The Occupy losers are delighted; they finally got the footage they think will shift the focus off the almost unbelievable legacy of Occupier violence, sexual assaults and general degeneracy that has been so carefully documented by Big Government.  They hope that the visual of the UC Davis police force using pepper spray to stop these mutants from disrupting the campus will re-mobilize the fainthearted liberals who have grown fed up with the Occupiers’ antics.  We conservatives need to ensure that doesn’t happen.

And we can do it the same way that we disrupted their narrative during the first phase of the occupation – by providing the context and telling the truths that the Occupiers used to be able to count on the liberal mainstream media to conceal.

The Occupy movement is in a public relations freefall, and the outlines of the next phase in what is a classic Alinskyite propaganda operation are becoming clear.  The problem for the Occupiers is that people are now seeing them for what they are, a movement composed entirely of weirdos, losers and mutations who worship at an altar of greed, laziness and bad hygiene – all served up with an utter lack of irony and self-awareness that drives away even those who might support aspects of the Occupiers’ inchoate ideology.

I knew the Occupiers had a problem when I partied in San Francisco last week with several very liberal friends – all of whom mocked the nearby Occupiers for being stupid, lazy and stinky as thoroughly as I did, and with the kind of searing contempt for these deadbeats that made me proud to be an American.  My pals will never be tea partiers, but that’s not the point.

The point is that the puppeteers behind the scam now see that they have lost control of the narrative, and they are attempting to morph the Occupy movement in order to recapture it.  The liberal media frenzy focusing on last week’s necessary actions by the police is the result.

The UC Davis pepper spray incident wasn’t an accident.  The Occupiers wanted it.  They needed it.  They have been trying to make it happen.  And they are counting on the notion that the aesthetic unpleasantness of video clips showing the reality of the use of force by the police – force made necessary solely by the actions of the Occupiers themselves – will shift the narrative from the Occupiers’ myriad personal and ideological failings and onto them as victims of state oppression.

Interestingly, the mainstream media is going into overdrive to depict the Occupiers as victims of a repressive police state when our head of state is the Occupiers’ Number One Fan.  But again, neither irony nor self-awareness were ever liberal strong suits.

Remember that this community-organized movement is critical to the Left’s election strategy for next year; it mobilizes the radical base while providing a perfect target to triangulate against down the road.  But now that plan is falling apart.  The pepper spray imbroglio is part of a second phase designed to regain the initiative it has lost as a result of the very exposure it cultivated in the first place.

There’s just one problem for the Occupier’s puppet masters – this isn’t the same world in which Saul Alinsky operated, and that’s why this band of clowns is going to fail.

The Alinksyite strategy behind the Occupy movement operates on the premise that the liberal mainstream media will always present the movement in the most favorable light and will willingly airbrush out the… unpleasantness that always occurs whenever bands of leftists gather together.

This is an information operation, a propaganda campaign that depends on gaining legitimacy and sympathy from the good-hearted, soft-hearted mass of Middle America.   The Occupiers cannot afford to be seen as they really are, a motley collection of tools ranging from greedy college students demanding normal people subsidize their Third World Womyns’ Studies graduate degrees, to drug-addled drummers living off the largesse of Uncle Sucker, to Jew-hating Palestinian suck-ups yearning for Holocaust Part II, to union-trained “up-twinkling” professional protesters, to straight-up Marxists looking to enslave the American people in the service of their dark collectivist god.

They need to be seen as “peaceful,” as “concerned,” as something approaching normal.  The mainstream media is only too eager to comply, bypassing the masses of creepy mutations that make up the bulk of the Occupiers to find and interview on camera the rare Occupier who is unpierced, semi-coherent and looks like someone who might actually get a job some day.  In this way, the mainstream media can help its left-wing allies promote the fiction that this is some sort of relatable, organic movement reflecting the real feelings of the majority of Americans.

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Academics have, for centuries, looked far back in time as they argued and speculated about why the Roman Empire fell, but we now have an opportunity to observe in real time the accelerating decay of that imperial gatekeeper of liberal conventional wisdom, the New York Times.

A pair of op-eds from August 27^th illustrate this sad phenomena as its writers invent a new stage in the Kübler-Ross grief scale inserted somewhere between “denial”, “anger” and eventual “acceptance”: “delusion.”

The first op-ed is by congressman and civil rights legend John Lewis, whose work in the Sixties makes it awkward to have to point out that he is entirely full of it, having morphed from an anti-establishment hero into just another establishment hack.  Sadly, he seems totally oblivious to his sad transformation over the last five decades even as he keeps milking his past in order to block any kind of critical look at the nonsense he is peddling in the 21^st Century.

His op-ed is entitled “A Poll Tax by Another Name,” which is a problem because what he is whining about – mostly laws that require voters to prove that they are who they say they are – is neither literally nor figuratively a “poll tax.”

Poll taxes are, well, taxes charged voters for the privilege of voting.  Voter ID laws, in contrast, are requirements that people identify themselves before voting.  Nope, not the same.  Not even close.

“Despite decades of progress, this year’s Republican-backed wave of voting restrictions has demonstrated that the fundamental right to vote is still subject to partisan manipulation. The most common new requirement, that citizens obtain and display unexpired government-issued photo identification before entering the voting booth, was advanced in 35 states and passed by Republican legislatures in Alabama, Minnesota, Missouri and nine other states — despite the fact that as many as 25 percent of African-Americans lack acceptable identification.”

Those GOP bastards, forcing people to prove they are who they say they are before voting in an election!  It’s almost a Robert Byrdian level of racism!

Wait, I should show more respect for this Democrat icon.  After all, Byrd was a kleagle.

Let’s leave aside the dubious notion that a quarter of all black adults lack a photo ID – which would mean, among other things, that a quarter of them can’t drive.  Or cash checks.  Or fly on an airliner.  Or get a job, not that this would be a big issue in the miserable Obama economy.

Let’s also leave aside the even more dubious (not to mention patronizing and utterly obnoxious) idea implied by Lewis that these citizens lack the basic competence to obtain such ID.  It’s interesting that hardcore conservatives have a significantly higher opinion of African-Americans’ ability to function than those liberals who loudly claim their leadership, but it isn’t surprising.  Liberalism is an ideology based upon low expectations.

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In the wake of the passage of Boehner 3.0, ABC’s Jake Tapper has shifted into some hardcore revisionism that would make the guys at the Ministry of Truth proud.  He reports that the addition of the balanced budget amendment language that secured the bill’s skin-of-its-teeth passage ruined the chances for the failed version 2.0’s passage through the Senate:

Democrats close to the negotiating process say that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has made his deficit reduction legislation a non-starter in the Senate by adding the Balanced Budget Amendment.

A case could be made that the previous incarnation of the Boehner bill might have become law. Let’s say come Monday no compromise legislation was close to being successfully negotiated, and the previous Boehner bill had passed and the Stock Market was tanking. Despite 53 Democratic Senators signing the letter saying they would oppose the bill, despite the president’s advisers having formally recommended that he veto it, there still seemed a chance it could become law. A last chance, but a chance.

Yeah, a case could be made for that notion – a really crappy case.   The outlines of the newly coagulating conventional wisdom – that Boehner 2.0 would have passed the Democratic Senate and gotten President Obama’s signature, but that 3.0 never will and thus the Republicans are to blame – are becoming clear.  However, to buy this nonsense requires dropping the last few days’ worth of Democratic leaders’ unequivocal statements rejecting 2.0 down the memory hole.  For example, as Tapper’s own ABC News reported by quoting the Senate majority leader: (more…)

Noted ‘conservanerd‘ David Brooks has abandoned all pretense of conservatism in his latest New York Times column titled “The Mother of All No-Brainers.”  It’s pretty clear that he believes that his readers are the brainless ones – rarely have so many shaky premises, false assertions and heapin’ helpings of pure nonsense been gathered into one NYT opinion column.  That’s saying something.

Brooks is Obama and Axelrod’s favorite pseudo-conservative for a reason: his creepily slavish devotion to the idea that we mere drones need to be guided, led and – sadly yes, controlled – by a coterie of Ivy League-indoctrinated betters who will lead us out of the darkness of our sad little lives.  These wise leaders may be identified by the crease in their slacks – Obama’s sharp press famously demonstrated to Brooks that The One would be The One.  It’s that kind of profound insight that has made David Brooks the most popular conservative pundit among those who hate and despise everything conservatives stand for.

Let’s take a quick look at the cheesy rhetoric and flabby thinking that this servant of the failed status quo put out on the Fourth of July.  It’s a wonderful illustration of how liberals argue – and provides a lesson in countering the nonsense.

The Republicans have changed American politics since they took control of the House of Representatives. They have put spending restraint and debt reduction at the top of the national agenda … Republican leaders have also proved to be effective negotiators.

First, he sucks up to the conservatives.  This is to try and make us think he is one of us, that he speaks as a friend instead of the house servant of his lefty overlords.  Feel your defenses crumbling?  Then:

[The Democrats] have agreed not to raise tax rates.

Wait, what?  Since when have the Democrats agreed not to raise tax rates?  Isn’t the President still talking about raising the rates next year, or is that one of those inconvenient truths?

[The Democrats] have agreed to a roughly 3-to-1 rate of spending cuts to revenue increases, an astonishing concession.

Hold on … weren’t they agreeing not to raise rates just a sentence ago?  Or are these “revenue increases” – don’t you love euphemisms? – all going to come from wiping out the scourge of corporate jets?  Whatever.

And wait a second – exactly who has agreed to this 3-to-1 ratio?  It best not be someone on the GOP side unless she or she wants a well-funded primary opponent next year.

Watch out, because these harmless “revenue increases” are “to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures.”  The “tax expenditures” language is priceless – as if the government “spends” money by not taking it.  And the “loopholes” are the same kind of deductions that every business takes – deductions merely being a recognition of costs since what is taxed is profits.  David, if you want to get on board with a low corporate tax rate and wipe out most all deductions, we conservatives might be on board.  But you don’t.  You want to raise rates without raising marginal rates; the sneaky way to do that is make more income taxable by eliminating deductions.  And you think your readers are too stupid to see that.

And now comes the good part.

(more…)

Jon Huntsman’s presidential announcment was met with resounding approval from those who wish to see four more years of the Obama Administration.  Among the rest of America, the reaction ranged from ennui to observations like “It’s good to see the Cryptkeeper getting work again.”   Regardless, Huntsman’s candidacy fuels some of the most intense liberal fantasies outside of Anthony Wiener’s hard drive.

For the liberals and the MSM – as if the two were different – Huntsman represents the ultimate in a win-win GOP candidate.  They win because head-to-head against Obama, Huntsman would get pummeled like a handicapped Tea Partier at a SEIU anti-violence rally.  And, in the off-chance some unlikely event takes place that allows Huntsman to beat Obama – like a surprise unicorn invasion or a sudden onset of accurate and complete reporting by the MSM – the GOP still loses.  The only thing worse than Obama implementing neo-socialist economic policies, spending like an alcoholic lottery winner, providing amnesty to every illegal north of the Rio Grande and buying into the global warming scam is having a nominal Republican do those things.

The very worst case scenario for the MSM is that ex-Utah governor Huntsman still provides it with a ready, willing and able yardstick of sober rectitude and utter supine submission by which to measure – and find wanting – the Republican candidates with the stones to actually fight for conservative principles.  His schoolmarm presidential announcement was really just a lecture directed at the American people – in particular, the ones upset about the destruction of our traditions and our future – instructing them not to get uppity, to be “respectful” to those who disrespect them, and to accept that we are morally obligated to ignore the evidence before our eyes that our opponents intend to fundamentally alter our country for the worst.  Pretty presumptuous for a guy who Don Quixote would assess as having no chance in hell.

To Huntsman and his squishy ilk, we’re the problem.  Our role is to come out and vote for the pseudo-conservatives, then to sit down, shut up and take what we are spoonfed by our D.C. betters.  And the MSM rewards this attitude by bestowing upon these fifth columnists the proverbial “strange new respect” that distinguishes a Republican who has accepted leftist dhimmitude.

On that note, has anyone seen a negative story about Boehner since he started golfing with the One and flailing helplessly before the liberal onslaught?  The countdown has begun to a WaPo headline reading “Speaker Boehner Soberly Tries To Balances Duty To America Versus Unreasonable Demands of Hate-Filled GOP Right-Wing Fringe Lunatics.”

Huntsman simply represents the latest in the sorry line of domesticated Republican pushovers embraced by the MSM as long as they acquiesce to certain failure.  On the journalism side we have conservanerds David Brooks and David Frum.  On the political side, you had Bob Bennett and you have Orrin Hatch – what the hell is it with Utah anyway?   Hatch has reinvented himself as Tea Partier and is tapdancing like Gregory Hines on meth to escape accusations of accommodationism that could put him out of his job and on the whining-about-how-the-GOP-left-me express with his pal Bobby.

John McCain found out just how much the love and respect of the MSM is worth during his run – while the vice-presidency may be worth a bucket of warm spit, MSM favor for a Republican is worth that less the bucket.  The second he secured the nomination it was open season, and the effort redoubled when he dare blow minds with his one move that was both truly maverick and truly not idiotic – picking Sarah Palin.

So it’s not fair to compare Jon to John – Huntsman doesn’t have it in him to pick a true conservative veep nominee and he doesn’t have the sterling war record that, regardless of our disagreements with his policies and maverick antics, has earned McCain the sincere respect and thanks of conservatives (Hugh Hewitt calls him“a great American, a lousy senator and a terrible Republican”).

On the plus side, there’s no indication that Huntsman has an obnoxious daughter who is as publicly chatty as she is publicly embarrassing.

Huntsman’s role is not to win the nomination – he’s the only person on earth who actually believes he can do that and it’s even doubtful he’s that dumb.  Huntsman’s role is to be the boring, ineffective moderate that the MSM can use to unfavorably compare to the real conservatives.  Every time he is crushed by GOP primary voters it will be cited as undisputable evidence that the Republican party has veered off into a netherworld of primordial rightwingery that no sane person could possibly want any part of.  His eventual defeat will be the final piece of evidence convicting the GOP of crimes against the mainstream.  Can you trust a party so unwise as to reject Jon Huntsman?  Mark this – I’ve got $5 that says that, stung by his forthcoming rejection, we will see Jon Huntsman sadly inform the MSM that he must reluctantly support President Obama because whoever gets the GOP nomination is “just too extreme” during a time when “we need to be united, not divided.”  Of course, by then inflation will make that $5 worth $2.

The promotion of Huntsman is like the condescending whisper of a sanctimonious unionized schoolteacher telling you to “use your inside voice.”  But the last thing the GOP needs now is the voice of the party to be muted, quiet and inoffensive.  Which is exactly why the MSM wants so very badly for Jon Huntsman to be that voice.

In the end there is no question about Huntsman’s natural constituency among Republicans.  It’s the guys who feel that we, as the GOP, are honor-bound to lose at all costs.  And the MSM is going to aid and abet them right up until the moment that Huntsman actually – through a miracle of such magnitude it would convince Christopher Hitchens to leap into a confessional and beg forgiveness from the Almighty – appears to be a threat to a second Obama term.

There’s a scene in Platoon – a crappy movie, by the way – where Willem Defoe’s character is running from the pursuing communists and we see him take hit after hit, stumbling, getting up, stumbling some more, and then finally, inevitably, and despite the best efforts of his comrades, dropping dead.  Except for the communists doing the pursuing, it’s not unlike the mainstream media’s current predicament – enduring failure after humiliating failure, it’s only a matter of time before it expires.  And this week, the new conservative media tossed a couple more shovelfuls of dirt into its open grave.

The first load was hurled in by none other than Sarah Palin – you know, the woman too dumb to tie her own shoes, as demonstrated by her shocking failure to realize that her lack of a Yale diploma disqualifies her from participation in the political process.  Except the woman the MSM is doing everything it can to portray as the Clown Princess of Conservatism has tied the MSM itself up in knots.

Her bus tour, whether the prelude to a campaign for the presidency or merely as way to take over the conversation from our embattled president, was straight out of “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu.  Sun Tzu counseled his students to know their enemies as they know themselves, and to take advantage of their enemies’ weaknesses and laziness.  And that’s just what Sarah has done.

Two huge weaknesses of the MSM are its boundless self-regard and the lack of residual goodwill among the American people, a consequence of decades of shameless shilling for every pinko with social program and a “D” behind his name.  Sarah’s bus tour – as did her conversion of her Facebook page into a kind of unassailable right-wing Olympus from which she issues pronouncements – went straight at those weaknesses.  She’s like a new media Patton in heels, applying her strengths to their vulnerabilities. (more…)

I hate to point out that the photos of Wonkette’s Jack Stuef looks just like you would expect a guy who thinks it’s cool to trash a three-year old with Down ’s syndrome because he disagrees with the child’s mother’s politics to look like.  The bloated face, the pursed lips, the sorta hipster glasses that really come off as “nerd” – he looks like the guy who proudly wore a t-shirt through high school that read “Dungeon master” until he realized too late that doing so was just one more card in the deck stacked against his ever kissing a live girl.

Now, it’s proper for me to mock Jack Stuef because he’s a grown man and not a little kid with a handicap. Well, technically, that’s inaccurate.  He’s certainly grown – the dude looks like he’s never met a burrito he didn’t like and that he’d detonate in a burst of bile and used Pringles if he ever tried to do a sit-up.  But he’s not a man.

It’s not fashionable to expect men to be men anymore – I’m sure Jack listened intently and internalized every lecture by his Georgetown University gender identity studies course professor and probably considers whole idea of “being a man” at best an anachronism and at worst some sort of Bu$Hilter/Haliburton conspiracy to reinforce the patriarchal paradigm.  But, of course, the characteristics we label as “manly” are not restricted to those with Y chromosomes – honor, courage, integrity, duty and the willingness to take risks for the greater good do not know gender.  Hell, most of the “real men” in the GOP have bore children.

(more…)

There is a misconception that the mainstream media hates all conservatives.  That’s just not true.  The MSM loves some conservatives – the ones who combine a willingness to stick their conservative brothers and sisters in the back with a stereotypical, tweedy doofusism that ensures absolutely no one would ever want to be one of them.  Their poster children are David Brooks and David Frum.  Call them the Conservanerds.

Conservanerds aren’t hard to identify. You can tell one by listening to him for about 15 seconds, by which time you will be overcome by a desire to either slap him or take his lunch money.  You can find them dwelling at the fringes of liberal culture – they are allowed to attend the cocktail parties as the token conservative, tolerated by their masters in return for passive obedience and the occasional swipe at Sarah Palin and her intolerable uppityness.

If they were simply annoying, that would be one thing, but the problem is that the MSM loves to present them as the true face of conservatism, a face that is reasonable and harmless and that always – always – loses out to the liberals.  Conservanerds play up to the awful stereotype of the bookish, passive-aggressive “traditional” conservative with a disdain for popular culture and, critically, for the other 95% of modern conservatives out there today.

Tea Party folks?  Heaven forbid – those simply are not our kind of people.   Those vulgar Tea Partyiers enjoy NASCAR and beer and guns and some actually believe in God.  Many of them work with their hands, and most of them didn’t even go to Harvard!

Sure, there’s class at play – it goes without saying the Conservanerds feel more at home with an Ivy League Hillary Clinton than a Middle-American Sarah Palin – but it’s also MSM wish fulfillment.  Liberals love the idea of conservatives who pose no threat at all, who are happy to take the scraps from the MSM’s table just as long as they get invited to the dinner party.

This is not a new phenomenon.  Starting with Goldwater and up through the Reagan years, a bunch of new folks flooded into the Conservative movement, folks that were less William F. Buckley and more John Wayne – or even Johnny Rotten.  The old line conservatives, the tweed-wearing country club types, found it quite a culture shock.  During college in the 80’s, half the staff assembling the California Review, UCSD’s right-wing paper, would be trying to appreciate to some Respighi concerto while the rest of us would be cranking the Ramones and swilling Coors.

It turned out that the party Republicans won.

The real conservative today is aggressive, outspoken and (worst of all for the Conservanerds) cares nothing for the approval of the elite.  That makes us anathema.  No wonder they are so eager to pounce – we’ve committed the sin of not caring what they think.  Whether you’re a tee-totaling Georgia Evangelical, a concerned mama grizzly from Kansas or a beer-swilling LA cavalryman with a four letter vocabulary and the Sex Pistols on his CD player, we’re the new face of conservatism.  And it’s driving the Conservanerds bonkers.

(more…)

Like some sort of hack zombie, former Wyoming senator Alan Simpson has stumbled back onto the political stage, basking again in the media limelight and sounding off after putting his name on President Obama’s debt commission’s liberal dream prescription – increasing both taxes and the size of government.

This raises an important question:  Who the hell cares what Alan Simpson thinks?  The answer is that the mainstream media cares, for now, because his dreary conventional wisdom is useful to them – for the moment.

Simpson’s return to prominence in the wake of the conservative – not GOP – victory in the recent mid-terms is a harbinger of what we will see much of in the next couple years as MSM-approved “reasonable” and “mature” Republicans are dug-up and held-up as role models while Republicans who actually pursue conservative goals are painted as raving lunatics one step away from climbing up the bell tower with a Remington.

The 79-year old maverick (“Maverick”: A Republican who enjoys the hosannas of the press that come from attacking fellow Republicans.  Related Definition:  “Sell Out”:  A Democrat who worries about his party’s slide to the far left.) makes no bones about where his allegiance lies – with the kind of old-school, chummy, go-along, get-along Republicanism that got us into this mess in the first place.

Fortunately for us half-wits, he’s brave enough to face down our selfish, short-sighted attempts to interfere with his ability to implement his insights – and the media is only too happy to give this relic a soap box.  That is, until the label “useful idiot” becomes only half true.

(more…)

When someone calls my office and wants to sue somebody for libel or slander, assuming they manage to get through my phalanx of people devoted to keeping me insulated from time burglars, the first thing I say to them is, “You probably have no case.”  I don’t wait to hear the facts.  I don’t need to know their evidence.  I know that statistically speaking, it just is not going to have merit.  Yet threatening defamation suits is a growing tactic in the war on the new media.

Defamation cases generally fail.  And by “generally,” I mean almost all of them.  I’ve never lost a libel case I’ve defended.  Why are defamation cases so bad?  Defamation is a unique tort because it involves publishing false and unprivileged negative information about someone.  With the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees – you know, the ones that frustrate and irritate the left to no end when those of us on the right avail ourselves of them – defamation takes on  whole new dimension you do not find in regular torts like negligence.  There’s a tension between the right to speak and the right not to be lied about, and the courts generally err on the side of free speech.  This is especially true in the context of political debates.  (more…)

Well, the bad news is that we’re a bunch of racists.  The good news, though, is that our liberal overlords are understanding.  Due to their boundless capacity for empathy, they understand that we just can’t help the inherent bigotry that characterizes us.  But with a little firmness and a good talking to, they’ll set us back on the progressive path.

At least, that seems to be the strategy du jour for the left and their mainstream media meat puppets.  Apparently realizing that their cacophonous chorus of innuendos and outright epithets excoriating the wayward bourgeoisie for its myriad sins was not having the desired effect – astonishingly, the know-nothings who make up the bulk of American society actually found being called “racists,” “sexists,” “homophobes,” “Islamaphobes” and all manner of other “-ists” and “-phobes” annoying.  With the polls tanking, it was time to try a new approach.

That new approach rolled out Sunday as columnists Nick Kristoff and Cynthia Tucker tried out the new, kinder/gentler scold mode. Kristoff’s New York Times piece, delightfully titled “America’s History of Fear,” generously allows that maybe – just maybe – a virulent hatred of Muslims is not the only reason one might oppose the Ground Zero mosque.  No, he doesn’t quite say that perhaps some people might find a terrorist apologist putting up a mosque on the site of where other Muslins, acting explicitly as Muslims, murdered nearly 3,000 folks to be, at best, unbelievably tacky and insensitive.  Instead, those expressing feelings are “worriers” acting out because of their irrational fears: (more…)

JournoList is back.  As Jonathan Strong makes clear in the latest Daily Caller revelations from the Journolist archives, the (publicly) unspoken strategy of the MSM mandarins is to support and protect their liberal/left favorite politicians and policies.  Understanding the tactics they use to achieve their goals – tactics I deal with frequently in litigation – is the first step in the counterattack.

The template for responding to breaking news that undermines their political favorites is almost always the same, a three step process designed to undercut the validity of the story, destroy the credibility of the storyteller, and then ensure that no one outside the new conservative media ever hears about it – or at least about the most important elements.  And the Daily Caller’s story illustrates them all.

The first step is to minimize the story.  So, the arm of the Democrat Party named ACORN feels it’s just fine to give advice to would be child sex traffickers?  It’s nothing – it’s just a side show that happened in once…okay, twice…I mean three times…I mean… anyway, it’s not important.  How about New Black Panthers intimidating voters?  Well, it’s just one precinct in Philadelphia and all the voters there were probably voting for Obama anyway so it’s really not that important.  Maybe a government bureaucrat admitting – publicly and proudly – that she treats white farmers in need of assistance worse than black ones?  Well, that’s one woman and she’s off in the boonies of Georgia!  It’s not important. (more…)

Big Peace took less than a day to start driving the Left up the wall and jumping the shark, which is probably exactly what Andrew Breitbart had in mind in the first place.  But if you can get beyond their dreary predictability, these attacks do serve an important purpose – they illustrate exactly why sites like Big Peace are so necessary.

No review of lefty anklebiting would be complete without a hat tip to the nonentity task force otherwise known as Media Matters.  Some guy there named Matt Gertz started things off by chiming in on Day One about how – I’m paraphrasing just a bit – Andrew Breitbart and Big Peace editor Frank Gaffney are the unholy spawn of a three-way between Glenn Beck, Mussolini and Satan himself.

Gertz called Breitbart a “liar,” which must be true because “liar” is documented by a hyperlink to yet another Media Matters piece, which itself boils down to the argument that ACORN’s eager assistance, on multiple occasions in multiple locations, to people representing themselves as trying to traffic in child prostitutes, really wasn’t immoral because the journalist who caught them on tape was not wearing a sufficiently flamboyant pimp hat.

Gertz also asserted that the “Big” sites have some sort of pro-birther agenda; I must have missed Andrew Breitbart’s memo.  But hey, why let facts obstruct a good meme? (more…)

The “Cry Wolf” leader Professor Peter Dreier has a clear right to solicit all the biased, agenda-driven, fraudulent “research” he desires under the First Amendment of the Constitution he and his pals have so little regard for.  But his antics may not pass muster under another set of guidelines that he – and his institution – operate under.

Occidental College, Professor Dreier’s employer, expressly promises the students, whose parents fork over a cool $55,655 a year for the privilege of attending, that they will not be subject to any political litmus test as they participate in the school’s academics between bong hits and sessions of binge drinking:

Students are entitled to an atmosphere conducive to learning and to even-handed treatment in all aspects of the teacher-student relationship. Faculty members may not refuse to enroll or teach students because of their beliefs or the possible uses to which they may put the knowledge to be gained in a course. The student should not be forced by the authority inherent in the instructional role to make particular personal choices as to political action or his or her own part in society. Evaluation of students and the award of credit must be based on academic performance professionally judged and not on matters irrelevant to that performance, whether personality, sex, race, religion, degree of political activism, or personal beliefs.  (Occidental College Faculty Handbook, p. 2)

Of course, here a professor – in his capacity as an Occidental professor while using his Occidental email account – is expressly soliciting research work to support his personal political beliefs.  Sure, he’s not technically granting or denying credit based on his students’ political views.  He’s just exercising some of the informal “authority inherent in the instructional role.”  And it’s abundantly clear – even if he doesn’t say it outright – that a student who disagrees with Professor Dreier’s politics best keep on walking. (more…)

“The former Alaska governor has complained on her Facebook page that [writer Joe] McGinniss is spying on her famous brood as writes a book about her while living next door in Wasilla, Alaska. She says McGinniss can see into her daughter’s bedroom and into her garden as he works on the tome with the working title: Sarah Palin’s Year of Living Dangerously.” The Canadian Press, May 26, 2010.

May 19, 2010:  I’ve arrived in Wasilla, Alaska, home to Sarah Palin!  But it’s clear she’s already prepared an unfriendly reception. When I told the cabbie “I’m Joe McGinniss, the best-selling author,” he tried to act like he didn’t even know who I was.  Well, if these hillbillies think they can fool this newshound, they’ve got another thing coming!

May 20, 2010:  Delighted to find indoor plumbing and electricity up here.  Took a break from unpacking to check out the new place’s view.  As soon as Bristol saw me, she shut her curtains – as if a few strips of cloth are going to protect her deceptions from exposure!  Next, I tried from every angle to see Russia from here but it simply can’t be done.  Just one day on the ground and already I’ve uncovered another Palin lie – Chapter Five has already written itself! Think I’ll call it “Hoop Dreams…”

May 21, 2010 (10 a.m.):  Walked around town today.  I asked a local where the nearest Whole Foods was and he just stared at me.  I sat down at a diner and asked if the mushrooms in my omelet were shiitake.  The owner told me, “This is a family place and we don’t use that kind of language.” I told him, “Well, that language was Japanese, sir, and where I come from – Massachusetts – we don’t appreciate racism!” (more…)

After pleading guilty to what is apparently the misdemeanor of “Entry by false pretenses to any real property, vessel, or aircraft of the United States” (18 U.S.C. § 1036), James O’Keefe has joined a long list of political activists convicted of charges related to their political activism.  He’s just the only conservative one.  Nonetheless, we look forward to the mainstream media enshrining him in its current pantheon of heroes of civil disobedience.  And to elephants flying.

Like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, with their like-clockwork arrests protesting whatever is in the news at any given moment, O’Keefe’s antics were apparently designed to make a political point.  In this case, the point seemed to be to show that the local staff of Senator Mary Landrieu (D., La.) was making up stories about her telephone system’s being down in order to dodge calls from outraged constituents decrying the health care reform bill.

It being a conservative point, rather than a left-wing attempt to raise racial tensions or extort money from cowardly corporations, we have not seen much sympathy for O’Keefe’s plight.

Of course, it is unfair to compare O’Keefe to lefty icons Sharpton or Jackson – unfair to O’Keefe.  The precocious O’Keefe helped blow the lid off ACORN’s twisted willingness to break not only the law but also the most basic tenets of moral decency in order to assist what its representatives understood to be child sex slavers, leading to ACORN’s welcome demise.  In contrast, Sharpton is a notorious charlatan who has spent years dodging the judgment against him entered after the Tawana Brawley charade, and Jesse Jackson is a noted shakedown artist, adulterer and father of a love child. (more…)

This piece originally ran on the Opinion page of the May 17, 2010, edition of the Washington Times.

Elena Kagan’s problem is not that she has too much empathy but that she has too little. President Obama famously made “that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles” his key qualification for a seat on the Supreme Court. What little we know of Ms. Kagan’s record demonstrates that she does not meet even that nebulous standard.

Empathy would require that Ms. Kagan place herself in the position of the “despised and downtrodden,” as her mentor Justice Thurgood Marshall put it. And who could possibly be more despised than a United States Army officer assigned to recruiting duties at Harvard Law School?

Did Dean Kagan put herself in his place before enforcing her law school’s repugnant ban on military recruiters? Did she imagine the feelings inside that young captain, perhaps limping from the fragments still in his leg from an improvised explosive device that hit his convoy outside Ramadi, as he walked through Harvard’s gates? Did she consider the stares he drew at the training academy from the liberal elite, the palpable contempt directed at him as one whose mere presence Harvard had officially designated as morally unworthy? (more…)

You need to give me some money.  And you need to do it right now.

Let’s be clear – this is an emergency.  The time for debate is over.  The time for action is now.  There is a clear consensus among experts in the field of law, like me, that you are legally obligated to give me some money.

Why?  Well, it’s a legal thing, and frankly you wouldn’t understand.  I’m a lawyer; I do understand these things.  You need to trust me.  Our futures – and our children’s futures (particularly my children’s) – depend on it.

Now, I reject any attempt to compare this important crusade to the advocacy of the anthropogenic global warming believers.  Sure, as the latest New York Times op-ed by Al Gore shows, there are some superficial similarities.  Yes, the global warming crowd tells you to believe the “experts” and here I’m telling you to do the same.  But “experts” do play an important role. (more…)

As a trial lawyer, I am jealous of Tom Friedman, that prophet of painfully conventional “wisdom” whose insights grace the ever dustier New York Times op-ed pages.  His latest column, “Global Weirding Is Here”, has managed to achieve what I only dream about as an attorney -– a self-proving argument.

Tom is, of course, an anthropological global-warming disciple and a lay Grand Inquisitor.

So, naturally, the uncooperative weather – you know, those giant snowstorms folks back east might have noticed – provide him with a quandary.  How does one reconcile his faith that the world is becoming one gigantic orchid hothouse with the fact that it seems to be colder all the time?

Well, you start by mocking the heretics – excuse me, the “deniers”: (more…)

Some people will tell you that there is no such thing as a stupid question.  They’re wrong.  People ask stupid questions all the time.  It becomes a problem when people do it on purpose.

The “we’re just asking questions” rationale seems to be the explanation du jour for the tiresome and self-destructive continuing “Birther” fixation of some journalists who purport to be on the Right.  As depicted in a fairly straightforward Washington Independent article, WorldNetDaily Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah used his Friday night dinner speech at the Tea Party convention to “raise questions” about the President Obama’s citizenship, much to the disgust of other attendees, including Andrew Breitbart.  “It’s self-indulgent, it’s narcissistic, it’s a losing issue,” Breitbart told one of Farah’s minions, his frustration evident.

Let me add a few more adjectives.  It’s “stupid,” “irrational” and “destructive” of everything we are fighting for.  The movement might as well take out its figurative .45, aim directly at its foot, and pull the trigger. And, according to a new book by John Avlon, “Birtherism” began on the Left. (more…)