Boxer Decked by Own Left Jab      1/15/2007
By Jan LaRue, Chief Counsel

Barbara Boxer is no Golden Glove contender.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) says there was a point to her pointless jab at U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as she testified last Thursday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Boxer used the committee "ring" to tell Rice that she won't "pay the immediate price" for increasing military troops in Iraq because of her reproductive failure.

Boxer's "boost" to child bearing has apparently struck dumb the abortion lobby, and for that we are eternally grateful.

Boxer prefaced her skewered question to Rice by saying, "I won't pay a personal price. My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family."

Boxer is now bobbing and weaving, trying to dodge critics who are calling for an apology to Rice. I was just "speaking truth to power," says Boxer. "What I was trying to do in this exchange was to find common ground with Condi Rice."

It's much like the common ground Rosie O'Donnell was seeking with Donald Trump.

Thank you, God, for congressional oversight. We regular folks are just babes lost in the political woods without pampered, privileged politicians perched on a vaulted dais spewing irrelevant banalities that point the way to "truth."

"So who pays the price," Boxer demanded to know. "The American military and their families," she proclaimed. See? Even she knew. No Rubik's cube here.

Boxer's office released a statement Friday, saying:

I spoke the truth at the committee hearing, which is that neither Secretary Rice nor I have family members that will pay the price for this escalation. My point was to focus attention on our military families who continue to sacrifice because this Administration has not developed a political solution to the situation in Iraq.

"And let me just say, I fully understand the sacrifice that the American people are making and especially the sacrifice that our soldiers are making, men and women in uniform. I visit them. I know what they're going through. I talk to their families. I see it," Rice said.

"Madam Secretary, please, I know you feel terrible about it. That's not the point. I was making the case as to who pays the price for your decisions."

Rice's decisions? Indulge my fantasy as Rice plays "Rope a Dope" with Boxer.

"I deploy ambassadors, Senator - no troops at State. If you have serious questions about the military, you might want to try the guys at Defense or e-mail potus@commanderinchief.gov! And by the way, my brain functions independently of my uterus. You might try it some time."

For those who think Boxer was making a point and not a barb, when did Boxer ever ask former Secretary of State Madelyn Albright whether she had an "immediate family" who would "pay the price" of her troop deployments to Bosnia and Somalia?

Thursday was classic and classless Boxer style. She gets away with boorish behavior because it's not likely that a person responsible for upholding the dignity of high public office will respond in kind. For that you need a seat in Congress.

Boxer's smarmy statement would not only disqualify millions of Americans from having an opinion on the war, she admittedly would disqualify herself. But bare logic won't keep Boxer's briefs in her drawer.

So here are a few questions for Sen. Boxer:

• Aren't the U.S. economy, the social security system and military readiness paying the price of 47 million abortions?
• Why don't you value the opinion of women who've paid the immediate price of infertility because of a "safe and legal" abortion?
• How did seven male Supremes incapable of paying the immediate price have any basis to know if abortion is good for women?
• Is it solely the immediate family that pays the price of fatherless families?
• Since taxpayers pay the immediate price of out-of-wedlock births, why don't you respect our opinion when we tell you that teaching kids abstinence is more effective than a wink and a condom?
• Is it only those with children or grandchildren in public schools who pay the immediate price of a failing educational system? By the way, where is your grandchild enrolled?
• Aren't you forever telling us that same-sex "marriage" is appropriate because family is more than children, parents and grandparents?
• Since you're not the adoptive parent or potential adoptive parent of an embryonic "Snowflake Baby," you won't be paying the immediate price of their destruction, will you? So why is your advocacy of embryonic stem cell research worth a fig leaf?

A class contender needs more than a left jab.

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