By Jeffrey Page

Tom Verner opened a paper bag and placed it over the little girl’s head for a moment. “Anything in there?” he asked.

“No.” She was about 5.

He handed her his magic wand and asked her to wave it over the bag while saying some magic words. Not abracadabra, but woo-woo-woo. He looked inside, slapped his hand to his cheek in astonishment, and withdrew a bright green silk. Some children in the audience gasped – the sound magicians love.

After the green, he found a red silk and the gasps grew louder. Then he stuck his hand in and pulled out a transparent plastic box with a fancy ribbon handle and some paper flowers inside. The kids understood that logic had just been defied. There was no way that box – and a second box that Verner would find in another minute – could possibly fit in the bag.

This was last week in Warwick as Verner was making his way from home in Vermont to Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, where he would do some of the same tricks and bring a little joy, a little astonishment, and maybe a little hope, to children living in orphanages, hospitals and refugee camps.

Verner has been taking his act overseas for the last nine years. He has performed in 25 countries, as well as in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama after Hurricane Katrina, undertaking the three basic tasks of magicians. He makes things appear (the silks), makes things disappear (a coin you could have sworn he had in his hand), and transforms things (a round red ball he stuffs into a child’s hand changes to a black cube).

Verner said the response he gets from sick, injured and lonely children in the grim pockets of poverty and war overseas is identical to the reaction of healthy, happy, well-fed kids in America. To prove his point, Verner showed a short movie of some of his performances. In shows in Warwick and Macedonia, Verner tore up a sheet of thin white tissue paper and placed the pieces in his mouth. He chewed the paper, and a moment later, pulled out the tissue – intact, of course – followed by a silk about 45 feet long (that is not a typo) in green, red, blue, yellow.

In Warwick, Macedonia and El Salvador, the kids displayed that universal look of wonder – the dropped jaw, the raised eyebrows and the beckoning arms. Not just wonder, but of amazement, excitement and joy as well. Not to mention the expression that says: How does that happen? It doesn’t matter if they speak English, Macedonian or Spanish.

Verner first learned of the unifying language of magic in 2001. While on retreat in Poland bearing witness to the horrors of Auschwitz, Verner learned of refugee camps in the Balkans. He made his way to Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia where he put on shows for the homeless and displaced.

“I spoke no Serbo-Croatian. They spoke no English,” Verner said, anticipating the question. “But magic is its own language. The kids watch; they get it.”

That 2001 visit led to Verner’s founding Magicians Without Borders. He has been dividing his time between magic overseas and his duties as a professor of psychology at Burlington College in Vermont ever since. His Burlington students engage in a great deal of independent study. In addition to entertaining, Verner uses much of his time on the road in El Salvador teaching magic to the next generations of conjurers, some of whom are already performing on their own.

The United Nations estimates that Verner and his wife, Janet Fredericks, who plays a mime named La Fleur in Verner’s magic shows, have entertained more than 400,000 people since 2001. Just last year, for example, they performed for 80,000 Bhutanese refugees living in camps on the Indian-Nepalese border, for the children of prostitutes in Bombay and Katmandu, and at an orphanage for mentally ill children.

The Warwick stop, at Stone Bridge Station on Wisner Road, was arranged by Sugar Loaf Music, and was a two-fold affair. Verner spent about an hour doing magic for young children and their moms and dads – earlier in the day he wowed the kids at the Middle School – and then addressed the parents. He described the squalor and hopelessness of the slums and refugee camps he has visited.

He said he always believed that the camps were places where displaced people spend a year or so until they can straighten out their lives. But he was shocked to find some families still in camps after 20 years. “People out of hope,” he said.

With his Warwick show for the kids over, Verner made a low-key pitch for donations over and above the $10 admission to keep his show on the road. Listening to his talk about overseas conditions he has encountered, the parents were inspired and a small valise near the exit quickly swelled with bills.

Verner’s and Fredericks’ act, performed on four continents, is more than sleight-of-hand. “Magic plants the seeds of hope, hope that the impossible might yet be possible,” he said. “Maybe I can help that process along.”

Care to be the magician’s assistant without getting sawed in half? Magicians Without Borders is based at 100 Geary Rd., Lincoln, Vt. 05443.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Last time, it was a member of the House of Representatives calling for the deportation of the children of illegal immigrants even if the kids are American citizens.

Duncan Duane Hunter, a first-termer from Southern California, would ship the kids back though he doesn’t say to where. Which raises the question: Why would Mexico or Poland, Peru or Saudi Arabia accept them if they’re native born citizens of the United States?

If he had actually read the 14th Amendment, Hunter might have been shocked to discover that his own U.S. citizenship is no more sacred than that of a young Chicano who was born or naturalized here – no matter if the kid’s parents are here legally or not.

But Hunter was last week’s news. Now, in the fearful time after the failed attempt to detonate a car bomb in Times Square, my friend Ken Farber sends along a note about the mischief Senator Joseph Lieberman is disguising as serious legislation. Lieberman would strip the citizenship of anyone who provides material support for a group that the government has designated a terrorist organization – whether or not that person has been convicted of a crime.

“Let’s just throw the Bill of Rights out the window,” Ken says in disgust.

“If they’re a U.S. citizen, until they’re convicted of some crime, I don’t know how you would attempt to take their citizenship away,” House Republican Leader John Boehner said. “It would be pretty difficult under the U.S. Constitution.”

Oh right, that bothersome Constitution.

Meanwhile, what is material support anyway?

Writing in The Washington Post, David Cole, a professor at the Georgetown University Law school, notes the meaning of “material support” is “so broad that it makes it a crime to file an amicus brief in the Supreme Court, to lobby Congress, to teach human rights or to write an op-ed piece, so long as it is done with, or for, a designated group.”

Could this mean that if you exercise your First Amendment right to petition the government on some matter that Joe Lieberman finds offensive you could lose your citizenship? I don’t believe we really want to go down that path.

On the matter of stripping someone of his citizenship, Cole says the Supreme Court has previously ruled that citizenship is a constitutional matter and thus can’t be arbitrarily terminated by the government.

In these dangerous days some politicians are trying to prove how tough they are. The problem for the rest of us is that people like Lieberman and his three co-sponsors – including Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the successor to Ted Kennedy – might not know when to stop. If we ship American kids out of the country and revoke the citizenship of people not convicted of anything, when do we get back to internment camps such as those to which earlier American citizens were exiled?

In the earlier dangerous days of the Forties, we shipped 120,000 citizens of Japanese ancestry to what amounted to internal deportation, snatching their homes and much of their property in the process. It took 50 years but the American people finally apologized for this atrocity and even paid $20,000 in reparations to each of the 60,000 survivors. This was not liberal gamesmanship.

“Here, we admit a wrong, here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under law,” President Reagan said as he signed that reparation measure into law in 1988.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

It’s a different time with different concerns and different people, but the words ring as true now as they did in 1954.

“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” Joseph C. Welch said, sounding the beginning of the end of Senator Joe McCarthy.

Nowadays, those questions are justifiably addressed to Rep. Duncan Duane Hunter, a Republican from Southern California, who would tackle the problem of illegal immigration to the United States by deporting the native-born children of illegal immigrants.

In other words, Hunter would trash the Bill of Rights and deport American citizens. This Orwellian solution would be a first for America, a place where we have always prided ourselves for granting rights, not eliminating them.

The shameless Hunter is not the only person who must be asked about a sense of decency. The question also should be put to the nativists in our midst who talk up the matter of “family values” and yet have no problem with the idea of separating families. Certain families, anyway. Can you guess which ones? More on this in a moment.

In order for Hunter to get what he wants, America would have to suspend the 14th Amendment, whose first sentence is: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” Changing the Constitution is something not to be taken lightly. To amend it would require approval in the Congress by two-thirds majorities plus subsequent approval by three-quarters of the states, or by a Constitutional convention.

As it stands, if you were born here you belong here. You’re a citizen. You could be president or a judge or even a member of the House of Representatives from southern California, and no yahoo back-bencher like Duncan Duane Hunter can change that.

The question of Hunter’s easy one-syllable immigration fix came up at a recent Tea Party gathering in Ramona, Calif., about halfway between San Diego and Escondido. Hunter was asked if he supports such deportations. “I would have to, yes,” he said.

Here’s why Duncan Duane Hunter isn’t the only person who needs to be questioned about a willingness to divide families and about his monumental ignorance of the framers’ desire “to promote the general welfare and [to] secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

Hunter’s remarks in Ramona were before a Tea Party. Did they scoff at his suggestion to send children back? (Back to where, by the way?) They did no such thing.

Did the tea partiers, whose fondness for family values is evident on many of the signs they carry whenever they gather, greet him with jeers and thumbs-down gestures? They did not.

In fact, they burst into applause and cheers. To cheer Hunter’s idea is to declare that only Anglo values can count as family values.

“We’re not being mean,” Hunter said. Whoa! As long as he brought up the subjective question of meanness, let’s at least be honest. His idea is among the meanest imaginable.

He continued: “We’re just saying it takes more than just walking across the border to become an American citizen. It’s within our souls.”

Duncan Duane Hunter doesn’t know what he’s talking about. First of all, no one thinks that to become a U.S. citizen, you simply walk across a border. And second, no one – not even Duncan Duane Hunter – should ever presume to know what is in the souls of others.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

You think New York is a political circus?

In this year’s senate election in Nevada, the incumbent is the hapless Harry Reid, the senate majority leader, who alienated millions of people out of jobs and maybe out of hope with some ill-conceived comments. He’s being challenged by the treacly Sue Lowden, a woman in her own sentimental dream world.

Let us begin with Reid and recall that skin-crawling moment in March when he hauled himself in front of the microphones to discuss the February jobs report. Labor observers had anticipated a loss of 75,000 jobs. The actual loss was 36,000. Reid should have celebrated the unaffected 39,000, expressed some sympathy for the 36,000 newly unemployed people, and called it a day.

But he blew it with a line that will be remembered when Nevadans – those with jobs and those without – go to the polls this fall. He said: “Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good.”

That’s an accurate quote. Democrats will complain that it was taken out of context, but there are 36,000 people who will remember it as the message from a man who doesn’t care much. The Republicans raised a good point when it suggested that Reid ask a few of the 36,000 people whom had lost their jobs in February how “really good” the numbers were. It’s virtually assured that Reid’s gaffe will be replayed time after time in GOP campaign ads this year.

But wait. Just when you thought Harry Reid is a blithering idiot, along comes the blithering Sue Lowden, who is Reid’s likely Republican challenger. Lowden has some ideas about medical coverage and insurance she’d like you to know about.

She said: “You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor. They would say [to the doctor] I’ll paint your house…. In the old days that’s what people would do to get health care with their doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I’m not backing down from that system.” (A chicken for an office visit is a “system?”)

First of all, Lowden knows nothing of days when you might have paid the doctor with a chicken since she’s only 57 years old and doctors weren’t accepting chickens in lieu of payment in the years after 1953.

Second, to fully appreciate the cynicism of her chicken-in-lieu-of-cash recollection it is important to note that Sue Lowden and her husband are worth about $50 million and never – even if they live to be 100 – will fret about their ability to obtain and pay for the finest medical care available. You and I may know people who’ll decide to save money by cutting their prescription dosages in half. But the Lowdens never will have to do that.

Chicken for treatment, indeed. I must quote the inimitable Gail Collins of the Times, who said recently: “Lowden has yet to explain how much poultry it would cost for a colonoscopy.”

Lowden’s health care solution places her in the jabbering wing of the Republican Party that believes if you stand on the shore of the Bering Strait as the fog lifts you qualify as an expert on Russo-American relations because you’re facing Russia 55 miles across the water.

If elected, Sue Lowden presumably would go to Washington loaded with uncomplicated, easy-to-understand solutions for other problems we face.

Education? Dismiss all those high priced teachers.

Taxes? Just end ‘em.

Immigration? Dig a 5,000-mile trench wide and deep.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

So here’s Chris Christie, the pugnacious new governor of New Jersey, basically announcing that the state’s teachers, and many other public workers, are the chief cause of high taxes in the Garden State.

So he wants to freeze teachers’ pay. You can imagine what the teachers think of this.

Though teacher contracts are worked out by the New Jersey Education Association and the local districts, Christie has a lot to say about teacher pay because he decides the extent of state aid to the school districts.

This is a man that any intelligent person would want to deal with very carefully. But the NJEA has stepped into a bucket and can‘t get its foot out. Here‘s Joe Coppola and several other officials of the NJEA pulling a stupid stunt that makes the union look like a bunch of out-of-control jackasses, gains sympathy for Christie, and creates an atmosphere in which an aide to the governor can ask the legitimate question: “How [does the union] explain themselves to the children?”

At issue of course is the infamous NJEA memo about how the union will slug it out with Christie, but winds up with a prayer that Christie calls dangerous, the union calls a joke, and most everybody else calls idiotic. As reported by The Record of Hackensack, it goes like this: “Dear Lord: This year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze; my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett; my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman Billy Mays. I just wanted to let you know that my favorite governor is Chris Christie.”

The joke got out to the public, and the union was left stammering that it was a joke, that it was never meant to be made public, that it was inappropriate, that union officials would never wish anybody dead, and blah blah blah. The union could be using its time to better advantage than explaining the jest.

By the way, NJEA couldn‘t even get the joke right. The Lord didn‘t take Swayze, Fawcett, Jackson and Mays this year. They all died in 2009, but the union never thought to update the list.

Why do otherwise intelligent people forget that words have meaning and that many in the public take those meanings at face value?

Here‘s another moronic joke told recently, this one by a Qatari diplomat. As Mohammed el-Madadi was leaving the bathroom on a Washington-Denver flight, an attendant smelled smoke and confronted Madadi who said he had not smoked but had been trying to set fire to his shoe.

Madadi said it was a joke. I wonder what the other passengers thought as they recalled Richard Reid, the original would-be shoe bomber. I wonder what the Air Force thought as it scrambled some jet fighters to intercept Madadi‘s flight. I wonder what the FBI thought as it entered the case.

Here‘s another. The Times Herald-Record reported this week that Sullivan County Judge Frank LaBuda ordered a lawyer to perform 100 hours of community service. Why? Because the attorney, William Brenner, had told LaBuda that there had been no plea deal talks for his client.

“In fact there had been several,” the Record noted dryly and went on to present a great quote from LaBuda to Brenner. Community service would be a reminder “to put your mind in action before your mouth.”

I‘m reminded of the never-ending battle between New Jersey environmental officials and people who love bears. The bear population is growing and the state has on occasion sanctioned a bear hunt. At a demonstration in Vernon, few years ago, one of the anti-hunt people carried a sign that said: “DROP McGREEVEY, NOT BEARS.”

McGreevey was the governor. You know what “drop” means.

The leader of the bear defenders was outraged when the wording on her protest sign appeared in the newspaper the next day. It was a joke, she said. Not to be taken literally, she said. She would never wish anybody dead, she said.

The most intelligent perspective on how to deal with political foes came from Bob Dole when he ran against Bill Clinton in 1996. Dole said he was shocked at Clinton’s personal conduct and went on to predict that the House would impeach him.

And Dole left it at that, saying of Clinton: “He‘s my opponent. He‘s not my enemy.”

But that of course was before politics became a blood sport.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

I want to say something nice about Bill O’Reilly, a man whose typically loud, boisterous, and right-wing protestations usually annoy the hell out of me.

But first some background. In 2006, the Rev. Fred Phelps and some of his acolytes picketed the funeral in suburban Maryland of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, a Marine who died in a vehicle accident in Al Anbar Province in Iraq. He was 20 years old.

Picket a funeral? Phelps’s people carried signs with incendiary messages such as “God Hates Fags” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” None of the Phelps gang had any knowledge of the life or death of Matthew Snyder. Their reasoning for terrorizing the mourners at a small cemetery in suburban Maryland was this: America has allowed itself to be subsumed by gay culture. Matthew Snyder and other fallen soldiers enlisted in the armed services to defend and protect America. So it follows that Snyder and the others must have been gay. And therefore they are despised by the Lord.

The cruelty and the ignorance are monumental.

But not only does God despise the dead soldiers, Phelps says. He also hates their families and their friends. He hates their ministers. He hates their military commanders. He hates everybody who ever had anything to do with them.

Phelps is good at naming all the people God hates, but you start to wonder how he can ignore the guidance of 1 John 4:8: “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

Phelps’s disgrace at the Snyder funeral was just one of hundreds of similar demonstrations. I first came in contact with Phelps and the people from his Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas four years ago when I wrote columns for The Record in Hackensack. It was Phelps’s daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper who informed me that God hates not only the individual soldiers but everyone associated with them.

After speaking with several of Phelps’s victims – relatives of fallen soldiers – I finally understood the extent of his savagery. He visits a cemetery where a soldier is being interred, makes his God-awful noise and then prances happily back to Kansas, leaving the soldier’s family devastated and at a loss to understand the degree of his hatred.

Most people try to get past it.

Not Matthew Snyder’s dad, Albert Snyder. He sued Phelps for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and won a $5 million judgment in a federal trial court. But Phelps appealed and not only had the judgment against him reversed, but got an order from the appellate judges requiring Albert Snyder to reimburse him for $16,510 in costs.

Enter O’Reilly. “That is an outrage and I will pay Mr. Snyder’s obligation,” O’Reilly said on March 31. “I am not going to let this injustice stand.” Bravo for a man who puts his money where his mouth is.

Incidentally, the case has been accepted for review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Regarding O’Reilly: This my second gentle encounter with him. Several years ago I was writing a series of columns about an epidemic of child murders in New Jersey. It seemed to me there wasn’t as much outrage over the killings as you’d expect. The news stories seemed to come and go, and I don’t recall any especially passionate opinion pieces on these wretched felonies.

But there was O’Reilly on the Fox News Network displaying admirable rage at people who would kill an infant. He yelled. He slammed his hand on his desk. At least in that one area, I was a fan.

Our agreement on Phelps is not complicated: A family has a right to grieve its loss without a bunch of yahoos celebrating the death. Can it be any plainer than that?

Albert Snyder had the guts to sue and he got screwed. Cheers to O’Reilly for offering to write a check. A Snyder family spokeswoman told me that any money left over from what Albert Snyder has to pay Phelps would go toward a scholarship in Matthew’s name.

I decided to send my own check to Barley Snyder at 100 East Market St., York, Pa. 17401.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Dear Oliver S. and Stanley A.,

I read the story in The Times about Massachusetts authorities charging nine high school students in the death of a young girl who committed suicide rather than face more of their taunts, bullying and physical attacks. And I thought of you. And I thought of me.

Looking back to the late Fifties, I’m tempted to say that Forest Hills High School was a building full of 4,000 snobs or would-be snobs – young people living up to the sweet cachet of the words “Forest Hills” with its wealth and status. But this wouldn’t be fair. The fact is that there were some really decent kids at that school. You (whose identities I have fudged) were two of them. I wish I’d been one of them.

“Forest Hills” conjured coolness, prestige and privilege, and I – the son of working-class parents – should have known better than to strive to be part of it. Not that it ultimately mattered. I was never accepted by the student elite, those people who basically ran the social life of the school. They set the standards and if they thought your crew cut was goofy or if they saw you in the corridor with one side of your Ivy League button-down collar forgetfully unbuttoned they’d let you and everybody nearby know about it.

I remember the school as a place where a lot of kids wished they could be somewhere higher in the pecking order of adolescence, which was – and probably still is – the pecking order of misery.

Was the staff at Forest Hills aware of the pain and misery the cool kids inflicted on you? I don’t know. But at South Hadley High School, the district attorney says, teachers and administrators knew full well about the physical attacks and verbal abuse being heaped on Phoebe Prince, 15, and did nothing to stop it. Phoebe Prince is the girl who hanged herself in January. The charges against some of the students include statutory rape, and I’m forced to wonder if a staff member’s silence makes him guilty of being an accessory to a felony.

The aristocrats at Forest Hills High School were the student government types, cheerleaders and athletes. They wore great clothes. They got great grades. To believe them, not one of them was still a virgin. Teachers loved them. The principal loved them.

I thought I could edge my way up, but of course could not.

And there were people like you, Oliver and Stanley. You didn’t fit into “Forest Hills.” Your scrawniness was an object of derision in the locker room. Oliver, you were the one who made a noise like a shriek when someone not-quite-playfully punched you in the arm while smirking and asking what you were doing on Friday night, when the cool people would hang out on Continental Avenue. Stanley, you were the one who giggled excitedly, loudly and almost uncontrollably when you won an argument in class or in the hallway.

The two of you could outthink any comer in that damned school. But you weren’t cool and so you were dismissed as weird.

But you were such decent guys. And if I had been a little more decent myself, I wouldn’t have stood there, mute, while the cool kids imitated the way you walked, mocked the way you talked, laughed at the way you dressed, and sneered at your very existence.

I could have said something. I could have stepped in. I could have been your friend. I could have told those assholes to lay off. I could have suggested that we go bowling, see a movie, or just go for a Coke on Continental Avenue.

But I – with my lousy grades, my proletarian background, my acne, my virginity – was a coward who had other business. That was to be accepted by people who despised me as much as they loathed you. But I said nothing in your behalf, for which I’m ashamed.

I just went along, playing the inelegant schlub to the elite, available for errand running. Such as the time a young blond knockout (very cool) said, “If you see Larry, tell him to call me,” which I did, and which assured my continued role as drone and the complete insanity of my even thinking about asking her to go out to a movie.

I haven’t seen you two guys since graduation, but have thought of you many times over five decades. I hope you are alive and well. I hope your lives have been happy and productive. I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you how I wish I had had the courage to be a better friend when they made your lives miserable with their taunts, and when I made your lives miserable with my unforgivable silence.

I am so sorry.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Some Republicans in Congress believe that in the great scheme of things, Ronald Reagan ranks one step behind God and a billion steps in front of everyone else. And so, they’re calling for the U.S. $50 bill to be redesigned. Off would go the bewhiskered Ulysses S. Grant, the Union general and 18th president, and on would go Reagan, the movie actor and 40th president.

Such a switch would be a mistake. I’m not interested in preserving Grant for Grant’s sake. If the United States is tired of Grant, it could opt for Eisenhower or Truman, Kennedy or Albert Einstein.  In fact, the nation has redesigned its money before. The dime, for example, used to bear the image of the goddess Liberty wearing a winged cap. And in 1946, just one year after he died, Franklin Roosevelt’s image replaced Liberty’s.

But Reagan?

If for no reason other than his moronic decision to lay a wreath at the German military cemetery at Bitburg in 1985, Reagan’s picture ought to remain in the family albums and the scrapbooks of his followers, and not on American currency.

Twenty-five years ago, Reagan was asked by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to visit the cemetery where 2,000 German soldiers were buried. Also interred at Bitburg were the remains of 49 others.

Those 49 had served with almost 1 million others not in the Army but in the SS, the military-police wing of the Nazi party that amounted to Hitler’s personal army. The SS was the muscle for some of the greatest atrocities the Nazis inflicted.

In one of the more embarrassing screw-ups of his administration, Reagan’s people were unaware of the SS graves until after he had accepted Kohl’s invitation. Informed, finally, Reagan refused to change his plans. To Bitburg he would go.

Reagan, whose eyesight kept him out of combat during World War II, spent the war years in California making movies for the Army. As president, he ignored the requests of World War II veterans to cancel or change the visit. The vets weren’t concerned so much about the 2,000 regular troops buried at Bitburg. It was the 49. And vets had something to say in this matter. Nearly 410,000 Americans troops were killed in the war against Germany and its ally Japan.

Jews, too, asked Reagan to avoid Bitburg. Jews knew something about death in great numbers as well. Even the House and Senate got into the dispute, both adopting resolutions opposing the visit to the Bitburg cemetery. But Reagan was determined to go.

It was to persuade Reagan not to visit the cemetery that Elie Wiesel uttered his much quoted plea: “That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.”

It made no difference. Reagan preferred to ignore American veterans, Congress, and Jewish Americans rather than confront Kohl, tell him that a mistake had been made, and insist on finding a cemetery without graves of SS murderers.

On the same day he visited the Bitburg cemetery, Reagan also visited the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where 50,000 people are buried, and served up some of his typical sentimental tripe. “Here they lie,” he was quoted by The New York Times. “Never to hope. Never to pray. Never to love. Never to heal. Never to laugh. Never to cry.”

I’m not sure about healing and laughing, but I imagine that anyone caught in the Nazi killing machine did plenty of hoping, and plenty of praying, loving, and crying.

If Reagan believed a visit to Bergen-Belsen somehow balanced his wreath-laying at Bitburg, he was a fool.

Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill would be an absurdity.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Glenn Beck, in his bizarre rant encouraging Christians to quit their churches if they see the words “economic justice” or “social justice” on the bulletin board or hear them in the pastor’s homily, has thrown down an unanticipated gauntlet. He thought he was challenging liberals, but serious churchgoers of all political persuasions must respond to his ignorance.

Beck, on his radio show, linked social and economic justice to the worst politics the world has yet to produce. “Social justice was the rallying cry – economic justice and social justice – the rallying cry on both the communist front and the fascist front,” he said. And just in case you didn’t get it, he went on to say that “social justice” and “economic justice” are “code words,” presumably for communism and nazism.

A quick aside: If “social justice” is code for communism, is Beck telling us that “no social justice” is code for capitalism? Now that’s a revelation.

I’m sure this will take Beck by surprise but social and economic justice are synonyms for Christianity and most other faiths. Additionally, ask most people and they’d tell you that social justice and economic justice are worthy ideals.
 
Beck would have you believe that he knows something you don’t. But in fact, he’s just a fool who sees subversion when churches lend a hand to people who are broke. And he sees a plot when members of the clergy wage campaigns against such conditions as poverty, bad education, fifth rate medical care and lifetimes of lousy, underpaying jobs.

That’s not the kind of job Beck has. The Times reported in 2008 that he had signed a contract extension with Premiere Radio Networks for $50 million over five years. That’s $10 million a year to slander good people doing good works.

His ignorance and cruelty are astounding.

He apparently is unaware of Proverbs 31:9:  “Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.”

And of Proverbs 21:13: “Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard.”

Let us cut to the chase. Do you think Beck is aware of Jesus’ first 13 words in the Sermon on the Mount? “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Clearly, Beck was addressing people who worship at liberal or middle-of-the-road churches and who share – with parishioners at conservative churches – a basic belief that Jesus Christ knew what he was talking about.

For many people “economic justice” and “social justice” are code words all right – not for nazism and communism but for a society that cares for all its people including those whose incomes are substantially less than $10 million a year and who are forced to ask for food when their kids are hungry, a job when they’re out of work, treatment when they’re sick.

So far, the Times has reported that the Rev. Jim Wallis, who heads a Christian antipoverty organization in Washington has implored listeners to turn off Beck’s radio show. Wallis is No. 1. Who’s next?

And which minister and/or parishioner of a politically conservative church or social justice agency will inform Beck that his likening of social justice with communism and fascism was ill-informed, childish, and an affront to all good people of faith, no matter their politics?

Who will tell him that when he says “If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish,” he reveals an enormous ignorance about one of the fundamental tenets of Christian churches – to love thy neighbor as thyself?

Has anyone heard from Pat Robertson lately?

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

“Left face!” Sgt. Al Minicus would bark at his trainees at Fort Dix and, invariably, 65 men would turn their bodies 90 degrees to the left, and one or two would turn to the right.

“You’re so damned dumb, you’d f**k up a wet dream,” Minicus would shout into the face of a soldier who turned the wrong way. It’s a line that can’t be explained but whose meaning is understood immediately.

And so we turn to the dreams of New York Democrats. One year ago they had the world by the tail. Comptroller Alan Hevesi had resigned two years earlier and talk of his idiotic use of state workers to chauffeur his wife had pretty much faded. And Governor Eliot Spitzer, who had paid high priced hookers to do that which he wished done, was out of office for nearly a year. The punch line “Eliot Spitzer” was heard less and less.

The Democrats had elected a promising new president. They were in solid control of the House and Senate. Rep. Charles Rangel was chairman of the important Ways and Means Committee. A House freshman, Eric Massa, had won a seat in a traditionally Republican district on Lake Erie. After eight years of Bush and Cheney, Pataki and Joe Bruno, this looked like the Democrats’ time.

But they have spent the better part of a year acting very strangely and through it all, there was a large nonpartisan constituency watching and wondering: Whoa, is this the party to fix things?

–Last spring, Democratic State Senator Pedro Espada defected to the Republicans. The Senate ground to a halt; important legislation was put on hold. Then Espada kissed some Democratic rings, or maybe it was the other way around. He defected back. And Senate Democrats welcomed him by making him their majority leader. Truly, this was Marx Brothers material.

–Recently, another senator, Democrat Hiram Monserrate, learned that – you know? – you’re just not allowed to drag your girlfriend around by her hair and shoulders. Monserrate was convicted of misdemeanor assault. In a rare display of political courage the Senate kicked him out. He won’t go quietly. He’s threatening to sue.

–Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is looking into reports that Governor Paterson had staff and/or the state police contact the ex-girlfriend of his confidante to get her to withdraw a request for an order of protection against the aide, David Johnson. Some are calling for Paterson to resign.

–Recently, two important members of Paterson’s administration quit – his criminal justice adviser (“good conscience,” she said, made her continued service impossible) and his communications director (“good conscience,” he said, dictated that he leave). Oh, and the head of the state police retired.

–Rangel gave up his chairmanship of Ways and Means as suggestions of lapses of ethical conduct swirled about him. One charge is that Rangel took trips to the Caribbean that were paid for by corporations. This is not allowed but don’t be too hard on Rangel. After all, he’s only been in the House of Representatives for the last 39 years. And there’s also an unresolved matter of possible income tax evasion.

–Massa used to be a Republican. Now’s he’s a Democrat. He says the reason a staffer went public about Massa’s alleged sexual harassment is that the White House is out to get him because he doesn’t like President Obama’s health reform plan. So he resigned. Then the Times ran a story about Massa’s interview on an upstate radio station in which he confirmed that, at a party in January, he  “grabbed the aide, joked about having sexual relations with him and mussed his hair before getting up and leaving.” The aide’s complaint is now in the hands of the House Ethics Panel.

–Toss in the White House’s insane non-response over the summer as the Tea Partiers grabbed headlines on Page 1 on the matter of health reform. Did the geniuses in the Obama Administration think the Tea Party people would get it off their chests and then just go home?

Twelve months ago, the Democrats were sitting on top of the world. Nowadays, they’re sitting on one another. And that’s no dream.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com