Georgia Legislator Wants ACORN’s Tax Exempt Status Revoked

-By Warner Todd Huston

NBC Augusta is reporting that State Senator Jeff Mullis (R- Chickamauga) is sponsoring legislation to revoke the tax exempt status of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) because of the wide spread voter fraud that the group has been perpetrating over the last few years.

“An organization that chooses to undermine the integrity of our nation’s election process should not be entitled to tax exemption benefits,” said Sen. Mullis. “The excessive amount of evidence against ACORN engaging in fraudulent activity demands that the organization to be held accountable for taking advantage of hardworking taxpayers, and I call on the IRS to ensure that justice is executed in this case.”

Well said. These criminals should not be favored by government with OUR tax dollars either in direct payments (which it woefully receives) nor in tax breaks (which it also gets).

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Lies and Plenty of Them

-By Marie Jon’


In Southern California, we have one of the largest county fairs, where there is always someone demonstrating a miracle knife that slices and dices.

As people watch the demonstration, it looks pretty good. Look at all the fruits and vegetables that knife can cut. We’ve all seen the guy on TV who sells products that can do unbelievable things. They all come with a 100% money-back guarantee.

However, there is just one problem. When you try to return things, you find that the guarantee policy isn’t as generous as promised. You realize that you’ve been snookered.

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Illinois County Auditor Launches Promising Transparency in Gov’t Effort

-By Warner Todd Huston

OK, we all know how corrupt and venal the various governments in Illinois are, right? Well, let’s talk about some good news in the Land of Lincoln for a change.

Republican Bob Grogan, County Auditor of DuPage County, Illinois (The populous county just to the west of Chicago’s Cook County), has launched an impressive transparency in government effort on the county website. Grogan had pledged recently to “provide the citizens and taxpayers of DuPage County with timely and pertinent information regarding the operations of DuPage County Government” and it looks like he is making good on his promise.

Only one month after starting his new, elected position, Grogan has launched a section of the website where county expenditure reports can be viewed by anyone. The reports are broken down in several ways; by department, vendor or individual project. Each report has a search feature and Grogan’s office will be updating the reports monthly.

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Unions Decide THEY Should Say Who Gets Taxed

-By Warner Todd Huston

In the military it’s called “mission creep.” That is when you start out doing one thing and end up doing something that has nothing at all to do with what your main function is supposed to be. Unions in New Mexico have just shown mission creep, once again, because, for some reason, labor leaders in that state imagine it is their duty to tell government what sort of taxes should be invented for the citizens of Santa Fe.

These so-called labor leaders have decided to urge government to institute a “transfer tax” on houses that they deem “too big” to be allowed to be sold without confiscatory taxes imposed upon them.

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Journalists Being Shut Out by Obama

-By Warner Todd Huston

According to Sun-Times columnist and long-time Chicago journalist, Carol Marin, journalists at Barack Obama news conferences have come to realize that Obama has pre-picked those journalists whom he will allow to ask him questions at the conference and many of them now “don’t even bother raising” their hands to be called upon.

One wonders why journalists are allowing this corralling of the press? Would they have allowed George W. Bush to pre-pick journalists like that? Would they meekly sit by and allow themselves to be systematically ignored, their freedom to ask questions silenced by any Republican? Would journalists so eagerly vie with one another for the favor of Bush like they are Obama’s?

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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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Congress Comes to YouTube (again)…But it Almost Didn’t Happen

John Boehner, GOP Minority leader, reports on a new venture…

Today marks the launch of a new collaborative effort between The U.S. Congress and YouTube.com. The House Hub and Senate Hub have been developed to make it easier for visitors to find their elected officials and their YouTube channels. YouTube and other popular technologies continue to empower American citizens with real-time information about the policy debates and actions being undertaken by Congress.

As we see more and more members from both sides of the aisle embrace web video and social media, it’s easy to forget that only a few months ago Democrats on the House Administration Committee were proposing rules that would have brought this free flow of information to a screeching halt. The proposed rules, including an “approved list” of websites that could be used by members of Congress, would have amounted to new government censorship of the Internet by a panel of federal officials that is neither neutral or independent.

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LA Times Celebrates Communist ‘Art’ Show

-By Warner Todd Huston

So, picture this… you are a refugee from the fall of Saigon, or, after it fell and in the midst of the many millions murdered by the communist oppressors that overtook the country in the 70s and 80s, you were lucky enough to escape with your life. Let’s say you finally move to California to enjoy a communist free life in the United States. Paradoxically, though, there you encounter a newspaper that scolds you and says that you are just a fearmonger for getting upset that there is a communist art show in your new community. And all the while you know that millions of your countrymen were murdered by the same communists that this paper, the L.A. Times, wants you to celebrate in art.

Would you get a tad upset? I think you might. Yet the L.A. Times thinks you should rather be interested in breaking “taboos,” having “open dialog” and to stop “the fear.” You should not get so gosh darned all upset at the commie art show. YOU are at fault here, not the commies.

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Chinese Humvee… er, Mengshi, we Mean… Outperforms American Humvee

-By Warner Todd Huston

Don’t you just love it when other nations have such grand successes in the realm of science, technology, and engineering? Isn’t it great when, all on their own without any help from anyone, a backwards country such as China can produce a battlefield transport vehicle that is far better than our poor American version? And, they did it without any espionage, too.

And if you believe that…

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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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Bloggers Get Press Creds From NY Police Dept.

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a turn of events that should and will be used by bloggers all across the country, three news bloggers have prevailed over the New York City Police Dept. and received their press credentials despite being denied previously without explanation.

The New York Times City Room Blog reports that that Rafael Martínez Alequin, Ralph E. Smith and David Wallis filed a federal lawsuit when each of them were denied credentials, even though all of them had such credentials in the past.

In the face of the lawsuit, the NYPD changed their minds and issued the three their press cards, anyway. This move gives other bloggers across the country hope for legitimacy in the eyes of government officials.
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Today’s Podcast: Accountants Demand Bailout

-By Warner Todd Huston

I have been doing podcasts for a while, now, and from here on in they will appear here when posted at TalkShoe. I am finally getting around to being a bit more proactive in alerting you all to the podcasts.

This one is a reading of my satire posted several days ago, Accountants Seek Bailout.

Feel free to visit the Publius Forum TalkShoe page to see my past podcasts. New podcasts appear monthly, or whenever the mood strikes me to do one.

Refreshing Change of Pace: Boston Herald Attacks Sarah Palin

-By Warner Todd Huston

I admit it. My headline was a sarcastic slam on the Boston Herald. But, then again, for her latest Palin slamdance Margery Eagan deserves no less than all the opprobrium that can be visited upon her poor, hate-filled, blackened, grinch-like little heart.

In hers headlined “Unbearable Mama Grizzly clawing way to Oval Office,” Eagan so revels in her hatred of Sarah Palin that one suspects that she was foaming at the mouth while writing the thing (or dictating it to her assistant, as the case may be). At the very least we end up with a spittle-specked pile of intemperance as spewed forth from her keyboard, for sure. One wonders if she ran out of her meds before she flipped on her computer?

Catch the childishness of this first paragraph:

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Disgruntled ACORN Employees — Loose Nuts Strike back at the Tree

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last year a scandal rocked ACORN when it was revealed that the brother of the founder of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Dale Rathke, was caught by the ACORN board embezzling one million dollars in the organization’s operations cash. For eight years founder Wade Rathke hid the theft from public consumption as well as from his fellow ACORN board members and tried to arrange a pal of his to “pay back” the money to cover up his brother’s theft. (see here, here, and here)

Now, several ousted members of the ACORN board are seeking a federal criminal investigation into their ouster and Dale Rathke’s theft. The self-dubbed ACORN 8, led by Marcel Reid and Karen Inman, were removed from the ACORN board last year after they failed to convince others to join their efforts to instigate a federal probe of the embezzlement.

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The Silence of Snow

-By John Armor

Whenever there is a decent snow storm at night, as there was in the Blue Ridge this week, the following morning reminds me of a handful of perfect days in my life, fifty years ago in Salisbury, Maryland.

Salisbury was then a very small town. Located on the Eastern Shore, it was halfway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay, about 20 miles away from each. As a six year old boy, I had no comprehension of the influence of geography on weather. All I knew was, there was a sled in the front hall that had been there since September, and the snow for that sled fell everywhere except in my home town.
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Anchorage Daily News Claims Own Anti-Palin Story Wasn’t Paper’s Fault

-By Warner Todd Huston

Remember when you were a kid and you and your best friend got caught doing something you two weren’t supposed to be doing? Remember the first words blurted from your mouth was, “Well, it’s HIS fault?” It’s a common reaction for a kid trying to avoid the wrath of Mom that he knows is coming after getting caught for doing what he knew was wrong in the first place. Well in essence, this is what the executive editor of the Anchorage Daily News, Pat Dougherty, did in reaction to the furious question that Governor Sarah Palin had for the editor’s choice of continuing to pursue the idiotic and insulting claim that Sarah is not the real mother of son Trig. In response to being outed, editor Dougherty blamed everyone else for his continuing to publish the ridiculous conspiracy theory that only idiots, hatemongers and fools could believe.

In a good catch by McClatchy Watch, Dougherty gets caught spreading hateful rumors about Governor Palin, gets called out on the fact by Governor Palin herself, then looks back wide-eyed in feigned innocence and points his finger at bloggers and people on the left that have persisted with their own interest in this stupid story.

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The All Hat, No Cattle Obama Recovery Plan

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Caucus Blog of The New York Times says that Barack Obama’s transition staff are claiming that his so-called economic recovery plan will be a “paperless plan.” By that, they mean that there will be no “detailed documents, cost estimates” or the sort of announcements and “fanfare that capital watchers expect for the unveiling of major initiatives.”

It seems that, in Papal fashion, Obama plans to issue lofty rhetoric from the balcony to adoring crowds, then will retreat back inside his chambers to allow others to “fill in details.”

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Unions Ready to Pounce on 111th Congress

-By Warner Todd Huston

Unions gave many millions of dollars to elect Democrats and Barack Obama last November. Now they want payback. And, at least according to The New York Times, it is to begin with a bang.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D,CA) is planning an early push of two pay “discrimination” bills ASAP.

Last year, President George W. Bush threatened to veto both the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would overturn a 2007 Supreme Court decision making it more difficult to sue over past pay discrimination, and the Paycheck Fairness Act, which closes loopholes allowing employers to get around the 1963 law requiring equal pay for equal work.

As in all things Democratic Party, the Ledbatter Act was based on the lie that this Ledbetter woman was discriminated against. Ledbetter had every opportunity under the law for redress by waited too long to take her former employer to court, exceeding her 180 day complaint period. But, who needs rules, eh?

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New Labor Sec Claims SHE Can ‘Create’ Jobs?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Hill is reporting that Obama’s newly minted Labor Secretary was “pressed” on the job losses recently reported by the federal government. Oddly enough, Rep. Hilda Solis (D, CA) imagines she is somehow imbued with the ability to create jobs.

Lawmakers quizzed Solis as to how she could best reverse the jobs decline for a number of sectors in the economy, from healthcare workers to those afflicted with disabilities. One solution the California congresswoman recommended was focusing on creating new “green-collar” jobs. That could include retrofitting government buildings to meet energy-efficiency standards and installing solar panels, among other tasks that would develop America’s alternative energy production.

So, when, exactly, did it become the job of the Sec. of Labor to “create” jobs? What magical powder was she given to sprinkle upon the earth for these jobs to rise forth like a spring daffodil?

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Inquisition or Scientific Investigation?

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Is it in the spirit of scientific research to ostracize and to punish anyone who brings new and contradictory evidence to the table?

The Spanish Inquisition was not an effort to discover the truth. It was a means to eliminate any dissent from orthodoxy.

Today’s ferocious reaction by the scientific establishment against any voice questioning the hypothesis of man-made global warming is remarkably similar in spirit to the Inquisition.

On one level, none of this is surprising. It’s a reflection of human nature. Everyone wants to protect his turf and to preserve his claim to recognition. Science, however, is supposedly welcoming to revision of hypotheses to account for new evidence. In the fields of cosmology and nuclear particle physics new evidence continually necessitates theoretical revisions.
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Martin Luther King was an Admitted Adulterer!

-By Don Boys, Ph.D.

Martin Luther King had many affairs with women in his own church and city, but was better known to use white and black prostitutes and pay them with SCLC tax-exempt funds!

David J. Garrow is a well-known leftist author and revealed to USA Today King’s justification for his sexual immorality: “He [King] explained it as someone on the road 27 days a month and needing sex as a form of anxiety reduction and for emotional solace.” “Anxiety reduction” and “emotional solace” are now excuses and justification for immorality!

I have a copy of an AP article that should be a knockout blow for those who worship at King’s image. With its heading, “FBI and Abernathy Say King Was a Sex-obsessed ‘Tomcat’” and followed with a graphic description of King’s last night on earth. “The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spent parts of the night before his assassination with two women and then fought physically with a third, according to the memoirs of the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, King’s top aide.”

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Giving Obama ‘A Chance’… Or Not

-By Warner Todd Huston

America has always had a great tradition, one mature for it’s age and true at birth, of the peaceful turnover of power from one faction to another. Never have Americans rioted when a president of another party took his seat in the White House, never has the military been called in and never has government been wholly shut down during the turnover of power because of political strife and unrest. This is, it cannot be denied, a good thing. It is one of the things that makes the USA’s unique among the history of nations. But, does this relative good sense include the necessity of one party giving the new president of the opposing party “a chance” once he takes office? As Republicans, are we obliged to sit back and allow a new president we opposed — in this case Barack Obama — the opportunity to do anything and everything he so pleases? Is this what is meant by “giving him a chance”?

I’ll have to politely say “no” is the answer to that question. Republicans are under no obligation to chuck all principles to the four winds in some mistaken notion of giving Barack Obama “a chance” to do whatever it is he wants to do in office. We have no reason to sit back and do nothing just because “the people have spoken.” To that, it must be pointed out that none of our members of “the people” spoke in Obama’s favor.

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Reuters: 8,000 Bosnia Massacre Victims Just Like Gazans?

-By Warner Todd Huston

These sort of nonsensical comparisons, filled to the brim with hyperbolic foolishness, is what we get from the anti-Israeli Old Media so often that it almost fails to even surprise at this point. But, here is Reuters again indulging its inner terrorist, just the same.

In “Bosnia genocide victims protest Gaza offensive,” Reuters reports the over-the-top claims made by Bosnian Muslims that the action in Gaza is “just like” that of the 8,000 Bosnians murdered in 1995 in and around Srebrenica. This absurd comparison is, of course, these Muslim’s opinion, but Reuters reports this straight without bothering to reveal the full facts that would show that there is, in truth, no comparison between the two situations at all.

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Union Leader Becomes Speaker of Conn. House

-By Warner Todd Huston

It was just announced this week that representative Chris Donovan (D, Meriden, CT) is the next Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives. What makes this a strike against good government is that Donovan is a former member of the Service Employees International Union. (Donovan info and further bio)

So, we have a former union leader (and former as only having left union leadership a short time ago) now stepping into the role of Speaker of the House where his former colleagues in the unions will be lobbying him for favorable legislation and other goodies.

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Roland will fit right in

-By Michael M. Bates

Senate majority leader Harry Reid can be such a tease. On Sunday, the Nevada Democrat suggested that Illinois Gov. Blagojevich’s appointment of Roland Burris to replace The One in what is facetiously called the world’s greatest deliberative body might not be welcomed with open arms.

In his trademark high-pitched voice that thrills Canine-Americans everywhere, Reid said of Burris’s becoming a senator: “It’s going to be very difficult for that to occur.” Then, realizing that his statement could possibly offend felons or other core Democratic constituencies, he backed off slightly with “I’ve learned, being a senator for the time I have, that anything can happen.”

That someone like Reid is the Senate majority leader is corroboration of how right he is.
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Keynes’s Wrong-Turn Hypothesis

-By Thomas E. Brewton

As Keynes observed, people often unknowingly are the prisoners of erroneous doctrine propounded by long dead theoreticians, in this case doctrine of Keynes himself.

I have noted before that Wall Street Journal news reporters often display pervasive, sometimes subtle, liberal-progressive-socialist biases. Unlike the Journal’s editorial board writers, among other things, they still parrot the nonsense popularized by economist John Maynard Keynes during the 1930s Depression.

Since Keynesian economics is the reigning school of thought in socialistic academia, it’s no surprise that Keynesian nostrums are repeated, without evaluation, by today’s reporters.

One example is in the Journal article titled The Doomsayers Who Got It Right.

The Journal reporter writes:
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Workers Deserve Better Than a Big Labor Lackey

The Heritage Foundation

Today may well turn out to be a major turning point in the history of the labor movement, and not because Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) will face questions at her Secretary of Labor confirmation hearings in the Senate. No, the bigger story is the voice vote conference call Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern has scheduled for 2 pm today. If things go the way Stern plans, the SEIU board will approve the forced break up of the third largest SEIU affiliate in the country, SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW). The UHW’s sin? Their leader, Sal Rosselli, has been a big critic of Stern’s leadership. The Los Angeles Times reports:

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