Scrapbook
Scrapbook Let Our People Go! AS THE SCRAPBOOK goes to press, wire services are reporting that China has been detaining yet another American citizen, without charge or explanation, for more than a...
...Honorees Flanigan and Walton have both helped thousands of deserving students escape dysfunctional and reform-resistant inner-city school systems...
...The first annual William E. Simon Prize in Social Entrepreneurship was awarded to investment banker Peter Flanigan for his work as principal founder of the Student/Sponsor Partnership, a nonprofit agency providing financial aid and mentoring services to disadvantaged students attending private schools...
...They are Communists, which more or less explains everything...
...Each prize is worth $250,000...
...the First Amendment On the afternoon of March 26, the Senate debated a measure styled "Joint Resolution 4," sponsored by Fritz Hollings of South Carolina...
...American foreign policy experts and other deep thinkers now scratch their heads to divine what signal China's leaders might hope to send us by means of such unusual . . . diplomatic initiatives, as it were...
...passport—on February 25, intending to visit a friend...
...AS THE SCRAPBOOK goes to press, wire services are reporting that China has been detaining yet another American citizen, without charge or explanation, for more than a month...
...Oddly enough, "this page" failed to notice the Hollings resolution at all...
...The Scrapbook joins the William E. Simon Foundation in applauding them...
...its military is also very strong...
...who currently holds a professorship at the City University of Hong Kong, walked from his home across the border to the neighboring Chinese city of Shenzhen—with his U.S...
...Constitution authorizing Congress and the states to "set reasonable limits" on contributions to, and expenditures by, candidates for all public offices...
...And this is the view of all the Chinese people...
...His audience applauded...
...So "why do you frequently take special interest in cases such as this...
...In the same issue, breezily dismissing complaints that the McCain-Feingold bill, too, would impede free speech, the Times's lead editorial boasted, "This page . . . has a record of vigilance on the First Amendment...
...A more appropriate response would be for the State Department to recall its Beijing ambassador for consultations...
...senators decide that the First Amendment needs curtailment, you'd think some people would get upset—leading journalists especially...
...The Xue and Li detentions are the acts of a rogue state...
...All forty-one of these people, incidentally, would vote for the McCain-Feingold bill a few days later...
...You may have to go back to the first decade of the 19th century, in fact, when England was impressing American merchant seamen into service in the British navy, to find the willingness and ability of the United States to guarantee the safety of its citizens traveling abroad so frontally challenged...
...He never arrived...
...And for the president to order an immediate moratorium on bilateral contacts with China until Gao Zhan and Li Shaomin are set free...
...The key word here is "insists...
...Joint Resolution 4, in other words, was a proposal to abridge the Constitution's elemental protection of political speech...
...Li Shaomin, 44, a Princeton Ph.D...
...The first annual William E. Simon Prize in Philanthropic Leadership was awarded to John Walton, an investor and Wal-Mart director, for his work in a series of private-school scholarship initiatives directed at children from low-income families...
...Such is the nature of modern "reform...
...government has refused comment on the case, and Li's wife, Liu Yingli, has been refused all contact with her husband...
...Earlier this month, of course, came news that another American citizen, a 5-year-old boy named Andrew Xue, had been held incommunicado from the U.S...
...The New York Times vs...
...And when the debate was done, 40 senators voted to do just that, with Montana's absent Max Baucus announcing through the clerk that he had intended to join them...
...The day after the Xue incident was made public, Chinese vice premier Qian Qichen, feted in Washington by the industrialists at the U.S.-China Business Council, put it quite well: "Chairman Mao is a great leader of the Chinese revolution...
...The next day's New York Times restricted mention of the Hollings resolution to the final sentence of a 1,000-plus-word story the paper ran on page 18...
...The Bush administration must recognize them as such...
...Under the same line of high court rulings, the Constitution will not tolerate any limitation on campaign expenditures unless the money in question comes from general tax revenue in a publicly financed election...
...But the U.S...
...Andrew's father reports that the boy now spends his days wailing over and over: "I want my mommy...
...E-mail THE SCRAPBOOK THE SCRAPBOOK is reachable 24/7...
...Simon Says Shortly before he died last year at age 72, Ford administration Treasury secretary William E. Simon designed a major program devoted to the cause of private charity, one of his lifelong concerns...
...Besides, "the United States is the most developed country in the world in terms of its economy and its high tech...
...After all, Andrew and his parents were arrested—which "means they must have violated the law to a certain extent...
...embassy—and from his parents—for 26 days beginning February 11, when the family was detained at Beijing's airport...
...To paraphrase Alice Roosevelt Longworth, if you don't have anything nice to say, e-mail it to Scrap-book@Weeklystandard.com...
...Twenty-four hours later, responding to questions from the Washington Post, Chinese president Jiang Zemin expressed incredulity that Americans might be distressed about the Xues...
...An unbroken, quarter-century-long string of Supreme Court decisions hold that the First Amendment forbids even "reasonable" limits on campaign contributions unless those limits are necessary to combat corruption...
...For what it's worth, we would argue that it doesn't matter what signal China's leaders are sending...
...But no...
...You have a lot of things to occupy yourself with...
...Surely the time has come for the United States, its government and its people, to get angry—very angry...
...Andrew and his father have subsequently been released and reunited...
...This timidity ill-suits American honor...
...But Andrew's mother, Gao Zhan, a political scientist at American University in Washington, D.C., remains under arrest on patently ridiculous espionage charges...
...We think it should matter enough—and only—that it has been done...
...This is the authoritarian mind: consumed with questions of power, and impatient with the "sentimentality" about individual liberties that a nation like the United States insists on as a matter of principle...
...Officials at the American embassy in Beijing were informed of Li's arrest at some unspecified later date...
...A new constitutional amendment would be necessary to authorize such limits because an old constitutional amendment—the first one—stands in the way...
...Administered through the 34-year-old foundation that bears his name, Simon's final project made its initial mark last week...
...When so many U.S...
...We think it shouldn't matter much at all exactly why China has lately taken to making American citizens disappear in its dungeons...
...The resolution proposed an amendment to the U.S...
...As we write these words, the White House and State Department have not done more than issue cautious expressions of "concern" about Gao Zhan and Li Shaomin—to go with quiet, back-channel protests to the Chinese foreign ministry...
...Where major world powers are concerned, the arrests without charge are virtually unprecedented in modern diplomacy...
Vol. 6 • April 2001 • No. 29
