[The following letter was written by a lady on the staff of a United States Senator. She has asked that we only use her first name, Laura. TTP has personally confirmed with her the veracity of her account, which took place on February 8, 2004.]

I'm at the 8:00 am service at my church, St. Johns at Lafayette Square, across from the White House. (I wanted to go early because I was going with Alice and Brent for breakfast at the Cracker Barrel in Manassas.) Much of the service was uneventful--nice, but uneventful--until it comes to the part of the service when the priest says, "Greet one another in the name of the Lord." I turn to my right to exchange the peace with my friend Amy, who was on the other end of my pew. I then shake hands with the person in front of me, and turn around to say hello to the person behind me.

The person behind me was our 43rd President George W. Bush

My view has been that this man, who is a quasi-traitor and anti-American as well as a vacuous, arrogant snob, could not be elected president, unless perhaps his opponent were falling apart before our eyes, and Bush hasn’t reached that stage yet. Regardless of the polls, regardless of what’s going on in the world of politics, it would be unimaginable and unprecedented for the U.S. to elect such a man.

That’s been my position. But now it occurs to me that there is another way of seeing it:

Whether the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein were self-inflicted or not, the military operation to capture them was immaculate.
 
There were no American deaths, 10 minutes of warnings were given over loudspeakers, and it was the Iraqis who opened fire. So sensitive was the American approach, they even rang the bell of the house before entering.

The neat operation fits squarely with the tenor of the whole American campaign, contrary to the popular negative depiction of its armed forces:  that they are spoilt, well-equipped, steroid-pumped, crudely patriotic yokels who are trigger-happy yet cowardly in their application of overwhelming force.

”John X” is a very recently retired FSO (Foreign Service Officer) of many years at the State Department. It’s important to know that there are a good many conservatives sprinkled throughout the Foreign Service - and even on the Seventh Floor of Foggy Bottom itself. Most of them have to stay politically hidden, but with Condi they may start coming out of their closets. Here is “John’s” assessment, as a State Department professional, of Colin Powell. -JW


Powell had made no secret that he would resign after the election. We had been hearing rumors all last week that Powell had submitted his resignation letter; on Friday, November 12, a 7th floor source told me that Powell had sent his letter to the President. On Monday, of course, it was all over the media.

I was in the Department the day that Powell arrived. He was a breath of fresh air after a string of very bad Secretaries of State, starting with Jim Baker, continuing with the comatose Warren Christopher, and then the vile Madeleine Albright.

The State Department was in disarray, morale was at rock bottom, literally hundreds of officers had quit or taken early retirement. Our Embassies in many countries were barely functional, and very exposed to terrorist attack. Department employees were constantly being lectured on the need "to do more with less" but no reform of the bureaucracy was undertaken to make it leaner and more efficient; everything was pretty much left as it was, but just given less money -- except of course for Albright's travels, in my office she was known as the "Empress" for her lavish demands on the budget.

[Clinton’s Secretary of State was also nicknamed “Secretary Half-Bright” by virtually the entire Foreign Service. She was astoundingly stupid. - JW.]

So Powell was a relief.

I am glad to see Professor Hospers’ letter on websites such as WorldNetDaily. We offer it here in case you have not seen it. John Hospers changed my life, and so much for the better. When he was Chairman of the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, he persuaded me to teach there and get my Ph.D. under his guidance. That was 33 years ago, and whatever philosophic capacities I have result in large part from the impact of his wisdom and counsel.

It is a tragedy that so many libertarians pretend to live in Plato’s Cave, despising the real actual America because it does not live up to their Platonic ideals. Let’s hope Professor Hospers’ valiant effort persuades them to leave the comforting dark of fantasy and have the courage to fight for the country they actually live in. -JW

As a way of getting acquainted, let me just say that I was the first presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party back in l972, and was the author of the first full-length book, Libertarianism, describing libertarianism in detail. I also wrote the Libertarian Party’s Statement of Principles at the first libertarian national convention in 1972. I still believe in those principles as strongly as ever, but this year — more than any year since the establishment of the Libertarian Party — I have major concerns about the choices open to us as voting Americans.

There is a belief that’s common among many libertarians that there is no essential difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties — between a John Kerry and a George W. Bush administration; or worse: that a Bush administration would be more undesirable. Such a notion could not be farther from the truth, or potentially more harmful to the cause of liberty.

The election of John Kerry would be, far more than is commonly realized, a catastrophe.

This is the full Introduction to John Fund’s new book, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy . A friend of mine for many years, John is on the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal and writes the WSJ’s Political Diary column. You’ve seen him often on Fox News - it’s always enjoyable to see John rhetorically slap Alan Colmes around.

John has written a very important book, and it could not be more timely. The Democrats are masters at stealing elections, and new rules regarding such things as “provisional ballots” and mass absentee voter fraud give them more opportunities than ever. John’s book is sobering and frightening. The Democrats have gone around the bend this year with rage. Their ends-justifies-the-means Marxist morality - as exhibited by Dan Ra^ther claiming forgeries are fine if they contain a “core truth” - gives them the rationale to commit whatever fraud necessary to “win.” Please read John’s Intro - and please buy John’s book! -JW

Our nation may be on the brink of repeating the 2000 Florida election debacle, but this time in several states, with allegations of voter fraud, intimidation and manipulation of voting machines added to the generalized chaos that sent our last presidential contest into overtime. There is still time to reduce the chance of another electoral meltdown, both this year and in future years. But this will not happen unless we acknowledge that the United States has a haphazard, fraud-prone election system befitting an emerging Third World country rather than the world's leading democracy.