cards based on the doctrine of "separate but equal." But Brown had the inadvertent effect of replacing this doctrine with an even more unfair policy: "together but unequal." Black children were forced to attend white schools where they couldn't possible compete and white children where forced to attend black schools where they weren't challenged enough. Parents were horrified that their children had become pawns in social experiments that tried to force equality and integration. Many parents responded understandably to forced busing of their children by throwing rocks at buses carrying other people's children.

The Brown decision, perhaps more than any other event in our history, gave rise to the modern conservative movement. In writing about Brown in his book Conscience of a Conservative, Barry Goldwater said, "In effect the Court said that what matters is not the ideas of the men who wrote the Constitution, but the Court's ideas. It was only by engrafting its own ideas on the law of the land that the Court was able to reach the decision it did….I am therefore not impressed that the Supreme Court's decision on school integration is the law of the land" William Buckley's National Review also denounced the decision at the time. And future Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote a memo in 1952 urging the Court to do the right thing. "I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by 'liberal' colleagues but I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed," wrote Rehnquist, who would stay true to his ideals and make a lot of unpopular and unhumanitarian decisions. If it weren't for Brown, there might be no modern conservative movement.

But like all conservatives Justice Roberts is a great respecter of the principle of stare decisis and did not want to overturn an important precedent like Brown after more than 50 years (although the Warren Court apparently felt no such compunction in overturning Plessy). So instead, he went back to the original intent of the decision, which was that the government should be completely colorblind. If many schools have become resegregated in the half century since Brown, then the government is totally blind to this outcome. As Justice John Paul Stevens noted in his dissent, quoting Anatole France, "The majestic equality of the law, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." Under the Roberts court the government gives black students and white students the same freedom to go to dilapidated segregated schools if they want to.

If parents don't want their children attending segregated schools, then the have the freedom of choice to move to another district, earn enough money to send their kids to private schools or quit their jobs and homeschool their kids. Other parents, on the other hand, may prefer that their children attend segregated schools. "People -- black, white, brown, rich, middle-class, poor, Christian, secular, etc. -- naturally want to be around people like themselves. Why is that such a bad thing?" conservative Rod Dreher recently wrote. He points to a study by Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam that shows that "the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone." The recent conservative uprising over immigration legislation was a warning to politicians that conservatives do not want to be forced to listen to salsa music and be subjected to the pungent odors of Mexican cooking in their own neighborhoods, because that will only make them trust their Spanish-speaking neighbors less, especially since they can't understand a word they are saying.

"It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much," Judge Stephen Breyer said in an angry dissent from the bench. But all Justice Roberts has done is return to the original intent of Brown, changing things back to the status quo. In coming years I think we will see the Court returning to the original intent of a number of decisions. Hopefully, we will return to the original intent of Roe v. Wade, which affirmed that the government does have the right to restrict abortion, the original intent of Griswold v. Connecticut, which granted only married couples the right to privacy and the original intent of Marbury v. Madison, which affirmed that the Supreme Court only has the power to interpret the original intent of the Founding Fathers not make up its own interpretations.

I hope that the Roberts Court will also return the original intent of legislation that has been distorted over the years. It made some strides in this direction in another decision the Court issued yesterday, which stripped away 96 years of misinterpretations of anti-trust laws and returned back to the original intent of the law. If Justice Roberts Court succeeds in his efforts to wrest control of the judiciary away from the radical judicial activists, this country will be returned back to the original vision of the Founding Fathers and the last 200 years or so will just seem like a bad dream.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Brown v. Board of Education, Supreme Court,John Roberts, Original Intent, Parents Involved, Politics

Raising the Minimum Age for Porn

Feminist blogger Garance Franke-Ruta, in a piece on the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal, has an interesting article on what should be done about Joe Francis, the auteur behind the Girls Gone Wild videos. Franke-Ruta has hit on excellent solution for driving him out of the business of preying on drunk college girls. She wants to raise the minimum age for consenting to participate in hard- and softcore pornography to 21.

"A 21-year-old barrier would save a lot of young women from being manipulated into an indelible error, while burdening the world's next Joe Francis with an aptly limited supply of 'talent,'" says Franke-Ruta. On her blog she explains that while a girl may be adult enough to fight in Iraq at 18, she is not mature enough to decide whether it is a good idea to flash the camera. "Our laws recognize that maturity comes slowly," she says, pointing out that there are minimum ages for holding elective offices. She also says that she doesn't mind so much if girls give it away for free.

Franke-Ruta's efforts to throw more pornographers and consumers of pornography in jail and make our young women less wild has been criticized by a few libertines like Ezra Klein, but I don't think she goes far enough. Can a girl of 21 really know what she is consenting to when she signs a release form for a pornographer? Does she really understand what the ramifications might be later in life? That is why I propose that we raise the minimum age of consent to participate in pornography to 65.

I think by 65 a woman has finally attained the maturity necessary to weigh the pros and cons of participating in pornography. Since she will most likely be retired or on the way to retirement by that age, there is little danger that such images will come back to haunt her in her career.

Requiring that porn stars be elderly would open up new career opportunities for senior citizens, which would be an excellent way for them to supplement their retirement and social security incomes. It would certainly prove more diverting for many than playing bingo at the senior citizen center. I think many seniors would be grateful for the chance at an exciting new second act as an exotic performer and many people would be surprised at just how much they would appreciate this opportunity. As Annie Gottlieb pointed out in her fascinating Bloggingheads segment with Ann Althouse, "Older women are really kind of bawdy. We're like honorary guys. We have nothing to lose, nothing to gain and nothing to hide. As a result we can be down and dirty with them about all the stuff that younger women would go "Oooh' at."

Criminalizing pornography featuring anyone less than 65 would not only save younger women like Franke-Ruta (who had a interesting Bloggingheads episode of her own with Althouse) from going "Ooh!," it would no doubt also greatly cut down on the supply of this terrible scourge. It would force consumers of pornography to disgorge themselves of most of the porn they already own or face legal consequences. Finally, anti-pornography crusaders would achieve most of their aims without actually having to pass a law banning obscenity per se, which might have been stricken down on First Amendment grounds. The sight of small towns across America holding porn bonfires would warm the cockles of the hearts of those who have crusaded for years against the degeneracy of our culture. And think of all the perverts that would be rounded up and hauled off to jail protecting our society from their deviancy. It would be enough to provide Dateline NBC with enough material to run 24 hours a day.

I also think Franke-Ruta may have found a way in which pro-abortion feminists and those opposing abortion can finally agree. If a woman is not mature enough to have control over how her body is being used in images when she is 18, how can we say she is mature enough to have control over her body in deciding to get an abortion? Raising the age of consent laws for abortion to 21 would certainly cut down on the number of abortions, but think what would happen if we raised the age of consent to 65. Abortion would be completely eliminated.

Franke-Ruta may have hit on the solution to healing our divided nation, even though she doesn't go quite far enough. Raising the minimum age for participating in pornography to 65 would just be the first step to returning America to the greatness it had before the 1950s when sex began to warp our culture.

Young men would begin to think of sex as something their grandparents do to make a little cash and could put the energy they once used to search for porn on the Internet into fighting terrorism or curing cancer or pursuing more difficult quests on World of Warcraft. Young women would once again be coddled and protected from having to make decisions that their unformed minds can't handle. Grandma and grandpa would no longer have to worry how to pay for their prescription medications. And if the terrorists no longer saw our country as being so decadent, perhaps they would finally leave us alone, which is a point Dinesh D'Souza made in his book The Enemy at Home.

Franke-Ruta modestly calls her suggestion "more a general principle for legislation than a fully worked out proposal (I'm no lawyer)." But even if she was just proposing something off the top of her head without really thinking about it, she may have stumbled on an idea that, with just a little tweaking, could actually save our country.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Garance Franke-Ruta, Sex, Bloggingheads, Joe Francis, Girls Gone Wild, Ann Althouse

Jon Swift's 2006 Congressional Campaign Roundup

Democrats need to win 15 Republican seats to recapture Congress and according to the National Journal and the Charlie Cook Report at least that many are already in trouble. Of course, turning Congress over to the Democrats would mean that the terrorists have won, so I have put together a list of the Top Ten Republicans most in need of support. When you take a look at their accomplishments, it's hard to believe that these great lawmakers are not trouncing their opponents.

Don Sherwood - Pennsylvania-10

Don Sherwood has been the victim of vicious personal attacks from his enemies who accuse him of trying to strangle his mistress. Although Sherwood admits having a five-year extramarital affair with her, he vehemently denies physically abusing her and says that when police were called to the apartment they shared, he was only giving her a backrub, which, as anyone who has ever had a good backrub knows, can seem like being choked although you feel really good afterwards. Unfortunately, Sherwood has been victimized by these slanderous attacks because he is a staunch member of the Christian Right who has high ratings from the Christian Coalition, the American Conservative Union, and the American Family Association. The record of his opponent Chris Carney, a Navy veteran and counter-terrorism expert, just begs the question as to whether he ever tried to strangle anyone during his military service. I think when voters are faced with the stark contrast between someone who might have tried to strangle somebody and a good Christian conservative who definitely did not try to strangle somebody, the choice will be clear.

Randy Graf - Arizona-08

The Republican National Committee has already given up on Randy Graf, a former golf pro, just because he is 20 points behind his opponent Gabrielle Giffords. His golfing experience has given him unique insight into the Constitution, which he views as a "rule book" just like the one for golf, only shorter. As a state legislator Graf fought hard for a much needed bill to allow people to carry concealed guns into bars, which would have reduced the epidemic of bar brawls in the state, or at least made them end more quickly. But Graf is running for Congress mainly to do something about the issue he most cares about: illegal immigration. A member of the patriotic Minutemen, his efforts to curtail illegal immigration of non-Europeans by militarizing the border won him the admiration of David Duke. Unfortunately, he won't be able to rely on the expertise of his former campaign manager, who was jailed for having sex with two underaged girls, a crime that Graf said was "no more serious than providing a teenager with a beer." As any grateful teenager can tell you, that's really not so bad at all.

Rick O'Donnell Colorado-07

Rick O'Donnell is a man with visionary ideas. In 2004 he proposed drafting high school kids to patrol the Mexican border, which he said would give them "a society-wide rite of passage into manhood" that provided "a sense of adventure and risk." How many parents would love to get their teenagers out of their hair for a while and how many teenagers would be ecstatic at the chance to wander through the desert bordering Mexico, risking their lives nabbing immigrants and narcotraffickers? Another foresighted idea he had, abolishing Social Security, might not sit well with some voters, especially really old and cranky ones, but as he explains now, he was just a "misguided 24 year old" and a "know-it-all kid" when he thought up that one so he can't really be held accountable. Even though he has grown older and wiser, according to one of his campaign ads he "still looks 14," which will help him relate to pages on their level. While his opponent Ed Perlmutter, an attorney and former State Senator, looks his age that hasn't stopped him from doing well in the polls.

John Hostettler - Indiana-08

John Hostettler is an impassioned supporter of Christian rights who once said on the floor of Congress, "Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can't help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians." Unfortunately, his words apparently violated some persnickety rules and he was forced to withdraw them 20 minutes later or face censure, but it's the thought that counts. Hostettler's faith informs everything he does: He co-authored a bill to allow churches to engage in political campaigns without losing their tax-free status; sponsored "the Public Expression of Religion Act," which forbids awarding attorney's fees to those who sue the government for violating the Establishment clause of the First Amendment; voted against Hurricane Katrina aid, presumably because it would have gone against God's intentions to destroy New Orleans by flood; and told a group of breast cancer survivors that abortion causes breast cancer, which some overly sensitive attendees took as an implication that they had had abortions. Unlike some congressman, Hostettler has only been arrested once, when he accidentally tried to take a loaded 9 mm Glock pistol on an airplane with him in 2004, which is something that could happen to anybody. I'm sure it happens to his opponent Sheriff Brad Ellsworth all the time.

(Update: The other Roger Ailes informs me that although the story about about Hostettler trying to rename Interstate-69 because it was too risqué appeared in the very reputable Hoosier Gazette, it was actually intended to be satire. I really think this kind of satire should not be permitted or at least should be clearly marked to avoid causing confusion and embarrassment. I hope that Rep. Hostettler will sponsor legislation to outlaw this sort of thing as soon as he is re-elected.)

Heather Wilson - New Mexico-01

Heather Wilson has fought diligently for the rights of people not to see nipples during half-time shows. In a tearful speech during a hearing to investigate Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, she spoke movingly of the terrible effect it had on her young son and compared Viacom, the parent company of CBS, which broadcast the offensive show, to Enron, which contributed $2,500 to her campaign in 2000, while Viacom only gave $1,500. Wilson's deep-seated desire to protect children won her a position on the Congress' page board in 2001, which is a very big honor. During her tenure she became very close to Mark Foley, who contributed more to her campaign this year than to any other candidate, so you can imagine how devastated she must be by the recent allegations, which she denies having any prior knowledge of whatsoever so you can't blame her for what happened. One thing she and Foley have in common is a strong belief in the right of prvacy, which is probably the reason for her misguided statement calling for a full investigation of the NSA wiretapping program. Wilson's deep concern about issues of privacy began early in her career. Three days after she was appointed to head the New Mexico Department of Children, Youth and Families in 1995, she had an investigative case file on her husband removed and hidden in her office so that it wouldn't fall into the wrong hands. Although she initially denied taking the file to a nosey reporter, she later courageously owned up to it. Her opponent is New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid, who makes her living from prying into other people's business.

Curt Weldon - Pennsylvania-07

Curt Weldon is perhaps the lone voice in Congress for conspiracy theorists and others who think outside the box or don't even believe there is a box at all no matter how many government commissions with their "experts" plot to make everybody think there is a box. Believing that "the jury is still out on WMD," he tried to organize his own personal mission to go to Iraq and find them until he was stopped by the State Department. Weldon, who was one of six lawmakers granted the honor of attending the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's "coronation," wrote a book detailing his shadowy correspondence with an Iranian dissident who claims that Iran is about to attack the United States. He also believes the government is covering up the fact that it had identified some of the terrorists responsible for the September 11 attacks before they happened. Although the National Journal wrote an article about him that begins with a quote from Gnarls Barkley's song "Crazy," it's likely that the National Journal is part of some vast conspiracy against him that includes the CIA, the NSA, the 9/11 Commission, the Trilateral Comission, Freemasons and his opponent, retired Vice Admiral Joe Sestak.

Peter Roskam - Illinois-06

Trial lawyer Peter Roskam really has a way with words. When he accused his opponent Tammy Duckworth of wanting to "cut and run from Iraq," many were impressed by his use of metaphor since Duckworth, who lost both of her legs fighting in Iraq, couldn't literally run from Iraq if she wanted to. Roskam is so concerned with precise use of literary imagery that he has proposed striking all mention of suicide from the curriculum of public schools, including such dangerous works Romeo and Juliet and It's a Wonderful Life. His use of analogies is also quite sophisticated. When asked why he is opposed to stem cell research when most Americans support it, he replied, "Most Americans were for slavery." If Roskam is elected, he will no doubt do everything in his power to set the stem cells free.


Michele Bachmann - Minnesota-06

Michele Bachmann sincerely wants to help homosexuals deal "with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life.…It's a very sad life. It's part of Satan." She believes that gay marriage is the "biggest issue in 30 years" because "the immediate consequence, if gay marriage goes through, is that K-12 little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal, natural and perhaps they should try it." She also believes that "the number one issue for our country right now, how are we going to deal with this threat of radical Islam." And of public education, she says, "That's my number one issue." Her opponent Patty Wetterling doesn't even have a number one issue, as far as I know, while Bachmann has at least three!

Mark Foley - Florida-16

Even though Mark Foley has resigned from Congress, he's still on the ballot. The Republican Party has said that if he wins they will substitute another candidate, but I don't necessarily believe that. I think if he gets enough votes, he can be persuaded to come back after he gets out of rehab. A vote for Mark Foley would be a repudiation of the Democrat smear campaign against him and the Republican leadership. Voting for his opponent, Tim Mahoney, would just encourage Democrats in their campaign of dirty tricks.

Tom Delay - Texas-22

Tom Delay is another member of Congress whose name is still on the ballot despite the fact that he resigned. The Republican Party is asking people to write in another candidate with a complicated hyphenated name that is very hard to spell. But I say why go through all that trouble when you can just pull a lever for Delay, who was one of the best congressmen ever. By the time the next session of Congress convenes it's possible that all the charges against him will have been dropped, and I'm sure he would jump at the chance to serve his constituents again. The Democrat candidate Nick Lampson just wants us to turn back the clock to a time when Congress didn't run so efficiently as it does today, thanks to the man known as "The Hammer."

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