NYTimes Food Reporter Rejoices at Chick-Fil-A VP’s Heart Attack, Apologizes

-By Warner Todd Huston

Mark Bittman, a New York Times food critic, admits he used an “inappropriate phrase” in an August 3 blog posting about Chick-Fil-A. In fact, it was down right Bitter, man, because he seemed to be rejoicing that a vice president of the fast food company had died of a heart attack back in July.

Bittman apologized to his readers for the giddiness he displayed about the death of Chick-Fil-A’s Vice President of Public Relations, Don Perry, who passed away on July 27.

Said the bitter foodie,

In a recent blog post, I used an inappropriate phrase to refer to the late VP of PR for Chick-fil-A. My choice of words did not rise to either my own standards or to The Times’s, and the phrase has been removed from the post. I regret this lapse.

What he said on August 3 deserved to be excised, too. It was pretty vile. Here is what was removed from the post:
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NYTimes Food Reporter Rejoices at Chick-Fil-A VP’s Heart Attack, Apologizes”


Happiest Nations Also Have Freedom of the Press

-By Warner Todd Huston

A University of Missouri study has found that nations with the happiest citizens share something in common. They also have an established tradition of a free press.

Missouri University Journalism student Edson Tandoc, Jr. and co-author, Bruno Takahashi from Michigan State University, correlated data from 161 countries and applied that to the 2010 Gallup Poll measuring happiness around the world, Freedom House’s press freedom index, and other data and found that, “the more press freedom a country enjoyed, the higher the levels of life satisfaction, or happiness, of its citizens tended to be.”

“The road to happiness isn’t direct; it is a complex path or web that includes many different influences and interrelationships,” Tandoc said. “Things like improving the economy alone are insufficient for increasing happiness. Protecting press freedom is also an important component of the happiness web.”

The authors also found that countries with a higher level of press freedom had better quality of life quotients in many other areas, as well.
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Happiest Nations Also Have Freedom of the Press”


AFP, Defending the American Dream: Combating Progressives Practices Panel

-By Warner Todd Huston

This week I am in Washington D.C. at the Defending the American Dream Summit, an annual event hosted by Americans For Prosperity. This is always a great event held in the nation’s capitol with lots of great speakers and breakout panels, mostly for the edification of members of AFP.

The breakout panel I chose this morning was one titled Progressive Practices: Exposing and Combating the Left’s Tactics. The panelists were three of the best people you can put on such a panel. Wall Street Journal writer John Fund, famous for his knowledge and reportage on vote fraud. Anita MonCrief, famous for once being a member of the notorious group ACORN and later a whistleblower on its fraud, and videographer and investigative journalist (or guerilla journalist as some may say) James O’Keefe, famous for really being a pain in the left’s reared.


Videographer James O’Keefe and Author and Journalist John Fund

The intention of the panel was to help members of Americans For Prosperity to come to better understand the tactics of the left so that they know how to fight them back home, but the focus was most especially about vote fraud since each of the three panel members specialized in that area.
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AFP, Defending the American Dream: Combating Progressives Practices Panel”


Chicago Alderman Illegally Using His Office for Obama Re-election Campaign Workers

-By Warner Todd Huston

Rebel Pundit has discovered an interesting, and likely illegal, Obama campaign move in Illinois. It really does look like a Chicago alderman and the Obama campaign are breaking the law, here.

You’ll recall the little known alderman that tried to get himself some national attention by illicitly using the power of his office to deny the Chick-Fil-A company its right to its religious conviction and its right to do legal business in the city. His name is Proco “Joe” Moreno.

First of all this anti-American alderman is certainly violating the U.S. Constitution by trying to use the power of his office to attack a business that has broken no laws — not just broken no laws in Illinois, but broken no laws anywhere.
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Chicago Alderman Illegally Using His Office for Obama Re-election Campaign Workers”


NYTimes Looks for ‘Golden Lining’… in Genocide?

-By Warner Todd Huston

By some accounts, since the coming to power of Zimbabwe’s terror-inducing Robert Mugabe, up to 480,000 people have lost their lives. Of those not killed outright or starved to death, tens of thousands of people had their property stolen and their livelihoods ended, they were beaten, raped, and left for dead. As these outrages were occurring the nation’s economy was devastated, a one-time economic bright spot in Africa reduced to ruins. And in all this violation of human rights the New York Times sees a “golden lining”?

How could there be a “golden lining” in all this murder — even genocide — and destruction? Well, apparently out of the ashes of a country, the genocide of hundreds of thousands, and the human rights violations of millions more, the fact that a few thousand small farmers have risen up to some modest success raising tobacco is somehow a great success.

In a Friday, July 20 piece, Lydia Polgreen is all excited over this year’s tobacco crop haul of 330 million pounds of the golden leaf (hence the “golden” lining).

Of course, this is down from the 522 million pounds that was realized in the year 2000, but it’s better than nothing, one supposes.

Polgreen goes on to laud all the progress that this handful of black small farmers have had this year and that success, she and other Mugabe apologists think, might signal that Mugabe’s genocidal “land reforms” might be a howling success. But even her own announcement of success is prefaced by the horrors.
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NYTimes Looks for ‘Golden Lining’… in Genocide?”


NY City Council Speaker Stands Up Against Freedom of Speech

-By Warner Todd Huston

Judging by this whole Chick-Fil-A oppression program liberals are engaging in, it’s no wonder Jonah Goldberg had a hit with his recent book, Liberal Fascism.

This time it is City Council Speaker Christine Quinn who is proud to stand against our Constitutional rights of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, not to mention the right to do legal business anywhere without fearing the iron boot heel of government coming down upon us for having upset some haughty government official somewhere.

Quinn has condemned Chick-Fil-A for having dared to break no laws in the exercise of its daily business and is sponsoring one of those wondrous Internet petitions saying so.

If a petition were to be where her ire ended, well, that would be her right as a private citizen, as far as that goes. But she’s taken that step farther which makes her actions illegal. Quinn’s invoked her powers as an elected official and sent a letter to New York University’s president demanding that the Chick-Fil-A outlet on his campus be shut down.
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NY City Council Speaker Stands Up Against Freedom of Speech”


The ‘No One Gets Rich On Their Own’ Baloney

-By Gary Krasner

Obama’s “no one gets rich on their own” rant was to justify policies that soak the rich, and not about the wonders of roads & bridges! But that was how Obamians had tried to spin it, such as here at Huffington Post.

You can read my postscript deconstruction of his Roanoke speech at the end of this article to see how ridiculous that is. Bottom line is that when Obama uttered these two sentences, “If you’ve got a business—-you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen”, he was NOT referring to roads and bridges from the prior sentence. It would have been far too obvious for him to have meant that shop keepers do not build the roads and bridges in the towns where they operate. He sure as hell didn’t mean to suggest that their taxes help build them! No, holding to the full context of the speech, he meant that they are not singularly responsible for their success, that would warrant the degree of wealth they reaped.

The original thesis—-the product of liberal linguistics consultant George Lakoff—-is a way to minimize individual success, so as to justify taking from successful people the rewards of their success, through taxes. Liz Warren—-the women who couldn’t get into Harvard on her own without falsely claiming to have one drop of Cherokee blood—-had adopted this simplistic baloney to frame the debate for OWS, if you recall.

Here’s Lakoff:
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The ‘No One Gets Rich On Their Own’ Baloney”


Even TIME Says Mayors Emanuel and Menino Wronging Chick-Fil-A

-By Warner Todd Huston

It’s a “First Amendment buzzsaw,” that the mayors of Chicago and Boston have walked into over misuse of their powers in denying Chick-Fil-A the right to open and operate their fast food stores in the two cities. This is from TIME, yet. And if even TIME realizes that the Democrats are misusing their powers, well, let’s just say it’s a major violation of Chick-Fil-A’s free speech plain and simple.

For TIME, Michael Scherer goes over the whole series of events that led up to the two mayors — Rahm Emanuel of Chicago and Thomas Menino of Boston — imagining they have the power to deny Chick-Fil-A a right to operate merely because committed Christians run the company. Scherer’s analysis is that this mistaken belief in their powers puts the mayors in “tricky legal waters.”
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Even TIME Says Mayors Emanuel and Menino Wronging Chick-Fil-A”


Obama’s DOJ Refuses to Affirm America’s Religious Freedoms

-By Warner Todd Huston

This video is a perfect example of the essential lawlessness of the Obama administration.

There are some things that are essentially a basic truth. Murder is always wrong. Rights must be safeguarded. And violations of rights must be prosecuted. Also, the U.S. Department of Justice should always, always be zealous in the scheme of protecting those rights.

But not to Obama. No, to Obama the DOJ is only a political office, one that operates on no essential truths.

In this case, Congressman Trent Franks (R, Ariz.) asked an official of Obama’s DOJ if his office would vow to protect our Constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom.

This DOJ stooge refused to do so.

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Obama’s DOJ Refuses to Affirm America’s Religious Freedoms”


Homer-Lockport Tea Party Screening of ‘Injustice the Film’ — July 30

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Homer-Lockport Tea Party is going to screen a very special movie at 7PM on July 30. The film is titled “InJustice, The Film,” and is a documentary about “greed and corruption in American’s lawsuit industry.”

You can see more info at the InJustice website or at the Homer-Lockport Tea Party site.

The film will be introduced by WLS radio personality Dan Proft and will start at around 7PM on July 30 at 14326 Golden Oak Drive, Homer Glen, Illinois.

I had the pleasure of meeting the director of the film, Brian Kelly, when his film first came out and he had some interesting things to relate about the film.

Interview
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Homer-Lockport Tea Party Screening of ‘Injustice the Film’ — July 30″


Rep. Mike Kelly’s Fantastic Speech on House Floor

-By Warner Todd Huston

“So, do you want know the price of regulations? You want to talk about creating jobs in America? …Take the heavy boot off the throat of America’s jobs creators and let them breathe!” — Mike Kelly, Representative of Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District

On Friday, July 27, Rep. Mike Kelly (R, Penn.) took to the floor of the House of Representatives to slam Washington’s business as usual, red tape attacks on the American business sector.

Obama’s regulations are killing this country.

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Rep. Mike Kelly’s Fantastic Speech on House Floor”


Salon.com to Team With Anti-Semitic News Service

-By Warner Todd Huston

It has been noted that Salon.com has been treading an increasingly anti-Israeli path and its recent announcement of a partnership with the anti-Semitic news site Mondoweiss.net seems another step down that road.

On July 16, Mondoweiss announced on its website that it was officially teaming up with Salon and the news is not sitting well with pro-Israeli activists and bloggers. Mondoweiss, they say, is a virulently anti-Semitic site.

Upon news of the teamup, for instance, the staff at the Algemeiner blog reported the many voices calling Mondoweiss an outlet for anti-Semitism.
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Salon.com to Team With Anti-Semitic News Service”


Emanuel’s ‘Chicago Values’ Includes Supporting Gay-Hating, Jew-Hating Louis Farrakhan

-By Warner Todd Huston

Yesterday we reported that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said that the Christian values of Chick-Fil-A are not “Chicago values.” So, who does embody those “Chicago values” as far as Rahm is concerned? Why, extremist Louis Farrakhan, who else?

On July 25, Mayor Emanuel welcomed the “help” of hatemonger Louis Farrakhan, leader of the cult the “Nation of Islam,” in a non-violence crusade in a city awash with violence, murder, and gang crime. The Nation of Islam is a pseudo Islamic cult based in Chicago.

Emanuel has happily accepted Farrakhan’s “help” despite the fact that Farrakhan has a long, long history of anti-Semitism and violent rhetoric.
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Emanuel’s ‘Chicago Values’ Includes Supporting Gay-Hating, Jew-Hating Louis Farrakhan”


Calif. AG Pushes to Award Law License to Illegal Immigrant

-By Warner Todd Huston

California’s Attorney General, Democrat Kamala Harris, has weighed in on the side of an immigrant who is asking the State Supreme Court to award him a California law license after his graduation from law school despite that he’s neither a legal resident nor a naturalized citizen of the United States of America.

In her brief, Democrat Harris pleaded with the court to award this license. “Admitting Garcia to the bar would be consistent with state and federal policy that encourages immigrants, both documented and undocumented, to contribute to society,” Harris said.

This is nonsense. Our laws do not encourage undocumented immigrants to “contribute to society.” Only when our laws are ignored, set aside, or broken by recalcitrant government officials do they somehow encourage illegals to “contribute to society.”

In truth, our laws encourage illegal immigrants to become legal or go back home.
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Calif. AG Pushes to Award Law License to Illegal Immigrant”


Gun Control Argument Stopped Cold by Susan Gratia

-By Warner Todd Huston

In the aftermath of the crime in Colorado, the Old Media and left-wingers everywhere rush to claim that we need more gun control. In this climate it is instructive to remember what happened to Doctor Susan Gratia.

She was a legal concealed weapons carrier in Texas, but because she became fearful of being arrested for carrying because Democrat legislators at the time (1991) began to prosecute people for carrying their firearms, Dr. Gratia left her gun in her car instead of carrying it in her purse as she usually did. Then a gunman burst into a restaurant in which she and her parents were eating. She made it out. Her parents did not.

This cautionary tale MUST be remembered.
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Gun Control Argument Stopped Cold by Susan Gratia”


NY Times Gives Obama a Pass on Outrageous Claim That Romney’s a ‘Felon’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Once again The New York Times lends its “paper of record” as a vehicle for Obama’s reelection campaign by leaving out important parts of a story, parts that mitigate in favor of GOP candidate Mitt Romney.

Specifically, the Times is repeating the Obama claim that Romney committed some sort of fraud (team Obama says he’s a “felon”) for his work at Bain Capital, a charge that is false by any reading of the facts.

Yes, once again, The New York Times gives only one side of the story.

In a July 12 piece in The Caucus blog, Times reporter Michael D. Shear once again gave credence to the smear against Romney seen in the deeply flawed reporting of the Boston Globe, a story that appears to be little else but retaliation by the Globe against Romney.
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NY Times Gives Obama a Pass on Outrageous Claim That Romney’s a ‘Felon’”


Buzzfeed Misleads on Job Loss of U.S. Merchant Marine, Blames Tea Party

-By Warner Todd Huston

Now that Congress passed and the President signed the highway bill, Buzzfeed has jumped in to decry the loss of as many as 10,000 jobs in the U.S. overseas shipping sector. Naturally, since it’s Buzzfeed we’re talking about here, only the left side of the story is being told. Worse, Buzzfeed tries to pin this “job loss” on the Tea Party — as if millions of Tea Partiers nation wide are dead set on causing job loss to our Merchant Marines.

For Buzzfeed, former The Hill employee John Stanton seems to have simply rejiggered a Democrat Party press release to cry about the “jobs loss” he and the left think they see in the Highway bill. He spends no time at all worrying about any Republican response, quotes only Democrats, and also seems to be just regurgitating press releases from lobbyists for the Merchant Marine. Of course, there really isn’t any explanation of what really happened.

One of the claimed “unexpected” results of the highway bill, Stanton tells us, was the reduction in federal funding of the shipping by sea of foreign food aid. Until this bill, 75% of this food aid was shipped aboard American ships. The new bill cuts that to 50% for a savings of some $108 million a year in taxpayer’s funds.

This, Buzzfeed says, is a result of those darn Tea Partiers being so staunchly against earmarks.
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Buzzfeed Misleads on Job Loss of U.S. Merchant Marine, Blames Tea Party”


Uppity, Feminist Journalist Meets Muslims, Gets Arrested, Hilarity Ensues

-By Warner Todd Huston

A left-wing, uppity, feminist, English journalist, a woman quixotically named Cinnamon Heathclote-Drury , got her world turned upside down over the last few months and her own liberalism is what did her in. One has to feel for her, of course, if only a little bit. But still laughter is far quicker to hit you before sympathy comes.

So, imagine the scene. A loud-mouthed, British, feminist journalist sees a woman in a hijab loading a large number of groceries onto the store conveyor belt at check out. She begins fuming with feminist ire because this Muslim woman’s husband stands idly by doing nothing to help the overworked woman load the groceries.

Femi-journo can take it no more and just has to say something. She brusquely confronts the man telling him that his wife needs to help loading the merchandise. She pushes past the man and starts helping the hijab-clad woman herself because, “This is what feminism’s about – women helping women.”

As it happened, neither the Muslim man nor his wife much appreciated the “social lesson” the uppity journalist thought to teach them. And, as so many Muslims in Britain do, they proceeded to play the Brit’s liberalism against them. The couple cried racism and had the journalist arrested for a “hate crime.”

This is so funny on so many levels.
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Uppity, Feminist Journalist Meets Muslims, Gets Arrested, Hilarity Ensues”


Hollywood Disconnect, Valuing ‘Equality’ More Than ‘Liberty’

-By Warner Todd Huston

We are soon to be regaled by yet another movie from Hollyweird that likely misunderstands the difference between liberty (or freedom) and equality. This we might infer from the recently released advance plot synopsis for the upcoming movie Elysium from Director Neil Blomkamp, director of the surprise 2009 Sci Fi hit District 9.


Matt Damon in the upcoming movie “Elysium”

Blomkamp’s new film is set in the not-too-distant future where the human elite live in a cushy space station circling the Earth while the rest of humanity toils down on the environmentally distressed Earth. In this film, the hero (played by Matt Damon, who else?) will battle to, according to the synopsis, “bring equality to these polarized worlds.”
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Hollywood Disconnect, Valuing ‘Equality’ More Than ‘Liberty’”


Congressman Joe Walsh Has a Message for the Illinois GOP and America

-By Warner Todd Huston

Is Congressman Walsh Making a Populist Run for Illinois Governor?

Joe Walsh is not a rock star like Joe Walsh. Joe Walsh (the Congressman) is not Joe Walsh (The rock singer from the 1970s band The Eagles) yet both were in town this weekend working political ends. Singer Joe Walsh was stumping for Democrat Tammy Duckworth, a practically vacant, establishment Democrat who is good for little else but spewing talking points it doesn’t seem she fully grasps, while Congressman Joe Walsh was across town warning voters at a well attended townhall that thanks to Obamacare, the 2012 election may be our last chance to save America. (http://walsh.house.gov/)


Walsh was in the Elk Grove area to talk chiefly about the historic and historically bad Supreme Court decision that gave Obama a win on his nationalization of America’s healthcare industry. So, Obamacare was the big topic this day.

“I was overwhelmed by the close to 400 people who turned out for today’s forum,” Congressman Walsh stated. “It was clear from the crowd that this decision was not only historic, but also tragic. It’s even more clear that the only way to repeal this unpopular law is to do so legislatively. This health care plan is a job killing bureaucratic mess that is now recognized by the Supreme Court as a massive tax on the struggling middle class. I have made it clear that getting Americans back to work and repealing the President’s health care plan are my top priorities.”


More on healthcare in a moment, but first, after the townhall I had the chance to ask the Congressman some questions about his ideas and his campaign for reelection to his 8th District Congressional seat.

At the outset of our interview, Congressman Walsh had some very stern words for the Illinois Republican Party. In fact, he said the Illinois GOP is currently part of the problem, not the solution.

Here is a transcript of Walsh’s warning to the Illinois GOP.
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Congressman Joe Walsh Has a Message for the Illinois GOP and America”


News Corp to Split Entertainment from Publishing Division

-By Warner Todd Huston

News Corp watchers have been talking about a possible split of Rupert Murdoch’s massive entertainment and publishing empire for sometime and it looks like they are finally on the right side of the guesswork as the News Corp board met on Wednesday to consider separating Murdoch’s entertainment from his publishing division.

For some time Murdoch has resisted calls to split his empire into separate sections — even as recent as last month — but after the wiretapping scandals that hit his British newspapers, the idea seems to have become more acceptable to the media giant.

While the initial meeting was held Wednesday, the final decision might not be known until Thursday and the whole process could take as long as a year to work out.

This is not halving of the corporation, though. The publishing portion of the company is far smaller than the newer education/entertainment division so reports that we are about to witness a “splitting in half” of News Corp is an over statement.
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News Corp to Split Entertainment from Publishing Division”


Muslims in Michigan Attack Christians With Bottles, Stones — Cops Turn Blind Eye

-By Warner Todd Huston

This is one of the most disgusting and alarming videos made in America I’ve seen in quite some time. In it you will see scores of teenaged Muslims surrounding a small group of less than a dozen Christians in Dearborn, Michigan. You will see these Muslim thugs taunting the Christians, cursing them, throwing bottles, and even chunks of concrete at them. One scumbag, punk even throws a plastic milk carton at the Christians.

You will also see Dearborn police ignoring these crimes. Why? Because Dearborn police don’t care about enforcing the law. They care about placating their Muslim citizens. It is easier for Dearborn cops to allow these Muslims to attack Christians and then to blame it all on the Christians than to uphold the law much less the U.S. Constitution.

This is truly disgusting…

Why are these Muslim creeps doing this? Because these few Christians wanted to stage a little march sporting their banners and touting their cause. And what could be more American than wanting to have a little march, protest or otherwise?
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Muslims in Michigan Attack Christians With Bottles, Stones — Cops Turn Blind Eye”


CNN Mistakenly Reported Roberts Overturned Obamacare

-By Warner Todd Huston

Seven minutes of “f**king humiliation” is how one CNN staffer described the morning faux pas the “most trusted name in news” made when it reported that Chief Justice John Roberts overturned Obamacare’s mandate this morning.

As the Supreme Court of the United States was delivering its long awaited decision on Obamacare, CNN’s on-air news reader, 29-year-old Kate Bolduan, breathlessly said that the healthcare mandate was struck down. And I do mean breathlessly…

Kate Bolduan: We’re still going through the reading of the opinion, but I want to bring you the breaking news that according to producer Bill Mears, the individual mandate is not a valid, uh, not a valid exercise of the Commerce Clause. So it appears as if the Supreme Court Justices have struck down the individual mandate, the center piece of the healthcare legislation.

Not only did Miss Bolduan make CNN look bad but she also claimed that CNN’s man inside the courtroom, Bill Mears, told her this misconstruction of the facts over the phone. It doesn’t appear, though, that Mears actually said the whole thing was struck down but that young Bolduan just didn’t understand the complexities that Mears was trying to relate.
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CNN Mistakenly Reported Roberts Overturned Obamacare”


Illinois Blogger Threatened With Lawsuit by Anti-Free Speech Democrat Jack Franks

-By Warner Todd Huston

Blogger Cal Skinner of McHenry County Blog is under attack by another anti-free speech Democrat — not that any Democrat is pro-free speech, of course. Democrat State Rep Jack Franks has sent Mr. Skinner a threatening letter essentially telling him to stop writing about him, or else.

Now, Democrat Franks wants us to feel sorry for him as any reading of his threatening letter can see. In his letter Democrat Franks is pretending that blogger Skinner is trying to post images of his family and invading their privacy. Democrat Franks also claims that Skinner is “not credentialed” as a “journalist” so he shouldn’t be allowed to write criticism of the public official.

First of all, Cal Skinner has never posted any photo of Jack Franks that wasn’t obtained during a public event and Skinner has no interest in Jackie boy’s family — just about Franks’ public policy decisions as a State Rep. Secondly, legal case after legal case all across this great land is coming down in favor of bloggers. So, Franks’ attempt to shut a blogger up is running counter to American right of free political speech, not just in the spirit of the First Amendment (that part of the Constitution that Democrats hate with a passion) but even counter to emerging law concerning the status of bloggers that is being set all across the country.

But Democrats hate, hate, hate being dogged by Internet journalists. Democrats just aren’t used to seeing bad press, after all. I mean, the so-called “real journalists” out there never write a bad word about them, so it’s no surprise that Democrats get alarmed when conservative bloggers begin to write about them in a critical manner.
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Illinois Blogger Threatened With Lawsuit by Anti-Free Speech Democrat Jack Franks”


Indiana Law Gives Citizens Legal Right to Shoot Out-Of-Control Cops

-By Warner Todd Huston

Apparently the State of Indiana has passed a law allowing citizens to use deadly force against out of control officers of the state, including police officers, who unlawfully enter their home. This is a very touchy subject, especially for conservatives. Can we as law and order types agree that such a deadly force law is a good idea? Or should we defer to the police at every instance?

Well, I can’t speak for all conservatives, of course, but for me, I can’t agree with this law more.

Now, before you get all crazy about how I just don’t understand law “enforcement,” let me warn you that my father, a man I dearly love and respect, was in police work for most of his adult life. I am proud of his service. For the most part I respect and sympathize with our officers of the law. So,l et’s get beyond that.

So, while I most certainly sympathize with our law officials, I sympathize with our founders’ vision and the natural rights they invoked more than I do the expectation that officers of the law can act with impunity. That is why I put “enforcement” in quotes. Properly constituted our law officials don’t “enforce” anything. They really only investigate crime, they don’t and shouldn’t proactively try to “enforce” anything as that implies the power to stop something that has yet to occur.
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Indiana Law Gives Citizens Legal Right to Shoot Out-Of-Control Cops”


Obama Labor Dept. Forces Journalists to Use Government Issued Computers?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Journalists are crying foul at a new Obama policy that will deny them the right to use their own computers to write stories from economic data issued inside the halls of the Department of Labor. Instead, the DoL says, journalists will have to use government owned computers, government selected software, and government owned Internet transmission lines to write their stories about the data issued by the department.

All news organizations have been ordered to remove their computers, tools, and other electronics from the Department of Labor by June 15 and will not be allowed to bring any of their own electronics into the place from that point forward.

Until this change, the practice had been that the economic data was released to journalists ahead of the official release date in a special “lock-up” room inside the DoL. Reporters then used their own computers and software to write their draft reports and create their graphics and tables on the data. Then, once the release time for the data was reached, the DoL allowed the journalists to transmit their stories from inside the special room over Internet lines that have been installed and paid for by news media outlets.
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Obama Labor Dept. Forces Journalists to Use Government Issued Computers?”


CPAC Chicago, Part 4: Joe Walsh, Randy Hultgren, Straw Poll Results

-By Warner Todd Huston

Finally, in part four we’ll hear from two solid Illinois Congressmen, the 8th District’s Joe Walsh and Randy Hultgren of the 14th. We’ll also hear the, perhaps not startling results of the straw poll, the most important question from which was who Romney should pick for his vice presidential candidate (hint, the top picks weren’t any of his one-time rivals for the nomination).

Congressman Joe Walsh


Rep. Joe Walsh gins up the crowd

Joe Walsh of the Illinois 8th District is the one Congressman that the left wants to eliminate more than any other Republican Congressman. This is because Joe has carved out from among his fellows an outsized voice for conservatism. He appears regularly on TV and radio to tout the conservative message. But he’s become a major target of Democrat redistricting and now faces a tough challenge to be reelected in his newly reconfigured 8th District. Me, I think he can easily beat the know-nothing candidate the Democrats have put up against him, but Joe is taking nothing for granted.

One thing is sure, though, Joe Walsh knows how to get a conservative audience in motion.
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CPAC Chicago, Part 4: Joe Walsh, Randy Hultgren, Straw Poll Results”


CPAC Chicago, Part 3: Bobby Jindal, Peter Roskam, Michele Bachman

-By Warner Todd Huston

In part three of our series we’ll take a look at the speeches of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Illinois Congressman Peter Roskam, and Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. Bachmann’s speech was quite interesting for its singular focus on a particular jihad-supporting Muslim group that is operating in America today. Bachmann was vehement that Obama ban this group.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal


Gov. Bobby Jindal on the main stage

Jindal is another favorite of the greater conservative movement. He has a very compelling story of immigrant parents that came to America to become part of this great nation to finally see their little son become the most powerful man in their adopted state. It’s the perfect American story, for sure.

Speaking of stories, Jindal has a lot of them especially where it concerns his involvement in the BP Oil spill from 2010. I’ve seen Jindal relate this tale several times and it is always a good one. His description of how the federal government was more interested in observing its silly OSHA than deal quickly with the emergency before them was telling and hilarious — though ultimately sad and infuriating. Since this is standard stump speech stuff of Jindal’s, though, I did not Tweet that segment.

Like the others Jindal started praising the Walker win in Wisconsin. One of his funniest lines was that all the news people were proclaiming that the vote would be so close that it would be a long night for Wisconsin as they tallied the votes. But reality proved that the whole thing was over in a matter of hours with Walker’s landslide. Instead of it being a long night for Wisconsin, Jindal joked that it was instead a “long night at Obama headquarters in Chicago!”
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CPAC Chicago, Part 3: Bobby Jindal, Peter Roskam, Michele Bachman”


CPAC Chicago, Wisconsin Praised, Obama Razed — Part One: Rick Santorum, Ron Johnson

-By Warner Todd Huston

Well, Friday evening, June 8, 2012, we marked the end of the first CPAC event held in Chicago and what a great event it was. The triumph in Wisconsin was on everyone’s mind but so was Obama’s dismal record. Not just dismal, but according to several speakers, even dangerous. The economy and the election of Romney were focal points but so was foreign policy this day. One theme, though, was constant: Obama has to go.

Because of other things going on and the several press availability sessions, I didn’t catch every speaker in the main hall, but I did hear the speeches of (in this order) former Senator Rick Santorum, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, Indiana Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Illinois Representative Peter Roskam, Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachmann, and Illinois Representatives Joe Walsh and Randy Hultgren. I also heard and recorded the press availability sessions of Herman Caine, Peter Roskam, and Michelle Bachmann and I caught most of Kansas Representative Tim Huelskamp’s.

Other notables whose speeches I missed were Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner, and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback.

The event was a great success with well over 2,000 participants, all seats filled for the most part during the speeches and some great groups like the United Republican Fund, the Illinois Policy Institute, the Heartland Institute, Champion News, and others hosting and participating.

I’ll say a few words about the speakers I did see in the order I saw them and I’ll do this in a few installments so that this won’t be one long, overly taxing post. Now, as each of these speakers appeared before us I live Tweeted their comments, so the following quotes are pulled from my Twitter feed.

But before I do that, each speaker was quite enthusiastic over the win of Governor Scott Walker who defeated an effort by the far left and their union overlords to recall him in Wisconsin. Each speaker praised Walker and crowed about the left’s loss in there. I won’t regurgitate the Wisconsin hunk of each speaker as they were pretty much all the same; exuberant. The essential point was that we are all cheeseheads now.

Rick Santorum


Rick Santorum on the main stage

Former Pennsylvania Senator and recent GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum gave one of his well-crafted, typically workman-like speeches. One of Santorum’s early points was that America is at a “tipping point” and we’d better be there to tip it in the right direction.
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CPAC Chicago, Wisconsin Praised, Obama Razed — Part One: Rick Santorum, Ron Johnson”