Free Speech For Students… Unless You’re Christian, That Is

-By Warner Todd Huston

Our institutes of “higher” learning are all about being inclusive. They are stridently for freedom of speech and stand 100% behind the concept of open political debate. Well, unless you’re a Christian, that is. Christians, you see, are the only group that our fetid colleges and universities have agreed to discriminate against.

Last week, another example of that well known “tolerance” our schools are so concerned with promulgating was seen in Pomona College in Claremont, California. There two Christian, pro-life students were banned from the Pamona campus. Their crime? Video taping a question-and-answer session with a Planned Parenthood representative invited to speak there.

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Free Speech For Students… Unless You’re Christian, That Is”


Obama Wanted To Fire GOP US Attny To Fill Job With Dem

-By Warner Todd Huston

Is is being reported that President Obama wanted to fire a Republican US Attorney in Missouri and to replace her with a Democrat.

Now, can we revisit the agonized wailing that emanated in 2006 from the unhinged left when President Bush fired some US Attorneys? Remember how they screamed that it was all “just political” and that it might even be an illegal action? Remember how they gyrated over Bush’s supposed “destruction” of the US Attorney offices in the land, how he was trying to ruin our system?

Their wailing went on for several years quite despite the fact that these same US Attorneys serve at the discretion of the president in the first place. Quite despite the fact that past Democrat presidents also fired them at will. (Here is a perfect example of how the uniformed and unhinged left took this story back in 2006.)

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Obama Wanted To Fire GOP US Attny To Fill Job With Dem”


Is Libel Law Turning Against Us, New and Old Media Alike?

-By Warner Todd Huston

This is not a story of bias in the media. It is a story, rather, that affects both the Old Media of newspapers, TV and radio, as well as the New Media of the Internet. Our disagreements with the Old Media aside, we both stand to see trouble if a recent court case in Massachusetts gains momentum or is applied liberally henceforth.

The Associated Press reports on a libel case in Boston that pits a fired employee of the Staples office supply chain against his former employer. Staples, as it happens, sent out an emailed newsletter informing its employees that salesman Alan Noonan was fired for padding his expense account. Noonan sued for libel. Alarmingly, even though the emailed newsletter was reporting the strict truth the court held that truth was no defense in this case.

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Is Libel Law Turning Against Us, New and Old Media Alike?”


First Kill all the Lawyers… or at Least Put Them Out of Work

-By Warner Todd Huston

With apologies to the many fine folks at law that visit these pages, and those of my colleagues on the web that ply the law, today I am going to act the vulgar Shakespearian and advocate to “first kill all the lawyers.” Well, if not kill them exactly, then at least put many of them out of work — not that I am any expert on Shakespeare, he says to a chorus of “you betchas.” Still, the thought comes to mind because of a recent story in the Boston Globe that waxes pathetic over the many Bean Town lawyers that can’t find a job in this faltering economy.

The Globe piece starts out with a pity party for Boston lawyer Paul Semenza, a lawyer for 25 years that cannot find a job in his chosen profession. He now sells sofas and mattresses in a furniture outlet. And to that I say, good riddance to Paul… at least figuratively as Paul may be the nicest fellow in the world. But may he take several thousands more of his kind with him into exile. Let them get real jobs that are useful to his fellows at long last.

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First Kill all the Lawyers… or at Least Put Them Out of Work”


A New Way to Backdoor a Gun Ban: Onerous Insurance

-By Warner Todd Huston

Want a gun in Illinois? Fine. Then you’ll be forced to carry an expensive, million dollar insurance policy to be “allowed” to observe your Second Amendment right. At least, that will be the law if lefty gun-banner Kenneth Dunkin has any say in the matter.

Dunkin (D, Chicago) has made this attempt to undermine the Second Amendment even worse than a mere “insurance” policy. He has also slipped into this unConstitutional morass a provision that says gun owners will be liable if their gun is used in a crime after it has been stolen from them. The bill also authorizes the State Police to confiscate the firearm owner’s ID (FOID) from any citizen that doesn’t comply with purchasing the hefty insurance policy.

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A New Way to Backdoor a Gun Ban: Onerous Insurance”


Microdictatorships Line The Road To The Future

-By Frederick Meekins

In my column “Capital Implements Measures Violating Rights & Property”, I warned that a number of steps taken in the name of curtailing crime in a particular Washington, DC neighborhood forbidding entrance to anyone but those whose business and reasons for being there were deemed legitimate by law enforcement were to be baby steps in laying the foundation of a plan that would ultimately turn many of America’s cities into micropolice states by cordoning off selected segments of concentrated areas of population. Some snickered at my idea as I in part drew inspiration for my projections from an episode of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” where the downtrodden were corralled into sanctuary districts and they also chided me for failing to comprehend the complexities of the lawless situation supposedly requiring a response characterized by considerable sternness.

In all honesty, as an analyst basing many of my conjectures upon extrapolations where I see various trends headed, there are times when I wonder if perhaps I have overreacted to certain things I have stumbled across in the news. However, in light of a number of additional press accounts, any doubts I may have had about America’s municipalities eventually going into a state of lockdown with few chances of them reopening have been laid to rest as things continue along to such a lamentable destination
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Microdictatorships Line The Road To The Future”


Sneaking Abortion Funding Into Every Bill

-By Warner Todd Huston

For some thirty years Congress has built into bills a legislative device called a “pro-life rider.” These riders prevent public funding for abortion from being slipped into bills under the radar. These riders have wide bi-partisan support having resisted elimination since the 1970s.

But, now these riders are coming under threat by the new Obama administration and his pro-abortion Democratic Party cohorts. A bi-partisan group of House members, however, seek to quash the effort by Obama and his followers to reverse a thirty-year tradition, one that conforms to the majority opinion of the American electorate.

Heath Shuler (D-NC), Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and nearly 100 of their fellow House members have signed a letter urging the House majority leaders to retain pro-life riders into the coming session and beyond. (see text of letter here, .pdf file format)

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Sneaking Abortion Funding Into Every Bill”


It’s Not Obama’s “Stimulus” Bill

-By Frank Salvato

Now that the behemoth “stimulus” package has been reconciled in conference it appears that we, the taxpayers, will be saddled with financing a superfluity of special interest projects and entitlements. From programs that serve to combat sexually transmitted diseases and facilitate smoking prevention initiatives to the $30 million earmarked – yes, earmarked – for a wetlands restoration project meant to protect the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse, We the People have been bamboozled into financing the biggest raid on the US Treasury in the history of our nation. But before we grab the pitchforks and the torches and start marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House in protest, we should consider the facts surrounding the crafting of this abysmal piece of pork legislation.

The American citizenry has employed the convenient practice of blaming the President of the United States for all things enacted or ignored by government. This practice has been facilitated by the mainstream media for decades, if not since the birth of our nation. It can be argued that we have fallen into this practice primarily because it is easier and less time consuming than keeping tabs on each of the 535 voting members of Congress. But in taking the less engaged and less accurate approach to holding our elected officials accountable we perpetuate the misconception that the Executive Branch is all powerful. In fact, it is the Legislative Branch of our government that is charged – exclusively – with the tasks of finance and legislation.

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It’s Not Obama’s “Stimulus” Bill”


Don’t Blame President Obama

-By Thomas E. Brewton

The simple truth is that no president can pull an economy out of recession or guarantee continuous prosperity.

Our nation has become hypnotized by the PR hype surrounding all presidents. The proposed stimulus plan almost certainly will do little to boost employment, but it will give a huge boost to inflation. In our economic ignorance, we desperately want to believe that presidents can take steps to manage the economy back to low unemployment and prosperity. We therefore demand action, even if such action always leads to inflation that makes economic problems worse.

Chalk the misperception up to President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR). He was the first president to operate on the hubristic presumption that a president could plan and successfully manage the entire economy to prosperity by imposing the liberal-progressive ideology of social justice. Even Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., one of President Roosevelt’s most sycophantic eulogizers, was compelled to tie the New Deal to what he termed the imperial presidency.
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Don’t Blame President Obama”


Congress: Don’t Kill the Internet’s Golden Goose — Welcoming Private Investment Capital

-By Scott Cleland

It is more important what Congress does not do — than what it does do — concerning the final language on broadband in the pending economic stimulus bill.

It is critical for economic growth and job creation for Congress not to derail the market competition and private investment dynamic, which is currently very successful for 90+% of the country, in trying to achieve broadband open access for the <10% of the country that does not have it, or enough of it.

Economically-depressing, open access/net neutrality restrictions on broadband investment are counter-productive in an economic stimulus package.
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Congress: Don’t Kill the Internet’s Golden Goose — Welcoming Private Investment Capital”

A Simple, Inescapable Fact

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Corruption can be reduced only by reducing the size of the Federal government.

Much is being written about unsavory political influence exercised by the army of Washington lobbyists, who act as conduits for large amounts of influence money from special interest groups. Those special interest groups range from business and environmental groups, to abortion advocates, and labor unions.

Tom Daschle’s exit from nomination as the commissar of a national socialized healthcare system is among the headliners. Another is Leon Panetta, bound for the CIA, coming off large lecture earnings from groups doing millions of dollars worth of business with the CIA. Already fading into the background is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s husband’s big-bucks connections with some of the less reputable characters on the international scene, people against whom Secretary Clinton must represent the interests of the United States.
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The Man the Left Wants Hanged for Tax Cheating

-By Warner Todd Huston

Tax troubles were all the rage for certain folks recently. ABC News screamed in a headline about one fellow that was, “America’s Overnight Sensation… Owes $1,200 in Taxes.” Huffintgon Post was all up in arms over the same story. The San Francisco Chronicle was tsking the fellow for being “concerned about increased taxes – but hasn’t paid his own income taxes.” The Chicago Tribune chided this figure for being “delinquent on his taxes.” It was a crime, they all said. An outrage. This is not to even mention the unhinged, screaming mimis of the left blogosphere that dug in like pitbulls to excoriate this notorious tax cheat.

So, who are they talking about? Who had these people out for blood? Is it Tim Geithner, Obama’s tax cheating chief of the Treasury? Maybe the hubby of Hilda Solis, Obama’s choice for Sec. of Labor? Perhaps it’s Tom Daschle, Obama’s unfortunate choice for the HHS? Maybe it was Nancy Killefer, Obama’s pick for the post of chief White House performance officer who just bowed out over troublesome tax issues? Was it any of these tax cheats?

Just who was the guy that the news and left bloggers were so incensed over?

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Yeah, Let’s Cap Salaries. Start With Harvard!

-By Warner Todd Huston

Since Barack “Giant Killer” Obama thinks it’s his business how much CEOs and captains of business should be paid predicated on receiving federal money one has to wonder why this principle is not being applied fairly across the board? If receipt of federal money is enough to constitute total government control over salaries, let’s apply it everywhere. We can start with the salaries of university presidents.

Back in 2005, Senator Charles Grassley (R, Iowa) wanted to launch an investigation of the president and board of trustees of American University in Washington because of a giant severance package of $1.3 million given outgoing President Benjamin Ladner who only had a base salary of $633,000 in 2003. The severance seemed excessive, to say the least.

In 2005 Bloomberg published a story investigating the salaries of a handful of the nation’s top paid university presidents. The numbers then all exceeded President Obama’s new $500,000 cap for the evil CEOs of 2009.

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It’s About The Change Yet Lobbyists and Tax Cheats Abound in New Administration

-By Warner Todd Huston

From the early days of his campaign, Obama made with the flourish that, should he be elected, lobbyists would not be welcome in his new tone Washington, his Washington of change and hope. Soon after the election, Obama’s spokesman John Podesta made a great show of announcing that Obama was insisting on the “strictest ethics rules ever applied” to his ongoing choices for members of his administration and his transition team.

In the early November news conference, Podesta proudly proclaimed that Obama was so interested in distancing himself from the old, business-as-usual Washington that they didn’t care if they were excluding people of long Washington experience with their supposed strict ethics rules. Podesta sternly told reporters, “I’ve heard the complaint that we’re leaving all these extra people on the side, that we’re leaving all the people that know everything out in the cold. So be it. That’s a commitment that is one the American people expect and one the President-elect made.”

Yet within weeks it became clear that this new ethical standard was merely so much window dressing. Now, lobbyists abound in Obama’s administration and have since day one. Not only that, but tax cheats seem to be particularly drawn to the new president.

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Why Government Is The Problem

-By Thomas E. Brewton

As Friedrich Hayek noted (A Free-Market Monetary System), government monopoly of the right to issue currency is the ultimate source of our economic miseries.

President Reagan, in his first inaugural address, famously said:

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.

In 1981, when he said it, economic conditions were in many respects identical to those we face today. And for the same fundamental reason: governments almost always arrogate to themselves the exclusive right to issue and/or to regulate the issuance of currency. The Constitution, Article I, Section 8, states: The Congress shall have Power… To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures…

This power, for any government, creates a temptation to over-expand the money supply and debase the currency. Only the unwritten constitution of the nation can guard against it.
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Here Are The Senate Republicans That Voted to Confirm Tax Cheat Geithner

-By Warner Todd Huston

Keep the following names in your wallet just in case the IRS comes knocking at your door to arrest you for any possible “mistakes” in your payment of federal taxes, won’t you? For these are the names of those Republican Senators that one can rely upon to absolve us for being a tax cheat. In fact, if you play your cards right, you might even get a cushy government job out of the deal. These are the Senators that don’t think being a law abiding tax payer is a necessary requirement for being Secretary of the Treasury:

Corker (R-TN) 
Cornyn (R-TX) 
Crapo (R-ID) 
Ensign (R-NV) 
Graham (R-SC) 
Gregg (R-NH) 
Hatch (R-UT) 
Shelby (R-AL) 
Snowe (R-ME) 
Voinovich (R-OH)

On the other hand, here are those unrelenting bores that seem to insist that tax laws are written in stone and that, darn it all, one should not be given high public office when it is discovered that one is a tax cheat!

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The Right to Defend Sovereignty

-By Nancy Salvato

It is written in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Each and every one of us has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A seemingly simple idea, it’s the definition of when a life begins or should end, when the liberty of one being is to be considered encroaching on the liberty of another, and on the meaning of personal happiness on which we disagree.

I imagine one would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t want a peaceful existence which would allow us to go about our lives unencumbered by external threats. Again, it’s the method our country uses to achieve a relatively peaceful existence and at what cost –on which we currently disagree. While all of these topics are worthy of discussion and study, the question of our nation’s sovereignty begs examination at this moment in time because our present way of life is the direct result of our nation’s sovereign status in the world and so for many of us, it is worth preserving.
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A Fading Dream

-By Thomas E. Brewton

The much lamented fading of the American dream of a better future results from the continuous, corrosive effect of policies initiated by President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s.

Democrat/Socialists blame Republicans for foreclosing the American dream, the expectation that things will be better for our children than they were for us. Their explanation is that presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush took income away from the middle class and from low-income citizens and gave it to “the rich” via tax cuts.

The incoming Obama administration vows to change that.
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The Net Neutrality debate has narrowed — Why the recession may narrow it further

-By Scott Cleland

The reality is that the net neutrality debate has narrowed greatly over the last three years, and could narrow further as the recession puts a public policy premium on growing the economy, creating jobs and promoting investment.

That was my general conclusion in preparing to participate in the CES Open Internet panel yesterday as I stepped back and took stock of the state of the Net Neutrality/Open Internet debate and issue. The panel was moderated by Rob Pegaroro of the Washington Post and had panelists from Free Press, Amazon, Google and AT&T — in addition to me.

I believe you will find the two main points I made thought-provoking — and that you will find the reaction they elicited from my fellow panelists interesting as well.
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Left Doesn’t Mind When Gov’t Takes Over Art… When Dems Are In Charge

-By Warner Todd Huston

So, what sort of hue and cry do you think would have been raised if President Bush had proposed that he develop an “art czar” like Obama is proposing? Do you think that the left would have eagerly agreed with the idea that a President Bush should be in control of art in America — at any level whatever?

No, high dudgeon would have been the likely outcome if Bush had proposed to invent the pseudo cabinet position of “art czar” answerable only to the executive branch. Once again Bush would have been excoriated by the left as stamping on people’s Constitutional rights of free expression. They would have lost their tiny little minds over the fact that government with a Republican at its head would be controlling art in any way at all. They would have been outraged anew over the audacity of the Bushhitler and apoplectic over his various evils.

And, at some level they’d have been right.

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‘Crunchy Cons’ Rod Dreher Thinks Republicans Will Lead Populist, Anti-Business Revolt?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Rod Dreher, author of the “crunchy cons” definition of that certain sort of “Birkenstock wearing, environmental, gun-loving” Republican has weighed in on the economic crisis the US faces and is attempting to further expand his factional theory of the conservative side of the political aisle. This time Dreher is claiming that the next anti-corportate, anti-Wall Street populist revolt will be led by his “crunchy con” faction of the center-right electorate, but I think he misses the mark with this one.

Linking the current economic crisis to past religious revivals that have periodically swept the country, what he calls a “creedal passion period,” Dreher thinks he sees where this will all soon be heading, at least as far as center-right voters are concerned.

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Undermining Our Sovereignty from Without & Within

-By Nancy Salvato

The first amendment to the United States Constitution expressly prohibits the United States Congress from making laws that infringe on the freedom of the press. While it should be expected that those elected to the legislature have at least a basic understanding of the Bill of Rights, this is not necessarily the case.

“Those who have held elective office earn an average score of 44% on the civic literacy test, which is five percentage points lower than the average score of 49% for those who have never been elected.” Neither score bodes well for the state of our nation.

If we are to continue to be a sovereign country, we must understand the rule of law and why each and every word of the founding documents are so important to the defense of our nation and to the continuation of our freedoms.
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Martin Luther King Was a Thief!

-By Don Boys, Ph.D.

One of the easiest charges to prove against King is that he stole much of his material from the time he was 15 years old! King preached his first sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church but it was taken from Harry Emerson Fosdick’s “Life is What You Make it.” You will note that he chose the leading liberal (Modernist) preacher of the day from whom to steal.

King stole from others all his lifetime. The scholars of the King Papers Project confessed: “King’s plagiarism was a general pattern evident in nearly all of his academic writings….We found that instances of textual appropriation can be seen in his earliest extant writings as well as his dissertation. The pattern is also noticeable in his speeches and sermons throughout his career.” Note that the confession is from King’s own people!

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Blagojevich’s Mea Culpa

-By Dan Scott

The recent vote of 114 to 1 to impeach Governor Blagojevich was a seeming triumph of bipartisan political will or was it? Governor Blagojevich’s response was by all accounts a non sequitur citing Tennyson, claiming he was doing good with implementing Health Care and quoting the Bible or was it? Both quotes were quite revealing of Blagojevich’s mind set and belief system. It is also revealing of the Illinois political culture of corruption.

Let’s examine first the charges then the quotes:

The committee on Thursday unanimously recommended impeachment based on the criminal charges but other allegations as well — that Blagojevich expanded a health care program without proper authority, that he circumvented hiring laws to give jobs to political allies, that he spent millions of dollars on foreign flu vaccine that he knew wasn’t needed and couldn’t be brought into the country.
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Illinois GOP Wrong On Special Election to Fill Obama’s Senate Seat

-By Warner Todd Huston

Once it became known throughout the state that Governor Balgojevich was being entertained by the U.S. Attorney for his creative attempts to shore up his retirement plans and once it was realized that the Governor had yet to pick a replacement to fill Barack Obama’s Senate seat, the Illinois GOP latched on to the call for a special election as the solution for that issue.

Unfortunately, they’re wrong.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, it is definitely the only way a Republican could possibly be sent to Washington as our junior senator from Illinois. But special elections are not the constitutional way we fill a vacated senate seat. It just isn’t.

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CNN Lists Sarah Palin With 2008’s Criminals, Sex Addicts, and the Corrupt

-By Warner Todd Huston

**UPDATE**

Before we get into this op ed, I have to relate a bit of history first. I originally posted this on Sunday on my NewsBusters.org posting. It raged all day Sunday and into the night among Palin fans and center right bloggers. Lucianne.com, FreeRepublic and many other sites linked to the story. Gretta Van Susteren even posted about it on her FoxNews blog (It garnered 4 pages of comments there, too).

Well by the time Monday morning arrived, CNN quietly and without explanation or apology erased Sarah Palin from the article I describe below.

Showing they have no sense of morality, no grasp of corruption and no understanding of what defines a criminal, CNN gives us another one of those ubiquitous year in review stories, this one titled “Politicians who fell from grace in 2008.” In this one, CNN has decided to reveal for us their top eight politicians that found 2008 to be a “career-buster” because of their “crimes and misdemeanors” or their outrageous controversies.

CNN features corruption mired Rod Blagojevich, the sex crazed Elliot Spitzer and John Edwards, and the criminal bribe taker Ted Stevens among four others. Each of these men in the CNN list have either been convicted of criminal actions, are indicted for corruption, lost their positions, been drummed out of their party, or are soon to face jail time. Among these eight criminals, however, is a name that doesn’t belong among this class of serial abuser of the public trust. It won’t be shocking to note that among the worst sex criminals, bribe takers, liars and thieves in politics for 2008, CNN ridiculously included the name of Governor Sarah Palin.

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Requiescat in pace, Uncle Sam

-By Michael M. Bates

2008 will be known as the year the United States set aside any pretense of free enterprise. A nation that had flourished with the concept of limited government economic intervention turned to the seductive allure of massive federal intrusion. Washington will now more than ever redistribute wealth in the name of compassion, pick winners and losers, and decide how the fruits of your labor will be spent.

Admittedly, we’ve been heading in that direction, sometimes gradually but inexorably, for decades. James Madison, often identified as the father of the Constitution, would have been astonished by the shift. He’d written: “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. . . ”

When the ostensible crisis hit last fall, everyone from President Bush to Barack Obama insisted that Congress needed to take immediate action to bail out the financial industry. Sounding like used car salesmen, they argued it couldn’t wait for a month or even for a week; a $700 billion deal had to be cut now. The details could all be sorted out later.
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Missouri Moves to Make Secret Ballot Required by Law

-By Warner Todd Huston

The misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) will take away the secret ballot for potential union members and force them to openly declare their preferences for or against a union, causing that worker to be easily open to intimidation by union thugs. This is a law currently in the table in Congress, one that Barack Obama has pledged to push through regardless of how it eliminates one of the oldest democratic rights there is.

But, now Missouri is trying to head off the possible federal enactment of “card check” (the provision that eliminates the secret ballot) by legislating that a secret ballot is protected by state law.

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Skewz.com Predicts Top 5 Trends for 2009

-By Warner Todd Huston

Skewz.com has put together its top 5 predictions for how political communications under the Obama presidency will be changed in 2009.

Now, in some ways, I can see where the Skewz team is coming from seeing as how they are in that Internet bubble, but I think that their assumptions of Internet domination of politics is a bit overblown. Still, I think in many ways the predictions are right if not quite as strong as presented nor as immediate.

Here are their predictions and my replies to them:

1. Blogging Gets Issue-Specific : The 2008 election re-enforced and validated the need for candidates to have a strong outreach program to the blogosphere to amplify their message. While it’s apparent that bloggers are becoming more important and tightly linked to campaigns, the increasing number of blogs is pushing many bloggers to become “issue specific” as a way to differentiate themselves. For example, rather than being just a “right” or “left” blog, specific topics such as crime, the housing crisis, government bailouts, poverty, etc. will dominate. In addition, day-to-day issues such as crime and poverty will become more relevant to larger portions of the electorate.

I think this is less a reaction to “differentiation” among bloggers, more an act of going with what one knows based on the growing legitimacy of the medium. Over the year 2008, Blogs have become a legitimate news source and this has spurred even more people with specific fields of knowledge to feel confident that they won’t merely be laughed off with their blogging efforts. Smart people with detailed knowledge and a passion to debate the issues have migrated to blogs in great numbers over the year. And with the growth of social networking sites like Twitter and FaceBook — all of which rely heavily on linking to stories on news media and blogs — the Internet has really come into its own as an “official” news source. Witness the recent survey that shows a far grater number of people than ever before saying the Internet is their news source.

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