If someone gives you good odds, you could do worse than to bet on the possibility of Robert Portman, Bush’s new Budget chief, being the Republican nominee for President in 2012 or 2016.

Portman has been a favorite son of the "New World Order" establishment since he went to work as associate counsel to President George H. W. Bush, whom he also served as the Director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs.

With President G. H. W. B’s backing, Portman was elected to Congress in 1993 and served in the House until 2005, when he became U.S. Trade Representative.

Portman, now age 50, is a graduate of Dartmouth College and received a law degree from the University of Michigan. He is married with three children.

The path being followed by Portman is analogous to that of Don Rumsfeld, who, after becoming one of the youngest members of Congress in the 1960’s, left the House of Representatives to become a counselor to President Nixon, and head of Nixon’s Cost of Living Council. He was one of my predecessors as Director of the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity and became White House Chief of Staff to President Gerald Ford, who nominated him to be America’s youngest Secretary of Defense in 1975. President George W. Bush made him America’s oldest Secretary of Defense in 2001.

As with Rumsfeld, Portman has long had Presidential ambitions. There are still some who think it possible that Rumfeld’s protégé, Dick Cheney, could succeed to the Presidency in time for the 2008 election and that he would then name Rumsfeld to be his ticket mate. This, of course, is wild speculation, but stranger things have happened.

RADICAL LEFTISTS – SOME TAX SUBSIDIZED – ORGANIZE PRO-ILLEGALS DEMONSTRATIONS

Hundreds of thousands of people have marched in opposition to restrictions on illegal immigration.

Who’s checking them out?

In fact, many of the march organizers represent organizations funded with our tax dollars, including Legal Services lawyers, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Foundation, La Raza Unida, and many, many others.

Some of the groups involved in organizing the demonstrations are hard-core Marxist-Leninist entities.

As reported in The Washington Times (4/11/06), "One of the key organizers of the immigration protests and rallies nationwide including yesterday’s in Washington, is a group whose leaders are tied to the Workers World Party, a Marxist organization that has expressed support for dictators Kim Jong-il of North Korea and Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

"Its March 25 rally in Los Angeles and its planned ‘Great American Boycott of 2006" on May 1 are part of a series of large-scale events [that the] coalition hopes will sway lawmakers to put millions of illegal aliens in the United States on track toward permanent residency and U.S. citizenship."

You don’t have to be Dick Tracy to consider the clues.

George Bush has formed an alliance with John McCain reflected in his decision to sign into law the McCain-Feingold Free Speech Restriction bill, which is in clear violation of the First Amendment.

Bush signed it after acknowledging it to be unconstitutional.

John McCain has gone out of his way to support President Bush on everything from the war in Iraq to amnesty for illegal aliens, and much more.

Dr. Jerry Falwell, Chancellor of Liberty University, who is very close to White House political boss Karl Rove, has declared John McCain to be the best Presidential choice for cultural conservatives in 2008.

Indeed, Falwell has secured Senator McCain to be commencement speaker at Liberty University graduation exercises this year.

McCain has cast his lot with George Bush, hoping it will win him the 2008 GOP nomination and Bush, or Rove at least, has apparently decided that McCain is the best bet to continue the Bush legacy.

“President Bush said…that the federal government gave more than $2.1 billion in grants to religious charities last year - a 7 percent increase from the prior year and proof, he said, that his administration has made it easier for faith-based groups to obtain taxpayer funds. …

“Government’s role is ‘to fund, not to micro-manage how you run your programs,’ he said. ‘I repeat to you, you can’t be a faith-based program if you don’t practice your faith.’

“The speech, accompanied by a blizzard of statistics on federal grants, was partly an appeal to religious supporters and partly a response to rising criticism. …

“Last month, one academic study concluded that direct federal grants to faith-based charities fell from 2002 to 2004. Although the number of grantees rose, the total pie of available funds shrank by $230 million, according to a three-year survey of 99 federal grant-making programs by the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, a nonpartisan group at the State University of New York at Albany.

“H. James Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiative, accused the study’s authors of ‘cherry-picking’ the data to produce a ‘rotten pie,’ and he promised that the administration would soon come out with its own figures showing a steady increase in funding for religious groups.

“Making good on that promise yesterday, the White House said it analyzed 23,000 grants made by seven federal agencies in fiscal 2005 and found that faith-based groups received 2,760 of them, an increase of 22 percent. The total value of grants to religious groups was $2.154 billion, up nearly $150million from fiscal 2004, it said.

“The White House acknowledged that the portion of all grant funds that went to faith-based groups barely budged, rising from 10.3 to 10.9 percent.

“Its data also revealed declines in funding at some agencies, such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where grants to faith-based groups fell from $545 million in 2004 to $521 million in 2005, and the Department of Labor, where they dropped from $34 million to $20 million.” Source: Alan Cooperman, The Washington Post, 3/10/06, p. A5

After Richard Nixon was re-elected in 1972, he reorganized the Executive Branch to establish a system of four "Super Secretaries", each of whom would be responsible for several subordinate departments and agencies.

At the time, Caspar Weinberger was Nixon’s Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and I, as Director of the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity, reported to Weinberger, who died on Tuesday, March 28.

Weinberger began his career as a very liberal California Republican. In fact, he opposed Ronald Reagan’s candidacy for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 1966, preferring instead to support San Francisco Mayor George Christopher.

Subsequently, Weinberger became a strong Reagan stalwart and, during the Nixon Presidency, where he initially served as head of the Federal Trade Commission, Cap functioned as President Nixon’s "ambassador to Ronald Reagan" at a time when Nixon feared that Reagan would challenge him for re-nomination in 1972.

One of Weinberger’s closest friends when both served in the California legislature was Augustus Hawkins, who, in 1973, was Chairman of the House Economic Opportunity Committee and head of the Black Caucus.

When I was called to testify before Hawkins’ Committee, as a result of a personal request from Secretary Weinberger, Chairman Hawkins treated me most courteously, during a five-hour hearing in a packed hearing room where members of the Black Caucus unsuccessfully attempted to stare me down.

Congressman Henry Hyde, as Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, had proposed language for legislation that would have forced the U.S. government to withhold millions of dollars in United Nations "dues" pending supposed reformed of the U.N.

Hyde’s bill passed the House of Representatives in June, 2005, but the Senate failed to approve similar language.

According to USA Today (3/28/06, page 5A), Hyde’s bill would have withheld half of the U.S. "dues" (taxes), beginning in 2007, if the U.N. did not make an estimated 40 reforms.

According to Congressman Hyde, "There is serious resistance to the notion of withholding dues…The establishment doesn’t like that, the State Department is unenthusiastic about it, but most people support it."

One of the unfortunate aspects of having a Republican President and a Republican Congress is that when you have a New World Order President, such as George W. Bush, it is very difficult to place restraints on such entities as the United Nations, NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

Under Bill Clinton, Republicans in Congress blocked hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to the United Nations, but, when George Bush came in, there was not a single opposing vote in the U.S. Senate and efforts by Congressman Ron Paul in the House were denied a hearing as the taxpayer subsidies were enacted on a voice vote.

Conservatives are mourning the death of Lyn Nofziger, who was a faithful employee of Ronald Reagan --- before, during, and after the Reagan Presidency.

Nofziger’s job in the Reagan White House was to deal with conservatives, who were treated, thanks to Jim Baker, as one of several minorities for whom there were designated liaison personnel.

Lyn was a man of great personal character and loyalty who became an advocate of access to marijuana for medical purposes, probably as a result of treatments which benefited his cancer-stricken daughter.

Lyn was always gracious and helpful in his dealings with me.