Seeing as they each impact key pillars of what today passes for liberalism, there seems to be more than a few connections between the recent ACORN stings by Giles, O’Keefe and Breitbart, and the recent hacking of the emails of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, or “Global WarmingGate”, as Charlie Martin dubs it elsewhere at Pajamas. Not the least is that they each sent the legacy media into full gatekeeper mode, hoping to prevent exciting, important news of current events from ever reaching their readers. Or perhaps, like the scandal last year involving John Edwards, sitting on the stories for so long, while making claims that they have to endlessly research them to verify their authenticity — Keep rockin’! — that when the legacy media decides to go “public” with news that everyone already knows, they can dramatically dilute the ultimate impact of these stories.
In September, we noted the L.A. Times’ hypocrisy when they wrote, “O’Keefe’s hidden-camera methods are distasteful, and the extent to which his videos were edited is unknown” — as opposed to the hidden camera videos run almost every week by their fellow liberal brethren on 60 Minutes since the show debuted on CBS over 40 years ago.
And as a nice sequel of sorts to our previous post on leftwing cognitive dissonance, Orrin Judd spots this staggering moment of hypocrisy from the New York Times’ Andrew C. Revkin of their “Dot Earth” blog on Friday:
The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.
And they don’t contain any obvious state military secrets as well, unlike say the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War or more recently, the secrets of War on Terror, or any of a number of other leaked documents the Times has cheerfully rushed to print.
Back in 2006, when his paper disclosed the previously confidential details of the SWIFT program, which was designed to trace terrorists’ financial assets, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller said on CBS’s Face the Nation, “one man’s breach of security is another man’s public relations.” Of course, much like the rest of the media circling the wagons with ACORN, it’s not at all surprising that the Times circles the wagons when it’s necessary to save the public face of their fellow liberals.
Incidentally, Tom Maguire explains the perfect way to square the circle:
If Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe are done tormenting ACORN maybe they can figure out how to pose as underaged climate researchers…
Update: At the Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb adds, “As a journalist, there is no greater glory than publishing materials that were not meant to be published”:
If I could, I would only publish emails and documents that were never meant to see the light of day — though, unlike the New York Times, I draw the line at jeopardizing the lives of American troops rather than jeopardizing the contrived “consensus” on global warming.
And of course, the Times has those priorities exactly reversed. But then, for the Gray Lady, small government Republicans are “Stalinists”, but actual totalitarian governments are worthy of emulation and respect.
Update: On Twitter, “Justkarl” asks, “You don’t suppose the real reason Revkin won’t publish the CRU e-mails is that he’s implicated in them?”, adding, “Revkin CRU e-mail. Likely here too.”
Related: For those who would like to “Wear The Decline”, T-shirts are now available in the lobby!
Today marks the 46th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. Back in 2007, I interviewed James Piereson about his then-new book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, which looked at the enormous cognitive dissonance that descended upon the left in its wake.
And it may be permanent: Piereson has a new article comparing the left’s inability to process who shot JFK with the motivations of Nadal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter at the Weekly Standard. Click here to read it.
Beginning with the first sentence of the great Theodore Dalrymple’s new article at City Journal, “Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform”, you know one of the most influential modern architects and one of the most disasterous city planners of the 20th century has met his match:
Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform. In one sense, he had less excuse for his activities than Pol Pot: for unlike the Cambodian, he possessed great talent, even genius. Unfortunately, he turned his gifts to destructive ends, and it is no coincidence that he willingly served both Stalin and Vichy. Like Pol Pot, he wanted to start from Year Zero: before me, nothing; after me, everything. By their very presence, the raw-concrete-clad rectangular towers that obsessed him canceled out centuries of architecture. Hardly any town or city in Britain (to take just one nation) has not had its composition wrecked by architects and planners inspired by his ideas.
Writings about Le Corbusier often begin with an encomium to his importance, something like: “He was the most important architect of the twentieth century.” Friend and foe would agree with this judgment, but importance is, of course, morally and aesthetically ambiguous. After all, Lenin was one of the most important politicians of the twentieth century, but it was his influence on history, not his merits, that made him so: likewise Le Corbusier.
Yet just as Lenin was revered long after his monstrosity should have been obvious to all, so Le Corbusier continues to be revered. Indeed, there is something of a revival in the adulation. Nicholas Fox Weber has just published an exhaustive and generally laudatory biography, and Phaidon has put out a huge, expensive book lovingly devoted to Le Corbusier’s work. Further, a hagiographic exhibition devoted to Le Corbusier recently ran in London and Rotterdam. In London, the exhibition fittingly took place in a hideous complex of buildings, built in the 1960s, called the Barbican, whose concrete brutalism seems designed to overawe, humiliate, and confuse any human being unfortunate enough to try to find his way in it. The Barbican was not designed by Le Corbusier, but it was surely inspired by his particular style of soulless architecture.
At the exhibition, I fell to talking with two elegantly coiffed ladies of the kind who spend their afternoons in exhibitions. “Marvelous, don’t you think?” one said to me, to which I replied: “Monstrous.” Both opened their eyes wide, as if I had denied Allah’s existence in Mecca. If most architects revered Le Corbusier, who were we laymen, the mere human backdrop to his buildings, who know nothing of the problems of building construction, to criticize him? Warming to my theme, I spoke of the horrors of Le Corbusier’s favorite material, reinforced concrete, which does not age gracefully but instead crumbles, stains, and decays. A single one of his buildings, or one inspired by him, could ruin the harmony of an entire townscape, I insisted. A Corbusian building is incompatible with anything except itself.
The two ladies mentioned that they lived in a mainly eighteenth-century part of the city whose appearance and social atmosphere had been comprehensively wrecked by two massive concrete towers. The towers confronted them daily with their own impotence to do anything about the situation, making them sad as well as angry. “And who do you suppose was the inspiration for the towers?” I asked. “Yes, I see what you mean,” one of them said, as if the connection were a difficult and even dangerous one to make.
From Karl Marx and the Soviet Union, to the Bauhaus, to National Socialism, to the hippies of the 1960s, the idea of starting from Year Zero, at Dalrymple notes above, has long been one of the central strains of the left in its various forms. And of course, it’s a theme that continues to this day.
Back in September, we referenced the World Wildlife Federation’s botched advertisement associating global warming with 9/11; this ad by the appropriately named “Plane Stupid” attempts to do much the same. What else does one think of when watching bodies fall from the sky in an urban environment filled with high rises? At least until ascertaining that those bodies are the wintry cousins of Yogi, Boo Boo, Smokey, and their Build-A-Bear brethren?
Update: Found in the comments of Tim Blair’s blog, scientists, circus performers, and astute urban developers are already teaming up to provide innovative solutions to the nation’s plummeting bear market:
Bill Whittle of PJTV.com interviews Charles Stimson, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of defense for Detainee Affairs, now with the Heritage Foundation. They’ll be discussing Attorney General Eric
Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 suspects in New York City.
Pajamas Media CEO Roger L. Simon and fellow Motion Picture Academy member Lionel Chetwynd make sense of the byzantine process of how a film gets nominated for an Academy Award.
Glenn Reynolds interviews the members of the Smart Set, on how the Internet is changing how music is distributed and opening new opportunities for entrepreneurial musicians.
John Boot and Christian Toto note that the new movie version of The Blind Side, the enjoyable recent football book by Michael Lewis of Liar’s Poker fame, contains a classic Hollywood sucker punch. As Christian writes:
Here’s the scene: Bullock’s character is waiting in line to speak to someone about her new son Michael’s legal status.
Fed up, she cuts to the front of the line to ask a question:
“We have been sitting around here for over an hour and when I look around all I see are people shooting the bull and drinking coffee … who’s in charge here?”
The bemused woman behind the desk points to the wall, where a picture of Bush is hanging.
We’ve all been in long lines before, be it at the DMV or other governmental offices. And it doesn’t matter which party – or person – is occupying the White House at the moment.
So the joke makes no sense. All it does is deflate a feel-good movie for no good reason. Maybe the filmmakers realized with Bush out of office time is running out to throw spitballs at Hollywood’s favorite target.
Hollywood is high school and if you want to sit at the cool kids’ table (i.e. work) you better fit in, and if you’ve been involved in the writing, directing or producing of a film sympathetic towards the most hated demographic (yes, even more hated than terrorists — again, watch the product) in the 9-0 zip code, you had better inoculate yourself.
And that’s what the gratuitous, unnecessary, jarring, take-you-out-of-the-movie shot at Bush is: an inoculation. The filmmakers want to work again; they want to be invited to all the right parties. But if you’re remembered as the perso involved in bringing to life a movie only Glenn Beck could love, no matter how big of a hit, that’s not a good thing on the ole’ resume’.
There are notable exceptions, but working in Hollywood — an industry built on social interaction — means getting along with Leftists, and Leftists are religious, regional and ideological bigots of the worst order. The smart people involved in the making of “The Blind Side” knew the Bush shot was bad storytelling — was what what John Boot described as ”a non-sequitur nonpareil” — they just felt, for whatever reason (their own bigotry or career survival), that it was worth it.
Hollywood is not money or profit-driven. This is an industry engaged in an ideological war with traditional conservative America that doesn’t mind making a profit, but never will at the expense of the cause. Everyone involved in the making of “Blind Side” knew an unnecessary partisan shot at Bush would turn people off. They all knew they were insulting the very audience the film was marketed at for no reason other than to insult them. But there was absolutely no way in hell this thing was going to see the light of day without something for the Hollywood bigots to snicker over.
As John writes, “This is their sandbox, and there’s a ring to kiss if you want to play.”
Slate magazine is just one of the countless media outlets convulsing with St. Vitus’ Dance over that demonic succubus Sarah Palin. In its reader forum, The Fray, one supposed Palinophobe took dead aim at the former Alaska governor’s writing chops, excerpting the following sentence from her book:
“The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn’t work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle.”
Other readers pounced like wolf-sized Dobermans on an intruder. One guffawed, “That sentence by Sarah Palin could be entered into the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. It could have a chance at winning a (sic) honorable mention, at any rate.”
But soon, the original contributor confessed: “I probably should have mentioned that the sentence quoted above was not written by Sarah Palin. It’s taken from the first paragraph of ‘Dreams From My Father,’ written by Barack Obama.”
The ruse should have been allowed to fester longer, but the point was made nonetheless: Some people hate Palin first and ask questions later.
Palin’s book was rejected by at least one local book chain in the increasingly reprimitivized Bay Area; PJM’s David Steinberg looks at what titles they carry instead. (Hint: Rosie O’Donnell and Charlie Sheen should be pleased.) Meanwhile, the legacy media, which goes to 11 when it’s time investigate Plain’s autobiography (unlike Obama’s), has taken to picking on her 17-year old fans.
After introducing [George] Lopez on her CNN Headline News program last night, [Joy] Behar played a clip of Lopez’s HBO special in which he said, “There are a lot of politicians that would be Latinos and a lot now who are Latino. Sarah Palin, Latina. Believe me. She’s got all the signs. She works and her husband don’t.” [sic -- Ed]
Later in the segment, after commenting about Palin’s lack of experience, Lopez stated, “I mean, the concept of Todd Palin being a stay-at-home dad-listen Joy, when I was a kid, those guys were called bums.”
“Uh-huh. They’re still called bums,” agreed Behar.
Don’t interpret passage of the watered-down Kanjorski amendment as the peak of the “break up the banks” movement. It may be about to get some new allies on the right, folks tired of Big Government, Big Money and crony capitalism.
For the moment, though, it was arguably the best that Representative Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat, [and Mr. New New Deal himself -- Ed] could have gotten through the House Financial Services Committee. All the committee Republicans and even some of the Democrats voted against it. And even in its much-diminished state, the Kanjorksi amendment would likely be weakened further in the Senate. At the same time, the Obama administration seems little interested in such pre-emptive powers.
Wall Street, however, is hardly getting any more popular with Main Street. The Goldman Sachs Apology Tour is evidence of that. And there are mid-term elections in less than a year. Republican candidates will probably do well as high unemployment continues to drive voter anger at incumbents. As Gallup diplomatically puts it, “Republicans seem well-positioned to win back some of their congressional losses in 2006 and 2008.” More accurately, fear of losing the House is now running high among congressional Dems.
And all those new Republicans are likely to be infused with the ethos of the Tea Party movement: anti-TARP, anti-Fed (the House GOP is already there on this), anti-bailouts and anti-Wall Street. It could be a group of newcomers, as John McCain recently said, that is populist, protectionist when it comes to China and the yuan and pro-financial regulation.
Sarah Palin could be a harbinger. Although she diligently promotes the wonder-working power of Reaganomics in her autobiography, she also warns about “the return of corporatism – government collusion and co-option of big business.” [More on corporatism here -- Ed]
As the TechPresident blog noted recently, Obama’s admitting that he’s never used Twitter is a reminder that his campaigned lied when it demonized John McCain for being out of touch with the Internet. (Despite the YouTube and blog-savvy nature of the McCain camp doing much to keep his campaign competitive during the summer of 2008.)
In China, a student asked President Obama, “Should we be able to use Twitter freely?” You and I might have said, “Yes.” President Obama began, “Well, first of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone.” He went on, “I should be honest. As president of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn’t flow so freely, because then I wouldn’t have to listen to people criticizing me all the time.” Yet “in the United States, information is free.” And “I have a lot of critics . . . who can say all kinds of things about me.” And “I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”
You could argue that this is a clever, nuanced answer — not too brash. But isn’t the answer weirdly me-centric, Obama-centric? And doesn’t he argue from pragmatism — “It makes me a better leader”? How about principle: the principle of free speech, freedom of expression?
I really think a simple “yes” might have been better.
One more thing: Obama said, “There are times where I wish information didn’t flow so freely.” Did he mean that, or was that just a matter of rhetoric?
There’s liberal hypocrisy on the part of New York Times economics columnist and left-wing blog-follower Paul Krugman in his Monday nytimes.com blog post, “Proposed extensions of Godwin’s Law.”
Leading into a discussion of how he thinks people should discuss inflation and interest rates, Krugman said:
Godwin’s Law — which says that in any sufficiently long online discussion, someone will compare his opponent to Hitler — is often interpreted to mean that if you do, in fact, start making Nazi comparisons, you’ve lost the argument and can no longer be taken seriously. I’m all for that. (Does this mean that we should no longer take any significant figure in the Republican Party seriously? Yes, it does.)
Not only is that way overstated (Krugman provides no actual examples), it’s also pretty bold, given that Krugman takes seriously and often utilizes ideas from left-wing blog sites like Daily Kos, where comparing President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler was pretty much the password for entry.
And such concern for civil debate didn’t stop Krugman from comparing conservative host Rush Limbaugh to Communist dictator Joseph Stalin in an April 13 column:
Speaking of Mr. Limbaugh: the most impressive thing about his role right now is the fealty he is able to demand from the rest of the right. The abject apologies he has extracted from Republican politicians who briefly dared to criticize him have been right out of Stalinist show trials.
Republicans pick up an unlooked-for Senate seat via a 2010 special election.
…which is probably not Corzine’s intent; but then, neither was losing the governor’s race. As for this prospective race… a recent loser, a Democrat, and an incumbent in 2010. That would be perfect, thanks.
Michael Socolow, assistant professor in the department of communication and journalism at the University of Maine, grudgingly acknowledges the importance of Spiro Agnew in firing the first salvo in the American people versus, what was then, still very much a mass media:
The attacks on the media perfectly encapsulate the cynical brilliance of the Nixon administration. Scripted by Pat Buchanan and Bill Safire, and vetted by President Richard Nixon, Agnew’s speeches (there were several) began in Des Moines, Iowa, on Nov. 13, 1969. They proved remarkably successful. Agnew appeared on the cover of Time and Life magazines, special features on his criticism aired on all three national broadcast networks, and invitations to speak to civic and community organizations flooded his office.
The speeches were notable for both their content and style. No successful national politician had so forthrightly attacked The New York Times or CBS News. Stylistically, the speeches were filled with insults (barely) cloaked in peppery, alliterative phrases. But hidden beneath Agnew’s name-calling was a far more serious in-dictment of media consolidation. This part of the speech — now largely forgotten — changed the American media landscape forever.
In the newsrooms and executive offices of American media organizations the attack led to a great deal of internal self-examination. At CBS News, Charles Kuralt already had been assigned (“On the Road”) to report back on rarely reported aspects of America, and shortly after Agnew’s speeches NBC News sent two reporters out to do the same thing. A survey of local television stations revealed that 115 of 123 stations had started “a serious search” for more “good news items” after Agnew’s attack. Local news turned more toward soft news and light features, beginning a move away from critical reporting that has continued to this day.
The New York Times responded by implementing the OpEd page after years of internal debate. John B. Oakes, the editorial page editor of the Times who conceived the idea of the OpEd page (basing it upon a commentary page in the old New York World called the Page Op), had tried to launch the innovation for more than a decade. The publisher agreed only after the White House’s criticism could no longer be ignored. Oakes later described Agnew as typical of the oppositional voices he wanted represented in the Times. The first edition of the OpEd page featured both a critical assessment of Agnew’s speeches and an unflattering caricature of the vice president.
Both Agnew and Oakes professed a belief in the value of a diverse marketplace of ideas, but they held divergent philosophical views on the media’s social role. Oakes believed the media should lead and teach, invigorating the public sphere with fresh perspectives and ideas. For Agnew, the media’s responsibility was to be re-sponsive to the masses. This essential question — whether the news media should lead public opinion or reflect it — remains unresolved four decades later. But with the rise of the blogosphere, Fox News, the decline of journalistic authority and the fragmentation of audiences, Agnew’s vision clearly holds the upper hand.
Were Agnew alive today, he would undoubtedly be pleased by his contribution to the current media environment. Never have the American media been bombarded by such constant criticism — from both the right and the left. The motivations, assumptions and biases of professional journalists are closely and constantly examined, and the authority of their work has correspondingly eroded.
Two observations: first, didn’t Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center say much the same thing a decade ago? And second, a generation whose elites spent the last 40 years alternately shouting “Question Authority”, “Dissent Is Patriotic”, and teaching postmodernism, multiculturalism, and the importance of diversity in all things, shouldn’t be too surprised when the rest of the American people take them up on those ideas and begin to seek out media sources that reflect their own values.
Apparently, in Rich’s mind, because conservatives thought — accurately as it turned out — that Dede Scozzafava, running for Congress in New York’s 23rd District was a Republican in Name Only, and they preferred a more conservative candidate, that made them…Stalinists!
On the other hand, it was rather refreshing to see a journalist with the New York Times use the word pejoratively. Needless to say, that hasn’t always been the case, as we’ll explore in the latest edition of Silicon Graffiti, including:
Thomas Friedman’s love for Big Brother in China and Cuba.
Then: Shut Up And Play Your Guitar, as Frank Zappa used to say. Now: shut up and call your attorney, as Gibson Guitar Corporation’s Nashville manufacturing plant runs afoul of the eco-police, and gets raided:
Federal agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and local police today seized wood, guitars, computers and boxes of files from Gibson Guitar’s Massman Road manufacturing facility.
Sources say the Nashville-based guitar manufacturer is being investigated for violating the Lacey Act, a key piece of environmental law, for importing endangered species of rosewood from Madagascar.
Rosewood is widely used in the construction of guitars and sells for $5,000 per cubic meter, more than double the price of mahogany. The island nation off Africa’s east coast is a key producer of the hardwood, the export of which has links to international criminal activity.
A statement from Gibson released late Tuesday afternoon says the company is “fully co-operating” with the investigation.
“Gibson Guitar is fully cooperating with agents of the United States Fish & Wildlife Service as it pertains to an issue with harvested wood. Gibson is a chain of custody certified buyer who purchases wood from legal suppliers who are to follow all standards. Gibson Guitar Chairman and CEO [Henry Juszkiewicz] sits on the board of the Rainforest Alliance and takes the issue of certification very seriously. The company will continue to cooperate fully and assist our federal government with all inquiries and information,” the company’s statement said.
Madagascar has struggled financially since a January coup and new President Andry Rajoelina issued an executive order in September legalizing the export of rosewood and ebony. The move was decried by environmental groups and political leaders worldwide, as hardwood forests are key to Madagascar’s unique ecology and serve as a habitat for a dwindling lemur population.
Sources tell NashvillePost.com Gibson was involved in a scheme that shipped the wood from Madagascar to Germany and then to the United States.
Ironically, if they made a movie of this, as the old Hollywood legend goes, it would likely be cut up into guitar picks after failing at the box office, thereby bringing things full circle.
In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.
Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city’s largest municipal union.
Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.
“We’ll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails,” Balzano told the council.
Balzano said Saturday he isn’t targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city’s decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said “there’s to be no volunteers.” No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.
Last year, when Obama and his backers were on the campaign trail portraying America as some sort of impoverished Dickensian nightmare (when not advising the huddled, starving masses to share the wealth, and cut back on how much they eat, and drive their big eeevil SUVs), Michelle Obama famously said:
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones.
Huh — I must have missed him on the National Review Cruise last November. But as Allie Duzett of Accuracy In Media writes, America’s fourth-ranked cable news channel “is now claiming that Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, is a conservative”:
On November 10, 2009, CNN Special Investigations Correspondent Drew Griffin called Hasan “conservative,” and now that talking point is being spewed again on today’s front page online story. The story, about Hasan’s search for a wife, discusses how two imams told CNN “about [Hasan’s] conservatism.” The story also mentions Hasan’s “conservative” clothing choices.
However—what exactly about Hasan is conservative?
Fact: Islamofascism is not conservative, in any way. Hating America is not conservative—conservatives tend to love their country. Wanting to blow up America is not conservative—again, conservatives tend to love their country. Hating people for their religion (or lack thereof) is not conservative—conservatives are not the ones trying to remove other people’s religions from the public sphere.
What Hasan did was not conservative. Murdering men and women in the armed forces is not conservative—conservatives are traditionally the ones most supportive of our men and women in the armed forces. Murdering fetuses is absolutely not conservative—conservatives tend to oppose abortion, and Hasan murdered a pregnant woman and her unborn child. And of course, wearing traditional clothing—even Islamic clothing—does not make you a conservative. While I don’t believe the story meant to imply that Hasan’s clothing linked him to a conservative ideology, I believe the writer could have picked a better word for it. Hasan may have been religious, but religiosity never makes one conservative, even if that person is a traditionalist within the religion.
This is just another case of CNN’s reporters creating a link to conservatism where there really is none.
At Power Line, John Hinderaker writes, “We are beginning to see way too many echoes of the 1930s, as national socialist and Marxian socialist thugs try to drive competing political views off the streets”:
The worst offenders so far have been the Service Employees’ International Union, which has repeatedly sent its members out into the streets to beat up anyone who isn’t toeing the Obama line on issues like socialized medicine.
Most recently it’s International ANSWER, a hard-core Communist group supported by shadowy funding sources that have never been made public, but appear to consist of a handful of rich people. ANSWER, notwithstanding its unabashedly Communist ideology, now feels comfortable enough to assault non-communist demonstrators who show up in the streets. In this case, the non-communists were protesting illegal immigration, seeking to uphold the nation’s laws, when they were set upon by ANSWER’s thugs:
Update: Welcome those stopping by from Instapundit — and however you’ve arrived here, don’t miss the incredible comment #6 below from “Carl Gordon”, which is that rarest of combinations: it’s both the Best. Comment. Ever. and Most-Hackneyed. Writing. Ever. all at the same time.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute believes that it has finally come with the scratch big enough to tempt Al Gore to finally debate global “warming”:
After introducing [George] Lopez on her CNN Headline News program last night, [Joy] Behar played a clip of Lopez’s HBO special in which he said, “There are a lot of politicians that would be Latinos and a lot now who are Latino. Sarah Palin, Latina. Believe me. She’s got all the signs. She works and her husband don’t.” [sic -- Ed]
Federal agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and local police today seized wood, guitars, computers and boxes of files from Gibson Guitar’s Massman Road manufacturing facility.
