SCHOOL PRAYER: NOT NOW

As the Republicans poise to take control of Congress, a push for school prayer has surfaced. Newt Gingrich, who will likely become the new House speaker in January, has called for hearings and a House vote by July 4 on a school prayer amendment. It's a case of good motive, wrong timing. Voluntary prayer in public schools is meaningful, but there are many other issues that demand immediate attention.

The GOP must promote its Contract With America as its first and foremost priority. Other issues must take a back seat until these pressing matters are acted on by Congress. It may take every ounce of perseverance and brains to move the contract through Congress, even with a GOP majority in both houses. The institution of Congress remains in need of reform, and many of the contract's changes will be tough to pass. If Republicans falter in their quest to move the contract through, they may find themselves displaced -- and back in the minority -- come the next election.

The contract includes eight major reforms to be passed on the first day of the session. These include such matters as requiring all laws that apply to the rests of the country to apply equally to Congress, limiting the terms of all committee chairs and requiring a three-fifths majority to vote to pass a tax increase. But the contract also includes 10 major pieces of legislation, which Republicans pledge to bring to the floor in the first 100 days:

A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and legislative line-item veto. An anti-crime package including stronger truth-in-sentencing and cuts in social spending. A Personal Responsibility Act to discourage teen pregnancy and welfare limitations. The Family Reinforcement Act that would strengthen rights of parents in their children's education, and offer tax incentives for adoption and elderly dependent care. A $500-per-child tax credit and repeal of the marriage tax penalty. The National Security Restoration Act, which would prohibit U.S. troops under U.N. command, and restore national security. Senior Citizens Fairness Act that would raise the Social Security earnings limit. Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act that would create small business incentives and a capital gains cut. "Loser pays" laws with reasonable limits on punitive damages and reform of product liability to reduce litigation explosion. The first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians.

With these ponderous goals on the table, Congress plenty do. There is no need to muddy the waters with other issues.

For now, legislators should remind school officials across the country that voluntary prayer in public schools is legal. The Supreme Court has banned organized prayer in school but continues to uphold freedom of speech and religious freedom. A school prayer amendment isn't needed to prevent the horror stories in some school districts around the nation. Some educators simply need to use more common sense and become more educated about the First Amendment.

RM18AIM guest column:

'Give Hunt the hook!'

By Reed Irvine and Joseph C. Goulden

Special to the Southeast Missourian

Does the fact that a person has reported for a news organization give him special credentials for accuracy, honesty and objectivity? We have just witnessed an extraordinary demonstration by journalist Al Hunt that shows a former reporter can be as biased and mean-spirited as any political polemicist existent.

Hunt's outburst came on the CNN "Capital Gang" show on Nov. 12 during a discussion of "Strange Justice," a new book on the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings by his Wall Street Journal colleagues Jill Abramson and Jan Mayer. A former chief of the paper's Washington bureau, Hunt now works there as a columnist.

The exchange came when panelists were asked to list what they considered "the outrage of the week." Mona Charen, columnist for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, had this to say:

"My outrage is that a gossipy, insubstantial, anti-Clarence Thomas book is getting lavish treatment from the mainstream media. The double standard here is insufferable. Some of these same news organizations stayed miles away from the Paula Jones allegations, nor did they cover "The Real Anita Hill" by David Brock as news, but when Kitty Kelley wrote a nasty and absurd book about Nancy Reagan, The New York Times made it front-page news. The moral: when it's gossip about Republicans, it's news; when it's gossip about Democrats, it's beneath contempt."

HUNT: Mona, those two journalists who wrote that book worked for me and let me tell you why almost all objective analysts find it a very riveting and persuasive book. First of all, you've never been a reporter, so let me tell you the difference between a book by two very highly respected reporters that is meticulously researched and full of attributed quotes versus an ideological diatribe by David Brock that was funded in part by a right-wing conservative foundation and makes no pretense at honest reporting. "Strange Justice" is a very substantial book as any of you who read it will find out.

CHAREN: David Brock is as honest a reporter as I have ever met and he has said himself that he is open to new evidence, that he has looked at this book and he says there is nothing new in it that changes an iota of what he wrote in his book and --

HUNT: If I may finish, he was, he was, he is not a reporter. Neither one of you has ever been a reporter, and he is somebody who, as I say, was underwritten by a conservative foundation. He went into it with the idea of coming up with a certain conclusion --

CHAREN: That's not true.

HUNT: If I may finish, please. That's exactly what he did, because he was funded by people who said you must have this conclusion...

Hunt was wrong on every point he raised, and Brock and Michael Joyce, president of the Bradley Foundation, immediately demanded that he retract the slur. Brock wrote that he has worked as a reporter for nine years, first as a reporter for Insight Magazine and now with The American Spectator. (Ironically, he was also a reporter-intern in 1985 for Hunt's own Wall Street Journal.)

Brock said that six months into his book, he received unsolicited grants of $5,000 from the John M. Olin Foundation and $11,000 from the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation. These went to pay a library assistant and supplemented an advance of more than $100,000 from The Free Press, his publisher. (Unlike Mayer and Abramson, he did not have the research resources of the Wall Street Journal at his beck and call.)

Brock wrote Hunt, "I can state flatly that in my brief discussions with both foundations, I was never asked, nor did I volunteer, what my book would say ..." Nor did he have any contact with the foundations until after the book was published.

Joyce challenged Hunt to provide any proof of his claim that the Bradley Foundation dictated the conclusions of either Brock or any other of the "literally hundreds of scholars and authors: it has helped finance the past decade.

With the threat of law suits rumbling in the background, Hunt commented further on the "Capital Gang" show of Nov. 19. He said he wanted to "clarify a few points" made the previous week. "I said David Brock ... had never been a reporter. What I should have said was he has only been a reporter for ideologically driven publications. Moreover, I don't have any proof that Brock had any understanding, implicit or otherwise, with the conservative foundations that helped underwrite his book. But these foundations also had an agenda. The head of one of them was the finance chairman of the citizen's committee to confirm Clarence Thomas, and the Brock book should be read in that light."

Hunt's "clarification" replaced his original outright false statements with the ridiculous insinuation that only reporters who work for liberal publications can be trusted to be accurate and objective. He is living proof of the falsity of that claim. To borrow an old vaudeville term, CNN should "give Hunt the hook" and turn his "Capital Gang" seat over to someone other than a smear artist who has the gall to pose as an objective reporter.

Reed Irvine and Joseph C. Goulden are with Accuracy in Media, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group.