A month ago, we attended 8th grade graduation. One of the teachers presented the humanitarian award and gave a speech that included every cliche in the book. I'll spare you my rant on her suggestion that it was terrible there was no testing for kindness and kids had to self-assess.
In her frustration about the lack of time spent teaching kindness, she said that the math teacher assured her they wouldn't need algebra after graduation. How often have you heard this? Math is unnecessary in real life.
I was reminded of this again the last couple of days. Yesterday, I deposed a witness on damage calculations and assessed the formulas that he used. This morning, as I contemplated building a garden pool, I realized my volume calculation skills were a little rusty. I could figure out how much liner I would need for the pool size I wanted. Then I had to price pumps. Did I need a 500 gallon pump? Larger? Smaller? My hole in the ground had no label telling me this.
Independent Sources posted five critiques of the Los Angeles Times in a span of 48 hours. Independent Sources is either a little tired of dinner-hour calls from the paper’s telemarketers or perhaps it was just a run of shoddy, biased reporting that prompted the posts. Either way, the critiques were flowing:
LAT Columnist Prefers Presidents that are Fat and Undisciplined
Jonathan Chait’s Times op-ed “The (over)exercise of power” stated that he thought President Bush’s discipline of getting regular exercise and encouraging others to do so were “creepy.” Given the state of obesity in the nation, if anything is creepy it’s Chait’s over-wrought bias that has him deriding physical fitness. Independent Sources even offered to help Mr. Chait find the time in his busy day to work-out just like the President.
Does The LA Times’ Content Make Its Circulation Problem Better, Or Worse?
A timely hat tip to LA Observed for finding outgoing Times editor’s remark that the political right might disagree the paper’s reporting has stemmed the loss of readers. He’s got that right, we disagree.
LAT Says I’m Sorry You Think I Said Something Wrong
A hat tip to Patterico who noted the LAT practice of burying their corrections in places where readers of the original stories won’t necessarily see them.
Our Offer: You Get To Be A Guest Blogger At Independent Sources, We Get To Be Wrong In The NYT
A hat tip to Mickey Kaus for busting Swati Pandey for a month-old New York Times op-ed that stated that Pakistani madrassas do not breed terrorists. (Given the events of this week, we think its clear that you are wrong on that one Swati). Prior to Mr. Kaus report, Independent Sources had noted on several occasions what they considered her superficial and incorrect research.
LA Times Uses Psychic Powers to Decide ‘Wife of Nominee Holds Strong Antiabortion Views’ (And They May Be Wrong, Too)
A scathing analysis of Richard Serrano’s “Wife of Nominee Holds Strong Antiabortion Views,” which according to Independent Sources should never have been printed. Independent Sources also noted that the paper failed to show what her views actually are or why they are relevant to the debate over her husband’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Okay, enough of the dour analysis of all things LA Times. Just to show you that they have a sense of humor, Independent Sources made a list of the 23 best headlines (and then more headlines) in the blogosphere from the maelstrom resulting from a San Bernardino sociologist’s public suggestion to incorporate Ebonics into school curriculum. While the subject matter (essentially surrendering African American children to mediocracy) is anything but funny, at least bloggers brought a little sense of humor to the headlines. For a serious discussion on the topic, check out…
Finally, and most importantly a hat tip to Justene, Boi From Troy, Little Miss Attila and all of the other people who worked to make the Bear Flag League Conference was a success. Here are a few of the many roundups from BFL members: Democracy Market, Log Cabin Republicans, Baldilocks, Big Ideas 4 LA, Local Liberty, Dafydd, Darleen’s Place, Patterico, Flap, and Right on the Beach to name a few. (Yikes! Am I the only person who didn’t post a round-up?)
Update: Independent Sources just posted an article praising (yes, praising) an LAT article on the London subway shooting compared to the treatment of the same incident by the NYT. Read the quoted passages from each paper and make your own conclusion.
Ok, I'm a little late on this one, but I have to pay homage to Angry Clam's 4,888-word composition, worth every bit of bandwidth.
The silver-haired, jut-jawed officer, who rose through the ranks quickly in Europe during World War II and later became superintendent of West Point, contended the United States did not lose the conflict in Southeast Asia."It's more accurate to say our country did not fulfill its commitment to South Vietnam," he said. "By virtue of Vietnam, the U.S. held the line for 10 years and stopped the dominoes from falling."
Westmoreland was right, after all. America's intent to aid a free South Vietnam from the attacks of communist North Vietnam was nobly conceived, if ignobly concluded.
The tragic results of America's surrender of Indochina to communist forces is catalogued in Bruce Herschensohn’s profound essay, When Night Fell In Indochina: Remembering the Consequences Of America's
Abandonment of South Vietnam and Cambodia.
John J. Miller pays tribute to General Westmoreland's "service to America — both in and out of uniform."
Ed Morrisey sets the table—
We have enough problems fighting the war on terror in the measured, strategic method used by the Bush and Blair administrations without Republican Congressmen recommending the bombing of sites held sacred by Muslims across the political spectrum. Yet today, Tom Tancredo (R-CO) suggested that a nuclear attack on an American city could result in a bombing run on Mecca.
The meat of the exchange:
Tancredo—"[Y]ou know, you could take out their holy sites."Interviewer—"You're talking about bombing Mecca."
Tancredo—"Yeah."
Hugh pulls no punches, referring to Tancredo's remarks as:
[T]he most irresponsible statement any American official can make.
As Michelle Malkin notes, Tancredo has some stiff competition in the realm of irresponsible statements, but clearly his quip about "taking out" Mecca wins at least a door prize.
The fact remains that Tancredo isn't a key official, just another congressman whose mouth has more power to do ill than anything else at his disposal. As Ed Morrisey observes:
Besides, who is Tom Tancredo [...] anyway? He doesn't have anything to do with the military chain of command or the national security systems that would make those kinds of recommendations. He certainly doesn't speak for the President ...
In terms of foreign policy and power to direct military assets, Tancredo’s a nobody ... but with a mouth.
Hugh corrently cites Tancredo's quote as a potential PR bonanza for the head-choppers:
It will be on al-Jazeera within the hour, and it will be used by jihadists against us.
It's also fodder for the open-borders, backdoor-amnesty crowd that has long sought to portray Tancredo as an unhinged champion of those 'vigilante-minded wingnuts' whose opposition to illegal immigration is taken to evince a hatred of Mexicans, et al.
This post may be dedicated to a well-merited roasting of Tancredo, but the fact remains that he has done inestimable work in the desperately needed cause of immigration reform. His stand on immigration has earned him a respect in some respects without peer within the halls in Congress, which only makes his current remarks about Mecca all the more unfortunate and distressing.
Michelle Malkin begins her post:
My friend Rep. Tom Tancredo …
That’s an important perspective to keep. Friendship and personal support should not be easily renounced. Hopefully Tancredo will retract his statement, and divest himself from whatever personal philosophy gave foment to the statement in question.
Tancredo must also understand certain political realities. Standing up against illegal immigration draws lots of fire from all quarters, inciting deeply visceral opposition not only from libs of virtually every stripe, but also from the highest members of the current administration. In light of all of this, he’s in maybe the worst position imaginable to offer up this current grist to the ‘Tancredo’s a nut’ caucus.
In a practical more than a philosophic sense, it's the sheer stupidity of Tancredo's statement that may ultimately prove more unforgivable than the sheer wrongness of it. As we have seen time and again in the field of public relations, speakers are undone much more readily by the stupidity of their statements than the wrongness of them, no matter how great or slight the wrongness may be.
As far as targeting Mecca, let our threat of reprisal be nothing more than this: The day a missile strike on America follows a trajectory traceable to a silo in Mecca is the day we will visit upon Mecca the same.
And now for what really matters—
Talk of what won’t work in effectively combating radical Islam is a vain exercise in comparison to a serious and ongoing discussion of what should be done—and what may soon be made imperative beyond all question. Let none consider themselves well-read on the topic until they have availed themselves of the following post [Hat tip Michelle Malkin] and article.
On his radio show today, Hugh Hewitt referred to a loose assortment of those generally advocating stringent control of illegal immigration as "nativists."
It pains me to hear this from Hugh, as he is my favorite talk show host.
The charge of nativism is a serious one; it’s an accusation of bigotry towards foreigners. Quite the contrary from being nativists, the overwhelming majority of those to whom Hugh refers have no problem with legal immigration—their beef is only with illegal immigration. It mystifies me that Hugh cannot (or will not) understand that opposition to illegal immigration is in no way equivalent to nativism.
Also troubling is the fact that Hugh has used this mischaracterization before. Though the inaccuracy of his repeated statements are almost surely owning to carelessness, Hugh would best serve his professional reputation and Christian profession by strictly adhering to the highest possible standards of truth in his reporting on such matters.
I'm sending Hugh a link to this post, not in hope of a direct response, but in hopes of prompting Hugh to more truthful characterizations of those whose only 'wrong' is a principled opposition to illegal immigration.
By Kevin D. Korenthal - SoCalPundit.com
It has long been known that California's legislative districts are devised in such a way as to prevent any new comers from having a shot at wrestling state Senate seats away from those already occupying them.
The current system allows politicians to determine legislative and Congressional boundaries--which essentially means lawmakers can choose their voters, not vice versa. And it's a system that has resulted in a political class that answers first and foremost to its special interest patrons. This single ballot measure would go a very long way toward injecting competition into a political process in which incumbents currently hold office as long as they like.Bring in the California Special Election. There are many initiatives on the ballot for November, some of which are even backed by The Governor but clearly...
...Arnold's most potent initiative would transfer the authority to draw California's voting districts from the legislature to a panel of bipartisan retired judges. Of the 153 seats ostensibly up for grabs last November--53 Congressional seats and 100 in the state legislature--not a single one changed parties.Sounds fair huh? Take the power to make kings away from the kings so that the real king makers are the voters! Democrats disagree that this is necessary. And rather than simply advertise against it, they have decided to beat it in the courts where a minor change of wording could have the initiative thrown out before voters even have a chance to vote on it.
The proposition has polled well, so it was no surprise that California's Democrat-controlled legislature, desperate to preserve these sinecures, initially responded with a counterproposal that would allow a seven-member "citizens commission" to redraw districts. A majority of the members would be chosen by the lawmakers, who would appoint commissioners who do as they're told. Sort of like the puppet regime that Japan set up in China prior to World War II.The bottom line here is that Californians have a right to vote on this initiative. But Democrats are increasingly fearful of any changes to the majority gerrymandered seats they currently hold in government. They seem to realize that if all things are equal, they have less of a chance of remaining the dominant force in California politics.That plan was going nowhere, when earlier this month state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, a Democrat and former leader of the state senate, decided to take matters into his own hands by suing to have the Governor's redistricting proposal simply removed from the ballot on a technicality.
Since Kelo, City Councils all over the country have been bringing the adding machines out of retirement as they struggle to keep up with all the dollars they are going to generate from stealing property from unsuspecting poor people.
Since this Supreme Court Decision generally steals from the poor and gives to corporate America I am amazed it takes California's most conservative State Senator to stop this madness.
McClintock's proposal would require that a government must either own the property it seizes through eminent domain or guarantee the public the legal right to use the property should it be transferred to a private party. In addition, the proposed amendment requires that seized property must be restored to the original owner or his or her rightful successor if the government ceases to use it for the purpose of the eminent domain action.Again I ask: Where are the Democrats on this?GOP Assemblyman Doug La Malfa and other property-rights advocates will join McClintock at a press conference in Sacramento today to announce the proposal.
He writes it in his own sublime voice of course, but Charles Krauthammer has clearly signed on for an endorsement of Levine's Second Rule of Law: "Clarity and consistency in judicial opinions are paramount above all else."
He even agrees with your humble blogger that a consistently liberal Supreme Court is preferable to one populated by habitual "Second Rule" offenders such as O'Connor and Kennedy.
As one critic said of O'Connor:
"When it came to religious liberty, every case was in doubt until the moment Justice O'Connor voted because even her own precedents could not predict the outcome of new cases. That's amazingly counterproductive for a nation that believes in the rule of law. Her approach to religion law questions made everything turn on what an imaginary 'objective observer' would think. But there was no way to know what this imaginary person would think until Justice O'Connor imagined it. . . . Her approach made everything a matter of her subjective judgment and that's not why we have a Constitution. Although she was well-intentioned, she was slowly but surely reinventing monarchy."
Am I going crazy? Am I living in an "Alice in Wonderland" world?
Perhaps I am. Otherwise, I wouldn't be witnessing the media becoming apoplectic over this Karl Rove-Valerie Palme-Joe Wilson non-story-story.
Here is an interesting example of how twisted this whole mess has become:
Howard Kurtz (the self-proclaimed media critic of the Washington Post) writes this in his coverage of the Republican response to the Karl Rove/Valerie Plame "controversy" (6 paragraphs down from the start of his column) -
So the response is that 1) the Dems are playing politics (and Rove wasn't, in dragging in Mrs. Joe Wilson?). And 2) Rove was just performing a public service by steering a reporter away from a false story. (Actually, Wilson was right about the bogus Niger uranium tale, and the White House was wrong, although his credibility did take a hit from a critical Senate intelligence committee report.)
Emphasis most definitely added - and you'll read why in a second.
First off, let's examine Kurt's "conclusion". He cryptically tells us that Wilson was "right...although his credibility did take a hit from a critical Senate intelligence committee report." Kurtz never bothers to explain the nature of this "critical hit". If you read the bipartisan report itself - any honest person will tell you that Kurtz's conclusion is full of shit. (pages 4-12 and 37-39 are the most relevant to the Rove-Wilson-Plame affair, but it is important to read the entire document, including the footnotes, in order to fully understand the full background of this "scandal". Also, the page numbers I cite correspond to the PDF file document, not the original report's page numbers.)
At the very least, the most that can be said about the "Niger tale" is that the evidence is inconclusive and that Wilson is definitely a liar. And that's just from the redacted version of the report. Who knows what's in the full version?
Maybe Kurtz didn't actually have time to read the Senate Report on Wilson and Niger. But I find it hard to believe that he didn't have time to read his own newspaper which also reported that Wilson is a liar. (And no, this report from the Washington Post is not an editorial. It is a regular news story that they saw fit to bury on page 9 of their paper, and (to the best of my knowledge) hasn't seen fit to mention it again during any of the current reporting of Karl Rove.)
A few key paragraphs from the Washington Post's news story last year:
Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.Wilson last year launched a public firestorm with his accusations that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war. He has said that his trip to Niger should have laid to rest any notion that Iraq sought uranium there and has said his findings were ignored by the White House.
Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.
The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.Yesterday's report said that whether Iraq sought to buy lightly enriched "yellowcake" uranium from Niger is one of the few bits of prewar intelligence that remains an open question. Much of the rest of the intelligence suggesting a buildup of weapons of mass destruction was unfounded, the report said.
The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him.
Plame's role could be significant in an ongoing investigation into whether a crime was committed when her name and employment were disclosed to reporters last summer.
"Plame's role could be significant in an ongoing investigation..." Gee, ya think?
But wait, it gets better folks! Let's get back to Howard Kurtz's take on this story.
Remember that key paragraph of Kurt'z that I quoted above?
Here it is again:
So the response is that 1) the Dems are playing politics (and Rove wasn't, in dragging in Mrs. Joe Wilson?). And 2) Rove was just performing a public service by steering a reporter away from a false story. (Actually, Wilson was right about the bogus Niger uranium tale, and the White House was wrong, although his credibility did take a hit from a critical Senate intelligence committee report.)
Now try this simple experiment at home - go ahead and click on the "printer friendly" version of Kurtz's column so that you can print out your own personal hard copy of it (or you can directly link to it here).
Notice any difference between the 2 versions???
Here is what the "printer friendly" version states (or rather, doesn't state):
So the response is that 1) the Dems are playing politics (and Rove wasn't, in dragging in Mrs. Joe Wilson?). And 2) Rove was just performing a public service by steering a reporter away from a false story (actually, Wilson was right about the bogus Niger uranium tale, and the White House was wrong).
The printer-friendly version of Kurtz's piece doesn't even mention the Senate intelligence report on Wilson at all!!!! It has been conveniently deleted from the version that people will print out to pass around outside of the Internet.
I'm not about to conclude that it's some sinister conspiracy on Kurtz's part (though so far, there is more circumstantial evidence here for a conspiracy than any supposed conspiracy on the part of the Bush White House). I will say however, that Kurtz owes readers an explanation for this curious but vital discrepancy in his article.
You would think that these two sources would be absolutely critical to an understanding of the Karl Rove-Valerie Plame flap.
Too bad that nobody in the media seems to want to bother....
[Follow-up side note: You will notice that in footnote 8 of the Senate Intelligence Report on Niger, Senator Rockefeller requested that the FBI look into who might have forged the Niger yellowcake documents, what their motivations might have been, and to what extent they were part of a disinformation campaign. To the best of my knowledge, the FBI has never publicly stated any conclusions to these questions. However, some press accounts have uncovered their own answers and have put the blame squarely on the French.]
[Update: Glad to see that Jim Lindgren over at the Volokh Conspiracy is also on the case. Perhaps the Today Show will do better than Howard Kurtz in its analysis. But I wouldn't hold my breath....]
[Not sure if there is a problem with the trackback indicator - but welcome Volokh readers!]
If anyone can figure out what the following have in common other than being interesting tidbits found in the blogosphere, you win a free coffee mug.
Anarchists:
With property damage occurring and at least one very serious injury to a policeman, there is very little to laugh about with this protest gone awry. But when I read that anarchists staged a poorly organized protest in San Francisco, I immediately thought of the Onion and their talent for drafting oxymoronic headlines. As Independent Sources points out, perhaps the lack of organization at the protest was due to the fact that the protesting anarchists in attendance believe in no central control at all. Do you think? [hat tip: Michele Malkin]
Manipulated Data:
Also in Independent Sources, noted liberal bloggers Daily Kos has a chart of terror incidents this year. Much like the much-maligned-yet-still-used global warming “hockey stick”, the picture appears to tell a story that the low-point in terrorist attacks was the year that Bush took power and terror attacks have been on the rise ever since. The data would seem to support liberal arguments that Bush’s policies have increased, not reduced, terror.
Not surprisingly, the statistics used by Kos are misleading. In their data, approximately one fifth of the terror deaths cited are in Chechnya, a conflict that dates back to 1994 and hardly the work of Mr. Bush. Other terror deaths are in Uganda, once again hardly Mr. Bush’s fault. Attacks in India/Kashmir area also included, not really in the sphere of influence of an American President. You get the idea.
If one strips out the extraneous information, what we can really learn from the Kos statistics is the shocking revelation that Bush became president in 2001 and terror attacks, both by Islamic fundamentalists and others, have continued around the world.
Conspiracy Theories:
While on the subject of Daily Kos, Daily Pundit pointed us to this July 8th Daily Kos notice:
I made a mass banning of people perpetuating a series of bizarre, off-the-wall, unsupported and frankly embarassing conspiracy theories. I have a high tolerance level for material I deem appropriate for this site, but one thing I REFUSE to allow is bullshit conspiracy theories. You know the ones -- Bush and Blair conspired to bomb London in order to take the heat off their respective political problems.
Evidently, certain Daily Kos readers had been posting “theories” that Blair/Bush were behind the bombings. Wisely, and fortunately for Kos and us, he pulled them before his site became even more identified with bizarre thinking.
Name Calling:
LA Observed tells us about the name calling between Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and Los Angeles Times music writer Robert Hilburn. Whatever happened to “sticks and stones may break my bones…”?
Richard Scrushy:
No doubt you have heard that having beat the rap for a $2.7 billion accounting scandal using a dubious legal defense, Richard Scrushy is looking to get his old job back as CEO of HealthSouth. Feeling bad that he was only able to pocket a reported $300 million of ill-gotten gains, Independent Sources has offered Mr. Scrushy a job writing for the blog.
We [Independent Sources] would like you to know how incredibly moved we were by your attorney’s closing comments comparing your prosecution for inflating Healthsouth’s earnings by $2.7 billion to the civil rights movement in the South.
As they say, charity starts at home.
Insider out.
Simple arithmetic—merely divide $3B (Hat tip LGF) by the cost of a bomb belt, then multiply that by the number of Israelis killed by the average homicide bomber:
GLENEAGLES, Scotland - World leaders wrapping up an economic summit shaken by terrorism agreed Friday on an "alternative to the hatred"—aid packages for the Palestinian Authority [...]Blair said the Palestinian aid package would total $3 billion "in the years to come." The British leader said the assistance was designed "so that two states, Israel and Palestine, two peoples and two religions can live side by side in peace."
Strange, isn't it? The same world leaders who were "shaken by terrorism," immediately pledged $3 billion to some of the most virulent terrorists in the world (or to—as Charles Johnson puts it [LGF link provided above]—"the society that, perhaps more than any other, breeds and fuels the terrorist ethos").
The startling apathy among Palestinian leadership to genuinely improve the lot of fellow Palestinians is only exceeded by—or perhaps in direct proportion to—their exceeding thirst for killing Jews.
Thanks to generous G-8 funding, Israeli ambulances should have much brisker work for many, many years to come. Good going, G-8 knuckleheads. The $3 billion might as well have been funneled to al-Queda.
In other G-8 sagacity...
[A]id to Africa would rise from the current $25 billion to $50 billion.
All of this in light of recent news:
ABUJA, Nigeria, June 25 (UPI) -- Nigeria's past rulers stole or misused some $400 billion during the last four decades of the 20th century ...
If the G-8 spent the first $49,999,000,000 in addressing rife corruption by African leaders, the last $1,000,000—dedicated to straight aid—would relieve more suffering than the $400,000,000,000 previously squandered. Bono, where are you when we need you?
The usual balliwick of the Bear Flag League is California -- with notable exceptions. When something as important as the London attacks occur, the League is on it. Independent Sources had a chance to read through all of the league and roundup the posts on London.
Daughter #1 is in Washington DC at a leadership institute focusing on diplomacy and homeland security. Yeah, what passes for fun here is, um, different. They've been in a weeklong simulation. Madeleine is the UK representative to the UN. I've been getting reports like North Korea has attacked Japan, North Korea attacked one of her ships.
Today, her excited voice came over the cel phone that woke me up at 5 am. "Mom, there were explosions in London. Mom, Mo, you have to wake up, it's for real. There were really explosions in London."
And so there were. Updates to this post will occur throught the day.
UPDATES:
London bloggers: Dodgeblogium,Tom Worstall, About This Boy.
Jeff Jarvis is collecting London blog posts.
Back Seat Drivers has emergency numbers.
UPDATE:
Edgeware Road has 9 dead. We stayed across the street on our last trip to London. It was, if memory serves, in a section of the city with a heavily Arabic population. I guess no one is safe.
Joseph C. Phillips, a member of the Conservative Brotherhood, will be speaking at the BFL conference on July 17.
Although Phillips is not running for assembly yet, as had been rumored earlier in the year, he remains active in politics. He was National Co-Chair of the African American Steering Committee for Bush/Cheney ‘04, was named a member of he Republican National Committee's African American Advisory Board and was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the board of directors of the California African American Museum.
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(UPDATED)
Democratic Senate minority leader Harry Reid has gone on record with his first endorsement for a prospective Supreme Court nominee (Hat tip Hugh Hewitt):
Alberto Gonzales is qualified. ... But having said that he's qualified, I don't know if he'd have an easy way through.
I call this damning as all get-out for Gonzales. Gonzales has won this public endorsement of Supreme Court worthiness from Reid only because the Democrats have determined Gonzales to be the squishiest prospective nominee on President Bush's short list. Don’t think that the Dems haven’t done their research before sending Reid out to pronounce Gonzales “qualified.” Don’t think their paymasters—uber-left lobbyists such as those from People for the American Way—haven’t signed off on this beforehand.
The Democratic Party has veered so radically left, that an endorsement by a leader of the Democratic Senate should be—in any sane political environment—by all rights the kiss of death for any prospective nominee.
The only nominees in the best interest of America are those so viscerally and ideologically repellant to Democratic leaders as to cause men like Reid to spit blood.
UPDATE:
Don't miss Angry Clam's must-see post on just how awful of a prospective Supreme Court nominee Gonzales really is.
The form of initiative on the petitions and the form now heading to the ballot differ. Ted Costa is unconcerned.
Conservative activist and initiative proponent Ted Costa, chief executive of People's Advocate, said he found out about the different drafts a month ago and now predicts that someone will use the discrepancy to challenge the initiative in court."On the last 13 initiatives [we've sponsored], we've been sued on every one of them," Costa said. But he expressed certainty that the courts would uphold the initiative.
"I would suppose that anyone who doesn't like redistricting would probably think this is serious," he said. But "if you look at all the legal precedents, they're all on the side of" allowing "a small legal error in an initiative."
Hugh Hewitt recently did his best to speak graciously of O'Connor:
[Justice O'Connor] deserves thanks and recognition for more than two decades of service as a pioneering jurist and incredible professionalism in the public eye. She will always be the first woman to have served on the Court, and it is unlikely that she will ever be surpassed in terms of graciousness and "judicial temperment."
The problem is, there are instances in which graciousness is not called for.
In contemplation of her "more than two decades of service," Matthew Franck’s critique provides a far truer reckoning than Hugh’s, of O'Connor's tenure on the Big Court (Hat tip Christopher Cross):
... O'Connor should be remembered as one of the worst contributors to American jurisprudence in recent history. She was notorious as a "swing vote," equally maddening to Left and Right at various times. But she consistently held one of the most expansionist views of judicial power, committed always to the most capacious version of the Court's authority over American life. A few years ago I told my students my "O'Connor rule" for saving oneself a lot of trouble: If the Court has declared anything unconstitutional, and the vote was 5-4, and the fifth vote was provided by O'Connor, the case was wrongly decided. Reading the opinions is necessary only to confirm that judgment.
Whithering as such criticism may be, it falls short in capturing how warped O'Connor's philosophy of jurisprudence truly was:
MSNBC—Last October, in a speech in Atlanta, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor added fuel to the controversy over foreign precedents, predicting that “over time we will rely increasingly, or take notice at least increasingly, of international and foreign courts in examining domestic issues.”"The impressions we create in this world are important and they can leave their mark," O'Connor said in remarks quoted in the Atlanta Constitution. Looking to foreign precedents "may not only enrich our own country's decisions, I think it may create that all-important good impression."
What a perverse and deranged judicial philosophy to take to the highest court in the land!
So much for applying the United States Constitution as the sole arbiter in Supreme Court cases. No, to O'Connor the Supreme Court was about bowing down to a smorgasbord of decisions from courts of lesser nations, whereby to "enrich" America. O'Connor was concerned with creating "that all-important good impression," not with the steadfast, wholehearted, single-minded application the Constitution of the United States.
As such she was a miserable failure as a jurist.
No one who relies on foreign courts to guide and inform their rulings has any business clerking at the United States Supreme Court, let alone presiding as one of its jurists. O'Connor's talk about creating “that all-important good impression," is sheer nuttiness. We would ask one simple thing from our Supreme Court justices, that they faithfully apply our nation’s Constitution according to its original intent, period, and let "all-important good impressions" be damned.
Finally, what but a miserable failure as a jurist could elicit such praise from the following character witnesses:
Minority Senate leader Harry Reid—
"Above all, Justice O'Connor has been a voice of reason and moderation on the court ... who embodies the fundamental American values of freedom, equality and fairness."
Senator Teddy Kennedy—
"She was a careful and thoughtful and highly respected member of the court, a wise judge who served the nation and the constitution well."
I rest my case.
PS—
Calblog's own Justin Levine has found another great critique on O'Connor:
"When it came to religious liberty, every case was in doubt until the moment Justice O'Connor voted because even her own precedents could not predict the outcome of new cases. That's amazingly counterproductive for a nation that believes in the rule of law. Her approach to religion law questions made everything turn on what an imaginary 'objective observer' would think. But there was no way to know what this imaginary person would think until Justice O'Connor imagined it. . . . Her approach made everything a matter of her subjective judgment and that's not why we have a Constitution. Although she was well-intentioned, she was slowly but surely reinventing monarchy."
The National Council of Churches is exploiting the celebration of Independence Day as an excuse to utter more inane leftist garbage. Note that for the N.C.C. the 4th of July has meaning only as it provides a quick segue into the standard leftist boilerplate diatribe against the war in Iraq (Hat tip LGF):
“This year our nation is at war as we observe the 4th of July ... [T]he rationale for invasion [of Iraq] was at best a tragic mistake, at worst a clever deception.”
Oh, puh-LEEZE!, has it come to the place where we can’t enjoy a pleasant 4th of July without having moonbats making their usual mess of rhetoric on the carpet, and telling us how good it smells?
And what could be more annoying than moonbats who add insult to insult, cloaking themselves in religious garb?
Could it get any sappier, any nuttier than this?:
As people of faith, we believe in the transcendent sovereignty and love of God for creation, and that the responsibility of human beings is thus to pursue justice and peace for all. We also believe that, as the biblical prophets of old, who in faithfulness to God spoke out to a people and a nation they loved, in humility before God we too are to speak to a land and people we love. As religious leaders we invite others who share our affections and dismay to recognize the time has come to speak out.
Got that? The N.C.C. are “people of faith” who “believe in the transcendent sovereignty and love of God” and all that good stuff, and so of course it’s they’re duty to exhort toward “justice and peace for all,” in other words that all-important early American withdrawal from Iraq.
Surely once Zarqawi’s band of merry men step inevitably into the void created by an early American withdrawal, Iraq will become a ‘It’s-a-Small-World’ utopia of “peace for all.”
They at the N.C.C. are “as the biblical prophets of old;” they the repositories of “faithfulness to God;” they the ones who love America so dearly. Best of all, they have all this, plus the “humility before God” to bring it all together. Their wealth of "humility" is—indeed—stunning. Gotta hand it to the N.C.C., they’re quite the package of spirituality.
Perhaps it’s their nauseating pretension as some modern equivalent to “the biblical prophets of old” that makes me most want to puke. What posers, and worthy of special contempt! The Biblical prophets of old were true messengers and servants of God—quite conversely, the N.C.C. are charlatans; hippies in habits; an embarrassment even to whatever pretense of religious faith they profess.
A heaping helping of 'hate America,' brought to you this Independence Day by the ever-loveable denizens of Indymedia, bastion of the American Left:
A fellow Bear Flag League member has been caught up in a sandstorm over at Political State Report. An op-ed piece he wrote offended the few members of the left, who seem to think that free speech is only limited to the side that equates Bush with Hitler. Also caught up in the swirling dust is PSR' editor. I cite myself as the weatherman who saw the wind start to pick up and did not do enough to stop it.
Some time ago, I hit my own dirt devil on
the PSR site. (Editor's Note: PSDR is changing servers and links are currently unavailable.) Political State Report is unique within the blogosphere. It reports mostly state news, categorized by state, from bloggers within that state. It aims for neutral reporting. Recognizing that no one is completely neutral, contributors' political leanings are listed on the sidebar and the site tries to have reporters from both sides in each state.
Another Republican contributor had quit the site because at that time, it was run by Markos of the Daily Kos, whose opinions on Bush sometimes crossed the line of propriety. When I joined, more than one fellow conservative emailed me privately and unsolicited to warn me against the notion. I believed then, and still believe, that the answer to speech that is disagreeable is more speech. If Markos' comments bothered me, then the site needed an R in CA all the more.
At some point, LA Observed reported on an LA Times memo by editor John Carroll chiding reporters for their way of reporting the abortion issue. I put the information up on Calblog and PSR. By day's end, the memo was big news, though the hoped for traffic on those sites didn't materialize. Soon, the complaints hit the PSR mailing list about how reporting liberal bias at the LA Times wasn't appropriate. No one addressed me directly, just generally muttered about the inappropriateness of it all. Markos was one of the ones expressing that view. I responded directly, stating that since the LA Times was a source for what we put up on PSR, it seemed appropriate and, in addition, it looked like a hot story that I could get on PSR early, which could be good for the site. (Imagine from a blogosphere POV, if every contributor complaining that it shouldn't be there, had instead put a link on their site and discussed the issue. Perhaps PSR could have gotten some recognition.) No one responded to me directly but continued to talk as if I wasn't there.
Time pressures forced me to leave the site. No other R in CA took my place and that's long bothered me. I keep in touch with Temple Stark, who took over the editorial duties from Markos. Temple is committed to the idea of reporting from both sides of the aisle. I occasionally mentioned possible contributors to the site. After all, the Bear Flag League boasts about 100 conserrvative CA bloggers.
Recently, I hooked SoCalPundit up with PSR. Kevin does some excellent state political reporting, such as this piece on the Cal. Club for Growth PAC's 1st annual meeting. Instead, Kevin's first piece up on the site was an Op-ed called "Liberals Do The Terrorists'
Bidding?" I said something in passing to both Kevin and Temple that it wasn't a PSR piece but I didn't press the point. Not my piece, not my site. In hindsight, maybe I should have pressed.
That's when the trouble started. Various people with the opposing viewpoint did not just disagree. They argued that he should not be allowed to express those views. Attacks on the site spilled over to, you guessed it, the Daily Kos.
I've never understood that point of view. There are sdome Democrats, such as Ted Kennedy, whose views to me, seem idiotic. Kennedy, for example, seems to take every situation and tries to spin it to show that his side is righteous and the other side is bad. I'm often offended by his tone. Yet, I can't recall ever thinking that someone should tell him to stop speaking.
Temple took the post off the main page and issued an apology.* He realized belatedly that the piece took away from the focus of PSR and took full responsibility. I know Temple not terribly well, but well enough to know that he is sincere in this. Still, I expect that those on the moonbat fringe see it as a victory, silencing the opposing view, which to them, is just wrong.
I do not know if Kevin would be willing to be in R in CA at PSR now, or if anyone will. The contributor before me left because of perceived bias. I experienced being the nonentity in the room when I posted something anti-liberal. Now Kevin's felt the wind.
Two years ago today, I started the Bear Flag League along with a half dozen cohorts to give a larger, more visible presence to the conservative voice in California. As we've grown to over 100 bloggers and applications for membership come in at a clip that will cause us to double in size in the next 3-6 months or limit membership, I wonder when we'll be "legitimate". When does that viewpoint become just the other side of the aisle?
* Because PSR links are unavailable, here is the texr of the apology: