Columnist.
Few people more desperate than desperate progressives. And there are few things more despicable than desperate progressives attempting to impose their worldview on impressionable children, using the public school system as their vehicle of choice. Two stories, from NYC and Bellingham, MA, vividly illustrate the depths to which such people will sink, if they are not challenged. That's the small picture. The big picture? The calculated degradation of our public schools is no accident. We are currently "educating" millions of children -- to become wards of the state.
It is no secret that whatever ruling the United States Supreme Court reaches on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the decision will have monumental repercussions for the nation and the Obama administration. Critical to that ruling is the ability by individual justices to render an impartial decision on the issue. Considering her history regarding healthcare reform previous to her court appointment, Justice Elena Kagan's ability to be impartial is highly questionable.
NBC has an ongoing "omissions" problem. The latest scandal involving the network centers around its selective editing of the taped conversation between George Zimmerman and the 911 operator on the night when Zimmerman allegedly shot and killed Trayvon Martin. The unabridged tape of the conversation goes like this...
While Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were continuing to stir up racial animosity in Sanford Florida, one of the worst mass shootings in Florida history was taking place in Miami. Last Friday, 14 people were shot and two men were killed during a funeral for 21-year-old Morvin Andre. A 5-year-old girl was wounded in the exchange as well. Why no outrage or calls for massive demonstrations? Because the shooters were allegedly black gang members attending the funeral.
On March 30th, the Global March to Jerusalem (GMJ), an attempt to mobilize millions of demonstrators aimed at converging on the state of Israel and inevitably breaching its borders, took place. Joining the likes of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Mavi Marmara flotilla veterans, were the inevitable horde of useful idiots from the West, including British anti-Semite George Galloway, anti-war Bush-basher Cindy Sheehan, Truther conspiracy advocate Richard Falk, and radical race theorist Cornel West. Yet it was one of the movement's "official advisers" whose name stood out: president Obama's former spiritual advisor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Al Sharpton remains one of the driving forces behind the effort to turn the Trayvon Martin case into an indictment of America itself. To earn his daily bread, Sharpton is well aware that he must continuously convince black Americans that they live in a hopelessly racist nation, not because it's true, but because any genuine progress made by blacks themselves is inimical to his own interests. Forgotten in the controversy surrounding the Martin case are the dark levels Sharpton has stooped to in order to ensure the survival of his public persona, which are worth recalling here.
In an interview with the Daily Caller, former NAACP leader C.L. Bryant challenged the credibility of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whom he accused of "exploiting" the Trayvon Martin tragedy to "racially divide this country." He further accused the duo of being "race hustlers" and said they are "acting as though they are buzzards circling the carcass of this young boy." On Monday, Jackson and Sharpton held a protest attended by thousands in Sanford, Florida, the town where Martin was shot. Al Sharpton took the opportunity to work up a racist angle in a case where, at this juncture, such an angle is as tenuous as it gets. "We are here with two million signatures of people petitioning you to execute the immediate arrest of the killer of Trayvon Martin," said Sharpton. If the board does not act swiftly, he added, the town could become "the Birmingham of the 21st century, as a place of racial intolerance and double standards."
Americans have endured many politicians with a capacity for "embellishing" the truth. Yet as the last three years have revealed, with a special emphasis on the current election campaign, president Barack Obama is in a class by himself. He has lied so often and with such ease, it is impossible to catalogue them all.
If one wishes to understand the ultimate destination of progressive ideology, California is a bellwether. Last Friday, the Los Angeles Police Department announced that it would no longer enforce a state law that requires police to impound the vehicles of unlicensed drivers for 30 days. Why? Because the majority of unlicensed drivers in that city are illegal aliens, and the policy purportedly inhibits their ability to get to their jobs. It also imposes an undue burden on them when they attempt to retrieve their vehicles -- because they must pay a fine to do so. "It's about fairness. It's about equal application of the law," contends Police Chief Charlie Beck, a man seemingly oblivious to the Orwellian dimensions of such a statement.
Sergeant Robert Bales stands accused of murdering 16 Afghans, including 9 children. Many top American military officials, including Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, have intimated that even the death penalty "could be a consideration" should Bales be found guilty of the crime. On cue, the Left has used this tragic incident as an opportunity to impugn the entire military and the nation, claiming the killing is on par with My Lai and is representative of our servicemen and women generally.
Yesterday, House Republicans offered Americans their vision for the nation's fiscal future, releasing a budget proposal that attempts to bring runaway deficits and the national debt under control. In a Wall Street Journal editorial, budget author Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) explained the that difference between Republicans and Democrats "revolves around the fundamental nature of American democracy and the social contract," further noting that "no two documents illustrate this choice of two futures better than the president's budget and the one put forward by House Republicans."
While American progressives remain in high dudgeon over a woman's "right" to "free" government-provided contraception, a genuine woman's rights issue has been unfolding in Morocco. In Larache, near the city of Tangiers, 16-year-old Amina Filali committed suicide after she was forced by a judge to marry. Whom did the judge force her to marry? Her rapist. "The prosecutor advised my daughter to marry, he said 'go and make the marriage contract,'" said Lahcen Filali, the girl's father. Thus, once again the wonders of Sharia-based jurisprudence are revealed.
Democrats are very sanguine regarding president Obama's re-election chances. Yet two economic issues could derail Mr. Obama. One is fraught with delicious irony, and remains in the forefront of the news. Yet issue number two, despite its far more serious implications, remains largely under the radar.
On Thursday, the European Union (EU) ordered the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) to block Iranian banks currently subjected to EU sanctions from using their service. SWIFT is a financial transaction company used by almost every bank around the world to send payment messages to each other. Since global financial transactions are virtually impossible to implement without SWIFT, the move represents the EU's most determined effort to date to convince Iran that its pursuit of nuclear weapons is unacceptable.
A funny thing has happened on the way to the implementation of Obamacare, aka the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA): it's become much less affordable. When the law was passed in 2010, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated it would cost $940 billion over a ten year period. The new estimate? $1.76 trillion.
Further burnishing his reputation as one of the most politically partisan U.S. Attorney Generals in the history of the republic, Eric Holder has had the Department of Justice (DOJ) file a complaint rejecting Texas's voter identification law under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, claiming its implementation "disproportionately harms" Hispanic voters. The move is virtually identical to the DOJ's rejection of a voter ID-law passed in South Carolina that federal officials contend adversely affects black voters. Both states have filed suits in U.S. District Court in Washington. But reality suggests that neither case will be resolved before the 2012 election.
For a number of years, California has maintained its reputation as a "cutting edge" state, the incubator of grandiose ideas that eventually find their way to the more "benighted" regions of the country. California is indeed ahead of the curve in that it offers a compelling look at where unfettered progressivism in all its destructive glory eventually leads. It is a destructiveness the Obama administration aims to impose on the rest of the nation should the president win re-election in 2012.
When one is an acolyte of the Marxist/socialist, command-and-control approach to governance, nothing aggravates more than that which is beyond one's command and control. Couple that tendency with an all-encompassing narcissism and a facility for prevarication and what do you get? A United States president more than willing to put Israel's very existence on the line so as not to weaken his chances for re-election in 2012. Last Thursday, Israeli newspaper Maariv, citing unnamed Western diplomatic and intelligence sources, claimed that the United States offered Israel advanced weaponry, such as bunker-busting bombs and refueling planes, in exchange for Israel's agreement not to attack Iranian nuclear sites prior to the 2012 election.
The expanding conflict between constitutional rights and technological advances has taken another turn in Texas. On February 29th, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled it is now legal for police to search cell phones without a warrant. ... Technology is rapidly eliminating anything resembling a genuine the right to privacy. Sadly, in a nation of people enthralled with posting the details of their lives on Internet websites, or loading substantial portions of those lives into cellphone and other portable devices, much of that elimination has been voluntary.
Much remains unknown about Barack Obama's radical past -- which the president has gone to great lengths to conceal from the American people. Obama hasn't succeeded in covering every trail, of course, as works such as David Horowitz's "Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model" and Stanley Kurtz's "Radical-in-Chief" have shown. Indeed, both those texts have powerfully exposed the deceptive nature of our current president and the socialist/Marxist associations he has managed to keep from the public. Yesterday, another window revealing the president's radical past was opened. A video released by Breitbart.com captured Obama leading a 1991 protest on behalf of Harvard Law's Derrick Bell, described by some as the "Rev. Jeremiah Wright of the academic world."
