ustxtxb_obs_1997_12_05_50_00017-00000_000.pdf

bottled water because “if you have a flammable substance in your drinking water, you want to err on the side of conservatism.” The Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission has sent inspectors to Clute to check it out. GOOD COP/ BAD COP. This desk heard it first two months ago from a Bush contributor in Greenwich, Connecticut: the year 2000 dream ticket of Texas Governor George W. Bush and New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Never mind that Bush offended the mayor during the 1996 American League playoffs, by saying that he would have “to arm himself’ before he could follow his Texas Rangers through New York City to Yankee Stadium. And that Giuliani offended Bush’s Christian right voters by showing up in drag at a fundraiser. The two Republicans have high numbers in the second and third largest states in the country, the ticket has regional, Ralph Reed will figure out a way to convince Christians that it’s okay to vote for Giuliani, even if he did wear a dress. According to the Washington Post, Reed, who recently left his position as executive director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition to work as a private political consultant, is expected to work on Bush’s presidential campaign staff, although former Vice President Dan Quayle is the chosen candidate of the Christian Coalition Reed just left. PAULINE THEOLOGY. Libertarian Republican Congressman Ron Paul might support the Gold Standard and oppose Social Security, but he occasionally gets it right on foreign policy, where his pronouncements often make more sense than anything Madeline Albright has said lately. “Our foreign policy is without sense or reason,” announced Paul last month. “We subsidize China to the tune of many billions of dollars, although their record on human rights is every bit as bad as Iraq…. Further, we are currently bailing out Indonesia, although it too, violates the civil rights of [its] own people…. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have hardly been champions of civil liberties for minority religious groups or women, and yet we sacrificed American lives for them. The determining factor in all this seems to be who’s controlling the oil.” A Father Roy Bourgeois Alan Pogue NO CONTEST? Six hundred and two of the 2,500 peace activists who traveled to Fort Benning, Georgia, to protest the spending of U.S. tax dollars to train Latin American soldiers were arrested for entering the military post that houses the School of the Americas. The protest took place on November 16, the eighth anniversary of the assassination of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter, killed in San Salvador by Salvadoran soldiers. Many SOA graduates have returned to their countries to engage in campaigns of terror. The 26-man battalion responsible for the political assassination commemorated in Georgia included nineteen SOA graduates, and the death squad that carried out the assassination of Salvadoran Bishop Oscar Romero was led by graduate Roberto d’Aubuisson. Among those arrested on November 16, twenty-eight were repeat offenders, who entered the military post for at least the second time. Three of the twenty-eight appeared before a federal magistrate in Georgia and pled no contest. Carol Richardson, of SOA Watch; Anne Henderson, described as “a grandmother for peace” from New York; and Richard Streb, a retired college professor from Binghamton, New York, were all sentenced to six months in prison and fined $3,000 for criminal trespass. The other twenty-five repeat offenders entered “not guilty” pleas and await trial before a federal judge. All others were released, and face no fur ther prosecutionunless they return to the base before November 19, 1998, three days after the next annual protest scheduled by SOA Watch and Father Roy Bourgeois, the Catholic priest and former military officer working to close the SOA. \(The New York Times and The Washington Post have both described the Army’s Fort Benning operahas served two federal prison sentences totalling eighteen months for previous acts of civil disobedience at the school. He was again arrested for entering the base, as he promised in October \(TO, Bourgeois faces another trial and possibly more time in prison. Two bills that would close the school are pending before Congress: House Resolution 611, sponsored by Massachusetts Representative Joseph Kennedy, and Senate Bill 980, sponsored by Illinois Senator Richard Durbin. To contact the Washington, D. C., office of SOA Watch, the organization Bourgeois A VET AND A NUT. Victoria Republican State Rep Steve Holzheauser hasn’t gotten a lot of press during his ten years in the House, mostly because he’s done nothing but show up to vote. But at least the Victoria veterinarian didn’t get the attention his opponent in the Republican primary earned during his one term in Congress. Steve Stockman was the Beaumont congressman who wrote in Guns & Ammo that President Clinton was pleased with the “fiery end of the, siege at Waco,” because it was “a lesson to gun owners all over America.” Stockman, who defeated Democrat Jack Brooks in 1996, also warned Attorney General Janet Reno that a Soldier of Fortune editor had told him that an El Paso military task force was preparing to raid U.S. militia groups. \(Stockman had earlier said Reno was guilty of “premeditated murder” in the attack on the Branch Davidians, diminishing somewhat his credibility Owners of America lobbyist Larry Pratt and made him an insider, arranging for him to meet Dick Armey to lobby for an immediate vote to repeal the assault weapons ban. Pratt had been forced off Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaign because of his appearance at Aryan Nation meetings and other racist gatherings. DECEMBER 5, 1997 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 17