-By Vince Johnson
If I were on the President’s advisory staff I’d tell him to go to the United Nations and make a short speech as written below:
The United States entered Iraq to rid the world of a dangerous tyrant and help them establish a government of self-determination. After four years in this effort, we have come to realize the following:
Continue reading “Advice for the President”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Why is it that every time the MSM writes a story about a supposedly “staunch Republican” who is vocally supporting the opposing Party, we have to wonder of its veracity? Maybe it’s because there always seems to be a few little problems with the claim of “staunchness” on the part of the MSM’s favored Party hopper du jour? And in this case, the Chicago Sun-Times story titled “GOP lawyer sold on Dems” by Jennifer Hunter, we have no better assurances than we ever do that the claimed “staunch Republican” is either very “staunch” or very “Republican.”
Sun-Times writer Hunter dug up a supposedly “staunch Republican” named Jim Ronca, a trial lawyer from Pennsylvania. Mr. Ronca, claims Hunter, is “certain of one thing: He is not going to vote Republican in the 2008 presidential election.”
But there is more than that. He also says he’ll financially support Democrats, and he makes this announcement as if this is somehow an earth shattering rebuke to the GOP, or so the Sun-Times wishes us to believe.
Continue reading “Chgo Sun-Times: Turning Big Dem Contributor into ‘Staunch Republican’”
-By Thomas E. Brewton
Krugman’s conception of economic man is a caricature of reality.
Previous postings (Part One; Part Two; Part Three; and Part Four) discussed aspects of Paul Krugman’s essay Who Was Milton Friedman? in the New York Review of Books.
In that essay, Professor Krugman, the New York Times’s propagandist for socialistic economics, contrasts the conceptual approaches of Nobel-Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes, who remains one of Professor Krugman’s heroes.
Keynes, a British economist, propounded a rationale for massive Federal deficit spending and continuous inflation, along with tight regulation of private economic decisions. His 1936 General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money was regarded by liberal-Progressive-socialists in the Roosevelt New Deal as the ultimate revelation of economic wisdom.
Professor Krugman, who is grouped among the neo-Keynesian economists, writes:
Continue reading “Krugman and Friedman – Part Five”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Janet Tu, religion reporter for the Seattle Times, recently came out with a mind-boggling story. She chronicles the odd pronouncement of the Reverend Ann Holmes Redding, an Episcopalian priest from Seattle, who has decided that she is both an Episcopalian and a Muslim.
Incongruously, Redding who is the director of faith formation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, a priest for more than 20 years Tu reports, is “ready to tell people that, for the last 15 months, she’s also been a Muslim — drawn to the faith after an introduction to Islamic prayers left her profoundly moved.”
This is yet another outrage against the Episcopal Church, as hard as it is to rise to the level of outrage for a Church with so many such instances constantly coming to the fore. After all, the Episcopal Church has lurched from one upheaval to another for these many years. From the fight over ordaining female priests, to allowing avowedly and unapologetically homosexual priests to take the pulpit, not to mention their many decades of “progressive” ministries, the Episcopal Church has seen falling numbers in their congregations and splinters over doctrine as a result of the constant reevaluating of its tenets and practices. It’s no wonder that the joke about them seems too true for comfort; Episcopalians are just agnostics who can’t shake that need to go somewhere on a Sunday morning.
This latest instance does not help belie the claims from another, more cynical, religious perspective, that of radical Islamists, who claim the west in general is in relative cultural and religious decay. Islamists see endemic in western societies an unwillingness or inability to uphold their own religious convictions and sees a west constantly warping and tearing down their own practices. Certainly I won’t substantiate that view, but it sure is hard to dismiss it out of hand when stories like this come up.
It is patently absurd, of course, to be both a Muslim and an Episcopalian, even for the gruel thin creed that is Episcopalianism. Not because being Episcopalian is so incompatible with Islam, but because Islam is entirely intolerant of any other religion and is, therefore, entirely incompatible with Episcopalians.
Continue reading “Professing the “Faith” of Musli-Piscopalianism?”
-By Vince Johnson
As many of you may realize, My Commentary is more than a hobby to me. It is my soapbox. In a way, it is therapeutic. Recent circumstances have made this monthly exercise more therapeutic than ever. It was a minor cardiac event. The fifth one since a quad by-pass in 1990. I had to lie around in bed for nearly two days. No radio. Not in the mood for magazines. Did a crossword and a lot of thinking.
Much of the thinking was devoted to the royal mess this country is coping with. I did a mental exercise to pass the time. I wondered what I would do if the President asked me for some advice. Within a few minutes, I had the entire thought clear in my mind. When I got home, I wrote it down and tweaked it a bit.
Continue reading “Personal Comments”
-By Frank Salvato
Conventional wisdom is that whatever happens between Israel and radical Islam will also be the fate of Western nations, especially the United States. The continued appeasement of Hamas and Fatah by the Israeli government and its failure to thoroughly defeat Hezbollah in last summer’s war validates the contention that without strong political resolve it is impossible to be victorious over radical Islamofascists. As Congress moves forward in its renewed attempt at forcing the US military out of Iraq we would be wise to examine Israel’s current situation more carefully as it is a precursor of things to come.
DEBKAfile, a publication specializing in intelligence ignored by the mainstream media, reported that on July 8, 2007, Hamas and Fatah officials met in Stockholm to begin what should be a fairly expedited negotiation toward reconciling the differences that brought them to civil war in Gaza. The report stated that under the watchful eye of Iranian and Syrian ambassadors, Hamas operations Chief Imad al Alami met with PLO ambassador to Sweden Eugine Makhloof in an effort to hasten that reconciliation.
When this reconciliation concludes Israel will find itself in a most precarious situation. It will have militant Hamas, armed and funded by Iran, at its southeastern border complete with coastal access and Fatah, newly funded by the naïve actions of Israel and the international community, on its eastern border at what forms a choke point for Israel between the West Bank and the Mediterranean. To make matters worse, Iran’s proxy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Syria, sits ominously on Israel’s northern border, as does Hezbollah-heavy southern Lebanon.
Continue reading “Al Qaeda Strengthens, US Political Resolve Weakens”
-By Lee Culpepper
I felt sick when my doctor informed me that I am her only patient who vomits each time he hears the words “multiculturalism” and “diversity.” In fact, political correctness in general makes me queasy. Perhaps I’m a hypochondriac — anxiety over this possibility depresses me. Though my doctor did not prescribe a cure for my disorder, the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision – which struck down programs that considered race to make school assignments – may provide the remedy I need. In light of the justices’ ruling, ethnic realities appear so much clearer now.
With my family visiting over the Independence Day weekend, I realized that a white family — my white family — is made up of peculiar white individuals. No one in my family shares exactly the same views about anything. Our religious beliefs (while Christian) are not identical; our political interests are not the same; and our hobbies are different. We also pursued separate areas of education and have dissimilar careers. When all these obvious realities hit me at once, I started feeling dizzy.
I sat down to compose myself, but a heated debate that my brother, sister, and mom were having after dinner livened up the evening’s mood. I then realized something else — my white family is quite different than my wife’s white family. These kinds of debates never occur when her side of the family visits. Suddenly, I was lost in thought about how different most white families can be from other white families and how individuals within those families can be so different, too. I started worrying that diversity peddlers purposely ignore such obvious facts. Now, my lips were numb and I felt feverish.
Continue reading “My Diversity Disorder”
-By Warner Todd Huston
A short column by Ray Mcallister of the Richmond Times-Dispatch scolded a Virginia Middle School for having a drawing of Karl Marx on their graduation certificate. The school replied that they had thought that the drawing represented Frederick Douglas and didn’t realize they had been using a picture of Karl Marx.
As Mcallister reports:
Richmond schools spokeswoman Felicia Cosby called last night to explain:
“She really thought she was capturing clip art representing Frederick Douglass. She did a search to pull up Frederick Douglass and this is what came up… with the beard and the hair.”
It was all just a big mistake, you see?
OK. Maybe it was. Maybe this uninformed school teacher who helped design the graduation certificate didn’t know what Frederick Douglass looked like and mistook the Marx image for Douglass’. She just didn’t know.
But, if it was a mistake born from a lack of knowledge, does this make it all better? Can we just go on and forget about it? Is there no deeper meaning here?
I say a mistake is one thing, but this whole incident reveals that not only did this uninformed teacher not know what she was doing, but neither did the rest of the school’s design committee, the school board, or even the printer who printed the thing.
Continue reading “When Even The Teachers Know Nothing”
-By Frank Salvato
It’s becoming quite the gamble. Once again, Democrats in Congress – led by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi – are betting that the Sitcom Attention Span (SAS) of the American people will save their hides, this time from their dismal performance during the first six-month in control of the House and Senate. But as the old adage goes, fool me once, shame on you. . .
The list of accomplishments the Democrats have racked has been anything but what they promised during the 2006 election. They failed to end the Iraq War. They failed to reform the earmark process. Instead of “draining the swamp of corruption” they seem to have taken to bathing in it. They failed to produce meaningful immigration reform. They failed in securing the nation’s borders in a post-9/11 world. Oh wait, these aren’t accomplishments, are they?
Continue reading “Pelosi, Reid Bank on America’s Sitcom Attention Span”
-By Michael M. Bates
Jack Valenti’s autobiography, “This Time, This Place,” was published last May. In terms of promoting the book, it was bad timing. He died in April.
Still, it’s always interesting to see Democrats rewrite history. A few months ago I reviewed professional Clinton toady Terry McAuliffe’s book.
In a feat of Herculean proportions, Mr. Valenti’s volume probably outdoes McAuliffe’s book for name dropping. A difference is Mr. Valenti does it much more charmingly than the insufferably boorish McAuliffe. And where Terry drops names such as Yasser Arafat and Oscar de la Renta, Jack makes do with the likes of Gina Lollobrigida, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Ann-Margaret and Juliette Binoche.
Jack Valenti served our country with distinction during World War II. The Texan had a successful career at what was later to become Exxon Mobil. Then he and a friend launched a flourishing ad agency.
What he’ll most likely be remembered for, however, is working as a top assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson and then serving nearly 40 years leading the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
Continue reading “Valenti an LBJ stalwart until the end”
You have to wonder what the heck is the deal with this photo Time Magazine published accompanying a Joe Klein screed?
They have cut off the heads of President Bush and the troops he was posing with, quite a disrespectful “artistic” choice wouldn’t you say? Even if they don’t respect the president, to treat our troops in such a way is obscene.
But, who imagines that they respect the troops in the first place?
-By Warner Todd Huston
Islamofascism is fast over taking the immigrant communities of old Europe. Now, by “immigrant community” Europeans mean Muslim immigrants, of course. Whether they be Moroccans, or Africans or what have you, large segments of Europe’s immigrants are from Muslim countries and these insular communities are long past the point of being merely troublesome already having become an outright danger. It has been a long time coming, but some Europeans are finally getting to the point of having had enough. More and more are finally beginning to speak out. But Europe’s empty PC attitudes and platitudes are hard in dying.
We are all aware of the on going riots and mass car burnings in France, but what many Americans ate not aware of is the increasing violence and sexual abuse that is occurring amongst Europe’s most Islamicized immigrant communities. From Sweden, to Germany to the Netherlands, all across old Europe the danger, crime and poverty of their Muslim immigrant communities is growing exponentially every year.
I have written before of how England has seen an growing rise in sexual assaults and in the so-called honor killing, a brutal and barbaric practice where members of a girl’s own family will kill her if she is even seen in public with the “wrong” kind of man. But, England is by no means an isolated trouble spot. All of Europe is seeing the same thing.
Many in Europe are finally starting to wake up and see the threat that Islam presents a civilized society, but they are still too few and not able to sway policy to any great extent… yet.
Continue reading “Europe’s ‘Immigrant Problems’ Close to Boiling Point”
-By Frederick Meekins
Just Because You Don’t Understand Doesn’t Mean Its Not Real: Most Epistemologically Unprepared For Bioenhancement Nightmares
An old adage posits that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Whoever came up with that one obviously had little imagination to foresee the horrors about to be set loose upon the earth in the years and decades to come.
In my column “Scientists Suggest Bestiality”, I wrote about findings by MIT and Harvard researchers suggesting that millions of years ago ancient humans and chimpanzees engaged in interspecies liaisons resulting in fecund offspring, bolstering the claims by a growing number of geneticists and the like that the boundaries between the species might not be as set in stone (or at least DNA) as at one time thought. It is deplorable enough some would interpret the data in this fashion (as frankly there aren’t that many interspecies pornos dating back that far to serve as irrefutable evidence) to further undermine the uniqueness of man in their attempt to bolster the Darwinian hypothesis that one form of life is essentially no better than any other. However, things grow even more disturbing when one realizes that there are adherents of this particular worldview that believe that it is not enough that all species are the same morally but that they must all be merged into the same species ontologically.
Continue reading “Unprepared For Bioenhancement Nightmares”
-By Warner Todd Huston
– A review of the new book by Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — and Doesn’t, Harper Collins, 2007, $24.95
Stephen Prothero should be hailed as the great “setter-righter” where it concerns truly how religious Americans are or aren’t. It is true, of course, that Americans are generally the more religious of the current great western nations, but the assumption that Americans know much about their religions or even how to BE religious is one that Prothero dispels quite well. He shows us that our actual knowledge of what our own religions really are, what they mean, what their history is and how they differ one from the other is being lost with time. He successfully proves that America is a religious country with little religious knowledge and that our claims at being religious ring a bit hollow.
The best thing about Prothero’s revelation is that he chronicles that our loss of religious knowledge didn’t just happen with the beginning of the counterculture in the 1960’s, but that it began to happen well before the Civil War in the 1800’s. According to Prothero, it is a result of our own democratic propensities, but regardless of why it has happened, we must take steps to stop it.
Continue reading “More like Religious ILLiteracy!”
-By Vince Johnson
Remember Elian Gonzales? The young Cuban boy who came to America illegally? He and his mother were two of fourteen people trying to reach Florida in a small boat with a faulty engine. His mother lost her life on the way. He was one of three survivors. Attorney General Janet Reno determined he was here illegally, and with Bill Clinton’s approval, directed the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to send him back to Cuba. Eight SWAT agents from the INS were ordered to raid the home where Elian was living with relatives. The SWAT team wore bullet resistant vests and they were armed with fully loaded automatic rifles. None of those in the house were armed. Elian was forcibly removed and within days, he was returned to his father in Cuba.
There is a question here, and I’m not sure anybody is prepared to answer it: If it takes a highly trained, heavily armed, eight man SWAT team to forcibly remove an eight year old child from his unarmed relatives, how many will it take to apprehend *eight million illegal immigrants? *Source: US Census Bureau 2000
Continue reading “Some Realities About immigration”
-By Warner Todd Huston
This one is a hoot. The L.A.Times has posted a piece in their politics section about the supposed revelations of Drew Westen, a psychologist who is advising Democrats that they are too logical and rely on “facts” too much in their campaigns. Westen is warning Democrats that they need to be more “emotional” in their appeals to the voters because, according to his “research”, Democrat and independent voters are just too darn stupid to understand logic and facts. And Westen makes this claim as if Democrats don’t already campaign almost strictly on pure emotion with little appeal to intellect now!
WASHINGTON — Drew Westen, a genial 48-year-old psychologist and brain researcher, was talking to a rapt liberal audience about the role of emotion in politics, how to talk back aggressively to Republicans, and why going negative is not to be feared.
One wonders when, exactly, Democrats didn’t follow this path toward using overly emotional campaign methods? Have we so soon forgotten the James Byrd ad where then Governor Bush was accused of agreeing with the racist dragging death of a black Texas man? How about LBJ’s famous Daisy ad where Democrats accused Barry Goldwater of wanting to start a nuclear war? How about today where John Edwards is campaigning on “two America’s” or his 2004 claims that Democrats would make sure the crippled could walk if America elected he and John Kerry to office? And how often are Republicans cast by Democrats as those evil people who want to poison the water, keep blacks from voting, take away women’s rights, and starve the children?
…only EVERY election!
Continue reading “L.A.Times: Democrats Need to be MORE Emotional Campaigners?”
Here’s a fun story…
Bin Laden’s son ties the knot
By Associated Press
July 11, 2007
LONDON — Omar bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader’s fourth son, has married a British woman he met in Egypt last fall, British media and colleagues of the bride said today.
Jane Felix-Browne, 51, of Moulton-Cheshire, in northwest England, was in Egypt for medical treatment of multiple sclerosis, the Times and Sun newspapers reported. She told the newpapers she met bin Laden, 27, while riding a horse near Egypt’s Great Pyramid.
Great.
But this leaves me with one burning question.
Where is the bride registered at… Target?
By Selwyn Duke
Last week the Supreme court handed down three free speech rulings that find favor with conservatives. One of them is Morse et al. v. Frederick, a case involving the free speech rights of students. At issue is a five year old incident wherein a Juneau-Douglas High School senior named Joe Frederick raised a 14-foot banner stating “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” and was subsequently suspended for “drug speech” by then school principal Deborah Morse. Writing for the majority in a five to four decision in favor of the school, Chief Justice John Roberts reasoned that the First Amendment should not be applied in this case because the student was encouraging drug use.
While I agree with the principal’s actions and take solace in the knowledge that educators’ hands won’t be further tied, the Supreme Court’s ruling does nothing to address what is the underlying problem. In fact, with the convoluted logic displayed by virtually all members of the court, it’s hard to find much to applaud in this judgment.
The real issue here extends far beyond this one case and harks back to a precedent set in 1969 in the Tinker v. Des Moines ruling, which divined from the Constitution a right to free speech in schools. Upon issuance of that decision the court stated,
Continue reading “Free Speech From the Mouths of Babes?”
-By Warner Todd Huston
There are two kinds of war, when you get right down to it, and the USA has had a little of both. First is the idealistic kind, evinced in that of the American Revolution and WWII, which were both fights to free a continent from despotism. Even Korea and Vietnam can be fitted into the idealistic category because the main goal with each was to stop the evils of communism from spreading further. Then there is the pessimistic kind, like ours with Mexico in the 1840s and most of our various Indian wars from Andrew Jackson’s Seminole excursions in Georgia and Florida to the last major actions against the Nez Perce in the Pacific North West. Few of them were little else than overt land grabs.
One axiom, however, can be applied equally of all our past wars up until recently; war means fighting and fighting means killing. Or, as Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman once unapologetically said, “If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.”
Americans, like other warriors of days past, rarely felt squeamish about killing the enemy, even when they were other Americans — whether they be “native” or Southern. Save for a brief time early in the Civil War as the residents of Virginia were spared too much deprivation by Union forces, or when Lee invaded Maryland and Pennsylvania, even civilians were not spared the hard hand of the God of War. The internecine border war in Kansas and Missouri was vicious for its attacks on civilians even as North and South played at their temporary, tender sensibilities in Virginia and the surrounding countryside for that brief moment of mercy.
For the most part, our ancestors knew that war was a hard business and fought it that way. Theirs was a war of the head. A war where one and all accepted the dreaded but necessary fact that people would die, even if some of those people never raised a hand in anger.
But, around the time of the actions in Vietnam, things began to change in the larger perception of the American populace. The idea that only “the enemy”, often an amorphous term, should be harmed in war began to gain cache. Fire bombing of the likes of a Dresden or the A-Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki began to take on barbaric overtones until we have, at last, arrived at the ridiculous phrase “collateral damage” to explain unwanted, but unavoidable civilian deaths.
Continue reading “War Between the Head and the Heart – America’s Timidity at War in the 21st Century”
-By Vince Johnson
I will get right to the point. America needs a special excise tax levied on all Political Ads. This could be a source for millions in expense required to cover the preparing, printing and distribution of voter’s pamphlets and ballots. It could also help offset expenditures involved with manning and operation of voting booths as well as the expense of clearing up and recycling millions and millions of political signs, buttons, banners, and campaign trash scattered all over America.
My rationale for this tax is simple and based upon the fact that ads can be divided into two categories:
Continue reading “Here’s The Tax You’ve Been Waiting For”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Jim Geraghty over at National Review Online is reporting on an interesting thing concerning this story that the L.A.Times printed last weekend claiming that some abortion advocates hired Fred Thompson to lobby the White House for them over a pro-abortion issue in 1991 (Publius story here). It seems that the story as originally posted on the LAT website has been altered with no notice of the change, nor an explanation of why it was changed. Once the removed sentence is looked into, though, it becomes clear that it was removed in an attempt to clean up the story to remove items problematic to the veracity of the thing!
In the July 7th version of the story Judith DeSarno, the woman making the accusation that Thompson worked for her pro-abortion organization in ’91, mentioned that she had talked with the Senator about his “cowboy death scene” in a movie he was in. She claimed she talked to him about this scene during one of the diners she claimed to have had with him where they discussed his lobbying efforts.
The problem with DeSarno’s original claim is Thompson was never in any westerns in the 1990s. In fact, he appeared in a western only recently with the HBO movie “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”, which was released this year — and in that he played president Ulysses S. Grant.
Continue reading “Why Are Parts of Thompson/Abortion Lobbying Story Disappearing From L.A.Times Website?”
-By Warner Todd Huston
I keep seeing this talking point phrase in multiple MSM stories about the Libby conviction; “Libby was convicted in March, the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair roiled the Reagan administration in the 1980s.”(emphasis, mine) This is a misleading statement that makes the reader imagine that no high-ranking Presidential appointee, adviser, or member of the White House has been convicted of anything or sentenced to anything since Reagan’s era. But, at least one past official’s name should be placed above that of Libby’s. Henry Cisneros was the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, appointed to that position by President Bill Clinton. Cisneros, it should be remembered, was indicted in 1995 on 18 counts of conspiracy, false statements and obstruction of justice. Cisneros pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of lying to the FBI. Now, I’d dare say that Libby, who only worked in the office of the Vice President, was a minnow in the pond in which Cisneros swam. Cisneros was the Secretary of HUD, a presidential cabinet member, after all!
Naturally, on his way out of the White House in 2001, Clinton pardoned Cisneros.
Yet, here we have the MSM constantly calling Libby the “highest White House official” convicted, completely ignoring the fate of a much, much higher official with Cisneros. Of course, that this man was a member of Clinton’s cabinet pretty much explains why the MSM is conveniently forgetting the fact that Libby is a small fish in this conviction game compared to Cisneros. And, Cisneros was certainly a member of the White House having been a Clinton appointee.
Still, this claim of Libby being “highest official” is everywhere. An MSM talking point, for sure. And a misleading one, at that.
Here are just a few quick examples:
Continue reading “MSM Ignores Higher Placed Clinton Officials’ Conviction to Tout Libby’s”
-By Thomas E. Brewton
Enforcing proper behavior is anathema to liberals, but essential to learning.
The recent Supreme Court decision in the MORSE ET AL. v. FREDERICK case, better known as the “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” case, has generated controversy, both because of the Court’s decision, and because of the concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas.
Facts of the case were the following:
At a school-sanctioned and school-supervised event, petitioner Morse, the high school principal, saw students unfurl a banner stating “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS,” which she regarded as promoting illegal drug use. Consistent with established school policy prohibiting such messages at school events, Morse directed the students to take down the banner. When one of the students who had brought the banner to the event—respondent Frederick—refused, Morse confiscated the banner and later suspended him.
The Court’s ruling, expressed in the opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts, was:
Because schools may take steps to safeguard those entrusted to their care from speech that can reasonably be regarded as encouraging illegal drug use, the school officials in this case did not violate the First Amendment by confiscating the pro-drug banner and suspending Frederick…. Our cases make clear that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U. S. 503, 506 (1969). At the same time, we have held that “the constitutional rights of students in public school are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings,” Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U. S. 675, 682 (1986), and that the rights of students “must be ‘applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment.’
Continue reading “School Discipline”
-By Nancy Salvato
“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.” — Alexander Pope
Around this time last year I participated in the Center for Civic Education’s National Academy, where Professor Will Harris led a selected group of students in 21 days of intense study on the basic issues of political theory, and the values and principles of American constitutional democracy. Early on, the importance of gaining a “surplus of mind,” as a crucial element of the democratic process, was discussed. In order to become thinkers or problem solvers, our citizenry must be taught by teachers who are ambitious in their learning goals. When teachers over simplify learning objectives, this conditions our citizenry to fail at more complicated tasks. Conversely, giving the populace the tools to figure out the world’s complexity enables each person to be more powerful and free. Moreover, this is a necessary component of our system of government.
To elaborate further, a surplus of knowledge is especially useful when dealing with unexpected situations. When weighing the possible consequences of a decision, an intelligent person draws on these reserves. The key to “intelligence” is a capacity to weigh the variables that come into play when assessing individual situations. A surplus of knowledge gives us a reasonable shot at being able to anticipate short and long term repercussions of actions or inaction. Indeed, as a colleague of mine recently noted, every choice comes with regret.
Continue reading “A Little Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing”
-By Warner Todd Huston
The AP, taking their cue from the new because-she-said-so story offered by the L.A.Times, has run with a short clip on a story that claims Fred Thompson was working as a lobbyist for an abortion agency in 1991, giving the hearsay evidence against him but not offering the meat of his against the claim. The result is that the AP offers more “evidence” against Thompson than it does for him making it too easy to conclude he is “guilty” of the charge of lobbying for an abortion advocacy organization.
The AP did a wonderful job making this story seem more cut and dried than it really is, of course, but the fact is, this claim of Thompson’s supposed lobbying for the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association is nothing but an unproven (and maybe unprovable) claim against Thompson made by people who are well-known, far left activists and heavy contributors to the Hillary Clinton for President campaign. Naturally, neither the AP nor the L.A.Times wastes any time to detail the history of those making these claims against Thompson, leaving their relevant backgrounds completely out of the story.
Gee… why do you think they’d forget to let readers know that this story is based solely of the good word of Hillary supporters?
Here is the entire short AP post on the story:
Continue reading “AP/L.A.Times Don’t Mention Thompson Abortion Lobbying Claims Made by Hillary Supporters”
-By Thomas E. Brewton
The Apostle Paul defines the goal of the Christian life.
Sunday’s sermon at Black Rock-Long Ridge Congregational Church (North Stamford, Connecticut) was delivered by Rev. Ted Fiorito. His text was taken from Philippians, chapter 3.
In his letter to the church at Philippi, Paul describes the goal, the bull’s eye that is the aim of Christian life:
But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Continue reading “Stay the Race to the Finish Line”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Many Americans from the north like to scoff that our southern brethren are still fighting the Civil War, treating them as if they are unaware that the war was over nearly 150 years ago. It has been so often repeated that southerners are still “Confederate” that the stereotype of the southerner looking to the past instead of the future is secure in northerner’s minds. Would that it were true that all southerners are so fond of their history because it appears that even one of the most famous Confederate cemeteries in the Confederacy’s very own capitol is being forgotten, uncared for, and repeatedly vandalized.
The bad news is that Oakwood cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, is being forgotten and ignored, and, as mentioned, it is also being increasingly vandalized. The good news is that a community group has not only volunteered to take upon themselves the upkeep and maintenance of the final resting place of 17,000 Confederate solders, but they have already raised $100,000 to do so. They have also gotten the blessing and legislative support of the Commonwealth of Virginia for the effort.
But even as dozens of grave markers are vandalized repeatedly by God knows who, the city of Richmond refuses even to take a meeting with the Sons of Confederate Veterans who are ready to take on the duty.
Continue reading “A Nation of Sleepwalkers — Even Southerners Forget Their History”
-By Thomas E. Brewton
Free markets do a far better job of policing than socialistic lawmakers.
Liberal-Progressives’ politics of envy and class warfare, recently aimed at hedge funds and private equity groups, exemplifies the fairy tale nature of socialism.
As noted in Economic Class Warfare, hedge funds and private equity groups are not the product of privilege. Paradoxically they result from excessive Federal spending authorized by liberal-Progressives themselves. The financial world is flooded with excess liquidity, because the Federal Reserve, to fund Congressional spending, keeps pumping out phony money that fuels inflation.
Liberals in Congress have been pompously posturing, purportedly seeking regulations to protect the public, but in reality hoping to extort new taxes and open new avenues for class action suits by their money pals, the tort bar.
Continue reading “Privileged Private Equity?”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Is it just me, or did the Bloomberg “news” service just release a hit piece on Senator Fred Thompson disguised as a bio on the Senator just in time for a Michael Bloomberg entrance into the race as an independent presidential candidate? On June 28th Bloomberg writers Kim Chapman and Julianna Goldman brought us “Thompson’s Backers Check His ‘Fire in the Belly’ for 2008 Race”, a piece that reads more like a long series of snide undercuts of Thompson than any serious report on his status as a candidate. The duo exploits every single detraction thrown at the Senator since his days in the Senate leaving the speculation that he is left wanting standing like the elephant in the room.
They begin by making Thompson’s whole life seem like one undeserved, happy accident after another saying that the man has “ascended without much apparent effort” to his place in life. It doesn’t seem to occur to our two intrepid reporterettes that making something seem effortless doesn’t necessarily mean it was so. After all, Fred Thompson did at the very least pass the bar exam, not something so easily done by just anyone. (Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley, for instance, took the bar exam 5 times before he passed and his daddy, Richard J. Daley, was the most corrupt and powerful man since Huey Long and could easily have fenagled his son’s sudden passing grades if he’d have wanted to, fer gosh sakes!) Someone should inform our feminine cynics that it is usually a mark of excellence when someone makes something look easy, not one of accidental “ascendance.”
Continue reading “Thompson Hit Piece Disguised as Bio On Bloomberg’s “News” Service”
-By Frank Salvato
With the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S1639) now stalled – permanently, we hope – at the debate stage in the US Senate, we can come away with one lesson learned from this course of events, an unsettling number of politicians in Washington DC ignored the “baggage” that is their constituency. In light of this undeniable truth, it is understandable that outraged Americans would be looking to the section of the Declaration of Independence that talked about dissolving government. But when one takes a break from pointing fingers – and perhaps raising some toward their elected officials – it would be wise to remember who allowed this to happen.
Let me be perfectly clear, I am not about to apologize for the actions of those who have betrayed their constituencies. In fact, I believe that any elected official who doesn’t hold and respect the inclinations of his constituency in the highest regard should be removed from office. While the positions that elected officials hold need to have a degree of latitude when it comes to enacting the will of the people, it should never be the case that an elected official would be obliged to ignore or look down upon the positions of his constituents.
But the blame for getting to this pathetic and disturbing point simply doesn’t lie – exclusively – with the creatures that dwell inside the beltway or in the State Houses. A major portion of the blame needs to lie with We the People. It lies with you and me.
Continue reading “We Blame the Politicians But We Put Them There”
