So, now we have the "never trust anyone over thirty" hippie crowd running governments. Those who made a practice of dropping acid and playing with angel dust, the "down with the establishment crowd," are now the government establishment. And boy does it show!

For instance, the popular consensus of the political set is that, whether or not we should have intervened in Serbia, now that the bombing has started we have to win the war. Except, they do not yet want to call it a war (except for the prisoners of war, that is). They're calling it a "conflict." Really though, it's an assault. A conflict is a state of open, often prolonged fighting, like a battle or war. There is no open fighting in Serbia. We are attacking them with bombs. And, so far, that's all there is to that. They haven't done much of anything to us. Yet.

And, take it from an old "ground pounder," I sincerely hope things do not progress to a ground war in Serbia.

There are two major problems confronting us, as I see it. First, some of our politicians are still suggesting ground troops be used. Of course this is necessary, if we are serious about making a real war. But, this action is more of a public spanking than a war.

The real problem will be the resultant deaths. The Nazis tried to take over Serbia during WWII. They put a lot more troops into that area than NATO plans and they sort of won. Sort of. . . . .

The Serbs are at home in those hills. We (or the Germans) are not. The Nazis lost one man out of every seven they fielded to guerrilla warfare. For an historical account, see Army publication CMH 104-18 "German Antiguerrilla Operations in the Balkans (1941-1944)" at <http://imabbs.army.mil/cmh-pg/BALKAN.HTM>. Then, consider that if we insert 200,000 ground troops and the Serbs fight true to form, we loose at least 28,000 people.

Consider too, that the Nazis didn't care who they killed, while our people will try to be careful about not harming noncombatants. That's hard. Take it from the point of view of someone who has looked over iron sights at someone's head and wondered whether to fire or not. That stuff can get on your damn nerves real quick!

Guerrillas, those fighting for their homeland, you see, do not wear uniforms. So, unless the ground soldier waits until they see a weapon, they will never know for sure who's who. Until it may be to late.

Messy business, that. So excuse me if I sincerely hope Americans never have to make choices like that again.

It's almost as bad for bomber pilots. Those aircraft come buzzing over a target at 400 MPH or more. The pilot has little information on exactly what is below, just what the target is. Pilots must depend on intelligence to alert them of civilians, friendly forces and whatnot. And, good intelligence is exactly what is missing in this "conflict." Both kinds.

The whole mess is so completely mismanaged, in fact, that many of us were thinking of calling around Washington to see if Robert McNamara -- the idiot who tried to "manage" the Vietnam war from Washington and ended up getting a lot of Americans killed -- is back in government service. Because, they are doing the same stupid things again.

As it stands, half the countries in NATO now want out of this mess. Greece, Italy, Germany, Turkey, and even France are starting to make serious noises about wanting to quit. It's Clinton and Blair, the "Third Way" boys, who are applying pressure to continue the war on Serbia.

One theory is that NATO will lose respect if it does not perform. A more believable theory is that Clinton needs a wag the dog scenario to keep news of the China connection out of the headlines. Whichever, the reason for continuing borders on criminal.

NATO has violated its charter to be strictly a defensive organization. But, NATO is not needed anymore, anyway. The European Union is in place. NATO should disband and turn over the keys to the EU. This fiasco may accelerate that process.

Except for Clinton, who needs this war, many politicians are now looking for an honorable way out. Now, it looks like they may have one. NATO will hand off to the UN, a peace agreement will be signed and UN "peacekeepers" will be used to keep order in Kosovo. Same players, different controlling organization.

Even so, the Defense Department wants $5 to $5.5-billion to pay for the "conflict" until the new fiscal year starts on September 30. To our union friends, that equates to 122,200 new jobs at $45,000 annually. And, that's just this round. We already have twice that much invested in Bosnia.

Congressional leaders said that neither the House nor the Senate is ready to conduct a formal debate on the NATO attacks on Yugoslavia or the possible use of U.S. ground troops to fight there. Of course they are not. Congress shuns all decisions except those taxing or controlling the American people.

On last Wednesday's CBS News, they showed a Serbian woman stating that all she wants is for NATO to "leave us alone and let us live."

Sure. That's what everyone wants.

As soon as we all learn to quit screwing around with each other and live and let live, we can all join together to force our respective governments to give us the freedom we deserve. So, when will that start? Not any time soon in Kosovo, would be a good guess.

Visit the "Allied Force" information at: http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/kosovo

Now it's official. The judge has ruled. We can add contemptuous to the long list of Clinton attributes. Quite a legacy this jerk will have.

Let's see here, in no particular order, Clinton was the first elected president ever impeached, he has been accused of rape, sex abuse, obstructing justice, perjury, money laundering, fraud, tax evasion (that one was handled quietly), abuse of power, and threatening witnesses. Along the way, he also caused the bribing of elected officials, started major defamation of character campaigns against those who were politically opposed to him, used his office to grant major favors for campaign contributions, and he lies to the American people almost continuously.

One would think that some of these topics would elicit a few expose pieces from those in the Washington media but, considering the amount of material available, there's been nary a peep. http://www.mediaresearch.org/

The best news last week was that Kenneth Starr told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that the law permits him to prosecute Clinton after his term expires. Somehow, though, that piece of information was downplayed.

Administration supporter Dan Rather interviewed Clinton and allowed Clinton to publicly feel sorry for himself. Interestingly enough, Clinton chose to compare himself to both Franklin Roosevelt and Nelson Mandela -- a socialist and a communist. Then, unrepentant as ever, Clinton said: "I do not regard this impeachment vote as some great badge of shame. I do not. I do not believe it was warranted, and I don't think it was right."

That's interesting because nearly 80% of the American people believe Clinton committed perjury -- we watched him do it on the tapes, played on national TV -- and obstructed justice. Another huge majority also believes Clinton illegally took laundered campaign funds from agents of the communist Chinese government.

Anyway, back at a March 19 press conference, Clinton was asked about Chinese spying at nuclear laboratories. Clinton replied: "Now, you asked me ... can I tell you that there has been no espionage at the labs since I have been President. I can tell you that no one has reported to me that they suspect such a thing has occurred." Of course, half the world knows that's a lie.

The fact is, one of China's major lobbyists currently works in the White House. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger was the partner in charge of the communist Chinese lobbying account at the Hogan and Hartson law firm before working for the Clinton administration. So, it's no surprise that Berger downplays intelligence warnings and urged closer ties with China. He's paid (or, at least was paid) to do that.

Currently, there are two hearings concerning Chinese espionage ongoing in Congress. And, hopefully soon, the Cox report will be released to the public. When the truth comes out -- and it will, eventually -- America will see that our national security was sold out for the proverbial pieces of silver. We expect to see that there were a few out and out traitors mixed in there, too.

Meanwhile, we take the interesting news where we can get it, and last week it was from federal Judge Susan Webber Wright citing Bill Clinton for contempt (perjury) in the Jones vs. Clinton matter. The Judge writes, in part:

It is difficult to construe the president's sworn statements ... as anything other than a willful refusal to obey this court's discovery orders. Simply put, the president's deposition testimony regarding whether he had ever been alone with Ms. Lewinsky was intentionally false and his statements regarding whether he had ever engaged in sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky likewise were intentionally false.

The court ordered Clinton to reimburse Jones for legal fees, which could be as much as $3-million. Also, legal ethics experts say that Clinton faces a real possibility of being disbarred or suspended from practicing law in Arkansas.

To read the Jones vs. Clinton opinion, go to: http://www.are.uscourts.gov/unsealed/jones_vs_clinton.htm

Nature causes air pollution. So said a paper by J. A. de Gouw, C. J. Howard, T. G. Custer, and R. Fall titled "Emissions of volatile organic compounds from cut grass and clover are enhanced during the drying process" published in a recent journal Geophysical Research Letters. (1999;Vol. 26 , No. 7, p. 811) http://www.agu.org/pubs/toc/gl/gl_26_7.html

"Wounding, cutting and drying of leaves and stems occur both naturally and by human activities, wound- induced and drying-induced ... compounds are expected to be significant in the atmosphere," the study reports.

Leaf wounding, or the cutting of leaves and stems, releases various "wound-compounds" and volatile organic compounds (VOC) such as methanol. Worse yet, the report says, a second burst of emissions, lasting up to several hours, takes place during the drying process when overall damage to cells occurs.

The emissions from cut grass and clover, they continue, were analyzed in the laboratory using chemical- ionization mass spectrometry. Therein they found that in addition to wound-compounds, oxygenates like acetone and butone are also released during the second burst when drying occurs. These compounds, which are relatively unreactive in the atmospheric boundary layer, can travel to the upper troposphere and undergo photolysis there. The authors submit that the VOC release from drying vegetation can have a "significant impact" on the chemistry of the atmosphere in arid and agricultural areas where plant material tends to dry naturally.

Now things get interesting: As the report says: "In urban areas, lawn mowing may contribute to the total ... emissions and impact air quality."

Yeah, grass cutting now.

But, "It just doesn't seem likely to me that the smell of newly mown grass is toxic," Ray Fall of the University of Colorado, a biochemist and one of the researchers told AP. "Mowing the lawn is no more hazardous than eating raw vegetables," he added -- while pointing out that chewing vegetables also releases tiny amounts of the same chemicals.

Animals are offenders, too, he said: "Every time a cow chomps grass you get these little surges."

So, now ecological studies are reporting that cutting crops adds about 1.6 million tons of acetone to the atmosphere annually, compared with estimated total natural emissions of 8 million to 13 million tons. "Since alfalfa is the largest hay crop in the United States and is usually harvested several times during the growing season, multiple releases of reactive VOCs in agricultural areas are predicted."

"Cut and drying organic material appears to be a significant global, and possibly regional, source of volatile organic compounds. One that we think may not have been well accounted for before," Carlton J. Howard of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Aeronomy Laboratory in Boulder told AP.

Howard also told AP that emissions from lawn mowers and even barbecues have been identified as components of pollution in some urban areas and this study adds one more source of chemicals. "It is something that needs to be looked at carefully," he said.

No it doesn't!

This is a great report. Probably one of the funniest I have ever read. In fact, the study is so preposterous, I could not help but keep checking to see if it had an April 1st date on it.

First, the environmentalists warned about the pollution caused by methane in the flatulence of cows and other grazing animals. Now they say that chewing also pollutes the atmosphere.

Better yet, though, so does decaying plant material.

Me thinks these "scientists" have way, way to little real work to do. Because, when the earth was warmer and greener, there were hundreds of varieties of these plant eating creatures called dinosaurs. Some were huge and must have gobbled up hundreds of pounds of green plant material each day.

Think about it. There was a whole lot of major chewing going on back then. Probably quite a lot of uncontrolled flatulence, too. And a lot of these critters lived in stinky old swamps and marshes. Better yet, there were many active volcanoes constantly belching out tons of strange gasses and soot. Yet, the earth prospered quite well.

It's difficult for this old researcher to believe that someone could actually call themselves "scientists" in one breath and claim naturally occurring gasses are harmful to our well being with the next.

It is also really difficult to believe that our tax money is being spent to fund this type of "study." Apparently, there are no standards for federal grants anymore.

Will good triumph over evil? If so, then how? And what do we do when they keep trying to tell us that much of what we once called evil is suddenly actually good, and that which we once called good is really often cruel and unfair to others?

For instance, many of us would say that having the right to defend self, family and home against attack by an intruder would be a good thing. Even more of us would agree that the freedom to move around and function in society however we wish and with whomever we wish, so long as we do not bother others, would be a good thing. And almost everyone will agree that the possessions we work for and acquire legally are ours to do with as we please. So, when Washington, Franklin, Madison, and the boys got together to set up a government designed to protect our right to life, liberty and property, we say that was good. And still today, we say that Constitution, written way back then, is still the best Constitution ever written. That's because it is designed to support the freedom of the people: Our individual liberty.

What, then, is the corresponding evil?

Any type of government that restricts freedom would be one correct answer. We can call it communism, socialism, or statism. The name is not important. If a "good" government is the type of government that protects the individual freedom of the people, then any government restricting the freedom of the people must be on the other side of the coin.

But, this discussion is getting a bit inconvenient. Perhaps we had better work on defining "freedom" and "liberty" a little more.

We know what the Founding Fathers meant by freedom and liberty. A good number of them were lawyers, and the law book of their day was "Blackstone's Commentaries on the Law." Blackstone defines Liberty as, "the power of locomotion, of changing situation, of moving one's person to whatever place one's own inclination may direct, without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law."

Today, law books define Liberty as:

the ability to enjoy all the rights granted by the United States and a particular state's constitution, as well as other rights such as the right to earn a living, the right to acquire knowledge, the right to marry, etc.; refers to the fullest scope of freedoms one has but at the same time limits those freedoms so as not to interfere with another person's exercise of them.

That's not bad for a modern (1984) law dictionary. However, it is certainly not completely correct. We citizens are the keeper of all rights. Our Constitution gives us no rights. We already had them. Nor does our Constitution take away any of our individual rights. Rather, it instructs government to "protect" our individual rights -- and, it orders that our rights not be infringed by the federal government.

Therefore, limiting our rights of association, assembly, arms, contract, knowledge, locomotion, property, religion, self-defense, speech, etc., etc., is not something a "good" government would do. In the United States, it would be an outward violation of the Constitution for federal government to limit any of these rights. So, the question is, how much restriction does government have to apply on the people before the people begin thinking of that government as evil? If "good" is the Constitution and the original intent of the men who wrote it, then "evil" must be every law that oppresses our freedom in direct violation of that document's intent.

And, while we're at it here, shouldn't there be some method of publicly shaming those members of government who propose oppressive anti-freedom restrictions on American citizens? Because, if the answer to that is no, then maybe we have given up and all freedom is lost.

  ** uhuh **

The President said he is reducing taxes.

uhuh.

Congress says they are balancing the budget.

uhuh. Sez who?

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