COMMENT

...On the Brinkley show, Lehman defended himself against the suggestion that he acted inappropriately, calling it "gutter reporting...

...In sacred memory of those who died to bring hope and peace...

...As investigative reporter Robert Parry found out, there is a stone that commemorates these soldiers of this illegal war...

...Republicans rushed to criticize Clinton for trying to bask in the glow of a Republican idea...

...Job-training" programs that amount to little more than a copy of the want ads and a kick in the pants are commonplace, as companies maximize their profits by offering "services" to welfare clients on the cheap...

...The real story about Wisconsin's experiments with welfare is that they don't work...

...As he wrote in The Wall Street Journal, "the reported sexual harassment was a shameful aberration by some, perhaps dozens of individuals...

...It was to prop up a murderous government, dominated by the military, which ran death squads around the country and was largely responsible for the deaths of 70,000 Salvadoran citizens...

...But aside from these gratuitously nasty gestures, the two candidates agree on the basic thrust of welfare reform...

...More than 500 people in the Pay for Performance experiment were cut off accidentally because of a computer error on May 1. According to State Senator Gwendolynne Moore of Milwaukee, people who live in her district became homeless after the cutoff...

...Ginsberg eulogized Goldstein, saying he had been "sanctifying God's name, saving Jewish lives, uprooting evil, and fighting for the land of Israel...

...It's his tail on the hook...

...It is an attempt to force the gay community to follow the Christian Coalition's agenda...

...For years, he has tried to minimize the significance of it...

...No wonder Lehman's been so agitated about Tail-hook...

...You can see a whole new tone [in this decision...

...Only today are we finally and officially proclaiming that those who served and those who died did so for the noblest, the most unselfish of reasons...

...Army waged during the Reagan and Bush Administrations...

...Justice Scalia tried to reduce the decision to cultural elitism...

...They rely on the welfare system for^H port because jobs that pay little and provide no health insurance make them susceptible to job loss in emergencies, and because of the difficulty of finding safe, reliable child care...

...Even as Thompson announced his latest program, "Wisconsin Works," the bipartisan Legislative Audit Bureau was releasing a report showing that Learnfare, one of Thompson's major welfare initiatives, is a failure...

...As incongruous as it may seem, poverty is big business these days," Jon Jeter of The Washington Post reports...

...We wanted to correct the history...

...Clinton quickly announced that he is in favor of Thompson's experiment, which now awaits a federal waiver...

...Let's be clear about the U.S...

...Despite all the national excitement over Wisconsin's plan, people familiar with welfare experiments in this state are appalled...

...As members of one of the most oppressed cultures on the planet, we should be mindful of the history of oppression inextricably connected to marriage," cautions Victoria Brownworth in her new book...

...As a result, gay Americans will suffer because some people will see the right's message for what it is—an attempt to encourage discrimination, hatred, and even violence...

...This is not a success story," says Moore...

...It's still time to celebrate—even as the fight goes on...

...He said it "should send chills down the back of anyone who cares whether the people of this nation any longer have the power of self-rule...

...We must conclude that Amendment 2 classifies homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else," wrote Anthony M. Kennedy, the author of the majority decision...

...That is the real welfare fraud...

...A state cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws...

...Other states are doing the same...

...But who's in the gutter...

...The current rightwing reaction against gay marriage has distracted public attention from a very important event...

...This is revolutionary in the law.' —Chat Feldblum...

...No civil rights actually got conferred on any gay American, but this allowed us to break through to a whole new context of hope...

...Getting people off welfare without causing enormous suffering would require a full-employment economy, as well as higher wages, benefits, and publicly funded child care...

...Both are recommending absolute limits on welfare, so if a family uses up its allotted time, gets off welfare, but later falls on hard times, it will be out on the street...

...But the hostility to gays and lesbians was still evident in the court...

...As Garry Wills wrote in a New York Post op-ed May 24, Vistica reports that Lehman put a rolled-up dollar bill in his mouth, lay on the floor, and had a naked dancer lower her vagina around the bill...

...COMMENT Competition in Cruelty 'Programs for the poor have been transformed into potential profit centers as enterprising business executives—from Fortune 500 defense contractors to family-run dry cleaners—are scrambling to capitalize on the welfare-to-work movement.' —Jon Jeter in The Washington Post Bob Dole and Bill Clinton are holding a contest to see who can get tougher with poor women and children on welfare...

...In 1990, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction against the program because it left hundreds of people in Milwaukee homeless and hungry, many of them victims of faulty record-keeping...

...Jeter notes that private contractors all over the country are scrambling to get a piece of the action as states dismantle the public welfare system...

...For too long, we have failed to recognize the contributions, the sacrifices, of those who served with distinction under the most dangerous conditions," said William Walker, former U.S...

...A new book, called Fall From Glory, by Gregory Vistica, contends that Lehman, while Secretary of the Navy, went to a Tailhook convention and led the lewd and lascivious behavior...

...And the U.S...

...Get Out the Champagne Monday...

...Many of them missed an appointment with a caseworker because of their work schedules, and then were "punished" by being completely cut off...

...soldiers who were just following orders, but it's the grossest distortion of the historical record to say that the U.S...

...State officials brag that they have reduced the welfare caseload under a small-scale precursor to Wisconsin Works called Pay for Performance, which pushes welfare recipients into jobs...

...Current welfare-reform experiments don't save money and they don't relieve poverty...

...Under the welfare-reform plans supported by both President Clinton and Bob Dole, child poverty will get worse, as states are encouraged to run experiments that withhold food stamps, medical care, and other basic services from poor children in order to punish parents who don't work...

...Gilman has long been hostile to Palestinian rights and critical of those in Israel who would make peace with the Arabs...

...It's not a secret anymore...

...May 20, 1996, was a monumental day for lesbian and gay Americans...

...What Lehman neglected to mention in The Wall Street Journal was his own allegedly sordid behavior at a Tailhook convention several years earlier...

...The trouble in Wisconsin—and in other states where welfare-reform programs have had dire consequences—is that there aren't enough jobs around that pay enough to allow all single parents to go to work, support their children, and cover day-care costs...

...This is only the latest in a series of reports, commissioned by the state, that gives Learnfare a failing grade...

...But . . . what would have been at most a week's story instead ignited a firestorm that has been consuming the Navy ever since...

...But the state has accomplished much of the caseload reduction just by tossing people out in the street...

...Most are children...

...This is the same Rabbi Ginsberg who in 1989 defended Israeli students charged with killing a thirteen-year-old Palestinian girl...

...Georgetown University law professor and legal counsel to the Human Rights Campaign, on the Supreme Court's decision that public prejudice cannot justify discrimination against homosexuals...

...In what amounts to a net transfer of funds from poor children to businesses and bureaucrats...

...Governor Thompson's track record on welfare is abysmal...

...Not to cast aspersions on U.S...

...New York, California, Texas, and Maryland, among others, are awarding lucrative contracts to private firms to screen and monitor welfare recipients, search for fraud, collect child support, and provide short-term job-training and job-search services...

...Now it comes out that twenty-one U.S...

...This sort of preemptive legislation is meant to derail the lesbian and gay civil-rights campaign by redirecting, and diffusing, the energy of activists...

...government was busy in May tying up loose ends...

...But that would cost a lot of money...

...Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, said the ruling had come from "an out-of-con-trol...

...said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign...

...This court has no business imposing upon all Americans the resolution favored by the elite class from which the members of this institution are selected, pronouncing that 'animosity* toward homosexuality, ante, is evil," he said...

...In many cases, the public is not getting a whole lot of service for its money...

...This Colorado cannot do...

...But Ginsberg's record of bigotry, his eulogies for murderers, were not enough to keep the forewarned Representative Gilman off the podium...

...On May 5, fifty of those soldiers were honored for their service—a little late, by military standards, but there was the delicate problem of admitting that U.S...

...Republican Governor Tommy Thompson has promised to do away with AFDC altogether starting in 1997...

...How long are we going to have to hear the bombastic baritone of Henry Kissinger on Nightliner...

...After the tragic suicide of Admiral Boorda, Lehman took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal and the studio of the David Brinkley show to denounce what he calls the "anti-Navy lynch mob...

...Gilman was urged not to attend by Israeli diplomats and American Jewish leaders because Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsberg was also on the podium...

...Marriage has not been a high priority for many lesbian and gay Americans...

...Child poverty in the United States is already close to the worst in the Western industrialized world...

...Sharing the Podium When Jesse Jackson was running for President, he was constantly hounded with questions about his association with the Reverend Louis Farrakhan, who had made some appallingly anti-Semitic comments...

...In the first month of the program, 20 percent of participants were removed from the welfare roles...

...In the current welfare-reform discussion, politicians seem to have forgotten that there are people in this country who are poor enough that they need some assistance just to survive...

...Hook and Tail It's bad enough to have to listen to loathsome officials when they're in office, but it's even worse to get caught in their claptrap long after their duty is done...

...role there was most noble and unselfish...

...But the facts don't seem to matter...

...Thus the victors write the official lies that go by the name of history...

...unelected judiciary...

...Fortunately, the Court proved an effective restraint against the tyranny of the majority...

...soldiers died in this illegal war...

...soldiers actually saw combat in El Salvador...

...Too Queer: Essays from a Radical Life...

...Nevertheless, the increasing likelihood of men marrying men and women marrying women is proving an effective rallying cry for the Christian right...

...The Thompson administration has reduced by 24 percent the amount of money the state hands out in cash benefits to people on welfare since 1987, according to the Legislative Audit Bureau, but the administrative costs for welfare have skyrocketed during the same period—increasing by 126 percent...

...For the first time, the United States Supreme Court has decided in favor of a gay civil-rights cause...

...The Supreme Court vindicated gay America...

...Recently, Clinton and Dole raced to Wisconsin to have their pictures taken in the state that has concocted the most radical welfare plan yet advanced anywhere in the nation...

...He told Israel Radio: "It must be recognized that Jewish blood and the blood of a goy are not the same thing...

...Membership in this mob includes the media, the Clinton Administration, the Senate Armed Services Committee, bureaucrats in the Defense Department, and everybody's favorite, "the more extreme wings of the feminist and gay movements...

...ambassador to El Salvador...

...The Representative has some answering to do, the media some asking to do...

...Now will Republican Representative Benjamin Gilman of New York be similarly hounded for his association with a rabbi who has made some appallingly anti-Arab comments...

...Guess what...

...The three dissenters, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia...

...government financed these death squads from the very beginning, and armed and trained the Salvadoran army throughout the eighties and early nineties...

...There was a ceremony on May 6 at Arlington National Cemetery for their families...

...It is a competition in cruelty, and the losers are millions of poor children whom welfare is designed to protect...

...So Governor Thompson has created a bloated bureaucracy even as he squeezes the poor...

...They merely threaten to compound the misery of poor women and children...

...The group accused the majority of taking victory "away from traditional forces," and Rehnquist called the Colorado Amendment an "eminently reasonable" means of halting the "piecemeal deterioration of the sexual morality favored by a majority of Col-oradans...

...There is plenty of evidence that Wisconsin Works won't work, either...

...role in El Salvador...

...And we are not referring to William Colby, the former head of the CIA who was found drowned after he went for a canoe ride...

...More important, though, are the long-term costs to our whole society of abandoning a generation of children...

...We are referring to the secret war in El Salvador that the CIA and the U.S...

...People on welfare are not bums...

...This is the same Rabbi Ginsberg who spoke at the funeral of Baruch Goldstein in 1994, the Jewish settler who had massacred twenty-nine Muslim worshipers at a mosque in Hebron...

...The Supreme Court recognized that this was an extremely important civil-rights case...

...Both Clinton and Dole are poised to strip away the federal guarantee that families with children can collect minimal cash grants from the government when they have nowhere else to turn...

...The inscription reads: El Salvador 1981-1992...

...In the gay community, there was exuberant celebration...

...The U.S...

...Learnfare has had "virtually no positive impact," ac-cording to the audit bureau's report...

...Get the hook...

...Within days, however, a ruckus over the possibility of same-sex marriage drowned out expressions of joy within the gay community...

...But under the new Wisconsin Works program, Learnfare will be expanded statewide...

...Seems Lehman is still riled by the coverage of the 1991 Tailhook scandal...

...Decriers of the Supreme Court decision accused the justices of taking democracy out of the hands of the people...

...and Clarence Thomas, did not hide their preference for traditional sex roles...

...soldiers who fought in that illegal war are now official heroes...

...Earlier this year, Ginsberg spent eighteen days under arrest in Israel for inciting anti-Arab violence...

...The Supreme Court struck down Colorado's Amendment 2—a provision that had nullified existing civil-rights protections for gays and lesbians, and had barred any new antidiscrimination laws in the state...

...These experiments ignore the fact that most women who turn to AFDC already have a long history of wage work...

...And get the hook ready for John Lehman, Reagan's Secretary of the Navy...

...We wanted to recognize the sacrifices of those who served but were made to feel they were fighting in a dirty, secret war.' —Greg Walker, a former Army Special Forces staff sergeant, quoted in The Washington Post The Victor's Lies The national-security state that is the U.S...

...And it conflicts with the message both political parties are sending to voters: "You shouldn't have to pay taxes to suppgrt these lazy welfare bums...

...Blessed are the peacemakers...

...Surely there's a quota on pomposity that he has by now far exceeded...

...Ironically, despite the cost-cutting rhetoric, taxpayers in Wisconsin are not saving money by cutting funds to poor people...

...Clinton insulted his gay and lesbian supporters, signing onto the "Defense of Marriage" bill before the right could accuse him of being against "family values...

...To make matters worse, many welfare experiments are pushing mothers on AFDC out of community-college programs and technical training that offer hope for a brighter future...

...In April, according to an account in The Washington Post, Gilman spoke at an Israel Day concert and rally in Central Park sponsored by opponents of the peace process...

...Dole has attempted to distinguish himself with proposals that heap stigma on welfare clients, including mandatory drug testing, and denying aid to any teenage girl who becomes pregnant...