AG Eric Holder presses for expansion of thought crimes laws

Using recent attacks on George Tiller, the National Holocaust Museum and an Army recruiting station as his justification, U.S. Attorney General has called for tougher penalties for crimes motivated by -------- (I’ll pause as you go back and review the incidents which prompted this call) -------- gender, disability or sexual orientation.
The Associated Press reports:

The attorney general's call for Congress to act came as a civil rights coalition said there has been a surge in white supremacist activity since the election of the first African-American president and the economic downturn.
"Over the last several weeks, we have witnessed brazen acts of violence committed in places that many would have considered unthinkable," Holder told the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.
He cited separate attacks over a two-week period that killed a young soldier in Little Rock, an abortion provider in Wichita and a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Federal agents and prosecutors already are involved in the local investigations of each attack.
The violence, Holder said, "reminds us of the potential threat posed by violent extremists and the tragedy that ensues when reasoned discourse is replaced by armed confrontation."
"We will not tolerate murder, or the threat of violence, masquerading as political activism," he said. "So let me be clear. The Justice Department will use every tool at its disposal to protect the rights ensured under our Constitution."
Holder said that to stop such violence, Congress should pass an updated version of hate crimes legislation in order to more effectively prosecute those who commit violent attacks based on gender, disability or sexual orientation.
The growing number of hate crimes against Latinos also shows the need for tougher laws, Holder said.

For better or worse, everything Holder mentioned is already covered under existing “hate” crime laws. Perhaps he wants to go for mandatory life imprisonment. Or maybe this is the one situation where the left will support the death penalty.
Regardless, the very notion of “hate” crimes is uncomfortably akin to Orwellian “thought” crimes. To the untrained observer, there is no difference in outcome between “hate” crimes and the more ordinary, garden-variety crimes. To the left, however, what the criminal was thinking at the time he or she committed the crime makes all the difference in the world in determining the sentence.
As if the family of the victim would be consoled by the knowledge that the criminal’s act against their loved one was nothing personal.

6/17 UPDATE: The House passed the bill in April, but, LifeSite News reports, the Senate is trying to smuggle it through as an amendment to a tourism bill.

ABC becomes a more explicit propaganda arm of the Obama administration

One of the first principles of the MSM’s marriage to the Democrat Party is that they’re supposed to deny the existence of the relationship at all times. The ABC television network is violating this principle in a way that is raising a lot of eyebrows.

Drudge is reporting today that on June 24, ABC is planning to give president Obama a free, unchallenged bully pulpit to promote his health care agenda.

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care -- a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm!

Highlights on the agenda:

ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.

The network plans a primetime special -- 'Prescription for America' -- originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.

ABC will lead up to this event with a week and a half of promotions.

The Republican National Committee challenged ABC News to either allow opposing viewpoints or to make the Democratic National Committee pay for the airtime. ABC News Senior Vice President Kerry Smith sniffed in response:

"ABCNEWS prides itself on covering all sides of important issues and asking direct questions of all newsmakers -- of all political persuasions -- even when others have taken a more partisan approach and even in the face of criticism from extremes on both ends of the political spectrum. ABCNEWS is looking for the most thoughtful and diverse voices on this issue.

"ABCNEWS alone will select those who will be in the audience asking questions of the president. Like any programs we broadcast, ABC News will have complete editorial control. To suggest otherwise is quite unfair to both our journalists and our audience."

In other words, ABC says the balance will come through questions asked by its handpicked audience. They promise. Trust them.

Even if some audience member managed to slip a good question past ABC’s censors, that’s not the same thing as a high-profile opponent offering reasoned debate.

The fact of the matter is, ABC is acting as a willing shill for Obama’s agenda, and their protests to the contrary are sounding more and more pathetic as time goes on.

I take back some of what I've said about Twitter

I've long been of the opinion that Twitter is completely useless to anybody who isn't afflicted with ADHD. The microblogging service's limit of 140 characters per post is ill-suited to anybody who communicates in complete sentences and who has thoughts more complex than "OMG this traffic is awful" or "I like turtles LOL".

My antipathy toward Twitter has softened somewhat as I've seen the use made of it by anti-Ahmadinejad partisans in Iran. The #IranElection channel (is that the right word for it?) has been, bar none, the best source for raw information on the protests and the government's reaction.

I've come to the conclusion that Twitter is ideally suited for this kind of hit-and-run reporting (an apt term in this case, since many of the Tweeters are running for cover as they post). In other words, Twitter does "live blogging" better than blogs do.

Twitter appears to recognize that they're a part of history today. Australia's News.com reports that the service has postponed a scheduled outage so the #IranElection channel won't be disrupted.

To Twitter: SALUTE! To those in Iran wishing to be free from Mad Mahmoud: I wish you success, with little or no bloodshed.

P.S. I still think the other 99.9% of posts on Twitter are completely useless. And I'll keep saying so until I start my own feed there.

Yeah, that'll teach North Korea

The Associated Press (via WaPo) breathlessly informs us that the United Nations is sending North Korea to bed without any dinner:

The U.N. Security Council has approved tough new sanctions against North Korea for its recent nuclear test.

The resolution imposes new sanctions on the reclusive communist nation's weapons exports and financial dealings, and allows inspections of suspect cargo in ports and on the high seas.

U.S. deputy ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo said Friday's vote was a strong and united international response to North Korea's unacceptable behavior.

Does anyone seriously think these sanctions will persuade the folks in charge of NK to change their ways?

Saddam Hussein prospered for a decade under the United Nations' "tough sanctions" and its "strong and united international response" to his "unacceptable behavior". And Saddam was just your garden-variety genocidal dictator. Kim Jong-Il and his merry men take genocidal dictatorship to a whole new paranoid level.

St. George of Wichita

It was almost too easy to predict (like I did in the third paragraph in this post). Some among the religious left are already declaring George Tiller, heroic abortionist, to be a "martyr" and a "saint".

Washington Times, June 2:

Liberal religious groups joined secular pro-choice organizations Monday to mourn as a martyr one of the country's most famous providers of late-term abortions.

A nationwide network of candlelight vigils and services took place from Lafayette Park in the District to Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Ore., and from Union Square in New York to Millennium Plaza in Yakima, Wash.

Hundreds of people were expected to gather at each locale to mourn Sunday's fatal shooting of Dr. George Tiller on the grounds of his Lutheran church in Wichita, Kan. He was one of a handful of doctors in the country who did abortions after the sixth month of pregnancy.

St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Boston held an evening memorial service where the Very Rev. Katherine Ragsdale, president of Episcopal Divinity School in nearby Cambridge, was one of several scheduled speakers.

"This is about the loss of a man who was a saint and a martyr," she said in an interview before the service. "He was a prayerful man who put his life at risk to protect others and died for it. People are in shock, outrage and mourning. They need a place to go."

Yes, that was our good friend Katherine Ragsdale, who earned herself a brief moment of infamy when various websites discovered the text of one of her sermons where she referred to abortion as "a blessing".

Of course, if abortion is a blessing from God, then George Tiller was God's champion, and deserves to be sainted.

As long as the taxpayers are going to own an automotive company...

...why not own a company that makes cars that people actually want to buy? Satire from Scott Ott:

As the U.S. government escorted General Motors into bankruptcy court Monday with a deal giving taxpayers 60 percent of GM stock, a new survey reveals that most Americans would rather own a majority equity stake in Toyota.

According to a new Gallup poll, 87 percent believe Toyota's stock to be a better deal than GM's, due to the superior safety features, reliability and even the design of the Japanese equities.

A White House spokesman said, however, that the President Barack Obama has taken the AFL-CIO pledge to "Buy American" as the federal government takes over automakers, financial firms and other companies along a broad spectrum of business and industry.

You think that Tiller's murder is an indictment against all pro-life people? Fine.

We'll take moral responsibility for Scott Roeder's actions if the American Left will agree to take moral responsibility for the actions of Ted Kaczynski and Bill Ayers. Oh, and you "pro-choice" people need to own up to the eugenics views of Margaret Sanger.

Deal?

Left using Tiller murder to resurrect discredited DHS report

AmSpec's Matthew Vadum notes that the Left blogosphere is abuzz with one particular talking point: The murder of abortionist George Tillman proves that the Department of Homeland Security should not have withdrawn a report suggesting that everyone to the right of Obama was a potential terrorist.

Vadum cites some examples:

Zachary Roth of TPM Muckraker writes:

But in the wake of the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion extremist -- who had also been said by the FBI during the 1990s to have been a member of the radical Freemen group -- the report is looking a little more reasonable.

Predictably, Roth concludes, "[p]erhaps that report is due for a reassessment."
Hiding behind a pen name, "Kyle" of People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch, writes "it seems as if the report - far from being an offensive attack on Christians and anti-choice activists - was remarkably timely and accurate."

Given that this event (which I still contend was an atrocity) is turning out to be tailor-made to advance the Obama administration's agenda, perhaps we can suggest our own conspiracy theory by taking a cue from "Kyle" of People for the American Way: The timing of this murder was convenient. Too convenient.

Just kidding. I think.

Michael Moore dances on the grave of GM

Michael Moore has been on a jihad against General Motors for decades, and now his fondest dream is being realized: the dissolution of General Motors as a privately-owned corporation.

In his latest screed, he expresses his "joy" (his word, not mine) at seeing GM get seized unconstitutionally by the federal government.

However, he doesn't think GM's bankruptcy and nationalization should result in a single job loss (at least among union employees). Instead, he thinks that the employees should get right back to work for their new employer. Not building cars with internal combustion engines, mind you, because those are evil. What then? Things like:

• Bullet trains between all of the major cities of the U.S.
• Massive light-rail systems for all large and medium-sized cities in the U.S.
• Energy efficient buses to serve every place not served by the above
• Hybrid and all-electric cars for (steadily declining) use during the transition away from existing vehicles
• Windmills and solar panels!

All of this complete upending of America's transportation infrastructure would, on the taxpayer's dime, be forced on an unwilling public. Moore is completely unsympathetic, though, and even suggests a two-dollar-per-gallon federal gas tax to put automobiles out of the reach of those he pretends to champion.

Moore has been pumping out this kind of bilge for a long time. As recently as last year I would comfort myself with the fact that nobody in power would give him the time of day.

Times are different now, much to America's harm. Not only are there many sympathetic people at the levers of power now, they've shown time and again that they recognize no real boundaries on their power.

George Tiller's murder is an atrocity

Infamous late-term abortionist George Tiller was gunned down outside his church this morning. CNN reports:

Dr. George Tiller, whose Kansas women's clinic was the epicenter of the state's battles over abortion for nearly two decades, was shot and killed at his church Sunday morning, his family said.
Tiller, 67, was one of the few U.S. physicians who still performed late-term abortions. He survived a 1993 shooting outside his Wichita clinic.
He was fatally shot shortly after 10 a.m. Sunday at Reformation Lutheran Church, Wichita police said.

He was a lightning-rod for pro-life protests because he unapologetically championed the right to kill viable pre-born babies -- including through the use of the barbaric and medically unnecessary partial-birth abortion procedure.

The shooter apparently has been caught, but little information about him has been released yet. I'm sure we'll hear in the coming days about his motivations, but I don't really care to hear them, because I seriously doubt he could ever persuade me that his vigilantism was the right thing to do.

The shooter, whatever his motivation, did no service to God or to the pro-life movement. Rather, he has provided months or years of propaganda to the opponents of both. "Tiller the Martyr" will be beatified soon by the adherents of the culture of death, and I expect that we won't have to wait for long to see a major Hollywood motion picture done as a tribute to Tiller's life.

We can see in the CNN article that Tiller's family is already providing the template for his tribute:

Tiller "dedicated his life to providing women with high-quality heath care despite frequent threats and violence," his family said in a written statement.

"We ask that he be remembered as a good husband, father and grandfather and a dedicated servant on behalf of the rights of women everywhere," the family said.

Tiller's devoted his professional life in the service of a great evil, and make no mistake -- he will answer to God for it. BUT -- God has reserved vengeance (i.e. justice) for Himself, and I seriously doubt that He delegated this prerogative to some middle-aged guy from Kansas.

The shooter is guilty of premeditated murder, and he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

He does not deserve the admiration of any who abhor the practice of abortion.

If you accept the premise that individuals can take criminal justice into their own hands, you have to be prepared to take that reasoning to its logical conclusion. And trust me, you don't want to go there.


UPDATE: As predictable as the sun rising each day...

Watch your back, Mr. President

It looks like some of Mr. Obama's boosters on the far left are starting to sour on him in a big way.

Here's what uberkook Ted Rall had to say in his syndicated column today:

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.
From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. [...]
Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss.

For once, I agree with Ted Rall (up to a point). The president is dragging us into the abyss, but it's not because some of Obama's campaign rhetoric ran into the brick wall of reality.

Rall's sniping on some agenda items may be premature. As we saw yesterday, Obama is starting to push harder on phase 1 of nationalized healthcare. Perhaps Rall thinks the president should go for the whole package right away, even though his chances of succeeding in this way are remote at best. Government-run healthcare would be a disaster for our country, but it still has a chance of being implemented if Obama and the Dems roll it out incrementally.

Shock and awe: Obama's domestic agenda strategy

President Obama clearly understands that he has a limited amount of time to push through his radical, transformational agenda. The vast reservoir of public good will that he brought into office is already showing signs of drying up, and as more and more of the electorate comes out of its hypnotic "hope and change" trance, the more likely his initiatives will stall.

One area where Obama sees the window of opportunity beginning to close is the nationalization of the U.S. health care system. An AP article from today shows the president's growing alarm:

Obama says health care a must this year — or never

President Barack Obama warned Thursday that if Congress doesn't deliver health care legislation by the end of the year the opportunity will be lost, a plea to political supporters to pressure lawmakers to act. "If we don't get it done this year, we're not going to get it done," Obama told supporters by phone as he flew home on Air Force One from a West Coast fundraising trip.

Obama's political organization, Organizing for America, invited campaign volunteers to a midday conference call to describe a nationwide June 6 kickoff for its health care campaign. The president's message to his re-election campaign-in-waiting was simple: If volunteers don't pressure lawmakers to support the White House's goal on health care, Washington would drag its feet and nothing would change.

[...] The president's conversation with his supporters was part pep talk and part a nod to political reality. Obama is looking to use his network of supporters to deliver a campaign promise, and if he seeks a second term in 2012 — an almost certainty — he hopes to keep many of those volunteers engaged in person and online.

Keep the masses whipped up, and they don't need to think about the damage they're doing to our country.

Quick takes on the Sotomayor nomination

Tim Graham, Newsbusters:

The nomination of a Hispanic for the Supreme Court will remind conservatives of the case of Miguel Estrada, a promising Hispanic conservative that the Democrats filibustered -- at the circuit court level -- and in 2003, Estrada gave up the battle.

Here’s one priceless exchange from ABC’s This Week on February 9, 2003, with an ABC reporter now working as a talk-show host on National Public Radio:

MICHEL MARTIN: Miguel Estrada is a very promising young lawyer who went to some excellent schools, had excellent clerkships, has a good work record. What he lacks in judicial background he makes up with a compelling life story....And you know what that’s called George? Affirmative action. He is an affirmative action candidate as practiced by the Republican Party and the conservative movement....

GEORGE WILL: Michel, affirmative action, in the Michigan style, would be to give Estrada 20 extra points. He didn’t get that. He got the highest possible rating by the ABA.

Ilya Shapiro, Cato@Liberty:

She has a mixed reputation, with a questionable temperament and no particularly important opinions in over 10 years on the Second Circuit. Most notably, she was part of the panel that summarily affirmed the dismissal of Ricci v. DeStefano, where the City of New Haven denied firefighter promotions based on an admittedly race-neutral exam whose results did not yield the “correct” racial mix of successful candidates. Sotomayor’s colleague José Cabranes—a liberal Democrat—excoriated the panel’s actions and the Supreme Court will likely reverse the ruling next month.

If this is the kind of “empathy” the president wants from his judges, we are in for a long summer—and more bitter confirmation battles in the future.

Matthew Vadum, American Spectator:

President Obama's radical new nominee to replace Associate Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, used to serve on the board of LatinoJustice PRLDEF (White House backgrounder), one of the racial grievance groups that helped to sink the judicial nomination of Honduran-born Miguel Estrada in 2003.

Along with groups such as the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), LatinoJustice fought a war of attrition against President George W. Bush's 2001 nomination of conservative Miguel Estrada, a Honduran-born immigrant, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Democrats in the Senate filibustered the nomination and a weary Estrada withdrew from consideration in 2003.

Today LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit, hailed the nomination of Sotomayor on the basis of her ethno-cultural heritage. "As the second largest and fastest growing population in America, with a large pool of qualified individuals to choose from, it was wholly appropriate for the president to nominate a Hispanic," the group said in a written statement. (PDF)

Human Events has collected some quotes that suggest Sotomayor is not troubled by her lack of judicial impartiality:

• “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
  
• "I simply do not know exactly what the difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”
  
• “I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.”
  
• “All of the Legal Defense Funds out there -- they're looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is -- Court of Appeals is where policy is made. And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don't ‘make law.’ ”

Stephen Dinan, Washington Times:

Three of the five majority opinions written by Judge Sotomayor for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and reviewed by the Supreme Court were reversed, providing a potent line of attack raised by opponents Tuesday after President Obama announced he will nominate the 54-year-old Hispanic woman to the high court.

"Her high reversal rate alone should be enough for us to pause and take a good look at her record. Frankly, it is the Senates duty to do so," said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America.

Steve Milloy of Junkscience.com regarding one of those reversed decisions:

Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor represents a potential threat to U.S. consumers and to the economy in terms of energy and the environment.

In her 2007 Second Circuit decision in Riverkeeper, Inc. v. EPA 475 F. 3d 83, Judge Sotomayor sided with extreme green groups who had sued the U.S. EPA because the agency permitted cost-benefit analysis to be used in the determination of environmental protection technology for power plant cooling water intake structures.

Fortunately, Judge Sotomayor’s decision was recently overturned by the Supreme Court, fittingly on April 1, 2009 (Entergy v. Riverkeeper, No. 07-588).

Had the EPA been required to abide by Judge Sotomayor’s decision, American consumers would have been forced to pay billions of dollars more in energy costs every year as power plants producing more than one-half of the nation’s electricity would have had to undertake expensive retrofits.

Newbie Democrat Arlen Specter confirms that Sotomayor's gender and ethnicity are the main reasons why she should be confirmed:

I applaud the nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Her confirmation would add needed diversity in two ways: the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the high court. While her record suggests excellent educational and professional qualifications, now it is up to the Senate to discharge its constitutional duty for a full and fair confirmation process.

Meaning, of course, that only a misogynist racist would oppose her.


(Image found here)

Quick Quote: 'Bread and circuses' is the cancer of democracy

"A perfect democracy, a 'warm body' democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally has no internal feedback for self correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens...which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it...which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'

"Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader--the barbarians enter Rome."

-- Lazarus Long, in Robert Heinlein's To Sail Beyond the Sunset

Saruman in the White House

President Obama's speech at Notre Dame reminded LifeSite's Thaddeus Kozinski of the rhetorical skills of another great orator:

"Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell. For some the spell lasted only while the voice spoke to them, and when it spake to another they smiled, as men do who see through a juggler’s trick while others gape at it. For many the sound of the voice alone was enough to hold them enthralled; but for those whom it conquered the spell endured when they were far away, and ever they heard that soft voice whispering and urging them. But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will, so long as its master had control of it." ~ “The Speech of Saruman,” J.R.R.Tolkien, The Two Towers