There are still these things called newspapers out there. Yeah, I was surprised too – I gave up hardcopy papers way back when dissent was still patriotic. But out for a Sunday lunch at one of our favorite places in lovely Manhattan Beach, I noticed the front section of the Los Angeles Times lying forlornly on a counter between the napkins and the hot sauce. Someone had left it behind. The price being right, I decided to see what I’ve been missing.

The first thing I found was a long story on how the conservative movement is struggling to prove that it is not infused with racism. I was unaware of that the burden of proof is upon the accused to demonstrate its innocence, but then I remembered what I was reading. The banner picture of Joe Wilson summed up the way the article would combine dubious preconceptions with the lamest kind of liberal conventional wisdom and ignorance of the most basic elements of the conservative movement. (more…)

Word on the street is that the Left, the “equal pay, pro-women” left is desperately searching for lewd photos of Hannah Giles.

Savor that bit of irony for a moment.

The Left is seeking to employ sexism as a way to take down yet another young woman. A rationale after Ike Turner’s own heart! Leftist ideology replaces “barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen” as the modern-day female prison; step out of line and you will be virtually and emotionally abused by the burdensome patriarchal undercurrent that powers this political rationale. They’re only for choice if that “choice” is the genocide of the female sex; they’re only for female empowerment if it doesn’t disrupt the fragile liberal status quo – and Giles is the most recent example.

As a young woman, I can say that sexist behavior so often perpetrated by the left is a major reason why I and many other women left the Democratic party. It’s gross to know that a bunch of crusty, old, pee-paw Democratic operatives are, at this second, scouring the web for nudie Giles shots as a way to discredit her and O’Keefe’s work.

(more…)

Americans for Limited  Government has chosen to launch an outrageous, reckless  attack and smear campaign against an NBC News employee. Faced with irrefutable evidence that our employee did nothing more than ask to be removed from an email mailing list, the organization has maliciously published a fabricated email.

Our employee never sent any such email.. She is completely innocent of the outrageous charges and is being used by an organization to make a self-serving point. This is a  shameless, hateful and defaming act which should be roundly denounced.

On Wednesday, a video was posted explaining the theoretical reasons why excessive  government spending hurts growth. Just in time for the weekend, here is the second installment in the two-part series. Using cross-country data and citing scholarly research, the video reviews specific evidence on the negative impact of bloated government. Share it with your friends, of course, but especially send it any statists in your address book. Can’t hurt to expose them to the truth.

ALG Statement in Response to NBC “Bite me, Jew Boy” Email –

From Politico:

NBC News president Steve Capus fired back at Americans for Limited Government Friday, after the conservative group published an email allegedly from NBC producer Jane Stone to its director of media outreach Alex Rosenwald, with one line: “Bite me Jew Boy.”

“I’m still in shock, and outraged that this reckless organization would go out with such a defamatory, irresponsible statement,” Capus told POLITICO. “We have done a complete email analysis, all of our IT, all of our records.”

Here’s what both sides agree on: Stone responded yesterday to a mass email from ALG. (more…)

**UPDATE** Politico: NBC Vehemently Denies Allegations Over Anti-Semitic Email

**UPDATE 2** ALG Statement in Response to Alleged NBC Email

**UPDATE 3** NBC News Statement

**UPDATE 4**Group Stands Ground Over Claims That NBC Employee Issued Anti-Semitic Email

Apparently NBC “Dateline” producer Jane Stone or someone else who has access to her Blackberry has a problem with groups that oppose ACORN and with an ethnocultural minority.

When Stone received an email urging Congress to defund ACORN from Alex Rosenwald, director of media outreach for Americans for Limited Government, the following sentence came back to Rosenwald from Stone’s account: “Bite me, Jew Boy!”

Bite me Jew boy! –

Americans for Limited Government released the following statement:

Americans for Limited Government does not contend that NBC or its parent company GE, are anti-Semitic. What is highly disturbing, however, is that there clearly is a culture at NBC that has allowed this person who clearly has issues to go unchecked.

Ms Stone claims she did not send the offensive email. If that is not the case, we at ALG call upon her to help ascertain who did send it using her Blackberry and her email address. If Ms Stone did, in fact, send it, we at ALG call upon Ms Stone to apologize to Mr. Rosenwald, and we call upon the NBC hierarchy above Ms Stone to join her in issuing that apology.

I am told by fellow right-leaning journalists that getting rude and offensive emails from reporters in the mainstream media is a fairly common occurrence. (more…)

One of my favorite features of the Newseum in Washington, DC is the daily display of newspaper front pages from around the world. Today, Canada’s National Post was a standout with Alex Spillius’ coverage of a clash between Presidents Obama and Sarkozy.

obama sarkozy pdf –

Obama: “We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.”

Mere days before Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry are scheduled to introduce their version of controversial global warming “cap-and-trade” legislation — if several months after EPA whistle-blower Dr. Alan Carlin drew attention to the fact that the recent published scientific literature presents a decided tilt against prevailing “global warming” scientific wisdom — the New York Times has run a piece diminishing Dr. Carlin’s stature and findings.

This meme is picked up by those running with the Times’ “news”. For example, today’s trade press outlet “E&E Daily” styles their #2 story this way: “Employee lacked credentials for endangerment views”.

That’s odd.

Carlin has been with EPA since its inception in the early 1970s, having earned a degree in physics from CalTech. His lack of the same qualifications implicitly possessed by our law-givers comes from his having gone on to attain a PhD in economics from MIT.

This is different than the Times’ (and others’) treatment of and lack of interest in the academic training of the individual regularly cited without such “just an economist” commentary as a leading and essentially unimpeachable authority, the economist and former railway engineer Rajendra Pachauri. The Times has even hailed Pachauri in the past as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s chief “climatologist”. Climatology is a specialty field if ever there was one but a qualification which Pachauri, for all of his other virtues toiling for years in the UN vineyards, attained by virtue of being appointed to head the IPCC. This is unfairly disparate treatment.

(more…)

The point of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was to encourage national economic growth. The point was to curb unemployment. The point was to help small businesses be what D.C. has forever claimed they are—the national economic backbone. The point was to stimulate the economy… not the federal government.

But that’s what we’ve got. A federal government stimulated and growing by the day.

The Recovery Act was doomed from the start. Increasing spending while cutting taxes is a great way to grow a deficit and create future economic problems, not save an economy. The stimulus money never really had a shot at creating 3 million jobs, as was promised, and have them be sustainable. But the stimulus is failing even by the flawed standards of its creators!

With national unemployment at 9.7%, the USA Today reported Thursday morning that the number of civilian workers in federal government has increased by 25,000 since December of 2008:

Fourteen of the top federal agencies responsible for spending under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act say they’ve hired about 3,000 workers with stimulus money. That’s helped fuel the continued growth of the federal government, which increased by more than 25,000 employees, or 1.3%, since December 2008, according to the latest quarterly report. During that time, the ranks of the nation’s unemployed increased by nearly 4 million, Labor Department statistics show. Overall, there are about 2 million federal workers, the data show.

Thirteen agencies that report stimulus-related administrative expenses separately on their weekly spending reports say they’ve spent $186.8 million so far on salaries and other overhead. Those agencies have reported spending $46.1 billion in stimulus funds overall.

(more…)

United States Senator Roland Burris (D-Blagojevich) went on Chicago’s popular Don and Roma show yesterday to defend his vote to maintain taxpayer subsidies to ACORN. Yes, this is a real interview and not a comedy sketch…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

In the first two of what will inevitably be a multitude of ACORN Baltimore lawsuit related media hits, Andrew Breitbart spoke with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News Channel last night while Hannah Giles (and her attorney Kelly Shackelford) spoke with Sean Hannity:

The clips give a basic overview of a lot of arguments that we’ll be seeing as the case unfolds. Breitbart chastises ACORN for infringing on free speech, Giles finds ACORN’s arbitrary $5 million dollar figure “funny,” and both make the case that it is at least a bit ironic that ACORN plans to waste more of our tax dollars in a law suit against the people who exposed the extent to which they are wasting our tax dollars….

(more…)

Hitting the wires in a few minutes:

 ACORN Favorable            15%

Unfavorable                      67%

No opinion                          19%

 By 3-1 margin (51% to 17%), voters favor cutting off all federal funds

 By 6-1 margin (64% to 10%) voters agree with census bureau decision to cut
ties

 Only 20% believe the investigations of ACORN are politically motivated…
57% say they’re the result of illegal activity

The activities of the radical, corrupt to the core, left-wing Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has tangled itself up in an infinitely complex web of deceit, thuggery, and questionable financial dealings, are long overdue for a RICO probe.

Recent well-publicized events that I need not recount here show ACORN’s criminal propensities. In a moment I’ll explain how ACORN’s financial affairs ought to raise a red flag for investigators at the U.S. Department of Justice, but first some background.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which was created to prosecute organized crime, allows the federal government to go after individuals who commit any two RICO-related crimes over a decade. The law allows courts to convict persons if it can be shown that they committed those crimes as part of an illegal enterprise and can order disgorgement of their ill-gotten gains from the enterprise.

RICO is the right tool for the job.

Perhaps it’s the only tool for the job because the ACORN network is deliberately structured to deter scrutiny. Its nebulous legal status and opaque corporate structure allow it to keep its activities largely hidden from public view.

(more…)

The NEA apology from the White House is laughable, at best.  Again, if this was just all a big misunderstanding then why was a representative from one of the country’s largest political advertising firms involved?  And pushing the health care agenda on company time?

I believe the following information might help explain Bim Ayandele’s involvement.  Not only did he help set up the Office of Public Engagement, but before joining a division of one of the largest PR firms in the world — which specializes in “grassroots organization”, “issues management” and “crisis communications” — Ayandele:

served as the Director of Cures Now, a Los Angeles based non-profit organization leveraging a coalition of actors, directors, producers, musicians, and writers to promote the rapid, responsible and ethical advancement of science-related social issues, such as stem-cell research and diabetes awareness.

It seems Mr. Ayandele’s expertise is in “leveraging” the entertainment industry to “promote” health care related issues. A skill which would have been useful should, say, the White House or another interested third party wish to get NEA grant recipients to push President Obama’s health care agenda.

(more…)

As soon as James O’Keefe’s explosive video footage was unveiled two weeks ago — shaking ACORN to its core — various leftists and their allies in the mainstream media have fixated on a singular mission: smearing the messenger.

O’Keefe was not just targeted by MSM backbenchers, but the Big Three: New York Times, Washington Post, and the Associated Press.

The results weren’t even close.  It was a lopsided victory for O’Keefe, as all three titans of media issued corrections on damning allegations.

According to the Big Three, O’Keefe was a racist who targeted ACORN because they register minorities to vote, and he’s already been proven to use editing tricks to deceive in his attacks on Planned Parenthood.

Oops.

On Monday the 21st, Big Hollywood reported on a May 12 meeting of 60 artists with the NEA and the White House to help “promote the administration’s agenda” — the one where The Department of Alternative Thinking was proposed…

Today, the Washington Times compiled a long list of the invited artists who are grant recipients, and…

Fox News followed up with this report:

“Rappers, dancers, writers and other activists from around the country were invited to a May 12 session next door to the White House where they were “challenged to come up with promising and attractive ideas about how artists can work to promote the administration’s agenda.” (more…)

Statement from the NEA:

Following is a statement from the National Endowment for the Arts. Please let me know if you have further questions.

This afternoon Yosi Sergant submitted his resignation from the National Endowment for the Arts. His resignation has been accepted and is effective immediately. (more…)

FINAL UPDATE 9/24/2009 6:50 PM Eastern time

The senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), asked the IRS to probe ACORN – and asked that ACORN be dropped from the Combined Federal Campaign, a charitable program for government workers.

Grassley, long known as Capitol Hill’s foremost policeman of the nonprofit community, is expected to make his formal announcement this evening. In a letter the senator indicated he has been concerned about ACORN since at least 2006.

Grassley sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman earlier today and a separate, shorter letter to John Berry, Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Both letters are available here.

In the letter to Berry, he asks that the ACORN Institute “and any other ACORN affiliates, particularly any of those reviewed by my staff, be prohibited from participating in the CFC. The acts perpetrated by ACORN employees were impermissible and should not be supported with CFC dollars.”

CFC refers to the Combined Federal Campaign, which bills itself as “the world’s largest and most successful annual workplace charity campaign.” CFC is a federally administered program that channels donations from federal civilian, postal and military employees into causes deemed worthwhile. It is unclear how much money the ACORN network receives through CFC. (more…)