Plus, I'm searching for video from last night's press conference with Gov. Brewer. Will post when I see it. Meanwhile, here's a brief clip at ABC News:
See also, "Jan Brewer: We Will Beat All Lawsuits Against Arizona Illegal Immigration Law." And at Gov. Brewer's Secure the Border homepage, "Federal government has filed a lawsuit against the State of Arizona."
With your help, and those like you, we will enact an overwhelmingly aggressive campaign to “Kill the Ground Zero Mosque.” We will not rest until the plans for this mosque are burned, smoking, and buried…like the twisted metal of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers themselves, after the terrorist attack that killed so many of our fellow Americans at Ground Zero.
And this was too hot for CBS News? "Or so the the Republican Trust was told by media honchos."
BP has now spent the past 11 weeks promising to make things right for everyone affected by the Gulf spill. But for the families of Pan Am Flight 103's 270 victims, things can never be made right. Nor, following Megrahi's release, will justice ever be served. The question that BP could usefully answer—and answer fully—is whether, in that denial of justice, their interests were served. It won't restore the company to honor, but it might do something to restore a measure of trust.Also at "The Lockerbie Case."
Rachel Maddow is perfectly representative of the leftist identity of ideological infallibility (anti-rationalist). Watching her show is like listening to the incoherent ramblings of a pathological liar on the verge of cocaine overdose. And our brilliant media people at DOD have rewarded her with an embed in Kandahar! Hmm... on second thought about victory in Afghanistan?So between Afghanistan and Pakistan combined, there are a few hundred Al Qeada members total. All of this ongoing war and those hundreds of billions of dollars spent and those deaths and the decade of occupation, and those bombings and shootings and drone attacks and lawless prisons and habeas-stripping court precedents: it's all (ostensibly) for a few hundred extremists total hiding in remote tribal areas. A few hundred.Hey, it only took 19 to bring down the World Trade Center, and just 10 Lashkar terrorists completely demobilized Mumbai, but who's counting? Of course, Greenwald's expertise is constitutional law, not AFPAK, but when your conclusions fit the nihilist media meme you get marquee treatment on MSNBC.
Reminds me of some of my "colleagues" in the Business and Social Science Division.
A Beverly Hills judge ruled Tuesday that Lindsay Lohan violated the terms of her probation in a drunk driving case when she failed to attend alcohol education classes and sentenced her to 90 days in jail.Plus, TMZ has the videos if this YouTube comes down. And all the celebrity gossip's at WeSmirch.
Judge Marsha N. Revel stated several instances over the last few years in which the actress lied about taking drugs and drinking.
"It's like someone who cheats but doesn't think it's cheating if they don't get caught," Revel said ....
Before sentencing, a tearful Lohan addressed the court, saying "as far as I knew I was in compliance with my programs.”
“I wasn’t trying to get special treatment," the actress said. "I have to provide for myself. I have to work. Having said that, I did everything to balance my jobs and showing up. I’m not taking this as a joke. It’s my life. It’s my career...I take responsibility for my actions. I’ve tried to do the best I can. It’s been such a long haul, I don’t want you to think that I don’t respect you.”
Less than four months after President Barack Obama took office, his new administration received a forceful warning about the dangers of offshore oil drilling.Hey Dems... how's that hope-and-change thingy workin' out for you?
The alarm was rung by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., which found that the government was unprepared for a major spill at sea, relying on an "irrational" environmental analysis of the risks of offshore drilling.
The April 2009 ruling stunned both the administration and the oil industry, and threatened to delay or cancel dozens of offshore projects in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite its pro-environment pledges, the Obama administration urged the court to revisit the decision. Politically, it needed to push ahead with conventional oil production while it expanded support for renewable energy.
Another reason: money. In its arguments to the court, the government said that the loss of royalties on the oil, estimated at almost $10 billion, "may have significant financial consequences for the federal government."
The U.S. Court of Appeals reversed its decision and allowed drilling in the Gulf to proceed—including on BP PLC's now-infamous Macondo well, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast.
The Obama administration's actions in the court case exemplify the dilemma the White House faced in developing its energy policy. In his presidential campaign, President Obama criticized the Bush administration for being too soft on the oil industry and vowed to support greener energy forms.
But, once in office, President Obama ended up backing offshore drilling, bowing to political and fiscal realties, even as his administration's own scientists and Democratic lawmakers warned about its risks.
The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit today challenging Arizona's new immigration law, which takes effect July 29.Michelle's got some links as well.
The suit challenges the law on the grounds that immigration is under the purview of the federal government and that Arizona has overstepped its bounds. Justice also claims that the law is too broad and could result in racial profiling and discrimination.
The lawsuit names Arizona and state Gov. Janice Brewer as the defendants.
While the legal challenge had been expected, signaled by Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama in statements soon after the statute was enacted, the lawsuit is sure to set off a firestorm of debate pitting the federal government against Arizona.
Tea party" activists across the nation tried to put the "independence" back in Independence Day this weekend with festivals and other gatherings focused on the Constitution -- and how to use it for political gain.RTWT.
Coupled with an upsurge in organized classes and book clubs, the trend reflects a growing effort among conservatives to teach supporters how to do political battle using an inviolable weapon: the nation's founding documents. It's a change in emphasis for a movement that rose to prominence with spirited and sometimes unruly protests across the nation.
Yep.Eric Smith, 36, had been using a three-foot-long metal tube as a launcher to shoot mortars from the street near his Long Island home.
Police believe he leaned over the device while trying to ignite a firework and it rocketed into his shoulder.
Friends and relatives attending a barbecue in Mr Smith's back yard heard a boom and rushed around to the front to find him injured.Mr Smith's wife, Tania, saw the accident from her kitchen window. "I ran out to see if he was alive," she said.
One witness said the father-of-two "kept groaning: 'Oh, man, I messed up. I really messed up'."
Mr Smith has now been told his severed left limb cannot be reattached, according to the New York Post.
You can call me unpatriotic if you’d like, but really I’m anti-patriotic.Come to think of it, I will add this Moonbattery quote: "If his previous articles are any guide, Matthew Rothschild is a one-man parade of progressive left douchebaggery."
I’ve been studying fascism lately, and there is one inescapable fact about it:
Nationalism is the egg that hatches fascism.
And patriotism is but the father of nationalism.
Patriotism is not something to play with. It’s highly toxic. When ingested, it corrodes the rational faculties.
It gulls people into believing their leaders.
It masks those who benefit most from state policy.
And it destroys the ability of people to get together, within the United States and across boundaries, to take on those with the most power: the multinational corporation.
Plus, it’s a war toy, wheeled out whenever a leader needs to improve his ratings by attacking some other country—often after invoking God’s name, too.
It’s been so since the Spanish-American War and World War I and right up through the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War.
American patriotism has also gotten in the way of solving global warming. Many in the United States, which consumes 25 percent of the world’s resources but has just 4 percent of the world’s population, believe we have the God-given right to use up all the resources we can. And there is an all-too-common attitude that we don’t need to listen to any other countries, or the U.N., or obey any international agreements because we’re Americans, and we’re better than everybody else.
We’ve got to get over patriotism, and we’ve got to cure the American superiority complex.
So celebrate the 4th if you like.
But as for me, between God, country, and apple pie, I’ll take the apple pie.
Also, at Five Feet of Fury, "Do 'openly Christian' cops get to stick crusader flags in their helmets?"
America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them; and every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.We are a country bound by common political ideals (not grovelling grievances and a refusal to place American exceptionalism in its rightful place of international leadership).
#5) How to make some money doing this: Here's an unpleasant truth. You can have 2,000 or 3,000 people a day reading your blog and make almost nothing off of it. In fact, from what I've seen, until you get big enough to stand out a little bit from the crowd, say at 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 people reading you a day, you will have great difficulty making enough money to do more than pay your bills for your blog. Then, even when you do get big, if you don't know what you're doing and dramatically underprice your ads, you can still make a lot less money than what you should. I've seen people who could DOUBLE their ad rates and probably not lose any ads.While I'd love to make a little more money than I'm getting now (mostly from Amazon and the ad at the sidebar), I blog mostly to make a contribution to the debate (and we need more regular folks in new media, so hopefully I can hold out for a while). American Power has been doing well. My traffic has doubled since last year, and I'm co-blogging at both Right Wing News and Theo Spark's. (And that's something to think about, for the newer bloggers just getting started. Get going on the networking and seek high-traffic blogs to post essays and increase exposure.) I'm closing in on a solid average of 2000 visitors per day. A good chunk of that is from SEQ, but more and more it's due to the relentless promotion that's integral to serious blogging. As I've said previously, don't be shy about pimping your stuff (although adhere to some limits, naturally). In addition, I suspect one should think pretty carefully about making blogging a career. I'll be honest: If in a few years from now I'm able to find a way to make some serious, long-term money from blogging, I'll be no doubt looking to speed up retirement from my college. After ten years of teaching at LBCC, I've realized I probably don't have the ideological temperament for academe. It's my career, and I'm a professional, but I think I'd like to leave college teaching sooner rather than later. Maybe I can write books, or something. But that's a matter I'll discuss more another day.
American Power went on a bit of a Rule 5 rampage this week, NTTAWWT:This is mostly experimentation, especially the frequency of the hotness. I may or may not post Rule 5 in the future, or at least at regular intervals. There's clearly a demand for it. But what's important is that I CAN POST HOTTIES whether I want to or not. IT'S ABOUT FREEDOM. So if you like this kind of thing, enjoy it while it lasts. Meanwhile, maybe we'll see some increased blog frequency over at Swedish Meatballs Confidential!
