Saturday, February 28, 2009

Stuart Taylor's Response to Eric Holder

Attorney General Eric Holder's recent race-baiting statement that Americans are cowards about race has resulted in much criticism. The most thoughtful criticism I have read to date comes from Stuart Taylor:


Dear Mr. Attorney General:
Your speech commemorating Black History Month by calling America "a nation of cowards" because we "do not talk enough with each other about race" -- a topic about which we talk incessantly -- was unworthy of the admirable public servant I believe you to be.
The speech was, as others have pointed out, embarrassingly misinformed, hackneyed, and devoid of thoughtful contributions to racial dialogue.
You can do much better. Please use your bully pulpit in the future to cut through the usual cant and state some politically incorrect truths about race in America that would carry special weight if they came from you. That would require mustering the courage to take on the Democratic Party's powerful racial-grievance lobby. But it would do the country a lot of good.

Your unelaborated assertion that "this nation has still not come to grips with its racial past" is also way off base, Mr. Attorney General.
To the contrary, this nation has adopted numerous civil-rights laws. It has replaced the once-pervasive regime of discrimination against blacks with a benignly motivated but nonetheless wide-reaching regime of discrimination against whites, euphemistically known as "affirmative action." It sometimes seems more interested in teaching children about slavery and segregation than about math and science. It has elected a black president

As I think you know, and should acknowledge, Mr. Attorney General:
• The major causes of these problems do not include contemporary white racism, which has been driven to the margins of society and has not been a serious obstacle to black advancement for at least two or three decades.
• The dominant cause is, rather, our tortured history: slavery and past discrimination, of course, but also the misguided welfare policies and cultural trends that did so much to destroy work incentives, foster irresponsible child-bearing and dependence on the dole, and break up poor families in the latter half of the 20th century.
Indeed, even as legal barriers to blacks fell and discrimination receded, the percentage of black children born out of wedlock soared from an estimated 15 percent in 1950 to 69 percent in 2000. (There was a similar but far less dramatic trend among whites.) "You name the social problem -- poverty, crime, substance abuse, doing poorly in school, dropping out -- and it correlates with growing up in a home without a father," in the words of conservative lawyer-scholar Roger Clegg.

If you really want an honest conversation and if you don't share the opposition of the vast majority of Americans (including me) to large racial preferences, please clarify specifically why you disagree. Also, please come to grips with the fact that these preferences do very little for truly poor people; that a substantial percentage of them go to middle- and upper-class blacks at the expense of less affluent Asians and whites; and that preferences harm some of their intended beneficiaries.
On this last point, please address the social-science research showing that virtually every selective college and university in the country discriminates so heavily in admissions that most black students cluster toward the bottom of the class and the best black students see their accomplishments stigmatized -- and that alarming percentages drop out.

And I would caution AG Holder on one further point. Those whites and asians who are being discriminated against may return the favor at some point in the future, should the opportunity present itself.

"the free market mindset: history, psychology, and consequences"

I always get a kick out of hearing the elite talk about how all us unwashed masses are ignorant and deluded. Like when His Holiness B. Hussein 0bama said that we red state hicks are clinging bitterly to our guns and religion.

Now, Harvard Law School is hosting a conference entitled "the free market mindset:
history, psychology, and consequences"
in which the participants intend to demonstrate how stupid and mentally disturbed are those of us who believe in freedom. (Hat tip to Protein Wisdom). Many of the presenters come from elite universities, including Harvard, Chicago, Yale, and Stanford. And although most of the presenters come from law schools or sociology departments, there is also Stephen Marglin, from Harvard's economics department, and Sheena Iyengar, from Columbia Business School.


Here are a few choice excerpts from the schedule of presentations:


Stephen Marglin, “ How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community”: Economics is a two-faced, one might almost say schizophrenic, discipline. It claims to be a science, describing the world, telling it like it is without preconception or value judgment. (Never mind that the hey-day of positivism that enshrines the separation between fact and value is long past; economists have always lived in a time warp.) The reality is that descriptive economics has been shaped by a framework of assumptions, a metaphysics more geared to its normative message than to its descriptive pretensions. This framework is essential to the normative side of an economics that trumpets the virtues of markets and is maintained even when it gets in the way of understanding how the economy really works. The 19th century physicist, Lord Kelvin, famously proclaimed the virtue of knowledge imbued with the precision of number. Economics goes physics one better, from epistemology to ontology: anything we can’t measure—like community—simply doesn’t exist. If your model of the world is inhabited by self-interested individuals rationally calculating how to consume ever more, for whom society is the nation-state, community is not going to show up on your radar. It goes without saying that economic hardship, especially the kind caused by unemployment and short hours, will make community more necessary and more visible; people will have to rely on each other more and more as the market fails them. It remains to be seen what impact this dose of reality will have on economics.

That's right Stephen. All us awful economists, including you and your colleagues at Harvard, are schizophrenic deniers of the existence of community.


Juliet Schor, “ Colossal Failure: The Output Bias of Market Economies”: Mainstream economic theory claims that a competitive market equilibrium delivers optimal levels of consumption and well-being. The reasoning relies on a number of invalid assumptions, including the crucial premise that individuals’ preference structures are independent. If consumption is social, as considerable social science research shows, then the market delivers excessive levels of consumption, too many hours of work, and too much ecological degradation. (This is in addition to the well-known argument that ecological goods are externalities.) In this talk I discuss the implications of what has become a profound market failure, and how we can rectify it.

I can't wait to see Juliet's prescription for rectifying this horrendous problem. It wouldn't have anything to do with more government planning, higher taxes, and centralized control? Naw.

Sheena Iyengar, “ The Multiple Choice Problem”: It is a common supposition in modern society that the more choices, the better—that the human ability to manage, and the human desire for, choice is infinite. From classic economic theories of free enterprise, to mundane marketing practices that provide customers with entire aisles devoted to potato chips or soft drinks, to highly consequential life decisions in which people contemplate multiple options for medical treatment or investment opportunities for retirement, this belief pervades our institutions, norms, and customs. In this era of abundant choice, there are several dilemmas that people face: How do you choose given the sheer number of domains in which you now have the ability to choose? And in any given domain, what are the ramifications of being confronted with more options than ever before?

Isn't it terrible for us to have all these choices? I know, let's get the government to restrict our choices.

Jaime Napier, The Palliative Function of Ideology”: In this research, we drew on system-justification theory and the notion that conservative ideology serves a palliative function to explain why conservatives are happier than liberals. Specifically, in three studies using nationally representative data from the United States and nine additional countries, we found that right-wing (vs. left-wing) orientation is indeed associated with greater subjective well-being and that the relation between political orientation and subjective well-being is mediated by the rationalization of inequality. In our third study, we found that increasing economic inequality (as measured by the Gini index) from 1974 to 2004 has exacerbated the happiness gap between liberals and conservatives, apparently because conservatives (more than liberals) possess an ideological buffer against the negative hedonic effects of economic inequality.

This has got to be my favorite. Conservatives are happier than liberals because we "rationalize inequality". If this is so, then why do conservatives donate far more money to charity than so-called 'liberals'? Perhaps it is because conservatives actually care about those who are less fortunate than us. Whereas leftists, especially super-wealthy leftists, are more interested in having the government stick a gun in other people's faces and forcing them to donate to the less fortunate, rather than donating their own wealth.

I consider myself fortunate to not possess the brilliance of these intellectual 'elite'. Perhaps it is because I went to blue-collar universities like the University of Texas and Ohio State.

Friday, February 27, 2009


Oklahoma City Teaparty
I arrived late to the teaparty being held on the steps of the Oklahoma state capitol building in Oklahoma City. But it looked to me like a good turnout. A lot of people are really disgusted with the 0bama administration's relentless march towards socialism.
Welcome GoV and Gateway Pundit readers. I am a classical liberal and often comment on issues concerning gun control, climate change, terrorism, and economic policy. I hope you will linger for a while and read some of my other posts and add your comments.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Napolitano Vows to 'Get to the Bottom' of Raid on Illegal Immigrants

President Bush had a terrible record on the subject of illegal immigration. He stood by and watched as millions of illegals crossed the border and took jobs away from Americans. He foolishly proposed to give amnesty to the 12 million or so illegals that are here, ignoring the fact that such an act would entice millions more across the border.

But beginning in 2007, Bush began to get the message. His administration began to make half-hearted attempts to enforce the immigration laws. This included raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on businesses that employ illegals.

ICE recently made a raid on a business in Washington state and arrested illegals who were working there. And now immigrants 'rights' groups are blasting the 0bama administration for not allowing illegals to take jobs away from Americans while Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is vowing to "get to the bottom of this":


Immigrant rights groups blasted President Obama on Wednesday for breaking what they called his "personal commitment" to change Bush-era immigration raids after U.S. authorities raided an engine machine shop in Washington state and detained illegal immigrants.
The Obama administration itself seemed taken aback by the raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano vowing to Congress that she would "get to the bottom of this."
"The secretary is not happy and this is not her policy," a Homeland Security official said Wednesday evening, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the secretary's review is ongoing.
White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said "these raids are not a long-term solution."
"Secretary Napolitano is conducting a thorough review of ICE, including enforcement," Mr. Shapiro said. "The president believes we must respect due process and our best values as we enforce the law. The real answer to our broken immigration system is to fix it. The president has said that we will start the immigration reform debate this year, and this continues to be the plan."

So how are Barack and Janet planning to 'fix' our broken immigration system? Do they intend to give amnesty to millions of lawbreakers? Will they allow illegal aliens, who have no respect for our laws and our sovereignty, to take jobs from American citizens in the midst of a recession?

Janet of all people should understand the danger of sitting by while millions of illegals invade our country. She was until last month governor of Arizona. The illegals have been trashing her state while entering through the Arizona desert.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Japanese Scientists Dispute Global Warming Theories

The Japanese Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) is a government advisory panel. They recently issued a report written in their own language that disputes the UN's IPCC view that global warming is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, this report has received little or no attention in the leftist media here in the USA. The Register commissioned a translation of the report. A few excerpts:

Three of the five leading scientists contend that recent climate change is driven by natural cycles, not human industrial activity, as political activists argue.
Kanya Kusano is Program Director and Group Leader for the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology (JAMSTEC). He focuses on the immaturity of simulation work cited in support of the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Using undiplomatic language, Kusano compares them to ancient astrology. After listing many faults, and the IPCC's own conclusion that natural causes of climate are poorly understood, Kusano concludes:
"[The IPCC's] conclusion that from now on atmospheric temperatures are likely to show a continuous, monotonous increase, should be perceived as an unprovable hypothesis," he writes.
Shunichi Akasofu, head of the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska, has expressed criticism of the theory before. Akasofu uses historical data to challenge the claim that very recent temperatures represent an anomaly:
"We should be cautious, IPCC's theory that atmospheric temperature has risen since 2000 in correspondence with CO2 is nothing but a hypothesis. "
Akasofu calls the post-2000 warming trend hypothetical. His harshest words are reserved for advocates who give conjecture the authority of fact.
"Before anyone noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for truth... The opinion that great disaster will really happen must be broken."

When will the lefties get it into their heads that there is no scientific consensus about climate change? Don't hold your breath.
What? You mean you weren't inspired and reassured by 0bama's speech last night?
Health Care Fascism

A number of people, including Peter Ferrara writing in the American Spectator, have raised alarms about the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER), that was included in the Democrats' recent $787 billion boondoggle. Ferrara discusses the peril of central planning of medical decisions:


Is it the private medical community, medical institutes, medical schools, Professors of Medicine, private researchers, etc., informing doctors and their patients, where the ultimate decisions are made? Or is it the government, informing Big Government bureaucracies, who will then impose their decisions on these matters on doctors and patients?

Ferrara also mentions the danger of government bureaucrats who would deny treatment to older patients, as has been done in Britain with its socialist health care system:

Indeed, NICE [British National Institute on Clinical Excellence] is so nice that in 2006, as Betsy McCaughey reports at Bloomberg.com, it "decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye." This was not an isolated policy decision. As McCaughey further reports, NICE "approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit." This leaves senior citizens at a great disadvantage, because they have fewer years left to enjoy the benefits of any medical treatment. As a result, McCaughey continues, "Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis."

Ferrara also gives a number of examples of people in Canada's socialist health care system whose treatment was delayed or denied:

In March of 2005, [Ontario resident Shona] Holmes began losing her vision and experienced headaches, anxiety attacks, extreme fatigue, and weight gain. Despite an MRI scan showing a brain tumor, Ms. Holmes was told she would have to wait months to see a specialist. In June, her vision deteriorating rapidly, Ms. Holmes went to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, where she found that immediate surgery was required to prevent permanent vision loss and potentially death. Again, the government system in Ontario required more appointments and more tests, along with more wait times. Ms. Holmes returned to the Mayo clinic and paid for her surgery.

All of Ferrara's points are valid. But I think he greatly underestimates the potential hazards of allowing the government to run the health care system.

For one thing, we have seen how ethnic minorities have been given preferences in hiring, promotions, university admissions, and government contracts. If some federal government agency gets to decide who gets what type of medical treatment, we can rest assured that whites will be pushed to the end of the line.

Moreover, government involvement in health care to date has almost always favored women over men. In 2007, the National Cancer Institute spent $551 million on breast cancer research but only $305 million on prostate cancer. Even the US Department of Defense, which has far more male employees than female, spent $138 million on breast cancer research versus only $80 million for prostate cancer in 2008.

If you are a white male, under a government-run health care system you will likely be denied treatment for a medical condition, while some minority or woman who has a similar condition is granted it.

Furthermore, government-run health care would offer a tempting means for those who wish to stifle dissent. Anyone who criticizes the government had better hope they stay healthy. Look at what happened to Joseph Wurzelbacher when he asked 0bama a question that the presidential candidate found awkward. He was investigated by several government oficials in Ohio who were 0bama supporters.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009


Paul Begala Brainfarts in the Daily Beast


The Clinton administration was staffed by a large number of leftwing moonbats. One of the looniest was Paul Begala. Paul once referred to President Bush as a high functioning moron. Now we get an Op-Ed from Paul in the Daily Beast that earns him the coveted SOCIALIST MOONBAT OF THE WEEK!!!!!!

Ambitious young Gov. Jindal will stick it to Obama on TV tonight. But Paul Begala says to really make it politics, he has to break with the kook right.
One of the lesser-known laws of politics is that you can survive your enemies; it’s your friends who do you in.
So it is with Bobby Jindal. The governor of Louisiana has come a long way in a little time. A formidable politician, he wrested the governor’s mansion away from Bayou State Democrats. But can he survive the love of the right-wing Republicans—especially their leader, Rush Limbaugh?
If he wants to truly lead the GOP, he needs to take on and tame Rush Limbaugh. Bill Clinton publicly criticized his friend, Jesse Jackson, for giving a platform to Sister Souljah. Barack Obama denounced the bitter rant of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
To compare Rush Limbaugh with Sister Souljah or Jeremiah Wright is ludicrous. Sister Souljah is a racist who openly advocated the murder of whites during the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. Jeremiah Wright is another racist who repeatedly said "God damn America" and claimed that the US government deliberately infected blacks with AIDS.
Does anyone know of anything that Limbaugh has said or done that remotely compares with what Souljah and Wright have done? If you know of anything, please email me.
This is TOOOO funny!

Working in academia, you run into some real bizarre people. But Maria Grabe and Erik Bucey, both of Indiana University, have taken weirdness to a new level. They claim in a new book that network coverage of the presidential elections from 1992 to 2004 showed a "slight tilt to the Republican side":


BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Feb. 24 (UPI) -- The major U.S. broadcasters demonstrated bias towards Republicans in their coverage of presidential campaigns between 1992 and 2004, a new book contends.
Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Erik Bucy, both associate professors of telecommunications at Indiana University, are the authors of "Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections" published by Oxford University Press. They analyzed coverage of the elections on ABC, CBS and NBC and concluded all three networks showed a slight tilt to the Republican side.
"We don't think this is journalists conspiring to favor Republicans. We think they're just so beat up and tired of being accused of a liberal bias that they unknowingly give Republicans the benefit in coverage," said Grabe. "It's self-censorship that journalists might be imposing on themselves."

So what methodology did they use to decide which way the networks tilted?

Grabe, a former journalist with the South Africa Broadcasting Corp., and Bucey examined footage between Labor Day and the election in all four election years. They found more single-party stories about the Republicans in every year except 1992.
They also found that Republicans were likely to get more flattering camera work, less likely to be shown in tight closeup or from a great distance and more likely to be photographed from a low angle.

So those awful Republicans got more single party stories. Does it matter at all what is said about the Republicans in the stories? So what about the stories that CBS ran about the Texas Air National Guard memos in 2004, that they claimed were authentic but were exposed as forgeries by bloggers, just hours after the broadcast? Were those counted as bias in favor of Republicans because they were single-party stories?

Monday, February 23, 2009


The Provincialism of the Left

The gliteratti of the left, in particular 'journalists' like Katie Couric, can be amazingly narrow in their view of the world. Katie feels fine about doing a biased interview to try to demean Sarah Palin and misrepresent what she says, but when someone tries to criticize her, its another matter altogether. Anatreptic have some thoughts on a recent interview of Katie by Lloyd Grove:


In spite of the fact that her professional plaudits are based entirely on character assassination, she doesn't much like it when she's the target.

"No, no, not at all. I’m really happy I took on the challenge. I mean, it’s frustrating for me when people misrepresent things I say in that manner. It makes me embarrassed for journalism at times, but no, I feel really positive that I took this challenge head on."

I used to be wonder how the liberal elites, such allegedly sophisticated people, could be so incredibly and obviously provincial in their world views, but interviews like this serve to clear up the dynamic. Its a colony of narcissists who believe themselves to be the center of the universe. Why bother trying to understand the world as it is, when everything important is in Manhattan?



It's cool to be an ignorant hick.

Sunday, February 22, 2009



Actress of the Week: Naomi Watts
Saw her in The International last night. She was quite impressive.
Winston Churchhill on Mohammedanism

From Mark Steyn, via Kevin Myers, we have some interesting thoughs on islam from Winston Churchhill:


"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
"A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
"No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout
Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Allen Stanford: Friend and Supporter of Democrats

As the sordid details of Allen Stanford's fraudulent banking operations become available, one thing we learn is that among his other activities that included ripping off investors and laundering money for drug dealers, he was a very big $$$$ supporter of the Democrats:


The SEC's fraud charges may be the least of accused financial scammer R. Allen Stanford's worries. Federal authorities tell ABC News that the FBI and others have been investigating whether Stanford was involved in laundering drug money for Mexico's notorious Gulf Cartel.

The federal investigation, however, did not stop Stanford from using corporate money to become a big man at last year's Democratic convention in Denver.
A video posted on the firm's web-site shows Stanford, now sought by U.S. Marshals, being hugged by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and praised by former President Bill Clinton for helping to finance a convention-related forum and party put on by the National Democratic Institute.

The Clintons have a long history of association with crooks. Remember James Mcdougall, Charlie Trie, James Riady, Marc Rich, etc., etc., etc.

AG Eric Holder: Americans are Cowards on Racial Matters

Our terrorist-supporting Attorney General, recently had this to say:


WASHINGTON—Attorney General Eric Holder described the United States Wednesday as a nation of cowards on matters of race, saying most Americans avoid discussing awkward racial issues. In a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month, Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.
"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards," said Holder, nation's first black attorney general.

Hey Eric: 'AFFIRMATIVE ACTION' IS RACISM. Come visit me in Oklahoma and I'll say it to your face.

0bama's Suppression of Civil Rights

Mark Hyman in the American Spectator has an excellent essay detailing all the attempts that 0bama and his jack-booted thugs have made to stifle dissent and use the power of government to intimidate those who disagree with him:


After the Democratic convention, Obama campaign lawyer Robert Bauer warned TV stations against airing a TV ad that was embarrassing to Barack Obama. The commercial focused on the longtime relationship between Obama and Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Bauer sent letters to the Justice Department imploring the agency to pursue criminal action against those behind the ads. It was not lost on anyone at that time that Bauer was considered a candidate to be the next U.S. Attorney-General.

A few weeks later, state prosecutors and top sheriffs in Missouri who were prominent Obama supporters responded to a chilling Obama campaign request. They styled themselves as a "truth squad" and threatened to prosecute anyone including media outlets that printed or broadcasted material they deemed to be inaccurate about the Illinois Senator.

On Election Day, Senator Chuck Schumer likened conservative talk radio to pornography and argued it should be regulated. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed speech restrictions more than once during the election season. Senators Harry Reid, Dick Durbin and John Kerry have also advocated various limits to political speech. Senator Debbie Stabenow assured a liberal radio talk show host that regulating conservative speech is imminent. House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman is reportedly working on speech restrictions with acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps.

How soon and how far the Obama Administration will extend its attacks against its critics and the political opposition may become evident in the days ahead. Spared any serious scrutiny by most news outlets during his very brief career in public office, Barack Obama has displayed an exceptionally thin skin when he has come under a microscope or when he has suffered political and public relations setbacks.

Disgusting actions like these are inevitable under any type of leftist government. Their policies, like the $800 billion pork 'stimulus' bill are so ridiculous that they find it necessary to stifle dissent in order to stay in power.

The proponents of freedom will win in the long run. But we have a long, tough fight ahead of us.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Who are to Blame for the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Debacles?




hat tip to Captain Capitalism

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Climate warming gases rising faster than expected

Some moonbats are saying that CO2 is rising even faster than it did in the 1990s




CHICAGO (AP) - Despite widespread concern over global warming, humans are adding carbon to the atmosphere even faster than in the 1990s, researchers warned Saturday.
Carbon dioxide and other gases added to the air by industrial and other activities have been blamed for rising temperatures, increasing worries about possible major changes in weather and climate.
Carbon emissions have been growing at 3.5 percent per year since 2000, up sharply from the 0.9 percent per year in the 1990s, Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.



So why did atmospheric temperatures rise in the 1990's but not since 2000 ? If CO2 were causing the problem, you would expect the opposite effect.


Thursday, February 12, 2009


0bama the Ignorant

The left are constantly telling us how smart they are. And when it comes to His Holiness Barack, the belief amongst the chattering classes is that He is omniscient. That is why you won't hear much from the leftist media about His major foulup concerning the suspension of military tribunals for terrorists:


President Obama clearly didn't do his homework before ordering the suspension of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects. We have learned that even his own legal counsel admitted that Mr. Obama erred in discussing details about terrorism with families of victims last week, and that the administration was ignorant of a key point that terrorists exploit to their advantage. In his rush to fulfill a campaign promise to his more fervid anti-war supporters, the president's legal oversights risk the disclosure of some highly classified information to terrorists.
Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 that was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11, was present at last Friday's White House meeting of families of terrorism victims. Her impression was that President Obama was saying the right words in general, but when it came to specifics he was uncertain, uninformed, and sometimes just plain mistaken. Ms. Burlingame is an attorney who has followed closely the legal aspects of the terrorism cases, and her detailed, probing questions were met with stammers, stares, and statements that betrayed an understanding of the law that was, she said, "flat out wrong."
Case in point: the president's knowledge of the role of the Classified Information Procedures Act or CIPA. This law governs the way in which classified information is used in trials. The Sixth Amendment guarantees defendants the right to confront their accusers and the evidence against them, but the government has an important interest in cases such as these in keeping sources and methods secret. Under CIPA rules, in cases where classified information is used, the government has the option of sharing the information with the defendant, or not using it.
The Bush administration sought to avoid this potential national security threat by resorting to other procedures in which 6th Amendment issues did not arise. But President Obama believes that the model for terrorism cases is the prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. Of course a number of those plotters escaped justice (some were found later hiding in Saddam's Iraq, but that's another story). More important, because of the openness of that process, al Qaeda learned a great deal about how to do a much better job next time - and even the classified information from that trial was in Osama bin Laden's hands within weeks.
The terrorists have learned a great deal about conducting legal guerrilla war, using rules like CIPA to their advantage. Notice that more and more terrorists are dismissing their appointed lawyers and representing themselves. This gives them direct access to the classified documents that will be used in evidence against them. In this way they can learn about U.S. intelligence sources and methods - how they were targeted, what information was collected, and who may have been the traitors in their midst. Even if the names of sources are omitted, for example someone who was present at a key planning meeting, the terrorist defendant will know enough about the circumstances to be able to narrow it down. After all, the terrorist is familiar with every aspect of the events; he knows much more about them than the intelligence community.
The alternative to handing over the secrets is for the government to not use the evidence in question. That creates the incongruous situation in which the defense wants to maximize the amount of evidence that implicates them, and the prosecution wants to minimize it. (Our legal system was not designed to accommodate defendants who welcome being put to death.) According to Ms. Burlingame, Obama's answer to this conundrum was "there is no reason we have to give [the terrorists] everything." Evidently the former editor of the Harvard Law Review seems to think that one of his powers as president is personally to pick and choose which constitutional rights apply to terror defendants and which do not. That's the very thing they were criticizing President Bush for.
White House Counsel Greg Craig, often seen whispering in the president's ear during question periods, admitted later to Ms. Burlingame that the chief executive was getting the facts of the law wrong during the discussion with the families. Craig asked her if CIPA covers a case in which terrorists defend themselves, noting that "this is something we hadn't contemplated." If nothing else, this admission of ignorance is more evidence that the decision to rush ahead with closing Guantanamo and shutting down the military tribunals was ill-conceived, poorly planned, and may ultimately be injurious to our national security. The president may talk a good game about "swift, certain justice," but it is becoming clear that justice will not be swift, is highly uncertain, and in the end may not even be just.

In his rush to show the world how PC and tolerant towards fellow muslims He is, Barack is putting the lives of American citizens in danger.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

PETA Compares American Kennel Club to KKK

Whenever I think that the terrorist group PETA can't get any worse, they always find a way to make themselves more disgusting. Their latest escapade is to compare the American Kennel Club (AKC) with the Ku Klux Klan:

NEW YORK - The animal rights group PETA protested outside a well-known national dog show, comparing the American Kennel Club to the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan.
Crowds gawked at a table set up outside Madison Square Garden on Monday afternoon, where People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was protesting the start of the Westminster Kennel Club show. PETA contends that the American Kennel Club promotes pure-breeding of dogs that is harmful to their health.
"Welcome AKC Members," read a banner hanging from the table - with AKC crossed out and KKK written above it. Two PETA protesters were dressed as KKK members in white robes and pointy hats, while other volunteers handed out brochures that read: "The KKK and the AKC: BFF?" BFF is an abbreviation for "best friends forever."
"Obviously it's an uncomfortable comparison," PETA spokesman Michael McGraw said.
But the AKC is trying to create a "master race," he added. "It's a very apt comparison."

This coming from the organization whose founder and president said she wanted an epidemic of foot and mouth disease in the United States.

Unlike PETA, the American Kennel Club is a genuine animal welfare organization. PETA's tactics are typical of the left. Anyone who doesn't agree with their bizarre ideas is branded a racist, sexist, homophobe, or fascist.

Monday, February 09, 2009

Illegal Aliens Sue Arizona Man

How ridiculous is this? A group of illegal aliens are suing the owner of a ranch in Arizona for violating their right to sneak into the USA and vandalize his ranch while doing so.


An Arizona man who has waged a 10-year campaign to stop a flood of illegal immigrants from crossing his property is being sued by 16 Mexican nationals who accuse him of conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Roger Barnett, 64, began rounding up illegal immigrants in 1998 and turning them over to the U.S. Border Patrol, he said, after they destroyed his property, killed his calves and broke into his home.
His Cross Rail Ranch near Douglas, Ariz., is known by federal and county law enforcement authorities as "the avenue of choice" for immigrants seeking to enter the United States illegally.
Trial continues Monday in the federal lawsuit, which seeks $32 million in actual and punitive damages for civil rights violations, the infliction of emotional distress and other crimes. Also named are Mr. Barnett's wife, Barbara, his brother, Donald, and Larry Dever, sheriff in Cochise County, Ariz., where the Barnetts live. The civil trial is expected to continue until Friday.

So why does Barnett want to stop them?

Mr. Barnett told The Washington Times in a 2002 interview that he began rounding up illegal immigrants after they started to vandalize his property, northeast of Douglas along Arizona Highway 80. He said the immigrants tore up water pumps, killed calves, destroyed fences and gates, stole trucks and broke into his home.
Some of his cattle died from ingesting the plastic bottles left behind by the immigrants, he said, adding that he installed a faucet on an 8,000-gallon water tank so the immigrants would stop damaging the tank to get water.
Mr. Barnett said some of the ranch´s established immigrant trails were littered with trash 10 inches deep, including human waste, used toilet paper, soiled diapers, cigarette packs, clothes, backpacks, empty 1-gallon water bottles, chewing-gum wrappers and aluminum foil - which supposedly is used to pack the drugs the immigrant smugglers give their "clients" to keep them running.

Heaven forbid! I can't believe anyone has the gall to try to violate an illegal alien's right to trespass on private property and commit acts of vandalism.

Friday, February 06, 2009


Give the Guy a Break
Michael Phelps went to the Olympics last summer and wiped out the competition. He accomplished things that no one has ever done before.
And now, people are discovering that this very young man is capable of making mistakes. I am totally against anyone smoking marijuana or using any street drugs. But Phelps did not harm anyone but himself.
The reaction to him taking a toke is ridiculous. If everyone who ever smoked marijuana was condemned in this fashion, the world would be at a standstill.
Have some sense of proportion. We have the president of the United States who has palled around with known terrorists. We have the secretary of the treasury who has cheated on his taxes. They are both grown men, well into middle age. Neither of those men should be running our government.
I need more Sophie Pics

Anybody got some more?

IRA Terrorist/Counterfeiter/Marxist Arrested in Belfast

I hope those Americans who support the IRA take note of terrorist Sean Garland, who was involved in a counterfeiting ring that included the North Korean government, has been arrested in Dublin and the US government is attempting to extradite him


The American case is that Mr Garland’s regular trips to Moscow enabled him to visit the North Korean Embassy where, it is alleged, he picked up the forged dollars after they had been smuggled into Russia in diplomatic baggage.
The “superdollars” so concerned the US authorities that in 1996 the $100 bill was redesigned and further safeguards introduced. But within a few years the North Korean forgers had mastered the new version.

Here's what one of his former terrorist comrades has to say about the arrest:

Senator Eoghan Harris, a former comrade who reinvented himself as a political adviser to, among others, the former Irish President Mary Robinson, Lord Trimble and Bertie Ahern, the former Taoiseach, said: “Sean Garland hates my guts. But I still find it baffling that the USA would pursue a sick old man who led the Official IRA to a ceasefire in 1972 for the bloodless crime of forgery while welcoming, in the White House, Provisional IRA leaders who have blood on their hands and who waited another 30 years before following Sean Garland’s good example and calling a ceasefire.”

It has certainly been a mistake for any US president to welcome IRA terrorists like Gerry Adams into the white house. They belong in a cell in Guantanamo.

But don't be surprised if the pro-terrorist 0bama administration ends up dropping the charges against Garland. His Zeroness has previously shown his affinity for IRA terrorists. And now he is in the process of closing the prison at Guantanamo and dropping the charges against al Qaeda terrorists.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Leon Panetta Earned $700,000 in Speaking and Consulting Fees

Leon Panetta, who was undoubtedly up to his neck in the corruption and unlawful activities of the Clinton administration, is 0bama's pick for CIA chief. Now we learn that Leon earned some big checks from Merrill Lynch and Wachovia for speaking "honorariums"


WASHINGTON -- The White House's nominee for director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, has earned more than $700,000 in speaking and consulting fees since the beginning of 2008, with some of the payments coming from troubled banks and an investment firm that owns companies that do business with federal national security agencies.

Mr. Panetta received $56,000 from Merrill Lynch & Co. for two speeches and $28,000 for an Oct. 30, 2008 speech for Wachovia Corp. Both firms suffered big losses last year and were acquired by larger banks.
The Wachovia honorarium was on Oct. 30, while the last Merrill Lynch honorarium was on Oct. 11, according to disclosure forms filed by Mr. Panetta in connection with his nomination. At the time, Bank of America had already agreed to a rescue of Merrill Lynch, while Wachovia had agreed to be acquired by Wells Fargo & Co.
Mr. Panetta also received a $28,000 honorarium from the Carlyle Group, which owns a number of companies that do business with the national-security agencies of the U.S. government.

Leon made $56,000 from two speeches from Merrill Lynch, while at the same time the US taxpayers, most of whom make far less than $56,000 in one year, are forced to bail the crybaby investment bankers out.

It is clear that Leon has too many conflicts of interest to be in the federal government, as do Tom Daschle, Timothy Geithner, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, and many, many others.


They're Still Talking About Sarah

One would think that three months after the presidential election was over, that the unsuccessful vice-presidential candidate would have returned to relative anonymity. That you would not be hearing much about Sarah Palin outside of Alaska. But they are still talking about her, both on the right and the left. I read an excellent essay by Yuval Levin about the phenomenon of Sarah. There is much I disagree with in the essay, but there are also many illuminating insights into the left's visceral hatred and condemnation of Sarah:


[H]er views on matters of cultural and social controversy very quickly became the chief focus of media attention, liberal criticism, and pundit analysis. Palin was assigned every view and position the Left considered unenlightened, and the response to her brought into the light all manner of implicit liberal assumptions about cultural conservatives. We were told that Palin was opposed to contraception, advocated teaching creationism in schools, and was inclined to ban books she disagreed with. She was described as a religious zealot, an anti-abortion extremist, a blind champion of abstinence-only sex education. She was said to have sought to make rape victims pay for their own medical exams, to have Alaska secede from the Union, and to get Pat Buchanan elected President. She was reported to believe that the Iraq war was mandated by God, that the end-times prophesied in the Book of Revelation were nearing and only Alaska would survive, and that global warming was purely a myth. None of this was true.
Her personal life came under withering assault as well. Palin’s capacity to function as a senior elected official while raising five children was repeatedly questioned by liberal pundits who would never dare to express such views about a female candidate whose opinions were more congenial to them. Her teenage daughter’s pregnancy was splattered all over the front pages (garnering three New York Times stories in a single day on September 2). Some bloggers even suggested her youngest child had not issued from her, but from her daughter instead, and that she had participated in a bizarre cover-up. I attended a gathering in Washington at which a prominent columnist wondered aloud how Palin could pursue her career when her religious beliefs denied women the right to work outside the home.
Palin became the embodiment of every dark fantasy the Left had ever held about the views of evangelical Christians and women who do not associate themselves with contemporary feminism, and all concern for clarity and truthfulness was left at the door.

Yuval refers to the left's well-worn tactic of projecting certain beliefs or attitudes onto others, whether they are justified or not. For example, if I oppose the racial discrimination of the so-called 'affirmative action' programs, many on the left will brand me a racist.

The reaction of the feminazis towards Sarah's candidacy was also illuminating:

The reaction to Palin revealed a deep and intense cultural paranoia on the Left: an inclination to see retrograde reaction around every corner, and to respond to it with vile anger. A confident, happy, and politically effective woman who was also a social conservative was evidently too much to bear. The response of liberal feminists was in this respect particularly telling, and especially unpleasant.
“Her greatest hypocrisy is her pretense that she is a woman,” wrote Wendy Doniger, a professor at the University of Chicago. “Having someone who looks like you and behaves like them,” said Gloria Steinem, “who looks like a friend but behaves like an adversary, is worse than having no one.”
This preposterous effort to excommunicate Palin from her gender suggests that the kind of new-order feminism she represents—a feminism that embraces cultural traditionalism and workplace egalitarianism at the same time—is especially frightening to those on the feminist Left because they recognize its power and appeal. The attempt to destroy Sarah Palin by rushing to paint her as a backwoods extremist was not a show of strength, but rather a sign of desperation.

According to Yuval, Sarah's big shortcoming was that she failed to speak the language of the leftwing elite:

[T]he implicit charge was that Palin’s failure to speak the language and to share the common points of reference of the educated upper tier of American society essentially rendered her unfit for high office.
Nor is membership in the intellectual upper class determined by diplomas hanging on the wall. Palin could have gained entrance easily, despite the fact that she holds a mere degree in journalism from the University of Idaho. Although the intellectual elite is deeply shaped by our leading institutions of higher learning, belonging to it is more the result of shared assumptions and attitudes. It is more cultural than academic, more NPR than PhD. In Washington, many politicians who have not risen through the best of universities work hard for years to master the language and the suppositions of this upper tier, and to live carefully within the bounds prescribed by its view of the world.

I have seen this phenomenon even among some economists and business school faculty. In order to be a member of this elite club, they adopt the correct political positions. Human CO2 emissions are causing global warming. The Duke lacrosse players must be condemned even if they did nothing wrong. George W. Bush is the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler.

This is why Palin was seen as anti-intellectual when, properly speaking, she was simply non-intellectual. What she lacked was not intelligence—she is, clearly, highly intelligent—but rather the particular set of assumptions, references, and attitudes inculcated by America’s top twenty universities and transmitted by the nation’s elite cultural organs.
Many of those (including especially those on the Right) who reacted badly to Palin on intellectual grounds understand themselves to be advancing the interests of lower-middle-class families similar to Palin’s own family and to many of those in attendance at her rallies who greeted her arrival on the scene as a kind of deliverance. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that while these members of the intellectual elite want the government to serve the interests of such people first and foremost, they do not want those people to hold the levers of power. They see lower-middle-class populists like Palin and their supporters as profoundly ill-suited for governance, because they lack the accoutrements required for its employment—especially in foreign policy, which, even more than domestic affairs, is thought to be an intellectual exercise. It is for this reason that Barack Obama, who actually has far less experience in executive governance than Palin, was not dismissed as unprepared for the presidency. Palin may have been elected governor of Alaska, but his peers in Cambridge had elected Obama editor of the Harvard Law Review. He is thoroughly fluent in the parlance of the college town, and in the eyes of the new American elite, Washington is the ultimate college town.
_____________

The reaction of the intellectual elite to Sarah Palin was far more provincial than Palin herself ever has been, and those who reacted so viscerally against her evinced little or no appreciation for an essential premise of democracy: that practical wisdom matters at least as much as formal education, and that leadership can emerge from utterly unexpected places. The presumption that the only road to power passes through the Ivy League and its tributaries is neither democratic nor sensible, and is, moreover, a sharp and wrongheaded break from the American tradition of citizen governance.

Even though three months have passed since the election. And even though 0bama won decisively. The left are still very, very afraid of Sarah and what she represents.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Sunday, February 01, 2009