Senator Tom Daschle and his Democrat Senate departed Washington for the last time on Wednesday. Virtually every Republican cheered and so did many Democrats. The Daschle strategy of holding up legislation important to the defense of the nation and then blaming President George W. Bush for not winning the "war on terror" backfired during the mid-tern elections.

The turn of events also backfired for Senator Jim Jeffords (I-VT). In 2000 the Republican Party spent millions of dollars reelecting him to the Senate. Just a few months later, in May of 2001, this pro-abortion Senator departed the GOP and declared himself an "independent" who would caucus with the Democrats for the purpose of electing leadership. It was thus Senator Jeffords, not the will of the people, who handed control of the Senate to Tom Daschle. His reward was a powerful committee chairmanship which he will now lose.

Believe it or not, Senator Jeffords is putting out feelers to come back to the GOP if he can keep his chairmanship. Jeffords is what he is; a liberal’s liberal. Even when he called himself a Republican he voted against every issue important to social conservatives. There is no need for the GOP to move to the left to get Jeffords back on board. He can stay where he is.

The Senate did finally manage to pass the Homeland Security Bill this week, creating a complete reorganization of all the agencies responsible to defend the nation under one department. Daschle, Kennedy and Clinton tried one last time to stop this important bill for the sake of trial lawyers and union leaders, but failed.

On his way out of town Senator Daschle blamed his party’s problems on conservative talk radio hosts, comparing this form of conservative media to the Taliban. He also blames the right-wing religious folks he claims have hijacked the Republican Party. Hmmm. The reality is that the secularists hijacked the Democrat party over the last ten years or so. All those "religious" folks joining the Republican party came from the Democrats. I will not try to sum up the obvious but for a lengthy insightful story on how the Democrat party lost its "religious" members check on the story by Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio, "Our Secularist Democrat Party".

The nation did move further to the right on social issues and it had nothing to do with Rush Limbaugh, who is not a social conservative despite what Senator Daschle thinks. Here are some details:

In Nevada, homosexual marriage failed 67% to 33 %.

Every ballot initiative to legalize marijuana failed.

"Hillary care"- socialized medicine- received just 21% of the vote in liberal Oregon.

The people elected more anti-abortion members to Congress than ever before!

The truly sad part of the Tom Daschle story is that he really does plan on running for President in 2004. Are you feeling sorry for the guy yet?

I am working on the final production cut of a documentary about persecuted Christians in the Holy Land. While much of my work is in Washington, I do spend time in the West Bank assisting Palestinian Christians and in particular their Christian schools there. There are still 175,000 Christians living in the West Bank under the rule of Yassar Arafat. Christian parents there must either find a way to send their children to private schools or else turn them over for indoctrination in jihad and martyrdom in Arafat’s "public schools." The documentary "Holy Land Terror" should be available sometime in December in VHS and DVD.

In February I will be returning to the West Bank to survey one of the Christian schools the Religious Freedom Coalition sponsors. While there I will hold meetings with Palestinian Christian leaders to discuss other areas where American Christians can be of help. If you have an interest in helping Christians in the West Bank living under the yoke of Islam please contact me.

Congress will be adjourned until January. I will send one or two summaries to you over the next few weeks concerning the legislation coming forward when Congress returns.

To continue to inform the public on key issues, financial help is needed. Please consider giving a contribution online at www.rfcnet.org or by mailing a check to the offices of the Religious Freedom Coalition, P.O. Box 77511, Washington, DC 20013.