theOneRepublic - tOR Blog

[Ken Masugi - Director Center for Local Government Claremont Institute] 12:05 am [permalink]
Rock Star Justice Scalia at Chapman Law School Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia showed his rock-star qualities at their peak in his presentations to a Chapman University audience (Marla Jo Fisher, OCR). He delighted his audiences, in an evening lecture and at a moot court reprising Lochner v. New York (it lacked only the music to be a kind of Gilbert and Sullivan parody of the law; “Mama mia!” the justice cried out, when Lochner attorney John Eastman argued that some of the bakers who wanted more work were poor Italian immigrants). The moot court video is here.The justice was on campus to help the law school celebrate its tenth anniversary.

Scalia, however, displayed the deficiencies in his thought that have drawn the fire of Harry V. Jaffa; a shorter version is found in our APSA program here: the legal positivism (while avowing a personal belief in natural law) and the failure to defend his notion of majority rule. Following his evening lecture, I asked him a question about the judiciary’s need to disavow experts, in particular moral ones. That, I said, put him appropriately on the side of the anti-Progressives, but wasn’t he going too far in disavowing any notion of moral judgments other than votes, the power of a majority? After all, the Constitution had notions in it that require some amount of moral judgment: slavery, property rights, and religious liberty, among others. But Scalia replied that all that discussion, apparently meaning even The Federalist and the opinions of the Founders, were superseded by the ratification votes. I responded that there had to be one document they all ratified. “They could read,” he countered, to the roaring approval of the audience. I thought he was simply going in a circle, so I let the next questioner ask his.

While a tremendous asset to American law and the defense of liberty, Scalia undermines the strongest case for his typically sound votes. It is the notion that moral judgments are simply private that has led to a kind of moral solipsism or soft nihilism in the academy and in our courts of law. Scalia rightly assails judges for putting themselves above the law; in putting judges, in a certain sense, below the law he undermines their capacity to exercise their full potential as defenders of American constitutionalism. Judges, as elected officials, need to be part and parcel of the rule of law (equals, neither above nor beneath the law) to be fully engaged in the American experiment of self-government and constitutionalism.

Chapman and especially our Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence John Eastman deserve congratulations for a spectacular day. Incidentally, Justice Scalia taught an early morning constitutional law class in addition to his afternoon and evening labors. [visit Local Liberty Blog]

Zvesper is a significant political theorist of our time, whose recognition has been slight, given that he is an American writing on American politics in Europe. Retired from teaching in England, he now writes from the south of France. [visit Local Liberty Blog]

[Jim Kouri - columnist] - 10:01 am [permalink]
Traffickers Nabbed Smuggling Middle Eastern Aliens Minas Mirza, 42, also known as “Jack” and “Nino,” of Warren, Michigan, pleaded guilty on August 19, 2005, to two counts of alien smuggling involving illegal aliens from Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq and Jordan.

Mirza, who entered his guilty pleas before Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, faces a maximum of 10 years of imprisonment, admitting that he brought two aliens into the United States for cash payments. Mirza also faces a fine of $250,000.

Mirza’s guilty plea arose from his being charged along with three other defendants with smuggling aliens, including citizens of Iraq and other countries in the Middle East, into the United States primarily through South America. The defendants were charged in a five-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, charging them with conspiracy to smuggle aliens into the United States beginning in early 2001 up through the present and bringing unauthorized aliens to the United States for "commercial advantage or private financial gain."

According to officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, defendant Neeran Zaia owned a business called Universal Investment & Law Services, which she used as a front for alleged alien smuggling activities, advertising in Detroit media outlets, including an Arab-language magazine. Ms. Zaia and a coconspirator also reportedly operated “Saudi-Jordan,” a travel agency located in Amman, Jordan, and met there with migrants who wished to enter the United States.

The indictment alleges that Ms. Zaia and a coconspirator recruited aliens in Iraq and Jordan who wished to be taken to the United States in exchange for the payment or promised payment of money often for thousands of dollars. Ms. Zaia promised the migrants that she could procure the appropriate documents to facilitate that travel in exchange for those payments.

Ms. Zaia and other conspirators promised aliens US visas, but after securing partial payments for those visas, instead provided the aliens with visas from countries in South America. The defendants would then transport the aliens to South American countries as a staging area for entry into the United States, and then once the aliens were in South America, they would demand additional money to bring them into the United States.

In the course of his guilty plea, Mirza admitted his role in the conspiracy and specifically to his having coordinated the arrangements to smuggle two aliens into the United States for personal profit and to having personally driven two aliens from Washington, DC to Detroit, Michigan.

[Cliff Kincaid columnist] 12:01 am [permalink]
CNN and the Liberal Propaganda Machine Why were Senate democrats so silent about the NARAL ad that lied about the record of Judge John Roberts? Accuracy in Media revealed that the Democratic media company behind the ad handled the three biggest Senate Democratic wins in 2002—Mark Pryor, Tim Johnson, and Mary Landrieu. The ad, running on CNN despite charges that it is false and deceitful, accused Roberts of supporting anti-abortion terrorism.

AIM also revealed that CNN had a conflict of interest in running the ad because NARAL has been funded by CNN founder Ted Turner, a current board member of CNN parent company Time Warner.

NARAL’s media company, Struble Eichenbaum Communications, boasted that “Our record defeating Republican incumbents is unmatched,” and has deep connections to prominent liberal Democratic Senators, including Patty Murray, who says, “…they'll help you win.”

One of the firm’s founders, Karl Struble, began his career as a Democratic Party operative for Jimmy Carter and was a media consultant to Tom Daschle, who lost his Senate re-election race last year. Struble, who is said to emphasize feelings over issues in his political commercials, has referred to George W. Bush as “the president of the big oil companies” and Dick Cheney as “the Vice President from Halliburton.”

Another fascinating aspect to this controversy is that the NARAL propaganda blitz was preceded by a puff piece in the New York Times about NARAL Executive Director in New York, Kelli Conlin, a 46-year-old lesbian and the mother of two-year-old twins. Conlin, a former President of the New York City Chapter of the National Organization for Women, holds a Masters of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University in Illinois and a B.A. from Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana.

CNN’s airing of the NARAL ad was blasted by Fidelis, a national Catholic-based advocacy group. It said in a statement that “CNN agreed to accept the NARAL attack ad on Judge John Roberts, yet has refused to air a pro-life ad featuring international humanitarian Mother Teresa. In 1998, CNN rejected an ad produced by Right to Life of Michigan featuring a touching interview with Mother Teresa filmed just before her death. At the time, the cable network cited its policy prohibiting issue advertisements.”

The group’s statement quoted Barbara Listing, President of Right to Life of Michigan, as saying, “CNN refused to run our pro-life ad. And yet now sadly, CNN is willing to run a commercial so full of lies from such a strident pro-abortion organization such as NARAL that independent watchdog groups have labeled it ‘false.’”

Fidelis had launched a multi-prong campaign at http://www.CNNBias.org to allow the public to contact CNN executives via e-mail in their offices in Atlanta and New York, urging them to pull the NARAL ad.

The ad was eventually pulled—not by CNN but by NARAL. So CNN’s double-standard remains. [AIM]

[Chuck McVey - Our American Times] 12:02 am [permalink]
Court Gives Ranch to Two Illegal Aliens With apparently questionable charges, an Arizonia court has given a Texas ranch to two illegals. On March 20, WorldNet Daily reported Texas Rangers arrested two members of the citizens' group Ranch Rescue. These two men, one was Casey Nethercott, were accused of pistol-whipping two illegal aliens they had helped detain. However, WorldNetDaily spoke with witnesses who insisted the charges were not only false, but that the couple “were treated only with care.” Said Ranch Rescue spokesman Jack Foote, “This is a massive travesty of justice. These two [foreign] trespassers were treated with the utmost of kindness and respect.” “Foote told WND he was with a team at the ranch of Joe Sutton, south of Hebbronville, when ‘we were surrounded by hundreds of criminal trespassers pouring over the fence and running to hide in grass.’” Foote continued that the couple had initially claimed to be Mexican nationals but were later determined to be from El Salvador . Finally, WND noted “a French freelance photographer who was at the scene, on assignment, corroborated Foote's version of events.” This occurred in Jim Hogg County, Texas which is about 20 or 30 miles from the border.

Move forward to the New York Times, dateline, August 19, Douglas, Arizona: The ranch, a 70-acre property about two miles from the border known as Camp Thunderbird and formerly owned by Casey Nethercott, had been turned over to the two illegal aliens who had accused Nethercott of “harming them” by threatening them and hitting one with a pistol. At the time, Nethercott had been a member of Ranch Rescue which used the ranch in its operations.

"Certainly it's poetic justice that these undocumented workers own this land," said Morris S. Dees Jr., co-founder and chief trial counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. , which represented the immigrants in their lawsuit.

The two illegals, Edwin Alfredo Mancía Gonzáles who lives in Los Angeles and Fátima del Socorro Leiva Medina who lives in the Dallas area, were reported by the NY Times as “happy with the outcome.” They have also applied “for visas that are available to immigrants who are the victims of certain crimes and who cooperate with the authorities.”

There are two points to be made here. First, the factual discrepancies between the two stories are striking. However, both articles agree the two illegals first lied about their nationality, later admitting they were from El Salvador after papers were found on their person. Additionally, the two articles agree that at best there is a question of the illegals’ statement of mistreatment. In the Times’ article, they even admitted they were given “cookies, water and a blanket and let them go after an hour or so.” The final point is the obvious; this case is so outrageous, there must be something else here. However, the fact that the New York Times, which has shown itself to be quite biased in reporting on “undocumented immigrants,” did not report any mitigating facts, raises the strong supposition that none exist – that this is as outrageous as it appears upon the surface.

[Mediacrity] 12:01 am [permalink]
Rich Defends the "Mainstream Mama" Frank Rich's usual bloated, overlong column Sunday comes running to the defence of the Gold Star Moron, Cindy Sheehan, as follows:

Once Ms. Sheehan could no longer be ignored, the Swift Boating began. Character assassination is the Karl Rove tactic of choice, eagerly mimicked by his media surrogates, whenever the White House is confronted by a critic who challenges it on matters of war.

Yeah, Karl and I were discussing that at dinner the other day. Rich goes on to say, "The hope this time was that we'd change the subject to Cindy Sheehan's 'wacko' rhetoric and the opportunistic left-wing groups that have attached themselves to her like barnacles. That way we would forget about her dead son."

Sheehan hasn't forgotten her dead son. That is true. How could she? At every opportunity she spits on his memory, by crassly exploiting his death, and not just to "protest the war" -- hey, I for one would have nothing to say about her if that's all it was. What gets my goat is that she uses his death to advance a far-left and sometimes anti-Semitic agenda that drew endorsements from David Duke and neo-Nazis.

Though she has distanced herself from some of those statements, people who just love her ravings--the anti-American Electronic Iraq website, for example -- were the ones who publicized them in the first place. She didn't lamely disavow her toxic words when people appauded them.

I am sure that Rich has Internet access and can read all the noxious ranting that Sheehan has produced. It doesn't bother him because he agrees with her. He agrees with crap like this, taken directly off not some "pro-Bush blog" but the Electronic Iraq website:

" And the other thing I want him to tell me is 'just what was the noble cause Casey died for?' Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We're not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism."

That's "mainstream" as far as the Frank Rich and the New York Times are concerned. To them, she's not a Gold Star Moron. She's a Mainstream Mama.

UPDATE: The American Thinker makes the following very good point:

Ed Lasky adds:
Notice the whitwashing of the anti-Semitism-swept under the rug. The NYT just cannot report any instances of anti-Semitism (Conyers meeting, this column, Friedman's name-dropping columns involving Saudi princes, etc. ad nauseum. [go to Mediacrity blog]

[Roger Aronoff - columnist ] 12:05 am [permalink]
Will the Air America Scandal Take Off? A scandal involving the liberal Air America radio network has been brewing right under the noses of the mainstream media, and they’ve barely taken notice. Perhaps they’re afraid that their “Great Liberal Hope” on the air may be crashing and burning.

Remember that Air America was last year’s effort to find a liberal Rush Limbaugh, and to help the Democrats regain power. It was meant to help the left regain its rightful place atop the media culture, and to help John Kerry become president. Launched in March of last year, Air America programming is now carried either all or in part on 69 stations and XM Satellite radio. It is a ratings disaster, with its star, Al Franken, trailing Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly by a large margin, even in liberal New York City. And after a bumpy start, it has gone further downhill.

The scandal involves loans totaling $875,000 from the Bronx, New York-based Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club, one of the country’s top social-services organizations, to Air America and Evan Montvel Cohen, 39, who was both CEO and co-founder of Progress Media Inc., the original corporate parent company of Air America, and development director of the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club. According to Jeanette Graves, the president of the club’s executive committee, Cohen had initially impressed the committee by putting on a very successful fundraiser for the organization, which in 2003 received $3.7 million in government grants and more than half a million in government contracts.

As a result, when Cohen requested loans to help out Air America, the committee approved two loans totaling $167,000. In addition, according to what Ms. Graves told the New York Sun, the organization lent Air America another $213,000 “authorized with a rubber stamp of her signature on a document she said she never saw.” And more recently, she added, there was a wire transfer of at least $400,000 from the Gloria Wise Club to Air America without her knowledge. In addition, the executive director of Gloria Wise, Charles Rosen, loaned Mr. Cohen an additional $35,000 of the club’s money, because Cohen said it was for chemotherapy he needed to treat his brain cancer, from which he said he was recovered, and to help his dad, who he said was gravely ill.

In May of 2004, ownership of Air America was transferred from Progress Media to Piquant LLC, which issued a statement last month saying that it had no legal obligation to pay off Progress’s debt, but to preserve Air America’s good name, they would fully reimburse the Gloria Wise Club. The network has reportedly paid $50,000 into an escrow account controlled by the network’s lawyer, and is waiting for directions from the New York City Department of Investigation (DOI).

The matter is now being investigated by the DOI and New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. The DOI announced in June that it was suspending about $10 million worth of grants and contracts to the Gloria Wise Club, since its top officials had approved “significant inappropriate transactions and falsified documents that were submitted to various city agencies.” Jeanette Graves told the New York Sun that thanks to contracts and funds obtained from other sources, all of the social programs, which serve 20,000 kids, elderly residents and people with disabilities, are running fine at this point.

Stories about this scandal have appeared in the New York Post, the Daily News and the Washington Times, WorldNetDaily, NewsMax and several blogs. The New York Sun had the most thorough recounting of the details of the transactions.

But the silence by the left speaks volumes. Where is the righteous indignation from Maureen Dowd or Paul Krugman of the New York Times? The Times belatedly ran one story on the investigation, and the Washington Post carried one AP story. Why no reports on NBC, CBS or ABC?

Deborah Simmons, deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Times, tells the inspiring story of Gloria Brown Wise, “the first woman to participate in the early days of the lunch-counter sit-ins,” later to come back to New York where she began her charitable work leading to the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club. She wonders about the silence from Julian Bond, the Congressional Black Caucus, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Simmons eloquently writes that “somebody of consequence ought to be speaking up on behalf of the Boys and Girls Clubs…After all, there is far more at stake than the sullying of some lefty media organ.”

[Eric Hogue - radio talk show host KTKZ - Sacramento] 6:15 am [permalink]
Cindy Sheehan is Rosa Parks; Theft! Liberals have been sending so much taxpayer money to Blacks for so long, do they think they own them?

In an earlier posting, I mentioned the 'theft' of the African American cultural icons and heroes by liberals. From Bill Clinton being the 'First Black American President', to 'same-sex marriage' being a civil rights issue - you'd think that Black Americans would be growing tired of this rhetoric and "cultural theft".

The most recent liberal 'theft' has been Cindy Sheehan as 'Rose Parks of the Anti-Iraqi War movement'. I thought I was the only member of the media to cry out over this ridiculous comparison, and the wholesale cultural shoplifting of the African American Hall of Fame Icons.

Today, I found this blog page entitled, Bob Parks' "Black and Right". Parks is a former Republican congressional candidate (California 24th District), ex-Navy, single dad, graphic designer and television producer, life-long New England Patriots fan, and member/writer for the National Advisory Council of Project 21.

Do yourself a favor, read Bob Parks' blog and pass it alone on the blogosphere. Every African American should be outraged over Cindy Sheehan's theft of the Rose Parks lore and history. [Hogue Blog - email: onair@ktkz.com]

[Mediacrity] 9:01 am [permalink]
David Duke Boosts Sheehan Crackpot Cindy Sheehan, who has been trampling on the memory of her late son in her demonstration near the Bush ranch, has a new pal who loves her hate-America and often anti-Semitic ramblings -- the Gauleiter himself, David Duke. This from Christopher Hitchens, drawing a swift slap across the face today in, of course, Counterpunch.

Sheehan is clearly an off-the-charts nut. Yet the New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media are continuing to provide this disgrace a forum, ignoring her harebrained rambling and Jew-baiting. Note this piece in the Times today.

Speaking of the Times, here we have something else for its Empty Suit "public editor," Barney Calame, to ignore. Just to be sure he ignores it, I'm sending a copy of this item to Calame's email address. He has what some people believe is a computer robot who spits out form email responses to all those pesky complaints, while he snoozes on the divan. But no, actually Calame responds to each one himself. They only seem composed by a robot! [go to Mediacrity blog]

[Nick Winter-administrative editor - found in the ebag] 12:11 am [permalink]
Cindy Sheehan, Liberal Media Delight: a couple of comments to