Two weeks ago over on True North, Jeff Peil – who works at my radio station, AM1280 – wrote an article that cast a gimlet eye on “Girl’s State”, an annual mock government exercise sponsored (along with “Boys State” – perhaps two of the last non-coed educational exercises in America) by the American Legion and its Auxiliary.

Peil had gotten an email from a parent who was unimpressed by one of the products of the exercise:

 An irate parent forwarded me a handout his 16-year-old daughter received this past weekend at a “Girls State” retreat sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary.

Juniors in high school are invited to attend these Girls State retreats…While most of this seems relatively non-controversial, this year’s Girls State has ruffled a lot of feathers.  This year it was held at Bethel College from Sunday, June 13th – Saturday, June 19th.  During the course of the week, the daughter of my “irate” friend sent his father several emails decrying how left-wing the event was.  The father dismissed these, thinking he had simply trained his daughter well how to identify leftist propaganda.  Little did he realize that his daughter would come home with written proof of the left-wing agenda the group promotes.

Here is an exerpt – read Peil’s piece for the entire list:

Rules for Girls State – 2010

1. Never do housework.  No man ever made love to a woman because the house was spotless.

2. Don’t imagine you can change a man – unless he’s in diapers.

3. What do you do if your boyfriend walks out? You shut the door.

And more, in the same post-Sex-in-the-City vein.

Peil:

Now while something like this might be relatively non-controversial for women looking to boost their self-esteem and feminine comraderie, this was not a group of women.  This was a group of 16-year-old girls.  More importantly, these girls often attend this to have a resume padder for college applications.  The highly selective event offers young women an exposure to civics that not every high school girl gets, and thus makes the applicant stand out.  I ask you – what does this have to do with civics?

With all due respect to my colleague Peil – without whose talents as a salesman the Northern Alliance would not be on the air – I wonder if he’s watched Congress, or even most of the advertisements coming from Madison Avenue, lately?

No, there’s more to it than that.

———-

It was about thirty years ago last week that I and about a dozen other guys from Jamestown trekked off to Fargo on a Sunday to take part in Boy’s State.  Of the dozen from Jamestown, I think I was picked last – everyone above me had other plans.  So I squeaked in.

It was…different.  The presenting reason was about civics, of course – but I couldn’t help but thinking that the American Legion had an underlying motive; show us a little of the military life, too.    We were organized into eight “Counties”, which were about platoon-sized (and split into a couple of squad-sized “cities”), and led by a “counselor” who happened also to be an NDSU ROTC candidate.  These “counties” marched around in double file; we woke to reveille every morning, were shown how to make hospital corners on our dorm beds, had our rooms inspected by a couple of humorless highway patrolmen; minor transgressions rated pushups or minor hazing; being caught with “contraband” – booze, usually, although the list included drugs, porn and smokes – meant being sent immediately home to face the wrath of the local Legion chapter that had, we were reminded, paid our way (which, in a small town, was powerful deterrent; I think I heard of one kid being tossed).   We assembled at night for “taps” and to retire the colors, and had “lights out” at 10:30PM.

It was a whirlwind of activity; we divided up into two parties, the “Federalists” and “Nationalists”, by luck of the draw; I was a Fed.  We held a county caucus (mandatory) right after dinner Sunday.  I spoke; apparently that was all it took to get elected County party chair, which sent me to a 10PM meeting with the other seven chairs; they apparently liked my style, because by the end of my first evening I was the Chairman of the North Dakota Federalist Party.

Score.

The best part?  I would get to spend my first couple of days exempt from marching around with my platoon county.  I had early – 7AM – meetings every day with other party people; I had to get going early, and I’d gotten half an hours’ work done by the time the rest of my platoon county had gotten to breakfast.

But I also had to run the State Convention the next day.  It involved four hours of standing at a podium trying to conquer Robert’s Rules of Order on the fly.  And after that?  An all-night session of writing a party platform and designing a campaign for the state executive office races…

…the next day. 

Now, it’ll come as little surprise that I wrote most of the platform.  It SHOULD surprise you that it was so far to the left it would have made Paul Wellstone blanche with horror.  And boy, was I cynical; much of the platform was blatant pandering.  It was so far to the left that my “enemy”, the Nationalist Party chair, when he came to my college four years later to recruit for the Campus Republicans, recognized me and asked “so are you still super-liberal?”  I was a conservative by this point.

But between that and the campaign I designed – featuring a REALLY tight stage production that, yes, did in fact reflect my training in broadcast production values – we did in fact win the governor’s office and nine of the twelve executive offices. 

I went on to win an election to the Legislature, and then House Minority leader – all by Wednesday of that busy, crazy week.

And the House met for several sessions.  And by about Friday of that week of waking up at 6AM and going to sleep maybe at midnight (good behavior got us some later “lights outs”), some of the debate got a little blue, by PG-rated North Dakota 1980’s standards.

Friday afternooon,  someone – a Nationalist, naturally – introduced a resolution calling for the legalization of prostitution in Pisek, North Dakota, in the interest of helping spur economic activity in the depressed little city. 

It got debated for close to two hours, and I recall – and then got sent back from the Senate, before going (as I recall) on to get vetoed by the governor; the override survived. 

It was by far the most-debated bill in the session.  It was probably something none of us told our parents or our Legion sponsors about.   It was, of course, the inevitable result of putting a couple of hundred seventeen-year-old boys, punchy from long days and unfamiliar places and lousy food and constant immersion among strangers and strange jobs and strange rituals, into a room together.

And it was probably the most thorough education in how a bicameral legislature works that any of us have ever had.

———-

One of the Girls’ Staters posted a link to Peil’s article on a Facebook page, and True North got some feedback.

When I read the initial article, I was a little nervous; had the American Legion Auxiliary knuckled under to political correctness?

Emily Schirvar of Stillwater emailed to say not to worry:

In the first place, to accuse the Girls State as upholding “leftist” values is nothing short of ridiculous. As an attendee this year, I can attest that the American Legion Auxiliary’s focus tended more towards the right; I am proud to say, however, that the values we learned there were above and beyond party lines. We learned, among other things, to respect our nation’s flag as a sign of national unity and pride–ignoring our own biases to demonstrate an interest in and vision for the country we all share.

Well, that hasn’t changed…

Additionally, the “proof” mentioned in Peil’s blog is nothing more than misplaced evidence: these “rules” were meant to be a type of comic relief. With very full days, beginning at 7 a.m. and continuing as late as 10:30 p.m., laughs were a way to wind down, and relax for a moment; it would be ridiculous to attach ulterior motives.

And the “rules?”

Had the “irate” daughter been paying attention at the assemblies, she would have realized that not only were the “rules” designed as jokes–not to be taken seriously–but the other rule “verbally read by the group administrator” was not meant to be included at all. Receiving the list from a friend, the administrator simply forgot to proofread. Her embarrassment was sufficient, in my opinion, to forgive that mistake–one that the group rectified by not including it in the Moccasin.

Another participant, who asked not to be identified, supported this:

The list was passed on to our administrator from a friend and she didn’t proof-read the list before hand. The administrator apologized profusely and was quite embarasssed. This is why the “rule” did not make it into the list, the administrator in no way wanted that to be advertised by Girls State or the American Legion.

It is unfortunate that the young woman missed out on one of the most important lessons of Girls State: that our actions have consequences, good or bad, and in order to change the world, we must first arm ourselves with knowledge. Perhaps, had she considered this, she would have had a better experience at Girls State.

Another participant – let’s call her “Participant B” – added:

The girls were not given an option as to which party they belonged to, which provided new insight to those who were in a party that may not have shared the same views as them. Never did the Girls State program endorse one party or promote a certain party’s point of view. The guest speakers’ political views varied. In fact, one guest said she was so right-wing, “she made Rush Limbaugh look liberal.”

As far as the “Rules for Girls State” go, I cannot understand how any of those jokes could be considered part of the “left-wing agenda.” You would be hard-pressed to find a Democrat who believes we should build malls on the moon or that a man’s mind is “too little to be let out alone.” I ask YOU, Jeff Piel: What do any of those “rules” (which are nothing more than jokes) have to do with a left-wing agenda?

Well, there  is a certain amount of anti-male baggage with the part of feminism that’s tied itself to the left in America – and if our nation’s high school juniors are unaware of this, it’s either very good news or very bad news – but I suspect that if the American Legion Auxiliary ever becomes a hotbed of this train of thought, our nation will have much bigger problems to deal with.

 Schirvar challenges bloggers:

…I have heard about the “evils” of bloggers who neglect to do their fair share of research before acting as “experts” on a topic. It is disappointing, then, to find such a clear example of this occurrence. Although no one asks bloggers to be completely without slant, it would have been more honorable had Peil at least tried to find out about the other side of the story. Far from “leftist propaganda”, as he calls it, the week-long event was an intensive look into how government works–at times the Girls State citizens were asked to put aside their prejudices for the sake of the experiment, and many (myself included) would say that this unique look into new ideas helped each one of us grow as individuals.

 “Participant B”:

I’m sad to disappoint you, Jeff Piel, but the American Legion’s Girls State 2010 was entirely non-partisan and completely worthwhile.

On the one hand, it’s not the biggest controversy True North has gotten into.  On the other hand, the generation that’s going to be taking things over in thirty years or so is kinda vital.

Thanks for all the response!

John Hinderaker on the latest polls on the Tea Party:

Tea Partiers are people who have a more sophisticated understanding of current events than those who describe themselves as anti-Tea Party. Anyone who doesn’t realize that the exploding federal debt represents a serious threat to our future either is a fool, or doesn’t have children. (That, actually, would make for an interesting survey.)

Here was the part I thought was interesting:

The responses on terrorism are interesting, too: there is evidently a common thread between obliviousness to the dangers of debts we can’t pay and to the dangers of Islamic terrorism, but it is hard to see what that common thread might be, other than blind, stupid loyalty to the Democratic Party.

Read the whole thing?

As the economic news continues to worsen, voters are appropriately growing more surly. That is reflected, I think, in this Rasmussen survey finding that 60% of likely voters–a figure that matches the all-time high–want Obamacare repealed. Maybe that is due to recent news reports about the effects of the government takeover bill, perhaps in part due to a general lack of confidence in the administration’s economic competence.

I did learn one thing (emphasis added):

Disillusion with the Obama administration, which can hardly be disentangled from disgust with the Reid/Pelosi regime in Congress, is reaching dangerous levels–dangerous, anyway, if you’re a Democratic office-holder. In the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza points out that President Obama’s approval rating among whites is almost exactly the same as President Bush’s was two years ago. (I had forgotten, actually, that in 2008 Obama lost the white vote by 12 points. This was, however, a significant improvement on John Kerry’s performance.) It took President Bush seven and a half years to fall to that level; Obama, just 18 months.

So apparently the only reason not to vote for John Kerry was racism, too?

During the 2006 election, the Star/Tribune ran a story about Alan Fine, the GOP candidate for the Minnesota house against then-candidate, now-representative Keith Ellison.

The piece, with a byline from reporters Rochelle Olson and Paul McEnroe, but which reportedly included a lot of reporting from Erik Black, dropped right before the election, and covered a 12-year-old domestic violence case in which Fine was arrested after a reported altercation with his then-wife.

I looked at the story and thought, for a variety of reasons, that it stank to high heaven.  Scott Johnson at Powerline , being a lawyer, was able to put fact, or lack of it, to the   Strib’s “coverage”; the Strib piece omitted the facts that there was no physical evidence of abuse, no charges were ever filed, the arrest was expunged from Fine’s record, that Fine had eventually won custody of their minor child (a rarity in contested divorces in Minnesota), and Fine’s ex-wife later went on to get arrested for…domestic abuse.

I asked the Strib why all these facts got left out of Olson and McEnroe’s story.

“It was an editorial decision; there wasn’t enough room”, went the response.   But that was dodgy; in an exercise in which I left out some of the puffery and marginalia from Olson and McEnroe’s original story, I got in all the facts with plenty of room to spare (in terms of word count and column-inches).

So you may ask; why did the Strib run an incomplete story that related an inaccurate story that served only to slander a Republican candidate against the candidate that the DFL and Star/Tribune both endorsed?

Do I need to start over, or what?

———-

The problem is, if last week is any indication, the regional media is getting worse – even more selective in its relation of fact, bespeaking an even more bald-faced desire to get Democrats elected.

Last week, the Strib’s Pat Doyle ran a piece purporting to report on some of Tom Emmer’s legal wranging.  I covered it at the time,  calling it a “dog bites man” story of a lawyer…practicing law, and dealing with some of the collateral stresses that come with practicing small-town law; an embezzling office manager, a complaint from a former client, some other issues.  Even on a “Dog Bites Man” level, the story was thin, runny gruel.

The single story of the four that seemed to perhaps hold water was the tale of the landscaper that, to read Doyle’s account, lost a lawsuit against Emmer and his wife Jacquie.

Now, if you take Doyle’s account at face value, Emmer looks like a parsimonious weasel who wriggled out of a bill on a technicality:

In small claims court, District Judge Kathleen Mottl awarded Poppler his entire claim. She added that Emmer’s “request for reimbursement of ‘attorney’s fees’ is wholly inappropriate, as he represented himself.”

Emmer took his appeal to District Court, where his lawyer argued that he wasn’t responsible for the landscaping bill because his wife had initiated and modified the job.

Earlier, Mottl had disagreed with that notion. “She essentially did so as her husband’s agent,” she wrote.

But District Judge Dale Mossey ruled that Emmer was not responsible for his wife’s actions. Poppler said Jacquie Emmer has not paid the $1,237.

He said he’s considering suing her, but he is concerned about attorney’s fees.

Sounds pretty damaging.

And sources out on the campaign trail tell me that the tale has raised some eyebrows.

But Doyle’s story is missing some key facts.

———-

A Minnesota Tenth District Court document, “Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Order” for Case Number CV-07-7141, filed on December 28, 2007, includes the following “Findings of Fact” (transcribed from the order), relates the conclusions of the judge, after a December 13 hearing in Buffalo between Tony Poppler and defeandant Tom Emmer.:

1. In May of 2006, Jacquie Emmer contacted Plaintiff, seeking the performance of landscaping work.  Plaintiff and Ms. Emmer discussed the scope of the work and the price to perform that work.  Plaintiff and Ms. Emmer entered into an oral contract to perform the work.
2. On June 22 and 23, 2007, Plaintiff performed the work requested.  During the work, Mrs. Emmer requested additional work to be performed and Plaintiff agreed to perform it.  Part of this additional work included removal of certain dirt.  Mrs. Emmer and Plaintiff did not discuss the specific cost of the additional work.
3. Defended is married to Mrs. Emmer.  During the course of the project, Defendant looked over some of the work that had been performed and said that it looked good.
4. Defendant never asked Plaintiff to perform any work whatsoever.  defendant never agreed to pay for removal of dirt.  There is no evidence that Defendant directed Mrs. Emmer to seek landscaping services or to remove dirt.
5. Plaintiff has been compensated for all materials and labor except for, possibly, the removal of dirt.  Plaintiff does not seek recovery from Defendant or Mrs. Emmer under any theory of contract.  Plaintiff does not seek recovery from Mrs. Emmer under any theory.  Plaintiff seeks recovery from Defendant on a quasi contract theory of unjust enrichment.

Re-read number five.   It says that, as a matter of fact, Poppler didn’t try to sue Mrs. Emmer, the person with whom he had the “contract”.  He’s trying to get the money out of Tom Emmer for “unjust enrichment“.

The “Conclusions of Law” are pretty succinct:

1. Plaintiff’s performance of landscaping work at the direction of Mrs. Emmer does not unjustly enrich Defendant. Schumacher v. Schumacher, 627 N.W. 2d 725, 729 (Minn App. 2001).

In other words, the basis of Poppler’s suit – that Tom Emmer was “unjustly enriched” by the flap between he and Jacquie Emmer – had no basis in law.

And the “Order for Judgment” is one simple line:

1. Defendant is entitled to dismissal of Plaintiff’s claims, with prejudice, and to tax his costs.

I’m no lawyer, but it looks as if Mr. Poppler and Jacquie Emmer had a misunderstanding about billing – even though as the court directly noted, he was paid for everything but the dirt removal.  Poppler went after Tom Emmer and, after an appeal, lost, and was compelled to pay Tom Emmer’s court costs.

A source with knowledge of the situation emailed: “Basically, [Poppler] didn’t sue Jacquie because he couldn’t – he did not have a contract and he would have lost. So he tried to sue Tom for “unjust enrichment.” In the findings of fact, the judge wrote that he didn’t have a case against Jacquie. He ruled that the guy sued the wrong person. And he gave Tom court costs. A clear victory for the Emmers“.

But to hear Pat Doyle tell the story, you’d think it was one of a pettifogging attorney welching out on a contractor, and getting away with it on a petty technicality.

Pat Doyle would seem to have printed all the news that fit…the Strib’s narrative.  It’s of a piece with the 2006 smear of Alan Fine, the 2000 smear by association of Rod Grams (reporting on his son Morgan’s addication problems while omitting the fact that Grams had had very little contact with his son; his ex-wife had custory), and other among the Strib’s greatest hits, and might prompt a thinking person to say “there’s a pattern here”.

I will be asking Pat Doyle for comment.  Don’t hold your breath; most Strib and PiPress reporters seem to think they’re above answering questions from peasants.

To:  Ben Adler

From: Mitch Berg, uppity peasant

Re:  Your supernaturally stupid Newsweek piece

Mr. Adler,

I’m convinced that your piece, “Why doesn’t the media interrogate Tea Partiers’ Beliefs”, was a “black” parody written by a Tea Partier as a spoof of arrogant, agenda-driven inside-the-beltway dismissal and the media’s own smug self-satisfaction.

You wrote:

The media’s enduring, and understandable, fascination with the Tea Party movement continues unabated, as this weekend’s coverage demonstrates. Unfortunately, what appear to be false notions of objectivity—or perhaps a lack of interest in policy—is preventing that coverage from illuminating what the movement actually represents and what it would do if empowered.

“The Media” started its coverage of the Tea Parties in April of 2009 first by trying to pretend it didn’t exist.  Then it collaborated with the Democrats’ juvenile mockery for most of the spring. Then it dutifully chanted that the Tea Party was a bunch of violent rednecks.   Then it dutifully chanted in turn that it was a bunch of rich bitter white guys.

No, Ben Adler, I’m pretty convinced that it’s you that’s completely ignorant…

…no.  That’s unfair.  Or, rather, too fair.  I’m convinced it’s you that is driven completely by an institutional narrative about all those uppity peasants.

Case in point: the Associated Press just published a 2,300-word stemwinder examining how and why a variety of individuals became involved in the Tea Party movement without once asking what precisely the platform consists of. It tells you the back stories of representative Tea Partiers, dutifully quotes their antipathy toward government, taxes, and deficit spending, and their horror at the accusation that they are motivated by racial animus. But the reporter seems never to have posed any serious questions about what tradeoffs they would make to achieve their stated goals.

Well, that would be a fair criticism, if it weren’t for the fact that you pretty clearly have substituted “parrot the narrative” for “asking serious questions”, yourself.

No, really:

The closer you look, the more the Tea Party just looks like any other right-wing populist movement: it is motivated by fear of immigration, fear of new religious modes of expression, racial resentments, opposition to gay rights, and claims about taxes and spending that often don’t add up under scrutiny. Isn’t it time that we stopped treating the Tea Partiers like a curious sociological phenomenon and starting holding them to the same standards we should hold all mainstream politicians to?

Like the standards Newsweek held Barack Obama to?

Ben Adler:  you are the one that deserves the questions; your piece clearly oozes fear and beliefs that, ahem, could use the scrutiny – beliefs the AP article undercut, which is no doubt why  you are circling the wagons.

So here’s what we can do, Ben:  come on the Northern Alliance Radio Network with Ed Morrissey and I this weekend.  We can have a dialogue; you can ask us those probing questions about the Tea Parties that you’ve been fantasizing about.  It’ll be a two-way deal, of course; we can get to the bottom of your own ignorance, and maybe even enlighten you a bit.

Or at the very least start holding you to the same standard we should all mainstream media figures.

That is all,

Mitch Berg

I read this, and wondered for a brief moment if the story didn’t have some garbled copy – if it wasn’t talking about Afghanistan, or southern Mexico, or the Congo or something.

No such luck (I’m adding emphasis):

An area in south-central Arizona that was once a haven for family hiking and off-roading, now has signs warning of drug smugglers and human traffickers.

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu says that his department no longer has control over parts of his county.

At a recent press conference, Sheriff Babeu said, “We are outgunned, we are out manned and we don’t have the resources here locally to fight this.”

It is, in effect, an insurgency on American soil, on behalf of a foreign power (albeit not a soverign government – at least, not directly):

Last month, Pinal County Deputy Sheriff Louie Puroll was ambushed and shot as he tracked six drug smugglers. Sheriff Babeu said the ambush mirrored military tactics.

But for God’s sake, don’t ask peoples’ immigration status!

In regards to Obama’s promise of 1,200 National Guardsmen spread out from San Diego to the mouth of the Rio Grande, Babeu added, “It will fall short. What is truly needed in 3,000 soldiers for Arizona alone.”

OK, open borders people;  this is the wages of your lunacy.  This is the big reward for casting away our national sovereignty; losing control of our nation, not just fiscally and politically and economically, but in terms of actually controlling this country so that it is safe for law-abiding Americans.

 Question for all of you who call Michele Bachmann and the Tea Partiers “seditious” for advocating limiting the power of government – are the Open Borders, anti-sovereignty people not even more, more directly seditious, since their policies lead directly to the loss of government control over the nation is is charged in our Constitution with defending?

Ed Kennedy was the target of a staggering number of death threats:

Sen. Edward Kennedy lived under constant assassination threats of his own, sometimes chillingly specific, as he became a target for extremist rage, previously private FBI documents disclosed Monday.

Damn those violent Tea Partiers!

Oh, wait…:

Five years after President John F. Kennedy was killed and shortly after Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot, one letter warned that the third brother was next: “Ted Kennedy number three to be assassinated on Oct. 25, 1968. The Kennedy residence must be well protected on that date.”

Nearly two decades later, in 1985, the threats continued, this time including the Republican president as well as the liberal Democratic senator: “Brass tacks, I’m gonna kill Kennedy and (President Ronald) Reagan, and I really mean it.”

Who’da thunk it?

ME:  Hi!

REPRESENTATIVE GROUP OF LIBERALS (RGOL):  Conservatism is fundamentally racist!

ME: Um – beg your pardon?

“RGOL”:  Racism oozes from every pore of conservatism!

ME:  OK, that’s what we call “bigotry” where I come from, but what the hell, I love a good ad-hominem argument.  Do tell!

“RGOL”:  Nixon’s “southern strategy” brought all the racists to the GOP!

ME: Er, let’s get back to “the south” in a bit here.  You did read my post last week about Jacob Weisberg’s article in that noted racist conservative hangout Slate, that noted there are distinct differences between Northeastern, Southern and Western conservatism, right?  How Northeastern conservatism is largely comfortable with big government but with an emphasis on making big government more fiscally sane – think Mitt Romney – and race is largely a non-entity, and in fact part of the roots of Northeastern conservatism are at least partly in the abolition movement?  And how Western conservatism, the conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan, is fundamentally libertarian, which means racism is anathema, since libertarian government is utterly color blind, and all real racism – the racism that makes people unequal before the law – is entirely a function of excessive and illegitimate government power, right?  Which leaves southern conservatism, which certainly had racists among its adherents, but whose fundamental “racism” is at least partly a matter of framing by, well liberals?

“RGOL”:  Of course we did.  Now – look at this list of southern conservatives and the racist things they’ve said…

ME: OK, you’re more or less dodging the point here.  Can individuals be racist?  Certainly.  I mean, every human in the world is a “we-ist”, more comfortable around and attuned to people like their own community, and less to to people less like them in ways that are manifested as everything from pointed humor to muted suspicion to blind hatred.

“RGOL”:  Right.  Like conservatism!

ME:  Well, no.  Liberals too.  I mean, mention, say, a white fundamentalist from Mississippi who resurfaces driveways for a living…

“RGOL”:  Hah!  Dumb redneck wingnut!

ME:  …or an NRA member…

“RGOL”:  Bigger gun clinging snake-handling cousin-kissing Jeeeeeebus freak hahahahahahahaha!

ME: ….right, or Sarah Palin…

“RGOL”:  Hahahahaha!  She went to community college!  Trig is Bristol’s baby!  She can’t even write and has fake boobs and slept with her deputy mayor and …

ME:  …or the Japanese…

“RGOL”:  Er…what?

ME:  Well, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the godfather of the modern nannystate, did not only order the most singularly racist government action in the past 100 years – the mass internment of American citizens of Japanese descent – but did it after two terms in which he supported California’s deeply racist anti-Japanese immigration laws.

“RGOL”: …

ME: OK, fine, it was seventy years ago.  Still, your entire case that “conservatism oozes racism”  seems to be based on 1) a bunch of anecdotal stories of Republicans who said racist things 2) a bunch of memes from Media Matters and the like, that largely yank statements by the likes of Rush Limbaugh so far out of context you’re getting into borderline defamation, and 3) framing conservative issues as fundamentally racist.

To which I reply 1) Why does Robert Byrd never make it into those lists, 2) Gosh, a liberal flak group waterboarding context, notify the media, and 3) when your entire argument is designed to try to misleadingly frame your opponent as something evil – and we all agree that racism is a bad thing, right? – then you are committing a crime against truth!

“RGOL”:  What are you talking about?

ME: For example, every time a conservative talks about strengthening the Tenth Amendment, some idiot lefty will come back with “That sounds like “states rights”, which was once used to defend slavery.

“RGOL”:  Right!   Conservatism supports slavery!

ME:  {{facepalm}} No.  No, we are pretty much the opposite extreme; we are the party of individual self-determination.  And, by the way, it is a fact that Jim Crow after 1900 was largely a government initiative that overrode the free market; that in most southern states, the business community – which are stereotypically conservative, right?…

“RGOL”:  Bosses!  Bosses!

ME: …right.  They largely opposed Jim Crow, since Jim Crow took anywhere from 10 to 50% out of their markets!

“RGOL”:  But the southerners were racists!  And Nixon brought them into the GOP!

ME:  Well, no and yes and no.  The “Southern Strategy” sought votes from southerners who were upset over a variety of things – federal intrusions into property rights and free association as a matter of principle, the size and growth of government, and the federalization of an awful lot of things that had always been left to the states.  And yes, there were no doubt some among ’em that were upset that the Feds poked their nose into race relations – because a racist citizen’s vote counts just as much as yours does.  Which galls the crap out of me when I see some of those anti-semitic filth at left-leaning demonstrations, by the way – but I digress.  The framing of all southern conservatives’ flight to the GOP as race-related has become part of the conventional wisdom, to the extent that all defenses of the thesis become tautological.  Just watch:  “The southern strategy was not primarily about race”.

“RGOL”:  But the southern strategy was racist because it brought racist southerners into the party…

ME:  Thanks.  I rest my case.

“RGOL”:  …um…

ME:  Move along.

“RGOL”:  Yeah?  Well…what about Arizona?

ME:  Jeez.  More framing.  The Arizona law – which most Americans support, in its final form – is about securing our borders.  That is one of the missions of government, no?

“RGOL”:  But it’s racist!

ME:   Huh?  Let me ask you something; if Minnesota were awash in Canadians sneaking across the border, and illegal Canadian immigration were forcing down American wages, and if in coming here they rejected American culture and upheld Canadian culture with their back-bacon and hockey-worship and mass drunkenness, and if the Canadian Army were charging across the border to help out Canadian drug smugglers and killing people on our side of the border, that “illegal” Gordon Fitzpatrick wouldn’t replace the “illegal” Juan Jimenez as the boogeyman du jour?

“RGOL”:  But that’s just dumb.

ME:  What if our hypothetical Gordon Fitzpatrick was pro-charter schools and anti-card-check?

“RGOL”:  Then he’d be racist and he’d hate children…

ME:  Er, yeah.  Look – do our laws mean anything, or do they not? Are we a sovereign nation, or are we not?

“RGOL”:  Er…huh?

ME:  …

“RGOL”: You are obviously a racist.

ME:  Riiiiight.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if, after all the caterwauling that California has been engaging in over Arizona’s immigration law, it turned out that Cali had pretty much the same law?

Why yes.  It would:

My name is Harold R. Beasley, Sr. I am a retired Border Patrol Agent. I live in Sierra Vista, AZ. Telephone number 520-XXX-XXXX. I was the Deputy Chief Patrol Agent in San Diego for 5 years (1996 to 2001). I then transferred as an Assistant Chief Patrol Agent to Tucson, Arizona and then retired in 2002.

I did a little research and found that California has the same law (Penal Code 834b) on their books and are complaining about Arizona just passing our New Immigration Law. Wow, is this the pot calling the kettle black?

Please note the last section 834(b)(c). Looks like Los Angeles and San Francisco Mayors have violated California Law and should be investigated by the Attorney General of California.

I think it’s high time we profiled all currently0sitting California politicians.

Rob Port at Say Anything on Mitch Daniels’ soft-footing social issues:

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is pro-life and a Christian but wants focus on fiscal rather than social issues given the state of the nation’s economy and budget.

Does this kill off his hopes for a candidacy in 2012?

Beyond the debt and the deficit, in Daniels’s telling, all other issues fade to comparative insignificance. He’s an agnostic on the science of global warming but says his views don’t matter. “I don’t know if the CO2 zealots are right,” he said. “But I don’t care, because we can’t afford to do what they want to do. Unless you want to go broke, in which case the world isn’t going to be any greener. Poor nations are never green.”

And then, he says, the next president, whoever he is, “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues. We’re going to just have to agree to get along for a little while,”

I think that’s the big lesson of the Tea Party so far, not to mention of the Reagan administration:  if you don’t conquer government’s addictions to spending and taxes, then we’re screwed on the social issues anyway – and as luck’d have it, most candidates that are conservative on spending and taxes are on the right side of the social issues anyway.

It was 70 years ago today that Winston Churchill gave one of the greatest speeches in the history of the English language.

The British Army had just been ejected from continental Europe.  But it could have been worse.  We talked about Dunkirk earlier this week. 

Dunkirk was a miracle on one hand – but it had limits.  The Army had left all its tanks, artillery and all equipment heavier than rifles on the beach; it would have to be replaced, gun by gun, tank by tank, over the coming years.  And the rescue had battered the Royal Navy, which lost many ships protecting the evacuation.  Hitler was to turn in the coming weeks to trying to win air superiority over the island – the Battle of Britain, which Churchill would declare “their finest hour”…

…but that was all in the future.  On the evening of June 4, the Army – most of it – was home and safe, but the future was grim. 

The British people had been rocked on their heels.  There was some talk of reaching an armistice with Hitler; the British War Cabinet even voted on trying to seek terms with Hitler, although the proposal was soundly defeated.

Into that gap Churchill stepped, from the well of the House of Commons.  His speech concluded:

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength.

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

And Britain went into its two-minute drill that we all know today; they held out under the bombardment; they kept air superiority over their island; they became the base from which the liberation of Europe was launched.

The coming months would be almost unimaginably grim by our 21st-century understanding, with the near-destruction of Britain’s air defenses, the Blitz, the firebombing of London and most other major British cities, and the near-starving of the island kingdom by a deadly-effective U-boat campaign.  

Hard to picture?  Imagine 9/11, only 2-3 times a week.  More British civilians died during the five months of the Blitz than American soldiers in fifteen years in Vietnam.  Ten British civilians died during those twenty brutal weeks for every American serviceman that has died in nearly a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And yet Churchill kept his peoples’ minds on the prize – freedom for Britain, liberation for the Continent – for five more bloody years.

All we have to do is politically repel socialism and repeal a healthcare law.

Audio?  Sure!

I read this op-ed in the Strib the other day, by a Peter Mandel, and thought “finally – we’re on to something here!” 

I mean, it’s impossible to look at the sodden, overripe string of cliches in his lede…:

It’s a Banana Republic like no other. Fly into its capital from abroad, and you’ll catch a whiff of overripeness, even decay. The baggage carousel clunks and squeaks. The road to your hotel is missing signs and is a maze of crevices and holes. Soon you are lost in a universe of strip malls; some are flourishing, others empty and dark. Although its elite are among the world’s most privileged, the gap between the Republic’s rich and others here is now a chasm.

…and not think “he’s drawing us off-topic before he comes in for a big surprise at the end!  Nobody could keep this string of obviousness going all the way to the end!  Nobody!”

“He’s going to end with a zinger noting the similarities between the Chicago government that spawned President Obama and his Administrati0n, with its patronage and corruption and family connections and machine politics, and places like Peru!”

“He’s going to link Obama’s ruinous orgy of spending with the those of banana-republic comandantes from Juan Peron to Hugo Chavez, with their suface sheen of social utopianism lightly slathered over a big rotten core of “buying off the peasants” until their nations collapse into debt and an endless parade of coups d’etat!”

“He’s going to juxtapose the stifling of dissent, first via an avalanche of coverage from carefully-groomed propaganda organs and then via outright censorship!”

“He’s gonna surprise us!  Nobody could be that ploddingly, thud-wittedly obvious to keep this going all the way through to the bitter, banal, boring end!”

Almost weekly there is news of an attack. Not by foreigners, but by citizens bearing a grudge or with an urge for revenge.

Localized antigovernment groups stock up on armaments while practicing paramilitary moves. A growing movement shouts its hostility to a range of federal offices and laws.

…

Those who know the Republic well are nervous. Especially those of us who live here — in its 50 states.

We watch, we peel our bananas.

And we wait.

…

…um…

…

…so…

…weekly attacks?  Huh?

I feel like I’ve been spinning around too fast.  The blood has left my head, and my vision is blurry.  Did this fella…

…Peter Mandel is an author of books for children, including “Bun, Onion, Burger,” due out this spring from Simon & Schuster. He lives in Providence, R.I.

…right, “Peter Mandel” – did he just accuse the Tea Party of running a banana republic government and attacking people weekly?

I need a banana now.  For the potassium, I mean.  It might help me regain my equilibrium. 

I need it.

Taxi driver kills 12 in the western UK:

Armed with two weapons – a .22 rifle and a shotgun – Bird drove down the coast from Whitehaven where the first attacks took place, leaving a trail of carnage in his wake. Residents of the county were warned to stay indoors as police followed the deadly route, discovering more bodies as they went. At one point Bird abandoned his Citroen Picasso for another car which he then crashed near woods in the picturesque Lake District town of Boot. The body of Bird, a 52 year-old divorced father-of-two, together with his guns were found nearby.

Imagine how bad it’d be if the UK hadn’t completely banned guns!

(Although journalists can take comfort in the fact that nobody’s aiming up their butts).

I’ve bagged on the City Pages’ Matt Snyders a time or two for his flights into context-challenged, myopically-biased political writing.

But fair is fair; this piece on the “gun show loophole” is excellent, well-balanced, and…fair.

It kicks off with a conversation with this blog’s good friend Andrew Rothman…:

“If there’s an unequivocal opposite to growing up around guns,” says Andrew Rothman, “it’s being raised by New York Jews.” He puts down his glass of water and wipes his dark goatee with a napkin. It would be quite the outlandish statement were he not talking about himself.

“I grew up believing guns were bad,” he continues. “That’s what my parents taught me. But they also taught me to read. That was their first mistake.”

…and somehow managed to go to press without a quote from this blog’s other good friend (and my own carry permit training instructor), the ubiquitous Joel Rosenberg.

Snyders, by his own account, attended three gun shows trying to find a seller who’d let him buy a piece without running him through all the legal hoops – as the media and the gun-control groups who tell them what to think assure is is inevitable:

“So, um, what’s the difference between a Glock and a Beretta?” I asked.

A stupid question in this environment, and also a suspicious one. It’d be like attending the Cannabis Cup and asking a vendor the difference between hashish and marijuana.

“Well, Glocks are easier to use, I suppose, with a trigger-on-trigger safety, instead of an external lever,” he says. “Beretta, on the other hand, is a more traditional pistol with a hammer instead of a slide.”

I opt for neither, going instead with the Hi-Point. He hands me a clipboard containing a questionnaire—the background check required of all licensed firearms dealers. The so-called “gun show loophole” refers to sales between two individuals. The occasional guy walking around with a rifle and makeshift price tag are not required to check in with the national criminal database each time they make a sale…

…”You have your permit to purchase, right?” asks the vendor.

The answer to the question was an unfortunate no.

“No permit to purchase?” he said. “You’re shit outta luck, my friend.”

You might be surprised that the City Pages would cover the issue fairly – indeed, I was. 

Again.  Because it was in the winter of 1994, as the “shall issue” movement was just gathering steam in Minnesota, that I saw the first fair, balanced piece about concealed carry…

…in the City Pages.  Written by none other than Steve Perry.  So it’s not without precedent.

Snyders took Rothman’s carry permit training class – and like a lot of beginners, did pretty good.  He also catches the appeal of shooting like few people I’ve read on the left:

After five minutes and 25 rounds of warm-ups, it’s time for the test. An inexplicable wave of adrenaline washes through my arms and torso as I clumsily load five 9mm rounds into a magazine. I slap the magazine into the handle grip of a midnight-black semi-automatic Glock 17, and take aim.

Pop! Pause. Pop! Pop! Pause. Pop! Pop!

After seeing the five shots land true, Rothman instructs me to reload ten more rounds and squeeze them off. I oblige. Nerves settled, I begin to understand the elusive appeal of the gun. To be in control of a tool this powerful and deadly is to experience a visceral, almost intoxicating degree of autonomy. It’s sort of like the initial few days of giddy emancipation one feels after receiving a driving license, all contained in a flex of an index finger.

I won’t tell the other guys,” Rothman says as the target reels back six additional feet, “but you’re shooting a perfect score so far.”

The words of encouragement proved to be a jinx. The next two shots veer five inches off-target, one high and to the left, the other just high. Ignoring the occasional spent shell casing peppering my head, I continue to blast away, each shot about two seconds apart. I regain control and finish with a score of 146.

I’m now eligible for a permit to carry in Minnesota.

Kudos on the score and the story.

(But I got a 149…)

So yesterday, as Mr. Dillettante notes, Bob Collins of MPR (writing at “Gather.com”) and I got into a rhubarb over the interpretation and meaning of a sign he saw at Jason Lewis’  annual Tax Cut Rally last weekend, and the fact that it was displayed at all. 

In his article on Gather, Collins posted the photo – of a sign that says “Tax Cuts: Even A Monkey Can Do It”, with some form of stylized hand-drawn chimpanzee in the middle.   He also posted a link to a WaPo article that notes that the Tea Party is countering the “perception” of racism (shown in a series of polls that that while Tea Partiers overwhelmingly say that they are not motivated by racism, Democrats really really double-dog believe they are.

To summarize Collins’ point, between his article and the comment he left  (and feel free to jump in if anyone thinks I’m summarizing unfairly):

1. A “perception” exists that the Tea Party is at least partly motivated by racism.
2. There is no doubt whatsoever that the sign was racist.
3. If the presence of so much as one sign doesn’t prove the “perception” correct, the fact that nobody kicked him out of the rally does.

As Bob put it in one line, “the medium is the message”.

My response:

1. Of course you can find racists at Tea Parties.  No movement of several million people – especially one with absolutely no barriers to entry whatsoever – is going to be free of at least at thin film of bigots and idiots.  You’ll find them at a “Prairie Home Companion” taping, for that matter.
2. The odds are better than even that the person holding the sign was a ringer – a lefty like this very special young fella who gets his jollies presenting his opposition in the most loathsome possible light by providing a living caricature of it.
3. Even if it wasn’t a ringer, to a big chunk of the population here in 92% white Minnesota, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar a monkey is just a monkey, more a symbol of simple-minded rote cognitive simplicity than a racist slur.  Granted, one has to tread lightly around terms like that when an Afro-American is the subject, but I think Collins is at some risk of superimposing his own templates and prejudices onto the topic.
4. This is not only Minnesota – the land of millions of Scandinavians who won’t return an undercooked egg to the kitchen for fear of raising a fuss, much less confront an offensive stranger –  but a rally full of people who are inclined to be libertarians; who believe, as a matter of principle, that everyone, even the most depraved, as a right to free speech, and that indulging in stupid, bigoted speech reflects on them, not on oneself.  (To say nothing of people, like me, who are pretty much oblivious to signs anyway).  It’s whythe last Tea Party rally detailed a security group specifically to find, photograph and discredit such signs (which, in news that is completely unrelated, I’m sure, didn’t appear at that Tea Party rally).
5. The “perception” exists because the Adminitration and the mainstream media – pardon the very deliberate redundancy – want it to exist. As the Media Research Center noted, the major-media’s coverage of the Tea Parties has been so consistently dismissive, slanted, biased and wrong that it’s very difficult to believe it’s not part of a concerted pattern; in other words, the “perception” exists because the mainstream media, and the administration it overwhelmingly supports, wants that perception to exist, no matter how it has to waterboard context and mangle fact to make it happen.  Indeed; the mainstream media (as the MRC noted) devoted slavering coverage to the tiny fringe of racist and off-color signs at Tea Parties, but utterly ignored Pajamas Media’s successful effort to expose a large number of these “racists” as lefty ringers – but the drumbeat of stories and “infotainment” about the Tea Parties’ supposed “racism” didn’t take so much as a breath.

Or to put it in one line; “2+2=The Narrative, Winston”.

So I’d like to follow up the discussion with a few questions of my own.

1. So after the Seattle WTO riots, the union roughing up the Young Republicans at the Minnesota State Fair and breaking into the state GOP campaign office in 2006, the conviction of a would-be firebomber in connection with the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, the assault on a Tea Partier at Senator Carnahan’s office (with racial epithets, against a black man, no less), the Bill Sparkman suicide, the professor and out-of-control Obama supporter murdering her five colleagues, the Bush-deranged guy in Texas crashing his plane into an IRS office, the Pentagon Station shootings (by another BDS sufferer), and the violence and vandalism-prone immigration rallies, is there a “percpeption” that the American left is prone to meeting dissent with thuggish and violent behavior?
2. If not – in other words, if a years-long pattern of thuggishness and violence doesn’t create every bit as much an “perception” as the selective display of some ignorant and racist (and likely spurious) signs – then why not?
3. Could it be because the industry that creates these “perceptions” is selective about the “perceptions” it chooses to create and propagate?
4. If not, why?

I’ll welcome any actual answers.

You pretty much expect the DFL to lie about things; they’re stuck behind an administration that is becoming less popular daily and a Congress that might, maybe, outpoll Charles Manson.  They’re strapped to a Healthcare bill that is about to blow up in their faces, electorally. 

And at a time when jobs are tight and even legal immigrants have had enough of illegal immigration, they are flogging the idea of open borders.

The facts of their own positions are against them.  You can hardly expect them not to aim for the gutter.

This little fella’s name is Robert Erickson.  He joined the Emmer “Cinco De Mayo” parade – but he’s no Emmer supporter:

The handmade sign says "Your Papers Please".

He writes a leftyblog called “Columbus Go Home” (I’m not going to link it; too depressing).  If you see him at a parade, he should be politely asked to leave.

Since the Democrats have no actual counterarguments, and they’re losing in all the polls that matter, we have to be all the more vigilant about things like false-flag dirty tricks and dumbed down chanting points like these…

Macalester coeds display their solidarity with their Latina sistas.

…aimed at voters who just don’t know any better, it’s vital the Republican activists watch out for things like Mr. Erickson, with too much time on their hands and too little respect for other’s free speech.

WELCOME, “PHOENIX WOMAN” READERS: Glad you stopped by!  Just to clarify, though – whenever leftybloggers say that people like me “seethe with envy” or are “having a cow” or are “melting down”, they are pulling it (to phrase it in Latin, which is so much classier than English) De Anus. 

Of course, “she” would be accountable for this sort of thing – if she blogged under her actual name.

Perhaps that’s why “she” stays anonymous…

I got this email from Joe Doakes of Como Park, a government employee in Saint Paul:

St. Paul Mayor Coleman issued a press statement April 28 prohibiting City
agencies from traveling to Arizona, to protest the anti-illegal immigration
steps being taken there.  Apparently, Mayor Coleman’s grandmother was an
illegal immigrant from Ireland and he’s taken this stand in her memory, and
urges all of us to do so, as well.

Oh, I will.

Since my six of my eight great-grandparents came here legally, I hereby prohibit all Shot In The Dark employees from going to (flips around finding list of heavily Irish cities) Boston on company money.

I have a week of training coming up in June.  I had my option of going to
Orlando or to Phoenix.  Personally, I don’t cotton to scofflaws.  I think
Mayor Coleman’s position is asinine.

I booked the airfare to my training session yesterday . . . to Phoenix.

Thank you, Mayor Coleman, for making my choice so much easier.

I keep pondering commemorating it by being an “illegal alien” to the DFL primaries.

…that if I, or any Republican, goes to a DFL primary to vote for the weakest candidate this August, that none of them had better ask for our “papers”.

Perhaps it’s time the DFL practiced what it preached when it comes to “open borders?”

Hmmm?

Not that I’d vote in the other party’s primary or anything, y’understand.  But if I did…

Back in March, the left crowed with great glee about the arrest of nine members of the “Hutaree”, a self-styled Christian “Militia” group in Michigan.

The left and media (pardon the redundancy) saw this as the long-awaited proof that the American Right, afroth with racism over Barack Obama, was about to launch an “avalanche of violence” to vent its hatred toward the plucky black President.  They wheeled up the big guns; the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose job it is to see right-wing threats under every rock, reported right-wing threats…under every rock.

They needed something, of course; after setting up a prophylactic narrative in the days after the March 20 passage of Obamacare, the Democrats, led by Steny Hoyer, launched a meme about right-wing violence that impugned and defamed nearly every “out” conservative in the country – but has not to date yielded any violence (short of a still-unexplained “cut gas line” that has tellingly diappeared from the media).

So the Hutaree were a lifeline; a tank of rhetorical oxygen for a meme that was on life support.  Obama and the Dems needed to have Nine Redneck Terrorists, and the Feds obligingly provided them Public Enemies One Through Nine.

But over the past few days, a judge has tossed the Feds’ entire justification for holding them without bail, and raised serious questions about the soundness, and indeed the motivations, of the Feds’ case.

Archy Cary at BigJo runs down the case’s history – read it ASAP if you please – and asks the important question (emphasis added by me):

Here’s the question the MSM needs to ask, but won’t: Was this flamboyant raid primarily driven by political rather than law enforcement motives?

Was the arrest of the Hutaree militia Attorney General Eric Holder’s effort to manufacture an imminent right-wing extremist threat for political purposes?

Just asking.

Fearless prediction:  the Feds will drag this through court as long as they can.  They will lean on the Hutaree as hard as they can with the full weight of federal law enforcement, reinforcing the great Federal prerogative, “you can not afford to fight us”, squeezing them into a plea deal that allows the Administration and Media (ptr) to claim with a straight-ish face that of course there’s a threat!  People got convicted!  Nah nah nah I can’t hear you!

I’ve never cared much for Michael Savage.

And so I’ve never gotten one of his “liberalism is a mental disorder” T-shirts.

But the left seems to want so badly to presume that the right in America – especially the obstreporous, color-outside-the-lines right that’s making so much hay these days – represents some sort of depravity that I think some sort of diagnosis – clinical Narcissism? – might just apply.

Back as far as 9/12 (or maybe 9/13) I remember liberals chanting “the real danger is still home-grown militias”.  And every time there’s an incident these days, that wistful hope – that their fellow Americans are really a bunch of murderout animals – comes back to the front.

Over the weekend, before the arrest of the TImes Square bomber, we had Mayor Bloomberg   fairly hyperventilating at the possibility that the suspect would turn out to be a tea partier – a representative of a moment that has never had so much as a face slap attributed to it:

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared on Katie Couric’s show Monday night to discuss the attempted car bombing in Times Square. Between reassuring viewers at home that New York was safe and praising the city’s resilient spirit, Bloomberg wondered aloud if the culprit behind the Times Square car bomb was “a mentally deranged person or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health-care bill or something.”

Hizzoners’s wishful thinking was brutally let down when t Faisal Shahzad didn’t turn out to be a Tea Partier at all.

So intense is the left’s lust for this blood libel that left publications from The Nation to  the Daily Kos to tony leftybloggers to wannabee journalists citing “anonymous sources” that just knew that every liberals fantasy was going to come true, the left, fresh off of eight years of demanding that the right stop its (nonexistent) threats to their patriotism, seems to have developed an affirmative need to slander half of this nation.

So when are that tiny film of responsible liberals going to demand better of your leaders?

What started out as a case seemingly designed to impugn the Tea Party and all dissent against government…

…is turning, so far, into a sign that Janet Napolitano really, really needed a diversion:

Federal authorities touted the arrests of nine members of a Michigan militia as a pre-emptive strike against homegrown terrorists, declaring at an initial court hearing that the suspects with “dark hearts and evil intent” wanted to go to war against the government.

Five weeks later, prosecutors are scrambling to regroup after a judge questioned the strength of their evidence by ordering the so-called rebels released until trial and saying they had a right to “engage in hate-filled, venomous speech.”

“The government is falling short,” said David Griem, a former federal prosecutor who’s not involved in the case. “The message that’s been sent to the community is there are problems with this case.”

During two days of hearings last week before U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts, prosecutors tried to show how dangerous they perceived the Hutaree militia to be by playing secretly recorded conversations. Those talks, however, revealed no specific plot. Under questioning by defense attorneys, the FBI’s lead agent on the case seemed unprepared.

Were the Hutaree a group of convenient “usual suspects” rounded up at a time the Administration needed to discredit all dissent outside the Beltway – Tea Parties, bitter gun-clinging Jesus freaks and Republicans all at the same time?

For a while, I wondered if “Tom” wasn’t the MNGOP’s gubernatorial candidate’s middle name.  Listening to the Minnesota media, one might think his first name is “Right-wing-Extremist”.

In the meantime, they christened his opponent and erstwhile sparring partner in the House, Margaret Anderson-Kelliher, as a “moderate”. 

But Rachel Stassen-Berger, writing in the Strib, notes that I if Emmer is an “extremist”, then so is Kelliher; their voting records almost perfectly mirror one another:

Check out how various organizations rated the two House colleagues. The scores below are based on 2009 votes, unless otherwise noted:

AFSCME Council 5 (The state employees union)

Emmer — 0 percent

Kelliher — 100 percent

Clean Water Action (These are based on 2008 votes. The groups rates lawmakers votes for “our water, our health and our environment.”)

Emmer — 0 percent

Kelliher — 100 percent

Conservation Minnesota ( “We help you and other Minnesotans protect the lands, lakes, and way of life that we all cherish. We do so by helping Minnesotans evaluate the performance of your elected representatives.”)

Emmer — 13 percent

Kelliher — 88 percent

Legislative Evaluative Assembly (“LEA bases its evaluation on the traditional American principles of
constitutionalism, limited government, free enterprise, legal and moral order with justice and individual liberty and dignity.”)

Emmer — 98 percent (94 percent, career)

Kelliher — 0 percent (13 percent, career)

Minnesota Association of Professional Employees  (“Our issue priorities include: achieving fair compensation for state employees, fixing our broken health care system, preventing outsourcing and privatization of state services and protecting our pension and retirement benefits.)

Emmer — 13 percent

Kelliher — 100 percent

AFL-CIO (These are lifetime ratings through 2008. “The mission of the Minnesota AFL-CIO is to improve the lives of working families—to bring economic justice to the workplace and social justice to our state and the nation.”)

Emmer — 1 percent

Kelliher — 97 percent

Minnesota Chamber of Commerce (“Our voting records represent the most important votes on the issues that impact Minnesota businesses and jobs – they are not intended to endorse or oppose any candidate for office.”)

Emmer — voted with the Chambers position on 10 of 13 issues. He was absent on two votes and voted against the Chambers’ position on one issue.

Kelliher — voted with the Chambers’ position on 2 of 13 issues.

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (“MCCL compiles the voting records of lawmakers on key pro-life issues that come before the legislature”)

Emmer — 100 percent

Kelliher — 0 percent

Minnesota Family Council (The Council rates lawmakers on what it considers “pro-family” votes)

Emmer — 90 percent (He was absent for one scored vote.)

Kelliher — 0 percent

NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota (“We highlight the choice votes that occurred during the 2009 legislative session.”)

Emmer — voted against the NARAL position on three out of three issues.

Kelliher — voted with the NARAL position on three out of three issues.

National Federation of Independent Business (These are 2007-2008 ratings. Legislators got high scores if they “supported legislation important to small business.”)

Emmer — 89 percent

Kelliher — 11 percent

Organizing Apprenticeship Project (The project gives its “assessment of the state legislature’s and governor’s efforts to move policies that strengthen opportunity, racial equity and American Indian tribal sovereignty.”)

Emmer — D grade

Kelliher — A grade

Taxpayers League of Minnesota (“The Taxpayers League of Minnesota is a nonpartisan, nonprofit grassroots taxpayer advocacy organization which fights for lower taxes, limited government and full empowerment of taxpaying citizens in accordance with Constitutional principles.”)

Emmer — 100 percent (92 lifetime)

Kelliher — 0 percent (11 percent lifetime)

So which is it?  Is Kelliher an “extremist”, too?  Or are they both merely partisans who get routinely praised and/or slagged by their special-interest friends/enemies?

I can’t honestly say I have a coherent, consistent opinion about Arizona’s immigration law yet.

On the one hand, there can be no more repugnant thought to a citizen of a free society than the idea of police wandering around going “your papers, please?”. 

On the other hand, that’s not what the Arizona law is about.  According to actual lawyer Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci, who actually has some background in Arizona law, and who noted in my comment section yesterday:

Reasonable suspicion, I think, pertains to searches after an arrest has been effected. The example here being: a cop pulls a guy over for speeding and when the perp opens the car door window, pot smoke billows out. The cop then has reasonable suspicion that there may be pot in the car and can search it without a warrant.

That distinction (if I’m correct) is key to the critical language in the blurb you quote from 11-1051, “Lawful contact”. That term is not defined in Arizona Revised Statutes. However, given the context, I think it may mean a search or arrest pursuant to probable cause. Meaning that the mandate for cops to make a “reasonable effort” to ascertain a person’s immigration status (based on a “reasonable suspicion” of illegality) only kicks in if the person is stopped or arrsted for the violation of some other law.

That said, if I’m wrong and “lawful contact” means merely a cop ambling up to some browish dude with an accent and saying “hey, how ya’ doin’? Papers please,” then this law is repulsive, and proably unconstitutional.

If my interpretation is correct, then a lot of people are getting their panties in a wad over nothing.

To the best of my knowledge, the Arizona law does not mean law enforcment will be driving down the street rounding up brown-looking people who don’t have IDs on them. 

As many proponents of the Arizona law note, the law just reiterates federal law, as it is supposed to be enforced (but isn’t).  I’m no lawyer.  I don’t know. 

On the third hand, there are a lot of people who dont’ really care if you know the real truth or not.  To our nation’s media and current political elites, disinformation is just fine.  Christina Cordova at  “MNSpeak” is part of the disinformation, whether as a producer, a consumer, or both:

A new Arizona law makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally, and requires local law enforcement to ask for papers from anyone they reasonably suspect is in the country illegally — in other words, anyone that “looks” like they “may” not be… a “white” American. Hmm…

If someone can show me the “racial dragnet” portion of this law, please speak up.

On the third-and-a-half hand, we all know that there are cops who will made their collars first and bother with “reasonable” this and “probable” that later, and pretty much assume that nobody’s got the money to fight City Hall anyway.  And that’s usually a fair bet; I know of not a few situations where the police have trampled over ostensible constitutional rights, knowing that the victims weren’t going to be able to do anything about it on their budgets anyway. 

On the fourth hand, that’s a separate issue.  The fact that some cops give ten miles per hour of leeway over the posted speed limit, and some give none at all, doesn’t invalidate the speed limit law.   We need to keep our cops accountable.

On the fifth hand, more enforcement is only part of the answer to the narcotraficante problem.  The “War On Drugs” is a failure by every possible moral, ethical and practical measure.  We need to end it.

On the sixth hand, until we do end it, we have to deal with the hand we’re dealt.  It’d be far better to keep illegal immigrants on the other side of the border.  Perhaps it’s time to abandon the farce of the “open, unfortified border”, and screw the whole idea of a “fence”, and move the Army down there.

On the seventh hand, barring a major commitment in fence-building or a major redeployment of the Armhy, our border is utterly permeable.  And cops in Arizona – and all along the border – are facing an awful situation.  It’s not just would-be landscapers and fry cooks coming across the border.  Once low-crime Phoenix is awash in narcotraficante crime these days.  Trafficers from across the border are causing all kinds of mayhem, and killing not a few innocent Americans who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.  And the feds are apparently doing nothing useful, and the mainstream media are pretending there is no story, largely because they ideologically support open borders.  Hey, news anchors need cheap nannies too.

On the eighth hand, the illegal immigration problem predates the drug war in Mexico by quite a bit.  The current drug war and the longstanding illegal immigration problem tie into the fact that Mexico is a failed, socialist state, while the US, so far, isn’t.  The open border has allowed Mexico’s failed socialist government to put off its day of reckoning with its own people.

On the ninth hand, to a big chunk of our nation’s political and media elite, the idea of separating ourselves from a neighbor’s failure – even for both country’s mutual good – is noxious.  America is guilty, they think, for much of the hemisphere’s dysfunction, one way or the other.  The whole “the world is one” conceit isn’t just idle talk to them.

And as part of exercising that conceit, there is an epic slander underway.  It’s of a piece with the slander of all dissent that our political aned media elites are engaged in, in which all dissent on any subject is called “racist”, “violent” and otherwise depraved. 

Part of that campaign is the deliberate blurring of the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.  You will never see a lefty commentator, from Christina Cordova to Chris Coleman, use the word “illegal” immigrant when talking about the subject of the law; they never qualify the term “immigrant”, to the point of lying (Coleman’s little squib yesterday about the law affecting his sainted Irish grandmother, who would no doubt kick his ass if she saw the way he was torturing context; every good Irish Catholic gramma knows a lie by omission is a lie just the same).

On the tenth hand, I know of not one single conservative, anywhere, who actually favors clamping down on legal immigration.  “Build a high fence, and a wide gate”, most of us say. 

On the eleventh hand, the media would rather cover peckerwoods waving shotguns from the backs of their pickup trucks, a la “Reno 911″‘s classic “Minutemen” episode, than the actual facts.

So with eleven hands raised, where does that leave us?

Make sure the law is constitutional – as in, “actually follows the law”, as opposed to “makes my white-liberal-guilty heart droop”.

Josef Goebbels once gave us the biggest rule of PR, spinmongering, and the general art of getting the untrue accepted as truth; if you tell a big lie often enough, the stupid accept it as truth.

Are Cedar Rapids leftybloggers Sara and Brian Brandmeyer telling the big lie, or have they merely accepted it as truth?

He asks us to imagine if the Tea Parties were run by and mostly attended by black people:

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition.

If they were following the law, why would I care?  Skin color is (to me, at least) irrelevant; I have guns of my own.

And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government?

If those protesters – color irrelevant – were speaking from constitutional principal?  Why would I have a problem?  I share those principles.

If they were not,then – color irrelevant – I’d speak out against them.

It’s really fairly simple.

Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic?

If they – color irrelevent – were protesting in favor of constitutional principles I recognized?  I’d support ’em!

What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Right.  In the same way Thomas Jefferson once did.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired.

That’d be bad.  Of course, not a single “white” protester spat on Representatives Cleaver and Lewis; even they are backing away from the claim as fast as is politically prudent.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Then I’d put Ted Nugent in a ring with Harry Belafonte, give them both machine guns, and make the whole world a better place.

The rest of the piece is, improbably, not even as good as the excerpt, and can be best answered as follows:

THE BRANDMEYERS:  “What if black people said things that bothered you?”

MITCH:  “I’d use my First-Amendment-fu to make them look like idiots”.

It’s how that “free society” thing is supposed to work.  I don’t know why some people find that so scary.

Never more than a degree behind the liberal fashion curve, Saint Paul mayor Chris Coleman ordered a boycott of city-funded travel to Arizona:

[Arizona’s new immigrtion law], “rooted in hate and fear,” sets a dangerous example, Coleman said.

“It will create a culture where racial profiling is acceptable and will create a dangerous wedge between police officers and the communities they serve,” Coleman said. “I can’t imagine what it would have been like for my grandmother had they passed a similar anti-Irish law.

But we can, Mayor Coleman – because your grandmother came here legally.  Just like my great-grandparents.

“Today I choose to stand with the millions of immigrants in our city and across the country who should have access to the same level of safety and opportunity as everyone else.”

Illegal immigrants?

Coleman said he would write to the Democratic and Republican national committees, urging them not to choose Phoenix as a site for national conventions in 2012.

If you care to help out Arizona companies who facing getting hit with financial losses because of the anti-sovereignty bigotry of a few well-heeled lefty governments, here’s a list of companies from Arizona.

The “Southern Poverty Law Center” is  finding boogeymen under rocks:

Catherine Bleish is a 26-year-old libertarian who was a Ron Paul delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention. She is a leader of the Liberty Restoration Project which, among other things, opposes the federal “War on Drugs” and denounces the Patriot Act as “an assault against the civil liberties of Americans.”

Perhaps you disagree with those views, but is Bleish dangerous?

Like Janet Napolitano’s watch list, the SPLC believes every conservative is dangerous:

In a special report called “Meet the ‘Patriots’” issued last week, the SPLC named Bleish as one of 35 people “at the heart of the resurgent movement.” The report — which also names WorldNetDaily publisher Joseph Farah and Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media — describes the movement thus:

“In the last year and a half, militias and the larger antigovernment ‘Patriot’ movement have exploded, accompanied by the rapid expansion of other sectors of the radical right. … [T]he so-called Patriots [are] people who generally believe that the federal government is an evil entity that is engaged in a secret conspiracy to impose martial law, herd those who resist into concentration camps, and force the United States into a socialistic ‘New World Order.’”

“Patriots generally believe…”

The weasel words are the candy coat on a blood libel. 

The SPLC’s scary references to militias and conspiracies and a “resurgent movement” very much echo Bill Clinton’s recent conflation of the tea party with Timothy McVeigh and, like Clinton, the Montgomery, Ala.-based organization singled out Rep. Michelle Bachmann, calling her an “enabler” of the Patriot movement. Also labeled “enablers” by the SPLC were Glenn Beck and Andrew Napolitano of Fox News, as well as Ron Paul, the Texas congressman whose quixotic 2008 presidential campaign helped turn Bleish into a full-time political activist.

This was the sort of thing Joe McCarthy has been pilloried for for half a century – and at least he was partially right.