Your defense of Glenn Beck is touching on AOL, but it comes up very short and very sad. You claim that the big bad lefty meanie comedians are picking on Beck even when he is sick. Well, let's get something straight. Glenn Beck is inciting violence and helping legitimizing radical militia and white nationalist movements that otherwise would still be chatting on their MySpace pages. And the hatred that he is helping to unleash on this country is indefensible.

He was the butt of a few jokes by comedians at a time that you disapprove of. OK, are you now saying that the ADL is also being mean to him when they call him the "fearmonger in chief?" Will you weep for him over that too?

What did you think of those gun-brandishing "patriots" who showed up for teabagger protests? Were you happy to see all that vitriol targeted at President Obama by a lot of clueless robots who are out their because of talkers like Beck who have only one goal in mind -- to tear down this president after Bush and conservatism tore down our country for the last eight years?

It's not as though Beck himself hasn't been demonizing people -- his McCarthyite attacks on a number of people have not only been absurdly distorted but viciously personal. And it's not as though Beck is an innocent in the media personal-attack game; indeed, you may recall that he was responsible for one of the ugliest on-air smears in broadcast history: When Beck had a falling-out with a former radio-show partner named Bruce Kelly, who became a competitor in the Phoenix market, Beck embarked on a series of dirty tricks, including an invasion of Kelly's wedding. But Beck hit a new low a little later:

The animosity between Beck and Kelly continued to deepen. When Beck and Hattrick produced a local version of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" for Halloween -- a recurring motif in Beck's life and career -- Kelly told a local reporter that the bit was a stupid rip-off of a syndicated gag. The slight outraged Beck, who got his revenge with what may rank as one of the cruelest bits in the history of morning radio. "A couple days after Kelly's wife, Terry, had a miscarriage, Beck called her live on the air and says, 'We hear you had a miscarriage,' " remembers Brad Miller, a former Y95 DJ and Clear Channel programmer. "When Terry said, 'Yes,' Beck proceeded to joke about how Bruce [Kelly] apparently can't do anything right -- about he can't even have a baby."

Two wrongs don't make a right, and here at C&L we've avoided making it personal with Beck (beyond pointing out his utter lunacy). Just because we choose to pitch clean, though, doesn't mean we much mind seeing a toxic clown like Beck face a little chin music.

Please, spare us the tears and defend somebody who truly deserves it.

John Amato...

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (28)

PLAYS: (56)

November 19, 2009 CNN
Predator Drone airstrikes have increased under President Obama

I'm totally against the Afghanistan war, as C&Lers know, and it was lost as soon as Bush and Cheney decided to attack Iraq. Any chance to stabilize that region was lost immediately thereafter. The world had rallied around Afghanistan in such a way that that country could have been reconstructed and repaired by now.

So President Obama finds himself in a bad situation caused by conservative beliefs and now there really is only one strategy left: When do we leave? That being said, Fred Thompson, in a hatchet-job fashion, says the Afghan war is lost too, because Obama just isn't into it. Wow, aren't Republicans into fighting endless wars for profits?

Fred Thompson must know that Bush abandoned Afghanistan and forged his move to attack and remove the Taliban as nothing more than a chess move to attack Iraq.

Former Sen. Fred Thompson today intensified his party's criticism of President Obama's long deliberation over policy in Afghanistan, announcing that Obama's delay signals that "the war has been lost" and that nothing the president now does will "make any difference."

"It really doesn't matter how President Obama divides the Afghan baby, how he splits the difference between McChrystal and Biden. Because the war has been lost," Thompson said on his radio show today. "I say this because of one sad and simple fact. The president does not have the will and determination to do what's necessary to win it. His heart's not in it, and never has been. The Taliban knows it. Al Qaeda knows it. Our allies know it. And the American people know it.

Americans turned against these two wars a long time ago and public opinion will only keep declining. Vermin like Thompson only look for opportunities to cut up the president as often as possible. And they are using this conflict like the blade. They are a sad movement.

Thompson has the nerve to suggest that a sitting President doesn't care what happens in a war that is taking place now. These conservatives have no shame and that's why conservatism is a sham.
Remember the Faux outrage over Harry Reid?

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol said that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) remark that the Iraq war is lost is “much more disgraceful” than Sen. Trent Lott’s (R-MS) 2002 claim that the country would be much better off if it had maintained racist segregation policies.

“What Harry Reid said is much more disgraceful than anything Trent Lott said, and I do think Democrats should ask Harry Reid to step down,” Kristol said.

From The Daily Show, Jon Stewart's interview with Lou Dobbs. I love that Stewart hit him right off the bat for why the right only collectively freaks out every time a Democratic president is elected to office.

Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 1

You can watch the rest of the interview here:

Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 2

Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 3

Spencer Ackerman has done a yeoman's job digging into the details as to whether the 40-44,000 troop estimate by Gen. McChrystal is even realistic to consider, when one counts the number of troops still in Iraq and Gen. Odierno's glacially slow deployment out of that country, the number of troops who have just returned from Iraq or Afghanistan (or Kosovo or the Phillipines or Egypt or any number of other deployments), numbers of troops assigned in Germany and S. Korea, and the number of troops that are left available. It's a pretty close thing.

Obama would have something of a cushion, but not much, in the early months of 2010. An additional five brigades will finish their 12 months of so-called “dwell time” at home between deployments by April 2010, providing an additional 22,600 troops, but by that time, about 10,200 troops will be scheduled to leave Afghanistan, leaving available a net gain of 12,400. More brigades become available in the summer and fall, although others currently in Afghanistan will be ending their scheduled deployments then as well. Under current Pentagon policy, dwell time for the National Guard varies, but can be no shorter than two years, and so it is possible but not certain that two National Guard brigades composed of 6,800 National Guard soldiers might be available for deployment by March 2010 as well, beyond the 24,000 theoretically available now. Pentagon leaders had hoped to extend dwell time this year, but that was before McChrystal’s request for additional troops.

There will undoubtably be a Marine regiment or two included in the mix, but (for all the noise and thunder) the Marines are a small part of the overall "boots on the ground" needed by McChrystal's projection. You can't count on increases from NATO - the Brits may throw another 500 troops into the mix, Germany just announced that its troops would stay another year but didn't commit to increases, and Canada's counting on next year being its last. I sincerely doubt that the other countries are going to do anything different. And I am sure not going to count onany sudden near-term increase of professionalism or competency in the Afgan army.

So my question is this: Did McChrystal select, and the Joint Chiefs endorse, a 40-44,000 troop increase in Afghanistan because it was the right number, or because it was in fact the upper limit of available active duty troops (assuming that the White House will not ask Congress to authorize the call up of more Reserves and National Guard units)? The authorized increase in troops that Congress allowed a few years ago isn't going to kick in enough replacements to really count in any significant way. As I and others have noted, increasing the US troop strength to 102,000 or so still is going to be insufficient to be successful in securing Afghanistan in any time less than several years. If this is the upper limit, that there will be no other active troops available in brigade-size units, then we're really limiting our strategic options to "influence" anyone else in the world.

This is probably a good indication of why the White House is really trying to understand what the options are and what the implications are. As Mark Grimsley notes, there is a general consensus that there is no need for a quick decision in a military sense, given that the situation is stable - AQ is contained, the Taliban aren't about to take Kabul, and our troops aren't on the edge of re-directing the Taliban's growth any time soon.

The real division of opinion is about whether completion of the strategic review is time urgent in a political sense.  Does the length of the review reflect deliberation or vacillation, strength or weakness?  Where people come down on this essentially reflects their opinion of Obama.

Which is why the Republicans are already set to take cheap shots at the White House no matter what the decision is, and despite any rationale for the final direction that President Obama identifies. I can understand Obama's focus on the economy and on health care - these domestic issues capture the attention of the public and he needs the political capital from the presidential election that is running out.  But now we're finally in that point in time where Obama will have to announce his final decision. There's a lot riding on this decision, and I hope that Obama has the sense to identify his exit strategy and timeframe as justification for that decision.

Now I am probably not telling you anything new in this title, but when I saw this op-ed by William Kristol in his Weekly Standard magazine (hat tip to Matt Y), I just suddenly got this pounding headache and resulting furious reaction.

In areas where policies are still being debated--in foreign policy in particular--conservatives need to keep urging Obama to do the right thing. We are disgusted with Obama's irresoluteness on Afghanistan. But we continue to urge that he side with the experienced military leaders he's been fortunate to inherit against the second-guessing of political hacks (and of failed ex-generals turned political hacks). We conservatives want American soldiers to win wars, American interests to prevail, and American principles to flourish. We want the bad guys to lose. We're happy to work with President Obama to defeat them--and we only wish he shared our clarity and urgency about accomplishing that task.

That is to say, Obama should only listen to active duty generals like Petraus (USCENTCOM), Odierno (Iraq), and McChrystal (Afghanistan), not "failed ex-generals turned political hacks" such as former generals Karl Eikenberry (US Ambassador to Afghanistan) and James Jones (National Security Advisor). The latter have, of course, counseled caution before engaging deeper into Afghanistan. To be more specific, the Republican political line seems to be "yeah, we always do what our generals tell us to do - so long as their statements support indefinitely continuing the wars in the Middle East." What a ridiculous little man he is.

As far as Kristol's other statement - he wants American soldiers to win wars and American interests to prevail - I really want to haul back and punch him hard in the stomach. If you cared one iota about the American soldier, you slime, you base villain, you would have been pestering the CheneyBush administration as to its inability to put adequate numbers of American troops into Iraq and Afghanistan and its refusal to grow the military force to the numbers required for a long post-war occupation. Now we have military families breaking up, military suicide rates going ever upward, promotions for any officer with a pulse, military modernization programs on hold because of mounting operational costs, and a trillion-dollar bill that was never adequately planned for,largely due to the CheneyBush administration's inability to close the deal after eight years of continued combat.

You clearly have no respect for the American soldier or for American interests. In fact, if you were working directly against the American soldier and American interests, you could not be doing a better job.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (55)

PLAYS: (193)

November 16, 2009 NBC Conan O'Brien
Conan rips on President Obama and the Chinese Government during his opening monologue.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1185)

PLAYS: (2468)

CNN's Jim Acosta this morning filed the first part of a three-part report on the return of the militia movement, something we've been tracking regularly here at C&L.

The piece, unfortunately, is like a lot of mainstream reportage on the movement -- that is to say, reporters "parachute" in to a location (in this case, southeastern Michigan) and provide a facile report that's about toe deep in content. As with so many such reports, it's typically susceptible to swallowing whole the mythology that militia members like to toss up for mainstream consumption.

In this case, Acosta willingly transmits the main purpose of the militia movement -- which is to say, remaking genuinely extremist belief systems as mainstream and legitimate. Lee Miracle, the Michigan group's leader, is portrayed as just a gee-shucks ordinary guy concerned about his constitutional rights.

But then there were the other members, and it was clear there was the usual undertow of unhinged paranoia present -- along with clear statements that they were motivated by fear of a Democratic president, and particularly Obama:

ACOSTA (voice-over): Training for what depends on who you ask, but this militia member, who didn't want to give his last name, worries the government will eventually take away his gun rights.

"BRIAN", SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN VOLUNTEER MILITIA: Well, any time we get a Democratic president in the office, people become concerned, including myself and we get a resurgence out here.

ACOSTA: Others just don't like President Obama. So, you don't trust him?

MICHAEL LACKOMAR, SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN VOLUNTERR MILITIA: In short, I think he could be dangerous for the nation.

While overall it gives a pretty warm and fluffy view of the militias, it's not a thoroughly bad report; it at least manages to quote the SPLC's Mark Potok, who points out how they are driven by a combination of anti-liberal animus and wingnutty paranoia:

MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: The truth is, is that these groups are popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain.

ACOSTA (voice-over): Earlier this year, Mark Potok with the Southern Poverty Law Center put out a report warning of a surge in militia activity that came with the election of President Obama. Since that report was issued, Potok says his staff has counted 100 new militia groups across the country.

POTOK: There really is this kind of terrible fear mixed with fury about the idea that President Obama is somehow leading a kind of socialistic, you know, takeover of America.

In Acosta's on-air segment after the report, he talked it over with John Roberts and Kiran Chetry, and noted that, as it was in the 1990s, the militias are being driven by fear about both gun rights and Obama generally:

ROBERTS: All right. Is it all about gun rights then?

ACOSTA: A lot of it is about gun rights. A lot of it is about distrust. They just don't trust this president. They think he is out to peel back rights and the gun issue is their big ones. You know, we should mention that the gun control issue specifically is really unrealistic in many ways. Because the Obama administration knows and Democrats know that it will be political suicide for them to go after gun control measures. In fact, the attorney general indicated just recently that he's not even going to go back to the assault weapons ban that was enacted during the Clinton administration.

Then they ran one of their phone-in polls:

CHETRY: We also want to know what you think. Are militia members patriots or are they extremists? And o you think that your rights are slipping away or do you think that these militias go too far? Join us tomorrow and we're going to have part two of Jim's piece.

At the CNN/amFix blog, Acosta described what the next two parts will look like:

Not to worry, says the group's leader Lee Miracle. A military veteran and postal worker, yes postal worker, Miracle says he urges respect for the president.

He's out to change the way the world views militia groups. We get an up-close look at his family in part two of our series. A family Miracle refers to as "Lee and Kate plus eight plus a gun rack." That's because they have eight kids and 22 guns in the house. And the kids take part in militia day.

In part three of our series, we go to Las Vegas to go behind the scenes with an organization called "Oathkeepers." It's a group of ex-law enforcement officials and military veterans who say they've sworn an oath to the Constitution, not the president. The president they're referring to, of course, is Mr. Obama.

The ADL released a report today about the growing rage in the American landscape, of which the militia movement is a significant part:

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

4536 Plays

Wow. Look how much CNN wanted him out of there:

CNN was so sick of Lou Dobbs, it gave him an $8 million severance package to leave, The Post has learned.

"They wanted him out," according to a source.

Dobbs, who a source said had a year and a half to go on his $12 million contract, shocked viewers last Wednesday by announcing he was quitting.

CNN boss Jonathan Klein and Dobbs, 64, had been publicly feuding over the kind of reporting Dobbs was doing on his show -- especially stories about illegal immigration and the anti-Obama "birther" movement, which contends the president was not born in Hawaii and is not an American citizen.

But it was not clear until now that CNN was willing to pay Dobbs so much money to leave.

"What they do is their business," Dobbs said yesterday. "I tried to accommodate them as best I could, but I've said for many years now that neutrality is not part of my being."

Klein long believed Dobbs was at odds with CNN's desire to position itself as an opinion-free, middle-of-the-road alternative to its cable news rivals -- conservative Fox News and liberal MSNBC.

Steve Benen:

I checked the byline a couple of times this morning, to make sure the column that was ostensibly written by David Broder wasn't, in fact, written by Charles Krauthammer. Regrettably, the so-called Dean of the D.C. Media Establishment actually wrote this.

The more President Obama examines our options in Afghanistan, the less he likes the choices he sees. But, as the old saying goes, to govern is to choose -- and he has stretched the internal debate to the breaking point.

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right.

"Whether or not it is right." The Commander in Chief, in other words, should put expediency over merit. Speed is preferable to accuracy. It's only the longest military conflict in American history, with the future of U.S. foreign policy on the line -- the president should worry less about due diligence and thoughtful analysis, and worry more about picking a course, even if it's wrong. Other than the loss of American servicemen and women, untold billions of dollars, and undermining U.S. interests in a critical region, what's the worst that can happen?

This says so much to me. The "dean" of Beltway journalism and conventional thinking perfectly encapsulates the Republican zeitgeist:

1. Criticize anything that Obama does. If he acts decisively, complain that he's reckless. If he acts thoughtfully, complain that he's "dithering". If he points out that he's inherited a big fat clusterf&ck, complain that he's pointing fingers. If he tries to move forward in even a slightly progressive way, complain that he's not bipartisan enough and that he should listen to Republicans. In short, make sure that no matter what, Obama is wrong.
2. There are no consequences to telling Obama he's wrong. So what if 45,000 people die because they don't have healthcare? So what if sending more troops is basically sending them to their deaths? So what if there is no stable government in Afghanistan? So what if we're spending millions of dollars every month and deficit spending is the cause du jour for those suddenly fiscally responsible Republicans?

If Obama acts quickly, and it's the wrong choice, will the decision to act fall back on Broder and the Republicans for the pressure they've placed on Obama? 'Course not. But you can bet your sweet bippy they'll only be too glad to pounce on him if there are more American deaths.

Tell you what, Broder, if you're so eager to see some action in Afghanistan, let's see you do one of your patented "folksy" reports from a coffee shop in Kandahar or Kabul. Otherwise, STFU and let the people in charge actually make a reasoned and thoughtful decision, since it affects so much in American blood and treasure.

We've had eight years of quick rather than right decisions. It's time for the grownups to be in charge now.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (834)

PLAYS: (3606)

Fresh off warning us that President Obama intends to create a "one world order," Chuck Norris went on Sean Hannity's show last night on Fox and described his eliminationist fantasies if he ran for office:

Hannity: Why don't you run? No no no, there's a solution -- why wouldn't you -- Chuck Norris could be governor of Texas one day.

Norris: You know why? Because I'd be sitting here with my opponent, and debating, and then he would start attacking my character, and I'd jump over there and choke him unconscious.

[Laughter]

Hannity: You have more control than that!

Norris: I don't! That's the problem, you know. I have a thin skin. It was really tough in the film world. And in the political world, you know, I'd be killing half the people.

Because, you know, nothing bespeaks personal character like the volatile use of violence on your opponents.

He goes on to explain why he wouldn't fit well in political arenas like the Senate:

Norris: You know, with all the senators, you can't get anything done. You know, it's always right and left --

Hannity: No, no, you can, I disagree with you. You can.

Norris: Well, what I'd have to do, I'd have to choke out all the Democrats.

Hannity: [laughs] Well, it's a good start.

He also describes one of the eliminationist "jokes" in his new book:

Norris: One of the "facts" there [in his book] is America is not a democracy, it's a Chucktatership. And if it was, I said I would go to Congress, I'd line up every member of Congress, and I'd have Ron Paul, who I believe is one of the, probably one of the more honest ones there, I'd say, 'Ron, point out the honest ones' --

Hannity: I like Ron Paul. He's nuts.

Norris: Yeah, I know. That's why I like him. But anyway, I'd choke out the dis -- every dishonest politician that's up there.

Evidently, that would perforce include "all the Democrats." And any non-Paulbot Republicans. Which is most of them.

Well, paranoia and eliminationist violence often go hand in hand. And eventually, for the paranoid, the violence ceases to be a mere fantasy.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (938)

PLAYS: (1903)

The meme had been brewing for a few days among some of the Fox News guests -- particularly Michelle Malkin -- brought on to talk about the Fort Hood shootings, but it was Bill Sammon, during the broadcast of the memorial for the slain soldiers, who apparently made it official at Fox: The Fort Hood shootings were a terrorist attack -- comparable to 9/11 and Oklahoma City -- by a radical Islamist engaged in Muslim "jihad."

Now, it's not only the conventional wisdom at Fox News, it's one of their major attack points -- they're claiming that because President Obama and the rest of the media aren't adopting their presumptuous and hysterical meme, they're being "soft" on terrorism.

The meme gained momentum when Glenn picked up Sammon's ball and ran with it the next day, declaring: "If you don't call [Hasan] a terrorist, it clears a path for ... an extremist terrorist plan." That night, Sean Hannity explored the question at length with Michelle Malkin, as you can see from the video atop this post.

For Malkin and Hannity, "political correctness" -- which they blame for the military's failure to stop Hasan -- is actually code for "the refusal to engage in ethnic and religious profiling". Because such profiling, it's clear, is what they think the military (and the government generally) should do to prevent future such shootings.

The worst offender, though, has been Bill O'Reilly, who -- as you can see below -- not only harangued Sally Quinn for her reluctance to declare Nidal Hasan a "terrorist," but then devoted his leadoff Talking Points Memo segment last night to chastising the president and the rest of the media for their reluctance to embrace the meme.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (219)

PLAYS: (1076)

This exchange with Quinn was especially revealing:

O'Reilly: But you have a hard time saying the words "Muslim terrorist," and so does Obama. He has a hard time saying it. I don't know why you guys aren't saying it. You know, why, why?

Quinn: Well, I think, first of all, there are different kinds of terrorists. As I said, Timothy McVeigh --

O'Reilly: He's a Muslim terrorist! What do you mean, different kinds of terrorist? He killed people under the banner of jihad! That's who he is! What do you -- look, what do you want, him to come to your house with a strap-on bomb? The guy did it for jihadist reasons! "Allah Akbar!" That's the slogan! He mails Al Qaeda! Miss Quinn, you're a brilliant woman, and I'm not saying that facetiously. You are. A third-grader gets this, and you're resisting it! I wanna know why!

Quinn: Bill, you're making a very good case. I mean, he's Muslim, and he may well end up being a terrorist. We don't know for sure --

O'Reilly: I know for sure! Ninety percent of the people watching me know for sure! I don't know why you don't know for sure! What else do you need?

Quinn: I mean, you can call the guy who blew up -- you know, who shot up the Holocaust Museum a terrorist --

O'Reilly: Did he yell "Allah Akbar?" If he yelled "Allah Akbar," and he e-mailed Al Qaeda in Yemen, I'd call him that, Miss Quinn!

Quinn: OK, he's a Muslim terrorist.

O'Reilly: Thank you.

O'Reilly seems to have a peculiar idea of what constitutes "terrorism." His definition of the word seems to be "any act of violence by devout Muslims", or something along those lines.

That, of course, is quite a distance from the the legal definition of terrorism (from U.S. Code Title 22, Ch.38, Para. 2656f(d)):

(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;

This term, in fact, perfectly describes Holocaust Museum shooter James Von Brunn, who was, beyond any serious doubt, a classic right-wing "lone wolf" terrorist.

It is in fact still not clear, however, whether the description fits Nidal Hasan's motives in shooting 13 people to death. It is true that all kinds of evidence is emerging showing that Hasan was increasingly becoming politically radicalized.

What that evidence doesn't establish, though, is that he engaged in this horrendous act on behalf of those radical beliefs, or whether those beliefs simply formed part of the context in which he acted. There certainly haven't been any organizational ties established. We probably won't have any idea until Hasan himself starts talking, or at least his attorneys begin preparing his defense.

It's important to remember what mass-murder profiler Pat Brown told Fox's Brian Kilmeade:

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (2155)

PLAYS: (1817)

Glenn Beck -- who of course has a fetish about "extremist radicals" supposedly infiltrating the White House, while himself promoting far-right extremism on his show on a regular basis -- has been regularly plumping far-right "constitutionalist" theories about the 10th Amendment and states' rights for awhile now, including that hourlong segment complete with 1990s militia figures.

Mostly, though, Beck has been somewhat restrained about just how far down this path he would go, eschewing some of the more radical ideas that are part and parcel of this belief system, or at least declining to mention them to his audiences. But yesterday, filling in for the appendicitis-stricken Beck, Judge Andrew Napolitano opened the constitutionalist Pandora's Box wide and loosed all its ugly demons.

He opened the Beck program with a long rant in which he began (as is typical with "constitutionalists") with utterly false premises -- namely, that not only would the Obama "public option" health-care plan completely take over our health-care system, but the plan could put you in jail for failure to buy insurance. And from there, he sprang into advocating the repeal of the federal income tax and the "nullification" of federal laws by the states:

Napolitano: Last Saturday, at 11 o’clock in the evening, the House of Representatives voted by a five-vote margin to have the federal government manage the health care of every American at a cost of $1 trillion dollars over the next ten years.

For the first time in American history, if this bill becomes law, the Feds will force you to buy insurance you might not want, or may not need, or cannot afford. If you don’t purchase what the government tells you to buy, if you don’t do so when they tell you to do it, and if you don’t buy just what they say is right for you, the government may fine you, prosecute you, and even put you in jail. Freedom of choice and control over your own body will be lost. The privacy of your communications and medical decision making with your physician will be gone. More of your hard earned dollars will be at the disposal of federal bureaucrats.

It was not supposed to be this way. We elect the government. It works for us. How did it get so removed, so unbridled, so arrogant that it can tell us how to live our personal lives? Evil rarely comes upon us all at once, and liberty is rarely lost in one stroke. It happens gradually, over the years and decades and even centuries. A little stretch here, a cave in there, powers are slowly taken from the states and the people and before you know it, we have one big monster government that recognizes no restraint on its ability to tell us how to live. It claims the power to regulate any activity, tax any behavior, and demand conformity to any standard it chooses.

The Founders did not give us a government like the one we have today. The government they gave us was strictly limited in its scope, guaranteed individual liberty, preserved the free market, and on matters that pertain to our private behavior was supposed to leave us alone.

In the Constitution, the Founders built in checks and balances. If the Congress got out of hand, the states would restrain it. If the states stole liberty or property, the Congress would cure it. If the President tried to become a king, the courts would prevent it.

In the next few weeks, I will be giving a public class on Constitutional Law here on the Fox News Channel, on the Fox Business Network, on Foxnews.com, and on Fox Nation. In anticipation of that, many of you have asked: What can we do now about the loss of freedom?

For starters, we can vote the bums out of their cushy federal offices! We can persuade our state governments to defy the Feds in areas like health care -- where the Constitution gives the Feds zero authority. We can petition our state legislatures to threaten to amend the Constitution to abolish the income tax, return the selection of U.S. senators to state legislatures and nullify all the laws the Congress has written that are not based in the Constitution.

One thing we can’t do is just sit back and take it.

I can't tell you how bizarre it is to see arguments I used to hear coming from the mouths of Montana Freemen like LeRoy Schweitzer in the 1990s -- arguments that led to him embarking on an 81-day armed standoff with federal authorities, and resulting in him spending the rest of his natural life in a federal prison -- coming from supposedly mainstream talk-show hosts on Fox News only 13 years later.

Chip Berlet at PublicEye has a decent rundown of the roots of these "constitutionalist" beliefs:

Continue reading »

The Justice Department has subpoenaed indymedia.us for its visitor logs for a certain date. While this raises big flags regarding online privacy, something else happened with this action that is very odd. The recipient of the subpoena was told she could not talk about it unless authorized by the Justice Department – an essential gag order.

Of course news like this would send the right into a full frenzy that Obama is trying to silence the media, even a left-leaning site like indymedia. Here’s Hot Air’s take on it:

Did the White House try to open up a two-front war on the media?   Before the Obama administration launched an all-out battle with conservative-leaning Fox News Channel, the Department of Justice demanded the records of all visitor information of left-leaning Indymedia.us in an remarkable subpoena of a media outlet, for one specific day.  No one can recall any precedent for such a wide-ranging probe into the records of a media website, but it may provide a challenge to a national-security law if the DoJ presses hard enough:

But there’s a problem with this “blame Obama” mentality. The original source of the article is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and this is what they say about the subpoena:

On January 30th, 2009, Kristina Clair of Philadelphia, PA — one of the system administrators of the server that hosts the indymedia.us site — received in the mail a grand jury subpoena from the Southern District of Indiana federal court. The FBI had sent an email to Ms. Clair a couple of weeks earlier asking where a subpoena directed at the indymedia.us site should be sent. So, we at EFF were ready and waiting to evaluate the subpoena as soon as it arrived. Yet even we were surprised at what we saw. A PDF of the entire subpoena is available here.

And let’s look at when the actual subpoena was signed:

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1669)

PLAYS: (2044)

The Times is obviously trying to jump-start the political process that makes our elected representatives so reluctant to go back and ask for more badly-need stimulus spending from the federal government:

The unemployment rate includes only jobless people who have looked for work in the past four weeks. The underemployment rate — which also includes jobless workers who have not recently looked for work and part-timers who need full-time work — reached 17.5 percent in October. And the long-term unemployment rate — the share of the unemployed population out of work for more than six months — also continues to set records. It is now 35.6 percent.

The official job-loss data also fail to take note of 2.8 million additional jobs needed to absorb new workers who have joined the labor force during the recession. When those missing jobs are added to the official total, the economy comes up short by 10.1 million jobs.

Taken together, the numbers paint this stark picture: At no time in post-World War II America has it been more difficult to find a job, to plan for the future, or — for tens of millions of Americans — to merely get by.

At a recent meeting at the White House to discuss job creation, President Obama said that “bold, innovative action,” would be needed — from the administration, Congress and the private sector — to undo the devastation in the labor market. Americans are waiting for Mr. Obama to lead the way.

There were good ideas floated at the White House meeting, including bolstered federal support for efforts to retrofit and weatherize homes and public buildings. There was also talk of using government money to establishing a so-called infrastructure bank that would issue bonds to help finance big construction projects.

The country also needs a program that would create jobs for teenagers — ages 16 to 19 — whose unemployment rate is currently a record 27.6 percent. Deep and prolonged unemployment among the young is especially worrisome. It means they do not have a chance, and may never get the chance, to acquire needed skills, permanently hobbling their earnings potential.

We know that more stimulus spending and government programs are a fraught topic. But they are exactly what the country needs. It may be the only way to prevent a renewed downturn. And the only way to create the jobs needed to put Americans back to work. Those are the essential — and missing — ingredients of a sustained recovery.