New Year Promises Change As Giants Leave World Stage
January 1, 2007

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

In the Dec. 20 issue of Gun Week we reported on the Dec. 4 resignation of the iron-willed, straight-talking John Bolton as the US Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) effective Dec. 31. American gunowners, who understood that Bolton had been a forceful advocate of reform at the UN as well as a staunch defender of the US Constitution including the Second Amendment, were sorry to see him leave, particularly while the world body moved ever closer to finalizing a treaty to regulate small arms, including common self-defense and recreational firearms, around the world.

Bolton’s tenure at UN was opposed by a number of globalist, anti-gun Democrats and their like-minded Republican counterparts in the Senate. With Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE), who had pledged to prevent Bolton from ever getting Senate approval to a regular UN appointment, expected to take control of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bolton’s resignation was not unexpected. It was also regretfully accepted by President Bush.

Bolton stepping down is just one more sign of the changing times as one year ends and another begins. The new year promises to be a difficult and perhaps surprising one. However, with regard to the UN, one should remember that Americans have had strong and articulate representation during the UN’s 61-year-history. Admittedly the UN of today is not the UN of the 1940s and ’50s.

Different UN
Organized to solidify alliances to win World War II and the subsequent peace, the UN moved promptly and decisively when President Truman sought to block the June 1950 invasion of South Korea by its neighbor to the north. In more recent times, the UN has been much more sluggish to respond to challenges like those in Rwanda, the Sudan and other hot spots.

It is ironic that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who retires from his post on the same date as Bolton, chose the Truman Library in Independence, MO, as the site for a farewell address attacking US policies under Bush.

However, Americans should remember that we have had a series of forceful advocates for US ideals at the United Nations. I am old enough to remember Adlai Stevenson demanding truthful answers from the Soviet ambassador during the Cuban Missile Crisis and saying he was prepared to wait “until hell freezes over” for straight answers from the Khrushchev government.

Stevenson, Bolton, Jeane Kirkpatrick during the Reagan Administration, and even Madeline Albright under Clinton, have all been tough-talking diplomats who served American interests well.

Thus it is unfortunate that as Bolton and Annan exit the UN stage perhaps our most iron-willed UN ambassador has passed away.

Jeane Kirkpatrick
Former UN Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a one-time Democrat who switched to the Republican Party and warmly embraced and served the Reagan era of conservatism, has died at age 80.

Kirkpatrick’s death was announced on Dec. 8 at the senior staff meeting of the US mission to the UN, said spokesman Richard Grenell, who said that Ambassador John Bolton asked for a moment of silence. An announcement of her death also was posted on the website of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative-oriented think tank in Washington, DC, where she was a senior fellow.

Kirkpatrick’s assistant, Andrea Harrington, said that she died in her sleep at home in Bethesda, MD, late on Dec. 7. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Kirkpatrick’s health had been in decline recently, Harrington said, adding that she was “basically confined to her house,” going to work about once a week “and then less and less.”

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), said that Kirkpatrick, the first woman to serve as US ambassador to the UN, “stood up for the interests of America while at the UN, lent a powerful moral voice to the Reagan foreign policy and has been a source of wise counsel to our nation since leaving the government two decades ago. She will be greatly missed.”

Karlyn H. Bowman, a colleague of Kirkpatrick’s at AEI, called her “always insightful. Always interesting. Very thoughtful about modern American politics and foreign policy. A wonderful colleague.”

Kirkpatrick was known as a blunt and sometimes acerbic advocate for her causes. She remained involved in public issues even though she’d left government service two decades ago. She joined seven other former UN ambassadors in 2005 in writing a letter to Congress telling lawmakers that their plan to withhold dues to force reform at the world body was misguided and would “create resentment, build animosity and actually strengthen opponents of reform.”

And even when a giant such as Fitzpatrick leaves the scene for good, the winds of change are sweeping through Washington in preparation for the seating of the new Congress early in January.

According to The Washington Post, you can forget the minimum wage. Or outsourcing jobs overseas. The labor issue most on the minds of members of Congress on Dec. 5, according to the newspaper, was their own: They will have to work five days a week starting in January.

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who will become House majority leader and is writing the schedule for the next Congress, said members should expect longer hours than the brief week they have grown accustomed to.

“I have bad news for you,” Hoyer told reporters. “Those trips you had planned in January, forget ’em. We will be working almost every day in January, starting with the 4th.”

The reporters groaned. “I know, it’s awful, isn’t it?” Hoyer empathized.

For lawmakers, it is awful, compared with what they have come to expect. For much of the 2006 election year, the legislative week started late Tuesday and ended by Thursday afternoon—and that was during the relatively few weeks the House wasn’t in recess.

In 2007, members of the House will be expected in the Capitol for votes each week by 6:30 p.m. Monday and will finish their business about 2 p.m. Friday, Hoyer said.

With the new calendar, the Democrats are trying to project a businesslike image when they take control of Congress. House and Senate Democratic leaders have announced an ambitious agenda for their first 100 hours and say they are adamant about scoring legislative victories they can trumpet in the 2008 campaigns.

Hoyer and other Democratic leaders say they are trying to repair the image of Congress, which was so anemic this year it could not meet a basic duty: to approve spending bills that fund government. When the gavel ended the 109th Congress, members will have worked a total of 103 days. That’s seven days fewer than the infamous “Do-Nothing Congress” of 1948.

Hoyer said members can bid farewell to extended holidays, the kind that awarded them six weekdays to relax around Memorial Day, when most Americans get a single day off. He didn’t mention the month-long August recess, the two-week April recess or the weeks off in February, March and July.

He said members need to spend more time in the Capitol to pass laws and oversee federal agencies. “We are going to meet sufficient times, so the committees can do their jobs on behalf of the American people,” he said.

“Keeping us up here eats away at families,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays, according to The Post. “Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families—that’s what this says.”

Time away from Washington is just as important to being an effective member of Congress as time spent in the Capitol, Kingston added. “When I’m here, people call me Mr. Congressman. When I’m home, people call me ‘Jack, you stupid SOB, why did you vote that way?’ It keeps me grounded.”
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