MP3 audio

Alan Keyes
June 27, 2002

ALAN KEYES, HOST: Welcome to MAKING SENSE. I'm Alan Keyes.

Up front tonight, what's up with the courts? I'm sure you've noticed the swirl of controversy over some recent court decisions including especially the decision that was taken, striking down the Pledge of Allegiance and removing the words "under God" from the pledge. There's been a firestorm of reaction around the country, and it's a reaction that I think that speaks not only of rejection of this decision, but a heart around the country simply to defy it, to suggest that a judge can have his opinion and the courts can have their opinions, but we're going to go on saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

I think a lot of people have been making that very clear, from the Congress on down, that this is their intent. First, let's take a look, then at this situation with the Pledge of Allegiance case and yesterday's appeals court ruling that the words "under God" are unconstitutional. Late this afternoon, it turns out, Alfred Goodwin, the same judge who handed down yesterday's decision, put it on hold until the entire circuit court reviews the case.

Coincidentally, Attorney General John Ashcroft had made the same request today. Does this mean that he's having second thoughts? I don't know. I doubt it. I think what it probably means is he's standing there saying look, I made a decision that in terms of the logic of the Supreme Court's decision, makes a clear and logical application of those decisions. If you guys think this is wrong, you show me where it's wrong.

I think he's handing it to the full circuit court and saying show me what's wrong with it. Newspaper editorial pages across the country were ablaze with opinions about the pledge. This one in the "Washington Post" struck me particularly. It's entitled "One Nation Under Blank."

Quote: "If the court were writing a parody rather than deciding an actual case, it could hardly have produced a more provocative holding than striking down the Pledge of Allegiance while this country is at war."

Now that's a point that I alluded to last night, that in the midst of this war on terror, a time when we really need to be standing together, the pledge actually symbolizes our common commitment to one another, to the country, and the ground on which we stand together as Americans. Clearly, in one sense, the "Washington Post" has it right then when it says that there's something wrong with striking down the pledge at this moment.

On the other hand, I think we have to keep in mind that judges are there and they are independent in America, right, an independent judiciary. They're independent judiciary my friends because they're supposed to be able to make unpopular decisions -- decisions that the majority might not agree with, but that are required by the law, by the constitution, by the opinion, environment that the Supreme Court has created.

Now this is what the judge would tell us right now. I'm doing logically what is required by previous Supreme Court decisions and guess what? I think he's right. I think he's right. Now some of you are going to be outraged.

Do you accept the decision? No, I don't accept the decision, but I think he's right when he says that the decision is a logical consequence of decisions that have been made by the Supreme Court, throwing prayer out of schools, throwing God out of public places, and so forth and so on and applying a doctrine of separation and abuse of the establishment clause of the -- of the -- of the Constitution that has been allowed over the course of the last 50 and more years, and that is now coming to its logical conclusion.

You can't get mad at this judge for applying logically the rationale that has been created by many decisions of the Supreme Court over decades. Get mad at those who accepted the phony rationale. Think it through and reject it now because you begin to see that it will mean the loss of the pledge, the loss of the words "In God We Trust" on our coins, the loss even of our respect for the declaration, which explicitly refers to God at least four times.

Think about it. But this isn't the only area, by the way, I think in which the court system has been showing some vulnerabilities in the course of this week. There were apparently some contradictory decisions out of the Supreme Court this week. We start with the one that you probably heard about, got a lot of attention in which the system that left the decision as to the death penalty up to judges was struck down.

It was Ring (ph) versus Arizona and in that case, they cited another case, Apprendi versus New Jersey, in which they had decided that juries ought to be involved in making judgments about facts when such judgments are essential to increasing the kind of penalties that are going to be faced by folks. And quite logically, they said look, if for non-death penalty cases we say that juries have to be involved, then clearly in a death penalty case, there's so much at stake, the juries ought to be involved.

Well think about this though. The very day that they decided ring in light of this Apprendi versus New Jersey logic, they decided a case called Harris versus the United States, in which they decided 5-4 that it was OK for a judge to raise mandatory sentence without consulting a jury on a fact that hadn't been presented to the jury.

Now, four of the justices dissented from that, obviously, and in their dissents some of them cited the fact that this was looked like it was a total contradiction than what they had just decided in Ring (ph). Guess what? I think they're right.

What have we got here? A court that doesn't even know its own mind? You might say, Alan, this is all very academic. Why are you bothering us with this legalese? I'll explain it very simply. We're in the midst of a permanent war against terror that could prove to be a very challenging balancing act between our security and our liberty. Who's going to do that balancing? The courts.

Right today, we saw in the newspaper, "Washington Times," a judge has struck down the application of a law that labels groups as terrorist groups and then allows certain actions to be taken with respect to them. U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi has told the government you can't do that. Now we all know, because I've talked about it, this whole controversy over the label enemy combatants.

That's another one that's waiting in the wings. We're going to have judges looking at these serious issues of how power is used, how it may be being abused in the context of this challenge to our safety and national security. We're going to have to rely on the courts. We're going to have to have confidence in them, and yet we're in the midst of a time, I think, when many people are standing up, looking at this decision by this judge and saying where's the common sense in that?

Where's the integrity in that, where the court itself doesn't even seem to know its own mind when it comes to the application of decision. It's almost like it's whimsical and arbitrary. Not entirely an accident, by the way, in an area when in the law schools these folks are being told the law is what the judge says it is, as if they don't to have answer to standards of rationality and common sense, much less any standards that might have to do with natural rights, laws, the kinds of things that our founders talked about when they put the country together.

That sense that we're in the midst of a time when the court's going to be more critical than ever, the whole judicial system, and yet serious questions are now being raised about the integrity of judicial judgments. The common sense of the folks who are sitting on the bench and whether or not, in this powerless time of challenge, we can rely on the judges to take account of our situation and discipline themselves in order to show some coherence and consistency in their opinions. Can we do it?

That's what we'll be talking about tonight. And next on the heart of the matter, we will get into this question of whether in these perilous times we can trust the courts to do what they need to do in order to balance our safety against our liberty, which is what the challenge they're going to face. We'll talk to a prominent First Amendment attorney and we'll talk to a man from Concerned Women of America here on America's news channel MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEYES: The Supreme Court ended its session today handing down a landmark decision in favor of school vouchers. A lot of you who know me know that I rejoiced in that decision. Well in our next half-hour, we're going to debate whether that ruling on choice is the right choice for America's kids.

Also, a reminder that the chatroom tonight is busier than the clerk's office at the 9th Circuit Court. And you can join in right now at chat.msnbc.com.

But let's get back to our discussion about whether in these times when we're going to have to rely up on the more than ever, we are witnessing some decisions and other elements that might in fact erode the kind of deference and confidence that the courts will need in order to make sure that their decisions will seem acceptable to the American people, and that in a situation where a court decides that the president doesn't have the right to do something that the president says is absolutely essential to our survival and national security.

If we don't have confidence in that court, who do you think the public will prefer? Well joining us get to the heart of the matter, Thomas Jipping, Senior Fellow and Legal Studies for Concerned Women for America, and Herald Fahringer, a leading First Amendment attorney. Welcome gentlemen to MAKING SENSE.

THOMAS JIPPING, CONCERNED WOMEN FOR AMERICA: Thank you, Alan.

KEYES: The first thing that I would - I would like to take a look at, of course, is this decision that was taken on the pledge. And I'd like to start with you, Mr. Fahringer, because I want to say, and it might seem unexpected coming from me, but I've been through this decision two or three times today, and trying to carefully look at it and see whether or not I could pick a hole in the simple legal logic that was drawn by this judge. And I've got to tell you, based on the decisions that the Supreme Court has taken, I'm not sure I could pick a hole in it.

HERALD FAHRINGER, FIRST AMENDMENT ATTORNEY: Well, you're right.

KEYES: And so the question I would ask, do you think it's justified that people are ascribing this to senility, calling this man is a dingbat and all these names? Didn't he just apply quite rigorously the logic that the Supreme Court has, in fact, invented over the last several decades?

FAHRINGER: You're absolutely right. The decision is plausible. It's rational, and I commend it for the courage in making it. What essentially they're saying is the most essential part of a democracy is the right of choice. And even though people do not have to participate, young people don't to have participate in that exercise or that ritual of pledging allegiance, if you don't, then you're set apart from the rest of the class.

And if you attach penalty to the right of choice, then the choice is impaired, and if people have to suffer under exercising that right of choice, then it seem to me, what we're doing is impairing the right of choice. So the decision is plausible. It's rational, and it's unpopular.

KEYES: Well I've got tell you that I wouldn't want to leave the impression with my audience that I think the decision is actually right or even rational in the sense of overall rational because I disagree with you there. I think in terms of the logic the Supreme Court has invented for us, in terms of school prayer and other sorts of things, he was making sense.

But I'll have to say, Thomas Jipping, that I think he was making sense the way a person who takes an absolutely insane premise and reasons consistently from it makes sense. There are people who are quite mentally ill who do that very well. I think this decision falls in that category, an insane decision that reasons correctly from an absolutely faulty premise. What do you think?

JIPPING: Well, the trajectory on which the Supreme Court and therefore lower courts decisions with regard to religion has been on, has been one as if a hot air balloon had the rope cut that tethered it to the earth, and then it just goes wherever the winds happen to take it. I mean what Mr. Fahringer described as what he believes is the heart of democracy, whether that's true or any dozen other philosophical propositions is really beside the point because the constitution doesn't say any of those things.

The point is whether we take the constitution as being the constitution or the constitution as being any constitution, a judge's constitution, some constitution. And frankly for the last 50 years that is what the Supreme Court has done. The constitution has been treated like it's whatever judges say it is and therefore, if you want to call that rational, if you want to call that logical, then Judge Goodwin's decision I suppose makes some sort of perverse sense.

But quite frankly, to talk about the constitution in that sort of morphing, shape-shifting means anything at any time to any one sort of way, none of our rights are going to be protected under that ...

KEYES: Well ...

JIPPING: ... kind of regime.

KEYES: But that is at least in part, I think, and I want to address this comment to Herald, if I can. That's at least in part because if you look at the First Amendment, it doesn't say anything like the rationale you just described. It says that Congress shall make no law respecting and establishment of religion, a phrase that has been perversely misinterpreted and willfully misinterpreted by the courts. And then it says that they can't prohibit the free exercise of religion.

What you describe, it seems to me, is the prohibition of the free exercise of religion because I freely exercise my religion and pray in a public place, somebody else may feel bad. The Constitution doesn't say you have the right to infringe on my free exercise of religion because my views make somebody else feel bad. Why isn't that person just a bigot who ought to get over it, Herald?

FAHRINGER: Well, what I'm trying to say is that you're absolutely right. The constitutional provision is that there cannot be any state endorsement of religion.

(CROSSTALK)

KEYES: No. No, that's not what the Constitution says, sir...

JIPPING: That is not what the Constitution says at all.

KEYES: That's not what it says.

FAHRINGER: Well that's the way it's been construed and the...

(CROSSTALK)

FAHRINGER: Well...

KEYES: Herald, Herald ...

FAHRINGER: ... why do you eliminate prayer in schools?

KEYES: Herald, hold on.

FAHRINGER: I mean, how do you justify that?

KEYES: Can we stop a second because that phrase came up again last night. That's the way it's been construed. So whatever anybody construes the Constitution, some court says X, Y, or Z. It doesn't matter if it actually is in the Constitution, doesn't matter if the words will bear that construction. The phrase Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, does not bear the construction being placed upon it.

JIPPING: Well, and, Alan, let's be honest about this. It hasn't been construed that way. It has been changed that way. The court has amended the Constitution. They have taken out the word establishment. They have put in the word endorsement. These two words mean completely different things.

KEYES: But, Tom, they have...

JIPPING: And if the -- and if the framers wanted to ban an endorsement of religion, they could have done so.

KEYES: But they...

JIPPING: This is the court's creation.

KEYES: They also absolutely act as if the word respecting isn't there.

JIPPING: That's correct.

KEYES: The word respecting means with regard to...

JIPPING: Having anything to do with.

KEYES: Concerning. Having anything to do with. That means -- no, hold it. Let me finish Herald.

FAHRINGER: Sure.

KEYES: That means quite clearly based on the logic, Congress shall make no law. There will be no laws on this subject of an establishment of religion. That implies, of course, that it's beyond the purview of the federal government to touch this.

And everybody knows who has studied the history, that at the time those words were written, there were established churches in the state. There were debates going on in the states about disestablishment. And that people were very concerned to make sure the federal government would not dictate the outcome of those debates.

How that becomes a rationale for the courts to then absolutely interfere with the self-determination of the states on religious matters, I don't know, but we've accepted that insanity for the last 50 and more years. Where does it come from, Herald, because it's not in the word.

FAHRINGER: Well, what you have is and I understand its construction. Everything is construction, but you don't allow prayer in the schools. You don't allow any affiliation with religion in the schools. And so what these judges fashioned in the their minds, the two judges who held this way, is that by saying "one nation under God", that is preferring a Judeo-Christian Orthodoxy. Today we live in a very diverse culture. What about the children in school who don't subscribe to one God?

KEYES: I understand that, but Herald, all of this might be well and good if all we have to talk about is how some judge feels. I am still kind of concerned that these people are supposed to be applying the constitution and there's nothing in the constitution that supports it.

JIPPING: And, Alan, it is...

KEYES: Doesn't it bother you Tom? It bothers me.

JIPPING: It is simply ...

KEYES: They've been getting away with it for a long time, but it bothers me.

JIPPING: ... it is simply not true that everything is construction. To say that everything is construction is to say all of our rights, all of our freedoms, all the powers of government, are just simply up to whatever a judge, by the construction a judge wants to put on it. That is exactly the opposite of the reason that the framers, or the founders of this country made a written constitution.

FAHRINGER: Freedom of speech ...

JIPPING: They believed that by putting it into writing, it would not...

FAHRINGER: ...freedom of speech means nothing without construction. What does freedom of speech mean except by construing it? That it means you can burn the American flag or it means you can sew the American flag on a jacket.

(CROSSTALK)

FAHRINGER: That's not in the Constitution. It all involves construction.

KEYES: Mr. Fahringer, we don't have to go there because the words on establishment -- I mean freedom of speech, broad phrase...

FAHRINGER: I mean, freedom of speech doesn't mean anything without...

(CROSSTALK)

JIPPING: Let me answer Mr. Fahringer's question.

KEYES: The straightforward prohibition in those first words is not subject to this kind of gameplay...

JIPPING: Let me...

KEYES: They'd have to ignore it completely. Thomas, go ahead.

JIPPING: ... let me answer Mr. Fahringer -- I'll answer Mr. Fahringer's question -- simply because judges do have a limited task to determine the meaning of words in the constitution in order to apply them in their cases does not mean that anything they ascribe to the constitution, or any meaning they give to it is legitimate.

(CROSSTALK)

FAHRINGER: Judges are not infallible or are fallible and they can make mistakes...

JIPPING: Well, of course they are. But the point...

FAHRINGER: ... but to say that it doesn't involve construction is idiocy. I mean, everything is construed in the constitution ...

(CROSSTALK)

KEYES: Can we -- I want to quickly because we only have about three, four minutes left.

JIPPING: Well, simply because...

KEYES: I want to raise - wait, wait, Tom. I want to raise another question, though, which is a corollary of this and which I think is part of what bothers me right now. If we are getting this impression, whether it's because of construction or just totally amending and ignoring the constitution, either way, what we get is an impression of arbitrariness. We get an impression the constitution doesn't really matter.

It's only what the judge says. And then when the judge speaks from the Supreme Court decisions, recently we're getting the impression that the court doesn't even have to listen to itself because it can be contradictory. So if it feels one day today, another way tomorrow, it can contradict itself and it doesn't matter.

I think this is starting to create an impression of whimsical, arbitrary decisions that undermine our respect for the court and are leading to the kind of reaction we saw to this judge's decision. A lot of people are saying just ignore it. Defy it. Who are these courts anyway to be speaking in this arbitrary way? Isn't that dangerous Tom?

JIPPING: Well, it is and it's because we have -- we use the phrase, the rule of law all the time. But we don't any more know what it means. We have, in fact, rejected a rule and we have rejected the idea of what law is. And in fact, instead we have adopted what Mr. Fahringer's talking about, which is simply because judges are human, simply because they're not perfect or infallible, anything they do has to be accepted.

There are no restraints on the powers of judges to make our laws mean anything they choose. And we, the people, who are supposed to have established the constitution, and are the only ones that can amend it, simply have to accept whatever judges say. I would rather be ruled by the first nine names in the Washington, D.C. phone book than to be ruled by the nine justices of the Supreme Court.

FAHRINGER: Oh, I think it's sad to hear you say something like that and I find it unseemly. I think we have ...

JIPPING: It's not sad or unseemly at all ...

FAHRINGER: ... to keep our confidence in the court. The courts - we've got the best system of government in the world. And the judiciary is supposed to be independent, and they do.

JIPPING: Of course it is.

FAHRINGER: Most of the time I think we can place our confidence in them. I think they do their job well and they do it honestly. There are exceptions to that.

KEYES: Mr. Fahringer, Mr. Fahringer ...

JIPPING: But judges...

KEYES: Wait just a second. Mr. Fahringer, that statement there, they're supposed to be independent and all that, they don't have any authority in their persons or in their bodies or in their individual. They derive their authority from the Constitution and the law.

If it seems that they are arbitrarily ignoring the Constitution, misconstruing the law and substituting their own whimsical opinion for that, then they are due no deference.

FAHRINGER: Well...

KEYES: They are due no respect because they should...

(CROSSTALK)

Let me finish. They should get none apart from the Constitution and the law. So it's imperative that they be seen to respect those things when they make their judgments. If they're not...

FAHRINGER: It's only because you disagree with them that you find it that way. I don't think you're reflecting the sentiments of the community at all. I think the people of the United States have a great deal of confidence...

JIPPING: Judges are the biggest threats.

FAHRINGER: ... in our judicial system.

JIPPING: Judges are the biggest threat to their own independence when they, in fact, don't act independently of political or personal preferences.

FAHRINGER: Well, I think most of them do. My view is that most of them do.

JIPPING: Only when they are restrained by the law itself, by the Constitution itself.

FAHRINGER: Well...

JIPPING: ... can they, in fact, be independent? Judges are undermining their own independence by the very kind of arbitrariness, the very kind of, it means whatever we say it is. That's not an in independent judiciary at all.

FAHRINGER: Well that's just a lot of flim-flam and change of words and semantic. Most...

JIPPING: Not at all...

FAHRINGER: ... judges render their decision honestly, fairly, and I think that across the country, a large percentage, 90 percent of the decisions that are rendered are decisions on the law, are decisions that correctly interpret the law, and they do their job well. Because there are some that we don't agree with, that doesn't mean that the system is falling apart.

KEYES: Gentlemen, we've come to the end of our time. I'm going to take the prerogative of saying the last word here because I have to tell you, I listen to all that and then I remember the fact that this decision on the flag is based on just ignoring the actual words that are in the First Amendment, fabricating over the course of decades, and understanding of that clause, which does exactly what the clause forbids, allows the federal courts to interfere with religious self-determination in the states.

This is the most outrageous overturning of the Constitution, I think, that our nation has witnessed. And if that's not whimsical and arbitrary, I don't know what is. In the present time, I think the spirit of defiance that a judgment like this arouses in people, because it goes against common sense and our basic rights, that the courts need to be very wary of this, because we actually need them.

We need the deference that we ought to pay to them, and they need to be careful to help us maintain that respect by sticking to the law and the constitution from which they derive their authority. Thank you, gentlemen, for being with me.

Next...

JIPPING: Thank you Alan.

KEYES: ... today's high court decision upholding school vouchers. Was it the right call? We'll have a debate. You're watching America's news channel MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEYES: Welcome back to MAKING SENSE. I'm Alan Keyes.

As Bob Kur just reported, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of school voucher programs, saying public money can be used for private schools, even religious ones. Joining Chief Justice Rehnquist in the majority were Justices Thomas, Scalia, O'Connor and Kennedy. Dissenting were Justices Stevens, Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg.

The question we'll be talking about this evening is the voucher program right for education. That involves two things, of course. It's a question of whether this decision was correct, whether it did in fact represent the proper rationale under the Constitution, something we were just talking about as important.

It's also a question though that goes beyond this because there's nothing automatic about school vouchers being adopted anywhere in the country. A political battle is required. Legislatures have to move. Programs have to be established. And in many cases, when that battle is joined, vouchers and school choice have lost in some states, even as they have won in others. So it's still a matter of debate. And the question is on the merits, I would think, what's better for the children?

Well, joining us now to debate this is Charlotte Greenbarg, state chairwoman for the Independent Voices for Better Education; and Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Welcome to MAKING SENSE.

CHARLOTTE GREENBARG, INDEPENDENT VOICES FOR BETTER EDUCATION: Thank you.

BARRY LYNN, AMERICANS UNITED: Thank you.

KEYES: Now, Barry, Since, in a certain way, the court has had the say today, and I know that it's not a say that you agree with. I'm going to ask you first of all to hold forth a little bit about how you look at the decision and whether you think that it made sense.

LYNN: No. The decision absolutely does not make sense. It's a 5-4 ruling. As they say in baseball, and in the Supreme Court, if you get one more than the next team, the one with the most runs wins. So they won.

But it's an idiotic decision. It makes no sense to suggest at all that if you give money, tax money, to religious schools in the state of Ohio, in Cleveland, a program that was immediately the subject of the case today, 96 percent of the kids who got the voucher money were going to religious schools, it seems to me obvious that you are indeed supporting, promoting and having the taxpayers pay for religion. That's what a religious school is, as you know.

I don't know why a church would set up a religious school if it didn't plan to promote religion. That's what these schools do. I have no problem with that, no problem with them existing all over this country. I do have a lot of problem forcing the American taxpayer to pay for any of this religious indoctrination.

KEYES: Charlotte Greenberg, the court rejected Barry's rationale and basically saw parents as the intermediaries making the decision. The choice was up to them, not to the government, and therefore, this doesn't involve, in fact, a government expression of any kind of preference, endorsement, far from of course any kind of establishment. What do you think of the decision?

GREENBARG: I totally agree with it, obviously. Our organization, Independent Voices for Better Education, along with our affiliate Teachers for Better Education is amicus (ph) in the case in the Supreme Court as well as the state case that's going through the courts now.

We agree as it should be a matter of parental choice. We believe that parents have the inalienable right to choose the education that their children receive. It is not up to the government to be a national nanny for us as the person who drove me over said. It's up to the parents to decide -- parents and families and guardians, in some cases, what's best for their children. And in this case, what's best for poor children so they can at least have a chance to be on equal footing with families that can afford the private schools.

LYNN: You know, this is an interesting argument, this idea that every parent has an inalienable choice. I mean, it sounds good. It's great rhetoric, and to some extent, I even believe it. But you can't run a country, Charlotte, if everybody gets to make a decision about how he or she is going to operate in every facet of their life.

GREENBARG: That's what this country is about.

LYNN: If you don't like the defense department, you can't say, well, look, give me a couple of vouchers. I'm going to buy my own guns. And then the other people who want the defense department, they can have it. But I'm going to take my little voucher and use it for guns and security systems in my house. We can't do that.

GREENBARG: That's the classic liberal rhetoric.

LYNN: We have to make the commitment to make sure that every child in this country is offered a public school education that works for him or for her. If you want something extra, a private school, fine. But you have got to pay for it.

GREENBARG: We do pay for it.

KEYES: Go ahead, Charlotte.

GREENBARG: No, we do pay for it. You see, everybody pays taxes, whether they go to public or private school. You pay your public school taxes. The people who have the money simply put the extra money in and go to the private schools or those of us who have children -- had children in public schools -- mine are gone, I have grandchildren now -- put the money and the school's need and get them what they need. The poor families don't have the clout to do this kind of thing.

LYNN: The poor families in this country have the clout to make enormous changes, just like any other family and they have done it. When you go to South Central Los Angeles, you go to Harlem, you go to Washington, D.C., where the parents get together and say to a school, you are not meeting the needs of my children, public schools turn out to be very malleable...

KEYES: I'm sorry. Barry, Barry...

(CROSSTALK)

GREENBARG: Oh, you're living in liberal la la land.

KEYES: Let me intervene here. Barry, I have to say that that -- I live right next door to the District of Columbia. What you just said is a lot of nonsense. And I think ignoring the fact...

LYNN: You want to go to a school. I'll take to you a school that...

KEYES: Let me finish, please. Let me finish, please.

LYNN: ... that you would not -- that you would say is superbly (ph) right here in the District.

KEYES: I have the floor right now, OK? And I think you look at the situation of a lot of the poor folks. They're hostages in these schools. They don't have any place to go. And then somebody comes along and says there's a way out. And they say, well, I can't afford that way out.

And you're telling me that it's somehow an abuse of public funds to allow those poorer parents to send their children to schools that will produce better results, provably better results than they are going to get from the public school systems that are victimizing them. That's not only seems...

LYNN: You know, first of all, nothing is proven.

KEYES: Hold on. Hold on. Let me finish.

LYNN: Nothing is proven about this.

KEYES: That not only seems to ignore the rights of the child, but then you do it on the basis of a specious argument that flies in the face of things that have been quite regularly practiced. The rationale the court adopted is the same rationale that was extended during the G.I. Bill, when soldiers chose to go to different institutions. And we didn't say that because they chose to go to Notre Dame or some other school that had a religious background, that was government subsidized.

GREENBARG: Exactly.

LYNN: Alan, Alan, Alan...

(CROSSTALK)

LYNN: The G.I. Bill -- you bring up the G.I. Bill. The G.I. Bill is compensation, delayed payment for service to your country in the United States military. The programs you're talking about are essentially social welfare programs, the same thing that every night in this program, you tear to shreds.

KEYES: Excuse me, Barry...

GREENBARG: Excuse, me, how about daycare, Barry? How about daycare, Barry? Do you know if you're poor and in this country, you can get your child into any daycare slot that has an available place for the child, whether it's a church daycare or a secular daycare. Do you know that if you have...

LYNN: And there are rules about what you can teach that child though, Charlotte, and you know that. You know that this was a carefully crafted bill to guarantee that you wouldn't be having government pay with tax dollars for religious education.

KEYES: What I know, Barry, is that you are acting as if the tax dollars that people put on the table are not dollars that they have to earn. I know that's the view that liberals take, that that money belongs to the government. But that's nonsense. That money is earned by the people who have to pay those taxes. And when you suggest...

LYNN: Yes, and that's why I don't want to pay for your indoctrination.

KEYES: Excuse me, sir. When you suggest that somebody who would then be able to take those tax dollars and use them to support a child in a more effective education, in an institution of their choice, is somehow getting something they haven't earned, it shows your contempt for the taxpayers.

LYNN: Alan, wake up. These programs don't even work. In Cleveland, in fact, the longer running ones, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, it was such an embarrassing failure that the state legislature will not even allow...

GREENBARG: Oh, you are absolutely incorrect. Oh, no.

LYNN: Excuse me, but the...

GREENBARG: You are totally incorrect.

LYNN: ... state legislature will not even allow it to be tested anymore because they're so embarrassed...

KEYES: Not true.

(CROSSTALK)

GREENBARG: If you look at...

KEYES: Barry, hold on. Let Charlotte set the record straight. Go ahead.

GREENBARG: If you look at noexcuses.org, you're going to find out the kind of successes that the poor kids have had in these institutions that you claim aren't working. But the most interesting thing that I've found listening to the arguments in the courts, both in the state level and on the national level, because we have got a lot of feedback from Frank Shepherd, our pro bono attorney, is that the people in favor of keeping these children in these schools that don't work, in these prisons, I call them, mention not one word about the kids achieving.

They didn't say, gee, we're afraid the kids won't achieve. Gee, we're afraid the kids won't be happy or their families won't be happy. What they were concentrating on was we'll lose money. The public schools will lose money, herego, power. That's all they care about. That's all they care about.

LYNN: That's absolutely false.

GREENBARG: That is true. Look at the record, Barry.

LYNN: The only thing -- let me explain -- I don't know who all these other people are, but the only thing I'm sure about...

GREENBARG: I'm sure you don't.

LYNN: ... is what is going to help children. And I can tell you, Alan, this is a promise. This war is going on. It didn't end at the Supreme Court today because those of us who believe in guaranteeing quality public schools for every child are going to fight this everywhere. We are not going to allow the public schools of this country to be destroyed by right-wing ideology. We're not going to allow...

GREENBARG: Oh, this is the classic liberal nonsense.

LYNN: ... the civil rights of young people to be taking...

KEYES: We're coming -- hold on a second.

LYNN: ... a step backwards.

KEYES: We have got to take a break here. But as we go to it, I want to say, soap box or no, Barry, there is going to be a battle about this.

LYNN: You got it.

KEYES: And it is going to be a battle so that we understand that public education, that is education funded with public money, not the education controlled by the NEA, not the education controlled by the government, but education controlled with government money, we'll get better public education when we allow parents to send their kids to the better schools that they can put together when they're given a choice.

More with our guests right after this. And later, my "Outrage of the Day," the corporate corruption that now seems to be running rampant in America and what it really means. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEYES: We're back with Charlotte Greenbarg and Barry Lynn talking about the landmark Supreme Court ruling today on school vouchers.

As we left, we were talking about the fact that we have to look forward now to what is likely to be a pretty extensive battle in states around the country as folks try to move forward with the school voucher idea.

Now, Charlotte, one of the things I have noticed, and Barry is not going to like this when I say it, but I have noticed that some of the efforts to get school choice implemented in states and different parts of the country have been defeated by an interesting coalition that includes the NEA and people like this wanting to keep their grip on the public schools.

But it also includes opposition quietly roused in different areas, suburban areas and so forth, people afraid that somebody is going to escape from these schools that have been imprisoning the poor and actually show up on their doorstep in the schools that they've been able to afford with their money, a kind of subtle bigotry that's been going on. Is it possible to overcome this odd bedfellow alliance?

GREENBARG: I'll tell you, I was on the inside of the belly of the beast of the establishment because I was the Dade County Council PTA president from '88 to '90. So I know how they think and I know what their priorities are.

Their priorities are dividing and conquering. They divide classes of people in this country deliberately to pit us against one another so that they can keep power and keep the money. That's what this is all about. It has nothing to do with educating these poor kids. I call those title one schools the feeder patterns (ph) of the prisons. If we...

LYNN: It's absolutely amazing. Now we have got the PTA involved in a grand conspiracy to somehow make sure that vouchers don't pass.

KEYES: Don't mention the PTA. I said the NEA. Very different, by the way.

LYNN: Could I remind both of you of something? Twenty times in the last 20 years, we've had roughly 20 initiatives or referendums about vouchers, where we didn't go to legislatures, we went to the people. The people rejected them, usually about 2-1, in Michigan, not just in wealthy areas, but in the poorest areas. In California, just two years ago, not just in Los Angeles South Central, but also in the wealthiest suburbs. Nobody wants this except ideologues. Just today...

GREENBARG: No, Barry. Nobody wants this except the people who learn what it's really about, not the propaganda that your minions put out.

LYNN: I'm a parent. I've learned what it's really about. Parents learn if they...

GREENBARG: You and your unions put out million of dollars to fight these initiatives, putting out blatant lies about it, scare people to death, and then get them to vote against it. They will learn.

LYNN: That is -- in other words, the people are stupid. You're basically...

GREENBARG: No. You're lying to the people.

(CROSSTALK)

You're lying to the people.

LYNN: That is the arrogance that brings us to the point of having vouchers needing to be discussed...

GREENBARG: No, you said that, Barry.

KEYES: Excuse me. Let me have a word.

LYNN: ... when we know it is snake oil.

KEYES: The problem is, I think, that, and this has particularly bothered me because I look at it in a lot of cities around the country, scare tactics use that actually keep, especially poor black children among others, imprisoned in these awful schools.

Meanwhile, you're aiding and abetting those, a lot of liberals, too, by the way, who take their money, put their kids in the schools. The very same people, crying out about how you got to force these poor children to stay in the public schools, don't miss a chance when they got money in their pocket to take their children out. Jesse Jackson and all of them, everybody else.

It seems to me what we've got here is a clear case of money/class discrimination, and people pulling up the drawbridge behind themselves so that poor people can't get a break...

LYNN: Let me tell you something, Alan.

KEYES: That's what's going on.

GREENBARG: You bet, Alan. That's exactly what's going on.

LYNN: Alan, there's no liberal conspiracy either about this. Those of us who want quality public schools are going to keep demanding it. We are not going to go and take tax dollars out of my pocket to go into what, today, Harvard University in a new study said were the most segregated schools in this country, private religious schools.

KEYES: I wasn't even talking about that. See, you...

LYNN: I am not even going to talk about -- we are not going to let that happen. We're not going to turn back the clock because Alan Keyes says...

(CROSSTALK)

GREENBARG: See, it's about money.

KEYES: Barry, Barry, you do this...

LYNN: We ought to because he's an ideological...

(CROSSTALK)

KEYES: You do this whole liberal trick. I didn't say a word about race or segregation. What I was talking about...

LYNN: Of course, you did. You just said the people in the suburbs don't want those kids coming to their schoolhouse.

KEYES: Educational -- I was not talking about segregation. I was talking about educational results.

LYNN: No.

KEYES: I was talking about whether or not you're actually going to get better performance, as we have seen in schools, for instance, in Wisconsin and elsewhere...

LYNN: No. We haven't seen it anywhere, Alan.

KEYES: ... where that has happened. Yes, we have.

LYNN: We have seen it no place. Zero.

KEYES: Now, as is always the case...

GREENBARG: Oh, yes you have, Barry.

KEYES: As is always the case, we get outright lies from the folks who are opposed to the voucher program...

LYNN: No, no, no. All that we have said...

KEYES: And you put your millions behind those lies...

LYNN: From the beginning...

KEYES: ... in order to stir up the kind of class division that precisely has defeated these measures in the past.

LYNN: Class division, no, no, no...

(CROSSTALK)

GREENBARG: I was sitting in in the meetings where they planned them, Barry. Don't tell me about it. They thought I wanted the job.

LYNN: Listen, all of us have been parents. Some of us have found that when there's a trouble in a public school, you go and fix it. Apparently, you have given up, decided to sell snake oil instead of a real cure. And now you're proud of yourselves because you got a good vote in the court.

GREENBARG: The real cure is competition.

LYNN: That is not enough. That's not going to take us back. We are not going to turn back the clock and make schools even worse just because a few folks have an ideological -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE) ideological positions.

KEYES: What we have found is that when you actually respect people themselves, take the power out of the hands of self-righteous, patronizing, educational bureaucrats and professional agitators...

LYNN: Don't let them vote though. Don't let them vote.

KEYES: ... like yourself and give it into the hands of parents...

GREENBARG: No, let them vote when they get the truth, Barry.

KEYES: ... who actually care about the real results that are produced for their children, those results improve immensely because of the moral atmosphere in these schools, because of the discipline, because of the actual self-respect that is inculcated instead of the phony, happy-faced, self-esteem being promoted in these institutions that have been destroyed by the very liberalism you represent.

(CROSSTALK)

LYNN: And I'm glad a happy face is a part of this conspiracy. You know, you have got everybody in the country involved in this conspiracy.

GREENBARG: No, not everybody, Barry. Just people who want to profit from it.

LYNN: The truth is people look at the record, people look at the record...

GREENBARG: You're profiting from them, Barry. You're profiting from them, Barry.

LYNN: The evidence is there. Look at the evidence...

GREENBARG: You and your minions are profiting from these children. You're living off the blood of these children.

LYNN: I'm not profiting 10 cents from anything. I'm not profiting a nickel. You're the people that are profiting...

GREENBARG: You and your allies are profiting from them.

LYNN: ... including the big business interests...

GREENBARG: The NEA and the FCE...

LYNN: ... that promote vouchers and don't even tell the truth about who they're...

GREENBARG: ... and the PTA, which is their ally. The people who don't want to work, the people who don't understand what these kids really need, the teachers who care have long since left or...

LYNN: Baloney.

GREENBARG: ... they are hanging in their by their fingernails. And it's not baloney because I was in these inner city schools and I saw what went on. It was facade. It was smoke and mirrors until we got our A-plus plan in Florida that held somebody accountable for something finally.

And the last term of out last governor, before Jeb Bush, 65 percent of the kids who went into higher ed, 65 percent needed remediation. They couldn't read and write, Barry, but they got smiley faces and A's on their report cards.

LYNN: That's -- of course, we've got reform...

GREENBARG: Oh, it was lovely.

LYNN: We've got reforms. A lot of times, you folks on the conservative side will not pay...

KEYES: You know what's fascinating, Barry? What are we reforming?

LYNN: ... for any of these innovations. You only want to pay for one thing: vouchers.

KEYES: Barry, Barry, hold it. You know what is amazing about this discussion, folks?

LYNN: What?

KEYES: Barry is talking about, we've got reforms. We've got reforms. These liberals have been dominating the schools for decades. What are we reforming? We're reforming the sickening, poor results that have been produced by their experimentation in the public schools...

LYNN: They're getting better. They're getting better.

KEYES: ... with our children. That's what we're getting.

LYNN: They're getting better, Alan. You just can't stand it.

KEYES: Oh, yes, sure. Sure. Sure.

(CROSSTALK)

GREENBARG: Alan, California admitted it.

LYNN: ... going to keep talking forever about nonsense instead of common sense.

GREENBARG: Barry, California admitted that they destroyed children with whole language. They apologized. Oh, so sorry. We really did a disservice to our children. Now, we'll go back to phonics.

LYNN: Yes, that's a major issue, whole language.

GREENBARG: It is a major issue because they can't read.

LYNN: It's not. Kids can learn in multiple ways. We give kids opportunities.

KEYES: We've come to the wire...

GREENBARG: And you don't want them to read.

LYNN: This is nonsense.

KEYES: Charlotte, Barry, we've come down to the wire.

GREENBARG: Thank you.

KEYES: Obviously, everybody, this is going to be a...

LYNN: Thanks.

KEYES: Thank you. I really appreciate it.

This is going to be a lively debate. I think it's worth the intensity we devote to it though because what's at stake is the future of our country, the education of our children, who will carry forward for better or worse this nation's heritage. So I think we'd better devote a lot of time, effort and attention to getting it right. And I think the first people we ought to respect, me personally, are the parents. Put them in a position where they can feel the responsibility, take that responsibility and where the money follows their choice, not the choice of educrats bureaucrats and professional agitators who want to keep power in their hands.

That's my sense of it. Anyway, back with my "Outrage of the Day," taking a look at all this corporate shenanigans, right after these words. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEYES: Now for my "Outrage of the Day."

It looks like we're not going to see an end to the long train of abuses and scandals in the corporate industry. We've seen Enron and Global Crossing accused of manipulating the books, to hide things from their employees and steal a march on them in the stock market. We've seen WorldCom disclosing a loss, where it was hiding things from the stockholders and trying to cover up with the knievance, by the way, of an accounting firm, Arthur Andersen.

And then we get a report that Garban Intercapital Management Services that lost 600 and some odd employees in the World Trade Center bombing, they were raided, or at least a raid was planned according to found e-mails by another company seeking to steal their top management away from them in the midst of dealing with the widows and orphans.

Think about it. Is there no sense of integrity in business. No, there's not. Why? Because money and power are their idols. Where there is no God but money and power, there is no hope for integrity.

That's my sense of it. Thanks. "THE NEWS WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS" is up next. God be with you.