RedState Morning Briefing April 11, 2012 Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge. Happy Birthday, Liefje. 1. It Was Inevitable. Now Bring on President Both Ways 2. The Left, the Media and Plans to Destroy Scott Walker 3. Left not all that interested in free speech or tolerance 4. Why Ozzie Matters ———————————————————————- 1. It Was Inevitable. Now Bring on President Both Ways It was inevitable. Mitt Romney’s campaign has used a money advantage to shut out the competition. As I said when he won Ohio, Romney will be the nominee. The way forward for Romney depends on the economy. For the longest time I did not think he had much of a shot against the President, but as I’ve said several times recently, the economy seems to be struggling, which gives Romney an opening. Between a struggling economy and a President who wants to have it both ways in rhetoric and in practice wants to side with those hostile to the idea of American exceptionalism, Romney has an opening if he’ll aggressively take it. If I may be so bold, I think the greatest thing Karl Rove or Reince Priebus or Mitt Romney or any outside group could do right now is introduce the American Public to what I’ve started doing on my radio show: recounting the amazing adventures of President Both Ways. As Rory Cooper noted on Twitter, on August 26, 2011, President Both Ways claimed the Buffett Rule would “stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade.” And now? President Both Ways claims, “No one ever suggested that implementing Buffett Rule would contribute in large measure to reducing the deficit.” President Both Ways strikes again. Please click here for the rest of the post. 2. The Left, the Media and Plans to Destroy Scott Walker Labor union bosses, trial lawyers and the Wisconsin Democrats have been out to end the political career of Governor Scott Walker since the moment he took office. His move to reform government employee union collective bargaining rights was a public relations spark that ignited a partisan heap of half-truths and electoral grudges. To date, Scott Walker and his reforms are still standing (and working!) in Wisconsin much to the chagrin of the Left. Leading up to the June recall election in which Walker will defend his governorship, Democrats and Big Labor aren’t talking about collective bargaining reforms. According to an internal Democrat Party of Wisconsin memo reported on by Mother Jones magazine, Wisconsin Democrats are hoping to oust Walker by in part focusing heavily on what is known as the John Doe investigation. In Wisconsin, prosecutors may launch secretive probes (hence the name “John Doe”) into criminal activities. John Chisholm, the Democrat District Attorney for Milwaukee County, has for 2 years now been running a John Doe investigation into former county government employees who held jobs while Walker was Milwaukee County Executive. Interestingly enough, it was Walker who called for the probe to out suspected fraud. Please click here for the rest of the post. 3. Left not all that interested in free speech or tolerance I have worked in or around the Ohio Statehouse for a decade or more. I have seen a great many protests, counter-protests and events involving all kinds of issues and groups. But when I stopped by the Statehouse today to check out the Values Bus Tour event put on by Heritage Foundation and Family Research Council I experienced something I don’t believe I had ever witnessed. A counter-protest effectively shutting down an event. Please click here for the rest of the post. 4. Why Ozzie Matters Ozzie Guillén, manager of the newly re-minted Miami Marlins, has earned himself a five-game suspension by declaring his affection for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in Time magazine: “I love Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that son of a bitch is still there.” Many entities survive through unsavory methods—cockroaches and kudzu vines spring to mind. But Guillén wasn’t praising some neutral long-lived thing, he was admiring the machismo of the man who has spent more than six decades trampling on the freedoms of his fellow ballplayers. Please click here for the rest of the post.
More here:
Morning Briefing for April 11, 2012
I have worked in or around the Ohio Statehouse for a decade or more. I have seen a great many protests, counter-protests and events involving all kinds of issues and groups. But when I stopped by the Statehouse today to check out the Values Bus Tour event put on by Heritage Action and Family Resource Council Action I experienced something I don’t believe I had ever witnessed. A counter-protest effectively shutting down an event. As you can se in the video above, a small group of what appeared to be pro-abortion and gay/lesbian protestors had gathered with signs to protest the values groups. And this is to be expected, and would have been largely uneventful, except for one thing: a couple of the protesters had bullhorns equipped with sirens. They used these to emit an earsplitting noise that made hearing the speakers nearly impossible and mere rational thought challenging. In person it was much louder and headache inducing than in the video if you can believe it The video does capture the anger and vitriol of the left quite well in my opinion. But it also points out the hypocrisy of the left. They so often pretend to defend free speech, dialog, tolerance, elevated discourse and a host of other virtues and freedoms. But here is a group hosting an event focused on getting people registered to vote, educating them on the issues and getting them engaged in the political process. Whether you agree with their policies or politics this is democracy, right? This is about free speech and public engagement on the issues that matter to our country. So what does this group of angry leftists do? Instead of providing an alternative point of view for those attending the event, or even protesting the event from the sidewalk, they basically use sirens and shouts to prevent the speakers from being heard. They were clearly attempting to silence an opposing viewpoint. They were not interested in debate or discussion but loudly and angrily demanding that these peaceful folks leave the state; screeching that these views were not to be tolerated but shouted down and silenced. We have entered an Orwellian world where views on issues from spending and deficits to abortion and marriage – views held by large swaths of the American electorate – are not opposing viewpoints or different perspectives to be debated and/or refuted but “hate speech” that must be silenced and kept from even having an audience. Keep this in mind next time the left tries to claim the moral high ground on free speech and tolerance.
Read more:
Left not all that interested in free speech or tolerance
And anybody who tells you that you can get money out of politics is either deluded, lying, or possibly both. Exhibit A : the upcoming Democratic convention in Charlotte, NC. The Democrats piously declared that of course no dirty, dirty corporate/lobbyist money would be allowed to be spent on putting the convention together. And everybody cheered… only, it’s now 2012 and there’s potentially a looming shortfall in fundraising. And lo! – here are some lobbyist and corporate donors. Sure, they can’t contribute… under the old rules. But rules are flexible things, are they not? A corporation can’t contribute directly. But it’s all right for their executives to write large personal checks, or contribute the equivalent in goods and/or services, or launder it through a corporate charity. As for lobbyists… well. The DNC likes to see its friends happy – friends being defined as ‘people who bundle together a lot of personal contributions and/or corporate in-kind donations’ – and if VIP access and nice hotel rooms make friends happy, then that warm, happy feeling would be its own reward, yes? I’m actually not particularly upset at the idea that the Democrats were dumb enough to take a policy position that would inevitably force them to become hypocrites. Aside from the sheer pleasure of watching them tie themselves in knots like this, there’s also the opportunity to make the whole thing into a teaching experience. To wit: money cannot be gotten out of politics . It never has in the past; it’s certainly not out of politics now; and it won’t be in the future. As soon as one way of injecting money into politics goes away, another one opens up. Because people want to inject money into politics, and they rather outnumber the people who do not. This fact annoys certain elements of the Left no end. But not as much as the fact that the Right has noted that the standard progressive response to speech that they don’t like is some variant of a lynch mob; which fact is the primary pragmatic reason why we’re not moving towards an environment of greater transparency in donations. I may think that anonymous donations may be a truly regrettable necessity, but that does not mean that I don’t recognize that it is, in fact, a necessity. None of this excuses the Democrats for their hypocrisy, of course. If you’re going to take the position that a donation is not a form of free speech explicitly protected by the Constitution, then you really should live by the implications of your own belief system. If you cannot, please do not insist that I live by them, either.* (H/T: Instapundit ) Moe Lane ( crosspost ) PS: You cannot get money out of politics. *Mind you, I may not feel like living by the implications of your belief system even if you can, too.
Read the original post:
Democratic National Convention to be lobbyist/corporate funded, after all.
According to the blog McIntyre v Ohio , an anonymous blog devoted to promoting anonymous speech, Senator Joe Lieberman has proposed stripping blog hosts of the immunity they currently enjoy from liability for things their blog commenters say. If legislation like this ever actually passes, I’ll be shutting down comments. Those who followed the recent smack down of a serial troll at Popehat will no doubt remember that Ken invoked section 230 as the reason I cannot be held responsible for stupid things said by my commenters. I have the finest comment section on the planet, but you can’t prevent idiots from walking in the door if you are going to have open comments. And there are always the Kilgore Trouts of the world, too: people who deliberately plant inflammatory or racist comments on sites to smear the blog proprietors. What effect would stripping out section 230 immunity have on the exchange of ideas — especially ideas advanced by anonymous people? Both good and bad, I suspect, but mostly bad. I might still be willing to publish comments from people I know and trust — but anonymous commenters could not be allowed to speak. That would be bad to the extent that valid, well-documented ideas and news from anonymous commenters were to disappear. There would be one silver lining. You see, anonymous commenters (and bloggers) are also responsible for a lot of disinformation. And there is far too great a tendency for people to believe factual assertions by anonymous bloggers or commenters. Just because an anonymous blogger or commenter says something does not make it true. I specifically note this in part because I myself have been the victim of anonymous people making up “facts” about me. And it’s surprisinng how often people lap that kind of thing up. So a revision to section 230 would be mostly bad. But given how often anonymous speech is not factual, you’re not going to find me crusading on this particular issue. I’m all for free speech; don’t get me wrong. But reducing the power of anonymous trolls to spread lies is no trivial matter. UPDATE: Famed free speech attorney Marc Randazza sounds much more concerned, saying : “It will be a grave day if this amendment succeeds.”
Read more:
End of Section 230 Protection for Bloggers?
Union thugs protesting outside the homes of their targets has become a weapon more and more unions have added to their already-large arsenal. Now that the State of Georgia may become the first state to outlaw the offensive tactic, oddly enough, unions are getting support from an unlikely source–the Tea Party Patriots. Last year, when 45,000 union members struck telephone carrier Verizon, IBEW union radicals showed up outside the home of Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam’s House causing a disturbance in McAdam’s neighborhood (see video below). In another incident, up to 3,000 CWA protesters conducted a mock funeral outside the home of Verizon’s chairman. Though it shouldn’t be necessary for any legislature to even have to consider the protection of private residences from protesters, these incidents (and others like it) have drawn the attention of Georgia’s legislature, which has moved to pass Senate Bill 469 to prohibit the targeting of individuals at their private residences. Related: SEIU protesters descend on bank exec’s home, terrifying his son Too Far? CWA Picketers Stage Mock Funeral, Carry Coffins Outside Verizon Chairman’s Home NJ Teachers’ Union Thugs Protest At Student’s Home To Send Father A Message While the original bill was aimed at prohibiting unions from protesting outside private residences, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jim Galloway , the Georgia House altered the bill last night to include all private residences : The change doesn’t show up on the Internet version of the bill yet, but we’re told that the House Rules Committee last night altered SB 469 so that it would ban demonstrations at or near all private residences in Georgia. [snip] Pickets targeted at any home – whether belonging to corporate CEO, union executive, crack dealer, child molester, or even newspaper columnist – would be off-limits under the latest version of the bill. Which, according to one constitutional scholar we talked to, has a much better chance of surviving a court challenge. As usual, however, union bosses view their collective rights as superior than individual rights and have been protesting the bill with rhetorical fury reminiscent of last year’s Madison madness. Related: Teamsters to Hold Rally for Free Speech, Workers’ Rights What makes this issue more interesting is the fact that unions have found an ally in the Tea Party Patriots : Julianne Thompson, Georgia state director for Tea Party Patriots, told The Huffington Post that she and her fellow organizers don’t see SB 469 as a political issue so much as a free-speech issue. Thompson spoke out against the bill at the state capitol Monday. “When we’re talking about the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution, we’re not talking about political right-versus-left. We’re talking about right versus wrong,” Thompson said. “If it’s a violation of free speech we’re going to be on the side of the Constitution. I’m happy that we’ve reached across party lines with regard to this issue.” [snip] Charlie Flemming, president of the Georgia AFL-CIO, told HuffPost that the state’s unions are happy to see Tea Party activists coming down on the same side as them. Apparently, the Tea Party Patriots believe, as do their new collectivist union allies, that targeting the homes of their opponents is something that falls under the guise of Constitutionally-protected activity. By those standards, noise ordinances should be stricken, anti-harassment laws erased, and the ability of municipalities to allow parades, marches or protests by permit only should be done away with. Then, every American can enjoy this spectacle outside their front doors: __________________ “Socialism has no place in the hearts of those who would secure the fight for freedom and preserve democracy.” Samuel Gompers, American Federation of Labor, 1918 Cross-posted at LaborUnionReport.com
See the original post:
Strange Bedfellows: Unions Protesting For The Right To Target Private Residences Get Tea Party Approval
