3 November 2010 >> 1992/2008: A charismatic Democrat portraying himself as a centrist is elected President.

1992-1994/2008-2010: Democratic President sheds centrist image by tacking to the left during his first two years.

1993: Democratic President fails at getting his signature healthcare restructuring bill passed. / 2010: Democratic President succeeds at getting his signature healthcare restructuring bill passed.

1994: Republicans take over the House of Representatives, gaining 52 seats. / 2010: Republicans take over the House of Representatives, gaining 60 seats or more.

1994-: Chastened Democratic President moves to the center, works with Republicans in Congress enacting several substantial bills to bipartisan acclaim, and wins re-election.

2010-: ???

31 March 2010 >> Not too long ago, taking to the streets to protest your government was considered a patriotic act.

It’s true!

But it seems that publicly airing your grievances stopped being patriotic right around noon on January 20th, 2009.

Once President Obama was sworn in, protesting became incitement to violence.

If you’ve opened up a newspaper or watched a cable news program in the past week or so, you’ve probably seen members of the media painting Tea Party activists as dangerous bigots. That’s because disagreeing with President Obama on issues like government spending and high taxes makes you a racist, you see.

What’s interesting about the media’s latest freak-out is that there were radicals a-plenty under President Bush. They protested in the streets. They talked openly about revolution and killing. But oddly, the violent imagery used by people claiming to be advocates for peace never registered with the media. They were too busy fawning over Cindy Sheehan.

Why the difference in coverage? Did the media cheerlead protests against President Bush to hurt him politically? Are they trying to marginalize the increasingly powerful Tea Party movement because they favor President Obama’s agenda?

One thing’s for sure: If there is such a thing as dangerous rhetoric, then the media is at least one president too late in reporting the story.

Don’t believe me?

Well, then let’s take a trip down memory lane... Video >>

25 March 2010 >> When Barack Obama decided to launch his political career in the living room of unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, he tacitly endorsed using violence as a political tactic.

And when two staunch allies of the Democratic Party—the SEIU and ACORN—drove busloads of protesters to the private homes of AIG executives, just days later, President Obama told a meeting of bankers that “my administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

Implicitly, Obama was using the threat of violence to get the bankers to acquiesce.

During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama didn’t shy away from confrontation. In fact, he encouraged it by telling supporters to “argue with” opponents and to “get in their face[s].”

The Obama Administration’s confrontational tone included some violent imagery last August, when one White House official encouraged Obama supporters to “punch back twice as hard” against opponents.

Later that day, at an anti-ObamaCare rally in St. Louis, a black man named Kenneth Gladney was handing out “Don’t Tread on Me” flags when he was approached by pro-ObamaCare SEIU union members. One of the men asked Gladney, “What kind of nigger are you to be giving out this kind of stuff?”

The union thugs then beat him so badly he required overnight hospitalization.

Obama’s supporters got the message. They were getting in people’s faces, and they were punching. And kicking. Repeatedly.

Yet despite the fact that the Kenneth Gladney beating occurred the same day that the Obama Administration recommended supporters “punch back twice as hard,” there was no hyperventilating in the media about political violence or the veiled threats that encouraged it.

Today, however, the Democratic politicians who rammed through ObamaCare over the wishes of the American public are worried about the ugly environment that the Obama Administration spent over a year stoking. And if Obama and the Democrats truly believe that words lead to violence, then they should accept responsibility for the beating of Kenneth Gladney.

I’m certainly not condoning political violence, and would condemn any that actually happens. But there has been no reported violence against any Congressman, Senator or government official, despite the media frenzy of stories describing a crazed American public ready to terrorize politicians.

All politicians receive threats; any moderately trafficked blogger receives threats. So while I would hate for there to be any actual violence, excuse me if I chuckle at the chatter of the chickens in the media and our political class. This media-driven national freakout is a diversion, designed to de-legitimize opposition to ObamaCare and to take your attention away from the illegitimate and unprecedented usurpation of power by the Democrats in Congress and President Obama. They’re banking on you forgetting by November.

If the media is going to report on this atmosphere without discussing the Obama Administration’s words or the SEIU beat-down of Kenneth Gladney, if they are going to spend time breathlessly reporting rumored threats that have not been carried out while ignoring violence that actually occurred but didn’t fit their narrative, then it is yet more proof of the media’s patent bias.

20 January 2010 @ 8:35AM >> Two weeks ago, I wrote, “Democrats losing Ted Kennedy’s seat would be a massive political earthquake.” Well, yesterday, the once-unthinkable happened, and the deep blue state of Massachusetts elected its first Republican senator since 1972.

Today, politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle will be spinning, assigning blame, and taking credit.

Here’s my not-at-all-scientific breakdown of the factors I think went into Scott Brown’s victory over Democrat Martha Coakley:

• 30% - Opposition to high taxes and out-of-control government spending
• 25% - Backlash at the political hijinks of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid’s “get it done at all costs” tactics
• 20% - Rejection of ObamaCare specifically
• 15% - Martha Coakley being a bad candidate
• 5% - Scott Brown being a charismatic candidate
• 5% - Disappointment in President Obama’s first year
• 0% - Repudiation of Ted Kennedy’s legacy

By this measure, it’s hard to say that President Obama had nothing to do with the defeat, but in my view, his party shares more of the blame than he does personally.

11 January 2010 @ 9:18AM >> Another tale from the annals of government competence:

Someone is getting called for jury duty...but it’s no human.

A family is trying to figure out how their pet cat was summonsed for jury duty.

[...]

[The cat’s] owners, Guy and Anna Esposito, think they may know the source of the mix up: [the cat] really is a member of the family, so on the last Census form, Anna Esposito listed him under “pets”.

[...]

Anna filed for [the cat’s] disqualification of service. However, the jury commissioner was unmoved and denied the request.

[The] service date at Suffolk Superior Court is set for March 23. Anna said that if the issue isn’t cleared up by then, she will simply have to bring the cat to court.

8 January 2010 @ 9:22AM >> CBS News reports:

Less than a month after major Nidal Hasan allegedly killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, the Pentagon’s top intelligence officer sent the White House a report detailing an earlier failure to connect the dots. It reads like a dress rehearsal for the Detroit bomber case, reports CBS News chief national security correspondent David Martin.

According to that still-classified report, the terrorism task force responsible for determining whether Hasan posed a threat never saw all 18 e-mails he exchanged with that radical Yemeni cleric Awlaki whose communications were being monitored under a court ordered wiretap.

Guess which radical Yemeni cleric won’t be using the same communication channels anymore?

This is why we shouldn’t be trying to fight wars in a courtroom.

4 November 2009 >> Yesterday, two states held elections for governor. Last year, both states voted to elect President Obama. Now, a year after The Ascension of The One, in both states, Republican gubernatorial candidates won handily.

In Virginia, Republican candidate Bob McDonnell beat Democrat Creigh Deeds by more than 17%.* This in a recently-trending-Democrat state that Obama carried by more than 6%. That’s nearly a 24% swing in one year.

And in New Jersey, a heavily Democratic state that Obama won by over 14% last year, Republican Chris Christie beat incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine by almost 5%. That’s more than an 18% swing.

Even before the election, White House spinners were claiming that Democratic defeats would not reflect poorly on Obama, even though the president visited both states several times to campaign for the candidates that ended up losing.

In fact, in both states, the losing Democrats aligned themselves so closely with Obama that a quick glance at their campaign materials might lead you to think that they were running to become Obama’s vice president. So if anyone was trying to make this election about Obama, it was the Democrats who lost.

But now that the results are in, expect to hear the refrain repeated: these elections had absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama!

And if recent history is any indication, you can expect Obama to start pinning the blame on George W. Bush any time now.

(Hat tip: Jim Geraghty.)

* All figures as of this writing and subject to change as election returns are finalized.

16 October 2009 >> According to the NAACP, white politicians should not be permitted to represent majority-black voting populations:

Leaders of the Maryland NAACP, worried that a Baltimore mayor’s criminal conviction could result in the appointment of a white or Republican leader who may not fully represent the majority black and Democratic city, are asking state lawmakers to strip the governor of authority to permanently fill the office.

[...]

“There is that possibility of a conviction, and we want to know those protocols that are in place,” said Elbridge James, the political action chairman of the state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “If it looks like it is going to rain, I am going to buy an umbrella.”

[...]

Marvin L. Cheatham, the president of the Baltimore Chapter of the NAACP, introduced the resolution because he heard an attorney on a radio program discussing a lack of clarity on succession if [Baltimore’s mayor] were to be convicted and sentenced.

“Our concern is who would the governor appoint?” Cheatham said. “Here you have a predominantly African-American city. What if the governor appointed somebody white? ... Would he appoint someone Irish to be the mayor?”

[...]

The resolution passed “nearly unanimously” with little debate from the 150 or so delegates who attended the meeting, James said.

(Hat tip: James Taranto.)

13 October 2009 @ 6:22PM >> Months before Barack Obama formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, the name “Obama” was already being stamped on or sewn into objects of every type, and these objects could be purchased just about anywhere you happened to be standing. Keychains, buttons, hats, t-shirts were all readily available. I saw Obama skateboards and heard rumors of Obama bongs. Eventually, companies usually seen selling things like pewter gnomes and porcelain kittens got into the game, hawking commemorative coins and Obama dinner plates on late-night cable shows. Video >>

19 September 2009 @ 2:14PM >> Jon Stewart is pretty funny going after the media in this clip:

Best quote:

[W]here were the real reporters on this story? You know what investigative media, see me on camera three: Where the hell were you?

[...]

You’re telling me that two kids from the cast of “High School Musical III” can break this story with a video camera and their grandmother’s chinchilla coat? And you got nothing? They did it for $3,000, and that’s Blitzer’s monthly beard Wetvac budget. It probably cost CNN that much to turn on their hologram machine.

I’m a fake journalist, and I’m embarrassed these guys scooped me. Let’s get to work people.

Journalists need to ask themselves, how did this happen? How could they miss the corruption at ACORN? President Obama was once an ACORN lawyer, so the group is certainly significant enough to warrant media scrutiny. Then how did all the seasoned professionals get scooped by two students—James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles—one of whom isn’t old enough to legally drink?

ACORN’s many problems have been well known for quite a while, at least to anyone venturing beyond network newscasts and liberal blogs. As an organization, ACORN doesn’t just limit itself to churning out forged voter registrations. It’s a full-blown racketeering enterprise worthy of The Sopranos, and it finances its operations with the help of taxpayer money.

So how could the major media fail to hold ACORN to account all these years?

I have my pet theory.

Political correctness has been slowly rotting the establishment media to its core, to the point where few professional journalists would dare launch a serious investigation into the exalted Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now. Why? Simple: according to the tenets of political correctness, the racial makeup of the communities being “organized” automatically confers the presumption of moral superiority upon ACORN. So all those nasty rumors about ACORN must be no more than lies spread by racist propagandists.

To understand the mindset of the politically correct, there are a few rules of racial relations that you need to know. These rules establish the Hierarchy of Multiculturalism:

1. If a person is a member of a group guilty of past racial oppression, that person has no moral standing in relation to anyone in any group that’s ever been a victim of that oppression.
2. A member of an oppressor group is always assumed to be guilty in relation to a member of a victim group.
3. An oppressor can only avoid presumed guilt by making a display of his or her sympathy for the oppressed.
4. Members of victim groups can lose their moral standing by expressing a preference for individual rights as opposed to group rights.
5. Advocating on behalf of a victim makes one almost as unassailable as being that victim.
6. Coming to the defense of an oppressor is even more repugnant than being that oppressor.

This thinking is so common these days that many prominent liberals—from New York Times columnists to former presidents—believe that criticism of President Obama can only be motivated by racial bigotry.

That’s because people at a lower rung of the Multicultural Hierarchy are never allowed to challenge those above them. The purpose of this is to quell criticism and enforce thought conformity. Why break the rules and risk being thought of as a bigot?

Media coverage of Kanye West’s latest outburst at the MTV Video Music Awards illustrates this. Imagine the racial roles reversed:

It’s the Country Music Awards. A black female performer is accepting her first-ever award. She’s happy and a bit surprised; her style of music doesn’t usually win Country Music Awards. Halfway through her emotional acceptance speech, a white male country music singer runs up on stage, grabs the microphone from her, and announces that another woman should have won, a white woman—a “real” country singer—instead of the underdog black woman.

I’d bet my life savings that the reporting would be quite different than what happened in Kanye’s case. Sure, he was roundly criticized in the media, but we’re in an age when hidden motivations are attributed to every interracial interaction, so it’s interesting that few dared to discuss a racial angle to the Kanye West/Taylor Swift confrontation.

There’s a simple explanation. By the rules of the Hierarchy of Multiculturalism, when a member of a victim group is the actual victim in a real-world encounter, it’s an example of oppression. But when an oppressor becomes a victim in real life, that’s just karma, man. Any possible racial angle becomes irrelevant.

So forgive me if I don’t believe that the abundantly Caucasian and overwhelmingly liberal journalist class is capable of taking on a target like ACORN, no matter how apparent the criminality might be.

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter. The work of Giles and O’Keefe highlights the diminishing relevance of the establishment media. Despite the story getting no coverage on broadcast TV or in any major newspaper, it propagated online, then to talk radio and Fox News. And before any “mainstream” media outlet covered it, the political pressure grew to the point that the Census Bureau cut all ties to ACORN, and U.S. Senate voted by the overwhelming margin of 83-7 to cut off the group’s federal funding.

Even after these events, a vast majority of the media ignored the story. And yet the public kept getting the truth, which only made the media appear to be in the business of hiding news rather than reporting it. Realizing that this is not a winning business model for an ailing industry, a few of the more independent-minded reporters started covering the story, and now the White House Press Secretary is busy deflecting questions about the president’s former colleagues and fellow community organizers at ACORN. Despite the media’s best efforts.

James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles represent another massive power-shift in the age of Internet media. The first occurred when the Drudge Report broke Monica Lewinsky’s affair with President Clinton, a story that Newsweek got first but declined to run. The second was when CBS News got hoodwinked by documents that purported to impugn President Bush. After bloggers exposed them as forgeries, the documents ended up tarnishing CBS News instead. Long-time anchor Dan Rather was forced to retire in disgrace.

This is another huge embarrassment for Big Media—not so much because they look foolish, but because they’re beginning to look irrelevant.

---

A version of this post appears on BigGovernment.com.

4 September 2009 @ 8:56AM >> You may have heard about the uproar over President Obama’s desire to address the nation’s schoolchildren. Although the White House has not yet released the text of the speech, many people wondered whether the speech would be pushing Obama’s policy goals.

The idea that the speech would be political in nature is not something that people fantasized; it was related to the fact that the Department of Education’s lesson plan asked students to “help the president” and write about “what the president wants us to do.”

The Obama administration has since removed such language from the lesson plan, and has issued a rather lame excuse. The Associated Press reports:

Critics are particularly upset about lesson plans the administration created to accompany the speech. The lesson plans, available online, originally recommended having students “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.”

The White House revised the plans Wednesday to say students could “write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals.”

“That was inartfully worded, and we corrected it,” [White House deputy policy director Heather] Higginbottom said.

Of course, the only way the “inartfully worded” excuse works is if the new wording is a clearer way of saying what the original statement intended to convey.

In what universe is “what they can do to help the president” even remotely related to “how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals”?

One is not a more “artful wording” of the other. The administration’s new phrasing represents a completely different statement altogether.

If the president had intended to deliver a speech asking for students’ help achieving his political goals, I suspect this controversy will dissuade him from doing that.

We shall see.

31 August 2009 @ 8:24AM >> In honor of the care and compassion shown by Senator Ted Kennedy throughout his life, liberals and their enablers in the media have been proposing changing the name of President Obama’s healthcare reform plan. So, instead of referring to it informally as “ObamaCare,” it may become known as “KennedyCare.”

In order to help President Obama use the memory of Senator Kennedy to sell his healthcare bill, I present the official KennedyCare t-shirts:

Many more colors and varieties—not to mention hats, thongs and even dog clothing—available at the KennedyCare store.

23 August 2009 >> Only a government could be this stupid while simultaneously being this reckless with other people’s money:

A paedophile with a 30-year history of abusing children is being prescribed Viagra on the [National Health Service] — and there is nothing the authorities can do to stop him.

Roger Martin, 71, merely has to visit his GP to obtain the libido-enhancing drug, even though experts warn it will enable him to continue preying on children despite his age.

The probation officers who oversee Martin are powerless to interfere with the administration of prescription drugs.

He does not have to tell his GP about his criminal past and even if he does, doctors cannot take convictions into account.

[...]

He has forced himself on a string of youngsters and his latest assault was on an 11-year-old girl last year.

Jolly old England.

20 August 2009 >> Not too long ago, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets with signs comparing our president to Adolf Hitler, painting him as “the world’s biggest terrorist,” even calling outright for his killing. Here in New York City, posters of a cartoon George W. Bush replete with simulated bullet holes began springing up around town.

It was a time when Democratic politicians complained loudly whenever they felt their patriotism was being impugned. In those days, bumper stickers reminded us that “Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism” and Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, declared that disruptive protests were “very American and very important.” Now that protests are directed against a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, Nancy Pelosi thinks such disruptions are “un-American.”

During the Bush era, the media looked the other way at the extremist element in the protest movement; the large number of protest signs bearing swastikas and mathematical formulae like “Bush=Hitler” just didn’t interest them. But it did interest me, and because the media didn’t want to report it, I did some reporting of my own. The videos I posted online inadvertently launched me on a second career as a documentary filmmaker.

I recently dug through my old footage and found many examples of the same kind of inflammatory speech that the media and the Democratic Party—forgive the redundancy—now decry. What follows are just a few examples. More >>

17 August 2009 @ 10:33PM >> Last week, I called the office of Jerrold Nadler, my congressman, to see if he would be holding any constituent meetings on health care.

Today, I got a recorded call from Congressman Nadler inviting me to participate in a “live telephone town hall” at 8PM this evening. The call came in at 7:35PM.

Of course, this timing left constituents with a mere 25 minutes warning. (I didn’t even get a chance to listen to the voicemail until the “town hall” was long over.)

I’m sure the short notice caused many folks to miss the opportunity to question their congressman directly. Perhaps that was by design.

A cynical political observer might conclude that Congressman Nadler wanted as few people calling as possible.

5 August 2009 @ 11:59PM >> The Obama White House may be breaking the Privacy Act of 1974 by asking citizens to report “fishy” political speech.

On Tuesday, Macon Phillips, President Obama’s Director of New Media, wrote on the White House blog asking citizens to rat out fellow citizens who are spreading “disinformation” about Obama’s plans for more government control over the health care system. Phillips wrote:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

One wonders, what constitutes “fishy” speech or “disinformation”? Is it anything that runs counter to what the White House wants you to think? And what, precisely, is the White House planning to do about someone who’s speech has been “flagged”?

It turns out, even asking for citizens to report on each other may be illegal. According to the Department of Justice, “the purpose of the Privacy Act is to balance the government’s need to maintain information about individuals with the rights of individuals to be protected against unwarranted invasions of their privacy stemming from federal agencies’ collection, maintenance, use, and disclosure of personal information about them.”

Further, anything is considered a “personal record” if it identifies an individual (an e-mail address would qualify), and “federal agency” specifically includes “the Executive Office of the President.”

I’m no lawyer, but it sure sounds like the White House is violating the law by asking people to snitch on their friends and neighbors for engaging in “fishy” political speech. Anyone want to try this one in court?

In the meantime, I’m going to report myself. I’m obviously not thinking the way our Dear Leader wants...

---

Update: Renowned attorney David T. Hardy identifies another area where the Obama White House appears to be breaking the law:

5 US Code §552a(e)(7) commands that any Federal agency

“(7) maintain no record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity;”

3 August 2009 @ 4:52PM >> The tentacles of Big Brother are reaching further into homes in the U.K.:

Thousands of the worst families in England are to be put in “sin bins” in a bid to change their bad behaviour, Ed Balls announced yesterday.

The Children’s Secretary set out £400 million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour [closed-circuit television] supervision in their own homes.

They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.

It’s just the first step, and one that likely won’t be criticized, since these are problem families and someone must think of the children!

But the way incrementalism works, once this step is taken, it makes it easier for the next step to be taken.

That’s why further government involvement in healthcare is worrisome; it will lead to more extreme versions of proposals like these:

• Sodas should be taxed more to fight obesity
• Fat people should be subjected to added food taxes to try to make them healthier
• Eating meat is unhealthy and contributes to global warming, so let’s encourage vegan diets

If the Nanny Staters have their way, the government will be controlling your diet in the future, maybe even installing closed-circuit cameras in your fridge to make sure you’re not midnight snacking.

Think it can’t happen? Open your eyes.

27 July 2009 @ 4:15PM >> Peggy Noonan identifies one of the many reasons that I’m concerned about the government getting more control over our healthcare system:

We are living in a time in which educated people who are at the top of American life feel they have the right to make very public criticisms of . . . let’s call it the private, pleasurable but health-related choices of others. They shame smokers and the overweight. Drinking will be next. Mr. Obama’s own choice for surgeon general has come under criticism as too heavy.

Only a generation ago such criticisms would have been considered rude and unacceptable. But they are part of the ugly, chafing price of having the government in something: Suddenly it can make big and very personal demands on you. Those who live in a way that isn’t sufficiently healthy “cost us money” and “drive up premiums.” Mr. Obama himself said something like it in his press conference, when he spoke of a person who might not buy health insurance. If he gets hit by a bus, “the rest of us have to pay for it.”

Under a national health-care plan we might be hearing that a lot. You don’t exercise, you smoke, you drink, you eat too much, and “the rest of us have to pay for it.”

It is a new opportunity for new class professionals (an old phrase that should make a comeback) to shame others, which appears to be one of their hobbies. (It may even be one of their addictions. Let’s stage an intervention.) Every time I hear Kathleen Sebelius talk about “transitioning” from “treating disease” to “preventing disease,” I start thinking of how they’ll use this as an excuse to judge, shame and intrude.

So this might be an unarticulated public fear: When everyone pays for the same health-care system, the overseers will feel more and more a right to tell you how to live, which simple joys are allowed and which are not.

9 July 2009 @ 6:14PM >> USA Today reports:

Billions of dollars in federal aid delivered directly to the local level to help revive the economy have gone overwhelmingly to places that supported President Obama in last year’s presidential election.

That aid—about $17 billion—is the first piece of the administration’s massive stimulus package that can be tracked locally. Much of it has followed a well-worn path to places that regularly collect a bigger share of federal grants and contracts, guided by formulas that have been in place for decades and leave little room for manipulation.

“There’s no politics at work when it comes to spending for the recovery,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says.

Counties that supported Obama last year have reaped twice as much money per person from the administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus package as those that voted for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, a USA TODAY analysis of government disclosure and accounting records shows. That money includes aid to repair military bases, improve public housing and help students pay for college.

The reports show the 872 counties that supported Obama received about $69 per person, on average. The 2,234 that supported McCain received about $34.

25 June 2009 @ 8:50AM >> The mullahs in Iran have unleashed an even more brutal wave of violence against protesters opposing the recent questionable election. CNN reports:

Security forces wielding clubs and firing weapons beat back hundreds of would-be demonstrators who had flocked to a square in the capital on Wednesday to continue protests against an election they have denounced as fraudulent, witnesses told CNN.

[...]

They were among the more than half a dozen witnesses who told CNN that security forces outnumbering protesters used overwhelming force to crush a planned demonstration in Baharestan Square, in front of the parliament building. The witnesses said police charged against the demonstrators, striking them with batons, beating women and old men and firing weapons into the air in order to disperse them.

The melee extended beyond the square, according to one woman, who told CNN that she was traveling toward Baharestan with her friends as evening approached “to express our opposition to these killings these days and demanding freedom.

[...]

According to official figures, 17 people have been killed in clashes with government forces over the past 11 days. Anti-government demonstrators have taken to the streets in at least four cities outside Tehran.

But CNN has received unconfirmed reports of as many as 150 deaths related to the popular uprising. The government’s response to it appears to have hardened in recent days. CNN has received numerous accounts of night-time roundups by government forces of opposition activists and international journalists from their homes.

Some Tehran residents said they were too afraid to talk about the political crisis over the phone to anyone in the United States or Europe. Many protesters debated whether to venture into the streets.

“I am not going outside my house at all,” a 21-year-old college student from Tehran said. “The streets are too dangerous, and just so very busy with police. Ahhhh, when will our lives get back to normal?”

Worried the government was monitoring their phone conversations, some residents said the Internet was the best way to transmit information. However, the spotty connection made it difficult to rely on the Web.

“It’s beyond fear,” said a woman who arrived at a U.S. airport from Iran, but still did not want her name used for fear for her safety. “The situation is more like terror.”

[...]

Asked why the government has made it impossible for nearly all international journalists to report from Iran, [Iranian ambassador to Mexico] Mohammad Hassan Ghadiri accused the media of not accurately reporting events. “In Tehran, there were much bigger demonstrations in favor of the government that you didn’t report about,” he said.

Asked about the shooting of 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, whose death, captured on video, has become emblematic of the crackdown on protesters, he said, “It is not clear who killed whom.”

However, the malice of the Iranian regime is self-evident in their treatment of Neda Agha-Soltan’s surviving family, as The Guardian reports:

The Iranian authorities have ordered the family of Neda Agha Soltan out of their Tehran home after shocking images of her death were circulated around the world.

Neda Soltan

Neighbours said that her family no longer lives in the four-floor apartment building on Meshkini Street, in eastern Tehran, having been forced to move since she was killed. The police did not hand the body back to her family, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques, the neighbours said.

“We just know that they [the family] were forced to leave their flat,” a neighbour said. The Guardian was unable to contact the family directly to confirm if they had been forced to leave.

The government is also accusing protesters of killing Soltan, describing her as a martyr of the Basij militia. Javan, a pro-government newspaper, has gone so far as to blame the recently expelled BBC correspondent, Jon Leyne, of hiring “thugs” to shoot her so he could make a documentary film.

Soltan was shot dead on Saturday evening near the scene of clashes between pro-government militias and demonstrators, turning her into a symbol of the Iranian protest movement. Barack Obama spoke of the “searing image” of Soltan’s dying moments at his press conference yesterday.

Amid scenes of grief in the Soltan household with her father and mother screaming, neighbours not only from their building but from others in the area streamed out to protest at her death. But the police moved in quickly to quell any public displays of grief. They arrived as soon as they found out that a friend of Soltan had come to the family flat.

In accordance with Persian tradition, the family had put up a mourning announcement and attached a black banner to the building.

But the police took them down, refusing to allow the family to show any signs of mourning. The next day they were ordered to move out. Since then, neighbours have received suspicious calls warning them not to discuss her death with anyone and not to make any protest.

A tearful middle-aged woman who was an immediate neighbour said her family had not slept for days because of the oppressive presence of the Basij militia, out in force in the area harassing people since Soltan’s death.

The area in front of Soltan’s house was empty today. There was no sign of black cloths, banners or mourning. Secret police patrolled the street.

“We are trembling,” one neighbour said. “We are still afraid. We haven’t had a peaceful time in the last days, let alone her family. Nobody was allowed to console her family, they were alone, they were under arrest and their daughter was just killed. I can’t imagine how painful it was for them. Her friends came to console her family but the police didn’t let them in and forced them to disperse and arrested some of them. Neda’s family were not even given a quiet moment to grieve.”

Another man said many would have turned up to show their sympathy had it not been for the police.

“In Iran, when someone dies, neighbours visit the family and will not let them stay alone for weeks but Neda’s family was forced to be alone, otherwise the whole of Iran would gather here,” he said. “The government is terrible, they are even accusing pro-Mousavi people of killing Neda and have just written in their websites that Neda is a Basiji (government militia) martyr. That’s ridiculous - if that’s true why don’t they let her family hold any funeral or ceremonies? Since the election, you are not able to trust one word from the government.”

Given what’s going on in Iran, the Obama Administration is finally taking a harder line:

The Obama administration is seriously considering not extending invitations to Iranian diplomats for July 4 celebrations overseas, senior administration officials tell CNN.

No, that’s not a line from a news spoof in The Onion. It’s true: the only tangible action taken by the Obama Administration in response to the violence in Iran is to disinvite Iranian diplomats to Fourth of July barbecues.

After the Soviet Union expanded the Iron Curtain by invading Afghanistan in 1979, then-President Jimmy Carter showed his steely resolve... by not allowing American athletes to attend the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

Thirty years later, in response to the appalling oppression in Iran, President Obama shows his steely resolve by yanking some BBQ invites.

23 June 2009 @ 8:23AM >> Blogger Shannon Love argues a point about media transparency and bias disclosure that I’ve been making for years:

Obama’s Federal Trade Commission have decided to regulate blogs based on the premise that undisclosed financial relationships between bloggers and businesses could lead bloggers to deceive their readers as to the value of products they blog about. [h/t Instapundit]

If we’re going to regulate speech based on inducements to bias why stop with mere financial relationships? I think we should require all media sources to reveal all possible sources of bias starting with the political affiliations of the publishers and reporters. After all, the media sells stories they advertise as accurate and objective. Shouldn’t consumers have ready access to the information they need to decide if those claims are true?

Politics is more important than money. If you buy a toaster based on a biased recommendation, you’re only out the cost of a toaster. If you vote based on a biased political recommendation, you could lose your freedom. If the government has both the duty and the ability to protect you against bias in product recommendations on blogs, why doesn’t it have the same duty and ability to protect you against biased reporting on political matters?

Political beliefs matter. Soldiers fight and die for their political beliefs, not their paltry pay. Our political beliefs are closely tied to our moral sense of right and wrong and our sense of the just order of society. Political beliefs influence us on an unconscious level. Political beliefs do, without doubt, bias people even more strongly than money does.

This Wednesday, ABC is turning an entire day of news programing over to the Democrats’ health care plan. Wouldn’t viewers alter their judgment of the accuracy and objectivity of ABC’s reporting on the subject if they knew that the ABC employees donated to Democrats 80 times as much as they did to Republicans? Certainly, I can’t help but note that if the circumstances were reversed, most people who see nothing wrong in ABC’s actions now would suddenly see ABC’s donations as profoundly undermining the integrity of ABC’s reporting.

I’m not arguing for the government to mandate such disclosure, merely that if the government is going to be in the business of forcing disclosures of some types of information—which is what the Obama Administration is pushing—why not be consistent and thorough about it?

(Of course, I think we already know the answer, considering the “80 times” figure cited above.)

22 June 2009 >> “The federal government is spending $423,500 to find out why men don’t like to wear condoms,” reports Fox News.

I’ll give the government a hint in language they can understand: the words no, stimulus and package could be used in a valid answer.

19 June 2009 @ 8:24AM >> Remember when passing the Obama Administration’s stimulus plan was vital to saving the republic? The administration made all sorts of projections intended to demonstrate the necessity of their plan.

Well, now we’ve got a few months of data, so we can see how their plans panned out.

This chart shows Obama’s unemployment projections without the stimulus (the light blue line) and with the stimulus (dark blue line). Actual unemployment figures are shown as red dots:

(Hat Tip: Innocent Bystanders.)

3 June 2009 @ 8:49AM >> Joe Paladino of Lake Mary, Florida e-mailed in response to my piece on President Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor. And, no, the reason I’m posting this is not because of the first paragraph... I keep telling myself.

Joe writes:

First off, let me say that I love your site. There have been very few times were I seem to disagree with your posts. But what I like most is that you seem fair with the issues you write about and present all facts, then state your opinion. And still have time acknowledge the letters of those who disagree with you, even though there have been instances when they don’t seem worthy of anyone’s time. That is far more than I can expect from many other sources.

But for this most recent post, I have to express opinion. To most people, this nomination seems to clearly be a case of affirmative action. Understand that I’m certainly not doubting her qualifications, which may be sufficient. Of course that is to be decided during the Senate confirmation hearing. However, what infuriates me (and should disturb her as well) is that Sotomayor was only considered on the luck that she is female, and better yet, Hispanic. I believe it is safe to say that a majority of this country has no problem working and going to school with whoever desires to be there, so long as they deserve to be there. And by that I don’t mean because a college Dean or the President of the United States wants to even things out a bit.

This inforrmation you provide about her outrage while in college concerning the lack of hispanic students on campus is ridiculous. How is it anyone’s fault that only 66 Puerto Ricans applied to Princeton that year? Perhaps her time would have be better spent encouraging the potential students to consider Princeton as the college of choice. To support my argument I’m going to quote a great man who’s influence is still seen today though the messge is often passed over.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.—Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think it is safe to say that the way our colleges, and appearently supreme courts, are run is not exactly what Dr. King had in mind. It’s common sense that we should judge all people by their character. But it is absurd that in the year 2009 people still want racial equality, unless of course you are white. We already had our run.

But I don’t suppose I can blame her. It would take a extraordinary person turn down such an incredible opportunity and immense honor.

But a black man now holds the highest office in the land. While that certainly does not undo all of the racial oppression this country has seen, it does show that Americans are ready to move forward. Unfortunately, there are some who still think that things just aren’t fair yet.

2 June 2009 @ 8:34AM >> Another example of government regulation run amok:

A local pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a San Diego County official, who then threatened them with escalating fines if they continued to hold Bible studies in their home, 10News reported.

Attorney Dean Broyles of The Western Center For Law & Policy was shocked with what happened to the pastor and his wife.

Broyles said, “The county asked, ‘Do you have a regular meeting in your home?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you say amen?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you pray?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you say praise the Lord?’ ‘Yes.’”

The county employee notified the couple that the small Bible study, with an average of 15 people attending, was in violation of County regulations, according to Broyles.

Broyles said a few days later the couple received a written warning that listed “unlawful use of land” and told them to “stop religious assembly or apply for a major use permit” — a process that could cost tens of thousands of dollars.

[...]

Broyles also said this case has broader implications.

“If the county thinks they can shut down groups of 10 or 15 Christians meeting in a home, what about people who meet regularly at home for poker night? What about people who meet for Tupperware parties? What about people who are meeting to watch baseball games on a regular basis and support the Chargers?” Broyles asked.

(Hat tip: Reason.)

1 June 2009 @ 7:41AM >> In the mid-1970s, Sonia Sotomayor—President Obama’s nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court—was a student at Princeton. Back then, when Sotomayor led a group called Acción Puertoricaño, she was an “outspoken activist” well-versed in the language of leftism and identity group grievance politics.

In a letter to the Daily Princetonian published 10 May 1974, she describes a complaint from “the Puerto Rican and Chicano students of Princeton”:

The facts of the complaint are these: 1) There is not one Puerto Rican or Chicano administrator or faculty member in the university; 2) There are two million Puerto Ricans in the United States and two and a half million more on the island itself. Yet there were only 66 Puerto Rican applicants this year, and only 31 Puerto Rican students on campus. While there are 12 million Chicanos in the United States, there were only 111 Chicano applicants and 27 students on campus this year; 3) Not one permanent course in this university now deals in any notable detail with the Puerto Rican or Chicano cultures.

Although she herself was a Puerto Rican student receiving a free ride on a full scholarship, Sotomayor concluded that a “lack of commitment on the part of the university to the Puerto Rican or Chicano heritage seems self-evident” and that it “reflect[s] the total absence of regard, concern and respect for an entire people and their culture.”

Hyperbole comes naturally to the college-aged, so I’m willing to believe that the Sotomayor of the Woodstock era is not the woman who sits on the court today because, as she might say, I would hope that an older Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a young Puerto Rican girl who hasn’t lived that life.

Legal blogger Tom Goldstein conducted a survey of her record on the court of appeals, where he says “Sotomayor has decided 96 race-related cases.” Sotomayor has been on the United States Court of Appeals since 1998, where she serves on panels of (typically) 3 judges that hear each case. Goldstein’s survey found:

Of the 96 cases, Judge Sotomayor and the panel rejected the claim of discrimination roughly 78 times and agreed with the claim of discrimination 10 times; the remaining 8 involved other kinds of claims or dispositions. Of the 10 cases favoring claims of discrimination, 9 were unanimous.

If that’s true and is reflective of her record being better than her rhetoric, then that’s a bit of a relief. And although there is at least one highly-controversial racial discrimination decision in the record Goldstein cites, the fact is, Republicans don’t have the political juice to oppose her anyway. So, barring Obama withdrawing her for some reason or a new fact emerging that moves enough Democrats to vote against her, Sotomayor will be confirmed.

Nevertheless, her seeming inevitability doesn’t mean that Sotomayor should get a pass for her rhetoric or her fierce support of affirmative action and racial preferences in hiring. Her philosophy on racial preferences and “social justice” should be questioned thoroughly during her Senate confirmation hearings.

Since Sotomayor endorses the idea that a judge’s ethnic background affects judicial decision-making, shouldn’t we know how her heritage has influenced her thinking in cases she’s judged? Could she point to specific cases where “being a Latina woman” lead her to a “better” decision than a “white male” would have made?

I don’t expect the Democratic majority to ask these questions, so Republicans should. That is the minimal duty of an opposition party. We’ll see if they have the stomach to do it.

31 May 2009 @ 5:18PM >> Slate’s Mickey Kaus looks at the the Obama Administration’s bailout of the United Auto Workers union and asks:

Why should the government tax unskilled workers making $18 an hour, who haven’t bankrupted their employers, in order to protect unskilled workers making $28 an hour, and who have bankrupted their employers, from having to take a pay cut?

29 May 2009 @ 6:47PM >> The recent post on the FDA’s regulation of Cheerios as a drug generated a lot of e-mail from readers. Last week, I posted a well-reasoned disagreement with my view on the matter.

Here are a couple more responses:

Maybe the cholesterol lowering qualities are not the result of the Cheerios themselves, but the fact that the person eating Cheerios for breakfast is not eating a food that might increase one’s cholesterol level, i.e. bacon. Would the FDA be justified in stepping in then? I have to imagine if you had a side of bacon (a few slices) with your Cheerios everyday, your cholesterol would not be lower by 4% in 6 weeks. To me this is common sense. Unfortunately, there are too many people out there who have given up thinking for themselves and are reliant upon others telling them what is good and what is bad. Enter the Nanny-state.

And:

I just want to encourage you concerning your take on the FDA regulating Cheerios like a drug. It seems as though we as a nation have completely lost all common sense, and I can hardly take it anymore.

Is it really a revelation that food affects health? Before we became a nation of pill popping hypochondriacs, how do you think we consumed beneficial nutrients?

Since Cheerios might be able to make health claims, and therefore should be treated like a drug, it makes sense that the FDA should also treat milk like a drug, and investigate those potentially spurrious claims that it “does a body good”. Several years ago, there was an opinion that eggs increased cholesterol. Should the FDA have classified eggs as a harmful drug? Where does it end?

Food products are already regulated to require the disclosure of ingredient lists and nutritional information. Any nutritional scientist can consume the information already required of a food manufacturer and conclude potential health benefits and risks. If a product contains 3000mg of sodium per serving, for example, does it really take a clinical study to determine that it is not heart-healthy? You could not use the same method to evaluate Ambien or Prosac.

Of course, I am making my argument based on common sense. Since common sense is rapidly going out of style, perhaps I should just concede. Let’s treat anything healthy like a drug, just to make sure everyone is “safe”. Calling my doctor now to stock up on prescriptions for citrus - need that vitamin C.

26 May 2009 >> Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s most famous congregant dishes out another heaping helping of racial healing with his Supreme Court pick:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.—Judge Sonia Sotomayor,
President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court

Apparently, however, Judge Sotomayor was not referring to herself.

21 May 2009 @ 7:26PM >> In 21^st century America, the federal government’s solution to every financial problem seems the same: people who are responsible with money are forced to foot the bill for the reckless. Video >>