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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Society/Culture - The Law - Thomas Brewton - Uncategorized

Labor Unions: Double-Edged Blade

March 25, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Liberals see labor unions through rose-colored glasses. Reality is somewhat different.

Tuesday’s edition of the Stamford Advocate, my local newspaper, has a front-page article about actor-director Tim Robbins’s attempt to revive public interest in his 1999 film “Cradle Will Rock.” Mr. Robbins, a resident of the adjoining Westchester County town of Pound Ridge, spoke to a Stamford audience the night before at the Avon Theatre Film Center on Bedford Street.

Mr. Robbins’s movie, according to the Wikipedia:

… chronicles the process and events that surrounded the production of the original 1937 musical The Cradle Will Rock by Marc Blitzstein. Tim Robbins, in his third film as director, adapts history to create this fictionalized account of the original production, bringing in other stories of the time to produce this commentary on the role of art and power in the 1930s, particularly amidst the struggles of the 1930s labor movement and the corresponding appeal of socialism and communism among many intellectuals and working class people of that time.

Mr. Robbins’s evidently identifies emotionally with labor unions of the 1930s and sees business as a source of evil.

In a speech given at an antiwar rally in New York City’s Central Park on October 6, 2002, he said:
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00Publius Contributor - 2nd Amendment - Constitution - Democrats/Leftists - History - Media Bias - President - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Uncategorized - Warner Todd Huston

AP Going After Guns Again

March 24, 2007 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

In their never ending quest to attack the Constitutional right of self defense and gun ownership, the AP has once again published an anti-gun story, this time with a twist. It’s a toy in the hands of a schoolgirl there are gravely alerting us to.

Child Carried Toy Gun ‘For Protection’

Third-Grader Suspended in Upper Darby, Pa., for Carrying Replica Gun ‘For Protection’

UPPER DARBY, Pa. Mar 21, 2007 (AP)— A child who brought a realistic replica of a gun to school told a teacher she needed it “for protection,” police said.

Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said the third-grader took the authentic-looking replica of a German Luger pistol, which she apparently thought was real, with her Monday because she knew her older brother would not be able to walk her home from the bus stop that day. Children told a teacher about the gun, leading to police being called.

It was a toy, folks. A TOY.
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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Family - Gays - Media Bias - Religion - Selwyn Duke - Society/Culture - Uncategorized

What if Homosexuality is Biological?

March 24, 2007 by

By Selwyn Duke

The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., recently penned an article that has both fellow evangelicals and homosexual activists feeling none too gay. Mohler raised the ire of the former group by stating that science may very well prove there is a biological basis for homosexuality; he then sent the latter group into a tizzy by reasserting that homosexual behavior is sinful and that modern science may offer prenatal remedies for it.

That homosexuality may have a basis in biology is rejected by many on the right for the same reason it is embraced by homosexuals. The reasoning is that if such feelings are biologically induced, then homosexual behavior is neither sinful nor a choice. Thus, the genesis of same-sex attraction has become a locus of debate in the culture war. The truth is, however, that both sides have fallen victim to a misconception, one I have long wanted to dispel.

Any biological basis for homosexuality would only be relevant insofar as preventing the condition is concerned; it has no bearing on morality. This is for a very simple reason: Biology doesn’t determine morality.
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00Publius Contributor - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - GOP - Media Bias - President - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Uncategorized

Besieged Bush can stop the nonsense

March 24, 2007 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Democrats are having a blast since taking control of Congress. A day without something new to investigate is like a day without sunshine for them.

Dismissed U.S. attorneys. Valerie Plame. Iraq. The Federal Communications Commission. Conditions at Walter Reed Hospital. The FBI looking for terrorists. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s delivery of housing grants. And the month’s not over yet.

The Washington Post reported that “In two months, Democrats have held 81 hearings on Iraq. ‘This is just the beginning,’ said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. ‘What a difference a year makes.’”

Earlier this month, Democratic majority leader Steny Hoyer issued a fact sheet declaring there have been 106 full committee House oversight hearings on executive agencies since his party took over in January.

Much of the grilling is of dubious value. That makes no difference. It’s time to pile on George W. Bush and anyone imprudent enough to be associated with him.
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00Publius Contributor - Islam - Islamofascism - Media Bias - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Uncategorized - Warner Todd Huston

AP: Mahdi Army Disintegration… BAD News??

March 23, 2007 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Leave it to the AP to turn the disintegration of the organization of one of our enemies in Iraq into a bad thing!

That’s what we get with Wednesday’s analysis of the trouble that seems to be befalling the organization of Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia, a group that has resisted US led coalition government since day one.

Shiite Militia May Be Disintegrating

BAGHDAD (AP) – The violent Shiite militia known as the Mahdi Army is breaking into splinter groups, with up to 3,000 gunmen now financed directly by Iran and no longer loyal to the firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, adding a potentially even more deadly element to Iraq’s violent mix.

What is with this “potentially even more deadly element” business? One of our enemies falls and that is bad?

Still, despite this somewhat silly premise that an enemy failing is worse news, this report DOES go on to detail ever more interference by Iran who is meddling in Iraq.

Two senior militia commanders told The Associated Press that hundreds of these fighters have crossed into Iran for training by the elite Quds force, a branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard thought to have trained Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Afghanistan.

I urge each of you interested in what is going on in the Middle East to take a look at this report. It is sobering news.

Iran is itching to get attacked by the US and with their capturing of 15 British Sailors today, they just might get what is coming to them.
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00Publius Contributor - Constitution - Democrats/Leftists - History - Patriotism - Society/Culture - Uncategorized - Warner Todd Huston

Western States Regulate “Interior Designers”, Where’s the Public Interest?

March 23, 2007 by 2 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

The State legislature of Nevada wants to be sure your home’s Feng Shui is smooth. New Mexico’s officials want to be sure that your “space” is well arranged. They are all about home decor. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if they have the Home Improvement channel constantly playing in all state offices so that legislators can keep up on the latest tips. They must be experts, fanatically concerned with interior decorating, after all.

Why, you ask?

Well, because they have wasted the time of the legislature and the money of the State’s treasury to make sure that there is a legal, licensed difference between an “Interior Decorator” and just those lowly, unskilled “decorators”. Worse, there is now the iron boot heel of government standing behind the supposed “professional” status of an “Interior Designer” because if you hire someone who claims to be just a “designer” and he does work of an “Interior Designer”– whatever that is supposed to be — well, the black helicopters swoop down upon you, they unleash the hell hounds to run you to ground, and you’ll end up in the deepest pit the State of Nevada can find for up to a year, not to mention fining you $1,000.

That’s right, folks. The State of Nevada wasted its time defining what interior design “means” and has developed a license and fee schedule to control it all.
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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Media Bias - R. A. Hawkins - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Uncategorized

I’ve Seen The Enemy (Protests are Educational and Funny)

March 23, 2007 by

By R. A. Hawkins

My wife and I decided to go and greet the nice Sheehan/ANSWER crowd as they marched on the 17th in Washington DC. It turns out that they march every year in protest of the overthrow of any tyrants, unless of course it is a liberal that started the war. It is quite different to see it in person rather than on the Internet or to read about it, so here is my impression.

Never in my life have I seen anything more amusing. Now I have to admit I found it to be a little sad at the same time. The only reason I felt any sadness was that the peace protestors were actually sincere. Every one of them had the same level of sincerity etched on their normally blank faces as one might see on a three year old wondering if it would really hurt if he rode his tricycle down a four hundred foot flight of stone steps.

One of the sad things about being stupid or misled is that you don’t know why everyone is laughing at you. This is not much different from what the sixties were all about. They weren’t running short on drama queens. As a matter of fact they started their little freak show with one of the greatest shows of self-indulgent cowardice I’ve ever seen. The media, and I have no idea which ones they were, pointed their cameras at an angle that showed the number of protestors who were there, but also made sure they didn’t show how many of us were there to greet them. Playing for the camera, and just for the drama of it, the lame-o moon bats had some girls, and a lot of people that looked and acted like girls in some cases, protecting them. They had linked hands and wearing fluorescent yellow (the only honesty I really saw there) vests, and acted as human shields since we were obviously going to run out there and beat them up. The funny part is that those girls probably had the most nerve out of the whole stinky bunch. As slow as they were moving they are probably still marching towards the Pentagon with the speed of a snail in snow. The reason they did that was obvious. It made their small numbers look bigger. The only reason they took so long to pass was because they kept slowing down and stopping, and then grinding into movement. It was intentional. If they had walked at a normal speed they would have finished in ten minutes max.
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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Family - Media Bias - Race - Religion - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Uncategorized - Warner Todd Huston

PC Roundup – The Foolishness, Absurdities and Cultural Destruction of the Politically Correct

March 22, 2007 by 3 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

From time to time we all hear stories that reveals the stupidity of a dreaded PCism run amok. We hear the tales, shake our heads in disbelief and go about our day without taking much more notice of it afterward. It seems, as we hear of each case, that they are isolated stories, outrageous yes, but not interrelated. Perhaps, viewed as separate incidents, they really don’t mean much. Unfortunately, such incidents culminate to far more than merely incidental occasions.

Let’s just take a few incidents of the last week as examples to reveal the utterly vacuous nature of the Politically Correct, multiculturalism that has happened in both the US and England. The following are all examples of the kind of consequences of liberalism that damages society. We have one example that even ends up with the kind of unintended consequences that would horrify the very leftists who initiated the PCism in question.

From the silly…
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00Publius Contributor - Education - Family - Religion - Thomas Brewton - Uncategorized

Warriors for God

March 22, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

The Old Testament story of David and Goliath offers guidance to living a true Christian life.

Sunday’s sermon at the Long Ridge Congregational Church (non-UCC) in North Stamford, Connecticut, was delivered by Rev. David Smith, who heads the Pivot Ministries.

Pivot Ministries reorient men out of the thralldom of drugs and alcohol by giving them the personal experience of Jesus Christ’s saving love. They do a wonderful job, guiding men of all ages and from all walks of life along an 18-month program.

Pivot’s website is http://www.pivotministries.org/ . They need contributions to carry on. Contact them and give them your support.
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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Entertainment - Media Bias - Race - Religion - Society/Culture - Uncategorized - Warner Todd Huston

NBC Sitcom, Andy Barker, P.I., Attacks Christians? Says Americans are Reactionary, Racists?

March 21, 2007 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Why is it that sitcoms always go for the cheapest gags? And why is it that those gags are always shibboleths of leftist ideas? Does Hollywood imagine that the left never does anything that can be made fun of? Apparently Conan O’Brien and Andy Richter of the new sitcom “Andy Barker, P.I.” don’t think so, anyway.

In the pilot episode for the new sitcom from NBC starring former Conan O’Brien sidekick Andy Richter, within the first few segments we get one joke that makes Christians out to be mean-spirited and another that presents Americans in general as being reactionary racists post 9/11. In fact, these two jokes are back to back.

In the pilot episode, the main character rents a storefront in a small strip mall styled complex to open his CPA business. He meets the video store Owner downstairs who takes him on a tour to give him the lay of the land of the other shops in the complex.
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00Publius Contributor - Budget - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Society/Culture - Thomas Brewton - Uncategorized

First Corrupt Them, Then Control Them

March 21, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

By removing the Judeo-Christian ethos of morality and personal responsibility from our culture, Liberal-Progressives have led Americans into financial ruin.

A recent New York Times editorial titled Homeowners at Risk lamented the upsurge of mortgage payment delinquencies and the likely wave of foreclosures.

In that regard, the Times editorialists opined:

Responding to the mortgage bankers’ grim report, Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Banking Committee and a presidential hopeful, broached the possibility of federal help for struggling homeowners. The most plausible relief measures — detailed in a new report by the Center for American Progress, a liberal research and advocacy group — involve federal boosts to existing state and local programs. Those include counseling to help strapped families plan for rising monthly payments and renegotiate their loans, legal aid and short-term loans for eligible borrowers. One study shows that a federal grant of $25 million could replicate proven local programs in other areas now experiencing spikes in foreclosures.

Implicit in the editorial is the assumption that it should have been the Federal government’s responsibility, first, to keep borrowers from assuming debt beyond their capacities, and, second, to bail borrowers out, no questions asked.
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00Publius Contributor - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - GOP - Media Bias - Society/Culture - Uncategorized - Warner Todd Huston

Jonah Goldberg: Democrats not Liberal Enough!

March 21, 2007 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Prelude: I’d like to say a word about the following op ed before it begins as a way of warning the reader that I, a Conservative, am going to take issue with Jonah Goldberg, another Conservative.

I think Mr. Goldberg is wrong on his main point in his op ed from Tuesday that I am about to discuss, and wrong on several “possible” motives (the motives explained in the prologue). But I am NOT saying he is not a “real” Conservative, or attacking him and his body of work. I feel he is just wrong on this issue. So, never fear as I am not trying to practice the politics of personal destruction.

The simple fact is, if we do not take issue with our own side when we feel it necessary, then we stop having a debate in our own circles and we leave ourselves open for mere partisanship with no principle behind it. We should leave the empty moralizing and soulless partisanship to the Democrat Party.

Mr. Goldberg misses the point:

In the L.A. Times Tuesday, Jonah Goldberg is warning the Democrat Party that they are “betraying the base” because they have not been far enough left since taking control of Congress a few months ago –just as the GOP failed its base by not being conservative enough before the 2006 midterms. But his analogy is badly formulated and is an inapt fit fundamentally missing the facts.
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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - History - Media Bias - Society/Culture - Thomas Brewton - Uncategorized

Times Supports Abstract Savagery

March 21, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

New York Times editorialists equate morality with pagan environmental worship, doing so in the name of an abstraction called “the planet.”

In a New York Times editorial of March 10, 2007, titled Evangelical Environmentalism, the editors wrote, in part:

Whether or not you agree with [the conservative Christian wing of the Republican Party] about, say, homosexuality and abortion — and we emphatically do not — it is antiquated to limit the definition of morality to the way humans behave among humans.

Those days have been over ever since it became apparent that humans — busy thinking only about their own lives — had the power to destroy huge numbers of species, whole landscapes of habitat and, in fact, the balance of life on earth. The greatest moral issue of our time is our responsibility to the planet and to all its inhabitants.
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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Media Bias - President - Race - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Uncategorized - Warner Todd Huston

L.A. Times Obama-gasm: ‘Crisscrossed Cultural Divide’ As Child in Indonesia

March 19, 2007 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Why is it every time I see a newspulper headline about Barack Obama I envision the editors in near orgasmic delight over the “multiculturalism” they perceive in Obama, or the “connection” he has with all the peoples of the world? Or the near hero worship of his “clean and articulate” abilities they wallow in, for that matter? And how come I get a corresponding feeling that all I am getting is delightful puffs of air but no substance when I’m done reading the piece that goes with the sweetness and honey that is the headline?

Today’s L.A. Times delightful puff of Obama-gasm comes to us courtesy of Paul Watson, Times Staff Writer and honey-drippingly titled “As a child, Obama crossed a cultural divide in Indonesia”.

What we have today from the L.A. Times is a piece gushing with how Obama must understand the needs of Christians and Muslims because he went to a Muslim Madrasa school as a child as well as a Catholic school.
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00Publius Contributor - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Elections - Entertainment - Islam - Islamofascism - Media Bias - Military - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Uncategorized

Policy makers look to the stars

March 19, 2007 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin is one left-leaning gent, even by Democratic standards. The non-partisan National Journal earlier this month ranked him the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. In the company of such stalwarts as Teddy Kennedy, Hillary the pantsuit and Barack the empty suit, that’s a noteworthy, if dubious, achievement.

Comparing American soldiers to Nazis, Communists, and Cambodia’s Pol Pot burnished Dick’s credentials. When this inanity was extensively reported, he fell back on what liberals typically do. He didn’t apologize; he simply expressed regret that others may have misunderstood him. The Arab satellite TV network al-Jazeera reported this on its Web site as “US Senator stands by Nazi remark.”
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00Publius Contributor - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Frank Salvato - GOP - Islam - Islamofascism - Media Bias - Military - President - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Uncategorized

We Better Hurry Up and “Redeploy” So the Killing Can Start Again

March 17, 2007 by 3 Comments

-By Frank Salvato

The debate over the US military’s engagement on the Iraqi battlefield is raging on Capitol Hill with congressional Democrats attempting to defund the campaign through back-channel means. Simultaneously, reports are coming from a multitude of sources – both inside and outside of Iraq – that testify to the overwhelming success, to date, of President Bush’s “surge” initiative. Why are our elected officials wasting taxpayer dollars, allocated in the form of their salaries, to debate turning a victory into a defeat?

Anti-war activists, the mainstream media and liberal Democrats like Harry Reid, David Obey and Ted “Hope Floats” Kennedy are no strangers to ripping defeat from the jaws of victory. A perfect example of this can be found in the Vietnam War where politicians interfered with the generals to literally hand the Communist North Vietnamese a victory.

The US military, unmatched on the battlefields of Vietnam, was effectively neutered by politically and socially imposed limitations. In the end, it was the US military – the superior and more lethal fighting force – that was portrayed as weak and frail, ineffective and inept, not the inferior Communist forces championed by the mainstream media and the anti-war left. Their propaganda, delivered by an agenda-driven media monopoly, even turned the inarguable US military victory of the Tet Offensive into a perceived loss.

Today, the anti-war zealots of the intellectually challenged Progressive-Left – while they declare their support for our troops but not their mission (an oxymoron if there ever was one) – are plotting and scheming to once again impose political and social limitations on our Armed Forces in a transparent attempt to bring about another self-imposed US “forfeit.”
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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Family - Society/Culture - Thomas Brewton - Uncategorized

Liberal Theories of Human Nature

March 17, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

If liberal theories are correct, humans are passive bundles of nerves at the mercy of intellectual tyrants.

If only what we can detect and measure with our physical senses is real, then a human being is no more than a mechanism for registering pleasure or pain. This is a fundamental premise of psychology, one of the social sciences created by the French Encyclopedists. Liberals don’t buy the idea that people might be self-governed by their consciences and their moral sense. They presume that people are motivated only by desires for sensual gratification, power, or money.

Hence the extraordinary importance attached to Sigmund Freud’s theories at the beginning of the 20th century.

Psychology reflected this materialism perfectly in its behaviorist school of thought later in the 20th century. J. B. Watson and B. F. Skinner went so far as to dismiss, not only the human soul, but even conscious thought as determinants of human behavior. The idea of consciousness, they said, was pre-scientific superstition and witchcraft. Taking materialism to the extreme, they theorized that the only determinants of behavior are external environmental factors, which completely outweigh inherited characteristics.
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00Publius Contributor - Constitution - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Founders - Islam - Islamofascism - Media Bias - Military - Patriotism - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Uncategorized - Warner Todd Huston

Boston Globe: Iraq Insurgents Just Like Our Founding Fathers

March 16, 2007 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

I wonder if the MSM ever gets tired of trying to make evil look good? And if they aren’t trying to make evil look like good, they are trying to soft peddle evil with a they-are-really-just-like-us analysis of evil’s actions. Such is the case today in the Boston Globe wherein writer H.D.S. Greenway equates Iraqi insurgents to being just like America’s founding revolutionary generation.

In ‘Surge’ doomed to final failure, a badly garbled reading of history is foisted upon an unsuspecting reading public that culminates with H.D.S. Greenway boiling down the entire American Revolution to the claim that British soldiers were a “conquering force” in the Colonies and the Colonists were mad at them for it.

And so conquering foreign soldiers will be resisted in Iraq, as they have always been everywhere down the centuries. In early April 1775, the British governor of Boston sent John Howe out to gather intelligence in that hotbed of insurgency now called the western suburbs, but then the Anbar province of its time. Howe met an old man cleaning his rifle who looked too old to hunt game.

The old man said he expected foreign soldiers — “a flock of redcoats” — would be arriving soon, and he thought they would make good targets. Arrive they did, and with them the American revolution that in many states degenerated into civil war. The British soldiers were mostly of the same race and religion as the people they fought, but they were by then foreigners, and eight years later they were gone.

This simpleminded “gotcha” point that H.D.S.Greenway seems to imagine he has stumbled upon makes a mush of what really happened in 1776 and before to cause the American Revolution. Apparently H.D.S. Greenway is unaware that the British didn’t “conquer” the Colonists because the colonies were part of the territorial possessions of Great Britain in the fist place. Putting down an insurrection is quite different than conquering and the British were not truly “foreigners” – Revolutionary rhetoric aside– even to most American citizens. Unwanted, yes, but “foreign”? Not really. In truth, many U.S. citizens felt they were being truer Englishmen than the Brits were being.
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00Publius Contributor - Constitution - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Elections - History - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - The Law - Thomas Brewton - Uncategorized

The Genealogy of American Liberal-Progressive Gnosticism

March 16, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Whence came the deformed conceptions of anti-Constitutional, regulatory government and judicial activism?

American liberal-socialism is the gnostic descendant of the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror. The genealogical connection begins with Henri de Saint-Simon, the French intellectual who codified the doctrine of socialism in the first decades of the 1800s, shortly after the Revolution.

His colleagues and followers, including Auguste Comte, formed a body of disciples known as the Saint-Simonians. They spread the Gnostic gospel to German universities, where it became mixed with the philosophies of Fichte and Hegel.

During the ferment preceding the French Revolution, the same intellectual influences produced the English constitutional radicalism of Jeremy Bentham, the founder of Utilitarianism. In 1789, the year of the French Revolution, he published Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, which outlined the Utilitarian doctrine that all political action should be in the form of regulations scientifically calculated to produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In this, Americans will recognize the genesis of New Deal regulatory agencies and the liberal-Progressive obsession with controlling every aspect of our daily lives.

At first hearing, the Utilitarian principle of “the greatest good for the greatest number” sounds good. The rub is that implementing it necessitates overturning existing social traditions and constitutional principles, just as President Franklin Roosevelt did with his 1930s New Deal.
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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Media Bias - Society/Culture - Uncategorized - Warner Todd Huston

Dan Rather: Journalism Has ‘Lost its Guts’- Is Media not Biased Enough?

March 15, 2007 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Unbelievably, disgraced newsreader, Dan Rather, claimed at a recent festival that American journalism “has in some ways lost its guts” and that the MSM has “adopted the go-along-to-get-along (attitude).”

As reported by CNETNews.com, Rather was a keynote speaker at the South by Southwest Interactive festival this past weekend where he gave a 2 hour talk on the shape of journalism and the Internet.

One has to wonder to which “gutless” American media he is referring? Is it the same media that was so weak-kneed as to leak damaging national security information, the same media that just “goes along” to undermine the war effort at every opportunity? Is it the same one that goes out of its way to malign the US and Israeli governments? It is that MSM Rather imagines has somehow gone soft?

Rather’s talk was mostly about the media’s purported gutlessness, but he did have a few words of interest to say about the new media on the Internet.

“The Internet is a tremendous tool for not just news, (because) its potential is unlimited for that,” Rather said, but for “illumination and opening things up.”

His dubious eloquence aside, Rather is right on with his assessment that the internet presents the great opportunities of this new century, but he also proves his tin ear on why the MSM has lost its luster with the general public.
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00Publius Contributor - 2nd Amendment - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - GOP - Immigration/Immigrants - Islam - Islamofascism - Military - Patriotism - President - R. A. Hawkins - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - The Law - Uncategorized

It Ain’t Too Purty (Like 500 Miles of Busted Concrete)

March 15, 2007 by

By R. A. Hawkins

When I look at the current state of affairs in American politics I have to say that it ain’t too purty. I realize that some might immediately think that I’m referring to Pelosi and Hillary when I write like 500 miles of busted concrete (an understandable mistake mind you), but I’m referring to both parties right now. On one side we have the likes of McCain and Giuliani and Romney. And on the other we have a laughable catastrophe. I find little humor in the Republicans’ inclination to emulate Bill Clinton’s tendency to stick a moist finger in the air and see which way the wind is blowing at the moment. So I’ll start on them first.

Giuliani thinks that gun control is a nice idea. I can see one reason why the Republicans might decide to pick him and only one. He got a lot of really nice face time on the tube after 9/11. That’s the only reason I can see for them picking him. The mere fact that he hails from that lofty example of Americana and statehood that voted Hillary and Schumer in is enough to make him useless to any real conservatives. Unless an (R) behind the name is all it takes anymore. Now that brings me to Mitt Romney. He comes from a wonderful place that repeatedly puts the likes of Ted Kennedy and John (I threw medals over the White House fence that’ll show ‘em) Kerry into office. That should count him out right there. Then there is the RINO McCain. I really don’t have much to say about him that’s good so I’ll drop it. On the other hand…what a doof! Make it official you dummy! Switch to the Democratic Party! There I said it.

And now for my favorite party: There’s Gore, who may be getting an honorary PhD from some university in Minnesota for being able to read the script to a movie with made up science, which for the university that should be only an “Inconvenient Truth”. Liberals will begin to flock to that place because in the true spirit of liberalism, they’re even giving degrees away. Nice. As a side note it is interesting that the liberals who claim to be the party of Jefferson have tossed FOX News out of the Nevada debates. I think that’s because they’ve refused to read the liberal script. All FOX has to do to counter that cruel maneuver is do a few reruns of ‘Spanky and Our Gang’ at the same time. The Nielson ratings from that would tell the liberals that had been the wrong move to make.
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00Publius Contributor - Education - Media Bias - Society/Culture - Thomas Brewton - Uncategorized

Mr. Ignatius, Meet Mr. Bok

March 15, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius thinks that American colleges are just swell. Former Harvard president Derek Bok disagrees.

David Ignatius’s opinion piece was published in today’s Wall Street Journal. Its opening paragraphs are the following:

Higher-Ed Superpower
By DAVID IGNATIUS
The Washington Post
March 12, 2007

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — When people think about American power in the world, they usually list the country’s forbidding arsenal of bombers, aircraft carriers and troops. Yet America’s greatest strategic asset these days might not be its guns, but its universities.

Higher education is arguably the last area in which the United States dominates the world. We’re discovering the limits of military power in Iraq, the pressures of economic competition from China and India, the vulnerability of our financial markets to sudden changes abroad. But in this globalized world, American universities remain the gold standard.

Mr. Ignatius’s home venue, The Washington Post, is not the most radically liberal of the major newspapers, but it’s up there in the rankings.
Continue reading “Mr. Ignatius, Meet Mr. Bok”

00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Islam - Islamofascism - Media Bias - Military - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Uncategorized - Warner Todd Huston

The Military and the Media, a Clash of Missions

March 14, 2007 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The AP is protesting a decision made by U.S. Military officials in Afghanistan claiming an oppression of a free press and saying there was “not a reasonable justification” for erasing an AP photographer’s pictures taken of the aftermath of a suicide bombing in Barikaw, Afghanistan. The decision protested by the AP was made March 4th by officers on the scene of a bombing that killed 8 Afghans, wounding 34. But, is the AP correct that this was somehow an outrage against a free press?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The U.S. military asserted that an American soldier was justified in erasing journalists’ footage of the aftermath of a suicide bombing and shooting in Afghanistan last week, saying publication could have compromised a military investigation and led to false public conclusions.

“Investigative integrity is one circumstance when civil and military authorities will reluctantly exercise the right to control what a journalist is permitted to document,” Col. Victor Petrenko, chief of staff to the top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, said in a letter Friday.

The AP didn’t take kindly to the military erasing the photos.

“That is not a reasonable justification for erasing images from our cameras,” said AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll in New York. “AP’s journalists in Afghanistan are trained, accredited professionals working at an appropriate distance from the bombing scene. In democratic societies, legitimate journalists are allowed to work without having their equipment seized and their images deleted.”

The incident prior to the photographs being taken is currently under investigation by the military to determine if the resulting firefight was justified and the given reason by authorities for erasing the photos was a fear that the reporters could have impeded that investigation. But another reason given is the more probable one.
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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Entertainment - Frederick Meekins - Media Bias - Patriotism - Religion - Society/Culture - Uncategorized

A Review Of Faith Journey Through Fantasy Lands

March 14, 2007 by 1 Comment

-By Frederick Meekins

Few discussions will provoke opinions among believers as heated as whether or not Christians ought to enjoy works of popular fantasy.

On the one hand, some claim believers should avoid these realms of the imagination. On the other, there are those Christians so desperate to justify their interest with a veneer of spirituality that they try to establish one to one correlations between these entertaining stories and Holy Scripture.

“Faith Journey Through Fantasy Lands: A Christian Dialogue With Harry Potter, Star Wars & Lord Of The Rings” by Russell Dalton endeavors to provide a balance between these competing outlooks.

While highlighting the parts of these works that appeal to enduring values, Dalton also admits that neither are these stories themselves Scripture. Rather, he writes, “This book takes an approach that goes beyond a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ evaluation of fiction and film. It gives the reader a chance to reflect whether or not the behaviors and beliefs of the characters in today’s fantasy stories are consistent with the Christian faith, but it also looks at the questions these stories demand of our faith by entering into a dialogue between these fantasy stories and the Christians story (7).”
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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Media Bias - President - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Uncategorized - Warner Todd Huston

Clintons Moving Shills Into News Departments Ahead of 2008 Elections?

March 13, 2007 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston


With the recent announcement by CBS that they have made ex-Clinton friend Rick Kaplan the new Executive Producer of the CBS Evening News, it was eyebrow raising that another fawning pal has suddenly been ensconced in a “new” position at an American news service.

The AP has announced that long time Clinton friend,Ron Fournier, is joining the newswire service to act as the watchdog for “accountability and governing”.

“His primary responsibilities will be developing new approaches to political and election coverage online, working with AP’s news, multimedia and revenue groups,” Kathleen Carroll, the executive editor, said in a statement on Thursday.

Ron also will contribute to that coverage, bringing his sharp eye and multimedia experience to analysis and some new storytelling on this important topic. There, he will work closely with AP’s Political Editor, Donna Cassata, under the direction of Washington Bureau Chief Sandy Johnson.

Longer range, Ron will drive a new coverage focus on accountability and governing.

Fournier left AP last Summer to work for an internet site called hotsoup,com, but got his start “…as a political reporter at the statehouse in Little Ark., covering then-Gov. Bill Clinton.” AP helpfully reminds us that Fournier, “…covered Clinton’s presidential campaign, moved to Washington in 1993 after Clinton was elected and spent 13 years covering the White House and national politics.”
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00Publius Contributor - Budget - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - The Law - Thomas Brewton - Uncategorized

Need We Fear Inflation?

March 13, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Contrary to the popular understanding, higher wage rates and higher oil prices do not cause inflation. They are symptoms of the real danger.

News reports express concern that the tightening labor market and increasing oil prices will lead to increased inflation. This is an upside-down view of reality.

Inflation is nothing more nor less than an increasing ratio of money to available goods and services.

Higher prices – rising wages or higher oil prices, for example – result from two things.

First is excessive money supply creation and the resulting excessive amount of bank credit pumped into the economy.

Second is a change in the balance between supply and demand. Wages will rise whenever increasing business activity necessitates hiring more workers, with the requisite skills and experience, than are available in the needed locations. Oil prices will rise because demand exceeds current or anticipated supplies in the locations where oil is needed.

In either case, price increases are the result, not a cause.
Continue reading “Need We Fear Inflation?”

00Publius Contributor - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Islam - Islamofascism - Patriotism - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Uncategorized - Warner Todd Huston

Another Example of Democrats Aiding the Enemy

March 12, 2007 by

**Breaking News**

Want another example of Democrats assisting the enemy? Need more proof that Democrats are weak on defense and stand with those who wish to destroy our culture in particular and western civilization in general?

CAIR OK’d to meet in Capitol

A House Democrat has arranged for a conference room in the Capitol building to be used tomorrow by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group criticized for its persistent refusal to disavow terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

The District-based group also is singled out by other Democratic lawmakers and some law-enforcement officials because of financial ties to terrorists.

Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., New Jersey Democrat, reserved the basement conference room for CAIR’s panel discussion Tuesday titled “Global Attitudes on Islam-West Relations: U.S. Policy Implications.”‘

“We just see it as a simple room request,” Pascrell spokesman Caley Gray said. “We did receive a room request and evaluated it and approved it.”

He said the forum “opens up an important dialogue about global public opinion concerning the United States.”

There is nothing wrong with CAIR’s exercise of free speech, but why, exactly, should they be allowed to use tax payer funded facilities to spew their hatred and anti-Americanism? Let them pay for a conference room in some local hotel, let them contract with a conference center. Let them meet in any private facility that will have them. Let them organize a march in Skokie, Illinois like any other racist, hate-mongering group.

But DON’T let this terrorist financing, anti-American, traitorous organization get free government facilities.

And, here we have a Congressional Democrat turning over government facilities to these scum-bags?

Yet Democrats insist they are not anti-American!?

Who can believe them after countless examples such as this?

00Publius Contributor - Constitution - Democrats/Leftists - Founders - Media Bias - Society/Culture - The Law - Uncategorized - Warner Todd Huston

Editor & Publisher to Journalists: Get over Your Big Egos

March 12, 2007 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

As I have in the past, to be a fair and honest reporter, I’ll bring the good news about the MSM to the fore right along with the bad. Today I have some good in the form of a piece in Editor & Publisher’s Shop talk section titled Who’s a Journalist These Days? This is an interesting piece that takes journalists to task who share, as E&P puts it, the “big ego disease” that seems woefully prevalent throughout the MSM.

In fact, Mark A. Phillips doesn’t at all mince words when taking to task his fellow journalists, not sparing their feelings a bit. He even identifies by name one of the journalistic comrades of whom he is scolding. That being one Debra J. Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle.

In a recent article on the Josh Wolf affair, Saunders raised the question of the legitimacy of Wolf’s claims of being a journalist. Wolf, is a blogger who has been jailed since last year for refusing to reveal to investigators a news source he used on his Blog.

Saunders described Wolf variously as “…a blogger with an agenda and a camera”, and a man who likes to “…put himself in the company of real journalists”. Saunders’ final analysis negates Wolf’s claims of being a journalist. “But a camera and a Web site do not a journalist make, any more than shooting a criminal makes a vigilante a cop”, she haughtily proclaimed.
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00Publius Contributor - Elections - Society/Culture - Uncategorized - Vince Johnson

REVISION OF ANNOUNCEMENT MADE JANUARY 24, 2007

March 12, 2007 by

-By Vince Johnson

I recently indicated I would announce my candidacy for President of the United States sometime in May 2007. After considerable inner deliberation, I am having second thoughts.

As soon as I mentioned May 2007, people started asking questions. For example: “Who would I appoint as Secretary of the Treasury?” I had planned to appoint Donald Trump. But when I realized this appointment was based on my secret desire to fire him, I began to think it might be wise to re-consider. Maybe Bill Gates would make a better choice. If we ran a little short on cash, he could bail us out.

Then somebody asked me who I’d accept as a running mate? This stopped me cold. No matter who I picked, it would make half the electorate mad. If he were a Liberal, all the Conservatives would get upset. If he were Conservative, all the Liberals would get upset. If he were an Independent, all the Liberals and all the Conservatives would suddenly merge into a rare moment of unified uproar. If it were a man, most of the women would be insulted. If it were a woman, most of the men would be insulted.
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Constitution - GOP - Military - Society/Culture - Uncategorized

CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE HEATS UP

March 11, 2007 by

**Note, since I will be a speaker at the CLC, I thought I’d pass along some info on the convention**

Conservative Movement Heats Up With Premier Western Conference

Reno, NV – In October of 2007 thousands of Conservatives looking to organize and network on a scale that has yet to be seen will meet in Reno, Nevada for the first annual Conservative Leadership Conference ( www.clc07.com ).

Invited speakers include Newt Gingrich, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt and Morton Blackwell just to name a few. Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform ( www.atr.org ) in DC, has signed his organization on as a co-sponsor of the event. Presidential hopefuls will be given an opportunity to speak in front of extensive traditional and new media coverage.

As dissatisfaction within the Conservative ranks begins to reach record levels, the timing of the largest event of its kind in the West couldn’t be better. With Nevada being a key swing state, the location is ideal as well.
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