We’re already seeing how desperate the Left and their MSM allies are as 2012 nears, the economy sputters, Dems abandon ship, and Obama’s poll numbers continue to stay in the cellar.

Just last week, just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the Obama campaign and their MSM pals went apoplectic with phony outrage over an ad released by Governor Mitt Romney. The only real mistake the Romney ad made was a tactical one in that it gave Obama and his Media Palace Guards the ammunition they crave to to keep the focus on anything other than Obama’s failed record. Later, Democrats went even further and attempted to call the Romney ad — you guessed it — racist. The reasoning is so stupid I won’t waste your time, but The Hill has more.

Now Slate wants us to believe that the ad below, which quite accurately attaches Mass. Senator Scott Brown’s challenger Elizabeth Warren to Occupy Wall Street, is — you guessed it — sexist.

Judge for yourself:

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Slate’s absurd rationale:

The Crossroads GPS ad against Elizabeth Warren works not just by portraying her as radically liberal, but by implying that she is unhinged. After showing chaotic scenes of angry young mobs and what looks like a street explosion, and noting that protestors “support radical redistribution of wealth and violence,” the ad cuts to a clip of Warren’s “class warfare” speech, with the volume turned way down, so that the viewer cannot hear the warmth in her voice or the substance of her argument. She is gesticulating strenuously, and the scene implies passion without reason.

Images of female candidates looking angry or self-righteous are a staple of negative ads; the implication seems to be that they are out of control, overtaken by their own emotions and, utterly unfit for office. Nevada Sen. Harry Reid showed his opponent Sharron Angle first smiling sweetly, and then with her face contorted with feeling. “Not just extreme,” the ad intones: “dangerous.”

What’s going on here is that in collusion with their media allies, Democrats are attempting to make Republicans gunshy about launching ads that effectively criticize and define them. Everything in the Warren ad is true and even after you read Slate’s nonsense, there’s not a single frame that comes close to crossing any kind of line.

But the MSM’s tactics here are not about truth or clarity or informing the public; they are about distracting from the issues that should define the 2012 election.

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- More than 25 million watch the Cardinals’ epic World Series win over the Rangers on Friday.

- Newt Gingrich says what we all think about Meghan McCain: “How does she have a clue?” More importantly, how can we cure her suffering from the disillusionment that we care?

- The Guardian vs Reuters:

“Wow. Thanks to @Reuters for at least changing a few of the words from my story,” Miriam Elder, The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, tweeted Thursday, suggesting that Reuters had either plagiarized or borrowed heavily from her work without crediting her.

- Something about Rainn Wilson and his Twitter mishap over tacos. I forgot everything in this story when I read this:

Either way, I’d never heard of Del Taco before this, so PR success.

How can you like tacos and not have heard of Del Taco? Sure, I’m presupposing that everyone likes tacos, but egads man! There is nothing like sitting in the drive-thru of a Del Taco at 2 a.m. for some chicken soft tacos and secret sauce because everything else is closed. The moral of the story: Twitter is instant marketing.

- Dahlia Lithwick gives a half-exerted effort at spinning the complete lack of cohesive message from OWS into a “they don’t want the corporate media” defense. For a movement that doesn’t want corporate media attention because it’s corporate, they sure do whine about it a lot on all of their corporately produced devices via corporate-developed social media sites. She says to judge them by their signs.

They are holding up signs that are perfectly and intrinsically clear …

OK. If you say so.

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WARNING: This Image of Hate From Occupy LA May Have Been Placed in Our Minds by GOP Mind Control Operatives

Jews across the country who were frightened by those anti-Semites at the Occupy Wall Street protests can all relax now, because the Slate’s Dave Weigel says it’s all safe. According to Weigel OWS isn’t really anti-Semitic and/or anti-Israel it’s all just a Republican plot. Although he doesn’t say it, the implications are clear. The GOP has mind control experts who have the know-how to cause Americans to see things that aren’t there.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the RNC and NRCC tried their damnedest to argue that Occupiers are inhabiting anti-Semites. The crown jewel of the effort is one of those videos that makes liberal use of shaky video and pounding music.

There is a problem: The movement isn’t anti-Semitic. It started in New York. Its ideological hero is Naomi Klein. This is a movement studded with liberal Jews! Here’s one video that’s gotten less play than the one of the irate anti-Semitic dipshit with the “Nazi bankers” sign: The Kol Nidre in New York, at the Occupy camp.

Is it just totally nuts to worry about anti-Semitism here? Well, no. This is a protest against the banking industry. The chairman of the Fed is Jewish. The president of Goldman Sachs is Jewish. The Secretary of the Treasury is Jewish. If “anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools,” there’s a hell of a risk that people could get foolish about this.

See? Dave Weigel who is Jewish, is so calming you wouldn’t know he is a bit off the mark on just a few key points.

• “It started in New York” What does that mean? Is that Dave’s version of Jesse Jackson’s calling the “Big Apple” Hymie Town? Sure, if it started in New York it must be pro-Jewish.  I guess Weigel forgot Al Sharpton got his start in NY, where he incited two anti-Semitic Pogroms, one in Crown Heights, the other in Harlem. “It started in NY” didn’t work in that case.

• “Its ideological hero is Naomi Klein” Oh thank God! She’s a Jew, that makes me feel so much better.  That Dave Weigel really knows how to calm people down.

Naomi Klein is the perfect person to be the OWS ideological hero, she has been attacking capitalism and corporations for her entire career.  Less known is the fact that, Klein has another ideological similarity to the OWS protests, she has been demonizing Israel for almost as long as she has been demonizing capitalism.

It’s not just that she disagrees with Israeli policy but she demonizes and tries to de-legitimize the Jewish state. She uses that age-old blood libel and invents Israeli atrocities.  “[Some Jews] even think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free-card.”

In her book The Shock Doctrine Klein explains that Israel is run by a vast military-industrial complex who purposely perpetuates war against the Palestinians so they can develop and more importantly sell, new weapons on the world-wide market.

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Dave Weigel acknowledges in his Journolist 2.0 analysis that as a member of the original Journolist, his take may not be well received.

I didn’t have a problem with his write up until I got to this:

Dave Weigel of Slate reports that Random House, publisher of The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, has released the following statement on allegations that Joe McGinniss’s book is a literary hoax:

Joe McGinniss’s book The Rogue is based on the author’s extensive on-the-ground reporting in Alaska, as well as in-depth interviews he conducted with approximately 200 people who have known Governor Palin at different stages of her life and career. After a thorough and careful examination of the book, including probing discussions with the author about his sources, we are confident that the reporting it contains is solid, reliable, and well-substantiated.

Yet McGinniss revealed in an e-mail in January 2011 that Random House lawyers had informed him–after all of that “extensive-on-the-ground reporting in Alaska, as well as in-depth interviews”–that his manuscript contained nothing beyond “tawdry gossip,” and that his most “salacious stories” lacked “factual evidence.”

Yesterday, McGinniss told Mediaite: “My reporting continued beyond the date of the email.” In an attempt to prove that claim, he has released e-mails to Weigel showing his correspondence with prostitute Shailey Tripp, as he attempted to substantiate his claim that “Todd had sex with a hooker.”

But the new emails only highlight McGinniss’s decision not to include allegations about a “hooker” in the published book. They do not show why McGinniss chose to include almost every other allegation in The Rogue about which he had admitted in January that there was no “factual evidence.” McGinniss omits any emails relating to those claims. (more…)

Dave Weigel seems to admit that the mainstream media is not very important at all. He does so in a post for Slate, wherein he is trying to spin the reasons why Sarah Palin’s knocked-out-of-park speech in Wisconsin went mostly ignored by the mainstream media. Says Weigel (emphasis mine):

For what it’s worth, I mentioned Palin’s speech yesterday and talked about it on… drum roll… MSNBC. But is it a mystery or sign of bias when an author and former vice presidential candidate gives a speech at a rally and it doesn’t get national news coverage?Mansour, Nolte et al know that conservatives have all the access they want to Palin’s speech, through live-streaming and other videos. It doesn’t matter whether the media covers it.

So, according to Weigel, there is no need for silly old news programs or news networks or newspapers. People can just find the news themselves. Good to know, Dave. You know that leaves you out of a job, right? Willing to throw yourself under the bus, simply to spin away any truth that is positive toward Palin, I suppose. You’re a giver!

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Is this supposed to make it all better?

Posted by Dave Weigel at Slate:

UPDATE: Wonkette editor Ken Layne looped me in on an e-mail to AdWeek, in which he wrote that Steuf has been admonished.

I have four kids myself and I wouldn’t want them mocked on the Internet by a bunch of cretins on the Internet. And that’s just one reason why I wouldn’t parade my children around in the media. What kind of mother does that?

In any case, Jack has been admonished and put on night probation until further notice. Anything involving Palin, I want to make it extra clear that *Palin* is the problem with America. Not her kids. Not her little kid, anyway. The older ones seem to be on their own path and you can’t really blame Sarah for it, although she certainly encourages the sleaziest possible behavior from her grown children, which is hardly a very “family values” thing to do. But as far as Jack’s future, a few months on the night shift  cleaning up the furious, ALLCAPS unmoderated Wonkette comments, without pay, should teach him a thing or two about writing stuff that confuses the target. Trig is cool with us. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is a grave danger to America.

Sarah Palin didn’t “parade” Trig Palin around in the media. She held him in public. It’s hyperbole to state otherwise. Layne is unconcerned with the welfare of the Palin children, otherwise he would have pulled the post and fired the guy that wrote it costing them advertisers. Pretending to recognize and uphold “family values” is shtick Layne uses to lend himself credibility in this instance where none actually exists.

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I’ve had my own questions about the plan; yesterday I interviewed Rep. Todd Rokita of Indiana who helped to draft the Path to Prosperity, and he confirmed my fears: in order for the plan to work, Democrats have to a) accept it and b) economic and congressional variables must stay the same for the next 26 years. Otherwise, I like it. I want to be optimistic but some of that is tempered from Ryan’s past as a congressman who helped bring us TARP and other programs where big spending actually helped to create the tea party. In short: I think Ryan’s plan a nice gamble but I’m more of a cynic.

However, that Congressman Ryan goes so far as to defund health control warrants much credit and I was please to see Slate notice it, too. Slate doesn’t have to agree, but so far it’s one of the first liberal publications that noticed hey, Republicans have some good ideas, too.

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From Slate:

Andrew Brietbart’s ad hominem attack on Van Jones in The Daily Caller — right down to calling him a “commie punk” and “a cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak” — violates the tenets of debate and civil discourse we have strived for since the day we launched. As a result, we will no longer feature his posts on the front page.

He is welcome to continue publishing his work on HuffPost provided it adheres to our editorial guidelines, as the two posts he published on HuffPost did — guidelines that include a strict prohibition on ad hominem attacks. Our decision today recognizes that placing posts on the front page is an editorial call that elevates some posts over others, and is an indication of how seriously we take these judgment calls.

A strict prohibition on ad hominem attacks! (“Against Arianna’s friends,” is the big of that sentence that spokesman Marco Ruiz left out.) (Also there is apparently no prohibition on constant, practically obsessive race-baiting, but whatever.) (And obviously there is no prohibition whatsoever on spreading toxic bullshit about autism and other assorted crimes against science.)

Andrew has now gotten exactly what he wanted. He doesn’t need to publish his idiocies at the Huffington Post. But getting banned from the Huffington Post proves his thesis about the repressive, anti-free speech liberal media. And he’ll never shut up about it. [my emphasis]

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Well, we know which one Salon Mary Elizabeth Williams would save first if her house was burning down. If you think that the article reads more like seething, unspoken envy of a beautiful starlet that seems to have it all, you’re not alone. The entire piece has a Sweet Valley High mean girl aesthetic, in which a beta-wanna-be-alpha female projects her insecurities onto the popular girl by way of criticism over the most inane things.

The tagline: “In her acceptance speech, the “Black Swan” star suggests that pregnancy trumps a career. She’s wrong.”

Did you hear that, Natlie Portman? What’s-her-face at Salon thinks you’re wrong. No! Williams couldn’t let Portman have her moment in the sun without seizing upon her big, round, potential-laden belly.

thanking her fellow nominees, her parents, the directors who’ve guided her career, and then at last “my beautiful love,” dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, for giving her “the most important role of my life.” That’d be when he impregnated her, I’d wager.

At the time, the comment jarred me, as it does every time anyone refers to motherhood as the most important thing a woman can possibly do. But the reason why didn’t hit until I saw the ever razor sharp Lizzie Skurnick comment on Twitter today that, “Like, my garbageman could give you your greatest role in life, too, lady.”

Yes, because turning bathroom stall wall-level writing into an article for Salon is exponentially more important than creating and fostering life and raising it for the next eighteen years. (Natalie Portman is a/n [insert pejorative here]!)

But is motherhood really a greater role than being secretary of state or a justice on the Supreme Court? Is reproduction automatically the greatest thing Natalie Portman will do with her life?

Williams’ presuppositions are based on humanism which downgrades the divine and places greater emphasis on man’s desires. Williams misses that her examples of secretary of state or the Supreme Court were created by man, and that man had to be born in order for those positions to be created. She argues that the things created by humans, who required birth for their establishment, are greater than the that which created their originator.

This is indicative of what’s wrong with progressivism. The logic is insipid.

If Williams can point to me an example of a job created by an individual who existed without birth, I’ll be glad to discuss her argument on those terms.

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Brent Bozell has a great piece on the irony surrounding the media reaction to Planned Parenthood.

The same gaggle of broadcast TV watchdogs which has mustered endless outrage over the notion that the Catholic Church would fail to alert authorities about sexual abuse of minors is utterly uninterested in the sexual abuse of minors when someone more pleasing to secular progressives – like that abortion factory Planned Parenthood — is caught on camera.

Live Action has been exposing Planned Parenthood since 2007. You would think that by 2011, their clinic personnel would be more careful. It is just the opposite. Their disinterest toward statutory rape and child sexual abuse is shocking.

[...]

This woman has now been fired. But lying and squashing information is apparently Planned Parenthood policy. Another video broke, this time from Falls Church, Virginia, where a clinic worker told the man “We don’t necessarily look at the legal status, like I said. Abortion appointments do require photo ID. It’s nothing as far as records. It’s just photo ID that’s ever going to be required.”

[...]

The networks refused to acknowledge these stings. But it’s not a matter of journalistic principle, objecting to hidden cameras. It’s all about politics.

Twenty years ago, on the night of Halloween, 1991, ABC’s “Prime Time Live” aired a story based on its own investigation, complete with hidden cameras, of…crisis pregnancy centers. They were out to expose the allegedly awful practice of pro-lifers advising pregnant women against abortions. Within days of the ABC story, CBS and NBC also aired reports with hidden cameras and female producers lying about being pregnant.

Bozell’s response is some much-needed sense in a conversation that has sorely lacked it.

Big Time Feminist Amanda Marcotte, most notable for embarrassing herself while working for the John Edwards campaign, prizes her outdated snark (is there a more annoying term for this word?) more than the issue which she claims to care for in order to make bank: women’s causes.

Because if complicity in whoring out underage girls to satisfy money a pimp doesn’t scream GIRL POWER, I don’t know what does.

No, the worst thing is someone who makes a living off of being some feminist messiah refusing to speak out against child sex-trafficking because they would rather defend a company than kids.

“Let’s ri-i-i-i-i-ide …”

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David Weigel’s recent Slate piece on Jim DeMint (R, SC) is a perfect example of a gentle leftwing undertone sprinkled into a story like seasoning salt in order to gently spin a story to negatively effect conservatives, or at the very least to artificially heighten tensions in order to make it seem as if conservatives are at each other’s throats.

Weigel’s piece was a report on the first ever meeting of the Senate’s Tea Party Caucus headed up by Senator Jim DeMint and Weigel was bound and determined to make the meeting into some sort of conservative slugfest where all parties were taking each other on in a cage match to top even the World Wrestling Federation’s best brawls.

Mr. Weigel started out with an account of DeMint’s encounter with Tea Party activist Lisa Miller from Alexandria, Virginia. Miller was insisting that DeMint balance the budget but opposed any constitutional amendment to require it. DeMint, on the other hand, was adamant that it would take a constitutional amendment to balance the budget because regardless that congress always has had the tools to balance the budget anytime they wish — as Miller pointed out – he maintains that congress does not have the “institutional discipline” to do so.

DeMint kept walking her back. “The reason a lot of us are supporting a constitutional amendment,” he said, “is that they’ve done things before and made laws like pay-go–you can’t pass anything without paying for it. But every time it came up they’d waive it, with 51 votes. It was like a joke. The Social Security lockbox was supposed to keep us from spending Social Security funds. We kept spending them. There’s no institutional discipline.”

Weigel presented this as a contentious exchange, most especially by insisting that, “DeMint kept trying to convince her that he–Jim DeMint!–was not a squish.” But there is no real indication that it was ever that contentious. Sure Miller and DeMint had a small disagreement over policy direction, but no one was calling DeMint a squish. Especially Miller because even Weigel was forced to admit at the end of his piece that Miller thought the whole meeting “had gone brilliantly.”

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I’ll keep it short.

Wherein Weisberg pens a haphazard emotional rant about how guns are bad, mkay? minus fact, statistic, anything that would point out that his piece is somehow separate from what one would find scrawled on the inside of a Trapper Keeper:

But the Tea Party movement did make it appreciably more likely that a disturbed person like Loughner would react, would be able to react, and would not be prevented from reacting, in the crazy way he did.

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Dahlia Lithwick’s recent piece in Slate had me cringing almost immediately when she mashed this out from her keyboard:

the Constitution is always going to raise more questions than it answers and confound more readers than it comforts.

Frankly, I’m more dumbfounded by this statement than anything I’ve read in the crystal clear U.S. Constitution. The only thing confounding about the Constitution is that contemporary readers cannot reconcile how our current public policy and federal power both represent a substantial shift away from the original intent of the document.

That a product of an American law school can even fathom this confused view of the Constitution is troubling. Perhaps law schools should insist that their students take some remedial classes in American legal and political history as part of their JDs. After all, this is a question of compact theory and the enumerated powers of the federal government. Then again, overly creative lawyers are generally the problem regarding our public policy gone wild and increasing destruction of federalism, so I’m obviously the idiot here for expecting a lawyer, or a law school, to denounce the legal cash cow publicly.

And then there’s this:

It’s because the Constitution wasn’t written to reflect the views of any one American.

I’m not sure what the relevance of this statement is. It makes no difference whatsoever if the constitution was written to reflect the views of one, two, 17, or 3,000,000 Americans; the document simply states the basic powers given to the newly formed federal government.  This isn’t complicated, unless you’re a lawyer for whom “complicated” = penumbras, emanations, & interpretations which, you guessed it… lead to favorable judgment$.

There’s more:

the folks who will be reading the Constitution aloud this week can’t read the parts permitting slavery or prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment using only their inside voices, while shouting their support for the 10th Amendment.

They can shout loudly all of the above because the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude (I honestly have no idea was the 8th Amendment reference is all about). The 10th Amendment is not automatically disqualified at a later time because the Articles did not expressly forbid slavery within the individual states.

The Constitution was written as a limited set of powers, both well defined and yes, ultimately malleable… via the amendment process, as illustrated by the example of the 13th Amendment. That these points, which are as obvious as a bowling ball dropped on one’s toe, are not acknowledged by Lithwick is quite perplexing. How the Constitution came to be is out there for all to be had; some just don’t bother because we are so far gone from the original intent that many people cannot fathom what really happened, nor does it serve them any purpose to acknowledge it.

The popular myth that the Constitution was left purposely vague is right up there with the existence of Santa Claus. True, the limited powers written into the document were almost immediately exceeded, hence the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, but the Constitution was promoted to the states for ratification in generally the same way the Tea Party promotes the document… that it was clear, limited, and would be strictly adhered to; this was the only way the thing could be agreed to by many states in the first place.  I teach this each semester and my freshmen juco students seem to grasp it quite handily. The framers dealt in what they considered to be “truths”, not fleeting improvisational platitudes which would make the drafting a constitution moot in the first place.

Which part of Jefferson’s response to the Alien & Sedition Acts is not clear?:

1. Resolved, That the several states composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that by compact, under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each state to itself the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: That to this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, its co-states forming as to itself, the other party: That the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and measure of redress. ~Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolution, 1798

This was the original understanding of the Constitution. The bottom line is that the experiment in loose construction, which saw many great advances in civil rights, has gotten completely out of control and is running the risk of pile driving the United States straight into bankruptcy. Period. The Tea Party, while not only representing a peaceful, healthy expression of the 1st Amendment, is a necessary check on a federal behemoth that has gotten way out of control.  That the Tea Party is derided in the manner it is by some of the mainstream media is absolutely juvenile.

Both parties are to blame for our current bloated federal government, but my question is: which party will be part of the solution?  Which side of the political spectrum represents a way out of the mess, and which side wants to keep beer-bonging the “Ah screw it, just put it on the credit card” Kool-Aid? I wonder why both sides of the aisle cannot come to the conclusion that the federal government has bloated well beyond any reasonable level.

A general thought now seems to be that moving back toward stronger federalism would mean a reversion back to 100 years ago, when Jim Crow ruled the South, restrictive covenants in housing were okay, et cetera … What seems to be falling under the radar is that the amendments to the Constitution are as binding as the Articles themselves, as outlined specifically in Article V. Moreover, one may agree that much of the case law regarding constitutional issues is perfectly legitimate and still acknowledge that we’ve gotten away from the original intent of the Constitution itself. That’s what I’d like to see. Many of the gains in case law were obviously necessary, specifically regarding civil rights. However, when will these attacks on strict construction and the legitimate history of how the Constitution came to be cease?  A move away from the partisan dumbing down of the issue is in order. Just tell it like it is. That’s how you build a consensus.

Tea Party 101 should be mandatory for all 1st year law and J school students: big government is best held at the state level, where the damage is limited to 1/50th of the nation instead of allowing our centralized bloatocracy to foist its wasteful agenda on the entire nation as a whole. Basic rights guaranteed by the Amendments of the Constitution can still be enforced in the absence of the huge, largely unaccountable, unconstitutional 4th branch of government… an administrative branch that has led us by the nose down a path of national insolvency over the better part of a century.

Give Pamela Anderson a new hairdo in 1991 and it is an acceptable improvement. Give her 18 breast augmentations, collagen injections, and botox, and she turns into a grotesque, puffy monstrosity. That’s where we are; yes, we are the dirigible-breasted, cartoon Pam of today instead of the perfectly attractive and engaging Miss Pamela Anderson of “Home Improvement” fame.

Just wait until the Supreme Court gets five or more hardcore activist right wingers on it; I’d guess Ms. Lithwick will then be raising her Gadsden flag higher than anybody, right along with the Tea Party.

In a recent post in Slate magazine, Dahlia Lithwick takes aim right at the forehead of the Tea Party movement and its supposed prostration before the U.S. Constitution.  What prompted this latest wave anti-Tea Party tantrums by the left is the impertinence of an oral reading of the U.S. Constitution on the floor of the newly sworn in House of Representatives.  Apparently the left finds it a bit odd (“threatening” probably more accurate)  that engaged American citizens have the brazenness to believe that – even with its admitted imperfections – the document created by such brilliant minds as James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, et al.  and later modified with a list of protected liberties by the likes of Thomas Jefferson is a pretty good reference point to use as they embark on rectifying what they see is a nation gone astray … socially, politically, economically and spiritually.

With typical hyperbole of which liberals are so adept at accusing  conservatives, Ms. Lithwick goes on to label the interest in the document around which the framework of this entire nation was constructed as a “fetish.”  Setting aside this charged phraseology that doesn’t deserve comment, the crux of her argument is two-fold.  First, that to be a believer in the Constitution is to accept as gospel its scattered flaws as well as many virtues.  Second, that the desire to return to a less centralized apparatus whereby the Tenth Amendment (reserving non-listed federal powers for the states) is moved to the forefront of governance is one rooted in historical ignorance and even a notion that could do more harm than good where freedom is concerned.

She parades out a series of quotations from like-minded loose constructionist law professors and progressive journalists to back up her thesis too numerous to pick apart one by one in this limited format.  But I will say that for someone who chides the tea partiers for placing what she sees as an inordinate level of trust in the states vis-à-vis the federal government, her reliance on the courts to be the final arbiter of justice or even correct policy is just as much a leap of faith. She offers as an example of states abusing its citizenry outside the protective envelop of the almighty federal Oz this predictable liberal feminist talking point: “Try telling [the notion that states’ rights equates to more freedoms] to a woman seeking reproductive freedom in Virginia.”  (No mention of an innocent baby being denied its right to life, of course … but that’s another article).

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Slate Magazine’s Jack Shafer has called for Sec. of State Hillary Clinton to resign her post after classified cables sent be her were released in the Wikileaks document dump.  Slate is often an Obama ally however Shafer said, “The leaked cables make it impossible for Hillary Clinton to continue as secretary of state.”

Not withstanding the fact that numerous nations dabble in spying and say things in classified cables that aren’t meant for public consumption, previous Secretaries of State have engaged in similar efforts.  Shafer acknowledges this but claims, “what makes Clinton’s sleuthing unique is the paper trail that documents her spying-on-their-diplomats-with-our-diplomat orders.”  And because its now public, Shafer says we must give the offended nations Clinton’s “scalp” to “save face.”

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Upon reading Slate writer John Dickerson’s breadcrumbs piece attempting to provide backup to Sudeep Reddy’s shark jump in response to Palin’s QE2 remarks.

Palin’s call yesterday for Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to “cease and desist” with a second round of deliberate inflation and simplified the far-reaching effect the devalued dollar has on average Americans:

I’m deeply concerned about the Federal Reserve’s plans to buy up anywhere from $600 billion to as much as $1 trillion of government securities. The technical term for it is “quantitative easing.” It means our government is pumping money into the banking system by buying up treasury bonds. And where, you may ask, are we getting the money to pay for all this? We’re printing it out of thin air.

[...]

All this pump priming will come at a serious price. And I mean that literally: everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher. And it’s not just groceries. Oil recently hit a six month high, at more than $87 a barrel. The weak dollar – a direct result of the Fed’s decision to dump more dollars onto the market – is pushing oil prices upwards. That’s like an extra tax on earnings.

Sudeep Reddy couldn’t tangle with Palin’s correct assertion that the Fed’s choice of inflation (one of a couple ways this administration believes to be the panacea for a recession: inflation, tax hike) actually contributes to the toxic environment which has scared businesses and investors from further revenue growth and job creation, so Reddy relies on straw man to afford the jab.

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So, NPR canned Juan Williams (yeah, like I wasn’t gunna do this story). If you aren’t familiar with NPR, simply imagine yourself, on a bus, sitting next to Judd Hirsch.

Anyway, it’s all due to comments Juan made on the “The O’Reilly Factor,” last Monday. There Bill asked him to respond to “The cold truth [that] jihad, aided …by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”

Williams replied, “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot….But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

Racist.

He also brought up the Times Square scumbag – who had no problem saying that the war with America is just beginning.

But as Slate points out, the passage quoted by NPR was a spoon-fed clip that dumps out before Williams says his worry reflects the problem of generalizing about groups of people.

I doubt Media Matters will cover that.

But anyway, you could say NPR fired him for being honest. For saying what everyone with a brain is thinking (which eliminates Media Matters). (more…)

I’ve been sifting through hundreds of emails, stories, reactions to Juan Williams’ sensational firing by NPR over his remarks on Bill O’Reilly’s show, covered on Big Journalism for the past 24 hours. I’ve also read Slate’s ridiculous comparison of Williams to Sherrod. Williams didn’t call everyone a racist and help bilk taxpayers of billions for unfounded claims, but hey.

Those defending NPR’s reactions say that Williams “smeared” Muslims and portrayed them in a bad light.

Does not a group of men hijacking planes and flying them into the World Trade Center killing over three thousand people in the name of Islam portray Islam in a bad light?

Does not men hijacking a plane to fly into the Pentagon in the name of Islam portray Islam in a bad light?

When individuals strap bombs onto their bodies and detonate in public thoroughfares, killing men, women, and precious innocent children, all in the name of Islam, does not that paint Islam in a bad light?

When men bomb the USS Cole in the name of Islam, does that not portray Islam in a bad light?

When a Chechen group terrorizes school childrenin Beslan in the name of Islam, does that not portray Islam in a bad light?

(more…)

JournoList scandal is back and prepare for it to be a driving force in the news for quite some time. The Daily Caller published an article tonight indicating they’ve obtained emails from the JournoList and the initial details are as damning as we expected when the list-serv, founded by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein in 2007, surfaced with the Dave Weigel kerfuffle last month.

Snippets from the article below, but make sure to read the whole thing at the Daily Caller and return to Big Journalism early and often as we unpack the details that emerge and track the fallout from this seminal event in the history of left-wing media bias.  It’s unclear exactly what the Daily Caller has, but there’s certainly no indication from this article they’ve already laid all their cards out on the table.

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.” (more…)