I'm Really Disappointed In Eric Holder

The AG is to resign according to stories. No doubt to cushy money somewhere. I'm sure he'll get rich making speeches denouncing the wealthy and the white to wealthy white people.

I'm sort of shocked. I thought he was a True Believer who would sacrifice personal gain to the higher goals of protecting the world from pro-lifers, disenfranchising whites, enabling Black Panther thuggery, ceding the South to drug cartels and dismantling the fabric of society by undermining the bonds of trust and equal protection under the law for as long as possible.

Never thought of him as a sell-out.

Update: Shorter Rep. Issa: Door. Bang. Bye.

Eric Holder is the most divisive U.S. Attorney General in modern history and, in a vote supported by 17 Democratic House Members, has the dubious historic distinction of being the first Attorney General held in criminal contempt by the U.S. House of Representatives,” said Chairman Issa. “Time and again, Eric Holder administered justice as the political activist he describes himself as instead of an unbiased law enforcement official.  By needlessly injecting politics into law enforcement, Attorney General Holder’s legacy has eroded more confidence in our legal system than any Attorney General before him. Through strong arming reporters, practically ignoring high level wrongdoing, blocking his own agency Inspector General’s access to information, and overseeing a Department that attempted to stonewall Congressional oversight with denials of what is now established fact, Attorney General Holder abused his office and failed to uphold the values of our Constitution.  While President Obama and the Senate should work expeditiously to find a replacement, time and care must be taken to ensure that our next Attorney General recognizes and does not repeat Mr. Holder’s mistakes.
 On June 28^th, 2012, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on a bipartisan basis to hold the Attorney General in contempt of Congress for refusing to produce Operation Fast and Furious documents subpoenaed the previous year. The parallel civil contempt case is currently before a federal judge.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Read the Critique of Pure Reason

Shamelessly pinched from here.

That someone thought to put this disclaimer on Kant as dangerous for children makes me want to enter the catacombs and turn out the lights. There are PLENTY of reasons to keep your babies away from Kant that have nothing to do with his frightening and unacceptable heteronormativity.

They Really Do Hate Us

Todd Zywicki reviews Jonathan Haidt's book on psychology and politics. Two interesting points. First, Haidt singles out five "vectors" of social morality or values and finds Liberals care about only two of the five, whereas Conservatives tend to value all five:

Initially for Haidt what he focused on was ideas of “disgust.” Over time that has broadened and he describes five key vectors or values of psychological morality: (1) care/harm, (2) fairness, (3) loyalty, (4) authority, and (5) sanctity. Haidt finds in his research that self-described “conservatives” tend to value all five vectors of morality (as he defines them). Liberals, by contrast, place a high value on “care” and “fairness” and a lower value on loyalty, authority, and sanctity. On the two values that conservatives and liberals both value (care and fairness) they do not define those terms the same way, although they both value them according to their different definitions.

Secondly, conservatives can understand liberals, but liberals can't understand conservatives.

One other point that I find really interesting and important about Haidt’s work is his findings on the ability of different groups to empathize across these ideological divides. So in his book (p. 287) Haidt reports on the following experiment: after determining whether someone is liberal or conservative, he then has each person answer the standard battery of questions as if he were the opposite ideology. So, he would ask a liberal to answer the questions as if he were a “typical conservative” and vice-versa. What he finds is quite striking: “The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as ‘very liberal.’ The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives.” In other words, moderates and conservatives can understand the liberal worldview and liberals are unable to relate to the conservative worldview, especially when it comes to questions of care and fairness.
In short, Haidt’s research suggests that many liberals really do believe that conservatives are heartless bastards–or as a friend of mine once remarked, “Conservatives think that liberals are good people with bad ideas, whereas liberals think conservatives are bad people”–and very liberal people think that especially strongly. Haidt suggests that there is some truth to this.

And why would that be? RTWT.  Filing this under "perky little tyrants" because:

As an aside, I think the “thinness” of the liberal moral worldview may explain a phenomenon that has puzzled me, which is the speed at which liberal views harden into orthodoxy and the willingness of liberals to use various forms of compulsion to enforce that orthodoxy.

Not sure I buy the psychological explanation. Always be suspicious of efforts to reduce free persons to behaviorist automatons. I suspect Hayek's Road to Serfdom explains the phenomenon better than Haidt. But it's still interesting that sociology/psychology can measure the closedness of the typical liberal mind.

Progressivism & Manifest Contempt

Thinking further about Gov. Cuomo's manifest contempt for the people he is supposed to be serving, I'd like to point out that while his attitude is particularly dangerous in an elected official, it is not unique, but reflects the corrupting intellectual influence of Progressivism on all if not most of our citizens.

There's a lyric in Oklahoma's The Farmer & The Cowman Should Be Friends that captures the old American ethos: 

I don't say I'm no better than anybody else
But I'll be damned if I ain't jist as good. 

The song goes on to say that for the good of the incipient state of Oklahoma -- that is, for the common good of both the farmer and the rancher, and in spite of their competing needs--

Territory folks should stick together,
Territory folks should all be pals.
Cowboys dance with farmer's daughters,
Farmers dance with the ranchers' gals.

This is a folksy way of expressing the concept of citizenship at the heart of the American experiment: all men are created equal, with inalienable rights and equal dignity before the law; and while protecting of my own dignity, I am able to exercise such self-restraint as is necessary for the common good and for peace and good will to prevail.

An ugly feature of contemporary discourse to which I've become increasingly sensitive is the attitude that everyone else is an imbecile or immoral jerk except me, I'm enlightened. We're contemptuous of one another. I first started noticing this when I had kids and was initiated into the fraught conversations on parenting styles in which even the most contingent choices are elevated into high moral questions from which no dissent shall be brooked without acknowledgment one is a bad person.  (Here's a blogger documenting the condescending things people say about parents teaching sexuality to their kids, but I say the attitude is more generalized.) Have you noticed that you just never hear anyone say, "It's a free country," anymore? I heard it all the time as a kid and I think it's telling it's all but disappeared. I don't think that's because we have noticed we aren't free; I think it's because we don't think others have the right to do things differently.

Whenever something ugly and far outside the norm occurs, we have to have a national conversation about how horrible Americans are. Other Americans, naturally, of whom we're quick to believe the worst.

When there's a school shooting (and such incidents are on the decline, not the rise), we're sure everyone else is just about to blow and must be kept down and controlled. But the truth is there's no one you want on your side in a crisis more than your neighbors in the United States. Those incidents, ugly and tragic as they are, are not primarily about one mentally ill person inflicting harm, but about the nobility and courage and generosity of the ordinary people who rise up to help. (Here's an example from the Boston massacre, for example. Do we really not remember the extraordinary outpouring of volunteers in the aftermath of 9/11? The literal million of citizens who left their own homes and livelihoods to help rebuild New Orleans after Katrina? The $300 billion dollars of aid to charities Americans give annually on top of their taxes and foreign aid?)

Or: A couple of times a year it happens that some ugly incident of racism or homophobia occurs. It will be minor -- graffiti on a dorm room door or a nasty note left for a waitress in a cafeteria-- but it becomes national news and everyone takes to their social media pages to tut-tut -- but really, I would say, to publicly announce that THEY would never do such a thing, enlightened as they are, unlike some others we could name....(except, we never do name them, do we? Ever think why?). It never seems to occur to anyone to note that they're spreading the ugliness by publicizing it, which is exactly what the perp hopes for. And what REALLY never occurs to anyone is that some things are too bad to be believed. Almost always in my observation, such incidents later turn out to be false: publicity stunts created by the "victims" themselves (see here for example or here or here. There's even a website dedicated to documenting staged hate crimes.). But we fall for such stunts repeatedly because we're all quick to believe that America is a steaming cauldron of haters.

You don't even have to have much on the ball yourself to think other people are unworthy of self-government. Check out the comment the kid makes at about :48 in this video for example.

I don't want to say some people have reached the point where maybe they shouldn't make their own decisions, but...I think that's what it's becoming.

That's the opposite of  "I ain't no better than anyone else," and the antithesis of Lincoln's succinct pronouncement:

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

The utterly preposterous and chilling thing about the kid's attitude, which seems more and more widespread, is that he's not even talking about some major life decision. He's talking about regulating how people snack, which he thinks he knows better than you --and is perfectly happy to have government regulate-- with nary a thought about the implications for his own ability to make free decisions.

That, my friends, is the intellectual impact of Progressivism, which is Hegel & Darwin applied to the social order. Hegel denied there were any timeless (or self-evident) truths. He believed in only a progression of history, with rights "evolving" with historical consciousness. As History changes or progresses, certain antiquated concepts are left behind. All the old ideas, myths and customs disappear and become more "rationalized," and the business of politics becomes less and less a dialogue of Reason and exercise of Prudence and more and more simply Administration according to experts, to whom we all must yield.

Hence the rise of the Administrative state. Where once a free people elected representatives to debate the best course of action, now the Congress simply states a goal: say, healthcare for all, and then prescinds from any responsibility for the policy that results, delegating all the real work to expert regulators -- experts only in the "science" of administration.  There is no longer room for debate about the meaning of government and the rights of man, there are only enlightened rules to follow. And if you don't follow them, you're not enlightened and shouldn't maybe make your own decisions.

That is a sick way to think about human beings --and if I may jump tracks for a moment, precisely what Pope Francis is on about when he says inequality is our biggest social problem. He's not addressing literal income inequality. He's talking about the elites who increasingly make all the West's decisions without a single concern for genuine human flourishing: who treat the poor not as human persons entitled to be the protagonists of their own lives, but as problems for the state to manage, such that we think we've done right by the poor if everyone's perpetually on welfare, but don't create the conditions in which they can work and rise and don't even SEE them (just as a thought experiment: would Obama still be in office if we still had government run bread lines and soup kitchens instead of food stamps mailed in private to people's homes? Not suggesting a policy change, just suggesting that the expansion of the number of Americans jobless and on foodstamps is acceptable to us only because we don't see it).

If you think of others as unable to make their own decisions but yourself as enlightened and free, you are part of the problem -- and unfortunately, even among those who are champions of traditional morality, there's this progressivist corruption present which simply wants to stamp down others with our superior knowledge rather than do the step by step grunt work of political persuasion and cultural change. In fact, it seems to me that step by step grunt work is mostly today derided as insufficient purity and suspect motives. Let anyone take a slightly different tack on a matter than we do, and we're swift to denounce our allies as RINOS, CINOs, UNCLEAN. On the Right as well as the Left we prefer self-indulgent rage to the slow hard slog of liberty and respect for our fellow men.

How Cookie Has Fallen

A friend posted this Sesame Street parody of the new Hunger Games flick. Qua parody it's cute, but I can't help lament how far poor Cookie Monster has fallen. He's reduced to cross-dressing! And I note that, true to the politically correct promise made on his behalf some years ago, he has to "exercise self-control" and NOT eat a cookie, substituting an alarm clock. Message to small children: it is safer to ingest metal and plastic than a cookie. Yeah, that's better.

I remember the old days when Cookie Monster was allowed to eat cookies -- and was sophisticated enough  for existentialism jokes.


And just for grins, here is a Cookie Monster favorite.

What Happens If You Ask The School Board A Question?

You get forcibly removed from the room and charged with assaulting a police officer. Michelle Malkin has more details from other eye-witnesses. Essentially, at a meeting in Baltimore County about the Common Core curriculum, the county superintendent and various others would not take any but soft-sell questions.

This is a good visual for progressivism: rule by experts. The little people who dare to question are considered not citizens entitled to a hearing and an explanation, but little bugs getting in the way of progress. The audience appears to be on the guy's side -- he's applauded and there's some shouting in his defense. But they really should have all stood up and demanded he be allowed to ask his question.

If Common Core is so fabulous, how come its proponents aren't EAGER to answer any and all questions?

Fellow Marylanders, this is how eager your elected officials are to hear from you and serve you. Spread that video widely.

Kindness Requires A Permit

This kind of thing makes my brain explode. A guy's been giving homeless people haircuts for 25 years -- even was honored by his city for humanitarian work not too long ago-- and now he's been forbidden by city officials to keep going.

The justification for our massive government is that people aren't taken care of without government programs. But then when individuals step up with charity-- of a kind that's much more of a balm to the human spirit because there is human interaction involved-- they're forbidden by the government to do so.

Plus, you know, DUMB. Wasn't there a crack house the police could have raided instead?

Breeding Traitors

The Obama IRS scandal keeps getting worse. It's now clear that the official policy of the Administration is to target enemies using the coercive power of the state (see this important post, too). I don't know why we're surprised. It's just Chicago machine tactics elevated to the level of the Presidency -- but here's another First Amendment freedom gone, right? No freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, and now no freedom of assembly.

• The IRS told a pro-life group it would back off if it stopped picketing an abortion clinic. 

• The IRS even goes after adoptive parents, if you can believe it. 90% of adoptive parents are asked for "additional information" and 69% of them are audited (in comparison with millionaires, only 12% of whom are audited -- so now we know what "paying your fair share" means). Apparently the Administration not only wants to prevent any children from being born, it doesn't want people to have children by adoption either.

• And it's not just the IRS, either. The FBI also comes after you if you are an ordinary citizen caught in public with an anti-Administration opinion.

Those are just a sampling of the amassing stories. Anyway, not the most important thing in the ongoing revelations and discussion, but this caught my eye in a story about how our intelligence agencies cultivate "contacts" (meaning spies, meaning traitors to their home countries).

A case officer also looks for prospects among individuals who seem to be in search of an ego, their spirits stamped flat by purges, cultural revolutions or protracted tax investigations (a favorite tactic of today's Kremlin).

The most dangerous thing about this Chicago mafia running our country is not its specific policies; it's that it's breeding contempt for law and teaching people -- and the most law-abiding citizens at that-- to hate their country.

Oh, Bravo

Conservatives, Condoms & Compassion RTWT, but here's the money quote:

while one can perhaps imagine a government that would help “average” people to realize their transcendent hopes and aspirations, our actual government is designed to wring any meaning out of life.

Instacurtsy

In Which My Eyes Are Opened

My Spy in New York sent me a link to a British blog that 'splains something I haven't been able to figure out -- namely, why David Cameron is so desperate to redefine marriage in Great Britain. That he should be pro- gay marriage isn't surprising : everyone's a libertarian now, but what the heck is the urgency I haven't been able to understand.

The answer was supplied by EUreferendum today. And it is that in 2010 the UK signed up to an EU solemn international treaty that requires parties to permit same-sex marriage. In the UK’s case, the deadline was June 2013.

And that is the real reason as to why Mr Cameron has invested so much political capital in the cause of “gay marriage”. Although we have not ratified Protocol 12, we have accepted unconditionally Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)5, and undertaken to implement it by June 2013.

Having made that commitment for the Chairmanship of the CoE, Mr Cameron has no choice but to see it through. In June, there is another Committee of Ministers to consider a report on the implementation of the Recommendation, when he is to be called to account for his earlier commitment.

Mr Cameron has no intention of disappointing his LGBT colleagues in Europe. Being the good European that he is, he will do what it takes to get his Bill through Westminister.

Should have guessed.

Maybe Divorcés Should Boycott Chick-fil-A

The latest skirmish in the culture war is over whether or not to patronize Chick-fil-A (a popular fast-food franchise known for its chicken sandwich, rich shakes, and observance of the Sabbath, for those of you across the Pond.)

Dan Cathy, President & CFO of Chick-fil-A, granted an interview to The Bibilical Recorder, later distributed by Baptist Press, in which he said among other things that the company was "guilty as charged" of supporting traditional marriage.

The story has morphed into a great hue and cry, with The Usual Suspects on both sides performing as expected. Gay groups are boycotting Chick-fil-A and staging homosexual kiss-ins at the famously family-oriented restaurants. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel are threatening to prevent Chick-fil-A from operating within their cities' environs.

Gay marriage opponents are naturally rising to Chick-fil-A's defense. In case you're wondering why all of a sudden your friends are tweeting that they're at Chick-fil-A: that's why. Every Wednesday is now Chick-fil-A Wednesday If YOU CARE about Western Civilization AT ALL. Or so Facebook informs me.

Five quick points.

1. The Anchoress as usual gets it right. Hizzoners Menino & Emmanuel are what this blog likes to call Perky Little Tyrants. So far their threats seem to me like mere posturing and bloviating -- they didn't even read what the man said, but more on that later.. Making good on those threats would set a dangerous precedent -- do you have to declare your political beliefs before getting a business license? What kind of thought police crap is that?

(And how stupid is it to declare as beyond the bounds of civic discourse the exact same position President Obama, head of the Democratic Party, professed until oh, 2 minutes ago? Not only do these gentlemen think we all have to "evolve" on the issue of marriage, we now are required to evolve at the exact same pace as the President. )

2. I'm not a believer in corporate giving or the tax code that caused it to develop. Much as I don't approve of unions using member dues to support political candidates and causes, I don't approve of corporations donating to causes without the consent of the workers who helped build the business and make the profits. I think it's unhealthy to inject every transaction of public life with partisan significance, which is the logical result of that policy. But so long as the code is what it is, Chick-fil-A is simply exercising its rights in conformity with the law and a free market, precisely the way companies on the other side of the marriage issue (Starbucks, Home Depot, etc.) do. It is giving to causes it likes. It's not refusing to employ or serve entire constituencies, which is entirely different.

3. Politics ain't beanbag. If a company chooses to inject itself into a political battle, it has no right to cry foul when consumers take that choice into account. You can't give an interview throwing down the gauntlet at a particular constituency and expect them not to react. This is why I haven't really understood the response of friends who promote a boycott of Starbucks because they're pushing gay marriage but are offended and surprised by the gay groups' response to Chick-fil-A. Sauce for the chicken....

4. Turns out that is not what happened here. Chick-fil-A did not take on gay marriage nor insert itself in any way into that debate. Thanks again to the Anchoress, who points us in turn to Terry Mattingly's piece showing that Dan Cathy never said nor was asked a thing about gay marriage. That story is crock from CNN. Here's what Cathy actually said. First of all, he doesn't claim to be running a Christian business.

We don’t claim to be a Christian business,” Cathy told the Biblical Recorder in a recent visit to North Carolina. He attended a business leadership conference many years ago where he heard Christian businessman Fred Roach say, “There is no such thing as a Christian business.”
“That got my attention,” Cathy said. Roach went on to say, “Christ never died for a corporation. He died for you and me.”
“In that spirit … [Christianity] is about a personal relationship. Companies are not lost or saved, but certainly individuals are,” Cathy added. “But as an organization we can operate on biblical principles. So that is what we claim to be. [We are] based on biblical principles, asking God and pleading with God to give us wisdom on decisions we make about people and the programs and partnerships we have. And He has blessed us.”

And then he was asked about his WinShape Foundation, which includes programs to support and save marriages.

The company invests in Christian growth and ministry through its WinShape Foundation (WinShape.com). The name comes from the idea of shaping people to be winners. It began as a college scholarship and expanded to a foster care program, an international ministry, and a conference and retreat center modeled after the Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove.
“That morphed into a marriage program in conjunction with national marriage ministries,” Cathy added.
Some have opposed the company’s support of the traditional family. “Well, guilty as charged,” said Cathy when asked about the company’s position. “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. …
“We are very much committed to that,” Cathy emphasized. “We intend to stay the course,” he said. “We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”

You can argue I suppose that if Dan Cathy supports the Biblical view of marriage we know he also opposes same sex marriage. But he didn't make his comments as a dig at gay marriage, but as a support of a marriage culture. He had keeping couples together in view when he spoke. In fact, if there's anything at all to get huffy about in what he said it's this:

We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.

Married to your first wives? (My God, he is an extremist isn't he?)

It's divorced people who ought to be boycotting!

5. Here we have a story and moral outrage on both sides entirely ginned up by sloppy journalism. (Do read Terry Mattingly's entire piece.) More than sloppy: reckless. Brian Ross and George Stephanopolous are to pay no price for falsely accusing a man of mass murder last week. This week CNN is to pay no price for recklessly endangering the livelihood of thousands of Chick-fil-A employees, who now face a boycott and are inserted into the culture war for no good reason other than journalists have no standards and manage to sink below them even so.

Update: a 6th point. I'd like to thank the two demagogue mayors for so roundly answering the question, "How will same-sex marriage effect me?"

Standing With Geert Wilders

Mark Steyn's forward to Geert Wilders' new book is up at The Corner. It makes me ashamed because I confess from press stories I had the idea Wilders was a bit of a right-wing fanatic -- someone one is put in the awkward position of defending against Islamic extremism but with whose ideas one really doesn't wish to associate. (I don't care how crazy you are or how provocative what you say is, Islamic youths don't get to kill you on the streets of a Western democracy.)

As Steyn shows, this opinion is the product of lazy journalism. Discussing a big flap in Oz when an Aussie politician had the gall to want to meet Wilders and size him up in person rather than relying on rumor, he writes:

In that Cory Bernardi flap Down Under, for example, I’m struck by how much of the Aussie coverage relied on the same lazy shorthand about Geert Wilders. From The Sydney Morning Herald:

 “Geert Wilders, who holds the balance of power in the Dutch parliament, likened the Koran to Mein Kampf and called the Prophet Muhammad a pedophile . . . ”

The Australian:

“He provoked outrage among the Netherlands’ Muslim community after branding Islam a violent religion, likening the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and calling the Prophet Mohammed a pedophile.”

Tony Eastley on ABC Radio:

“Geert Wilders, who controls the balance of power in the Netherlands’ parliament, has outraged Dutch Muslims by comparing the Koran to Hitler’s work Mein Kampf and calling the Prophet Muhammad a pedophile . . . ”

Golly, you’d almost think all these hardworking investigative reporters were just cutting-and-pasting the same lazy précis rather than looking up what the guy actually says. The man who emerges in the following pages is not the grunting thug of media demonology but a well-read, well-traveled, elegant, and perceptive analyst who quotes such “extreme” “fringe” figures as Churchill and Jefferson. 

 Well, that's what you get for believing anything you read in the papers. Mea maxima culpa.

Steyn opens the forward by saying he considered not writing it because he's had enough of his own struggles with Islamist extremists trying to shut him down, brand him an extremist or threaten him with death and who needs it? But then he felt ashamed of that impulse. He concludes:

I have no desire to end up living like Geert Wilders or Kurt Westergaard, never mind dead as Fortuyn and van Gogh. But I also wish to live in truth, as a free man, and I do not like the shriveled vision of freedom offered by the Dutch Openbaar Ministrie, the British immigration authorities, the Austrian courts, Canada’s “human rights” tribunals, and the other useful idiots of Islamic imperialism. So it is necessary for more of us to do what Ayaan Hirsi Ali recommends: share the risk. So that the next time a novel or a cartoon provokes a fatwa, it will be republished worldwide and send the Islamic enforcers a message: Killing one of us won’t do it. You’d better have a great credit line at the Bank of Jihad because you’ll have to kill us all.

 Quite.

Shall There Ever Be An England?

They say the Right is fear-mongering and hysterical. I only wish we were making this stuff up. The "Advertising Standards Authority" is going after a blogger for running an ad in defense of marriage. Please click through and see the ad to understand how utterly innocuous it is. It's a bunch of photos of couples on their wedding day together with a statistic (w/ source citation) about how many people favor keeping marriage as it is and a plea to sign a petition.

He's getting threatening letters, requests for documentation and -- especially important-- insistence that he keep this process "confidential," all because some homosexuals complained it was "homophobic."

Rightly he calls BS on that and is shouting it to the world.

Since His Grace does not dwell in Iran, North Korea, Soviet Russia, Communist China or Nazi Germany, but occupies a place in the cyber-ether suspended somewhere between purgatory and paradise, he is minded to ignore that request. Who do these people think they are? 

Read his entire response. It's very satisfying, though we shall see whether he ends up shut down. I don't know what power this ASA has, if any.

Meanwhile on this side of The Big Pond (speaking of hate speech), my illusion that the WaPo editorial board is slightly more sane and capable of rational discussion than The Formerly Grey Lady has been shattered. Look what ad they ran on Wednesday. Even shameless bigots might think twice about offending a big population of potential subscribers one might think. But one would be wrong. Hatred for Christianity and Christians trumps all.  Here's the excellent response from the Archdiocesan newspaper.

It is slowly becoming a crime to be openly Christian.

Bully For You

As we gradually destroy our civilizing institutions, people are gradually reverting to barbarism and therefore not necessarily learning at home how a civilized person behaves. I acknowledge that schools may need to address certain basics such as, "Dogs establish Alpha order and intimidate everyone else into submission; people don't do that." Nevertheless, while I'm sure they are well-intentioned, I mistrust anti-bullying campaigns for three reasons.

1) I don't think the advice to never fight for any reason is sound. Always walk away from confrontation? That's right if we're talking about having your fancy shoes taken from you at gun-point. Don't die for shoes. When some loudmouth is picking on the class weakling, though, the right thing is to tell him to knock it off. Avoiding confrontation yields the schoolyard to the bully. Remember how horrified we were by the failure of Penn State asst. coach Mike McQueary to intervene in an abuse situation he walked in on? I think we're training our young people to do just that: never think about direct intervention, always wait and call for the teacher. Trained helplessness is good for the bullies long-run.

2)  Based on news stories about "bullying" incidents, I think they fail to properly discriminate between bullying behavior and mere insults. If I'm a 13-year-old girl and my BFF from twenty minutes ago switches allegiances to another girl on the playground and I call her a b**** on Facebook, that's uncharitable and immature speech, but it's not bullying. Every expression of anger is not bullying. Bullying is aggressive use of superior force to badger, intimidate or coerce another person. It's a power game. Single instances of lashing out don't qualify, and teaching kids --especially males-- to always suppress anger is a great way to make an adult who is cynical and bullying.

3) The anti-bullying movement is gradually becoming identified solely with eradicating "homophobia." No one wants a kid persecuted for his sexual orientation, but belief that same-sex attraction is an unfortunate cross to bear and not a gift to be celebrated is not commensurate with bullying. That won't wash. Political correctness is itself a form of bullying and there is no bully like the homosexual lobby. As witness this lovely outburst from Dan Savage of the It Gets Better project.

“I thought this would be about anti-bullying,” Tuttle told Fox news. “It turned into a pointed attack on Christian beliefs.”
Tuttle said a number of his students were offended by Savage’s remarks – and some decided to leave the auditorium.
“It became hostile,” he said. “It felt hostile as we were sitting in the audience – especially towards Christians who espouse beliefs that he was literally taking on.”
Tuttle said the speech was laced with vulgarities and “sexual innuendo not appropriate for this age group.” At one point, he said Savage told the teenagers about how good his partner looked in a speedo.
The conservative website Citizenlink was the first to report about the controversy. They interviewed a 17-year-old girl who was one of students who walked out of the auditorium.
“The first thing he told the audience was, ‘I hope you’re all using birth control,’” she told CitizenLink. “he said there are people using the Bible as an excuse for gay bullying, because it says in Leviticus and Romans that being gay is wrong. Right after that, he said we can ignore all the (expletive deleted) in the Bible.”
As the teenagers were walking out, Tuttle said that Savage heckled them and called them “pansy asses.”

Dan Savage is not a man who is against bullying; he is a bully himself. Unfortunately for Christian teenagers there will be no celebrity assurances that public attacks on them will get better. On the contrary, they are liable to get worse.

Federal Power Grabs

When I posted "In Stunning Act of Delayed Retribution, First Black President Enslaves All Americans" back in 2009, I was kidding. A little joke about the massive debt thrown on our backs by the first stimulus bill.

However, after a friend scoffed at me for saying that an America that would stand for compelling a pro-life conscience to pay for an abortion-inducing drug would stand for absolutely anything the government cared to try, I decided to begin to enumerate all the strikes against the Declaration and Constitution we now passively tolerate.

Here's a question. In what way is crony capitalism carried to the extremes listed below distinct from outright fascism?

My scoffing friend would look at this list and say, "Well, Obama didn't start it. He didn't appoint the first czar, etc...."  That's fine. Doesn't change the fact this must be opposed.

Like the Wholly Owned Subsidiary post, I intend to re-run this periodically with updates. 

Bypassing the Constitution

• Illegal use of recess appointments in four instances. (I've been a supporter of crafty use of recess appointments in the face of a recalcitrant Senate. That's not my objection. This is abuse of the rule, as liberal Jonathan Turley explains at the link.)
• 33 "czars" not confirmed by the Senate. (Some "czars" are more offensive than others. Sometimes the term "czar" is a nickname for a duly appointed position, but the "special assistants to the President" given authority over, eg, corporate benefits packages and climate change rules represent executive power grabs.)
• Administration argues that government decides who is a Church minister and what essential teaching is. (Defeated unanimously at SCOTUS, but they seriously argued this! And indeed the HHS mandate discussed below is simply a regulatory declaration of same: gov't decides who is religious, what constitutes a religious act, and what is essential Church teaching.) 
• Upon re-election, "space" to screw Poland.

Obamacare: Killing the Weak, Compelling All Citizens To Be Complicit In Abortion

• Compels citizens to buy a product on government say-so.
• Caps & rations care to medicare patients through unelected IPAB Boards, which the President can stack through recess appointment according to CRS. (More.)
  
• Compels 90% of insurance plans to pay for abortion. , and all Americans in those plans to pay for abortion from their pockets as a direct collaboration in abortion w/ no opt-out.
• Compels the remaining (religious) insurance plans to pay for abortion-inducing drugs, elective sterilizations and contraceptive pills and devices. (In spite of Hosanna v. Tabor, this mandate likewise asserts government control over what constitutes religious activity. "Religious" group defined as one which exists to teach doctrine and employs, serves only co-religionists.)
• Colleges & universities also covered by abortion drug mandate.
• You don't need no stinkin' mammogram!
• You don't need no stinkin' pap smear!
• But making you pay for your own contraception constitutes a war on women

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

• Federal power grab in education: standardized curriculum, national standards though they are forbidden by law.
• It's illegal to help a friend with his taxes.

Now, in an outrageous and unlawful power grab, the Internal Revenue Service seeks to control who you may hire to prepare your tax returns and even to nudge you toward a large tax preparation firm by eliminating many of their independent competitors. It has enacted a sweeping new licensing scheme that affects an estimated 350,000 tax professionals nationwide.

• Every publicly accessible pool, including hotels and spas, must install a wheelchair lift or ramp, even though their aren't enough lifts in the country to install in every pool. 
• EPA sues the Sacketts for building on a wetland their own map shows is not a wetland.
• Federal lunch inspectors. 
• FDA shuts down Amish farm. (Note: FDA! Not a state or local agency. Armed raid of a private citizen's farm.) (Related: Michigan state gov't stages armed raids on pig farms)
• Labor Dept. forbids farmers to assign farm chores to their children (yet has NO problem assigning them trillions of $$ of their parents' debt to work off).
• Armed raids on Gibson guitar company, for no reason other than the company owners donate to the GOP. 
• Marine biologist faces 20 years in prison for whistling at a whale to be able to watch it longer. 
• DoJ prosecutes pro-life protestors [and loses!].
• Government sues Arizona over immigration law.
• Government sues states that pass voter id laws.
• Government refuses to prosecute voter intimidation case against New Black Panthers. 

Update:
EPA "crucifying" oil and gas companies.

The Happy Conclusion

"It doesn't take a zero," from The Ryskind Sketchbook

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Fisking Fluke

Just for the record and the external memory drive, a point by point refutation of Sandra Fluke's speech before the media. I had precisely all these reactions when I read it, and am glad someone took the time to put pen to paper about it. Especially these two absurd claims (remember we are talking about Georgetown Law School).

Without insurance coverage, contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary.

First of all, I’d like to know how you arrived at that number, because folks have done some checking, and you can get a pack of generic birth control pills for $9 at a Target store just 3 blocks from the Georgetown Campus. That only adds up to $108. What does the other $892 pay for? Lingerie? “Toys”? Batteries? XXX-Rated DVDs? Chocolate? Wine? Dinner and a show?
And, really? “An entire summer’s salary” is only $1000 ($3,000/3 yrs of law school)?  A person getting paid minimum wage in the District of Columbia who works full-time for 3 months would make just a little under $4000 before taxes ($8.25/hr X 40 hrs X 12 weeks = $3960).
Are you telling me that law firms only pay their summer interns 1/4 of the minimum wage?
It seems to me that you might want to focus your advocacy on “Worker’s Rights” and “Economic Justice” for law students.

Forty percent of female students at Georgetown Law report struggling financially as a result of this policy.

Tuition for the 2011-2012 academic year at Georgetown Law was $46,865.   And you  expect me to believe that an additional $108/year is going to make someone “struggle financially”?  Give me a break.

And then there's the howler that a student didn't report a rape because the fact that the pill wasn't covered made her assume no women's health care was covered. Riiiiiight.

You know what I resent?
I resent someone like you thinking that it is acceptable to ask the rest of the country to listen to you whine about how life isn’t fair.
I resent someone like you storming your way into a private religious institution and telling them that they have to violate their religious tenets because you have a problem with it.
I resent someone like you trampling on a church’s First Amendment protections because you want to prove a point.
But you know what I resent most of all?
Knowing that someone like you - who doesn’t have a problem with making stuff up to advance a personal agenda - is going to be allowed to practice law.

Curtsy: American Digest

"White Noise"

part 6 in a series from The Ryskind Sketchbook

Click to enlarge.

Zero Tolerance, Part 5

"Maximum L.E.E.C.H. Drive," from The Ryskind Sketchbook

Click to enlarge.

Casual Sex Now Requires A Welfare Program?

Mark Steyn says forget religious liberty. Forget liberty at all. Just think about this:

When even casual sex requires a state welfare program, you're pretty much done for. 

That does rather focus the mind, no? But here's a little more -- the lead-in to that remark.

Nor is it even the distinctively American wrinkle the Republic of Paperwork has given to governmentalized health care, under which the "right to privacy" the Supreme Court claimed to have discovered in Griswold vs. Connecticut and Roe vs. Wade will now lead to thousands and thousands of self-insuring employers keeping computer records of the morning-after pills and herpes medication racked up by Miss Jones on reception.

Nor is the issue that America has 30-year-old schoolkids – or even 30-year-old schoolkids who expect someone else to pick up the tab for their extracurricular activities, rather than doing a paper route and a bit of yard work to save up for their first IUD, as we did back in my day. After all, the human right to government-mandated free contraception is as American as apple pie and far healthier for you.

In my most recent book, I quote one of Sandra Fluke's fellow geriatrics gamboling in the groves of academe and complaining to the Washington Post about the quality of free condoms therein: "'If people get what they don't want, they are just going to trash them,' said T Squalls, 30, who attends the University of the District of Columbia. 'So why not spend a few extra dollars and get what people want?'" All of us are born with the unalienable right to life, liberty and a lifetime supply of premium ribbed silky-smooth, ultrasensitive, spermicidal, lubricant condoms. No taxation without rubberization, as the Minutemen said. The shot heard round the world and all that.

Nor is the core issue that, whatever the merits of government contraception, America is the brokest nation in history – although the Fluke story is a useful reminder that the distinction between fiscal and social conservatism is generally false.

Just for the aphorisms this piece is one of his best.

Then there's this video, which is what Limbaugh was trying to do, and if he'd gone this direction instead of shooting himself in the foot, it would have spared us all a ridiculous and worse, extremely boring, news cycle. 


Minor notes:

• Did you hear she pronounces it, "Flook," rhyming with book? 
• I somehow missed --Steyn pointed it out and I had to google around to find what he was talking about-- that Fluke was not testifying. That wasn't a hearing, it was a press conference arranged by Nancy Pelosi with a friendly crowd and the press the sole listeners. 
• And how is it that this person comes to be on all the talk shows? She's being handled by the PR firm of an ex-White House employee.  Nothing nefarious or shocking about that, but it should be known.