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The Forsyth County News
Opinion
This is a page of opinions — ours, yours and others.
Signed columns and cartoons are the opinidns of the
writers and artists and may not reflect our views.
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CITY COUNCIL
Mayor, H. Ford Gravitt
RO. Box 3177, Cumming, GA 30028; (770) 8874342
Mayor Pro-Tem, Lewis Ledbetter
205 Mountain Brook Drive, Cumming, GA 30040; (770) 887-3019
Ralph Perry
1420 Pilgrim Road, Cumming, GA 30040; (770) 887-7474
Quincy Holton
103 Hickory Ridge Drive, Cumming, GA 30040; (770) 887-5279
Rupert Sexton
705 Pine Lake Drive, Cumming, GA 30040; (770) 887-4332
John Pugh
10813th St., Cumming, GA 30040; (770) 887-3342
COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
Charles Laughinghouse, Post 1
3550 Rosewicke Drive, (770) Cumming, GA 30040
(770) 886-7937; office, 886-2810;
cllaughinghouse@forsythco.com
Brian Tam, Post 2
4410 Dorset Lane, Suwanee, GA 30024
(404) 392-6983; office, (678) 513-5882; brtam@forsythco.com
Chairman John A. “Jack” Conway, Post 3
6130 Polo Club Drive, Cumming, GA 30040
(770) 886-9226; (770) 886-2807; jaconway@forsythco.com
David Richard, Post 4
8540 Meadow Grove Lane, Gainesville, GA 30506
(678) 513-5884; dwrichard@forsythco.com
Linda Ledbetter, Post 5
206 Mountain Brook Drive, Cumming, GA 30040
(678) 513-5885; lkledbetter@forsythco.com
BOARD OF EDUCATION
Ann Crow
320 Dahlonega St., Cumming, GA 30040
(770) 490-6316; acrow@forsyth.k12.ga.us
Tom Cleveland
5225 Millsford Court, Cumming, GA 30040
(770) 844-9901; tcleveland@forsyth.k12.ga.us
Nancy Roche
7840 Chestnut Hill Road, Cumming, GA 30041
(770) 889-0229; nroche@forsyth.k12.ga.us
Ronnie Pinson
8310 Browns Bridge Road, Gainesville, GA 30506
(770) 887-9808; rpinson@forsyth.k12.ga.us
Luke Haymond
759 Peachree Parkway, Suite 1, Cumming GA 30041
(770) 844-0020; lhaymond@forsyth.k12.ga.us
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NATIONAL LEGISLATORS
U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson
United States Senate
(■■«?** Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-3643 or (770) 661 -0999
U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss
416 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-3521 or (770) 763-9090 W
U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, 10th District
¥ S 2437 Rayburn House Office Building,
i ^1 Washington, D.C. 20515
i |vjfl Gainesville: RO. Box 1015, Gainesville, GA 30503
(770)535-2592;(202)225-5211;Fax;(202)225-8272
U.S. Rep. John Linder, 7th District
1026 Longworth House Office Building,
Washington, D.C. 20515-1011 i
(202) 2254272; (770) 232-3005; Fax: (202) 225- i
4696
STATE LEGISLATORS
Sen. Eugene “Chip” Pearson, 51 st District
The State Senate, State Capitol, Atlanta, GA 30334
District: P.O. Box 38, Dawsonville, GA 30534
770) 886-6971 or (404) 656-9221
Sen. Bill Stephens, 27th
District
236 State Capitol, Atlanta,
GA 30334; (404) 656-0048;
District: P.O. Box 4400,
Canton, GA 30114; (770) 517-5229
t Rep.Tom Knox, 24th District
1 220-A State Capitol, Atlanta, GA 30334
(404) 656-6831, or (770) 887-0400, law office
Rep. Amos Amerson, 9th District
Suite 401-G
State Capitol
Atlanta, GA 30334; (404) 657-8443
or (706) 864-6589
Rep. Jack Murphy, 23rd District
Legislative Office Building, Room 504
Atlanta
GA 30334
(404) 656-0188
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*
Who are you calling angry?
Janeane Garofalo, left-wing
actress-turned-Air America
radio host, is a miserable
woman. Last week before the
holidays, she turned up on cable
TV. No, not to count her bless¬
ings — but to rant against con¬
servative journalist Bob Novak,
author Ann Coulter, and the Fox
News Channel. She didn’t have
anything better to do for
Thanksgiving?
Accessorized by a perma¬
nent scowl (hard to believe she
was once considered a comedi¬
enne), Ms. Garofalo accused
conservatives of having “an
anger management problem.”
Without a trace of irony, the
frowning Garofalo griped about
“right-wing partisan hacks”
who “are always on the verge of
punching somebody or always
behave as if they’ve just been
cut off in traffic.” ,
This, dear readers, is a clas
sic case of liberal projection.
Like CNN executive Jonathan
Klein, who derided Fox’s audi¬
ence as full of “angry white
men, and those men tend to be
rabid,” and liberal comedian
Bill Maher, who also railed that
“Republicans need anger man¬
agement” and are possessed
with a “vein-popping, gut
churning rage that consumes the
entire right wing,” Ms. Garofalo
crossly blames the Right while
denying the pathological wrath
and fury that characterize the
J. Hoover’s name
WASHINGTON — On
Halloween night, crusty con¬
servative Judge Laurence H.
Silberman had a scary tale to
tell fellow right-wingers gath¬
ered for dinner at
Washington’s University Club.
He told in more detail than
ever before how J. Edgar
Hoover as FBI director
“allowed — even offered —
the Bureau to be used by pres¬
idents for nakedly political
purposes.” He called for the
director’s name to be removed
from the FBI’s J. Edgar
Hoover Building in downtown
Washington.
“In my view,” Silberman
said, “it is as if the Defense
: Department were named for
Aaron Burr. Liberals and con¬
servatives should unite to sup¬
port legislation to accomplish
this repudiation of a very sad
chapter in American history.”
That concluded his speech,
but it was not followed by
overwhelming applause. Nor
was there volunteered support
for his mission.
Silberman’s plea was not
exactly what his listeners
expected from him as featured
speaker for the Pumpkin
Papers Irregulars, who dine
each year to celebrate
Whittaker Chambers hiding in
his farm’s pumpkins classified
documents conveyed by Alger
Hiss to his Soviet spymasters.
The 70-year-old Silberman is
a judge in senior status on the
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Michelle
Malkin
' '7,
COLUMNIST
Who are you calling angry,
Ms. Garofalo? You want politi¬
cal road rage? Let’s start with
Al. Take your pick: Sharpton.
Gore. Franken. Yearrghh!
Now, open your eyes:
It isn’t out-of-control con¬
servatives tossing Molotov
cocktails at police officers in
San Francisco, burning
American soldiers in effigy, and
smearing pig’s blood and feces
on the walls and windows of
military recruitment centers
across the country to protest on
behalf of peace.
It isn’t rage-blinded conser¬
vative professors who embrace
fragging (the murder of
American soldiers by their fel¬
low soldiers on the battlefield)
as a legitimate anti-war tactic.
It isn’t vengeful conserva¬
tives torching SUVs, condo
developments, and research
facilities, and targeting biotech
and pharmaceutical company
employees and their families to
protest on behalf of the environ¬
ment.
It wasn’t mad conservatives
sporting “F— Bush” license
plates, punching cardboard
cutouts of the president, and
to secede after
Robert
Novak
COLUMNIST
for the District of Columbia,
capping a career in high gov¬
ernment office dating back 37
years.
His most recent public
service was as co-chairman of
the bipartisan presidential
commission on intelligence
failures. Its recommendations,
implemented by President
Bush, included a separate
national security service with¬
in the FBI. The Bureau’s ini¬
tial opposition that it would
undermine the attorney gener¬
al’s authority over the FBI
“amused” Silberman, consid¬
ering his experience as deputy
attorney general in the Nixon
and Ford administrations.
Instructed by the House
Judiciary Committee in 1974
to report on secret files kept
by Hoover (who died in
1972), Silberman told the
Irregulars: “It was the single
worst experience of my long
governmental service.” He
said Hoover ordered special
agents to report “privately to
him any bits of dirt on politi¬
cal figures such as Martin
Luther King and their fami¬
lies.” Silberman said Hoover
used this as “subtle blackmail
to ensure his and the Bureau’s
power,” adding: “I intend to
*
FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS — Friday, December 2,2005
the 2004 presidential election.
It wasn’t rabid conservatives
who gloated over Ronald
Reagan’s death or John
Ashcroft’s pancreatitis.
It wasn’t a gut-busting con¬
servative journalist who vowed
to kill herself if Dick Cheney
ran for president. (That would
be the perpetually aggrieved
Helen Thomas.)
It wasn’t hate-filled
Republican officials who
reportedly screamed “faggot”
and “fruitcake” and “I’ll break
your nose” at their political
opponents. (Those were all
Democrats: Pennsylvania state
legislator Vincent Fumo,
California Rep. Pete Stark, and
Virginia Rep. Jim Moran,
respectively.)
It isn’t fanatical conserva¬
tives joking about the assassina¬
tion of President Bush and the
execution of his Republican
aides. (That, Ms. Garofalo,
would include your Air America
colleagues. But I’ll forgive you
if you weren’t tuned in to them.
Few are.)
And it wasn’t ruthless con¬
servatives who cheered last
week when a liberal Bush-hater
wrote on the popular Dem
ocraticUnderground.com web¬
site last week:
/ am an American, Bom and
Raised,.but I am NOT a citizen
of BUSH’S America. I want
nothing to do with the country
take to my grave nasty bits of
information on various politi¬
cal figures — some still
active.”
Even worse than “dirt col¬
lection,” Silberman continued,
was Hoover’s offering of
Bureau files to presidents. He
exempted only Harry S.
Truman and Dwight D.
Eisenhower from this use of
FBI files, but said, “Lyndon
Johnson was the most
demanding.”
When President Johnson’s
aide Walter Jenkins was
arrested for homosexual con¬
duct in a men’s room during
the 1964 campaign, Silberman
said, LBJ aide Bill Moyers
directed Hoover to find simi¬
lar conduct on Barry
Goldwater’s staff. “Moyers’
memo to the FBI was in one
of the files,” he continued. An
“outraged” Moyers tele¬
phoned Silberman, he said, to
assert that the memo was
“phony.” “Taken aback,” said
Silberman, he offered an
investigation to publicly exon¬
erate Moyers. “There was a
pause on the line, and then he
[Moyers] said, ‘I was very
young. How will I explain this
to my children? »»» Sil
berman’s account of our con¬
versation is at odds with
mine,” Moyers told me when I
asked for comment.
During the 1968 campaign,
Silberman said Johnson
ordered FBI surveillance on
Republican vice presidential
?
PAGE 11 A
And for those who support
them, Let’s get Something Nice
And Sparkling CLEAR:
Stay The [F—] Away From
Me. Stay OUT of my personal
space. I want NOTHING from
you. I want NOTHING to do
with you. I want NOTHING to
do with your “vision ” of what
the world should be.
What DO I want from you?
Honestly?
I will freely admit there are
days, and they are becoming
more than not, that the Alien at
Area 51 in Independence Day
and I share quite a common
ground on the answer to that
question.
And I am NOT apologizing
for it.
In the words of the Late,
Great Bill Hicks, about the most
conciliatory thing I can say for
those people at this point is sim¬
ply this:
Kill Yourself.
My Christmas wish for Ms.
Garofalo and her ilk: a mirror
and a clue to make the yuletide
bright. In the meantime, when
vein-popping liberals start
seething about the rage of the
Right, the wisest action for
peaceful right-wingers I can
recommend is this:
Duck.
Michelle Malkin is author of
the new book “Unhinged:
Exposing Liberals Gone Wild.’’
Her e-mail address is
net.
candidate Spiro Agnew, not
about the bribery that eventu¬
ally drove him out of office
but to check whether he was in
contact with South Vietnam’s
government. He said LBJ also
used the FBI to spy on
Democrats, including his aide
Richard Goodwin, whom he
inherited from President John
F. Kennedy but suspected was
too close to Robert F.
Kennedy.
“I think it would be appro¬
priate to introduce all new
[FBI] recruits to the nature of
the secret and confidential
files of J. Edgar Hoover,”
Silberman concluded. “And in
that connection this country
— and the Bureau — would
be well served if Hoover’s
name was removed from the
Bureau’s building.”
After polite applause, a
conservative gentleman sitting
at my table said he thought
Hoover on balance was a force
for good in America. I dis¬
agreed, contending he was a
rogue and a law-breaker
(though I may be prejudiced
by his plans to tap my tele¬
phone that were undone by
my FBI sources). Nearly a
month now has passed without
any conservative publicly ris¬
ing to agree with Larry
Silberman that J. Edgar’s
memory should not be hon¬
ored.
Robert Novak is a nation¬
ally syndicated columnist and
a television commentator.