Big Government was forwarded the following statement in an email:

I am Judy Ancel, director of the Institute for Labor Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. While my university prepares its response, I feel compelled to answer the attacks by Andrew Breitbart on my character. I am speaking as an individual and certainly not for UMKC. I am speaking out of my strong lifelong commitment to educating working people to better understand the world they live in. Labor education is a vital part of anyone’s education. All Americans, especially our youth, need to understand the contributions working people have made and make in building our communities and nation. Labor education gives them the skills and vision to make a better world.

My students and I are outraged at Mr. Breitbart’s invasion of our classroom and his attempts to intimidate us and my colleagues at the university. Mr. Breitbart’s chop shop manufactured videos from 30 hours of classroom recordings that were posted for the course, “Labor, Politics, and Society,” on the university’s Blackboard system. Presumably these were delivered to him by a student, in possible violation of the University Standards of Conduct and the Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. These videos were recorded for the use of students enrolled in this course, and for them only. Breitbart disassembled the material, and reassembled it; arranging them to give the appearance that instructors of the class advocate violence. This is in fact the opposite of the position both instructors took in class. Any examination of labor’s past would be incomplete without discussion of violence, (which for the most part was directed at workers) and analysis of its roots. At no time did my co-instructor, Don Giljum, nor I advocate violence.

There’s no doubt that Breitbart’s attacks are politically motivated, part of a broad agenda to weaken unions and the public sector as well as public education. His fabrications have been exposed numerous times in the mainstream media. Yet he and his echo chamber at Fox News continue to cause great harm to educators and other public servants.

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If you tuned in to Rush Limbaugh yesterday, you probably caught El Rushbo talking about Andrew’s new book.  Rush reminds us that Andrew, yes, Andrew Breitbart, “was a big lefty until he heard me.”  Me, meaning…Rush Limbaugh.

By the way, great news!  Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World has been hovering between #1 and #2 on the Amazon Bestseller’s List in Non-Fiction, and between #10 and #12 Overall. Congratulations, Andrew!!!

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

Andrew Breitbart sits down with FOX News’ Sean Hannity on April 18, 2011 to discuss his new book, “Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World,” released April 15, 2011.  It wasn’t all just book conversation though…you’ll have to watch it and see!

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

From The Washington Examiner:

Media Matters, the George Soros-backed legion of liberal agit-prop shock troops based in the nation’s capital, has declared war on Fox News, and in the process quite possibly stepped across the line of legality.

David Brock, MM’s founder, was quoted Saturday by Politico promising that his organization is mounting “guerrila warfare and sabotage” against Fox News, which he said “is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.”

To that end, Brock told Politico that MM will “focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to disrupt his commercial interests …” Murdoch is the founder of Fox News and a media titan with newspaper, broadcast, Internet and other media countries around the world.

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From the same MoveOn.org rally that brought us video of the now infamous foaming liberal, who proudly “declared war on righties, Teabaggers and Republicans” over at the always sunshine and roses hotspot known as Daily Kos, we bring you yet another performance from an angry liberal.

Just moments after Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) gave a rousing speech at MoveOn.org’s “Solidarity With Wisconsin” rally, urging Americans to preach our principles and values across the country and around the world, this self-professed “Left of Lesbian” progressive took to the microphone to follow the Senator with this his own display of values:

“It’s time for Barack Obama to do what he did in Tucson – show up.”

“If you want to know the difference between Egypt and Madison:   Mubarak is a Tyrant.  Scott Walker’s an Asshole”

(I’m thinkin’ Hyde Park Johnny over at the Daily Kos may want to update his post.  He thought there were “no tea partiers in sight.”)

If this man looks and sounds familiar to you, he should.  This clip of him on Mediaite made the rounds on the day of the Tucson, AZ shooting, when he used an impromptu vigil as an opportunity to push Sarah Palin into the fray, as did so many others on the left that day.

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Great question by Fox News’ Neal Cavuto to Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels: “I am wondering if you just got punked?”  Daniels responded that he did not understand the question, and then proceeded to answer his own question. (transcript)

Yes, the governor and Republican House Speaker Brian Bosma were punked by Big Labor Democrats in several ways:

• The Governor tossed aside a law providing every Hoosier the right to choose whether or not to belong to a union, better known as the Right To Work. With f Democrats rattling sabers, Daniels chose to discard Right To Work and got nothing in return.
• For months prior to the Democrats’ fleeing the legislature and the job for which they were elected, Daniels and Speaker Bosma went from meeting to meeting predicting that introducing Right To Work would cause Democrats to throw a legislative tantrum.  They telegraphed that they were not going to fight for this employee emancipation issue. Democrats knew that Daniels would quickly give them what they wanted most:  dropping Right To Work, and Daniels delivered.
• Because Daniels and Bosma said that they intended to blame the Democrats’ childish behavior on the Right To Work bill, the Governor handed Democrats an excuse to justify their actions.  Worse, Daniels continues to repeat his “blame Right To Work game” every chance he gets. Daniels’ actions provide cover for the scurrying Democrats.  But, as Cavuto pointed out, the Governor’s team quickly caved on Right To Work, and yet, the Democrats did not return.
• Sadly, the Governor weakened his own bargaining hand.  Because Right To Work was quickly tossed, Democrats have every reason to believe the Governor and Bosma will cave on everything else.  And, having already caved, it will be harder for Governor to justify standing his ground.  This is why Democrats aren’t back in Indiana yet!

Yep, Daniels was “punked,” if Cavuto means losing the battle before it began. Indiana gave public teachers the Right to Work in 1995, but Gov. Daniels refused to even fight for freedom for private sector employees. (more…)

As the protests in Wisconsin continue, and occasionally border on riotous, as when the crowds repeatedly shout down FOX NEWS’ reporters and attack Governor Scott Walker’s house and automotive, I can’t help but wonder how the Founding Fathers might react were they to see it. How would they react to the unions’ cries for democracy? And to the way those cries have been parroted on media outlet after media outlet across our country?

Granted, the Founders all recognized “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” but they did so from the vantage point of a republican form of government rather than a democratic one. In fact, the fear of “democracy” was foremost in the minds of many of our Founders as this nation was birthed.

One of the reasons our Founders opposed democracy was because of its short life expectancy. Said John Adams, the second president of the United States: “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” And because they feared the violence (think Wisconsin’s teachers’ unions) that usually accompanies a democracy’s suicide, Benjamin Rush warned: “A simple democracy is one of the greatest of evils.”

Predominantly, the Founders viewed democracy as “mob rule.” A form of government in which a mere a minority of the population could manipulate a majority of voters into supporting their cause, therefore giving the few control over the purses, the land, and the lives of the many.  (Case in point: the 10% of the employees in this country who are unionized and who, through the partnership unions share with the Democrat Party, have been able to live off the monies confiscated from taxes on the 90% of non-unionized employees.)

On the other hand, our Founders adhered to a republican form of government because of its stability over the long haul. It wasn’t given to “change,” thus even the most charismatic of leaders, or politicians, would always be constrained by the limitations placed upon him (or her) by the Constitution and the laws of nature.

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I recently took a two-day trip down to Palm Springs to attend an event called “Uncloaking the Kochs” hosted by Common Cause. Accompanied by my dear friend, former assembly candidate Alvaro Day, I traveled as an independent investigative journalist, and not in any official capacity on behalf of Big Government or Breitbart.com (though I was pleasantly surprised to run into a familiar friend of mine on rollerblades jovially inviting everyone to Applebee’s).

Among Common Cause’s, well, common causes, are campaign finance reform, net neutrality, outlawing the filibuster, promoting cap and trade, and in this particular case, herding a mass of protesters outside a nearby hotel to yell at Charles and David Koch for being conservative and rich.

Unfortunately several “haves” have missed the memo that you’re not to be both rich and conservative at the same time, and that bankrolling your pet causes is an extra no-no if you’re conservative—thus exempting left-wing billionaire philanthropists George Soros (from whom Common Cause has received $2 million over the past eight years) Peter Lewis, John Doerr, Julian Robertson, Nicolas Berggruen, and many others from being yelled at too. (more…)

As he sits behind bars awaiting trial, Jared Loughner is undoubtedly relishing every moment of the ruckus that he managed to stir up with his deadly rampage in Tucson.  In addition to murdering six innocent human beings and wounding more than a dozen others in an act of sheer evil, the deranged gunman has set off a media and political frenzy that refuses to abate.

By various accounts, this is precisely what Loughner was hoping for. As his close friend Bryce Tierney told Mother Jones, “I think the reason he did it was mainly to just promote chaos. He wanted the media to freak out about this whole thing. He wanted exactly what’s happening.” Ironically enough, then, many of those now engaged in the shameless finger-pointing are inadvertently advancing the goals of the madman, by fulfilling his desire to create an environment of mayhem in society.

Deploying the most acerbic members of its verbal firing squads, the left has launched volley after volley of vitriol in recent days in an effort to score some political points and paint conservatives as extremists.  But in so doing, they are merely extending the damage inflicted by Loughner into the sphere of public discourse, thereby undermining the very same foundations of civilization that the gunman himself was targeting. (more…)

European Progressives are rioting over tuition hikes again, simultaneously proving to be the most in need and least deserving of an education.

Contrast the Progressive rioting mob against the politicians who are facing reality:

Wake up, America. To Progressive revolutionaries, this social breakdown is not a bug, it’s a feature of their long-term vision for overthrowing the entire system. What you are seeing on the streets of London is exactly what America’s most radical Progressive leaders want to see here in the United States.

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Dick Morris has picked up on a theme Education Action Group has been trumpeting for months: public employee union contracts, including school employee contracts, are unsustainable and have several states on the verge of fiscal collapse.

Recently on Fox News, Morris suggested California, Michigan, Illinois, New York, and Connecticut are the top five most likely to default, given the severity of their situation and the unlikelihood of the Feds or bond holders coming to the rescue.

“Education Action Group has been way ahead of the curve on this,” Morris told me.  “EAG has been showing the major spending problems, stemming from outrageous contracts, for quite some time.”

Buffalo Public Schools revealed recently that it spent $9 million last year alone on elective surgery for employees.  Coverage for such an extravagance, by its very nature taking funds away from the education of children, was due to the collective bargaining agreement.

In Milwaukee, the school district pays nearly $24,000 per employee for health insurance because such lavish benefits are demanded by the union. (more…)

Last week, Drummond Pike took his FOX News fight to a whole new level, this time painting all of the right with a scarlet letter. Coincidentally, Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald had also published a similar piece in much the same vein, only a week prior.

In his opinion contribution piece to Politico titled “Why Does the Right Hate Soros?”, the founder and CEO of Tides Foundation pondered aloud the imaginary reasons he’s fabricated in his mind for the animosity toward the Hungarian born billionaire.

His conclusion? Because we hate immigrants.

This is the typical left. When you don’t get the response you want, inject a new element of manufactured hate into the mix – when you can’t make it about race, make it about immigration. Drummond Pike even decided to step up the rhetoric, implying that George Soros is in danger because of right-wing media outlets and bloggers. But the sad truth behind this piece, behind all of these public letters, boycotts and petitions is that they are all coordinated, and they are all aimed at turning the public opinion against those who do not share the ideals of the leftist agenda.

Some highlights from Pike’s opinion piece:

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Congratulations to the editors at the Washington Post. Seventeen months after the Eric Holder Justice Department dismissed a slam-dunk case against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation, the Post gets around to printing a thorough vetting of the dismissal. The story is slated for Saturday’s print edition. While other media like Breitbart/The Bigs, Fox News, the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, Investors Business Daily, Pajamas Media, and Drudge have had dozens of stories on the corrupt New Black Panther dismissal, the Washington Post at last is in the game.

The story is a shocker too. The shock comes from the middle of the road and factual nature of the story.

There are small problems with the story. For one, the Washington Post is the only outlet that calls King Samir Shabazz by his old “slave name” (Shabazz’s own words) of Maruse Heath. Even Heath doesn’t call himself Heath. Of course this takes some of the sting off Shabazz’s rants against Jews and calls to kill “cracker babies in their crib.”

The Post’s decision to change a man’s name for him is controversial. It has no place.

But overall, the story is very bad news for Eric Holder. It debunks many of the myths spun by the administration. Inside DOJ sources describe deep hostility to protecting whites at Justice. DOJ sources say panther prosecutor Christian Adams never allowed his conservative views to influence his work, contradicting administration spin. And perhaps most damning of all to Holder, sources defending the administration defend the idea that whites aren’t protected by the Civil Rights laws. The latter is the blockbuster news in the Post piece. (more…)

It’s official.  There have been whispers in recent days, but George Soros decided to go public today.  He’s giving Media Matters a million bucks.  Why?  Because FOX News and Glenn Beck must be stopped!

In a statement released today by Soros and Media Matters:

“Despite repeated assertions to the contrary by various Fox News commentators, I have not to date been a funder of Media Matters,” Soros said. “However, in view of recent evidence suggesting that the incendiary rhetoric of Fox News hosts may incite violence, I have now decided to support the organization. Media Matters is one of the few groups that attempts to hold Fox News accountable for the false and misleading information they so often broadcast. I am supporting Media Matters in an effort to more widely publicize the challenge Fox News poses to civil and informed discourse in our democracy.”

See, now there you go again, George Soros.  Making FOX News out to be the evil (deceptively named) Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984, pushing out packaged Newspeak.

As Politico reported:

Soros figured prominently in the conspiracy theory that allegedly drove convicted felon Byron Williams to arm himself and set out to kill staffers at the Soros-funded Tides Foundation the ACLU this summer.  Although Williams said he had first heard of the theory from other sources, he told Media Matters in a jailhouse interview that Glenn Beck was a “schoolteacher” who “blew my mind” on such topics. He told the interviewer to watch Beck’s June shows to get more information about Tides.

On Friday, Drummond Pike, the founder and CEO of the Tides Foundation, said “there will be blood on many hands” if the next assassin succeed, and called for a network-wide advertiser boycott of Fox News in response to Beck’s rhetoric. This morning Media Matters launched a website to join the effort.

Might we remind readers that Mr. Soros has donated money to, among many other organizations, the Tides Foundation.

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Woah! Radical AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is calling for the left to take control over private industry.

Can we call them “socialists” yet?

“We need to fundamentally restructure our economy and re-establish popular control over the private corporations.”

The AFL-CIO blog reported:

With the economy continuing to stagger and job creation not moving quickly, “working people are justifiably angry and frustrated” as they approach the Nov. 2 elections, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

Trumka and Working America Executive Director Karen Nussbaum, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, Eric Alterman, journalist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and moderator Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of the Nation, led a panel discussion—Which Way for the Working Class? Elections 2010 and Beyond—Friday afternoon in New York City.

More than 400 people attended the event at the Great Hall at Cooper Union.

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Congratulations, Tea Partiers!  You know you’ve become a genuine threat to the Progressive movement when they start making t-shirts about you.

The Agenda Project has launched “F*ck Tea”, an anti-Tea Party campaign that aims to “dismiss the tea party and promote the progressive cause.”  Check out their nifty little video promoting their positive cause:

As Agenda Project founder Erica Payne explained to Politico’s Ben Smith:

“We will be launching new products in the next several months to help people all over the country F*ck Tea.  Products like a Glenn Beck Bowl Buddy (Beck B Scrubbin) and others are perfect holiday gifts or just a great way to say, ‘I love you and our country’ to your spouse, friend or family.”

The website features a variety of t-shirts and mugs imprinted with the slogan “F*uck tea,” and Ms. Payne infers there will be more to come in the future.  It also splashes a host of unsourced “Tea Party Facts” across the left side of the page, in an attempt to demean and minimize those who belong to or support the Tea Party movement, and imply that those who don’t are somehow of superior intellect based solely upon said “facts.”  Meanwhile, the site dotingly highlights the word “progress” as “a movement toward a goal; advancement; growth; development; continuous improvement,” calling it “The Real American Party.”  Frankly, I see nothing “real” about this or about any of the progressive people involved in it.

Now, I’ll admit, I’m one conservative constitutionalist who embraces the “F” word as part of my regular vocabulary, as much of a shock as that may be to leftists who may have already stereotyped me otherwise.  But I was not aware that the word had become synonymous with positive development and improvement.  (What a relief!)  If brandishing the “F” word across my chest and gallivanting in public is a sign of intellect and the new symbol of the party of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, then I’m more than happy to save my $22.50, thanks.  (Besides, if one’s cause were so important that such a word absolutely had to be used, the Libertarian in me wonders, why not just spell it out?)  Also somewhat amusing about the entire venture  is that the very people railing against the tea parties and against capitalism are shelling out over $20 a shirt for someone’s concocted-idea-turned-business-venture.  It’s the very Capitalist tale that so many of the progressive left heartily opposes.

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***UPDATE:  “Hardball” Defense of Breitbart Memory-Holed

****

Today, on MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews acknowledged (and appears to be the first member of the mainstream media to acknowledge) that the video Andrew Breitbart posted in his July 19th Big Government article about an NAACP audience’s reaction to a particular moment in Shirley Sherrod’s speech, does in fact include Ms. Sherrod discussing her redemptive revelation (transcript from Newsbusters):

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, there you go. [Quoting Ms. Sherrod] “I opened my eyes. I realized it wasn’t about black and white. It was, but it was about other things, about poverty.” So … that part, that part in there about redemptive revelation was actually in the initial tape.

This then prompts Mr. Matthews to ask his guests, Governor Howard Dean and Joan Walsh, a question that answers itself:

Yeah, but why do you think if this was a complete slime job, why do you think Breitbart kept that in there, Governor? Why did he keep in that part – let me let the Governor in here. Why did he put the redemptive part in here at all?

Dean admits he has never even viewed that 2:36 video in its entirety! Nor has he even read Andrew Breitbart’s original article, which states:

Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

Of course that has not stopped Dean from appearing on multiple networks and ripping Fox News as being racist for having played the video of Shirley Sherrod released on BigGovernment.com (yes, the same 2:36 video he has not watched all — any? — of). (more…)

She was likened to a modern day Rosa Parks or Nelson Mandela, but the former Ag official, according to the Washington Post, was not interviewed on a single major Sunday morning talk-show following a week that can only be described as a Shirley Sherrod media frenzy.  Though the conversation on Sunday morning focused on race in America, noticeably absent from the discussion was the woman behind the controversy. Earlier this week a handful of people in the blogosphere began to speculate Sherrod would pull off a “full Ginsburg,” or become only the thirteenth person to appear on all major Sunday talk-shows on the same day since the feat was first accomplished by William H. Ginsburg in 1998.  However, this was before a clip of Sherrod suggesting Andrew Breitbart wants blacks “stuck back in the times of slavery” went viral.  Sherrod also drew extensive criticism late in the week for blasting Fox News as racist.

Considering the Shirley Sherrod interview barrage that took place last Thursday, to not see Sherrod on television Sunday morning sends a clear signal the mainstream media no longer feels allowing the public to get to know the real Shirley Sherrod advances their agenda.

Last week, Charles Krauthammer pointed out that while Sgt. Crowley got a beer summit after Obama merely (and mistakenly) said he “acted stupidly,” Shirley Sherrod got just a seven-minute phone call after she was forced to resign.  The White House and the Obama Administration who hastily relieved her of her position were already keeping her at arms length, and now the mainstream media is too.

From The Plum Line at The Washington Post:

Now this is going to drive the right bananas.

Check out this nugget in an interview that Shirley Sherrod did with Joe Strupp, in which she comes right out and claims Fox News is using her as a “pawn” in a racist plot to undo the gains African Americans have made:

She said Fox showed no professionalism in continuing to bother her for an interview, but failing to correct their coverage.

“I think they should but they won’t. They intended exactly what they did. “They were looking for the result they got yesterday,” she said of Fox. “I am just a pawn. I was just here. They are after a bigger thing, they would love to take us back to where we were many years ago. Back to where black people were looking down, not looking white folks in the face, not being able to compete for a job out there and not be a whole person.”

This is pretty incendiary stuff. Sherrod is clearly not going away, and now she appears determined to force a larger conversation about the Breitbart-Fox News axis’s broader efforts to stoke white resentment towards the nation’s first African American president.

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The scandal surrounding the firing of Shirley Sherrod is getting weirder by the second. Now the NAACP is blaming Fox News and Andrew Breitbart for the NAACP’s own overreaction to the release of the video of Ms Sherrod, released on Big Government yesterday.