Unexpected Endorsement for Schlafly

Posted on | August 2, 2010 | 25 Comments

Remember my defense of Phyllis Schlafly? Well, now comes some blunt truth from Patterico:

Here is a generalization for you: when I see violent criminals in court, they tend to be fatherless. When government welfare policies encourage fatherless households, they encourage crime and violence. And when anyone — unmarried women or anyone else — votes for expanding the welfare state, they are voting for a continuation of this depressing and dangerous cycle.

Policies that enable anti-social attitudes and behaviors will tend to increase anti-social attitudes and behaviors. And the people who adopt those anti-social attitudes and behaviors will reliably vote for more such policies. This is how bad policy can be “good” politics, if by “good” you mean the re-election of people who promulgate bad policy.

Exactly why it should be controversial to say that, I don’t know.

Justin Bieber Gets Harper-Collins Book Deal for Memoir at Age 16

Posted on | August 2, 2010 | 31 Comments

Sure to be the biggest cult classic since Mein Kampf:

Harper Collins announced today that Bieber is publishing a memoir with the colon-heavy title “Justin Bieber: First Step 2 Forever: My Story” that will be be released in October. The book promises to reveal all the details of his “amazing journey to stardom,” a journey that, it should be pointed out, has lasted all of 16 years.

I might change the name of the blog to The Other Bieber, just for the extra traffic.

UPDATE: In semi-related news, audio tycoon Sidney Harman has agreed to buy Newsweek magazine, which is on pace to lose $70 million this year. We were unable to confirm rumors that Harman plans to rename the publication Bieberweek.

Stupid Things Lady Gaga Says

Posted on | August 2, 2010 | 56 Comments

“I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.”
— Lady Gaga, interviewed in Vanity Fair

“We have to be active. We have to protest. . . . I think it’s important that people understand that it’s a state of emergency for this place and this state.”
— Lady Gaga, denouncing Arizona immigration law at a Phoenix concert

UPDATE: Professor Donald Douglas has video of Lady Gaga’s immigration rant.

Federal Judge Allows Virginia Lawsuit Against ObamaCare to Proceed

Posted on | August 2, 2010 | 12 Comments

Denies Justice Department motion to dismiss:

Virginia’s lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s health care reform law cleared its first legal hurdle Monday as a federal judge ruled the law raises a host of complex constitutional issues.
U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson’s decision stemmed from Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s claims that Congress exceeded its authority under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause by requiring citizens to buy health insurance or pay a penalty.

Text of the judge’s ruling is here. Thanks to Doug Mataconis for the Twitter tip.

UPDATE: Brian Kirwin at Bearing Drift:

Liberals have for months claimed that Cuccinelli’s lawsuit would be dismissed because he’d have no standing in challenging a law that won’t go into effect until 2014, or that the vaunted Federal Supremacy would squash his defense of Virginia law.
And they were wrong, again.

UPDATE II: A couple weeks ago, Smitty got this video of Ken Cuccinelli speaking at a fundraiser for Patrick Murray, in which Virginia’s attorney general talked about Rep. Jim Moran’s dubious justification for the individual health-care mandate:

UPDATE III: Philip Klein notes that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is still lying about the accounting gimmicks by which Medicare “savings” are supposed to pay for this crap.

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters Attacks Washington Post TV Critic Tom Shales

Posted on | August 2, 2010 | 14 Comments

 Christiane Amanpour made her much-ballyhooed debut as host of ABC’s “This Week” and Tom Shales — who can’t stand Amanpour — made this pointed remark:

[T]he commendable “In Memoriam” segment ended with a tribute not to American men and women who died in combat during the preceding week but rather, said Amanpour in her narration, in remembrance of “all of those who died in war” in that period. Did she mean suggest that our mourning extend to members of the Taliban?

Which provoked this screeching headline from Boehlert:

WashPost TV critic smears ABC’s Amanpour as possible Taliban sympathizer

Uh, no he didn’t “smear” her. Shales asked a simple question about Amanpour’s choice of words. The phrase “all of those who died in war” obviously could include our enemies. As for Amanpour’s sympathies, am I the only one who remembers her godawful “God’s Warriors” series?

UPDATE: Tim Graham at Newsbusters:

Sophisticates inside the networks think it’s unfair for Americans to hold Amanpour’s snooty British accent and international focus against her. But if she suggests that American war dead shouldn’t be seen by Americans as more dear to us, since that’s shallow nationalism, then why do they still call this the American Broadcasting Company?

Good News: Dan Rather and Chris Matthews Bummed About Mid-Terms

Posted on | August 2, 2010 | 14 Comments

“Wouldn’t you LOVE to play poker with these people?”

Update: (Smitty) Video URL

You Might Be a Raaaaacist If . . .

Posted on | August 2, 2010 | 25 Comments

. . . you think Democrats are corrupt:

The politically charged decisions by veteran Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters of California to force public trials by the House ethics committee are raising questions about race and whether black lawmakers face more scrutiny over allegations of ethical or criminal wrongdoing than their white colleagues. . . .

Should I even bother debunking that theme? Or is the perverse reasoning obvious enough that everyone can spot it?

File No. 100-360217

Posted on | August 2, 2010 | 12 Comments

For those who missed the weekend’s Howard Zinn FBI files story — or who prefer a straight narrative account — my latest column at The American Spectator is “The Case Against Howard Zinn”:

Howard Zinn was teaching a class, but he wasn’t yet a professor and his classroom wasn’t at a university. It was late 1951, and the students who gathered for Zinn’s lessons in Brooklyn were his fellow members of the Communist Party USA.
One of Zinn’s comrades described him as “a person with some authority” within the local CPUSA section and said that Zinn’s class was on “basic Marxism,” the theme being “that the basic teachings of Marx and Lenin were sound and should be adhered to by those present.”
That description, furnished to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by a former Communist in 1957, is included in more than 400 pages of Zinn’s FBI file made public last week.
The FBI files demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that Zinn — author of A People’s History of the United States, widely used as a textbook or supplement in many of our nation’s high schools and universities — was a card-carrying Communist at a time when the Soviet Union was America’s most dreaded enemy. . . .

Read the whole thing. It’s two pages, so it might help to click the print-friendly version — which is also convenient for sharing with your local board of education, high-school principals, college professors, etc.

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