They can reduce the interest to normal levels...

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William Bennett Defends Comment on Abortion and Crime

'Book of Virtues' Author Says Hypothetical Remark Was Valid

By JAKE TAPPER

- After pondering on his radio program how aborting every black infant in America would affect crime rates, best-selling author and self-styled Values Czar Bill Bennett is vehemently denying he is a racist and defending his willingness to speak publicly about race and crime.

On the Wednesday edition of his radio show, Bill Bennett's Morning in America, syndicated by Salem Radio Network, a caller raised the theory that Social Security is in danger of becoming insolvent because legalized abortion has reduced the number of tax-paying citizens. Bennett said economic arguments should never be employed in discussions of moral issues.

If it were your sole purpose to reduce crime, Bennett said, You could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.

That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down, he added.

Outrage From Democrats

Bennett was secretary of education for President Ronald Reagan and is considered one of the Republican Party's big brains. But this week Democrats and some Republicans seemed to also question if Bennett's mouth is of size as well.

Democrats expressed outrage, ranging from demands for an apology to requests that the Federal Communications Commission suspend Bennett's show.

Republicans, Democrats and all Americans of good will should denounce this statement, should distance themselves from Mr. Bennett, said Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill. And the private sector should not support Mr. Bennett's radio show or his comments on the air.

I'm not even going to comment on something that disgusting, said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Really, I'm thinking of my black grandchild and I'm going to hold (off).

'Things That People Are Thinking'

In an interview with ABC News, Bennett said that anyone who knows him knows he isn't racist. He said he was merely extrapolating from the best-selling book Freakonomics, which posits the hypothesis that falling crimes rates are related to increased abortion rates decades ago. It would have worked for, you know, single-parent moms; it would have worked for male babies, black babies, Bennett said. So why immediately bring up race when discussing crime rates? There was a lot of discussion about race and crime in New Orleans, Bennett said. There was discussion � a lot of it wrong � but nevertheless, media jumping on stories about looting and shooting and gangs and roving gangs and so on.

There's no question this is on our minds, Bennett said. What I do on our show is talk about things that people are thinking � we don't hesitate to talk about things that are touchy.

Bennett said, I'm sorry if people are hurt, I really am. But we can't say this is an area of American life (and) public policy that we're not allowed to talk about � race and crime.

Robert George, an African-American, Republican editorial writer for the New York Post, agrees that Bennett's comments were not meant as racist. But he worries they feed into stereotypes of Republicans as insensitive. His overall point about not making broad sociological claims and so forth, that was a legitimate point, George said. But it seems to me someone with Bennett's intelligence � should know better the impact of his words and sort of thinking these things through before he speaks.

The blunt-spoken Bennett has ruffled feathers before, most recently in 2003 for revelations that despite his best-selling books about virtue and values, he is a high-rolling preferred customer at Las Vegas and Atlantic City casinos.

In light of accusations that the Bush administration should have been more sensitive to black victims of Hurricane Katrina, a Republican official told ABC News that Bennett's comments were probably as poorly timed as they were politically incorrect.

ABC News' Avery Miller, Karen Travers and Toni L. Wilson contributed to this report.

This is only one of a bunch of things he's rushing through so they can't be repaired easily once he's gone (IF he goes).

Here's part of it. The rest of the article can be found at: http://www.truthout.org/110708K

Washington - In the next few weeks, the Bush administration is expected to relax environmental-protection rules on power plants near national parks, uranium mining near the Grand Canyon and more mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia.

The administration is widely expected to try to get some of the rules into final form by the week before Thanksgiving because, in some cases, there's a 60-day delay before new regulations take effect. And once the rules are in place, undoing them generally would be a more time-consuming job for the next Congress and administration.

"The invasion of Iraq plays a crucial role in the agenda of the neoconservatives. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. It could replace, in case of need, other producers such as Saudi Arabia, a fragile ally of the United States. The control of oil production and prices gives the United States potential power to pressure consumer states such as Russia, China, and many in Western Europe."

This is by the former French ambassador to Tunisia, now a journalist. I guess I hadn't realized that Iraq was that oil-rich.

It's part of the Annenberg Foundation (don't know anything about that group). Anyway this seems to be a fairly nonpartisan website (even gives statistics backing that up). It provides great coverage of the claims made by both candidates and where the truth actually lay. Not surprisingly it appeared that overall Bush had a bigger problem with manipulating the truth than Kerry.

The site is not limited to just the candidates from the last election - I check it periodically out of general interest. As I said, I want the truth, even if it's painful sometimes.

Don't care where Waldo is, but would like to know where the thesis is...and also the rest of the missing Columbia records. If people are so concerned about where what the #2 on the other ticket did in Wasilla, Alaska, and how many colleges she went to, I would like to know what the #1 on the Democratic ticket was doing during his Columbia years. After all...he IS running for the #1 slot.

The govt in Iran has really been cracking down on communications. From what I understand (from news last night) they are confiscating computers, cell phones, etc. Because of this, there just simply isn't as much news coming out of Iran.