Eight years of total sleaze with the Clinton administration and nary a peep from him. Now we get a President who displays some honor and integrity and out pops Jimmy Carter.

Remember Jimmy? He volunteers to pound nails but back in the days of skyrocketing inflation and long lines at gas stations, Jimmy Carter was president (small "p").

Last week, Richard Hyatt and Serajul I. Bhuiyan of Knight Ridder reported that Carter criticized Bush's performance.(1) They write that "Jimmy Carter said he is disappointed in President Bush's performance in the Oval Office and said the first-term Republican has ignored moderates in both parties -- including Secretary of State Colin Powell."

That's funny, actually. Jimmy Carter is a socialist. He tried to micromanage our economy and made such a mess of it that it took the Reagan Administration two years and the largest tax cut in history to get things running half way decent again. Carter gave away so much to foreigners that the balance of trade favored nearly everyone in the world but us, which further drained our economy. Then, he actually had gall enough to stand up and ask us to elect him to a second term.

So now Jimmy wants Dubya to genuflect at the alter of domestic socialism like he did. "I thought he would be a moderate leader," Carter said, "but he has been very strictly conforming to some of the more conservative members of his administration -- his vice president [Dick Cheney] and his secretary of defense [Donald Rumsfeld] in particular. More moderate people like Colin Powell have been frozen out of the basic decision-making in dealing with international affairs."

Carter actually thinks of himself as a "moderate" rather then a socialist meddler. But, unfortunately, he still doesn't seem to know his posterior orifice from the proverbial hole in the ground.

"Moderates" were once "centrists," the middle of the road bunch. And the middle of the road is where they keep the yellow lines. There are not many of that breed left in Washington. Those who call themselves "moderate" today (in both parties) are nothing more than garden variety socialists.

"I hoped that coming out of an uncertain election he would reach out to people of diverse views, not just Democrats and Republicans but others who had different points of view," Carter said.

Different points of view like who? Socialist leader Tony Blair, maybe? Or perhaps he expects President Bush to kowtow to the far-left in Congress, like Daschel and Gephardt.

Look at the difference in results. With Carter's energy crisis we had a mess for a couple years. The Clinton administration also totally screwed up the energy industry and President Bush inherited it.

Unlike Carter's disastrous brand of socialism, Dubya simply said he was going to fix it and the industry suddenly responded. Because President Bush is a man of his word, the energy industry knew he would act. Suddenly, boardrooms across the country (and around the world) snapped to attention. Immediately, the excuses stopped and more oil and electrical power mysteriously materialized. All of a sudden, fuel prices began to drop and even California may have power to sell.

That's leadership. There was no equivocation with the Bush team. The President set the tone: 'This is unacceptable and we need to act right away.' The Captain's of industry replied by immediately correcting the (contrived) "problem" before the Bush Administration had time to tinker with any laws. The result is that we will not have an energy crisis again while Bush is President. Just the opposite, in fact. If they begin drilling in even half of the new places mentioned, we will have plenty of fuel for the next couple decades. By then, the internal combustion engine will be phased out.

When Jimmy Carter was playing like a president, on the other hand, he managed to aggravate all the oil producing countries so much we were lucky they were willing to send us any oil. Carter's administration was a fine example of one thing, though: The Peter Principle Personified. We thought we hired an engineer but what we got was a constant tinkerer with all thumbs.

So, when Carter called the missile defense system proposed by Dubya "technologically ridiculous," saying "I think it will re-escalate the nuclear arms race," we know President Bush is exactly correct. Ditto when Carter calls the administration's efforts in the Middle East "fruitless."

In short, Jimmy, go back to pounding nails and stay out of politics.

1. http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b5dcc773ea5.htm

The computer age is here and that's good. That is, it is good as long as people use the computers properly. When used improperly, computer technology can be a blatant violation of our liberty and privacy rights.

Placing computer controlled video cameras at stop lights to catch those committing an infraction of a civil violation (running a red light) is a clear violation of liberty. That is little more than the creation of a new revenue stream by a municipality. In most states, a peace officer must actually see a civil infraction in order to write a ticket. But, courts are already wrongly accepting fines from "violators" caught only by cameras anyway, just to collect money.

Now comes the concept of the "artificial passenger."(1) This one is kind of cute, actually. The problem is, it clearly opens the door for a very serious violation of our privacy by aggressive bureaucrats.

The "artificial passenger" is the brainstorm of IBM scientists who evidently had a lot of free time on their hands. It comes as part of the "smart dashboard" concept automakers are considering to make automobile driving more convenient.

For normal driving, the system will just lurk in the dashboard, watching. The "artificial passenger" will continually analyze the reaction of drivers -- speech, movement, etc. -- for signs of sleepiness. One way the "artificial passenger" will test the driver is by initiating conversations and monitoring the responses. The conversational cues would be created by first constructing a profile of a driver's likes and dislikes stored in an artificial intelligence database. The system would use a camera to watch the mouth of a driver and fine tune its speech recognition system to look for slurred speech.

If there are signs of sleepiness, the artificial passenger would do a series of things, like asking startling questions, changing the radio station and even squirting water in the face to insure the driver is alert.

No word yet if the artificial passenger system would phone home, too. But we've got five bucks to bet that the system would be maintaining a database for "accident investigation use." Which means, it would not be very long before bureaucrats and judges want an addition to stop drunk drivers, unlicensed drivers and a host of other such foolishness. That slippery slope could quickly lead down to a situation where one's automobile would turn them into police for any number of infractions.

Perhaps the computer could even be used to contact police for speeding and reckless driving violations. Or, they could set driving time limits on automobile drivers as they do with long distance truckers and the computer could enforce the regulations automatically.

Actually, this could be Big Brother at its best. The potential abuses of this artificial passenger computer system are only subject to the limits of the imagination. And police, prosecutors, judges and minor bureaucrats seem to have a very active imagination when the topic is the monitoring of the American people. For that reason, we look for a cottage industry of software and hardware additions to develop rather quickly.

But that's not to say that this new technology could not be used for great benefit. Being from Detroit, I have had many conversations with electronic research engineers from the "big three" auto manufacturers. One system that has been nearly ready to go for many years would have the automobile automatically follow a wire in the highway. Information for speed, conditions and curves would be provided to the automobile and most interstate highway "driving" would be semiautomatic.

Along with that system, sensors on the front and rear of the automobile would control the distance between cars and automatically apply the breaks if something gets in front of the car. Unfortunately, though, that would not help much if danger comes from the sides.

The downside to that technology was the cost. The system was invented in the 1970s when computer systems were very expensive. But, that's not true anymore and that update would only cost a few hundred dollars today.

If that system were integrated with a slightly updated version of the artificial passenger system, interstate highway driving could be more of a joy than a task. All the little computer systems would tend to keep traffic flowing at maximum speeds.

Or . . . everyone would get the "Blue Screen of Death" at one time and all traffic would be halted until everyone stops long enough to reboot. That seems to be an interesting possibility, of course.

1. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991039

Generally speaking, I'm a peaceful sort of guy. Grumpy once in a while, maybe. But peaceful, anyway. As a kid, I was taught boxing, Judo and the proper use of firearms, but no one except a violent attacker ever had to worry about me using any of that in public.

It wasn't always that way, though. The Army got me for a few years and taught me very effective ways to kill people and destroy things. Then, they sent us forth and said to go do it. Still, it didn't take more than a couple days to get re-civilized again. By the time I was done celebrating getting back home in one piece, it was time to think about school, job and a place to live. Life immediately got active and there was no time to dwell on that past Army experience anymore.

Nonetheless, I did learn something very important from military service. For one thing, I took the Oath of Office, promising God and country that "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" two different times. That was serious stuff to me and I meant it. As I look up those words again, I see there is no time limit on them. Presumably, I am still bound by that Oath.

So, let's say, I know that some foreign government or concern has plans to come over here and kidnap an American citizen. It appears that my Oath might require me to act to put a halt to that. Kidnapping, after all, is a major felony. Which means, I may freely use whatever force is necessary to stop that act.

That also means that every other person in the country who has ever taken that Oath would also be bound to take some such action to stop that crime.

Well, here's the rub. On June 28, Betsy Pisik of the Washington Times(1) reported that the International Court of Justice(2) "in its most explicit language" said that its "orders are binding on U.S. and other national courts." According to the ICJ, their orders supersede our courts. The one world government crowd says that the ICJ hears disputes between nations and its decisions are considered binding. The decisions can only be appealed through the U.N. Security Council. Our courts do not count.

The statutes of the International Court of Justice may be found, as one might imagine, on the United Nation's web site. In appears they are in cahoots and the International Court of Justice is the start of the court system for the new world government.(3)

The ICJ is also known as the World Court. They order that our country may not charge citizens of other countries who violate our laws without notifying (asking permission of?) officials from the perpetrator's country of origin.

Arizona tried and convicted a German national for murder. He got the death penalty. Germany got all bent out of shape about that and protested in the World Court based in the Hague. The World Court took it upon itself to issue an injunction ordering Arizona not to execute him until it could make a final ruling on the matter. Arizona executed the murder as scheduled, the following day.

Actually that happened before, too. In one case, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright appealed to the Supreme Court to halt an execution of someone convicted of rape and murder in Virginia. Virginia also executed the murder as scheduled.

Generally, this was just an excuse for the new World Court to stretch its wings, act a little aggressive and test the waters. The European Union forbids the death penalty, so that seemed like a good place to start. The problem is, now they say that Germany might sue Arizona and the United States in this bogus World Court.

So, the dismantling of our Constitutional system of government has begun. Outside forces are attempting to overrule our Constitution. This is something we must not take lightly! The problem will require an active political fight to correct.

No system in the world should ever be allowed to overrule our court system. The communists, socialists and fascists on the U.N. Security Council must never be allowed to take any action that can affect the Liberty of the American people.

To start, we must get the U.N. out of the United States and the United States out of the U.N. Else, our way of life will be forever lost.

1. http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b3b166a2599.htm

2. http://www.icj-cij.org

3. http://www.un.org/Overview/Statute/contents.html

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