JOHN SEMMENS: Semi-News

Leading Economic Indicators Rise Strongly

July 29, 2005

The composite index of leading economic indicators rose by 0.9 percent in June. This is an annualized rate of expansion of 11 percent. In addition, jobless benefit claims experienced the largest drop in over two years.

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) decried the trend: “This sickening spiral of prosperity is deadening people’s demands for government hand-outs, causing more and more to side with the Republican extremists who insist that individuals ought to work for a living.”

The senator renewed his call for a tax hike targeted at business investment as the best hope for turning the economy around.

O’Connor Sees Threat from Congress

Retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor gave America a parting warning of the growing threat that Congress will usurp the court’s lawmaking authority.

“Members of Congress are attempting to set themselves up as the supreme legislative body in direct contradiction to a long series of court decisions holding that such authority rightfully rests with the judiciary,” said O’Connor. “After all, the legislature is made up of amateurs elected by uninformed voters to relatively brief terms in office. The Supreme Court is made up of grizzled octogenarians, each having intensive legal training and decades of experience in making new laws.”

O’Connor suggested that eliminating Congress would save both time and money. Apprised of the unlikelihood of this happening since a Constitutional Amendment eliminating Congress would have to be passed on to state legislatures by Congress, O’Connor replied that, “If the right case is presented to the Court, it could decide the issue.”

Youngster’s Antics Raise Questions

At the White House ceremony announcing the nomination of John Roberts for the Supreme Court, Roberts’ four-year-old son Jack was shown on television fidgeting during the event. Democrats pounced on this as evidence of his father’s unsuitability for the Supreme Court.

Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said the boy's antics reminded him of goose-stepping Nazis. “The imagery is frighteningly disturbing,” said Durbin. “Mr. Roberts will have a lot of explaining to do before we can even begin to consider his candidacy for the Court.”

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) asserted that “A man who cannot control his own son isn’t fit for a place on the Supreme Court.”

Schumer and John Roberts clashed back in 2003 when the Senate Judiciary Committee interrogated him following his nomination to the Court of Appeals. At that time, Schumer castigated Roberts for refusing to say how he would have ruled on a lengthy list of historical Supreme Court cases.

Town Council Rejects Application to Raise the Roof

Brian Culbert, who is 6-feet, 10-inches tall, and his 6-foot wife Fiona are so tall they are banging their heads on the low ceilings and door jams.

The Lumphanan, UK Town Council rejected their application to raise the roof of their home on the grounds that it would set a "dangerous precedent."

Peter Argyle, vice-chair of the council, said: "It is bad enough that the Culberts tower over their mostly short and squat neighbors. Allowing them to make their house taller would further aggravate everyone else’s feelings of inferiority. Besides, if we allow this modification we will establish a precedent that the home owner ought to be the one to decide what his house will look like. This would dangerously interfere with the government’s right to control how property is used.”

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