From Human Events.
Oh, My Goodness: Jesse Jackson Accused of Sexually Harassing Gay Staffer?
Well, well, well — what have we here?
The Rev. Jesse Jackson is vehemently denying allegations from a member of President Obama’s gay rights issues panel, who claims he was fired from the civil rights leader’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition because he is openly gay.
Tommy Bennett, who worked for the organization for more than two years as the national director of community affairs, filed a complaint last year with Chicago’s Commission on Human Relations accusing Jackson of discrimination, harassment and even asking him to perform oral sex on him.
Thanks to commenter Pagan Temple for calling my attention to this story. Now, let’s read more of the juicy details startling accusations:
In his complaint, Bennett says when he assumed duties as Jackson’s travel assistant, he was required to perform “humiliating” tasks for the former presidential candidate, including escorting women to his room and cleaning up after his tryst was done. Bennett says he believes he was forced to do these tasks because he is gay.
He also claimed that he was once summoned to take notes in Jackson’s hotel room, where he found Jackson “dressed only in his underwear (briefs) and a v-neck t-shirt.” Bennett claims that Jackson, whom he had given Cialis to earlier, was sexually aroused and breathing fast.
Jackson told him a story about his gay high school teacher who became a mentor and provided Jackson with a good grade, pocket change and oral sex. Bennett interpreted that as a sign that Jackson wanted oral sex from him, but he says he left the room.
Two possibilities suggest themselves here: (a) Tommy Bennett is telling the truth, or (b) he plagiarized the “Canteen Boy” sketch from SNL.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!
‘It’s a Beautiful Story. And It’s a Lie.’
A soi-dissant philanthropist is exposed as a liar:
Some of the most inspiring and dramatic stories in the best-selling book, “Three Cups of Tea,” by Greg Mortenson, are not true, multiple sources tell “60 Minutes” . . .
The stories in “Three Cups of Tea” have become the source of inspirational speeches Mortenson is paid to make and the partial basis for donations of nearly $60 million to the charity he founded. . . . Mortenson’s charity, Central Asia Institute, has spent more money in the U.S. talking about education in Pakistan and Afghanistan than actually building and supporting schools there . . .
The heart of Mortenson’s “Three Cups of Tea” is the story of a failed attempt in 1993 to climb the world’s second-highest peak, K2.
On the way down, Mortenson says, he got lost and stumbled, alone and exhausted, into a remote mountain village in Pakistan named Korphe.
According to the book’s narrative, the villagers cared for him and he promised to return to build a school there. In a remote village in Pakistan, “60 Minutes” found Mortenson’s porters on that failed expedition. They say Mortenson didn’t get lost and stumble into Korphe on his way down from K2. He visited the village a year later.
That’s what famous author and mountaineer Jon Krakauer, a former donor to Mortenson’s charity, says he found out, too. “It’s a beautiful story. And it’s a lie,” says Krakauer. “I have spoken to one of his [Mortenson’s] companions, a close friend, who hiked out from K2 with him and this companion said, ‘Greg never heard of Korphe until a year later,'” Krakauer tells Kroft.
Read the whole thing. After 9/11, Mortenson shared his “philanthropic” opinion of the War on Terror:
“I’ve learned that terror doesn’t happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren’t being offered a bright enough future that they had a reason to choose life over death.”
Which is utterly misguided: Osama bin Laden is from one of the richest non-royal families in Saudi Arabia. Mohammed Atta was from an affluent Egyptian family and had a college degree in architecture. But one finds this Mortenson quote all over the Internet, because liberals desperately want to believe that poverty causes terrorism. If this were true, supposedly, we could “fight terrorism” by sending money and Peace Corps volunteers to the Third World, just as liberals believe we can “fight crime” at home with welfare, summer jobs programs, etc.
The moral of the story, of course: If it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not true. But there’s always someone clever enough to cash in by telling liberals what they want to hear.
Which brings us to the Question of the Day: “Liberals pride themselves on being tolerant. Are they really just suckers?” I think we all know the answer to that question, but the liberal author, Sally Kohn, goes on to make reference to the “pathetic self-loathing” of liberals.
Really, did she have to remind us of “Conscious Men“?
Separated At Birth, Reynolds/Grant Ed.
by Smitty
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This is precisely what it appears to be, a blatant attempt at blogwhoring. You will likely never see me mention the dude on the right again. I thought the height of his acting career was getting his chops busted by Colin Firth in Bridget Jones’s Diary
Shouldn’t A Renowned Constitutional Scholar Know That?
by Smitty
Bernstein at Volkh raises the ugly point, emphasis mine:
Remember Iran-Contra? The problem for the Reagan Administration there was that Congress banned the president from allocating money to the Contras. The Administration, quite illegally in my view, tried to get around that ban by using funds from arm sales to Iran to subvert the Congressional ban.
At least the Reagan Administration had the decency to do this secretly, knowing that it was acting unconstitutionally. Moreover, the Reagan folks at least were able to claim that they technically weren’t violating the Congressional ban, because they weren’t using Congressionally allocated funds, but the proceeds from arms sales.
The Obama Administration, by contrast, seems to be brazenly violating the Constitution. As I tell my constitutional law students, Congress’s ultimate power is the power of the purse. If Congress objects, for example, to military action engaged in by the president, it can simply refuse to allocate funds.
But the Obama Administration’s position seems to be that so long as it issues a signing statement refusing to abide by restrictions on funding that it deems to interfere with executive prerogatives, it can simply create the funding out of thin air. If there is no statutory funding for the czars, where exactly is the money coming from?
This is a very dangerous position for the Executive branch to take, and I hope even Obama partisans will recoil at this. Imagine if a future Republican president gets the U.S. involved in a deeply unpopular war. A Democratic Congress passes a military spending bill that specifically denies the president authority to spend any additional money on that war after a 60 day period to get the troops out. The president signs the bill, but with a signing statement that says that the bill’s ban on war funding violates the separation of powers and therefore “the executive branch will construe the relevant section not to abrogate these Presidential prerogatives.” Democrats, and anyone concerned with the Constitution for that matter, would be up in arms, and rightly so.
If Obama had such serious constitutional objections to Section 2262, he had only one constitutionally proper move to make, and that was to veto the bill.
So, now what? Does Sprinklerman call the bluff, or is this just another notch in the chastity belt? These are some mighty ugly precedents. If the line is not drawn here, then where? The Libya business, and now this, seems like it points to a Mel Zelaya-esque disregard for both spirit and letter of the Constitution, as well as the centuries of development since the signing.
More at The American Thinker.
Bonus: in case you missed it, the literary event of 2009! Yes: Czar d’Oz.
Sissypuss Has An Industrial Strength Tinfoil Hat Competition Entry
by The Blog Kitty
It all clicked. I get it. The point of the Obama/Trump birther conspiracy. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Hawaii’s most famous son. Jon Meacham, useful idiot par dreck-sellance gives us the clue here:
But that’s another story. Little is known of the story of the native-born clause. As reconstructed by Akhil Reed Amar of Yale, the provision is rooted in the framers’ fears not of immigrants, who were allowed to hold any other federal office, but in anxieties about imported noblemen.
Now, it can be revealed. The Obama birther business is all merely a front. To what end, you ask? To trick states like Arizona into writing legislation that could apparently cause difficulties for a sitting President, and whip his followers up into a froth. Then, like Meacham, they scream about the need to amend the Constitution to remove this archaic restriction. It all seems so nice. So reasonable. So only-the-most-raaaaacist-twit-in-the-country-could-argue-against-it.
And so it is done. And then what happens? Does the Ruling Class install Prince Charles over the old colonies, to tidy their atrocious accent? No, something more. . .spooky. . .
Past all this nonsense, here is the rub: we have 330+ million citizens. The argument that the Constitution should be amended should be built upon the argument that the opportunity costs of such an awesome candidate existing elsewhere in the world outweigh the political costs of Amendment, even in the face of all of the other issues currently besetting the country.
No, I don’t think such an übermensch exists, and I hope that this post has blown the idea out of the water on both silly and practical grounds.
Update: Memeorandum thread.
And it looks like Da Tech Guy is playing this one straight:
Trump’s shots have become body blows that are lowing the president’s defenses and Public Television that has always been there to help defend the democrats who fund them are going to try to soften the blows.
Trump is not my choice for the nomination, he’s not even in my top 5, but he has done serious damage politically to President Obama and as long as he is in play he will continue to do so. As Rush Limbaugh has said, the media will tell you who they fear, right now they fear Trump.
As Hollywood Turns: Charlie Sheen’s Ex-Wife Brooke Mueller Trying to Pawn Stuff
Brooke Mueller walked into a pawn shop in Inglewood, CA. early Thursday morning, and tried to hock an expensive men’s watch and a stereo . . .
Brooke was desperately trying to get cash for the two items … but the store would not make the purchase because Brooke did not have a valid I.D.
Brooke certainly shouldn’t need the money, because she’s getting $55,000 a month in child support, not to mention the multi-million dollar settlement she scored in her divorce with Charlie Sheen.
Let’s see: $55,000 a month = $660,000 a year.
And yet she’s pawning stuff? She’s required to undergo mandatory drug testing as part of the divorce settlement. If you’re thinking Brooke’s back on the crack, you’re not alone:
“Man, I ain’t never seen some sh*t like that, a cute a** white b**** looking for some candy on these streets,” said a man who identified himself as T-Mac.
I’m trying to picture a reporter, notebook in hand, taking down that quote from “T-Mac.”
London’s Gay ‘Kiss-In’ Protest
This image is from a video posted by the U.K. Guardian:
Two poofters got bounced from a Soho pub after they started kissing and — because everything is now political — there was a protest:
The pub at the centre of a homophobia row closed its doors, as hundreds of people prepared to attend a “gay kiss-in” protest there.
The John Snow, in Soho, central London, became the focus of unwanted attention when James Bull and Jonathan Williams were asked to leave on Wednesday night by a staff member who allegedly described the couple’s kissing as “obscene”.
Williams tweeted about the incident, which propelled him and Bull, who were on their first date, to the attention of national media, leading to plans for a “gay kiss-in” Facebook event, scheduled for 7pm on Friday. The John Snow, perhaps wary of the impending siege, closed at around 3.30pm, leaving bemused drinkers locked out on the street with beverages in hand, according to one bystander.
About 300 people attended the scheduled kiss-in, which took place despite the closure of the pub and included Bull, Williams and gay rights activist Peter Tatchell. Just after 7pm mass co-ordinated kissing took place in the street, to whoops of encouragement from a growing crowd. “It’s still a victory,” said Paul Shetler, a senior director at an IT firm. “They’ve wound up losing a night’s takings because they couldn’t have a bunch of men with tongues in each others’ mouths.”
Coming soon to a pub near you . . .