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comments@mclaughlin.com Waiting for a transcript, but I heard Lawrence O'Donnell shout on today's TMG that he could care less that the troops are demoralized by Kerry's incessant cynicism about the Iraq war. Essentially he said they should keep their mouths shut and fight. I almost fell out of my chair. Did anybody else hear the exchange? Shocking! Please write to McLaughlin producers at comments@mclaughlin.com to let them know that O'Donnell crossed the line of decency and really does not deserve to have access to an otherwise prestigious panel. I'll post the transcript as soon as it is available. If anybody...

On MSNBC tonight, Lawrence O'Donnell, political commentator for MSNBC, sounds like he knows what he is talking about, yet, his arguments in defense of John Kerry, are so asinine and untrue, I could hardly believe my ears.

So much for Senator John Edwards 'Two Americas.' Over the weekend, Edwards, whose 'Two Americas' stump speech was said to have enticed the Kerry campaign to put North Carolina on the bottom of the ticket, apparently dumped the stumper and ripped off Democratic hottie Barack Obama's convention speech.At a rally in Lawrence, Kansas, Edwards told an audience, ' There is no red state, there is no blue state, there is only one United States of America and we are going to serve this entire country.' So what happened to 'Two Americas?''There is a segment of the campaign, and it is...

Our first story comes from a story in the Kansas City Star. "Energy was the feature topic at the outdoor forum Friday, but it was agriculture — particularly related to hog farming — that drew testy comments. Kerry and Edwards pledged to help small hog farmers as large commercial operations began overshadowing them. Teresa Heinz Kerry handed her husband a note, and he invited her to stand up to speak.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: All right, I told you earlier in this hour, my friends, that we're in the lighthearted Stack of Stuff, the humorous stories. Such we've got two such stories involving the Democratic presidential contender, Senator John Kerry and his running mate Senator John Edwards. And one of the stories involves Senator Kerry's wife, the lovely and gracious Teresa Heinz Kerry. See her dirty dancing at one of these campaign stops over the weekend? Whew. At any rate. Well, to each his own. Ladies and gentlemen, remember now the slogan of the Kerry campaign, "Help is on the way."...

Lessons from Lawrence of Arabia By Ryan Dilley BBC News Online Magazine Sales of a book by Lawrence of Arabia, the British officer who united desert tribes against the Turks during World War One, have risen sharply since the war in Iraq. Why? "War upon rebellion is messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife." This grim assessment of quelling an armed insurrection must prey on the minds of at least two of the Westerners grappling with Iraq's upsurge in violence. It comes from the book which graces the otherwise sparse office of Rory Stewart, the British diplomat who...

Crime vs. privacy -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AIDS: Health risk Ohio law rightly treats an HIV-positive person who solicits sex as a criminal, just as it does anyone else who commits assault with a deadly weapon. So in the case of Charles Woodgeard the public has a right to know his health status. When he was arrested, he lost a right to medical privacy that ought to be otherwise maintained. Woodgeard was arrested on Aug. 20 on a charge that he solicited an undercover police officer for sex. He is HIV positive. Woodgeard is now serving a one-year prison term for his crime,...

"Sexually Inclusive Christians" Celebrate Victories, Push for More Mark Tooley August 22, 2003 When arguing for church acceptance of homosexuality, most advocates talk about monogamy. But others are bolder. “I am a strong ally of those in healthy, polyamorous relationships,” declared Debra Kolodny. She argued that having multiple sexual partners can be “holy.” Kolodyn was leading a workshop at the WOW (Witness Our Welcome) 2003 convention, an ecumenical gathering for “sexually and gender inclusive Christians.” Hundreds of homosexual, bisexual, and heterosexual people gathered under the “queer” banner in Philadelphia August 14-17 to urge religious acceptance of non-traditional sexual behaviors. According...

The leader of the nation's most well-known homosexual Republican organization says his group is consulted on nearly a weekly basis by the White House. "(O)ur access is unprecedented," Log Cabin Club executive director Patrick Guerriero told Metro Weekly, a Washington-area homosexual magazine. "I'm not sure there's been a week that I've been on the job where we haven't been called to the White House or asked to attend a meeting with the Republican leadership to discuss issues ranging from tax fairness to judicial nominations to global and domestic AIDS policy." The article was e-mailed yesterday between the leaders of many...

Personally, I'm relaxed about sodomy, which isn't the same as being relaxed during sodomy. But one does one's best to keep up with the times. I use the word ''sodomy,'' incidentally, mainly because I still can. I would wager that one of the consequences of the Supreme Court decision striking down sodomy laws will be that they've also struck down the word. I see New York is revising its statutes to eliminate such anachronistically pejorative terms, and in Georgia, where the DAs have made hip, busy cop-show acronyms out of their archaic legislation, I don't suppose ''SOLCAN''--as in ''Soliciting a...

The Consequences of Lawrence v. Texas Justice Scalia Is Right that Same Sex Marriage Bans Are At Risk, But Wrong That A Host of Other Laws Are Vulnerable By JOANNA GROSSMAN lawjlg@hofstra.edu ---- Tuesday, Jul. 08, 2003 Recently, and famously, in Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court invalidated Texas' anti-homosexual-sodomy law. It did so by invoking the constitutional right to privacy. But it also indicated that constitutional equal protection doctrines would have provided another reason to invalidate the statute, which targeted only same-sex sodomy. The decision extended long-overdue recognition of the rights of gays and lesbians. In doing so, it...

Sandra Day O'Connor was almost squished last weekend in Philadelphia. At an event celebrating our living Constitution or some such nonsense, a giant beam from the stage almost fell on her. It was a scary moment. For a brief blinking instant it appeared as if Sandra Day O'Connor was headed to meet her Maker. And, if that happened, the Constitution as we know it would have died. As Charles Krauthammer and others have noted, Sandy Baby (as John Riggins once dubbed her) is the Constitution of the United States of America. If she wants the text to mean free speech...

Our Rulers, The Supreme Court by William Murchison Posted Jul 7, 2003 The word, then, is no Supreme Court retirements expected this year. Pity. We could lose up to six justices -- say, the majority in the Lawrence vs. Texas sodomy case -- and feel indisposed for less than a week-long street dance, complete with door prizes and keg beer. On the other hand, we'd have to be careful. The retirements of Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, and -- oh, endless bliss! -- David Souter might give us the wrong idea. We...

Sodomy Ruling Part II: A Liberal Gold Mine by David Limbaugh Posted Jul 7, 2003 Our Rulers, The Supreme Court The Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas (the sodomy case) is a veritable gold mine for liberals and the shifting values they hold dear. Not many conservatives I know have any desire to see the sodomy laws of any state enforced against homosexual behavior within the confines of one's private residence. But the Supreme Court's opinion had little to do with protecting that kind of privacy and much more to do with legitimizing homosexuality, moral relativism and the concept...

In a recent public appearance, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the man proposed by many to become our next chief justice, uttered words that ought to send a chill down the back of every liberty-loving American. "The Constitution just sets minimums," Scalia told an audience at John Carroll University on March 18. "Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires." Scalia is a Harvard-trained lawyer with a keen intellect and an excellent command of the language. It seems fair to assume that he meant exactly what he said. He did not call into...

The Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas (the sodomy case) is a veritable gold mine for liberals and the shifting values they hold dear. Not many conservatives I know have any desire to see the sodomy laws of any state enforced against homosexual behavior within the confines of one's private residence. But the Supreme Court's opinion had little to do with protecting that kind of privacy and much more to do with legitimizing homosexuality, moral relativism and the concept of the Constitution as an evolving document. And for good measure, the Court also took a gratuitous swipe at American...

Is Lawrence Worse Than Roe? CRISIS Magazine - e-Letter June 27, 2003 ********************************************** There has been a lot of lot of talk since yesterday's Supreme Court decision in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, a dispute over Texas' law making sodomy illegal. The Supreme Court overturned that law by a vote of 6 to 3, saying that such laws "demean the lives of homosexual persons" and infringe upon their right to privacy. Let me tell you right now: Lawrence is a devastating decision, worse than most people think -- and for reasons that haven't fully dawned on them yet. I...

Scalia: What a massive disruption of the social order ... this ruling entails. *********************************************************** Read below one of the most brilliant defenses of traditional values, morality and conventions that have governed civilization for the past 5000 years. Judge Scalia is a national treasure: *********************************************************** Excerpted from his dissent in today's sodomy ruling: I begin with the Court ’s surprising readiness to recon- sider a decision rendered a mere 17 years ago in Bowers v. Hardwick .I do not myself believe in rigid adherence to stare decisis in constitutional cases;but I do believe that we should be consistent rather than...

I once worked in government. On my first day, I raised my right hand and swore to uphold the Constitution. I thought I knew what that meant. Recently we have gone to war in Afghanistan, Iraq and a few other places, at least in part to advance democracy and promote our kind of constitutionalism. A foreigner might then ask: What exactly is your Constitution? Now we know the answer. The Constitution is whatever Justice Sandra Day O'Connor says it is. On any given Monday.

As the Supreme Court ruling on Texas' sodomy law continues to generate controversy, Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute reveals a disturbing new element. The US Supreme Court used foreign precedents in formulating their decision. In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy referred to a "Friend of the Court" brief submitted by former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson. "This Court should not decide in a vacuum whether criminalization of same-sex sodomy between consenting adults violates constitutional guarantees of privacy and equal protection. Other nations with similar histories, legal systems, and political cultures have...