From The Pilot:

A video of Rep. Bob Etheridge physically confronting a college student in Washington brought back unpleasant memories for one former Moore County resident.

Brandon Leslie, who moved away seven years ago and is now an attorney in Oxford, Miss., said he had an encounter with the now seven-term Democratic congressman from Lillington almost 14 years ago.

In the fall of 1996, when Leslie was a senior at Pinecrest High School, he said he met Etheridge at a Pinecrest football game. Etheridge – then the state superintendent of public instruction – was challenging incumbent Republican David Funderburk for his congressional seat. At the time, Moore County was part of the 2nd District, which Etheridge now represents.

Leslie said he introduced himself to Etheridge and asked him about his stance on a particular education program. He said Etheridge didn’t answer his question, so he pressed him two more times.

“And that’s when he grabbed me by the shoulders, he shook me, and I’ll never forget it, he said, ‘Son, you need to learn to respect your elders,’” he said by phone on Wednesday. “I was just so taken aback, I think my jaw just dropped, and he walked off.”

Leslie said he was angrier about Etheridge’s attitude and “patronizing” tone than the physical contact.

“It wasn’t to hurt me, it wasn’t to harm me,” he says. “It was that he was irritated and wanted to get my attention.”

Leslie said the incident caused somewhat of a firestorm at the time, and he was contacted by a few newspapers, but no stories ever appeared.

Continue reading here. In 1996, newspapers could get away with ignoring a story like this. Today, not so much.

A congressional hearing on foreign ships in the Gulf of Mexico turned into a full-scale attack on the Obama administration’s response to the crisis — led by the committee’s Democrats.

Thursday’s hearing came as a growing chorus of critics has accused the Obama administration of unwisely turning away international help for the oil spill cleanup and failing to issue a temporary waiver of the protectionist Jones Act. The hearing came as Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) criticized the administration for bureaucratic hurdles.

Witnesses from the Coast Guard and Maritime Administration attempted to rebut the claims, but their assurances fell on deaf ears. (Video of the hearing.)

At one point, Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) became visibly upset and scolded Rear Adm. Kevin Cook. Moments earlier, the Coast Guard official came under fire from another committee Democrat for not having enough skimming vessels off the coast of Florida.

“I want to make sure we sense the urgency of this moment,” Cummings said. “We have a window of opportunity to save our beaches, save some of our birds, fish and wildlife. And I’m just wondering whether there is that sense of urgency. … When you say something like ‘We’re trying to make arrangements,’ I hate to say it, but that’s not good enough.”

Other Democrats were equally as harsh.

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On Wednesday, I posted a piece, drawing attention to what is now obvious even to Maureen Dowd: that, as an executive, Barack Obama is woefully incompetent. In that piece, I noted the propensity of the American people for electing to the Presidency men with ample executive experience – as generals, governors, cabinet secretaries, and the like. I remarked as well on the poor performance of the four Presidents they elected who did not have prior executive experience; and I suggested that it is time for the Republicans to ask who, in their number, has demonstrated a willingness and an ability to take charge and assume what the authors of The Federalist called responsibility.

In the course of the next few days, I propose to say a word or two about three of these Republicans. I will not discuss Sarah Palin, who displayed the requisite vigor and dispatch in her brief stint as Governor of Alaska, and I will not discuss Tim Pawlenty, who, over the last seven years, has shown genuine capacity as Governor of Minnesota. That worthy task I will leave to others – who know more than I do. Today, I will look at Bobby Jindal, Governor of  Louisiana.

Jindal is a remarkable young man. Born in 1971 to parents who migrated to Baton Rouge from India, he entered the freshman class at Brown University when he was twenty, was admitted to Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School when he was twenty-three, and that same year was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at New College, Oxford – where he took an M. Litt. in political science and wrote a dissertation entitled “A Needs-Based Approach to Health Policy.”

Instead of studying medicine or law, Jindal returned from Oxford to Louisiana, became Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals when he was 25 and President of the University of Louisiana system when he was 28, then shifted to Washington, DC where he became Assistant Secretary of  Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation at the age of thirty.

Two years later, he was back in Louisiana – where, in 2003, he ran for Governor in the state’s open primary, led in the first round, and lost in the runoff; where, in 2004, he was elected to Congress with 78% of the vote; where in 2006, was re-elected with 88% of the vote; and where, in 2007, he was chosen Governor, the first non-white man to have been elected to the governorship in that state and the first non-incumbent ever to have made it to the top without a runoff.

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Today, in 1815, allied forces under the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. It was a very near-run thing.

June 25th is fast approaching and I hope this year, given the international tensions all around us, we pause and consider that it is not just another day but the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

When the 300,000 troops of the North Korean People’s Army supported by tanks and artillery violently smashed across the 38th parallel to invade and overrun most of the South, they unleashed a conflagration that would grow to be a three year bloodbath pitting the forces of Communism and the Western Democracies against each other for the first time.  (It would also be the first time that the nascent United Nations would commit military forces to halt the aggression of one nation against another, showing that the UN must be backed by military will to be effective.)  After initial see-saw fighting down to Pusan, then up to the Yalu River after the Inchon landings, and then back down again after the massive Chinese intervention, the fighting settled into a brutal stalemate along a line that eventually would mimic the original pre-war border.  When the fighting finally ended in July 1953, the war left in its wake four million military and civilian casualties, including 37,000 American dead and another 100,000 wounded.  South Korea’s army would suffer almost 1 million casualties, the other UN nations’ a combined 17,000 as well. An estimated 520,000 North Koreans and another 900,000 Chinese were casualties.

One of the wounded from that war was a young Second Lieutenant Jack Schaeffer from the 1st US Marine Division, my father.   In his more reflective moments, usually after a pint or three, he would tell me bits and pieces of what he saw and did there.  Needless to say, they were disturbing.  And the one thing I believe always went through his mind was this: was the sacrifice made by him and his fellow soldiers worth it?

The answer lies in the contrast between the two nations six decades later.  The tragic fact is that every day 23 million North Koreans are forced to endure an horrific existence in what can justifiably be classified a slave state.  I will not get into the nitty-gritty of the starvation, exposure, poor health conditions, the physical and mental abuse, the forced labor camps, and general privations these isolated people suffer as this has been well-documented.

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More rough tactics were on display last night in Washington DC as a hotheaded campaign workerfor the Alexi Giannoulias campaign for Senator of Illinois confronted a man with a video camera at a fundraising event.

The event took place on the rooftop of an apartment building in Washington DC which is a public space for residents of the building and their guests.  The unidentified camera man has stated that he was, in fact, the guest of a friend of his who lives in the building.  Even if one stipulates that the campaign had the right to the section of the roof that was set aside for the event, the way in which the situation was handled certainly calls into question the judgement and temperment of the people candidate Giannoulias surrounds himself with.

As seen earlier this week in the outrageous response by Rep. Bob Etheridge to two college students with cameras who asked him if he supported “The Obama Agenda”, Democrats seem more and more reactionary when they see a person with a video camera near by.  In the words of a seasoned DC insider:  ”The heat is on.”

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All warfare is intertwined with politics in some way.  But in our latest edition of Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson talks with acclaimed author Sebastian Junger (famous for The Perfect Storm) about the experience of war.

Beginning in 2007, Junger embedded for fourteen months with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, making five trips to the Korengal Valley of eastern Afghanistan, a location that saw more combat than any other in the Afghan theater.

In the end, Junger finds war to both insanely exciting and fraught with complications.  Whatever political rationale there is for war disappears once fighting begins – what’s left is the bond of the platoon and the willingness to do ones job, no matter the consequences.

As a news man Junger says that it is impossible to be objective when covering war, and that often that is okay.  He discusses the role of the media and its biases in reporting on the war.

Junger argues that Afghanistan is a winnable war, but only if those involved have the political will to do what it takes to see a victory.  He points out that all European countries have felt the threat of Al Qaeda, and warns that if we give up on putting Afghanistan back together that we will all feel that threat again.

Watch the full show below.  Also, consider joining our Facebook Page or following us on Twitter.

Clinton: President Obama has spoken out against the law because he thinks that the federal government should be determining immigration policy. And the Justice Department, under his direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act. But the more important commitment that President Obama has made is to try to introduce and pass comprehensive immigration reform. That is what we need. Everyone knows it, and the President is committed to doing it.

The number of congressional Democrats who oppose the Federal Communications Commission’s bid to reclassify broadband as a traditional telecommunications service has reached seventy-six.  Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, last week urged Commission chief Julius Genachowski to search for a legislative solution in the adoption of so-called Network Neutrality rules.

Stabenow, whose disapproval of the FCC’s controversial undertaking promises to spur similar statements from colleagues in the upper chamber of Congress, asked Genachowski and his four fellow commissioners–two of whom are Democrats, and both approve of the measure–to stay the implementation of the agency’s reclassification proposal until Congress can revise the Communications Act.

“I urge the Commission to withdraw its Title II classification effort and work with the Chairs of the appropriate Congressional committees to develop [a] suitable and clear statute that will help us achieve our national broadband goals,” Stabenow wrote in a letter to Genachowski.

Democratic legislators chairing the relevant communications, commerce and technology committees in the House and Senate said last month that Congress will soon “launch a process to develop proposals” to overhaul the bill, which established in 1934 the FCC’s jurisdiction over traditional telecommunications services. Polls indicate that legislative action on net neutrality is slightly more palatable–though only marginally, and still faces broad public skepticism–than the FCC reengineering the regulatory framework of its own accord.

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One way or the other, one of us is going to go down. President Obama, by insisting that he will go to the mat on his “green jobs” agenda, which is simply central planning with a coat of green paint, indicates he will risk his presidency on getting the cap-and-trade, gas tax and windmill mandate through the Senate (with a stranglehold on domestic energy production to boot), then through the House again on a conferenced bill.

If he succeeds he will have doomed us; if he fails, politically the effort will have finally, fully exposed him for what he is: a Power Grabbing Statist whose economics are recklessly dogmatic while at the same time ignoring those societies he claims are his model.

Obama reminded us how as a candidate he set out what he called a set of principles, which he acknowledged were passed by the House, in a vote almost precisely one year ago today.

Here is what he said then about cap-and-trade, which the House passed. This discussion occurred in the apparent context of how to mount his and his team’s big-ticket agenda items:

“The problem is, can you get the American people to say this is really important, and force their representatives to do the right thing. That requires mobilizing a citizenry…And climate change is a great example.”

You got it: this is the community organizer, refusing to allow a crisis to go to waste, but instead seeking to use it to do what he’s trying to do.

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There is very little that can bring Republicans and Democrats together these days, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing considering the natural inclination of both over the last few years has been to spend money like it’s an Olympic event and they’re going for the gold. But every once in a while the two parties experience a sort of harmonic convergence and come together to do something that is actually based upon long-term thinking, not electoral advantage or political gamesmanship. Such is the case with the F-35 Strike Force Fighter, America’s next generation of fighter plane. But this wouldn’t be Washington, DC, were there not fight to be had somewhere, and in this case how best save money – in the short-term or the long-term. Therein lies where we join our story…

Normally the idea of Republican Leader John Boehner and liberal stalwart Dennis Kucinich agreeing on something would mean it would have to be about what time it is or from which direction the sun rises, but only sometimes. To say those two, and similarly aligned Members of Congress, regularly agree would be akin to saying the Washington Nationals have some room for improvement as a baseball team. But on this issue they are simpatico. Why?

Safe to say they didn’t lose a bet.  The real reason is quite simple – long-term savings potential.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) estimates that if what Boehner, Kucinich and ideological brethren voted for were to become law, the F-35 project could see savings of up to 12 percent in the long-term.  While 12 percent may not be enough to get you off the couch for a TV priced at $500, we’re talking about significant savings when dealing with billions of dollars.

So what is this project? It is the decision of who is going to make the next generation engine for the F-35. While this doesn’t seem like it should be an issue inspiring any sort of controversy, it wouldn’t be Washington if it didn’t.

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Authored with Ivan Osorio

Yesterday, the United Auto Workers union (UAW) named Bob King as its new president. Does this mean a change in direction for one of America’s most powerful unions? Not likely.

King, a UAW vice president before yesterday and a member of the union’s executive board, was described by Time magazine late last year as being “Picked – Not Elected – to Lead [the] UAW.” As Time writer Joseph Szczesny noted, “For more than 60 years, the UAW’s top leadership has blocked attempts to permit union members to vote directly for the union presidency.” Instead, the union’s executive board has picked the UAW president since the late 1940s through closed caucuses.

It’s not like the union doesn’t need change. For several decades, lavish compensation packages and restrictive work rules have helped make the Big Three Detroit automakers uncompetitive, especially in the face of increased foreign competition. Yet you wouldn’t know it from the parade of old faces at the UAW’s recent convention. Listening to their comments, it’ s no wonder why Michigan has the worst unemployment in the nation—14 percent compared to 9.7 percent average for the entire country.)

AFL-CIO President Trumka pushed the class-war rhetoric so common among labor bosses. He thundered, “We cannot ease off the fight against trade agreements that favor Wall Street over workers throughout the world.” He applauded the UAW for “fighting back” against corporate America and hostile politicians, and called on the automakers to give back concessions made by the UAW.

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Elections have consequences.

In 28 states across the U.S., unionized workers can be forced to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment. If workers refuse to pay the union, the union can order them to be fired from their jobs.

However, since 1947, the so-called Taft-Hartley Amendments to the National Labor Relations Act (passed over Pres. Harry Truman’s veto) enabled state legislatures to enact “Right-to-Work” laws which outlaw forced unionism. Currently, there are 22 “right-to-work” states…Unless Congressman Brad Sherman gets his way.

It’s not the first time he’s pushed it.  In 2008, he actually introduced a bill that went nowhere.  However, this time union-bought backed Democrat Congressman Brad Sherman’s effort to end Right-to-Work laws must be take a little more seriously.

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The ACORN apologists over at Media Matters were hard at work last week as they took time to once again whitewash or ignore the truth in order to protect ACORN. Even though Media Matters claims that my article titled “Radical Judicial Nominee Jack McConnell’s Disturbing ACORN Connections” is “nothing new” and the connections I drew in the article “between ACORN and progressives” are “even weaker than previous conservative attacks,” Media Matters apparently felt a need to try to refute it. Why write about “nothing new”?

Unfortunately for Media Matters, its arguments only work as long as its readers are content with ignoring key facts about ACORN and its role in politics, elections and government itself.

As stated in my previous article posted at many websites, including BigGovernment.com, there are several disturbing connections involving Jack McConnell, the lead paint litigation, and ACORN. Keeping in mind that this is the same “news organization” that still insists that ACORN’s alter ego Project Vote was totally separate from ACORN when Barack Obama worked for them, I will let ACORN’s own words explain its involvement in the Sherwin-Williams California case. The excerpt below is from page 59 of an ACORN report available here (click to enlarge).

Why would Media Matters ignore ACORN’s own words?

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The Center for Immigration Studies recently put out a study arguing that immigration has had negative effects on California. One of their measures was a comparison of how many people in the state were receiving some form of welfare compared to other states. I found that data (see Table 3 of the report) very interesting, but not because of the immigration debate (I’ll leave others to debate that topic). Instead, I wanted to get a better understanding of the variations in government dependency. Is there a greater willingness to sign up for income redistribution programs, all other things being equal, from one state to another? The “all other things being equal” caveat is very important, of course, since the comparison produced by CIS may simply be an indirect measure of the factors that determine welfare eligibility. One obvious (albeit crude) way of addressing this problem is to subtract each state’s poverty rate to get a measure of how many non-poor people are signed up for income-redistribution programs. Let’s call this the Moocher Index.

A few quick observations. Why is Vermont (by far) the state with the largest proportion of non-poor people signed up for welfare programs? I have no idea, but maybe this explains why they elect people like Bernie Sanders. But it’s not just Vermont. Four of the top five states on the Moocher Index are from the Northeast, as are six of the top nine. Mississippi also scores poorly, coming in second, but many other southern states do well. Indeed, if we reversed the ranking and did a Self-Reliance Index, Virginia, Florida, and Georgia would score in the top 10. Nevada, arguably the nation’s most libertarian state, is the state with the lowest number of non-poor people signed up for welfare.

Let’s now emphasize several caveats.

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On the morning of June 16, 2010, the Washington Post published a well reasoned editorial opposing federal mandated forced unionism on state and local public employees; specifically, first responders such as police officers and fire fighters.  Could this moment of clarity by Washington Post editors have reassured investors, resulting in its stock doubling in one second as noted in the Drudge Report?

Probably not, but that’s no reason not to welcome the Post, even if momentarily, back to the real world. And, welcome its opposition to another Obama-Reid-Pelosi payback to Big Labor that attacks states rights and limits police officers’ and fire fighters’ freedom at work.    Even, the Post rejects this power grab:

ALL ACROSS America, state and local governments are struggling with recession-induced budget crises … Many public employees have been promised pay, pensions and health benefits that tax bases cannot sustain even in good times. As a result, voters and political leaders of both parties are rethinking the costs and benefits of public-sector unionism.

Except in Congress, it seems. Senate Majority Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) is pushing to federalize labor relations between state and local governments and some public-sector unions. … the bill is supported not only by Mr. Reid but also by Republicans, including the soon-to-retire Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.). It has a good chance of passing if the Senate can fit it on its busy calendar.

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For far too long, Americans have watched as the Democrat Majority in Washington has made promise after promise that they would responsibly manage the taxpayer’s dollars – but one promise we haven’t seen many members keep is to take action to reduce our ever exploding deficit by actually cutting wasteful spending.

Many Americans have lost their jobs or have seen their pay and benefits reduced. Our nation’s families and small business job providers are all tightening their belts – all while they look at what’s happening in Washington in disbelief.

Spending is out-of-control. We have a national debt over $13 trillion; an annual budget deficit of nearly $1.6 trillion; and within the first eight months of our current fiscal year, the federal government has accumulated $935 billion in deficit spending. Currently, we are right on track to meet last year’s annual deficit record of $1.4 trillion. American taxpayers want spending reduced.

That is why Republican Whip Eric Cantor and the House Republicans have launched the YouCut project – where we go over the heads of Nancy Pelosi and her allies in Congress to engage the American people in the effort to reduce the deficit and cut wasteful spending now.

YouCut gives Americans the opportunity to vote each week for one of five wasteful spending programs and Republicans will force a vote on the one receiving the most votes. As of this week, Americans have casted over 850,000 votes on YouCut programs.

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In politics, temperament matters – it matters a great deal, as Barack Obama has unwittingly shown us time and again.

Some women and men love to posture, talk, debate, and negotiate. Temperamentally, they are suited for a legislative role. It is said – only partly in jest– that, in Washington, DC, the most dangerous space to occupy is that which lies between a United States Senator and a microphone.

Other women and men – think of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, and Ronald Reagan – were born to take charge. When Harry Truman put a sign on his desk, reading, “The buck stops here,” he knew what he was talking about. As Alexander Hamilton observed in The Federalist, it is vital that we have in our Constitution a unitary executive because, in human affairs, emergencies are commonplace; secrecy, vigor, and dispatch are often requisite; and, in such circumstances, there has to be someone in high office able, willing, and even eager to take responsibility for the conduct of affairs.

Americans have an instinctive understanding of what is at stake. Ordinarily, they choose as Presidents men with executive experience – men with a track record in directing affairs that can be judged. George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower had been prominent generals before they were elected Presidents, and Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and Theodore Roosevelt had also demonstrated an aptitude for leadership in war.

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, the younger Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George H. W. Bush had held the vice-presidency. Jefferson and Van Buren had also been Secretary of State, and the same can be said for James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and James Buchanan. Monroe had also been Secretary of War, and this was true was well for William Howard Taft. Herbert Hoover had managed relief efforts in Europe early in and after World War I; he had served as Food Administrator within the United States after we entered that war; and, from 1921 to 1928, he served as Secretary of Commerce.

Many of the others elected to the presidency had previously held gubernatorial office.

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Today, in 1953, workers in East Germany rose up against the communist regime. The Soviet Union dispatched an army division to deal with the uprising. The US yawned.