Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues & Strategy Bulletin of March 15, 1998

DAN QUAYLE ENDORSES PUERTO RICAN STATEHOOD

Concerning statehood for Puerto Rico, former Vice President Dan Quayle, appearing on Meet the Press (NBC, 3/15/98), said: "If two-thirds of the people of Puerto Rico vote for statehood, then I think we'd be in a position to try to have them become a state."

REPUBLICANS KILLED ENGLISH LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT

Prior to the 209-208 House floor vote paving the way for subsequent Senate action, the GOP House voted 238 to 182 (Roll Call no. 29, 3/4/98) to support legislation blocking a proposal to require that English be the official language.

Republicans who voted those Republicans voting in favor of Burton amendmentagainst making the primacy of English a prerequisite for Puerto Rican statehood included: Ballenger (N.C.), Barton (Tex.), Boehlert (N.Y.), Bonilla (Tex.), Burton (Ind.), Buyer (Ind.), Camp (Mich.), Campbell (Calif.), Cannon (Utah), Castle (Del.), Cook (Utah), Diaz-Balart (Fla.), Ehlers (Mich.), Ehrlich (Md.), English (Pa.), Ensign (Nev.), Foley (Fla.), Forbes (N.Y.), Fox (Pa.), Gallegly (Calif.), Gekas (Pa.), Gibbons (Nev.), Gilchrest (Md.), Gilman (N.Y.), Granger (Tex.), Greenwood (Pa.), Hansen (Utah), Hostettler (Ind.), Houghton (N.Y.), Hulshof (Mo.), Kelly (N.Y.), Kim (Calif.), Klug (Wisc.), Kolbe (Ariz.), Lazio (N.Y.), Leach (Iowa), McCollum (Fla.), McInnis (Colo.), McKeon (Calif.), Mica (Fla.), Morella (Md.), Oxley (Ohio), Pombo (Calif.), Portman (Ohio), Redmond (N.M.), Riggs (Calif.), Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), Saxton (N.J.), Shaw (Fla.), Skeen (N.M.), Smith (N.J.), Tauzin (La.), Thornberry (Tex.), Walsh (N.Y.), and Young (Alaska).

This included 21 Republicans who, on final passage (Roll Call no. 37, 3/4/98), voted against statehood (208-209). These 21 were: Ballenger (N.C.), Barton (Tex.), Camp (Mich.), Campbell (Calif.), Castle (Del.), Cook (Utah), Ehrlich (Md.), Ensign (Nev.), Fox (Pa.), Gibbons (Nev.), Greenwood (Pa.), Hansen (Utah), Hostettler (Ind.), Houghton (N.Y.), Hulshof (Mo.), Klug (Wisc.), McInnis (Colo.), Oxley (Ohio), Portman (Ohio), Shaw (Fla.), and Thornberry (Tex.).

Depending on the way redistricting works out, it could involve a net loss of 12 seats in the House of Representatives for the GOP. That could be fitting recompense for the Machiavellian maneuvers regarding Puerto Rican statehood.

DeLAY, BURTON, McCULLOM, SMITH BACK PUERTO RICAN STATEHOOD

Among the Republicans who voted (H.R. 856, Roll Call 37, 3/4/98) to put Puerto Rican statehood on a "fast track" were: Boehlert (N.Y.), Bonilla (Tex.), Burton (Ind.), Buyer (Ind.), Calvert (Calif.), Cannon (Utah), Cooksey (La.), Davis (Va.), DeLay (Tex.), Diaz-Balart (Fla.), Ehlers (Mich.), English (Pa.), Foley (Fla.), Forbes (N.Y.), Franks (N.J.), Frelinghuysen (N.J.), Gallegly (Calif.), Gekas (Penn.), Gilchrest (Md.), Gilman (N.Y.), Granger (Tex.), Kelly (N.Y.), Kim (Calif.), King (N.Y.), Kolbe (Ariz.), Lazio (N.Y.), Leach (Iowa), McCollum (Fla.), McKeon (Calif.), Mica (Fla.), Morella (Md.), Parker (Miss.), Peterson (Pa.), Pombo (Calif.), Quinn (N.Y.), Redmond (N.M.), Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), Saxton (N.J.), Skeen (N.M.), Smith (N.J.), Tauzin (La.), Walsh (N.Y.), and Young (Alaska).

Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues & Strategy Bulletin of August 31, 1997

The pandering pachyderms are at it again. Not satisfied with the fiascos they have caused by supporting Bill Clinton on the line-item veto, the $2 trillion budget, NAFTA, WTO, MFN for Red China, subsidies to Planned Parenthood and the homosexuals, extension of the Legal Services Corporation and the National Endowment for the Arts, expansion of the Federal role in education, creation of a new socialized medicine entitlement, yielding to the tax claims of the U.N. General Assembly, and so much more, now they propose to make Puerto Rico a state.

What a nitwit idea---not least of all, because of the language difficulties which would be involved.

E PLURIBUS UNUM? GINGRICH WANTS TO BUILD A TOWER OF BABEL

Sam Francis says this lunacy is not accidental. It springs from the brain of the "evil genius" Speaker Newt Gingrich.

According to Sam Francis (8/12/97), "Writing in The New Yorker of August 4, Joe Klein quotes the Speaker as expatiating on the Tower of Babel in the nation's schools. ‘Do you realize that there are two hundred languages spoken in the Chicago school system?’ Mr. Gingrich asked. ‘That's an asset, not a liability. Let's pair up the kids. You get Sally to speak Cambodian and Sally gets you to speak English. If they succeed we give each of them a thousand dollars. We'd have kids practicing language seven days a week.’

"It's hard to believe any grown man would utter this kind of foolishness. In the first place, the numberless languages now being chattered in American school systems are a liability by anyone's definition. Administratively, they make communication of simple classroom instructions almost impossible. Financially, teaching immigrant children to speak English costs millions of dollars that could be spent on more useful matters. Educationally, teaching English as a second language takes teachers away from dealing with the more serious learning problems of other students. Culturally, the explosion of multilingualism threatens one of the most fundamental instruments of a common nationality – the ability to talk to each other and to share the literary and linguistic heritage of a common civilization....

"It tells us that Mr. Gingrich has essentially signed up with the ‘diversity myth’ that Bill Clinton and his administration and its apologists in the media and cultural elites have been weaving. Behind Mr. Gingrich's delusion that polyglot school systems are an asset lies the more basic delusion that a common nationality is obsolete and that whatever serves to disintegrate nationality is progressive."

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