Words to Live By Since 1993 A SPIFF Publication Vol. 3, No. 17 The problem with censorship is Owl of a Different Color Since the revolution of November 8, you may have noticed a marked drop-off in the number of WTLB articles criticizing liberal policy initiatives. Well, that's because there haven't been any. So we must turn our attention to the little things that have always annoyed us, but were overshadowed by more important battles on policy. In our ongoing search for the hypocrisy of liberals, we turn over yet another stone and find cartoonist Gary Trudeau. In recent weeks, the same man who refused to draw George Bush, drew Dan Quayle as a chicken feather, and now depicts Speaker Newt as a bomb (in poor taste these days) now has decided to make fun of the crippling wound that Senator Bob Dole sustained during World War II. But we are not here to criticize Mr. Trudeau's lack of basic decency. Each time he rears his ugly head he handles that point on his own. No, we are here to point out the hypocrisy that has remained dormant but now (thanks to us) comes to the surface. In 1988, our beloved hometown boy, then-Senator Owl Gore, was one of the media-dubbed "Seven Dwarfs" running for the Democrat nomination to succeed The President. During that time, Mr. Trudeau decided that Owl was too conservative for his taste (proving his knowledge of things political) and took off after him in the panels of his little comic strip. Trudeau derided Owl as a "Prince" of Washington and as a spoiled D.C. brat who had gone to private schools and had never known anything about the common folk. In short, he told the truth. In a field with Dukakis, Babbit, and Gephart, Owl just didn't pass the Trudeau liberal muster. Four years later, Candidate Clinton and Bill chose Owl as their running mate for the general election. In their great crusade to trash Ronald Reagan and win the White House, the Clintons tried to hide the liberal in themselves and the liberals at their convention. Candidate Clinton was supposed to be a "new Democrat," meaning she wasn't a northeastern liberal. In a field that included Jerry Brown, Gary Trudeau should have done the same thing to the Clintons. Did we hear a word? Nope. Little did Mr. Trudeau know that his friend Owl would come back to visit him four years later. With the White House in his party's grasp, do you think that Trudeau pulled out his same attacks on Owl? Do we really have to answer that one for you? You see, only when it serves their purpose will liberals go on the attack. When they have a stake in the outcome, they are willing to stifle their complaints. The only difference between Owl in '88 and Owl in '92 is the fact that in those four years he wrote his stupid environment book. Apparently, Owl had Trudeau fooled as well as he did the people in Tennessee for many years. He was never a conservative Democrat. He was just an opportunist. Now that he is sailing on the good ship Titanic, everyone knows it. Let's Hear It for the Supremes! It's not often that you see an article singing the praises of the Supreme Court, especially in WTLB. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's not often that there is any reason to do so. Last week, one (and only one) such reason stood out. The court said that the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 violated the Constitution of the United States. For those of you who've been watching television news lately, you probably didn't know that the Constitution is a document that tells us what the government of the United States can and cannot do. Ok, now wait. It's now legal to take guns to school? And this is a good thing? If you're asking these questions, you haven't been reading WTLB for very long. If you're familiar with Spiff, you know that we subscribe to a very strange and unusual concept: no matter how wonderful the effect of a law may be, if it's unconstitutional, it's unconstitutional. The Constitution, including its amendments over the years, gives a short list of things that Congress must do and some things that Congress may do. It lists only a few things that Congress cannot do, because among the list is a forgotten clause known to some of us as the tenth amendment. It says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." If you pay too much attention to the medialibs (and we know you don't), they'll tell you that only constitutional scholars know what this really means. For those of us who are not constitutional scholars, what the tenth amentment means is that the powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. For years, the court has been determining that anything that Congress wants to do (if the ACLU doesn't object) is constitutional, citing what is known as the Interstate Commerce Clause. It says "The Congress shall have Power...To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes...." This is the part of the Constitution that supposedly excuses such laws as minimum wage, because they have a "substantial effect" on commerce. Using the substantial effect test, Congress had a green light to do, well, anything that the Constitution (had the tenth amendment never been ratified) didn't specifically prohibit. Last week, though, the court said that Congress does not have the power to ban firearms in a school zone. They said such a ban does not have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Why? Because it doesn't. Even better than the decision is (not surprisingly) Justice Clarence Thomas. He wrote a concurring opinion that went even further, encouraging the court to reconsider the substantial effect test. After all, you can pretend that everything has a substantial effect on commerce if you really want to. "...the power to regulate commerce can by no means encompass authority over mere gun possession, any more than it empowers the Federal Government to regulate marriage, littering, or cruelty to animals, throughout the 50 States. Our Constitution quite properly leaves such matters to the individual States, notwithstanding these activities' effects on interstate commerce. Any interpretation of the Commerce Clause that even suggests that Congress could regulate such matters is in need of reexamination." It would be great to see the court overturn the laws that were accepted because they had a supposedly substantial effect on interstate commerce. It would be even greater to see Speaker Newt and the boys repeal them before the court gets the chance. Quote of the weak: "Terrorists can be redeemed, and over history some of them have been." Philip Wilcox, the State Department coordinator for counter-terrorism Quote of the strong: "You can imagine how we felt when President Clinton received Gerry Adams. You can imagine how he'd feel if we accepted the people who did this in Oklahoma City." Margaret Thatcher Words to Live By is published every week at about this time by Spiff. You can send a fax to us here in the Spiff Executive Plaza, towering over beautiful downtown Donelson, Tennessee at 615-883-0435.