Roots

Al Gore, Growing Up in Two Worlds

David Maraniss and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writers
WashintonPost.com, Sunday, October 10, 1999; Page A1

"During his early years as a senator's son in Washington, Al Gore was often the smallest one in the crowd, a pint-size boy with dark hair and freckles who lived with his prominent parents in Suite 809 atop the Fairfax Hotel along Embassy Row. If this experience made him different from you and me, to borrow F. Scott Fitzgerald's phrase, it was not from being rich, but rather from being apart. He grew up in a singularly odd world of old people and bellhops, separated from the child-filled neighborhoods of his classmates at St. Albans and further still from his summertime pals at the family farm in Tennessee."

Left Ignores Gore's Attack of America

Ben Shapiro, Human Events Online

...Congress ought to revivify sedition prosecutions. U.S. Code 18 Sec. 2388 currently governs sedition. It reads, in relevant part, "Whoever, when the United States is at war, willfully makes or conveys false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies .... Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both." The only question for Al Gore is whether he has the requisite intent under this statute. It would be tough to argue that he does not, in current context. Justice Holmes' statement in Schenck v. U.S. (249 U.S. 47, 1919) should govern here: "When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right."