See their posts, "Tea Bag Envy and the Left’s Lack of Imagination" (Mellissa), and Dear Rightwing Extremists (Kathleen).
See also, Instapundit for lots of Tea Party information, and Michelle Malkin!
Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education - from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
See their posts, "Tea Bag Envy and the Left’s Lack of Imagination" (Mellissa), and Dear Rightwing Extremists (Kathleen).
The Los Angeles Times finally did a big story on the protests. But notice how the paper continues the media's leftist framing of the events by spinning the rallies as a right-wing fringe movement, starting with the title of the report: "Republicans Stage Tea Party' Protests Against Obama."
Nearly 200,000 Americans showed up to protest high taxes in hundreds of cities around the country today.The New York Times and The Boston Globe ignored "Tea Parties" altogether. ABC and CBS reporters were nowhere to be found. NBC, on the other hand, simply made obscene references - using a tea-related colloquialism - to express its corporate disgust with America's founding principles.Doug has the transcribed Susan Roesgen's totally unprofessional "interview" with a Tea Party dad at the Chicago rally (see also, "CNN Correspondent Claims Tea Parties 'Anti-Government,' 'Anti-CNN'").
* Infidels Are Cool, "Pics from the Santa Ana Tea Party."I wish I could post more!
* Michelle Malkin, "Massive: Tax Day Tea Party USA; Updated."
* Midnight Blue Says, "April 15th - Tea Party Day."
* Moe Lane, "Back from the DC Tax Day Tea Party."
* Nice Deb, "Kansas City Tax Day Tea Party."
* Paco Enterprises, "Tea Party, Lafayette Park, Washington, D.C."
* Pat's Daily Rants, "Anti Tax Tea Day Wrap Up/I'm a Right Wing Terrorist?"
* Point of a Gun, "From The Party."
* Pundit & Pundette, "DC Tea Party pic's *updated and expanded*."
* Robert Stacy McCain, "'Bama Tea: How Big Is Huge?"
* Samantha Speaks, "The Tea Party."
* SWAC Girl, "Silent Majority No More! Staunton's tea party in Gypsy Hill Park."
I'll post more photos later, as well as more details on the event.
By the standards of the Obama campaign and MoveOn.org, the Tea Parties happening all across the country are not very organized. Contra Talking Points Memo, no single group "owns" or is instigating tomorrow's events. The closest thing one could call to a centralized Tea Party homepage is Eric Odom's TaxDayTeaParty.com. Freedom Works has popularized a Google Map which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times that's become the unofficial directory of the event. Newt Gingrich is driving attendance through his American Solutions (a/k/a Drill Now) list, as are a myriad of other groups.Read the whole thing, at the link.
Contrast this to a MoveOn or MyBO (now OFA) mobilization during the election. A single group would send out a call for a single day of action to its massive e-mail list (in MoveOn's case, this would go to 5 million people; in Obama's, to 13 million people). They would direct people to an online event planning tool, which would either have the hallmarks of MoveOn's internal toolset or the Blue State Digital "PartyBuilder" toolset. Host and attendee information would be hosted on a centralized database. Reminder e-mails would be sent at timed intervals through the same technology. It would be a relatively clean, seamless, and centralized process.
Nothing of the sort has happened with the tea parties, at least from a technology and logistics perspective. Organizers have had to self-report their events to various national groups. One group claims credit for putting one set of events; another group for a different set. It's a much messier process that belies the stereotype of the right as a group of mindless automatons.
This is why it's amusing to watch the left try to debate Jon on the charge of "astroturf." MoveOn virtually invented massively replicable online grassroots organizing -- which many would equate with astroturf, in that activity is actually being directed by a few people at the top, and thousands of people on the ground are (willingly) following orders.
If there are talking points, sample agendas, syncronized start and end times, or standard branding and collateral for the tea parties, I haven't seen them. When Tom Matzzie and Eli Pariser did it old school and decided to send an e-mail to drive people to, say, an Iraq War vigil, they instantly created a level of organization we haven't yet seen in the tea party movement.
And that's okay.
The lack of coordination is a sign of a still-young movement that's just learning to organize online in earnest. And arguably, the advantage brought by a massive e-mail list is much impressive now than when MoveOn pioneered the practice in 2002 and 2003, its heyday.
Worse than Dan Quayle before her, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's bright star has fast faded in the eyes of Washington Republican officials and analysts, calling into question her efforts to become a national party figure ready to run for the White House. "She's just not ready for prime time," said a party strategist who has worked for former President Bush. "I mean, she's starting to look like she's having trouble being governor of Alaska." At issue is her weak debut, hampered by the mishandling of her by Sen. John McCain's campaign, and subsequent family issues such as the most recent tiff with Levi Johnston, the father of her first grandchild and ex-fiancé of her daughter Bristol.It's a little early to write off Governor Palin. Her first week in the national spotlight was enough to wilt even seasoned political candidates. And when Palin has troubles, the conservative grassroots rallies to her side. She'll be out there in force for the 2012 GOP primaries, without a doubt. We've got a long way to go, and she'll be going up against folks like Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, and perhaps Newt Gingrich. They've all been under the spotlight, and some of the controversies surrounding these three are more damaging than anything Palin's likely to face going forward. We'll be seeing moves by Bobby Jindal and Tim Pawlenty, as well - who knows who else? We're in the pre- pre-primary phase of Republican nomination politics, and anything can happen (just ask Howard Dean).
Are these tea parties the first signs of life from the Republican base? Or a trumped-up attempt by Washington insiders to suggest there is significant opposition to Obama's spending plans?But check out Matt Taibbi's feudal exposition on the movement, "The Peasant Mentality Lives on In America":
How the events play out will be a telling barometer. If these tea parties go off without a hitch and are well-attended (and, as importantly, well covered by the media) then Republicans have something on which to build. If the coverage shows a serious of sparsely attended events or covers controversial statements made by attendees, the tea parties might backfire.
It took a good long while for news of the Teabag movement to penetrate the periphery of my consciousness — I kept hearing things about it and dismissing them, sure that the whole business was some kind of joke. Like a Daily Show invention, say. It pains me to say this as an American, but we are the only people on earth dumb enough to use a nationwide campaign of “teabag parties” as a form of mass protest, in the middle of a real economic crisis.Having attended attended an organizing meeting last night with the Orange County National Tax Day Tea Party, I can assure people that "teabaggers" are not peasants. The meeting was held at a 12th floor law firm at Irvine's Wells Fargo Tower. I joined community activists and local busisnesspeople organizing against the "high-tax and deficit spending policies of President Obama and the Democratic Congress."
"The party has a ways to go," laments Phyllis Schlafly, a veteran conservative activist and founder of the conservative Eagle Forum. Schlafly says she takes hope from the grass-roots "tea parties" being organized against massive government spending across the country. One event in Chicago last week even boasted of turning away GOP chairman Steele, with organizers declaring they'd prefer not to have any elected officials at center stage.Still, at Pasadena's Tea Party last Saturday, activists turned against political candidates trying to hitch their wagon's to the growing anti-tax outrage. The issue's particularly immediate here, as California has a special election scheduled for May 19 to approve Proposition 1A, a measure seeking to raise billions in new revenues for the state (for more on this, see "Don't Believe the Lies - Vote No on 1A-1E!").
Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies - dubbed "tea parties" - to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org.Read the entire essay at the link, and also at Memeorandum.
So who's behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize. For a number of years, techno-geeks have been organizing "flash crowds" -- groups of people, coordinated by text or cellphone, who converge on a particular location and then do something silly, like the pillow fights that popped up in 50 cities earlier this month. This is part of a general phenomenon dubbed "Smart Mobs" by Howard Rheingold, author of a book by the same title, in which modern communications and social-networking technologies allow quick coordination among large numbers of people who don't know each other.
In the old days, organizing large groups of people required, well, an organization: a political party, a labor union, a church or some other sort of structure. Now people can coordinate themselves.
We saw a bit of this in the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns, with things like Howard Dean's use of Meetup, and Barack Obama's use of Facebook. But this was still social-networking in support of an existing organization or campaign. The tea-party protest movement is organizing itself, on its own behalf. Some existing organizations, like Newt Gingrich's American Solutions and FreedomWorks, have gotten involved. But they're involved as followers and facilitators, not leaders. The leaders are appearing on their own, and reaching out to others through blogs, Facebook, chat boards and alternative media.
The movement started with a “Porkulus” protest organized by Keli Carender, a blogger-mom in Seattle getting her first taste of political activism, three days before the now-famous Feb. 19 television news rant by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Carender was concerned about Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus package. Blogger Michelle Malkin got wind of Carender’s activity and touted it, which led to similar protests in Colorado, Arizona, and Kansas. A national movement caught fire, organized by a bunch of mostly unconnected people who found each other via social networking on the Internet. These facts about the origins of the movement render especially goofy recent accusations from pro-Obama groups on the left that the Tea Party Protests are somehow part of an evil right-wing conspiracy funded either by CNBC or Fox News.
Part of the reason for the mean-spiritedness in some of the attacks from the pro-Obama groups is likely the failure of efforts to turn out large crowds in support of the chief executive’s $787 billion economic stimulus package and $3.6 trillion 2010 federal budget, with its $1 trillion deficit and comparable floods of red ink for a decade thereafter. The recent “New Way Forward” gathering here in D.C., for example, was heralded by organizers as the first of a wave of counter-Tea Party Protests, but barely a dozen people turned out. Similarly, much-publicized efforts to use the 13-million email addresses compiled by the Obama campaign to generate pressure on Congress barely caused a ripple, much less a wave of support for the Obama budget. The piece links to Tax Day Tea Party and National Tea Party Day.
See "The New Tea Party and Revolution" for another tremendous resource.
Nice Deb has bumped up her post, "Who’s Going to A Tax Day Tea Party?", and she links to Luke America's resource, "101 Tea Party Sign Slogans."
See also:
Please e-mail to be added to this roundup. Patriots, to the streets!* Adam Graham, "Why I’m Attending a Tea Party."
* Angry White Dude, "Liberals Fear Conservative Tea Parties."
* Astute Bloggers, "Pawlenty Slams Obama Taxes."
* Atlas Shrugs, "White House Distances Itself from ... Lovers of Freedom."
* Cheat Seeking Missiles, "Toast Krugman At Your Tea Party."
* Dan Riehl, "The New Battleground: Tea Parties And The Tenth Amendment."
* David Weigel, "Tea Party Activists: Tax Day Events Will Attract ‘Silent Majority’."
* Flopping Aces, "Homeland Security Report targets Flopping Aces."
* Glenn Reynolds, "MARK LEVIN’S LIBERTY AND TYRANNY is still #1 on Amazon."
* Liberty Papers, "The White House responds to DHS report."
* Liberty Pundit, "Gallup Poll: People OK With Level Of Taxation."
* Little Miss Attila, "The Jon Henke Smackdown of Tea-Trutherism."
* Lonely Conservative, "Liberals are Mocking the Tea Parties."
* Lynn Mitchell, "Tea parties going global."
* Michelle Malkin, "Where will you be for Tax Day Tea Party?"
* PoliGazette, "Are the Tea Parties A Delayed Reaction?"
* Protein Wisdom, "Tax Day Tea Parties."
* Repurblican, "Beware of Tea Party free-riders and saboteurs, Right and Left."
* Right Wing News, "I am Participating in my First Protest Tomorrow."
* Robert Stacy McCain, "Alabama, here I come!"
* Snooper Report, "You Throw It Out And Replace It."
* Stop the ACLU, "Gallup Poll Apparently Says Us Teabaggers Are Out Of Touch (?)."
* The Strata-Sphere, "The Threat Of Far Right Extremism - Updated!"
* Sundries Shack, "Ignore the JournoList Meme of the Week and Go to a Tea Party!"* Wake Up America, "Watch For 'Men in Black' At A tea Party Near You Tomorrow."
* William Jacobson, "The Constitution Is A Subversive Manifesto Per DHS."
*********
UPDATE: More Tea Party and related posting:* The Anchoress, "DHS documents picking a fight? UPDATED."**********
* Andrea Shea King, "Tea Party Anthem Singer ... “This whole thing is Rush Limbaugh’s fault”."
* Critical Thinker, "Edmund Burke and a Progressive went to a Tea Party."
* Founding Bloggers, "Is DHS Writing Any Reports About ... Leftwing Extremists In Chicago?"
* Gateway Pundit, "St. Louis Tea Party Organizers Fight Back!..."
* Gayle's Place, "I'm a Rightwing Extremist, are You?"
* John Romano, "Tea Parties, Homeland Security and Silencing the Opposition."
* Maggie's Notebook, "AMERICAN LEGION: An Open Letter to Homeland Security ..."
* Mark Goluskin, "Of Tea Parties ..."
* Michelle Malkin, "Tracking the Tea Party crashers."
* The Next Right, "The Tea Party protests."
* Political Pistachio, "The Shadow Gallery."
* Power Line, "Watch Out For Those Crazy Right Wingers!"
* Pundit & Pundette, "David Shuster outdoes himself."
* Red State, "Obama ... Veterans, Pro-Lifers, Gun Enthusiasts ... are “Right Wing Extremists”."
* The Rhetorican, "Attack of the Anti-Tea Party Attack Poodles."
* Roger L. Simon, "Tea Party Derangement Syndrome - it’s here!
* Tygrrrr Express, "Events, Announcements, and Link Love."
UPDATE II: From Dave at Point of a Gun: "I Am Going For The Pulled Pork Sandwiches And The Protests."
In my view, the legal positions Yoo advanced in the post-9/11 memos are supported -- some well supported; others at least arguable -- by constitutional text, historical understanding and legal precedent. In fact, many of those positions were shared by Clinton administration officials now serving in the Obama administration.And also:
For example, one memo argued that the Geneva Convention does not apply to unlawful combatants, such as members of Al Qaeda, who target civilian populations and otherwise violate the rules of war. That position was shared at the time by Eric H. Holder Jr., now the U.S. attorney general. In 2002, in a CNN interview, Holder stated: "It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war."
Another controversial legal position advanced in the memos was that provisions of the Bill of Rights did not apply beyond the shores of the United States, particularly to wartime conduct. For authority, the memo cited the case of Harbury vs. Deutch, in which a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held in 2000 that the 5th Amendment does not apply abroad to claims of torture by CIA-paid agents against foreign nationals.
At issue were allegations of torture that occurred over an 18-month period -- half of it during the first year of the Clinton administration and that, according to the complaint, included this: "They chained and bound him naked to a bed, beat and threatened him, and encased him in a fullbody cast to prevent escape."
The appeals court accepted the arguments made by Wilma Lewis, a U.S. attorney during the Clinton administration, that the 5th Amendment does not apply to claims of torture involving "an alien rebel commander leading an attempt violently to overthrow a foreign government," even when the torture was alleged to have been committed by paid agents of, and at the request or at least full knowledge of, the CIA. The opinion was written by Judge David S. Tatel, a Clinton appointee, and joined by Judge Harry T. Edwards, a Carter appointee, and Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, a Reagan appointee.
After 9/11, the lawyers at the Justice Department faced unprecedented legal questions. They had been given the task of identifying the executive powers that could legally be brought to bear to prevent future attacks. That they were aggressive in their legal interpretations should come as no surprise, given the circumstances.Leftists never mention the Roosevelt administration's counter example. The regular meme on the left is that the Bush administration's "shredding" of the Consitution was unprecedented in American history. Such claims are fradulent, and the pushback against the Bush administration is just one element in the larger program of the secular collectivists to grab power in the name of the international proletariat (see, for example, The Daily Dish, Matthew Yglesias, Crooks and Liars, At-Largely, and AfterDowningStreet.org).
In the end, the president's options were more thoroughly vetted by lawyers than at any wartime era in our nation's history. There were no wholesale detentions based on race, such as occurred under President Roosevelt in World War II. No systematic suppression of antiwar speech, such as under President Wilson in World War I.
I celebrated Easter yesterday with my ultra conservative family. I love my family but they have gone so far to the right over the past 8 years that it is difficult to have any sort of discussion with them. I think they are typical of conservatives born in the baby boom. They are scarred by the culture wars and the hatred they have for the left is so strong that it becomes disturbing.I'll be travelling with my wife and sons to Fresno on Thursday to spend the weekend at my father-in-law's. Fox News will be on all morning, then most likely some History Channel in the afternoon. We'll have big dinners with the extended family on the weekends. The views expressed by Sullivan's reader will be bread and butter around the dinner table. I'll be very comfortable hanging out and rejoicing in the community of people who love America without having to think about it first.
Another important point is that 9/11 pushed them away from any level of pragmatism. My family is originally from Manhattan, so 9/11 was taken as a very personal attack. My father worked on the 76th floor of the WTC for years, he lost a lot of friends that day...
So with this in mind I compiled a few themes from the days discussions that you might find interesting (or horrifying). None of this is ground breaking but it is interesting to see these generalizations about the current conservative movement be personified in ones family.
1. Total insulation from MSM.
Everyone refuses to read the New York Times or Washington Post. Sunday morning while getting ready for Church I put on "Meet the Press" and my father looked on with disgust and changed the channel to Fox News. At dinner I brought up an article in The Economist that was critical of Barack Obama and my uncle said that it was a socialist rag.
2. Distrust of centrists When discussing the future of the Republican party I suggested that we needed to create a bigger tent and avoid social issues that alienated us from younger voters. My GRANDMOTHER responded that we don't need the back benchers like Christopher Buckley dictating our principles. I think that line was straight from the Mark Levin show.
3. Neoconservative aspirations The most interesting part of the day, was that so much of the discussion focused on the Somali Pirate issue. It was the story of the day, but I didn't think their was that much to talk about. Surely, not as interesting as talking about Iran, Obama's budget, the economy etc. However we spent most of the day discussing Obama's lackluster response to the issue and the weakness he displayed in not acting quicker. My father was incensed that the media kept referring to this as a crime rather then an act of terrorism. His suggestion was to engage in a land war in Somalia...
It convinced me of one thing that if a new conservatism is going to flourish, it is going to have to be led by a younger generation. People born between 1947 and 1960 have way too much baggage.
The “report” was one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever read out of DHS. I couldn’t believe it was real.Michelle cites a number of passages from the report, but this one caught my attention when I read it this afternoon:
I spent the day chasing down DHS spokespeople, who have been tied up preparing for a very important homeland security event later today: The First Lady is coming to visit their Washington office. Priorities, you know.
Well, the press office got back to me and verified that the document is indeed for real.
They were very defensive — preemptively so — in asserting that it was not a politicized document and that DHS had done reports on “leftwing extremism” in the past. I have covered DHS for many years and am quite familiar with past assessments they and the FBI have done on animal rights terrorists and environmental terrorists. But those past reports have always been very specific in identifying the exact groups, causes, and targets of domestic terrorism, i.e., the ALF, ELF, and Stop Huntingdon wackos who have engaged in physical harassment, arson, vandalism, and worse against pharmaceutical companies, farms, labs, and university researchers.
By contrast, the piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives. And the intent is clear. As the two spokespeople I talked with on the phone today made clear: They both pinpointed the recent “economic downturn” and the “general state of the economy” for stoking “rightwing extremism.” One of the spokespeople said he was told that the report has been in the works for a year. My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report — which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified “resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity” is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and…the historical presidential election.
In Obama land, there are no coincidences. It is no coincidence that this report echoes Tea Party-bashing left-wing blogs (check this one out comparing the Tea Party movement to the Weather Underground!) and demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party.
Historically, domestic rightwing extremists have feared, predicted, and anticipated a cataclysmic economic collapse in the United States. Prominent antigovernment conspiracy theorists have incorporated aspects of an impending economic collapse to intensify fear and paranoia among like-minded individuals and to attract recruits during times of economic uncertainty. Conspiracy theories involving declarations of martial law, impending civil strife or racial conflict, suspension of the U.S. Constitution, and the creation of citizen detention camps often incorporate aspects of a failed economy. Antigovernment conspiracy theories and “end times” prophecies could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition, and weapons. These teachings also have been linked with the radicalization of domestic extremist individuals and groups in the past, such as violent Christian Identity organizations and extremist members of the militia movement.I was in graduate school, in the 1990s, when we had the big worries over right-wing militias following the Oklahoma City Bombing. The threats were obviously real. I read a number of articles on this, as well as James Coates', Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right.
Conservatives may be catching up with their liberal counterparts in building a Web-driven, grassroots campaign to push their agenda.There's more at the link.
The online insurgency-in-the-making revolves around the so-called tea parties, the anti-tax protests popping up around the country that they expect to culminate Wednesday -- tax day -- with hundreds of rallies nationwide.
The movement, which expanded over the last two months via the Web, is now relying heavily on independent media Web sites to track and cover the campaign.
The digital evolution of conservative activists comes too late to help John McCain, whose new media arm was left in the dust by President Obama's campaign. But organizers are holding out hope that this movement has juice.
"It's thoroughly viral," said Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit.com blogger who hosts an online news show for the Web site Pajamas TV.
Pajamas TV is on the frontlines of new media coverage for the tea parties. The Web site already has covered some protests and is pledging to recruit an army of citizen journalists, working without pay, to cover the hundreds of protests on April 15.
Roger L. Simon, co-founder of the blog network Pajamas Media, which includes Pajamas TV, said the site went after tea party coverage because the mainstream media didn't.
He said Pajamas TV has more than 200 people registered to report on Wednesday's tea parties. He said they'll send in text reports, as well as videos and photos, to drive what he expects to be about 12 straight hours of online coverage.
"They'll be across the country essentially," he said, calling the operation a "big experiment."
"What will the quality of these reports be? Variable of course," Simon said. "But that's the nature of the beast."
The Web site currently features extensive footage of Tea Party protests, including interviews with activists and roundtable discussions.
From here, Simon wants to use the network of volunteer reporters for future assignments. Reynolds, who is also a law professor at the University of Tennessee, said he'll cover the protest in Knoxville and then return to co-anchor an online broadcast from his home.
* Common Sense Political Thought, "Mob Populism."
* Moe Lane, "I’d just like to note for the record ..."
* Nice Deb, "The Confused Critics of the Tax Day Tea Parties."
* Robert Stacy McCain, "Sully and the Tea Party Truthers."
* Paco Enterprises, "Protest is not a Leftwing Monopoly."* Valley of the Shadow, "The Story of Icarus and the Democrats."
I recently completed research on the topic of young voters and the GOP: where the Republican Party is losing young voters, how serious the threat is to the party, and how the Republican Party should respond. And on this point, Ms. McCain has it right - the issue of gay marriage is one on which young voters and the Republican Party diverge significantly ....Eh, hello? "47.3% of respondents 18-34 said homosexual sex was "always wrong ..."
Yet issues relating to homosexuality find vast differences between the young and older voters. In terms of the issue of whether or not homosexual sex is wrong, 44.3% of respondents to the General Social Survey 18-34 believe it is "never wrong" compared to 33.5% of respondents overall. Furthermore, 47.3% of respondents 18-34 said homosexual sex was "always wrong" compared to 55.6% of respondents overall.
There's a lot to think about for the GOP in acceding to the demands of "progressive" Republicans for a wholesale cultural change that is nowhere near supported by a majority of Americans. Not only that, the youth demographic is open to political persuasion toward more conservative ideals on lifestyle and families.Eight years after 9/11, the LGBT community gets its activism fix by indulging in nostalgic, anti-establishment indignation over petty domestic slights. Ganging up on an annoying little old lady carrying a cross at a Prop 8 rally satisfies the itch between workouts and White Parties. But wouldn’t it be genuinely awe inspiring to see masses of musclebound gay men taking on, say, a congregation of homophobic Islamic “thinkers” (who, BTW, love the idea of pushing gay men off cliffs to their death)? ....
Civil unions already offer gay couples the same basic legal status as married couples in several states, including California (and they’re a lot easier to get). But as a result of the gay community’s mass hissy fit to usurp marriage, the religious right has been re-ignited in its holy war against legal recognition of any gay relationships at all ....
40 years after the Stonewall Riots, it’s time for the LGBT community to reconnect with what made us rebel in the first place: the right to live not as conformist dhimmis, but as social, intellectual, and artistic pioneers. Instead of stirring up resentment trying to snatch a piece of a stale pie we don’t really need - and setting back our cause in the process - we need to keep moving forward, not “separate but equal,” but different and equal.
I don’t think the GOP need be pro-gay marriage to win the youth vote. I do think it needs [to] offer a vision of choice and opportunity to contrast the Democrats’ preference for government solutions and one-size-fits-all approaches.It's interesting that had Iowa taken the "federalist" route this last week, we would not have seen the approval of same-sex marriage in that state.
That said, I think the best path for the party would be take a more neutral stand on gay marriage and favor a state-by-state approach, consistent with the federalist principles which once undergirded the GOP.
As soon as he heard his car alarm blare and saw the orange glow through his bedroom window, UCLA neuroscientist J. David Jentsch knew that his fears had come true.This part's a little mind-boggling:
His 2006 Volvo, parked next to his Westside house, had been set ablaze and destroyed in an early morning attack March 7. Jentsch had become the latest victim in a series of violent incidents targeting University of California scientists who use animals in biomedical research.
"Obviously, someone who does the work I do in this environment expects that it's possible, indeed likely, that it would have happened," said Jentsch, who uses vervet monkeys in his research on treatments for schizophrenia and drug addiction. Before the attack, he had received no threats and had taken only limited precautions, including keeping his photo off the Internet.
"I've been as careful as you can be without being paranoid," he said.
After similar incidents, other UCLA scientists have become almost reclusive as security and public curiosity around them grew. Three years ago, another UCLA neuroscientist, weary of harassment and threats to his family, abandoned animal research altogether, sending an e-mail to an animal rights website that read: "You win."
But Jentsch has decided to push back.
Jentsch, an associate professor of psychology and psychiatry, has founded an organization at UCLA to voice support for research that uses animals in what he calls a humane, carefully regulated way. He is organizing a pro-research campus rally April 22, a date chosen because animal rights activists, who contend that his research involves the torture and needless killing of primates, already had scheduled their own UCLA protest that day.
"People always say: 'Don't respond. If you respond, that will give [the attackers] credibility,' " Jentsch, 37, said in a recent interview in his UCLA office. "But being silent wasn't making us feel safer. And it's a moot point if they are coming to burn your car anyway, whether you give them credibility or not."
The incidents have traumatized many professors and students on the Westwood campus, well beyond the circle of those directly affected, said Jentsch, who was not injured in the car fire.
Two days after Jentsch's car was burned, a profanity-laced Internet message from the murky Animal Liberation Brigade took credit for the fire, as it had for past UCLA assaults.Jentsch (pronounced "Yench") has organized a counter organization affilliated with Britain's scientific progress group, "Pro-Test." On April 22, Jentsch will speak at a UCLA rally, "Stand up for Science, Research and the Medicines of Tomorrow." The event is scheduled for 11:30am at the UCLA campus. Click here for more information.
"The things you and others like you do to feeling, sentient monkeys is so cruel and disgusting we can't believe anyone would be able to live with themselves," the message read. "David, here's a message just for you, we will come for you when you least expect it and do a lot more damage than to your property."
Jerry Vlasak, a Los Angeles-area physician and frequent spokesman for the animal rights movement, said he and fellow activists do not participate in the attacks and do not know who is behind them, although he sympathizes with the actions.
Jentsch, according to Vlasak, "is hurting and killing non-human primates every day. And if it took harming him to make him stop torturing, it is certainly morally justifiable."
Vlasak said that Jentsch's new group is a publicity stunt aimed at preserving researchers' federal funding and turning public attention from the nature of the researcher's own work, which involves addicting monkeys to methamphetamine. Vlasak and others said they want to meet Jentsch in a public debate, but the UCLA professor said he was willing to do so only with people who don't condone violence.
Properly understood, the concept of a right—and the attendant ideas of duty, responsibility, law, and obedience—enshrines what is distinctive in the human condition. To spread the concept beyond our species is to jeopardize our dignity as moral beings, who live in judgment of one another and of themselves.Interestingly - and highly relevant to this discussion - it turns out that Professor Sanbonmatsu did his doctoral training at UC Santa Cruz; and according to his biography, the professor's specialities are in "Political philosophy; critical theory (Marxism, feminism, ecological theory); ethics and animal rights; existentialism (especially phenomenology)."
See also, Red State, "Captive Captain Saves President Obama."Almost immediately following word of the rescue, the Obama administration and its supporters claimed victory against pirates in the Indian Ocean and declared that the dramatic end to the standoff put paid to questions of the inexperienced president’s toughness and decisiveness.
Despite the Obama administration’s (and its sycophants’) attempt to spin yesterday’s success as a result of bold, decisive leadership by the inexperienced president, the reality is nothing of the sort.
What should have been a standoff lasting only hours — as long as it took the USS Bainbridge and its team of NSWC operators to steam to the location — became an embarrassing four-day-and-counting standoff between a rag-tag handful of criminals with rifles and a U.S. Navy warship.
On Friday, April 9, as the standoff reached the end of its third day, I called on President Obama to take action to free the American hostage from his Somali captors. I outlined three possible operational tactics that could be used to do so; number 1 was the following:
(1) 2 helos, 2 snipers each: pop the [pirates] in their heads, then drop a rescue swimmer to escort the hostage up to one of the choppers. This works best if the hostage is aware of what is happening and can help without getting in the way — say, by hopping overboard as the gunships near, to divert attention and get out of the line of fire.
(This was written before the USS Bainbridge tethered the life raft to its stern, an action which eliminated the need for helicopters.)
However, instead of taking direct, decisive action against the rag-tag group of gunmen, the Obama administration dilly-dallied, dawdled, and eschewed any decisiveness whatsoever, even in the face of enemy fire, in hopes that the situation would somehow resolve itself without violence. Thus, the administration sent a clear message to all who would threaten U.S. interests abroad that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has no idea how to respond to such situations — and no real willingness to use military force to resolve them.
Any who think they weren’t watching every minute of this are guilty — at best — of greatly underestimating our enemies.
Like the crew of the Alabama, which took swift and decisive action to take back their own ship rather than wait for help from Washington that they knew could not be counted on, Captain Phillips took matters into his own hands for the second time in three days, leaping into the water to create a diversion and allowing the NSWC team to eliminate his captors. The result, of course, was the best that could possibly be expected: three pirates dead, the captain unharmed, and a fourth Somali man who had surrendered late Saturday night in custody.
"Sympathy for the Devil "
Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit "AND THE ROLE OF EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN WILL BE PLAYED BY…: Liberals’ Knives Come Out for Nate Silver After His Model Points to a Trump Victory..."
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Ace, "Georgia Shooter's Father Berated Him as a "Sissy" and Bought Him an AR-15 to 'Toughen Him Up'..."Free Beacon..., "Kamala Harris, the ‘Candidate of Change,’ Copies Sections of Her Policy Page Directly From Biden's Platform..."