UPDATE – University of Kentucky settles for $125,000. Prof. Gaskell was represented by the ACLJ.
University of Kentucky was wise to settle this early as they had no chance of victory. Considering the progress FIRE has been making in the courts to strip administrators of immunity soon we will see not the taxpayers paying these damages, but administrators who foolishly break the law.
The University of Kentucky … KENTUCKY folks… This is smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt. People of Kentucky are you going to tolerate this? Call your legislator today.
Their own university emails show it all. In spite of the fact that one member of the search committee said he was “breathtakingly above the other applicants.”
More censorship form the progressive secular left…… what a surprise…
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — An astronomer argues that his Christian faith and his peers’ belief that he is an evolution skeptic kept him from getting a prestigious job as the director of a new student observatory at the University of Kentucky.
Martin Gaskell quickly rose to the top of a list of applicants being considered by the university’s search committee. One member said he was “breathtakingly above the other applicants.”
Others openly worried his Christian faith could conflict with his duties as a scientist, calling him “something close to a creationist” and “potentially evangelical.”
Even though Gaskell says he is not a creationist, he claims he was passed over for the job at UK’s MacAdam Student Observatory three years ago because of his religion and statements that were perceived to be critical of the theory of evolution. [But wait, isn't it a scientists job to be skeptical of every theory? That is what I have been taught in science classes - IUSB Vision Editor]
Gaskell has sued the university, claiming lost income and emotional distress. Last month a judge rejected a motion from the university and allowed it to go to trial Feb. 8.
“There is no dispute that based on his application, Gaskell was a leading candidate for the position,” U.S. District Judge Karl S. Forester wrote in the ruling.
Gaskell later learned that professors had discussed his purported religious views during the search process. Gaskell told the AP in an e-mail that he didn’t grow frustrated, but felt “one should not allow universities to get away with religious discrimination.”
University scientists wondered to each other in internal e-mails if Gaskell’s faith would interfere with the job, which included public outreach, according to court records.
The topic became so heated behind the scenes that even university biologists, who believed Gaskell was a critic of evolution, weighed in by citing a controversial Bible-based museum in Kentucky that had just opened.
“We might as well have the Creation Museum set up an outreach office in biology,” biology professor James Krupa wrote to a colleague in an October 2007 e-mail. The museum was making national headlines at the time for exhibits that assert the literal truth of the Bible’s creation story. [It is this evidence that is going to sink them, even if the local district judge rules against Gaskell, the university is almost certain to lose on appeal. - Editor]
Science professors cited a lecture Gaskell has given called “Modern Astronomy, the Bible and Creation,“ which he developed for ”Christians and others interested in Bible and science questions…,” according to an outline of the lecture. Gaskell told the AP he was invited to give the lecture at UK in 1997, and organizers had read his notes.
The wide-ranging lecture outlines historical scientific figures who discuss God and interpretations of the creation story in the biblical chapter Genesis. Also in the notes, Gaskell mentions evolution, saying the theory has “significant scientific problems” and includes “unwarranted atheistic assumptions and extrapolations,” according to court records.
Gaskell was briefly asked about the lecture during his job interview in 2007 with the chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michael Cavagnero, according to Gaskell’s deposition. Gaskell said he felt that questions related to religion during the job interview were “inappropriate.”
“I think that if I had a document like this and I was advocating atheism … I don’t think it would be an issue,” he said of his lecture.
Science professors also expressed concern that hiring Gaskell would damage the university’s image.
An astrophysics professor, Moshe Elitzur, told Cavagnero that the hire would be a “huge public relations mistake,” according to an e-mail from Cavagnero in court records.
“Moshe predicts that he would not be here one month before the (Lexington) Herald-Leader headline would read: ‘UK hires creationist to direct new student observatory.’”
University spokesman Jay Blanton declined to comment Monday because the litigation is pending.
Gaskell said he is not a “creationist” and his views on evolution are in line with other biological scientists. In his lecture notes, Gaskell also distances himself from Christians who believe the earth is a few thousand years old, saying their assertions are based on “mostly very poor science.”
Gaskell’s lawsuit is indicative of an increasingly tense debate between religion and science on college campuses and elsewhere, said Steven K. Green, a law professor and director of the Center for Religion, Law & Democracy at Willamette University in Salem, Ore.
“I think it reflects a phenomenon that the sides in this debate are becoming more encamped, they’re hunkering down,” Green said. “Because certainly within the biology community and within the science community generally, they see the increasing attacks creationists are making as very threatening to their existence — and vice versa, to a certain extent.”
Gaskell was uniquely qualified for the new position at the University of Kentucky, according to court records, because he oversaw the design and construction of an observatory at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He also advised UK during the building of the MacAdam facility. He currently teaches at the University of Texas.
His attorney, Frank Manion, said scientists at UK were too quick to place Gaskell on one side of the creation-evolution debate.
“Unfortunately too many people get hung up on the idea that you have to be one extreme or the other,” said Manion, who works for American Center for Law & Justice, which focuses on religious freedom cases. They say “you can’t be a religious believer and somebody who accepts evolution, which is clearly not true. And Gaskell’s a perfect example of that.”
Sustainability. It sounds like such a yummy word, such a responsible word. Doesn’t it?
Do not be fooled. Sustainability is a euphemism for leviathan government, eco-extremism, the consolidation of wealth and power to an elite few, and the central planning of not just our economy, but our communities as in where and how we live.
The more the planner’s plans fail the more the planners plan, so in reality these ideas are anything but sustainable.
Academics and administrators who push this nonsense are violating the most basic academic rules of conduct. The purpose of an education is to prepare people to think for themselves, not to indoctrinate them. Believe it or not academics there is a difference between a school and a political party. Consider this a friendly warning; if you keep going down the path you are going, which is making public education subversive, you are inviting legislation to fix these problems permanently. The American people are waking up and they have had just about enough of government’s nonsense and that very much includes your behavior. Straighten up or face legislation that will either mandate your curriculum for you or defund your institutions.
Do you teach sustainability? Do you research sustainability? Will you promote sustainability? Are you setting an example in sustainability? Give us details.
Rather intrusive questions like these are popping up in faculty surveys across the country. This week, two Argus volunteers—one on the East coast, one on the West—wrote to us after they were each startled by the bluntness of their universities’ inquiries.
Faculty members at San Diego State University recently received an email from Provost Nancy Marlin asking them to “take a few minutes to respond to San Diego State’s first survey on faculty teaching and research related to sustainability.”
The survey asks nine questions. The first is, “Do you teach sustainability focused courses?” Fine print under the question explains that these are “Courses in which the primary content focuses on the Environment, Social Justice, Economic Equality, Human Health; Resource Management; Environmental Ethics, Economics or Law; Sustainable Tourism Management, Conservation and/or Preservation, Land Use Planning and Development, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management.”
While such subjects as the environment, ecosystem management, conservation, and resource management make immediate sense as names for stewardship of the earth, a few aren’t so obvious. Social justice, economic equality, economics, and law don’t seem to be specifically “sustainability focused” or fit with the environmental theme.
That’s because there’s a lot more to sustainability than just the environment. For a great many of its proponents, the environment serves as a cover to smuggle in a host of other ideologies. As the University of Delaware framed it in its 2007 residence life materials, “sustainability is a viable conduit for citizenship education and the development of a particular values system.”
Part of that “particular values system,” we’ve found, is a proclivity to big government, economic redistribution, and politically correct preferences for certain identity groups. That’s how sustainability is able to include ideas such as social justice, economic equality, economics, and law. Indeed, the top of the survey says:
Sustainability curriculum and research activities are not limited to considerations of environmental impact of human development or climate change but include content on interrelated social, economic, ethical, and environment dimensions.
The tension between sustainability’s shared aims is commonly depicted in a Venn diagram, with three interlocking circles labeled “Environment,” “Economy,” and “Society.”
This intrusion into partisan politics and economics is what makes “sustainability” unfit to be “the foundation of all learning and practice in higher education,” as powerful advocacy groups such as Second Nature are trying to make it.
Second Question:
But let’s move on to the second, more important question: “Do you incorporate sustainability as a distinct course component or deal with a single sustainability issue in any of your courses that are not specifically sustainability focused? Please indicate how many courses you teach that have a sustainability related course component.”
Selecting a number, 0-9, is the sole possible response here. Answering “no” isn’t an option—in fact, only four out of the nine questions have a “no” option.
This question is a net to catch all courses that aren’t explicitly sustainability focused (which are themselves quite widely defined). The implication is that there is no course that sustainability can’t touch, no subject too self-contained for sustainability to be squeezed in.
There’s where that phrase “the foundation of all learning and practice in higher education” comes in. Sustainability, say its advocates, should be the primary goal of academic learning. Not only if you’re studying to be an environmental engineer—or even an economist or lawyer—but also if you want to be a nurse, a mathematician, or a philosopher. Like diversity, sustainability doesn’t stop with administrators but turns a greedy eye toward the curriculum. And it won’t be content with just some of it.
Third Question:
The third question presses for specifics: “How do you incorporate sustainability into your courses that are not sustainability focused? Check all that apply:”
Followup Question:
A follow-up question to this one is intended to gauge faculty members’ commitment levels: “Would you be willing to integrate (or integrate more thoroughly) sustainability concepts in the courses you teach that are not sustainability focus [sic]? This may be phrased as a question, but its message is loud and clear. Essentially it means, “Get on board with our agenda.”
“No, it does not relate to my subject,” and “No, I am not interested in sustainability” are in the drop-down menu as options. It would be interesting to know how respondents who select these answers will be marked in the university’s records. Will they be asked or given incentives to reconsider?
Fourth Question:
Conforming Students to the New Ethics.
The answer set for the fourth question is where things really get strange. Most courses are now required to announce in advance a list of student learning outcomes—things students should have mastered by the end of the semester. Student learning outcomes as a concept tends to encourage professors to come up with low aims and high-sounding words. Here are the ones SDSU wants to see, some of which sound as if they came from the educational jargon generator:
Do the courses you teach include any of the following student learning outcomes? Check all that apply:
Understand and be able to effectively communicate the concept of sustainability
Develop and use an ethical perspective in which students view themselves as embedded in the fabric of an interconnected world
Become aware of and explore the connections between their chosen course of study and sustainability
Develop technical skills or expertise necessary to implement sustainable solutions
Understand the way in which sustainable thinking and decision-making contributes to the process of creating solutions for current and emerging social, environmental, and economic crises
Contribute practical solutions to real-world sustainability challenges
Synthesize understanding of social, economic, and environmental systems and reason holistically
“An ethical perspective”? We’ve seen sustainability’s strange, non-humanistic definitions of “ethics,” its stricter-than-Puritan moral codes, and its overtly religious nature. We’ve also seen that a nation’s manner of educating shapes the character of its people. So what character quality does sustainability ethics seek to instill in students? The ability to “view themselves as embedded in the fabric of an interconnected world.”
What does that even mean? It sounds more like burying your face in a planet-sized pillow than using “an ethical perspective.” The word perspective is also troublesome. Higher education’s role is not to tell students which perspectives they should adopt, but to give them the tools to develop their own.
There Is a Right Answer -
In her email, Provost Marlin said that taking this survey is “critical” in order to “ensure that San Diego State is more competitive in many of the external ‘green’ ratings and rankings, which are increasingly important to students.” She does not point to any evidence that incorporating sustainability into more of the curriculum will give students a better education or give faculty members a deeper knowledge of their disciplines. The rationale, instead, is to do something that students think is important. This seems on plane with parents who appease their children by giving them whatever they want. Is that wise? Is it good for students in the long run?
SDSU’s choice to conduct this kind of assessment has some serious implications. Such a survey has the weight of institutional authority behind it. If you’re a faculty member and receive Provost Marlin’s email, you’re going to feel obliged to answer a certain way, and to indicate some eagerness to get on the bandwagon. Again, while there aren’t known incentives or consequences for answering one way or the other, this one-track survey says clearly, “Follow the pattern we laid out for you.”
This pressure means that many professors will exaggerate their interest in sustainability, which likely means the university will brag about its high faculty involvement rate. Green ratings will soar and outsiders (including prospective students) will get the “right” picture.
As of today, hundreds of college and university presidents have vowed to make sustainability “part of the curriculum for all students.” The president of Unity College declared, “It has to be ubiquitous, it has to be done by everyone, it has to be part of the whole infrastructure.” Colleges and universities are on the verge of a major overhaul of higher education to refit it around sustainability. Questions such as, “How do you incorporate sustainability courses?” are only the beginning.
A supervisor for the now defunct political advocacy group the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has entered into a plea bargain with prosecutors in a case alleging that canvassers were illegally paid to register Nevada voters during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Amy Busefink, 28, pleaded no-contest in state court to two misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit the crime of compensation for registration of voters. Her nolo contendere plea acknowledged the state had sufficient evidence for a conviction if the case went to trial.
Busefink is expected to get a slap on the wrist, according to critics of ACORN, with only one year of probation, a $1,000 fine and 100 hours of community service probable.
Last month, House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri applauded reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had opened a criminal investigation into whether the left-wing advocacy group ACORN has violated federal election law by fostering and promoting a national program of voter registration fraud.
The Associated Press reported at the time that “the FBI is actively pursuing leads in the investigation of ACORN. Word of the investigation comes less than a week after Blunt joined Reps. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Tom Cole (R-Okla.), and Lamar Smith (R-Texas) in sending a letter to the Department of Justice urging it to act.”
Blunt, a former secretary of state in Missouri, joined other House leaders in urging the Bureau to “take all active and appropriate measures” to ensure the civil rights of legitimate voting Americans aren’t diluted by systemic voter fraud.
Pajamas Media has a fabulous post about the 10 most gerrymandered districts in the country. For those of you who do not know what gerrymandering is, it is the drawing of districts in long snake like scribbles in order to generate a politically motivated outcome.
Here in Indiana, the Democrats twisted out a portion of Elkhart county like a long snake for the express purpose of drawing our Congressman Chris Chocola out of the district.
GoHERE to see the material and wow is it educational. It goes to show just how far government will go to manipulate and thwart the votes of some to amplify the votes of others.
One hundred and thirty six years ago this week, Winston Churchill—arguably the leading statesman of the twentieth century—was born. The son of a British father and an American mother, Churchill is often remembered for his formidable oratory skills and his love of fine cigars. Yet Churchill was also a great friend to America whose warnings about the empty promises of the nascent welfare state have come to fruition.
A great admirer of America, Churchill especially praised our founding document: “The Declaration is not only an American document. It follows on the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights as the third great title deed on which the liberties of the English-speaking peoples are founded.” Though Britain and America were two separate nations with different forms of governments, they were united in principle: “I believe that our differences are more apparent than real, and are the result of geographical and other physical conditions rather than any true division of principle.” As Justin Lyons explains in “Winston Churchill’s Constitutionalism: A Critique of Socialism in America,” Churchill’s ideas about individual liberty, constitutionalism, and limited government “stemmed from his explicit agreement with the crucial statements of these principles by the American Founders.”
When Churchill saw America’s principles of liberty, constitutionalism, and limited government, threatened with the rise of the welfare state, he admonished America to resist this soft despotism. In “Roosevelt from Afar,” Churchill admits that the American economy was suffering when FDR took office, but FDR used this crisis as an opportunity to centralize his political authority [Sound familiar? LINK - IUSB Vision Editor] rather than to bolster the free market through decentralized alternatives. Churchill commends Roosevelt’s desire to improve the economic well-being for poorer Americans [FDR's New Deal never got non-farm unemployment below 20%. What it accomplished was a great expansion of government power, prolonged misery for the American people, and a supreme court that abandoned the idea of limited government after the court stacking threat. - IUSB Vision Editor], but he critiques Roosevelt’s policies toward trade unionism and attacks on wealthy Americans as harmful to the free enterprise system. Drawing on Britain’s experience with trade unions, Churchill understood that unions can cripple an economy: “when one sees an attempt made within the space of a few months to lift American trade unionism by great heaves and bounds [to equal that of Great Britain],” one worries that result could be “a general crippling of that enterprise and flexibility upon which not only the wealth, but the happiness of modern communities depends.” Similarly, redistribution of wealth through penalties on the rich harms the economy: “far from depriving ordinary people of their earnings, [the millionaire] launches enterprise and carries it through, raises values, and he expands that credit without which on a vast scale no fuller economic life can be opened to the millions. To hunt wealth is not to capture commonwealth.” Ultimately, attacks on the wealthy only serve as a distraction from other economic issues.
We can readily recall Churchill’s foresight in foreign affairs—his warnings about appeasing Hitler and the rise of the Soviet Union—but we forget his warnings about America’s welfare state. Unlike the progressives in America and abroad, Churchill recognized that tyranny is still possible—even with a well-intentioned welfare state. Political change does not necessarily mean change for the better. Throughout the nineteenth century, political progress was assumed to be boundless and perpetual. After “terrible wars shattering great empires, laying nations low, sweeping away old institutions and ideas with a scourge of molten steel,” it became evident that the twentieth century would not live up to the nineteenth century’s promise of progress. Democratic regimes—even in America—would not be immune from destruction and degradation.
Years later, Churchill’s warnings about trade unionism and redistribution have proven accurate. Though our current economic situation seems bleak, we must also remember (as Churchill reminds us) that politics is not a mere victim of history. Just as progress is not inevitable in politics, neither is decline. Isn’t it time we looked to our old friend Winston Churchill?
BY THE NUMBERS: DEMS’ LAST-MINUTE, $1.1 TRILLION SPENDING BILL CONTINUES WASHINGTON’S JOB-KILLING SPENDING BINGE
GOP URGES PRESIDENT OBAMA TO VETO RECKLESS SPENDING BILL, REAFFIRMS PLEDGE TO IMMEDIATELY CUT SPENDING IN JANUARY
December 15, 2010 | House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) | Permalink
While millions of Americans are struggling to make ends meet this holiday season, Senate Democrats proved just how out-of-touch they are yesterday by unveiling a $1.1 trillion-dollar spending bill loaded with thousands of earmarks costing billions of taxpayer dollars. Democrats are hoping to ram the bill through Congress this week, seeing it as “their last chance at delivering pork before serious fiscal belt tightening begins next year.” This latest 1,924-page spending monstrosity is nothing less than an insult to the American people who have been pleading with Democrats inWashington to stop their job-killing out-of-control spending spree and focus on creating jobs.
With the unemployment rate near 10 percent and the national debt climbing by the day, it is clear that America’s economy cannot afford for Democrats’ reckless spending binge to continue. Here is a by-the-numbers look at how Democrats’ latest spending spree will add to their already-extensive record of fiscal failure:
6,600: Total number of earmarks in the Senate Democrats’ pork-laden omnibus spending bill. (The Hill, 12/14/10)
1,924: Number of pages in the Senate Democrats’ pork-laden omnibus spending bill. (The Washington Post, 12/15/10)
$575.13 Million: Amount of spending per page in the Senate Democrats’ pork-laden omnibus spending bill. (The Washington Times, 12/14/10)
$78 Billion: Amount of taxpayer money that would be saved if Congress would adopt the Republicans’ plan to cut spending back to pre-‘stimulus,’ pre-bailout levels as outlined in the Pledge to America. (Pledge to America, Accessed 12/15/10)
$1 Billion: Funding included in the omnibus bill for the implementation of Democrats’ job-killing health care law, including $176 million to implement Medicare Advantage cuts. (The Hill, 12/14/10)
20,785: Number of earmarks President Obama signed into law his first two years in office. (Taxpayers for Common Sense, 2/17/10)
84 Percent: Increase in non-defense discretionary government spending since President Obama took office. (House Budget Republicans, 6/4/10)
$3.22 Trillion: Amount added to the debt on President Obama and Washington Democrats’ watch. (U.S. Department of the Treasury, Accessed 12/15/10)
0: Number of budgets passed by Democrats this year.
Great interview of Governor Palin; fun and informative.
For those of you who do not know, TLC had the Gosselin clan come to Alaska to go roughing it with the Palin clan. Kate didn’t handle it so well to put it mildly although the kids seemed to have a great time. It was not the most presidential moment so I am not sure I would have advised the Palin’s to take that risk. With that said the Palin’s despise elitist haughty attitudes and the segment demonstrated that. It also demonstrated that Alaska is called the last frontier for a reason. It is not for the timid.
It is about time. When I took constitutional law with Judge Sharp and communications law with Dr. Obata I had always lamented the courts unwillingness to do right by the spirit of the 4th Amendment and apply it to new technology. Email, third party databases like credit cards, all of it where the average citizen expects privacy, should be included as “reasonable” in my view, and in the view of almost any voter you would ask. I am from the school that popular sovereignty still counts for something.
Recently the Sixth Circuit Court did right by the Constitution and the people by doing what is clearly common sense. They told the government that if they wish to snoop in personal email they will have to show cause to a judge under oath and get a warrant. [Note - Your work email account doesn't count and shouldn't.]
In the last three years, three federal circuits have published opinions on whether the Fourth Amendment applies to e-mail (dividing 2–1). In all three cases, the initial panel opinions were withdrawn or overturned on other grounds, leaving the issue surprisingly unsettled. This morning, the Sixth Circuit handed down an opinion by Judge Boggs that addresses the question directly and concludes that the Fourth Amendment protects e-mail held by an ISP with a full warrant requirement. The case is United States v. Warshak, a criminal appeal following conviction involving the same set of facts that were the subject of one of the earlier circuit court cases later overturned en banc. I expect today’s decision to stick around: Because the Court concluded that the good-faith exception applied in light of the government’s reliance on the Stored Communications Act, the court affirmed the conviction, meaning that only Warshak can seek review at this point (and further review seems unlikely). Here’s the key passage:
Email is the technological scion of tangible mail, and it plays an indispensable part in the Information Age. Over the last decade, email has become “so pervasive that some persons may consider [it] to be [an] essential means or necessary instrument[] for self-expression, even self-identification.” Quon, 130 S. Ct. at 2630. It follows that email requires strong protection under the Fourth Amendment; otherwise, the Fourth Amendment would prove an ineffective guardian of private communication, an essential purpose it has long been recognized to serve. See U.S. Dist. Court, 407 U.S. at 313; United States v. Waller, 581 F.2d 585, 587 (6th Cir. 1978) (noting the Fourth Amendment’s role in protecting “private communications”). As some forms of communication begin to diminish, the Fourth Amendment must recognize and protect nascent ones that arise. See Warshak I, 490 F.3d at 473 (“It goes without saying that like the telephone earlier in our history, e-mail is an ever-increasing mode of private communication, and protecting shared communications through this medium is as important to Fourth Amendment principles today as protecting telephone conversations has been in the past.”).
If we accept that an email is analogous to a letter or a phone call, it is manifest that agents of the government cannot compel a commercial ISP to turn over the contents of an email without triggering the Fourth Amendment. An ISP is the intermediary that makes email communication possible. Emails must pass through an ISP’s servers to reach their intended recipient. Thus, the ISP is the functional equivalent of a post office or a telephone company. As we have discussed above, the police may not storm the post office and intercept a letter, and they are likewise forbidden from using the phone system to make a clandestine recording of a telephone call—unless they get a warrant, that is. See Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 114; Katz, 389 U.S. at 353. It only stands to reason that, if government agents compel an ISP to surrender the contents of a subscriber’s emails, those agents have thereby conducted a Fourth Amendment search, which necessitates compliance with the warrant requirement absent some exception.
I think that is correct, for reasons I have explained before. Under the Court’s reasoning, then, 18 U.S.C. 2703(b) is unconstitutional at least in most applications– which, again, I think is correct. This is a very important opinion, and there’s a lot in there, but based on a first read it strikes me as quite persuasive and likely to be an influential decision going forward.
Fat retirement plans, low or no contributions towards fat employee benefits, and pay that is double the average of the private sector. Who is exploiting who?
Often the politicians who negotiate the contracts with the government union work for the union as they are their number one cash contributor and make up much of their campaign force.
The majority of union members today no longer work in construction, manufacturing or “strong back” jobs. They work for government, which, thanks to President Obama, has become the only booming “industry” left in our economy. Since January 2008 the private sector has lost nearly eight million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000.
How did this happen? Very quietly. The rise of government unions has been like a silent coup, an inside job engineered by self-interested politicians and fueled by campaign contributions.
Public employee unions contribute mightily to the campaigns of liberal politicians ($91 million in the midterm elections alone) who vote to increase government pay and workers. As more government employees join the unions and pay dues, the union bosses pour ever more money and energy into liberal campaigns. The result is that certain states are now approaching default. Decades of overpromising and fiscal malpractice by state and local officials have created unfunded public employee benefit liabilities of more than $3 trillion.
…
The moral case for unions—protecting working families from exploitation—does not apply to public employment. Government employees today are among the most protected, well-paid employees in the country. Ironically, public-sector unions have become the exploiters, and working families once again need someone to stand up for them.
Who is the largest single political contributor in the 2010 campaign cycle? You can be pardoned if you answer, erroneously, that it’s some new conservative group organized by Karl Rove. That’s campaign spin by the Obama Democrats, obediently relayed by certain elements of the so-called mainstream media.
The real answer is AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union’s president, Gerald McEntee, reports proudly that AFSCME will be contributing $87,500,000 in this cycle, entirely or almost entirely to Democrats. “We’re spending big,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “And we’re damn happy it’s big.”
The mainstream press hasn’t shown much interest in reporting on unions’ campaign spending, which amounted to some $400,000,000 in the 2008 cycle. And it hasn’t seen fit to run long investigative stories on why public employee unions — the large majority of whom work for state and local governments — contribute so much more to campaigns for federal office.
…
Public employee union members have become, as U.S. News and World Report Editor Mortimer Zuckerman writes, “the new privileged class,” with better pay, more generous benefits and far more lush pensions than those who pay their salaries — and who are taxed to send money to their leaders’ favored candidates.
Franklin Roosevelt thought public sector unions were a lousy idea. Do you?
A woman suing the TSA for an invasive pat-down at the Albuquerque Sunport speaks only with KOB Eyewitness News 4.
Adrienne Durso of Carlsbad, California spoke over the phone – she describes her experience during a TSA pat-down at the Sunport back in August.
“Heavily concentrating on my breast area where I told her I had a mastectomy the year previous and in just seemed to go on and on,” said Durso.
She says she felt humiliated as the extensive pat-down happened in front of her 17 year old son and hundreds of other travelers.
“I felt as though I didn’t have any rights other than I had to stand there and let them do what they want to do to my body,” Durso continued.
She says she knew her rights had been violated so she asked to speak to a supervisor who she thought would help.
All the while her son stood by her side and couldn’t remain silent anymore
“My son, who I’m very proud of spoke up and said ‘I went through the metal detector and I did not get a pat-down’ to which the supervisor said ‘well you don’t have boobs’,” she said.
That statement was the last straw for Durso – so she contacted the lawfirm of Drinker, Biddle and Reath. Her attorney, Alex Brodsky, says this whole ordeal violates her 4th Amendment rights which protects Americans from unreasonable search and seizure.
“We think that these searches given the invasiveness and given the extensiveness of these searches are really more akin to something like a strip search and certainly as a result we think we have a strong case,” said Brodsky.
Durso says she isn’t doing this for money or fame but rather for countless other Americans who take to the skies for travel.
“I thought, ‘you know, surely this story must mean something to somebody, maybe this will help somebody who is trying to change the situation at airports because I don’t think anybody should have to go through this,” said Durso.
The TSA says it’s asking government security experts if there is a way to make the security pat-down less invasive but just as thorough but they haven’t commented on this case specifically.
The court had to keep it very narrow because the conviction/accusation was narrow. The defendant had handgun ammunition in his home. It is reasonable that since Heller made it clear that outright gun bans are unconstitutional that banning handgun ammunition in all cases whatsoever or from being in someones home is overly restrictive and unconstitutional. Eventually as the lawsuits continue I believe the courts will continue to shoot down more portions of this unjust and foolish law. The 2nd Amendment says that you have the right to keep and bear arms and it shall not be infringed.
Appellant Kevin Herrington was convicted in 2006 of unlawful possession of ammunition (UA), in violation of D.C. Code § 7–2506.01 (2001) (now § 7–2506.01(a) (Supp. 2010)). His conviction was based solely on evidence that he possessed handgun ammunition in his home….What is now subsection (a) of D.C. Code § 7–2506.01 provides as follows:
No person shall possess ammunition in the District of Columbia unless: …(3) He is the holder of the valid registration certificate for a firearm of the same gauge or caliber as the ammunition he possesses; except, that no such person shall possess restricted pistol bullets; …
[F]rom the Court’s reasoning [in Heller], it logically follows that the right to keep and bear arms extends to the possession of handgun ammunition in the home; for if such possession could be banned (and not simply regulated), that would make it “impossible for citizens to use [their handguns] for the core lawful purpose of self-defense.” By the same token, given the obvious connection between handgun ammunition and the right protected by the Second Amendment, we are hard-pressed to see how a flat ban on the possession of such ammunition in the home could survive heightened scrutiny of any kind. We therefore conclude that the Second Amendment guarantees a right to possess ammunition in the home that is coextensive with the right to possess a usable handgun there. The government has not taken issue with that conclusion….
[T]he UA statute makes it a crime to possess ammunition of any kind anywhere, regardless of its use or purpose; and the prosecution may obtain a conviction under the statute without having to prove that the possessor violated any registration, licensing or regulatory requirement or was otherwise disqualified from exercising his Second Amendment right. A UA conviction therefore may be based solely on proof that the defendant possessed handgun ammunition in his home -– solely, that is, on proof of conduct protected by the Second Amendment. In a prosecution such as this one, where nothing more was proved at trial to show that the defendant was disqualified from exercising his Second Amendment rights — there was no evidence, for example, that he possessed the ammunition for an illegal purpose or that he had failed to comply with applicable registration requirements for a firearm corresponding to the ammunition –- the UA statute is unconstitutional as applied. [Footnote: We express no opinion as to whether the UA statute is constitutional in other applications (e.g., as applied to possession of handgun ammunition outside the home or for an improper purpose, or possession of non-handgun ammunition), or whether it is unconstitutional on its face.]
In light of the constitutionally-protected nature of the conduct addressed by the UA statute, its provision of an affirmative defense if the accused had registered a corresponding firearm only compounds the problem. The Due Process Clause “protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged.” While legislatures do have leeway to reallocate burdens of proof so as to require the accused to prove some facts as affirmative defenses (rather than requiring the prosecution to negate those facts as an element of the offense), “there are obviously constitutional limits beyond which [a legislature] may not go in this regard.” Where the Constitution –- in this case, the Second Amendment –- imposes substantive limits on what conduct may be defined as a crime, a legislature may not circumvent those limits by enacting a statute that presumes criminality from constitutionally-protected conduct and puts the burden of persuasion on the accused to prove facts necessary to establish innocence. That, however, is precisely what the UA statute (as we construed it in [an earlier case] does with respect to the possession of handgun ammunition in the home, by making the defendant’s compliance with the registration condition an affirmative defense.
The limited nature of our holding should be understood. The Second Amendment permits the District to condition the lawful possession of handgun ammunition in the home on the possession of a valid registration certificate for a corresponding handgun (so long as the registration scheme is constitutional)…. [T]he prosecution may assume the burden of charging and proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant lacked the necessary registration in order to satisfy the Second Amendment. By doing so, the prosecution would establish that the defendant indeed was disqualified from exercising his Second Amendment right to possess handgun ammunition in the home. The application of the UA statute to the defendant in such a case would not be unconstitutional.
The fight over Sarah Palin is about a lot more than Sarah Palin. It’s about what America means. It’s about what things are truly good and trustworthy. It’s about the worldview and the values that will guide our government and society.
Neither the ferocious outpouring of hatred and derision she has received from the Left, nor the enthusiastic support she has received from the populist ranks of the Right, is caused by her actual record. Many of my liberal friends, whose contempt for Palin outstrips even the contempt they felt for George W. Bush, know little of her record. And half of what they know is wrong, as election-season falsehoods and exaggerations have hardened into “fact” in the minds of Palin’s cultured despisers. And many of my fellow conservatives know more about Barack Obama’s record than they know about Sarah Palin’s.
That’s for good reason. It’s not really about her past. Neither is it about her policies. Her conservative stances are a necessary but not sufficient explanation for why the Right loves and the Left loathes her. Many others who defend the same policies evoke nowhere near the same reaction.
So what is the reason for Palin Enragement Syndrome?
The loving and loathing, at least for most, have little to do with her past or her policies. They have to do with her persona. For the populist Right, Sarah Palin is a personification of all that is still good about America: rugged individualism and bootstrapping success, toughness and pluck, firm devotion to Christian family values, a commitment to the cause of life, and the kind of folk wisdom that cannot be gained through graduate degrees but is packaged in common sense and reinforced through the experience of a hardscrabble life. Palin also represents the blue-collar and no-collar ideal of a leader who comes up from the general ranks in a time of great trial in order to restore sanity and common-sense clarity to a government gone mad.
For the cultural elitists on the Left, Palin lacks everything they pride themselves on possessing, possesses everything they pride themselves on scorning, and stands for everything they pride themselves on opposing. She lacks cosmopolitan tastes and elite university credentials, a well-worn passport and fluency in foreign tongues, a blueblood vocabulary and literary speech patterns, not to mention a fashionable address and a vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard. She possesses a beauty-queen title and the wrong kind of good looks, a large brood of lily-white children with outdoorsy names like Track and Piper, a commoner’s cadence and a steady supply of you-betcha folksy phrases, and a background in conservative white evangelical and even Pentecostal churches. And she stands for the defense of the unborn, for heterosexual marriage, for premarital abstinence, for the extraction of our natural resources, for small government and second amendment rights, for conservative Judeo-Christian traditions and for American exceptionalism.
Patheos makes a good point here, especially for those who suffer from Palin Derangement Syndrome or have some type of emotional negative reaction to her I have noticed one thing that every last one of them I have encountered has in common, they are almost completely ignorant of her record as a governor, regulator, mayor, city councilman and small business owner.
Take the emotionalism and the attitude that the media has attached to the Palin name ans ask them if they would consider voting for a candidate who did the following:
Oversaw the Growth of a small city by a factor of four as mayor while keeping services at a level to meet the challenge and while maintaining low taxes.
Rooted out the corruption of bought off Republicans in state government and sent many bad actors packing. [For which much of the Alaska GOP hates her for and opposed her every step of the way. For Example GOP Senate leader Lyda Green tried to have the Alaska State of the State address moved an hour later so that Palin could not catch the last flight out of Juneau so that she would miss her sons high school graduation the next morning. Juneau is an on island so you have to fly out. How much Chicago machine corruption did Obama root out?]
Cut the state budget while maintaining state services.
Cut the governors personal expenses by 80% over the previous governor.
Implemented a plan to begin weening the state off federal “earmarks”.
Pass sweeping ethics reforms and reform a state contract bidding process that was rigged and controlled by cronies.
That is just a sample of the Sarah Palin governing record. This also shows why the elite media and the Democrats do not wish to engage her on the facts and are primarily interested in smearing her.
It‘s something of a stretch to compare a soccer game among eleven-year-old boys with the fate of the democratic world, but I’ve always managed to see big issues in small things.
My son is playing on a local soccer team which has lost every one of its games, often by humiliating scores. The coach is a nice guy, but seems an archetype of contemporary thinking: he tells the kids not to care about whether they win, puts players at any positions they want, and doesn’t listen to their suggestions.
He never criticizes a player or suggests how a player could do better. My son, bless him, once remarked to me: “How are you going to play better if nobody tells you what you’re doing wrong?” The coach just tells them how well they are playing. Even after an 8-0 defeat, he told them they’d played a great game.
And of course, the league gives trophies to everyone, whether their team finishes in first or last place.
I’d even seen an American television documentary about boys and sports which justified this approach, explaining that coaches were doing something terrible by deriding failure, urging competitiveness, and demanding victory. So were the kids really happier to be “relieved” of the strain of trying to win, “liberated” from feeling bad at the inequality of athletic talent?
Or am I right in thinking that sports should prepare children for life, competition, the desire to win, and an understanding that not every individual has the same level of skills? A central element in that world is rewarding those who do better, which also offers an incentive for them and others to strive, rather than thinking they merely need choose between becoming a government bureaucrat or dependent.
The playing field was perfectly even, but the boys were clearly miserable. They felt like losers, their behavior rejecting the claim that everything was just great, or that mediocrity was satisfactory as long as everyone was treated identically. They knew better than to think outcomes don’t matter. In a truly sad gesture, one boy had suggested before still another losing game that they form a circle, put their hands in, and cheer themselves: “Like the good teams do.” Halfway into the season, the kids had even chosen a nickname for the team that expressed their sense of being weak losers.
When the opportunity came to step in as coach for one game, I jumped at the chance to try an experiment. I’ve never coached a sport before, and am certainly no expert at soccer despite my son’s efforts. Still, I thought the next game could be won by simply placing players in the positions they merited, and motivating them to triumph.
For the starting line-up, I put the best players in and kept them in as long as they didn’t say they were tired or seem fatigued. Of course, I adhered to the league rule that everyone play at least half the game, but I didn’t interpret that to mean that everyone should play precisely the same amount of time.
I didn’t put terrible players in at forward or in the goal. It didn’t take any genius to do so, just basic sports common sense. You don’t need Ayn Rand to tell you which way the wind blows.
Before the game, I gave them a pep talk, with the key theme as follows:
Every week you’ve been told that the important thing is just to have a good time. Well, this week it’s going to be different. The number one goal is to win; the number two goal is to have a good time. But I assure you: if you win, you will have a much better time!
And that’s just what happened. They took a 1-0 lead and held it, in contrast to the previous week when it was scoreless at the half but turned into a 3-0 humiliation when someone ill-suited was made goalkeeper just because he wanted that job.
When kids with fewer skills didn’t want to play defense, I pointed out that these were critical positions, since winning required preventing the other team from scoring. At the end, they performed heroically, holding off repeated attacks on their goal.
I worried that the boys who played less of the game and were given seemingly less significant positions would be resentful. But quite the opposite proved true.
With the team ahead, they were thrilled. One shouted from the sidelines something I thought showed real character: “Don’t let the good players do all the work!” Instinctively, he recognized that some players are better, but he wanted to bring everyone’s level up rather than down. I’m tempted to say he was going against what he was being taught in school.
They played harder, with a bit more pressure and a less equal share of personal glory than they’d ever done before. But after the victory, they were glowing and appreciative, amazed that they had actually won a game. Yes, winning and being allowed to give their best effort as a team was far more exciting and rewarding for them than being told they had done wonderfully by just showing up, that everyone should be treated equal as if there were no difference in talents, and that the results didn’t matter.
Suddenly, I noticed that one boy’s mother was really angry at him, claiming he hadn’t showed good sportsmanship because he was too happy over the victory. Not seeing anything that might have provoked her outrage, I wondered whether this was a suggestion that one should apologize for winning. Still, the bawling out didn’t put a damper on his big smile.
Next week, of course, they will be back to losing. But I think that perhaps they learned something useful to counter the indoctrination they are getting in school. If you don’t care about winning, you’re merely handing triumph to the other side. In a soccer league that might not matter, yet in personal life, your level of achievement and satisfaction is going to depend on giving your best effort. If a country is indifferent to succeeding, the opposing team’s success might be very costly indeed.
As I said at the start, perhaps not too much should be read into this little parable. Yet the broader question may be the most significant issue of our time: why should Western democratic societies abandon the techniques and thinking that have led to such great success, in order to embrace failure as glorious or victory as shameful?
She stalked her prey, shot it square in the neck, field dressed it and took it home to freeze for dinner.
Liberals freaked ;)
Tonight’s hunting episode of Sarah Palin’s Alaska “controversial”? Really? Unless you’ve never worn leather shoes, sat upon a leather couch or eaten a piece of meat, save your condemnation of tonight’s episode. I remain proudly intolerant of anti-hunting hypocrisy. :) – Sarah Palin
James O’Keefe at Project Veritas strikes again. Are government unions really necessary? Pay special attention to the union’s statements about how they will protect teachers who touch students inappropriately.
Pinhead of the Year: New Castle Councilman Michael Wolfensohn (D-NY)
I have seen some pretty dumb politicians in my time, but when you think you have seen it all, another comes along just to remind you that there is still room to sink lower. On a side note, I could not find one elite media news outlet that mentioned Wolfensohn’s political party. Is it just that a Democrat hates the idea of any private business going on unless he gets a cut?
NEW CASTLE — When Andrew DeMarchis and Kevin Graff, two 13-year-olds from Chappaqua’s Seven Bridges Middle School, set up shop at Gedney Park on a fall weekend last month, they were expecting a tidy profit.
Instead, the two wannabe entrepreneurs selling cupcakes, cookies, brownies and Rice Krispie treats baked by them for $1 apiece got a taste of cold, hard bureaucracy .
New Castle Councilman Michael Wolfensohn came upon the sale and called the cops on the kids for operating without a license.
The boys’ parents are incensed and can’t believe a Town Board member would handle the situation that way.
“I am shocked and sad for the boys. It was such a great idea, and they worked hard at it,” said Laura Graff, Kevin’s mother. “But then some Town Board member decided to get on his high horse and wreck their dreams.”
DeMarchis and Graff, along with two other classmates, Zachary Bass and Daniel Katz, had a simple, if half-baked, business plan: sell their treats at Gedney Park for a couple of years and save up enough to open a restaurant.
Their first day was wildly successful, the boys said. They netted $120, of which they invested $60 to buy a cart from Target and added water and Gatorade to their offerings on their second day, the next Saturday, Oct. 9.
After about an hour of brisk business , during which DeMarchis and Graff — Bass and Katz were not with them — said they made $30, police arrived at their stand and asked them to shut it down.
“The police officer was extremely pleasant. He said he was sorry to have to do this, but that he was following up on a report filed over the phone by a Town Board member,” said Suzanne DeMarchis, Andrew’s mother, who was called to the scene. “Kevin was so upset, he was crying all the whole way home. He was worried if he was going to get arrested or have a criminal record.”
The boys, all of whom had bar mitzvahs this year, had done projects to benefit charities in the community, their parents said. The projects included collecting books for Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital and raising money for Haiti earthquake victims.
“These are good kids who haven’t once gone to the principal’s office,” said Laura Graff, Kevin’s mother. “This was a very scary experience for them.”
This month, after receiving a complaint from a friend of the DeMarchis family, The Journal News filed a New York state Freedom of Information Law request for the police report. The report, received Wednesday, listed Wolfensohn as filing the complaint.
The AP is on a tear lately with the false narratives and attacks. This is the status of what Palin called the “lamestream media” and it makes you wonder if a one of these reporters actually went to J-school.
The Associated Press provided another example as to why the media cannot be trusted to cover anything Governor Palin does fairly. AP “reporter” Jonathan Katz, wrote an article about the governor’s recent trip to Haiti with Franklin Graham and Samaritan’s Purse. Katz opens his article by saying:
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began a tightly stage-managed visit to Haiti on Saturday in which she visited cholera clinics while avoiding crowds and the press.
“Stage-managed” eh? As to imply that this is just some sort of staged political photo-op, no doubt. It wasn’t, but regardless it is not Jonathan Katz’ job as an AP reporter to make that assumption in the first place.
He then goes on to say (emphasis mine):
Palin, who traveled in part by helicopter, provided access on her tour solely to the U.S. cable network Fox News.
Graham’s organization, Samaritan’s Purse, refused to discuss Palin’s itinerary with other media and asked Haitian and American reporters to leave its compounds, citing a “security lockdown.”
It should be noted that Greta Van Susteren was asked by Franklin Graham (this is not the first time Greta has accompanied Graham on an overseas trip) to come to Haiti, it wasn’t Governor Palin who set that up.
I told him myself repeatedly. He also knows very well that for security reasons, Samaritan’s Purse did not want to release their itinerary.
Katz and others in the media seem to be saying two different things in their articles about Governor Palin’s trip to Haiti. They imply it was a photo-op on one hand, then complain about a lack of access on the other. So which is it? I gather this is just more, ‘throw the kitchen sink‘ at Governor Palin to see what sticks.
Jonathan Katz then writes:
Associated Press television journalists saw Palin talking with foreign aid workers. She wore cargo pants, a T-shirt and designer sunglasses on her first trip outside the United States since speaking to investors in Hong Kong last year. That speech was also closed to the media.
Why is JonathanKatz reporting on Governor’s Palin’s wardrobe? The last time I checked, Katz wasn’t a fashion reporter. Who cares what Governor Palin wore on a humanitarian mission? Some might say that it was sexist of Katz to include that in his article. I’ll leave that up to readers to decide for themselves.
By the way, as Ian noted earlier, Governor Palin and Franklin Graham held a press conference on Sunday in Haiti from the Samaritan’s Purse camp. So, no this trip was not closed to the media. You can see a photo from that presser here.
Update: I was just reminded that the Hong Kong speech was not closed to the media. Katz was wrong about that as well. The Wall Street Journal covered the Hong Kong event here.
Sarah Palin was attacked by a reporter for stating that there is inflation in spite of the denials of the Fed. Palin ended up being correct (and so did we). Now Jim Rodgers weighs in.
(Reuters) – U.S. government inflation data is “a sham” and is causing the Federal Reserve to vastly understate price pressures in the economy, influential U.S. investor Jim Rogers said on Tuesday.
The U.S. central bank uses inflation data that relies too heavily on housing prices, Rogers told the Reuters 2011 Investment Outlook Summit, and he criticized the Fed’s $600 billion bond-buying program.
Rogers, who rose to prominence after co-founding the now defunct Quantum Fund with billionaire investor George Soros some four decades ago, said he was betting against U.S. Treasuries. “I expect interest rates in the U.S. to go much, much, much higher over the next few years,” he said.
The core personal consumption expenditure index, which removes food and energy costs, is the Fed’s favored measure of inflation and was flat in October for the second straight month.
“Everybody in this room knows prices are going up for everything,” Rogers told the Reuters Summit.
The Fed began its $600 billion bond buying program last month, its second round of quantitative easing [this means monetizing the debt - printing more dollars and lowering the value of all of the dollars you have - Editor], to boost a sluggish U.S. economy, citing excessively low inflation and high unemployment.
DECEMBER 6–In the days after Bristol Palin was voted into the finals of “Dancing with the Stars,” viewers from across the country wrote to the Federal Communications Commission accusing the ABC show of everything from running a “payola type program” to “encouraging and promoting teen pregnancy.”
Many of the complainants, whose letters were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, were upset that, as one Oregonian put it, “the top scores were voted off yet Sarah Palin’s daughter remained on.”
One viewer from Pittsburgh alleged that the show’s voting system had been “fixed by extreme supporters of the Tea Party and Radical Right-Wing. I find that it has become a political platform for Sarah Palin to improve her image and ooze her political slime.” The aggrieved correspondent continued, “Bristol is not a star, what did she do, she had sex and got pregnant. Lets reward her…I made several call to ABC’s complaint line and I hope that their phone lines melt. It has become a political movement, with Tea Party websites instructing on how to vote for Bristol. Ridiculousness!”
Another source of grievances was a hug delivered to the 20-year-old Palin by one of the show’s judges, Carrie Ann Inaba.
Noting that “no other dancer was called over for a hug,” one viewer claimed that the clinch was a “signal for the GOP/Tea Party supporters of Sarah Palin to ‘stuff’ the vote for Bristol Palin, who on both dates had to be dragged over the dance floor.” The writer added, “My 96 year old Mother-in-Law can dance better than Ms. Palin…I want my Government to protect me the viewer from deceptive practices.”
A Cerritos, California resident reported that the “physical contact” made by Inaba “sets the contestant up for thinking the judge will favor them. She was impartial to one and partial to the others.”
One commenter who claimed to be a former FCC CAMS operator stated:
An ex FCC employee here. I worked in the FCC National Call Center in the mid to late 90′s. I and others that worked in the call center took millions of complaints in that time. Hundreds thousands of complaints were about “conservative or Republican” oriented broadcasts. It was easy to determine, by questioning many liberal callers, that the caller had never watched the television show or listened to the radio broadcast the caller was complaining about. Consumer Advocate Mediation Specialist (CAMS) FCC call center employee frequently heard the same complaint, word for word, 50 to 100 times in one day!
The conservative call in complaint campaigns that were organized, almost exclusively had to do with religious issues, not about an issue as mundane and lacking merit for complaint as Bristol Palin’s “Dancing with the Stars”!
Liberal callers were and still are, the most verbally abusive, vicious, obscene people showing an extreme lack respect and disdain for the CAMS working at the call center. The liberal callers threatened to file a complaint about me (and other CAMS) with their representatives or senators when we did not comply with their demands to remove conservative shows from TV and radio. No congressional inquiry was made about my refusals. Conservatives frequently wrote their representatives praising the CAMS they had spoken to, liberals did not! The politicians forwarded copies of these letters to the FCC. What “these” liberals don’t understand is that the FCC has no legal authority, due to the restraints of the Constitution of the United States, to do anything about an issue such as, Bristol Palin “Dancing with the Stars”! But I am sure that the liberals would change the Constitution, if they could, so all conservative programming could be banned forever from television and radio broadcasts! I am in my 60’s now, and it seems every year as I get older, the liberals grow worse in their expectations and their vitriol!
Fifteen-year-olds in the U.S. ranked 25th among peers from 34 countries on a math test and scored in the middle in science and reading, while China’s Shanghai topped the charts, raising concern that the U.S. isn’t prepared to succeed in the global economy.
The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, which represents 34 countries, today released the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment. For the first time, the test broke out the performance of China’s Shanghai region, which topped every country in all academic categories. The U.S. government considers the test one of the most comprehensive measures of international achievement.
The results show that U.S. students must improve to compete in a global economy, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said yesterday in a telephone interview. President Barack Obama’s administration is promoting national curriculum standards and a revamping of teacher pay that stresses performance rather than credentials and seniority.
“The brutal fact here is there are many countries that are far ahead of us and improving more rapidly than we are,” Duncan said. “This should be a massive wake-up call to the entire country.”
This is why you NEVER do an interview with anyone in the elite media without having your own cameraman take film of the entire interview.
Sarah Palin reads CS Lewis, fine, but serious books about the law, philosophy and the Supreme Court… well we can’t have that as it goes against the narrative ABC wants to propagate so an important substantive fact is left out; namely Palin’s mention of “Liberty and Tyranny” by Mark Levin.
Expectedly MSNBC goes after Palin for mentioning CS Lewis. One of their pundits even said that Lewis is ”just a guy who writes kids books”. Of course anyone who is educated knows that C.S. Lewis is considered a great writer on many subjects such as theology, philosophy, government etc. I wonder what other facts ABC edited out this time.
ABC and CBS in the infamous 2008 interviews edited out substantive sections to several of her answers to make it look like she had no substance.
Levin states what he learned in the video below, but I believe that Levin gets it wrong in making it “about him”.
Mark Levin is president of Landmark Legal Foundation. Previously he served as Landmark’s director of legal policy for more than three years. He has worked as an attorney in the private sector and as a top adviser and administrator to several members of President Reagan’s cabinet. Levin served as chief of staff to U.S. Attorney General, Edwin Meese; deputy assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education at the U.S. Department of Education; and deputy solicitor of the U.S. Department of Interior. He holds a B.A. from Temple University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, and a J.D. from Temple University School of Law.
Mark is a frequent contributor to, The Corner on National Review Online.
I just laugh when I see Arianna Huffington claim that her smear site is America’s internet newspaper with “real journalism”.
The Huffington Post blasts Sarah Palin almost every day and almost every the narrative the present is nothing short of Orwellian.
The following is just one example of many. When the Republic of Georgia (on Russia’s southern border) was considering applying for NATO membership. ABC’s John Gibson asked Governor Palin if she supported Georgia’s entry into NATO and Governor Palin articulated the same position that Obama, McCain, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton held on the issue. The Senate even passed a unanimous resolution calling for Georgia’s entry into NATO. Yet when Palin answered that Georgia should be admitted and explained that NATO by treaty is a mutual defense pact; the Huffington Post reacted with the headline, “Palin Talks About Invading Russia” – LINK.
Palin Does Haiti Cholera: How’s My Hair? (and, Did AP Lend a Curl?)
If I find the fantastically clever Sarah Palin to be one of the shallowest and blatantly self-serving politicians, err, political celebrities I’ve ever seen, it doesn’t stop me from taking pause upon seeing these AP shots from Franklin Graham’s cholera treatment center in Haiti.
Damn right it’s revolting seeing Sarah getting her hair made up like this field hospital is her movie set …
This is what Arianna calls “real journalism”. “Sarah getting her hair made up like this field hospital is her movie set”. The narrative complete with attitude implies that Sarah is vain and only cares about how she will look on TV when she is surrounded by suffering. The reality is that the woman next to Sarah is not some high paid makeup artist, rather it is her daughter Bristol who just took a moment to fix a spot on her mother’s hair.
It is amazing how much emotionalism, intent and action a hater can add into a picture’s narrative in spite of the fact that there is no truth whatsoever to what the hater’s mind created.
Notice the AP leaves out "At left is daughter Bristol" - that was no accident folks, these reporters followed the Palin's on their entire trip. This is the AP's way of making Palin appear vain and is also yet another sexist slap. The Huffington Post fell for that narrative hook, line & sinker. This is a fine example of what is called "Attitude Change Propaganda" or ACP. ACP is designed to infuse the reader with a negative feeling by implying a false narrative by using careful ommission of facts presented with an attitude.
He said for instance…that Republicans want to end middle class tax cuts. I thought ‘are you kidding me? The Republicans want to end middle class tax cuts?’ He said that it’s his job to grow the economy. He made one kinda odd statement after the other. And he said Republicans oppose various credits for the middle class. Those are flat-out lies!
The truth is that Democrats are not interested in taxing the wealthy and in recent years never have. Most of the very wealthy enjoy a 16,000 page tax code that is filled with exceptions. Much of the income for the truly wealthy is defines as non wage earnings, meaning that they are non taxable or taxable under a much lower rate. This is why John Kerry, who also wants to raise your taxes, paid only 12.34% federal tax on his $5,0072,000 he made in 2003.
The wealthy also have the option of just parking their money in a tax deferred growth account or some other shelter, buy gold, or just invest in China. Remember that it can only ba taxed when the money is moved. They have the option of simply not moving it, small businesses don’t have that option.
So while Google who earned 3.1 Billion dollars last year paid 2.4% tax they throw gala fund-raising events for Obama and give mega-bucks to the Democrats. In the mean time the small business Sub-S corporations (pizza shops, small manufacturing businesses, construction etc) who also pay in this tax rate are facing a new rate of 39.6%. Obama demonized the Chamber of Commerce most of the last year and who do they represent… you guessed it, most small business. Small businesses such as a small roofing manufacturer may bring in over $250,000 on paper, the simple truth is that most of that money is put back in the business. The small business owner, employer, risk taker has to pay everyone else first, the bills and the taxes all before he pays himself.
This brings us to Norton’s First Law: Big business loves big government because big government taxes and regulates the small to medium sized competition out of the competition.
The left and the elite media says that continuing current tax rates will cost the government half a trillion dollars. This is nonsense because the government increases its revenue when people move their money and when the economy grows, not when it jacks the rates up. The half a trillion dollars figure is an inflated Keynesian static model, the same static model that underestimated the 20 year cost of Medicare by a factor of 10 and the same kind of static Keynesian model that predicted that the Obama Stimulus would keep unemployment below 8%.
Always remember, figues don’t lie but liars figure.
While Obama tried to stop offshore drilling and exploration here and while his administration puts more of our domestic resources off-limits, the White House is using taxpayer dollars to aid Petro-Brazil’s offshore drilling efforts in waters deeper than the United States. George Soros is an investor in PetroBraz and this falls in line with the view of the academic left, that the wealth of the united states should be redistributed to the rest of the world. One way to do that is to send our jobs overseas and to have us send our money abroad for energy.
“As our country looks for ways out of the hole of lackluster economic growth and job creation, today’s decision shows that this administration would rather keep digging than take the ladder to increased economic prosperity offered by developing our nation’s domestic energy resources. ”The oil and natural gas industry is a reliable vehicle for growing the economy and creating good-paying jobs.
This decision shuts the door on new development off our nation’s coasts and effectively ensures that new American jobs will not be realized. It will stifle investment, deny billions in revenue for critical government services and increase our dependence on foreign energy sources.
“The oil and natural gas industry is committed to safe and environmentally responsible operations, and both the industry and regulators have added new safeguards to ensure such operations. This reversal on new lease sales off America’s coasts comes on top of a de facto moratorium, which has all but stopped new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.”
A Southern Methodist University (SMU) study released this week is no different, and it presents some alarming figures on the impact the de facto moratorium is having on shallow-water drilling.
According to Dr. Bernard L. Weinstein, associate director of SMU’s Maguire Energy Institute, the Interior Department’s slowdown in issuing new permits for shallow-water drilling operations could mean:
50,000 lost jobs;
Economic losses of $4.3 billion that would occur if 75 percent of the rigs become idle as a result of fewer issued permits; and
$12.5 billion in lost income nationwide.
As Dr. Weinstein points out, shallow-water drilling is extremely safe. In the last 15 years, the federal government reports that more than 11,000 wells have been drilled and just 15 barrels of oil have spilled as a result of a loss of well control:
“Shallow-water drillers work in less than 500 feet of water, mainly extracting natural gas. Projects center on well-charted fields of known pressure and geography, using simple and straightforward technology.”
Prior to the moratorium, 10 to 15 permits for new shallow-water wells were approved each month. But since April, only seven permits for new shallow-water wells have been issued, and 15 of 46 shallow-water rigs in the Gulf are idle.
As Jack Gerard mentioned in a blog post last week, a drilling slowdown hurts more than just oil companies. It’s time to put the oil and natural gas industry back to work and produce reliable American energy for Americans
It used to be 111, now its 222. More picking winners and losers.
It is just as the White House told the AARP when they were not so thrilled about the new law, “Either help create the menu or you will be on it”. After the favors AARP won they were all for it, but then we saw this:
Norton’s First Law: Big business loves big government because big government taxes and regulated the small to medium sized competition out of the competition.
The Obama administration has allowed 222 employers, insurers and unions to opt out of a key mandate in the new health care law – a number that has grown exponentially in the past two months. Employers like McDonald’s, Waffle House and Universal Orlando are among the companies that have received a one-year waiver, allowing them to maintain minimal coverage below the new law’s standards.
The list has grown significantly since October, when 30 companies had waivers, and has doubled since early November. Taken together, the companies cover more than 1.5 million people, including 34 unions with more than 140,000 members.
Other companies and unions that received waivers include Ruby Tuesday, AMB Bowling Worldwide, and the local chapters of the International Brotherhood of Trade Unions Health and Welfare Fund and the Teamsters.
Although the waivers are to last one year, groups can apply to extend them until 2014.
Many unions had fought hard for health reform and were dismissive about fears that companies would simply dump their coverage if health reform passed. But unions are now demanding to be exempt from the new law.
Many of the nation’s biggest unions also had backed President Obama’s campaign. Early in the health-reform debate, unions won exemptions to the tax on so-called Cadillac health-care plans — those with the most generous benefits.
Workers affected by these exemptions are now left to wonder whether their low-cost health-insurance plans will continue to provide the coverage they need.
Companies who do not get waivers are left wondering whether it’s fair that they must follow the health-reform rules and regulations that every other company in the United States must follow, while their competitors who got waivers do not.
Taxpayers are left wondering if it will be just as easy for them to get waivers on the individual mandate, which says everyone must buy health coverage or pay an annual fine, anywhere from $750 per person to not more than $2,250 per household.
The federal government began granting waivers from a part of the health-reform law in September when it gave the fast-food chain McDonald’s an exemption on its mini-med plans, paid for by the company.
Mini-med plans cover part-time and low-wage workers. McDonald’s threatened to drop its mini-med plans, covering 30,000 workers, if it did not receive an exemption.
Good. We are almost 90% of the population here. Our system of law is based on Western Christian Scholasticism. Since our rights come from God we should exercise them with Him in mind.
Do you go to Israel and tell them no Hanukkah? Do you go to Saudi Arabia and tell then no Ramadan? When in Rome folks…
When we said nearly half of U.S. doctors might close their practices or retire early rather than live under the Democrats’ health overhaul, we were heavily criticized. The critics, though, were wrong.
Four in nine doctors responding to an IBD/TIPP poll sent out in August 2009 said they “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” if Congress passed what has become known as ObamaCare. That means as many as 360,000 physicians have plans to be doing something other than treating the growing number of patients in this country.
The doctors also told us — 67% to 22%, with 11% not responding — that they expected fewer students to apply for medical school in the future if the plan became law.
Given these views, it’s no surprise that 71% were doubtful that the government would be able to cover the 47 million uninsured Americans with better care at lower costs, which ObamaCare supporters have promised.
Other findings from our poll of 1,376 doctors included: six in 10 agreeing that the Democrats’ plan would strip drug companies of the incentives they need to make lifesaving pharmaceuticals, and 65% believing that a government overhaul would lead to lower-quality care for seniors.
The critics said our poll was not credible, was “shabby” and “garbage.” They accused IBD of being partisan, pursuing an agenda, trying to sway gullible readers with shameless journalism.
Useful rhetoric for keeping the left stirred up, but it was nothing more than an attempt to poison findings the critics didn’t like.
Now a Merritt Hawkins survey of 2,379 doctors for the Physicians Foundation completed in August has vindicated our poll. It found that 40% of doctors said they would “retire, seek a nonclinical job in health care, or seek a job or business unrelated to health care” over the next three years as the overhaul is phased in.
Of those who said they planned to retire, 28% are 55 or younger and nearly half (49%) are 60 or younger.
A larger portion (74%) said they plan to make “one or more significant changes in their practices in the next one to three years, a time when many provisions of health reform will be phased in.”
In addition to retirement, and finding nonclinical jobs elsewhere, those changes include working part time, closing practices to new patients, employment at a hospital, cutting back on the number of patients and switching to a cash or concierge practice.
A deeper look at the results reveals eight in 10 believe ObamaCare “will erode the viability of the private practice model” while six in 10 are convinced they will be compelled to “close or significantly restrict” their practices to at least one category of patient.
Over half (56%) said they believe the government takeover will affect the quality of care they are able to provide their patients and 86% said doctors weren’t “adequately represented to policymakers and the public during the run-up to passage of health reform.”
It’s significant that the Physicians Foundation survey was taken from the membership of the American Medical Association.
After initially indicating opposition to ObamaCare, that group supported the legislation. For that reason, Dr. Marc Siegel said Tuesday on Fox News that he would be “more worried about non-AMA members and what they have to say.”
We think that we already covered that concern with our 2009 poll.
Doctors simply don’t like what the Democrats have force-fed them. A large segment of the healing profession says it’s willing to close its doors rather than endure the problems that will be created by the overhaul.
Unfortunately, this is exactly the sort of outcome that’s expected when lawmakers leave common sense behind and work far outside their moral and constitutional authority.
Former ‘Baywatch’ star Donna D’Errico says she was singled out by a TSA agent for a full body scan while traveling through LAX. The actress thinks the system of randomly selecting passengers for scans should be changed.
D’Errico says she was recently flying to Pittsburgh with her boyfriend and 17-year-old son when she was approached by a TSA agent immediately after she placed her luggage on the moving carrier.
“A male TSA agent took me by the elbow and said come with me,” D’Errico told KTLA.
D’Errico, 42, says when she asked the agent why she was singled out for the full body scan and not others he responded, “because you caught my eye and they didn’t.”
Her son was also given the body scan after she told the agent that they were traveling together, she said.
D’Errico says the agent never gave her the option for a pat-down.
Once she got through the line, she says she looked back and saw the TSA agent laughing, whispering and smiling as he and two other male TSA agents looked at her.
“I felt like I was in high school,” she said.
D’Errico says no one else from the long line was pulled aside for a body scan.
She says she would like to see the system changed.
“You shouldn’t have a human being randomly selecting people,” she said.
WARNING: If you are a progressive secular leftist this video will make blood shoot right out of your eyes. To most multiculturalists, multiculturalism in reality means all culture but Christianity. Tolerate this:
The Tea Party is taking power in the Congress and is likely to solidify that power in 2012. If the Tea Party is so racist and evil as the elite media and their comrades in the Democrat leadership claim, would we not see hate crimes and such on the rise? Especially since most Independents and many Democrat voters joined the Tea Party in recent elections?
Of course it was all nonsense and just served to further minimalize an already distrusted antique media culture.
FBI: Hate Crimes and Anti-Religious Offenses Declined In 2009
The FBI says the number of reported hate crimes dropped significantly in 2009 from the previous year, to their lowest point in more than 15 years, despite the deepening recession and growing social tensions. Anti-religious crimes also declined, although attacks against Jewish targets continued to far outstrip incidents aimed at Muslims and Islamic sites.
Whether that downward trend — and the proportionally low number of anti-Muslim incidents — continued into 2010 will only come to light in next year’s report. Given the supercharged political atmosphere that marked this election year, and flashpoints like the so-called ground zero mosque controversy and the Koran-burning threats that sparked numerous attacks on Muslims, the numbers could spike.
Overall, the numbers represent a drop of 15 percent in all hate crimes to the lowest number reported since 1994, outstripping the 5.5 percent decline in violent crime in 2009 and the 4.9 percent drop in property crimes.
Attacks against Jews and Jewish sites accounted for more than 70 percent of the 2009 incidents against religious targets, while Muslims were targeted in just over 9 percent of the incidents. Both groups have relatively small communities, a few million in each case, as opposed to the nation’s more than 65 million Roman Catholics, for example. The FBI tallied 51 anti-Catholic incidents in total in 2009, 38 against Protestants, and 10 against atheists and agnostics.
This video is a bit over the top and the rhetoric is a bit hyped to be sure. The video, while wiping their feet on the subject, still has a valid point.
The taboo on talking politics and religion fosters the status quo and only aids those who wish to manipulate us with crisis politics and a steady movement of the Overton Window. The Federal Reserve and a government that has gone out of control is putting us in a crisis and raping us of our wealth.
While this video is over the top, it is thought provoking so I encourage people to watch it and think.
Fortunately the last election cycle shows that people are waking up, but is it too little too late?
This is exactly what I have said is going on for a long time. I said this for a number of reasons. The first is most obvious, as a business model MSNBC has been run at a loss – and “at a loss” we mean that it is run below opportunity costs. This means that the network could use a model that generates more profits, but profits is not why MSNBC does what it does, it does so to ingratiate its parent company to the Democrats in power (and lifetime federal bureaucrats who tend to be democrats). While some of the reason may very well be ideology by the owners and those who run the network, for leftists in the private sector money almost always trumps ideology.
A fact that has been brought to light when reports surfaced that CNBC asked Rick Santelli to knock off the Anti-Obama policy rants, rants which gained the network great publicity and no doubt ratings. Santelli’s accurate explanation of what the “business street” thought about current policy was making him into a celebrity super star and favorite of the people. This could only have been a big plus for CNBC. Now Mett Nesto is likely facing the axe as well for being so tough on the administration.
What you are about to read is yet another quintessential example of how wrong Washington DC has become.
Today we have yet another example of this and to explain it are my friends fromAccuracy in Media:
In a “slobber alert,” a blog known as the “NYTPicker” called Sunday’s Times puff-piece story about GE a “wet kiss” that was designed to get the reporter, Steve Lohr, an exclusive interview with chairman Jeffrey Immelt.
But the Times is not alone. While excoriating Capitol Hill Republicans for insisting on an extension of current tax rates, which they call “tax cuts for the rich,” MSNBC commentators such as Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are giving plenty of “wet kisses” to GE by failing to cover the unfolding scandal involving how Immelt used his high-level Obama Administration connections to collect billions of dollars from the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
GE owns media properties NBC, CNBC and MSNBC.
The blogger wrote that New York Times reporter Steve Lohr had “fallen prey to that classic corporate gambit—access to the CEO for an ‘exclusive’ interview, and a guided tour of exactly what the company wants the public to see, and nothing else. Beyond that, Lohr excluded from his epic piece the most recent—and damaging—public-relations blow to the company’s reputation: Thursday’s revelation that GE borrowed $16 billion from the Federal Reserve in the fall of 2008, well before anyone realized the depth of troubles with the company’s credit.”
Charles Ortel, managing director of Newport Value Partners, was also amazed. He told AIM, “How does Steve Lohr write a five-page article on GE without addressing its soaring debt level and dwindling domestic revenues, profits and free cash flows from continuing non-finance operations?”
Ortel told AIM in a column last week that GE’s intrinsic net worth is about $2 a share, compared to its high of $60 and current price of $16.
However, the Lohr piece was decidedly upbeat and ran under the headline, “G.E. Goes With What It Knows: Making Stuff.”
Playing catch-up with former Times reporter Jeff Gerth at ProPublica, who had the story on December 2, the Times on December 5 reported, “Newly disclosed records show that during the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve essentially lent $16.1 billion to General Electric by buying short-term corporate i.o.u.’s from the company at a time when the public market for such debt had nearly frozen.” The story noted that Immelt sat on the nine-member board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, an obvious conflict of interest.
The paper added that “The New York Fed is the most powerful of the Federal Reserve’s 12 branches and was charged with carrying out various emergency programs that supported financial markets during the crisis.” How convenient.
Interestingly and ironically, Immelt is a member of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which was supposed to help dig America out of the economic and financial crisis.
Even bigger issues, Ortel says, are (a) GE’s drawdown of some $60 billion under the FDIC- backed loan program starting in November 2008 and the way GE wangled itself into this program even though its financial operations are not truly regulated, and (b) GE’s sale of $12 billion of common stock during the depth of the crisis.
We are waiting for MSNBC commentators Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to demonstrate their intellectual independence of thought and action by subjecting their corporate bosses to scrutiny over their financial dealings involving taxpayer money.
