A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

-By John Armor

The end of the year is traditionally a time of appraising the last year, and estimating what the next will bring. I’ll skip my personal history and my estimates for my family. Instead, the subject is what I have done for almost 40 years, now.

I’ve spent those years primarily in research, writing, teaching, and practicing constitutional law. At this time, I conclude that the Constitution is in serious trouble.

The idea of creating a democratic republic was extremely rare in 1776 when the intent was stated in the Declaration, as in 1787 when the Constitution was written. The irony is that our nation under that document has prospered mightily, and has survived longer than any other government under any other written constitution in the history of the world.
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Lefty-dupe Calls Palin Goof

-By Warner Todd Huston

In the Chicago Sun-Times’ Top Year-ends from its bottom rear-end today, columnist Richard Roeper picked Governor Sarah Palin as his top GOOF for 2008… yet got owned himself by awarding her his dubious distinction based on at least one lie and a few dubious assumptions.

Roeper, a man that clearly imagines himself the living embodiment of the lead character on Seinfeld, lapsed into the most supreme case of hyperbolic overload in his description of why he thinks Sarah Palin is a GOOF (a self-fashioned acronym standing for Greatly Overhyped and Overexposed Fool).

Of course Roeper starts with the canard of Palin supposedly not knowing what the “Bush Doctrine” is. The problem with this claim is that there really IS no such concrete thing as the “Bush doctrine.” As Charles Krauthammer so cogently revealed, Bush has had several different versions of it himself, so no one really knows what the “Bush doctrine” is. It has changed so much that there really is no way to say there is a single such doctrine.

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A Liberal Glimpses the Truth, Albeit Dimly

-By Thomas E. Brewton

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert denounces spending borrowed money, apparently unaware that he is stepping on the party line.

Mr. Herbert is about as far left in his liberal-progressive ideology as any writer in today’s mainstream media. Yet he has glimpsed enough of the truth to identify consumption floated by excessive debt as a cause of our present economic woes.

Read the whole column: Stop Being Stupid.

All conservatives, I believe, will wholeheartedly second Mr. Herbert’s assertion that, “Somehow, over the past few decades, that has become the American way: to pay for things — from wars to Wall Street bonuses to flat-screen TVs to video games — with money that wasn’t there.”

There are, however, important points of divergence reflecting Mr. Herbert’s economic paradigm.
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AP Attacks Gov. Palin EVEN in Birth Announcement of Grandson

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Associated Press is classy, indeed. They can’t even keep sniping at Sarah Palin out of a story announcing the blessed birth of her grandson. Ah, but wait, it gets even more annoying because not only did the AP snipe at Palin in its first birth announcement story, once called on it the AP went back twice to rearrange the piece rewriting history to make it seem as if they never sniped at her in the first place.

Initially, the AP attacked Palin in its very first paragraph saying that daughter Bristol’s pregnancy was the thing that caused Palin’s candidacy to “go downhill.” At 7:20 PM the AP gave us this: (Bold my emphasis)

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Tough Guy John ‘François’ Kerry Wants ‘Hot Pursuit’ of Pirates

-By Warner Todd Huston

It’s like handing a sheriff’s badge to Don Knotts. Like entering Gary Coleman in a Mr. Universe contest. Like expecting Michael Moore not to lie. In today’s laugher, the Associated Press is presenting John ‘François’ Kerry as a tough guy out to bring the law to the new Barbary pirates.

Seriously. Stop laughing.

The AP sternly informs us that, “As a young Navy swift boat commander in Vietnam, Senator John F. Kerry was no stranger to the perils of hot pursuit in combat.”

I am SURE them thar pi-rates is a shakin’ in their boots. The tough guy is after ’em!

But, just like John ‘François’ Kerry always does, there is “nuance” in his seeming braggadocio. (my bold)

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Darn Israel and Hamas for… Wrecking Obama’s Great Foreign Policy Plans?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Palestinians raise their kids to hate Jews. The Israelis have endured decades of acts of terror against their own children and have generally acted with forbearance in reply. The UN has been vehemently and irrationally anti-Israeli since day one. The questions of “right of return” and the “two state solution” have dogged international politics for a long time. And what is the Timesonline worried about? Are they worried about the safety of Jewish children. Are they concerned of the improvement in quality of life for Palestinian children? No, none of that. The Times is worried that all this will hurt poor Barack Obama and his wonderful plans for a foreign policy that will at last bring us peace in our times.

I’m not kidding. In all this mess, the Times is most concerned that Obama’s foreign policy promises will be harmed because of what Hamas has forced upon itself. While Obama skips church and runs off to the gym on a daily basis, the Times is all concerned for Barack’s foreign policy.

In a perfect emulation of their most beloved countryman, Neville Chamberlain, the peace-in-our-times London Times proves that Brits are entirely feckless where it concerns a moral understanding of foreign policy. In times like these, the delicate feelings of Barack Obama should be the last thing that anyone should care about. On top of that he isn’t even president, yet, so his ideas and opinion are meaningless at this point in time. But, this is the point the Times wants to explore in theirs headlined, “Barack Obama’s hopes for early peace deal shattered in minefield of Middle Eastern politics.”

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The Nutrooters Newest Hope for Hope-n-Change

-By Warner Todd Huston

Eli Pariser, the delusional Nutroot kingpin of MoveOn.org, has been allowed a few column inches of space in the Washington Post to reveal his hope for some Obama hope-n-change, and his op ed is a doosie, for sure. Headlined “Will He Bring Change.gov We Can Believe In?,” Pariser gives voice to his most hopiest of hopeiness that Obama is the True One that they all hope he is. All joking aside, this is a pretty revealing op ed for its utter inability at introspection or, on the other hand, its complete lack of honesty — I’m not sure which.

In fact, Pariser’s very first paragraph reveals his own extremism, an extremism that he pretends doesn’t exist (that being the lack of introspection, or the cynical attempt at covering the truth to which I was alluding).

So, how’s the Obama administration doing so far?

It’s a trick question: We’re still about minus-23 days in. But already, folks on the left and the right are furiously reading tea leaves, worrying about whether he’s as progressive as promised or trying to turn lemons into lemonade (“Hillary Clinton at State: a victory for conservative foreign policy values”). Through all this, there’s been surprisingly little focus on what may be the most important question Obama faces.

As Pariser mentions, Obama hasn’t taken office and so far all he has are appointments and a lot of vacation time, so no administration exists. This isn’t Obama’s fault, nor something to hold against him, but Pariser’s fevered imagination is running amuck, here.

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Another Journalist Proclaims The Masses Are Stupid, Internet is Pernicious

-By Warner Todd Huston

In another of a never ending line of self-congratulatory but quickly fading news paper journalists, Newark Star-Ledger writer Paul Mulshine has bravely taken it upon himself to warn us all that we’ll miss him and his kind when they are gone. By his kind, of course, he means print journalists.

Mulshine assures us all that, Mencken-like, he feels that the masses are idiots that cannot even pronounce pundit much less spell it well enough to become citizen journalists on the Internet. He is certain that without the assistance of professional journalists we lowly citizens will never be able to find out what’s going on in our local governments. This is because, he says, bloggers won’t take the time and haven’t the ability to, “sit through town-council meetings and explain to you why your taxes will be going up.”

Of course, he is completely wrong. Left and right there are many such bloggers doing just that on a daily basis.

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Ayers and Dohrn are Liars

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Everything, from people within the Weatherman Underground, to Bill Ayers’s own words, proves his mendacity.

Doug Welsh on his Twitter site posted a link to Larry Grathwohl’s reply to Ayers.

Mr. Grathwohl, from his personal knowledge as an FBI infiltrator in the Weatherman underground in the late 1960s and early 70s, confutes the self-serving, hypocritical rationalizations that Mr. Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn are now peddling.
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A Fundamentalist Christian Looks at Fundamentalist Islam!

-By Don Boys, Ph.D.

Have American Christians misread or misinterpreted historic Islam? I am afraid many have, and as a Bible-believing Christian concerned with the truth, I want to challenge their thinking.

Many believe that all Muslims are uneducated fanatics; however, many Muslim clerics are highly educated, urbane, and politically informed.

Another false conception is that all Muslims are terrorists, and while State Department testimony reveals that the extremists in Saudi Arabia control 80% of U.S. mosques, some Muslims are anti-terrorists. Some Muslim leaders, especially in Europe and Egypt have taken anti-terrorist positions at the risk of their lives! I have great respect for those clerics. (However, where have mass demonstrations of American Muslims taken place since 9-11 to show abhorrence for terror?)
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Flight 93 Update

Another stealth jihadist plants another evil hidden Islamic message

Blogburst logo, petition

What could be as evil as sneaking a memorial to the 9/11 terrorists onto the Flight 93 crash site? How about sneaking a hidden message of Islamic indoctrination into the soundtrack if an adorable baby doll, repeated every 30 seconds to thousands of 2-5 year old girls without parental knowledge?

If you haven’t heard it before, check out this AP video from October:
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‘Dear Mr. Obama,’ Why are our Kids so Brainwashed?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has launched a wonderful little feature that will run until Barack Obama takes the oath of office next month. They are calling it “Dear Mr. Obama” and it is a heartwarming exercise in child indoctrination and brainwashing. The Post-Gazette will be publishing letters from local students to Obama asking him for all sorts of global warming fixes, Iraq war enders, and big government programs.

Sadly, it appears that the government schools these kids have been subjected to have failed to teach their charges about anything like the American system, federalism, even science seems neglected. But they SURE taught their kiddies that government is there to spend, spend, spend, that government is to be treated like our collective parents, and that the war in Iraq is obviously an evil venture. Obviously.

And, yes little kiddies, The One, your very own Obamessiah, is flying to the rescue like a super hero. Cue the theme music — I’d suggest the theme to 2001, like Elvis used, is appropriate for the sentiment here. The Obamessiah has entered the building!

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The 99 Most Memorable, Interesting and Outrageous Political Quotes of 2008

-By David Huntwork

The year 2008 was politically the most exciting and unusual in a generation. It hosted a long, divisive and drama filled campaign season that featured the rapid rise and fall of Rudy Guiliani, Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee, the unlikely rise of John McCain and Barack Obama, and the eventual bitter defeat of Hillary Clinton. It brought us an unusually long and brutal primary with emotional charges of racism and sexism, the rise of the Superdelegate, and the explosion of Sarah Palin upon the national stage. All of this was followed by a rough and tumble presidential campaign whose outcome may have never been truly in doubt but was still a never ending soap opera of charges, counter charges, personal attacks, character assassinations, rumors, smears and the occasional, unexpected surprise.

2008 also also brought us a huge spike in gas prices, more political scandals, a mortgage and credit industry in a state of panic and a sitting president who was almost completely politically powerless in the face of such challenges. Rarely does such an alignment of events occur in a single year and the resulting deluge of memorable political quotes is a goldmine for the blogger, columnist, political junkie, and all those who follow current events. Without further ado I present to you my selection of the 99 most memorable, interesting, and outrageous political quotes of 2008.
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The NYTimes’ PC Christmas — Imagine There’s No Religion But Global Warming’s True

– By Warner Todd Huston

Imagine there’s no religion, it’s easy for The New York Times to do — even in a Christmas Day editorial that somehow forgets that Christmas is about Christ’s birth. In fact, the NYT decided that this Christmas was its opportunity to wallow in worse-than-ever sentiments and to bemoan that this year’s Christmas isn’t as good as it used to be. Oh, they tried to dress it up a bit by saying it is great to have a Christmas that gets us back to basics and also by slipping in some global warming clap trap, but it is still a lament that we all have it so darn bad these days.

The Christmas Day editorial starts off surmising that “you may be wondering about the carbon equation of a Christmas tree,” though it is a bit amusing to see them make such a silly assumption. I’d rather bet that even most environuts weren’t thinking about their Christmas carbon footprint when they awoke that morning! But, not the NYT. They are all worried that those old Christmas lights are going to cause the end of the planet as we know it!

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Obama’s First Gift to Unions

– By Warner Todd Huston

Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of Labor is his first gift to labor unions. Hilda Solis is quite a union extremist and has already promised to push the misleadingly named employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) once she takes over her new role in the Obama administration.

A recent Wall Street Journal report reveals that Solis, a California Congressman, has been in the back pocket of unions since she first ran for Congress.

Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of Labor — Hilda Solis — brings impeccable big labor credentials. The California Congresswoman first rode to power with labor backing against a fellow Democrat, has voted with the AFL-CIO 97% of the time, and got three-quarters of her campaign contributions from unions.

But the WS Journal rightfully worries that Solis will also try to gut the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS). In recent years the OLMS has tightened financial disclosure rules on the unions, an effort that is responsible in just one case for catching hundreds of thousands of dollars being illicitly spent by Tyrone Freeman, the head of the California office of the Service Employee International Union.

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MSN Says Ridiculing Palin Is the Top TV Moment of 2008

-By Warner Todd Huston

MSN TV reporter, Dave Lake, has decided in his infinite wisdom that Tina Fey ridiculing Governor Sarah Palin is the top TV moment from the 2008 TV season. Aren’t you surprised that making fun of Sarah Palin has become the top TV moment? I mean, it’s incredible that the liberal media has decided that out of the entire TV season, this is the top moment! I’m SHOCKED, to say the least. (Don’t worry, I won’t run out of sarcasm any time soon)

From his blurb on the main page of the TV Year in review section I think we can see why Mr. Lake is a reviewer and not himself a TV writer. Let’s just say that his “humor” fell flat.

I Can See Tina From My House: The year’s most singular TV moment was Tina Fey’s return to “Saturday Night Live” as Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin. Fey, who was never known for her impressions while on the show, nailed the voice, mannerisms and spirit of the Alaska governor, propelling the show to its best ratings in 14 years. An appearance a few weeks later by the actual Sarah Palin fell flat, much like her bid for the White House. (NBC)

The appearance by the “actual” Sarah Palin “fell flat”? Says who? It was one of SNL’s highest watched episodes all year. It would seem, rather, that the whole rest of the SNL season fell flat compared to the ratings that Sarah Palin brought the show!

And, I’m sorry, how did Fey “nail” the Governor’s “spirit”? That would presuppose that Sarah Palin is as stupid as Fey attempted to make her seem. One has to point out that Fey did not get elected to the highest office a state has while Sarah Palin did.

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Have Yourself A Theistic (Not Atheistic) Little Christmas

-By Frederick Meekins

From at least 1994 when I remember writing my first column on the subject, despisers of the Almighty and liberals of the most spineless of stripes have conspired to undermine Christmas as a national celebration in the attempt to downplay and ultimately eliminate public recognition of God in general and His only begotten Son Jesus Christ in specific. These efforts have been so widespread that I was able to compile columns written about them over the years into a book titled “Yuletide Terror & Other Holiday Horrors”.

Though the American people have been manipulated and their resistance worn down on a number of fronts to the point that they now let slide any number of outrages that would have caused considerable uproar in the past, for the most part citizens have been quite vocal about attempts by secular leftists to ban acknowledgment of the Christmas season. However, now that traditionalists have asserted the right to publicly affirm their god-given heritage, secularists are responding with alternative displays of their own promoting their own particular worldview.
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Governor Blago’s Pit Bull’s Tactics

-By John Armor

Governor Rod Blagojevich has announced that he is going to “fight until I take my last breath,” in an effort to avoid impeachment by the Illinois legislature. But his first defense tactic came not from the Governor himself, but from his high-priced pit bull (excuse me, defense counsel). Criminal defense expert Ed Genson has attacked the Members of the Illinois House for even thinking about using the tapes made by federal agents on which the Governor, in foul-mouthed tirades, demanded bribes be paid to him or his wife, in return for his appointment of Barack Obama’s replacement in the US Senate.

What did Ed Genson say was wrong with the tapes? Did he deny that Governor Blago said what was on those tapes? No. Did he deny that the foul-mouhed demands made by Blago amount to the sale of his services as Governor for cash and other benefits? No. Did he deny that if Blago did this, he is unfit to remain as Governor of Illinois? No.

Attorney Genson said that use of the tapes by the Illinois House as part of the impeachment process would be “unconstitutional,” and therefore they shouldn’t use that evidence.
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Kwanzaa Created by a Rapist and Torturer?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Each year, with the onset of Christmas, we are treated to another gauzy, fluff piece about how great Kwanzaa is by yet another PC spewing newspaper columnist. This year, among many others, we find aggrandizement such as the Progressive’s “Kwanzaa is more relevant than ever in recession,” the Chattanooga Times Free Press with their titled, “Common ground,” or the one from the Providence Journal headlined, “Christmas, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah brighten even the darkest season of the year.”

Several years ago, the Houston Chronicle got in the act with a piece by Leslie Casimir titled “Learning about Kwanzaa from the holiday’s creator.” This one, though, was a bit off the usual track of the how-great-is-Kwanzaa theme because this particular piece celebrated the inventor of the faux holiday, Maulana Karenga, himself. So, instead of merely celebrating this manufactured holiday Casimir amazingly made a hero of the rapist, race monger and violent thug who created it!

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Euro Journo Sides With Muslim Hate Over BDS Shoe Toss

-By Warner Todd Huston

Mitch Potter of the Toronto Star is the quintessential example of a self-hating European, I must say. He is a journalist that sides with those who advocate the destruction of his own culture just so he can puff himself up that he “gets it” and he does this willingly ala the useful idiots of old. In his latest pretense at journalism, Potter takes such glee indulging his Bush derangement syndrome (BDS) that he ends up accepting the terms of what “insult” means among Muslim hatemongers and terrorists and employs that as a weapon against Bush and the USA. It does not occur to this writer at all that we should scoff at what they think is an insult because he accepts their cultural concepts in place of our own.

First of all, the Toronto Star gives our Euro-weenie the exalted status of “Mitch Potter, Europe Bureau,” though it would have been better grammatically — less clumsy at least — to say he is “Mitch Potter, European Bureau,” but be that as it may. What strikes us at first glance is Potter’s penchant for the insufferable style of too many “reporters” in today’s world of woefully untalented journalists. That would be the appalling practice of the one sentence “paragraph.”

Evidently, the idea here is that readers are too stupid to read a paragraph more complicated than a single sentence or two. It is the idea that too many words grouped together is too taxing for the moron reader to withstand. So, these reporters give us annoying short bursts of words in clipped sentences that deter any sense that craft is something the writer is attempting to serve.

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NYT Foreign Policy Experts Print Fake Letter From Paris Mayor

-By Warner Todd Huston

On the ball. That’s what the experts at The New York Times are, alright. They are the arbiters of all that’s fit to print, remember? The ones that know all and see all, dontcha know? They are the ones with all sorts of advice on foreign policy, we must point out. So, it’s a bit hard to fathom how The New York Times printed a hoax letter, supposedly from Bertrand Delanoe, the mayor of Paris, France, taking the State of New York to task for turning to the ditzy Caroline Kennedy to fill Hillary’s Senate Seat.

That’s right, The New York Times got scammed by a fake letter. Worse, they didn’t even follow up to confirm the authenticity of the letter that arrived in their inbox via email. Someone at the Times just read the email then published the letter. And now they are apologizing for the negligence.

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Is CNN Pushing Kids to Ask For a Salary for First Lady Michelle?

-By Warner Todd Huston

**VIDEO below fold**

CNN has a segment that they call “CNN Student News” that is supposed to highlight the news of the day for the kiddie set. Pursuant to that, in a December 15 segment, CNN floats a question asking if Michelle Obama (or any First Lady) should get a government salary just for being First Lady?

But, what we really ended up with is a slight to those same students to whom CNN was ostensibly relating the news. No where in the report was there any talk of the Constitution in particular nor the law in general as the CNN anchor cajoled the kids into viewing with awe the “work” of the First Lady and in fostering in them a feeling that First Ladies should be paid for this “work.”

In fact, one interview during the segment even made happy talk of the fact that, during the Clinton administration, Hillary Clinton’s travel and causes forced a “moving public works project” wherever she went. There was no hint of the burden this posed on the places she visited and no sense that these expenditures were unfunded nor that such expenditures were never voted on by the people of the states she visited. The kids are left uninformed that this “moving public works” burden was forced upon taxpayers unawares.

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UAW Runs Whining to Obama

– By Warner Todd Huston

In a day when their industry is cratering, in large part because of their own actions, the United Auto Workers (UAW) is whining to president to be Barack Obama that “unfair labor rules” need to be retracted once he takes office.

The UAW is asking Obama to revisit the conditions that the recent Bailout is dependent upon whereby the union is forced to revisit its practices to look for cutbacks and concessions. In essence, the UAW is trying to convince Obama that the union should not be held accountable for its actions of dragging the US auto makers down the tubes.

“We are disappointed that,” President Bush, “has added unfair conditions singling out workers,” Gettelfinger said. “We will work with the Obama administration and the new Congress to ensure that these unfair conditions are removed, as we join in the coming months with all stakeholders to create a viable future for the U.S. auto industry.”

No, Mr. Gettelfinger, Bush is saying nothing at all about “the workers.” He is pointing at YOU, Mr. Gettlefinger, you and your union thugs. It is YOUR fault that the auto industry is falling apart, not “the workers.”

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Our Bailout Culture and the Beauty of Bankruptcy

By Selwyn Duke

The story of the Prodigal Son teaches a beautiful lesson about repentance and forgiveness. As you may know, it involves a lazy, irresponsible young man who insists upon taking his share of the family inheritance immediately and striking out on his own. He then proceeds to squander it on a dissolute lifestyle and ends up destitute, living like an animal. Duly chastened and humbled and purged of his spirit of entitlement, he approaches his father in contrition and asks for aid, saying that he would be satisfied to just be treated as a servant. The father, overwhelmed with joy, forgives his son, proclaims him “found” and holds a celebration commemorating his return. Of course, the idea is that he was “found” spiritually; he had developed wisdom, the capacity to not just manage money, but life.

Now, after 2000 years, we have gone from Prodigal Son to prodigal sin, and I imagine that today the story might unfold quite differently. The son’s problem would probably be related via cell phone, be chalked up to a matter of money, and remedied not with character formation but cash flow.
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Net Neutrality’s Chill on a Free Market Internet — Google’s OpenEdge Caching in Context

-By Scott Cleland

Calls for preemptive sweeping regulation can have a way of backfiring, impeding common sense, and discouraging sound market outcomes. Take Net neutrality.

Today’s Wall Street Journal front page story “Google wants its own fast track on the web” reports on:

Google’s secret “OpenEdge” request to ISPs to colocate Google servers on ISP premises in order to speed up Google’s network and reduce Google’s traffic burden on the Internet; and also How the special request appears to signal waning support by Google of net neutrality legislation/regulation.
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Old Media: Now Featuring Palin-Smears From Actions of In-Laws Not Yet Even In-Laws

-By Warner Todd Huston

The national news has found its newest way to slam Governor Sarah Palin and that is to report heavily on any untoward actions made by her relatives by marriage — or even soon to be marriage, for that matter. Next the Old Media will be strenuously looking for Palin neighbors that are unruly, Palin hairdressers that have parking tickets, Palin dog groomers that steal pens from work, and Palin fans that talk too loudly on cell phones while in a theater.

Now, it is beyond me why a person who is not yet even an official in-law by marriage of a public official is a major news story for a low-level drug bust. I can see where it might interest local media for a brief minute, but for this story to have spread all across the wires and the Old Media with nearly 1,000 stories on the national scene… well, it is rather silly, really. Evidence of the worst in tabloid maneuvers.

It’s silly, of course, until one realizes that it is just another lame attempt by the Old Media to slime Governor Palin, even if it does have to be guilt by association. And it isn’t even association by color of official government business, either. It is family business. In its zeal to slam Sarah Palin, Reuters even initially misreported the story to be Palin’s daughter getting arrested for drugs instead of the soon to be Mother-in-Law. (my bold)

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Huffington Post Stealing Others’ Writing?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The humor site The Onion, the offbeat weekly The Chicago Reader, and Time Out Chicago have discovered that some of their articles have appeared in total on Arianna Huffington’s mega web outlet The Huffington Post. And they are none too happy about the wholesale lifting of their material, either.

Wired.com has the full story about the Huffington Post’s unwelcome lifting saying that Huffington Post is “being accused of slimy business practices by a handful of smaller publications who say the site is unfairly copying and publishing their content.” And this wholesale stealing of others’ work seems strange when the latest news about Huff Post is that it was graced with a $25 million capital infusion by investors. With that kind of cash flow, you’d think they could hire a few out of work MSMers and give them a job, wouldn’t you?

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Illinois Politics, Chicago Corruption… I Told You So

-By Frank Salvato

Prior to the November General Election I wrote an article called This Is What a Vote for Obama Gets You. It highlighted the state of affairs here in Democrat controlled Illinois. Beyond that it introduced the reality that most Democrat politicians (and some Republicans for that matter) who emanate from Illinois – and especially Chicago – have a problem with ethics, demonstrating, almost on a daily basis, an inherent penchant for corruption. The recent influence peddling and profiteering scandal involving Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich demonstrates the Chicago/Illinois Democrat Machine in action.

By now, those who pay attention to the news are well aware that Illinois’ governor was caught on FBI wiretaps attempting to sell President-Elect Barack Obama’s vacated US Senate seat to the highest bidder. That – in and of itself – should produce a noticeable shade of embarrassment on the faces of everyone from Illinois, especially those who voted for Blagojevich.
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