RUST COMMENTARY: MARINE CORPS NUMBERS ARE DOWN IN SPITE OF CONTINUED THREATS

According to Lt. Col. KEITH SEIWELL (who spoke at the Cape Chamber of Commerce's First Friday Coffee last week), the Marine Corps budget has been cut 37 percent since Desert Storm, and the more than 200,000 strong Marine force is down to about 174,000 active troops and 40,000 reserves.

My read is that the United States would be hard-pressed to mount another Desert Storm offensive ... especially if we had a threat requiring troops at another front. But don't worry ... it's the economy, stupid, and things are going well.

Nuclear threats include the instability of the Russian economy and the Russians' willingness to sell arms and nuclear components to other countries ... but don't worry etc. etc. etc.

We have a newspaper at an Air Force base in the Northwest, and my daughter lives in North Carolina adjacent to Fort Bragg ... the home of the U.S. special forces who are generally the first to be called out for any military police action.

Where deployments used to average one over two years, they're now as high as twice yearly. Therefore, the officer retention rate is plummeting, and so is the morale with all of the social experimentation and non-military assignments. BUT ... don't worry. It's the economy, stupid.

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Navy pilots bailing out: I've reported to you before on the low morale and lower retention rates of our top Air Force pilots. Now a new report shows that the Navy is also suffering a crisis of confidence among its pilots. A Navy survey shows family separation, poor leadership and shrinking promotion opportunities are the main reasons why pilots are leaving. The airlines are offering top dollar to the Navy's Top Guns. This is the inevitable result of the neglect of our armed forces by a Clinton administration that sees America's role in the world as peacekeeping instead of peace through strength. This administration has used the military as a laboratory for a host of social experiments, creating a politically correct atmosphere which is hard for real leaders to stomach. "If we don't stop this, we're going to be in big trouble," said one Navy spokesman of the current practice of sending out junior guys as strike leaders. In the Carter era, it was called "hollowing out" the military. Today, it's the bailout. -- Washington Update

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Saw the St. Louis RAMS preseason game against the DENVER BRONCOS. Denver 's backup quarterback looked better than the Rams' TONY BANKS. Banks was indecisive and flustered when pressure was put on him. He made numerous poor decisions and was booed on approximately 50 percent of every pass play he attempted.

It's probably his mannerisms, but he showed little leadership in actions or in his body language. The coaches know more than I do, but the St. Louis fans have little patience left.

The running game looked good. The defensive line was great. And the defensive backfield was porous (although at least two key defensive backs sat out the game with minor injuries).

If any two of three basically open passes would have been completed (poor throws), the Rams would still have won ... one connection would have tied the game.

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The St. Louis PLAZA FRONTENAC'S new foreign-art movie theater is featuring some excellent foreign award-winning movies. I saw "Life of AYN RAND." This received one of the five Academy Award nominations for best documentaries this year.

It's worth the time to wrap yourself in the unique beliefs, life and philosophy of this fascinating woman who was born in the U.S.S.R. under communism and who immigrated at the age of 17 to the U.S.

She's the author of "ATLAS SHRUGGED" and "The FOUNTAINHEAD" ... both of which still sell over 100,000 copies annually some 40-plus years after they were written.

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At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In respone to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.

4. Occasionally executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought Car95 or CarNT. But then you would have to buy more seats.

6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but it would only run on five per cent of the roads.

7. The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light.

8. New seats would force everyone to have the same sized butt.

9. The air bag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.

10. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50 percent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.

12. Every time GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again, because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

13. You'd press the "start" button to shut the car down. -- Author unknown

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Weapons watch: If Kip Kinkel, the Oregon schoolboy who shot and killed his parents and two fellow students, had been attending a public school in Missouri, four deaths might have been averted.

While the Show-Me state has thus far escaped the horror of campus shooting rampages, law and education officials here are taking several steps to prevent such headline-making episodes. A new Missouri statute, designed to supplement earlier mandatory federal and state expulsion laws for weapons-toting students, permits authorities to detain offenders for 72 hours for a mental and emotional evaluation if they are found bringing weapons onto school property...although this is NOT mandatory.

The day after Kinkel took a gun to the Springfield, Ore., school, he killed his parents at their home and 24 hours later shot to death two students and wounded 23 others during school hours.

The nation's first significant attempt to deal with weapons being illegally brought to public schools occurred in 1994, when Congress enacted the Gun-Free Schools Act, requiring local educational agencies to expel from school for a period of not less than one year any student who brings a dangerous weapon onto school property. To qualify for federal funding assistance, states were required to enact such penalties, mitigated somewhat by a provision that permits local school officials to modify the year expulsion rule on a case-by-case basis.

Missouri legislators immediately enacted statutes which codified the federal regulations, making them some of the most comprehensive in the nation, according to a spokesman for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Not only does the state statute require a mandatory 12-month expulsion, except when mitigated by local officials, but it adds several weapons which will also result in expelling an offender.

Classified as weapons that will result in expulsion are legislatively defined firearms, blackjacks, concealable firearms, any explosive weapon, firearm silencers, gas guns, knives, brass knuckles, machine guns, projectile weapons, rifles, shotguns, spring guns and switchblade knives. The statute notes the listing can also include any weapon designed to harm a student, teacher or school employee.

Students riding school buses or attending educational activities beyond school property are also held to be in violation of the gun-free regulations. The state statute does not include private schools, although students from these institutions who participate in any state or federally funded programs are covered by the congressional sanctions.

In the first school year (1996-97) the state began keeping track of the number of expulsions under federal and state statutes, 318 students were ordered expelled for a 12-month period after having being found guilty of bringing a firearm or other dangerous weapon onto a school yard or school bus. Of this number, 33 were shortened to a term of less than one year by the chief administering officer of the educational institution involved.

Forty-three of the 318 expulsions were enrolled in elementary grades, 134 in junior high school and 141 were high school students.

Expulsion totals for the school year just ended are still being compiled. -- Excerpts from Missouri Political Newsletter by Jack Stapleton

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"The first responsibility of elected officials is to defend American lives," Family Research Council president Gary Bauer said recently as he called on Congress to push for the development and deployment of a ballistic missile defense system to protect American families.

"It is morally wrong for our leaders to intentionally leave the American people vulnerable to missile attack when the U.S. has the ability to protect them." Bauer criticized the government's policy of delaying deployment of a national missile defense system while seeking to expand the anti-ballistic missile treaty signed by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union in 1972.

Bauer joined House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Senator Kyl, former U.N. ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, House Appropriations Committee chairman Bob Livingston and others at a news conference sponsored by the Coalition to Defend America. The coalition released a poll showing strong support for a national missile defense system.

"The American people face a serious and growing threat of missile attack," Bauer said, noting that rogue states like North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya are working to acquire missiles that could threaten American cities. Bauer urged Congress to pass legislation to help minimize the danger from a deliberate missile attack by a terrorist country or an accidental or unauthorized missile launch by China or Russia. "it should be the policy of the United States government to deploy effective national missile defenses as soon as technologically possible," said Bauer.

The bipartisan Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States found that the threat of a missile strike was immediate. The commission's findings contradict those of the 1995 National Intelligence Estimate which said that a missile threat was at least 15 years away.

Bauer said that developing and deploying a missile defense system would not violate the 1972 ABM treaty. He said that the treaty was "a relic of the Cold War," and no longer valid since the Soviet Union no longer exists. Any attempt by the Clinton administration to extend the treaty to the former Soviet republics such as Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakstan, "would constitute a new treaty that would have to be approved by the Senate." "In light of the current climate of proliferation and terrorism, it's unwise to rely solely on a treaty to safeguard the American people from missile attack. -- Gary Bauer, Family Research Council

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.