The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

If Breitbart Had Managed To Get An Ambassador Snuffed, Maybe Andrew’s Wife Would Be Left Alone

Posted on | February 21, 2014 | 17 Comments

by Smitty

Stacy isn’t the only one living in legally exciting times. Pigford, of course, is one of the relatively minor vote-buying schemes afoot these days. Her sorely missed husband’s involvement continues to haunt Andrew Breitbart’s widow:

When fuller context for Sherrod’s remarks emerged, the administration offered to return her to her job, which she declined. In 2011, she sued Breitbart and his employee Larry O’Connor for defamation. Breitbart died unexpectedly in 2012, but his wife was substituted as a defendant in the suit.

At the outset of Thursday’s hearing, Leon lit into Glass for filing a 21-page statement outlining the government’s position—a filing submitted electronically just after midnight Thursday along with a stack of nine exhibits. The judge called it “a self-serving pleading, not requested by anyone” and repeatedly suggested it was filed for “public relations” reasons rather than because it might be useful to the court.

The case has drawn attention because of the subject matter and, more recently, because of indications that the Obama White House might assert executive privilege to block some of the parties’ demands for information.

This country needs thorough, top-down reform so badly that it hurts.

Category: Andrew Breitbart

Brett Kimberlin’s ‘Evidence’

Posted on | February 21, 2014 | 37 Comments

Brett Kimberlin could have been sentenced to 230 years in federal prison.

Brett Kimberlin’s Maryland lawsuit Kimberlin v. Walker, et al., is a nuisance and a distraction, and it angers me that I should be required to prove a fact that is abundantly self-evident to anyone who cares to investigate: Brett Kimberlin is a liar.

So if Brett Kimberlin files a lawsuit claiming I have defamed him, harassed him, stalked him, etc. — “Mopery With Intent to Lurk” — common sense suggests that the judge would take one look at his lawsuit and say, “Oh, this is Brett Kimberlin, the guy convicted of perjury in 1973, ‘a man whose idea of the truth is utterly malleable,’ ‘the convicted bomber, habitual liar and all-around sociopath‘ — that Brett Kimberlin? Yeah, he’s full of it. Case dismissed.”

Unfortunately, the legal system doesn’t operate on the basis of common sense,  which is why we need lawyers to prove the obvious, that I am innocent and Brett Kimberlin is a liar:

Plaintiff’s motion includes 38 pages of attachments in supposed support of his request. Yet those attachments do nothing to support Plaintiff’s request for so drastic an action as removing and suppressing the reportings and opinions of Mr. McCain. In particular, the motion and accompanying exhibits do not include even one example of a defamatory posting by Mr. McCain …
Plaintiff’s Exhibit D is supposed to provide examples of how Mr. McCain (and the other defendants) “dramatically title their posts and fill them with highly charged accusations such as rape, pedophilia, sex slave, domestic abuse … See, e.g., Exhibit D.”
As part of Plaintiff’s Exhibit D, Plaintiff includes a single blog posting by Mr. McCain. The “dramatic” title of Mr. McCain’s blog post is “Motions, Motions, Motions — Judge Grants Brett Kimberlin a Delay.” Mr. McCain is therein reporting on a ruling (in Plaintiff’s favor) in a federal lawsuit initiated by Plaintiff against Mr. McCain and a host of others. That same posting goes on to report and opine on other aspects of that case. Notably, the following words and phrases are never once used: “rape,” “pedophilia,” “sex slave” and “domestic abuse.”

And the “dramatic” title of that document is “Defendant McCain’s Opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion for a Preliminary Injunction.”

Kimberlin v. Walker – McCain – Opposition to Preliminary Injunction by Robert Stacy McCain

This goes to show the fundamental problem we’ve been dealing with: Kimberlin merely alleges this, that and the other, but the way civil court procedure works is, he doesn’t actually have to prove that I wrote anything defamatory — and of course, he can’t, because I didn’t — in order to drag me through all this preliminary bullshit. Hell, his complaint didn’t include a single example of anything I wrote that could even plausibly be construed as defamatory, yet still the judge let the case go forward because (and I quote from memory, but I’m pretty sure these are her exact words), “there’s enough alleged here.”

It’s like the Supreme Court abolished common sense or something.

 

BOMBER SUES BLOGGERS




 

 


Category: The Kimberlin Files

If #ObamaCare Helps At Least One Person, Other Human Wreckage Is OK

Posted on | February 20, 2014 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

Barack Obama will take many things; your life, your liberty, your pursuit of happiness: but he will never take responsibility. That’s on you:

Julie, her husband, and four children were covered by a medical plan they liked, and had been promised they could keep by President Obama. But like so many others in this country, her family’s private health care policy was cancelled because of the Affordable Care Act. So my sister and her family struggled through the expensive and incompetently designed Obamacare website to find a new policy. Unfortunately, while they waited for their new Obama-approved healthcare plan to finally kick in, my little sister fell ill. She couldn’t keep down solid food. She should have gone to a doctor. But she toughed it out, as many people do, until her new coverage would kick in on February 2. She and her husband didn’t have a lot of money, so she didn’t want to incur what she thought were avoidable medical expenses.

But she didn’t make it. It turns out that, unbeknownst to her, she wasn’t suffering from an upset stomach or food poisoning, but a badly blocked gall bladder that had become highly infected. Her body went into septic shock just two days before her Obamacare policy would have kicked in.

It’s not clear in what state this tragedy occurred. But if it was here in Virginia, here is one creep whose precious political career can be buried with his victim:
Everybody with a Democrat up for sacrifice in November should do a post and embed the other 59 loser that unleashed this wrecking ball on our country.

via Erick Erickson

Category: Health Care

‘The Second Time as Farce’: @sandraylk’s Recycled Marcusean Marxism

Posted on | February 20, 2014 | 61 Comments

Sandra Korn: Feminist socialist lesbian — but I repeat myself.

“If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of ‘academic freedom’?
“Instead, I would like to propose a more rigorous standard: one of ‘academic justice.’ When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue.”
— Sandra Y.L. Korn, Harvard University senior

“Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.”
— Herbert Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” 1965

Most of us who lived through the 1960s and ’70s have no desire for a repetition of that carnival of radical errors. Unfortunately, many of those who do remember that era fondly are leftist academics who have turned American university campuses into cauldrons of radicalism, where they inculcate in their young protégés a misplaced nostalgia for an idealized make-believe version of the Sixties. Brainy youth at elite institutions are therefore filled with an obsolete revolutionary zeal to “smash the system,” as if the Establishment today were as oppressive as the administration of Clark Kerr, the hapless liberal whose misfortune it was to be president of the University of California when the Berkeley “Free Speech Movement” erupted.

Because today’s radical youth do not know the actual history of the Sixties, but only what they have been taught about the Sixties by leftist academics, the students are ill-equipped to avoid the typical errors of radicalism, and seem not to realize how stale and predictable their supposedly “innovative” ideas actually are.

And so we come to Harvard senior Sandra Korn’s celebration of the hippie student mau-maus who protested psychology professor Richard Herrnstein’s research about heredity influence on IQ:

When he returned to campus for fall semester 1971, Herrnstein was met by angry student activists. Harvard-Radcliffe Students for a Democratic Society protested his introductory psychology class with a bullhorn and leaflets. They tied up Herrnstein’s lectures with pointed questions about scientific racism. SDS even called for Harvard to fire Herrnstein, along with another of his colleagues, sociologist Christopher Jencks.

This SDS protest at Harvard was after national SDS had already imploded under the pressure of increasing extremism among its leadership clique, an implosion that resulted in the formation of the Weather Underground terrorism cult. The grievances cited by Korn — “a joint history of science and studies of women, gender and sexuality concentrator” — include the predictable feminist recitation of disagreement as victimhood:

Does Government Professor Harvey Mansfield have the legal right to publish a book in which he claims that “to resist rape a woman needs … a certain ladylike modesty?” Probably. Do I think he should do that? No, and I would happily organize with other feminists on campus to stop him from publishing further sexist commentary under the authority of a Harvard faculty position. “Academic freedom” might permit such an offensive view of rape to be published; academic justice would not.

Is “ladylike modesty” an effective means of averting rape? One expects Professor Mansfield would find many who disagree with that view, but what Korn is saying is that “academic justice” would prohibit anyone at the university from disagreeing with feminist ideology about rape, so that in fact “justice” becomes an Orwellian synonym for the silencing of dissent. (Has she read Animal Farm? Nineteen Eighty-Four?)

Korn’s call for neo-Stalinism on campus — one imagines Harvey Mansfield being airbrushed out of old photos and dying with a feminist assassin’s ice-ax buried in his skull — is only shocking to those who have not followed recent trends in academia.

During the early years of the Cold War, as William F. Buckley Jr. documented in God and Man at Yale (1951), elite universities used the “superstition” of academic freedom to protect faculty who, if not objectively pro-Soviet, at least were decidedly biased against Christianity, economic freedom and American patriotism.

Mid-20th-century liberals were willing to defend anti-American faculty, but the anti-American student Left of the 1960s was unwilling to accept liberal toleration and instead staged a series of sit-in protests to impose radical demands on university administrations. Within a couple of decades — by the early 1990s — “political correctness” had become an intimidating force on many American campuses, and another two decades later, the Left now demands even sterner measures to suppress criticism and dissent. Those who witnessed the feminist jihad against Larry Summers at Harvard saw the omens of this totalitarian turn.

No one will be surprised that Sandra Korn is a Marxist lesbian whose activities include the “Student Labor Action Movement,” who names among her interests “socialism, the labor movement … being angry about gender … occupying things,” and who describes the topic of her thesis as “how biologists have tried over and over again to explain gender difference by invoking ‘science.'” She is a cartoon, a stereotype, a cliché of 21st-century student radicalism. Of course, she’s a member of BAGELS (“Harvard’s Queer Jewish Organization“) and, of course, she is an extreme anti-Zionist who is all about “Palestinian solidarity.”

If you accept the premises of the Left’s argument, the syllogism inevitably concludes this way. The triumph of the Left in academia was assured from the moment radicals realized that education could be transformed from a process of teaching facts and skills into a process of indoctrinating the young with certain attitudes. This transformation has been the project of the academic Left for at least the past hundred years, and the beliefs of Sandra Korn — that the “university community” exists primarily for the purpose of opposing “racism, sexism, and heterosexism” — are now so pervasive in the intelligentsia that almost no one at Harvard even questions such an attitude. Never mind teaching history, language, science, or any other actual knowledge. We shall not measure Harvard’s success by how much Latin or Greek their students learn. Rather, Harvard’s success is to be measured by how avidly its students embrace the desired progressive attitudinal orientation.

So thoroughgoing has been this transformation of elite education that there is likely not a single Harvard undergraduate who possesses the necessary knowledge — much less the inclination — to interrogate and critique Sandra Korn’s worldview.

An entire generation of America’s brightest youth have been deliberately and systematically miseducated, so that if there were any Harvard students who disagreed with Sandra Korn — one gets the impression that homosexuality and socialism are now more or less compulsory in Cambridge — none of those dissenters have the intellectual wherewithal to articulate their disagreement.

Sandra Korn’s ignorant emulation of Sixties radicalism is only possible because none of her equally ignorant peers are able to inform her why she is wrong. Is there no one at Harvard who could hand her a copy of Peter Collier and David Horowitz’s Destructive Generation, Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed or Daniel Flynn’s A Conservative History of the American Left?

What Sandra Korn proposes as “academic justice,” echoing the totalitarian ethos of Marcuse, is really just advocating as official policy what has long been unofficial practice at Harvard, where veritas has not been welcome for many, many years.

 

 

ADDENDUM: The caption under Ms. Korn’s photo — “Feminist socialist lesbian — but I repeat myself” — is perhaps in some sense humorous, but is not actually a joke, and should not be misunderstood by any naive Harvardians. As I have explained elsewhere (e.g., “Taking Feminism Seriously”), I’ve read more feminist literature than has the average Gender Studies major, and I agree with the pioneering leaders of the Women’s Liberation Movement: To be a feminist, one must be a lesbian socialist. Of course, there are socialists who are heterosexuals, and lesbians who are not socialists, but any woman who presumes to call herself a “feminist” must denounce capitalism and renounce the penis.

“Heterosexual feminist” is a mythical paradox and “moderate feminist” is an oxymoron. All real feminists are radical feminists, and all radical feminists are socialist lesbians. Quod erat demonstrandum.

 

Category: Education, Feminism, Intellectuals

Ukraine Unravels

Posted on | February 20, 2014 | 24 Comments

The news out of Kiev is troubling: At least 50 protesters reported killed, and the protesters say the number of dead is actually more than 100. The conflict is essentially one between Ukrainian nationalism and Russian imperialism. The current government in Ukraine is pro-Moscow and, unfortunately, Russian president Vladimir Putin holds the geopolitical trump cards. George Will observes:

Marx, whose prophesies were perversely predictive because they were almost invariably wrong, predicted the end of nationalism. Economic forces, he said, determine political, cultural and psychological realities. So capitalism, with its borders-leaping cosmopolitanism, would dilute to the point of disappearance all emotional attachments to nations. Ukraine’s ferment is an emphatic, albeit redundant, refutation of Marxism.

Read the whole thing.

 

Category: Russia, Ukraine

In The Mailbox, 02.20.12

Posted on | February 20, 2014 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Apologies for the lack of posting this week; having made the mistake of going to Katsucon this past weekend and contracted some kind of vile respiratory ailment, I’ve barely had the energy to make it to the tax mines this week, much less do blogging. Today being my day off, I’ll see what I can do to play catch-up.


OVER THE TRANSOM
Proof Positive: If You Like Your Cherry Tree, You Can Keep It
First Street Journal: The Delusions Of The Progressives
EBL: White Girls Cause Coral Bleaching
The Looking Spoon: Putting Palpatine’s Eyes On Liberals Is (Not So Surprisingly) Natural
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: LA’s Out Of Touch Teachers Union
Michelle Malkin: Obamacare – Con Artists And Criminals In Charge
Twitchy: Garry Kasparov Shreds Obama And His “Red Lines” As Bloodbath Continues In Ukraine


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Venezuelan Beauty Queen Genesis Carmona Shot, Killed In Anti-Government Protests
American Thinker: GOP Leaders Won’t Escape Conservative Voters’ Wrath
Blackfive: From Petty Officer To Pinup
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Obamacare Watch – Obamacare Is For Lovers (Whom Nobody Actually Loves)
Conservatives4Palin: Palin Calls For Buzzfeed Boycott After Its Hit Piece On Trump
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, February 19
Jammie Wearing Fools: What Could Go Wrong? FCC Wants To Police Content In Newsrooms
Joe For America: Five Interesting Things About Joe The Plumber Getting A Union Job
JustOneMinute: Raise The Minimum Wage, Because – Rodeo Clowns!
Pat Dollard: Ron Paul Says Ukrainians Don’t Want US Involved
Protein Wisdom: University Textbook Claims Reagan Was Sexist, Conservatives View People As Incapable Of Charity, Lazy
Shot In The Dark: Our Idiot Elite
The Jawa Report: Islamic Cleric Issues Fatwa Against Rescuing Princess Leia
The Lonely Conservative: HHS Wants Full Access To All Your Social Media
This Ain’t Hell: Wisconsin NG Soldier Suspended For Funeral Detail Antics
Megan McArdle: Go Ahead, Let Your Kids Fail


Evidently I was confused when I said the next Rule 5 Sunday wouldn’t be until March; it will in fact be this Sunday, February 25. Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox for the Father Of His Country Edition is midnight Saturday, February 22.


Category: Linkagery

Open Letter To Mike Church, aka @TheKingDude On The Military

Posted on | February 20, 2014 | 33 Comments

by Smitty

Dear Mike Church,

I enjoyed your remarks earlier this week on the U.S. military. I’m a retired Navy Reservist, and find your ideas in keeping with the main strain of historical American thought, at least up to the passing of the National Security Act of 1947. While Teddy Roosevelt’s early 20th-century Great White Fleet is an exception, the U.S. pretty much never maintained substantial standing forces between wars, until WWII. I’d like to offer some feedback from someone who drank the Kool-Aid, and is coming down off of it. Read more

Category: Military

Missouri Killer Grabbed Hailey Owens ‘Like a Rag Doll,’ Witnesses Tell Police

Posted on | February 19, 2014 | 83 Comments

Craig Michael Wood, 45, has been charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping in the death of 10-year-old Hailey Owens, whose abduction Tuesday led to an “Amber Alert” that rallied the community of Springfield, Missouri:

According to the probable cause statement in the case, Carlos and Michelle Edwards were in the open garage of their home Tuesday afternoon about 4:45 when they saw a young girl with a cellphone in her hand walk by, westbound on Lombard.
The couple witnessed a tan Ford Ranger driving eastbound stop near the girl, and heard the driver ask where “Springfield Street” was.
Michelle Edwards said the girl . . . turned to walk away from the vehicle before the driver opened the door to the vehicle and said, “Hey come here a minute.”
Owens took a step or two toward the truck before “the male then lunged out of the vehicle, grabbed the girl with his left hand and threw her into the truck ‘like a rag doll,’” the probable cause statement said.
The suspect then fled the scene quickly.

With a description of the vehicle and a tag number, police moved quickly, but not quickly enough to save Hailey:

Authorities believe Wood . . . abducted her from a Springfield street in the daylight hours Tuesday, took her to the basement of his home and shot her in the back of her head.
There was also evidence that her wrists had been tied, according to the probable cause statement used to file charges. . . .
Authorities said Owens, 10, was found in two garbage bags inside a plastic storage tote. The entire basement allegedly smelled of bleach.
Also found in the basement, the statement says, was a spent .22 caliber shell casing.

The scariest part of the story? The girl’s killer had been employed by the Springfield public school system since 1998.

 

Category: Crime, Missouri
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