By Steve Dunleavy. The New York Post.
If Fidel Castro is manipulating Juan Miguel Gonzalez - and kept him from visiting his son for four months - then what kind of dad does Elian have?
AS THE Castro Clintonistas are popping the champagne corks, I would like to ask a question.
What would a family court have decided if a mother abandoned her 6-year-old son for four months?
That is exactly what Juan Miguel Gonzalez did right after the Elian Miracle last Thanksgiving.
The average parent I know would have sprouted wings to get to a child who had been plucked from the jaws of death.
Oh, you say, Castro wouldn't have let him go for those four months. If it was Castro preventing him to leave, then it shows just how much Gonzalez speaks for himself and Elian.
He was either neglectful, or he doesn't speak for himself.
You can't have it both ways.
Even the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals can see that Gonzalez might not have been able to exercise his own judgment. And yet, the court hands him back to a prison island.
But there is something more troubling.
"Clinton and Reno may be celebrating in their Orwellian way," said Roger Pilon, law professor from the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank.
"But the court bent over backward to do the bidding of the administration. We're moving closer to an executive state."
Indeed, when a court does a president's bidding, what happens to separation of powers?
A little clue. Attorney Greg Craig suddenly went from being President Clinton's lawyer to representing Juan Miguel - after getting the National Council of Churches' introduction for a job that must be worth between $500,000 and $1 million in billings.
Of course, Fidel Castro was very happy about Craig's appointment. His representation gave it the imprimatur that Clinton was behind the campaign to send Elian back.
And Clinton is doing everything in his power to kiss Castro's ring, for fear the dictator will launch Mariel II. Clinton, speaking from Germany, was gleeful: "This is a case about the importance of family."
That's a lollapalooza. Clinton is about as qualified to talk about family as the Grand Wizard of the KKK is qualified to talk about race relations.
Former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer said yesterday: "This has been a farce and a charade from the very beginning."
Can the liberals celebrate yesterday's abortion of justice ... with the administration telling the courts what to do, with that vision of Reno's Raiders shoving an automatic weapon in Elian's face?
Under Janet Reno, we're not only in the business of kidnapping, but fixing a court with a Clinton mouthpiece.
Luis Zuniga, a former political prisoner in Castro's notorious jails, said yesterday from Miami: "The Cuban exiles here will respect the law, but that doesn't mean the law is right. Slavery was once the law. Was that right?"
In Reno's native Miami, along lots of the streets, yellow ribbons are tied on the fences as a sign that they want Elian back from the Kidnap Gang.
I'm sick and tired of hearing people talk about parental rights. Elian's mother died to give Elian human rights.
"Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses" - the words we supposedly live by in the Land of the Free - are starting to look a little limp today.
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