Scrapbook
Scrapbook The Perpetual Chaplain of the House After all the uproar about who should replace retiring James Ford as chaplain for the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican leaders have at last...
...Before agreeing to give up one of the few bits of leverage it has, Congress ought to be certain that the benefits that are supposed to flow from China's entry into the WTO will in fact do so...
...The foundation presents this annual prize to the columnist or editorialist whose work best reflects the spirit that animated Breindel's writings: love of this country and its democratic institutions, as well as the act of bearing witness to the evils of totalitarianism...
...Don't hold your breath...
...He may have to stay forever...
...The story begins back in June, when nine Democrats and nine Republicans met to choose nominees for Ford's post...
...Senate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm, unfortunately, wants the full Senate to vote on a flawed export-control bill before any of the key national security committees— Armed Services, Foreign Relations, Intelligence, or Governmental Affairs —can ensure that it will prevent the export of dangerous technologies...
...But that didn't stop the Catholic League, and among Republicans there's some suspicion that Donohue started the controversy to ensure that his League (which denounces liberals far more often than conservatives) keeps its reputation as nonpartisan...
...The Damn-the-Torpedoes Congress Congress is about to vote on two pieces of legislation with important implications for national security: the reauthorization of the Export Administration Act and permanent normal trade relations (formerly known as most-favored-nation status) for China...
...More likely, however, is that Donohue is a man of sudden enthusiasms and quick reactions, and after the first few faxes, felt he couldn't turn back...
...Applications may be obtained by contacting award administrator Jan Ruffle at 212-930-8018...
...This Hundt Was Doggedly Partisan Reed Hundt—Al Gore's high school chum who oversaw telecom deregulation as head of the FCC from 1993-1997—used to complain about the "incredible partisanship" of the Republican Congress...
...In 1996, while publicly professing that "we must not slip into the abyss of partisanship," he fought the National Association of Broadcasters over his plan to regulate children's TV programming because, he now admits, "I believed we were helping the President and Vice President win re-election...
...And here is his amazingly frank version of what it means for a supposedly independent agency to implement legislation Congress has passed (the 1996 telecom reform, in this case): "Under principles of statutory interpretation, we had broad authority to exercise our discretion in writing the implementing regulations...
...The winner will be announced in June...
...Democrats such as Henry Waxman, Earl Pomeroy, and Anna Eshoo, not otherwise renowned for their support of Catholic positions, gleefully repeated the charge...
...In December, speaker Dennis Hastert, majority leader Richard Armey, and minority leader Richard Gephardt met to make the final decision, with Hastert and Armey outvoting Gephardt to give the nod to Wright, a Presbyterian minister...
...To their credit, the chairmen of these committees—senators John Warner, Jesse Helms, Richard Shelby, and Fred Thompson—have asked Trent Lott not to bring the bill to the floor until their committees can hold hearings...
...With apparently little disagreement, they selected two Protestants and one Catholic: Rev...
...Robert Dvorak, and Fr...
...No wonder Hastert and Armey insist they found him more "empathetic...
...In response, Hastert's and Armey's staffs waged a brief but astonishingly incompetent campaign against O'Brien, accusing the Wisconsin priest of being a raging liberal, pastorally inexperienced, and soft on abortion—charges so easily dismissed that they seemed to prove Republican bigotry...
...Wright is a political insider and power operator who leads Washington's annual National Prayer Breakfast...
...The Breindel Award The Scrapbook is pleased to note that entries are now being accepted for the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism, which honors the memory of the New York Post editor and Weekly Standard contributor who died unexpectedly in March 1998, at the age of 42...
...The Breindel Award, sponsored by the Eric Breindel Memorial Foundation, is the most lucrative in the field of opinion journalism, with a prize of $10,000...
...Those who wish to be considered should submit no more than five editorials or columns written in the 1999 calendar year, accompanied by a $25 entry fee...
...This, at least, is the latest word circulating in New York and Washington...
...Of course, what actually led to the choice of Wright wasn't bigotry, but good, old-fashioned glad-handing...
...Hundt, in short, deserved every bit of "partisan" oversight that he got and probably didn't get enough...
...And, as the country learned through the Cox Committee and other investigations, the administration botched its responsibility to control the export of militarily-relevant technologies to potential adversaries...
...Charles Wright, Rev...
...Tim O'Brien...
...There is certainly need for such review...
...A confidential panel appointed by the foundation will judge the entries...
...As the measure stands, neither the State Department nor the Defense Department can veto an export license...
...This is precisely the opposite of what the Cox Committee recommended...
...Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby was the first winner of the award...
...That's because the previous export law lapsed in 1994...
...Instead, the congressional leadership—at the behest of an ardent business lobby and the Clinton administration—wants to speed things along...
...One would think measures of such import would call for thorough debate...
...In light of China's history of non-compliance with previous trade agreements, the devil really is in the details here...
...House of Representatives, Republican leaders have at last reached a decision: The chaplain will continue to be James Ford, who is delaying his retirement and returning for a 22nd year...
...The Scrapbook can't really recommend Hundt's forthcoming memoir You Say You Want a Revolution as light reading, but the page proofs contain ample evidence of Hundt's stunning hypocrisy in accusing anyone else of partisanship...
...Forcing a vote before all the facts are known about the terms of Beijing's entry into the WTO is hardly justifiable...
...This substantially increases the sway of the Commerce Department, which has never met an export it didn't want to expedite...
...Meanwhile, the House leadership has announced that it will seek a vote on giving China its coveted permanent normal trade status as quickly as possible, perhaps even before negotiations are completed between the European Union and China over the terms of China's accession to the World Trade Organization...
...Hundt sought the FCC post in the first instance, he now says, with a pledge to be "Al's lieutenant...
...On the export front, the administration for six years has had virtual free rein to regulate (or not regulate, as the case may be) U.S...
...It should have ended there, but Bill Donohue—head of the Catholic League, a New York-based 350,000-member organization that fights anti-Catholicism—stepped in, charging in a firestorm of faxes that the rejection of O'Brien meant Protestants Hastert and Armey were anti-Catholic...
...export policies...
...News Corporation, Breindel's employer and the corporate parent of this magazine, pledged $250,000 to the Eric Breindel Memorial Foundation...
...Indeed, like the modern engineers trying to straighten the Leaning Tower of Pisa, we could aspire to provide the new entrants to the local telephone markets a fairer chance to compete than they might find in any explicit provision of the law...
...Well, a fox smells its own hole...
...Two months later, the only face-saving solution for the Republicans and the Catholic League is the return of Ford...
Vol. 5 • February 2000 • No. 23
