One of the biggest whacks upside the head of the local blogging/trivia community this past year was the Met Council’s ruling that bars that’d established “smoking patios” outside their premises had to pay fees on that extra square footage as if it was indoor, year-round revenue-generating space.  This has forced Twin Cities’ bars to shut down the practice of having special patios for smokers, especially cigar buffs.

Of course, it’s been a bigger whack upside the head for the bar owners themselves.  Already on the ropes from the smoking ban, the extra smack to their summer revenue (summer is already a slow time for most bars) has pushed many Twin Cites establishments up to and in some cases over the edge.

And in a rare move for a bureaucracy, the Met Council seems to be considering responding to the pressure from bar owners and their patrons.  There’ll be a hearing this coming Tuesday afternoon to reconsider the fee structure.  I’m not sure if there’s time to salvage the summer (or if the provision will be lifted in time to set up a patio for the MOB party)…

…but I am sure that the region’s anti-smoking gestapo will take a break from whinging about the “orchestration” of town-hall meeting outrage over healthcare to organize plenty of people to come to the meeting to bitch about secondhand smoke.

This is where you come in.

Bureaucrats take phone calls seriously.  They – the smart ones, anyway – know that every phone call represents 100 people who didn’t call them.  One call represents 100 like-minded people; it’s public relations truism.

And so it’d be great if you could take a moment to contact the members of the Met Council.   Here they are.  Please take a moment and leave them polite, reasoned messages asking them to reconsider their policy; it’s killing bars, putting people out of work, and playing into the hands of chain restaurants and establishments.  Phone is better than email, but either is vastly better than letting the other guys have the stage to themselves.

Of course if you are free on Tuesday, here are the details:

Proposed Changes to the Service Availability Charge (SAC)Rules Regarding Outdoor Spaces Public Information Meeting: 1 p.m., Chambers

I might…just…be able to make it.  Fingers crossed.

As we noted last month, some states – and legislators in more states, including Tom Emmer here in Minnesota – are getting just a tad uppity on behalf of the Tenth Amendment. 

(For the benefit of the liberals in this audience who may have been told that the amendment legalized slavery, it actually reads as follows:  The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.  In other words; “If the Constitution doesn’t say a power belongs to the fed, it does not belong to the fed!”

The continuing battle in Nebraska over a resolution (not even a bill!) that would push Nebraska’s government to issue a non-binding objection to federal intrusion into the state’s sovereignty highlights the highs and the depraved lows of the subject:

“My goal here is to shine light on the fact that the federal government is overstepping its bounds,” said State Sen. Tony Fulton of Lincoln. “We would be making a statement on behalf of Nebraska.”

The tension between states’ rights and federal authority has been a repeated theme in U.S. history, starting with arguments among the founding fathers.

The struggle turned bloody when Southern states seceded, citing states’ rights on the question of slavery, and the Civil War ensued.

Of course, slavery was an issue that cut straight through to the founding of this nation, the meaning of its constitution, and the legal definition of humanity.  It was an issue that was going to have to be resolved one one extraordinary means or another – splitting the nation, fighting a war, or an unprecedented-in-human-history rapprochement between rival points of view that changed not only attitudes, but laws on the subject, by national consensus, virtually overnight by political standards.

As opposed to, say, enforcement of federal wetland easement requirements.

But there’s no way of telling that to those who cling to the notion that the Tenth Amendment is just…plain…wrong.  Note to the wise:  if you’re looking for a way to get me to beat you about the head with a baseball bat (rhetorically – and literally, maybe), this is a good way to start:

State Sen. Bill Avery of Lincoln said the proposals sound disturbingly similar to the states’ rights arguments made in defense of racial segregation and laws blocking blacks from voting.

“The history of this movement is rife with racism in the name of states’ rights,” he said. “I’m not saying that the people making the case now are racist, but I don’t think Nebraska needs to be getting in bed with these kinds of resolutions.”

On this issue as few others, liberals are stuck on stupid.  Tying every affirmation of state sovereignty makes as much sense as equating mundane government spending (let’s say “the Farm Bill” for a nice boring example) with the Gulag.

Colleagues denied links to that history. Fulton, an Asian-American, said he has no intention of promoting racism or segregation.

Right, but as everyone knows, no expression of racism or sexism is unacceptable if the target is a conservative minority or woman…

On the one hand, I support charter schools.  They are the only real form of school choice available to people who don’t have the money to send their kids to private schools.  They are the only alternative to the failed inner-city public school systems for most low-income students.

On the other hand, charter schools are supposed to follow rules – and in the case of Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy (in Blaine and Inver Grove Heights), there have been credible allegations that TIZA broke a big one, the Establishment Clause.  Charter schools use public money – each student’s allotment of state ed money – to operate; the law says that money can’t support religion.  Other charter schools in the state use the parochial school model to get excellent results, while scrupulously leaving actual religious instruction for times and places outside school; TIZA may not have, and may have reacted poorly to the allegations.

On the third hand, TIZA gets the kind of results that many charter schools, and all urban public schools, should envy.  With a student body that is 80% low-income and 2/3 of whom speak English as a second language, TIZA gets math and reading test scores that shame most schools of all types, everywhere in the state (and nationwide).  They are obviously doing something right.

On the fourth hand, they are allegedly doing something wrong; the American Civil Liberties Union took TIZA to court.

On the fifth hand, the first of the ACLU’s three suits got dismissed last week.

On the sixth hand, TIZA is counter-suing the ACLU:

“TiZA was forced to take these steps because of the tortuous interference the ACLU has caused one of the state’s best public charter schools,” said Erick Kaardal , TiZA’s legal counsel. “The ACLU’s claims are meritless as TiZA has followed state and federal regulations. TiZA hopes the court will prevent the ACLU from inflicting further interference and defamation with a permanent injunction.”

TIZA is suing the ACLU for “an amount exceeding” $300,000 for defamation, interference with the contract between TIZA and its students’ parents, and screwing with their ability to hire teachers.

So who do you root for?  The Establishment Clause (allegedly), or anyone who’ll cut the ACLU down a notch?

Both?

The Obama Administration is borrowing a key tenet of his “Heathcare” strategy from an infamous Minnesota initiative from the 1990’s; “Soak the Addicts Who Don’t Have Clout”.

In 1998, the State of Minnesota and Blue Cross sued and won $6.1 Billion from “Big Tobacco” – which was, of course, passed on to “Big Tobacco’s” customers, aka “smokers”.

But that was safe, because smoking – and smokers – were indefensible.  So nobody defended them.

Of course, the to make money, the strategy depends on having a boundless supply of people with declasse addictions and problems – smokers, drinkers, and – as the LA Times informs us with breathless excitement – the overweight and obese.

When historians look back to identify the pivotal moments in the nation’s struggle against obesity, they might point to the current period as the moment when those who influenced opinion and made public policy decided it was time to take the gloves off.As evidence of this new “get-tough” strategy on obesity, they may well cite a study released today by the Urban Institute titled “Reducing Obesity: Policy Strategies From the Tobacco Wars.”In the debate over healthcare reform, the added cost of caring for patients with obesity-related diseases has become a common refrain: most recent is the cost-of-obesity study, also released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It finds that as obesity rates increased from 18.3% of Americans in 1998 to 25% in 2006, the cost of providing treatment for those patients’ weight-driven problems increased healthcare spending by $40 billion a year.If you happen to be the 1-in-3 Americans who is neither obese nor overweight (and, thus, considered at risk of becoming obese), you might well conclude that the habits of the remaining two-thirds of Americans are costing you, big time. U.S. life expectancies are expected to slide backward, after years of marching upward. (But that’s their statistical problem: Yours is how to make them stop costing you all that extra money because they are presumably making poor choices in their food consumption.)

[Taxes raised on “unhealthy” foods] would pay for a lot of healthcare reform, which some have estimated will cost as much as $1 trillion to implement over the next ten years.And here’s the payoff: Conservatively estimated, a 10% tax levied on foods that would be defined as “less healthy” by a national standard adopted recently in Great Britain could yield $240 billion in its first five years and $522 billion over 10 years of implementation — if it were to begin in October 2010. If lawmakers instituted a program of tax subsidies to encourage the purchase of fresh and processed fruits and vegetables, the added revenue would still be $356 billion over 10 years.

Let’s be honest: the more affluent Americans will not feel the effect of a soda tax, nor that of the inevitable tax on fast-food purchases from McDonald’s, Burger King or Taco Bell…But let’s play along with the Ivory Tower bigwigs and self-appointed health gurus who are advocating the tax on “sugary” drinks as a means of off-setting the enormous costs of President Obama’s back-breaking health care initiative, as well as combating bad habits. Why stop at soda? How about a tax on every calorie-laden coffee drink served at Starbucks and its competitors? After all, a vanilla bean frappuccino with whipped cream is more than 500 calories, a beverage that health researcher Mike Adams calls “dessert in a cup.” Throw in a scone or brownie with one of those Starbucks “desserts” and a consumer is approaching, at mid-morning, the daily recommended calorie intake.

No knock against Starbucks, which I patronize, but it’s fairly inconceivable that either Congress or nutritionists would classify that chain’s offerings with the low-hanging taxable fruit of Pepsi and Coke. Taking this argument further: why aren’t the revenue seekers proposing slapping a “sin” tax on the following items that aren’t at all healthy (whether organic or not): butter, cream, eggs, bacon, corned beef, mayo, Godiva and Lindt chocolates, foie gras, triple-cream Brie, the entire dessert tray at a ritzy French restaurant, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, fried clams, squid, shrimp and oysters, entire menus at Chinese restaurants (both cheap and pricey) and fresh-squeezed orange juice? And maybe a tax credit ought to be awarded to those consumers who purchase olive oil instead of butter.

To add insult to injury; not only are “sin taxes” a way for the majority to punish the minority – they don’t work, either as revenue-generators or as societal behavior modification:

The consequences of the sin tax are often the very opposite of those intended by its designers. Rather than increasing revenue, the sin tax can reduce it. Rather than discouraging what are regarded as morally questionable behaviors, the sin tax can make them more appealing. Rather than reducing what are perceived to be internal costs of the sin, the sin tax can increase them and expand them to society as a whole.

The evidence that sin taxes are a failed policy approach is incontrovertible. According to a new report from the Mercatus Center, “taxes on sugar-sweetened soft drinks do not necessarily advance the overall public interest, may be regressive in nature, and hardly ever work as intended.” The bottom line, say researchers Richard Williams and Katelyn Christ, is that a convincing body of evidence tells us that boosting food and drink prices “is not sufficient to make ‘fat taxes’ a viable tool to lower obesity.” That’s because soft drinks are really a small portion of most people’s diets.

In short – sin taxes are a flop.  They drive down revenue, sap economic and personal freedom, and yet don’t affect behavior.  What they are is a handy way for those that are in charge in society to tell those that are not “there are gonna be some changes, here”.
So observe the number of ways the Obama Administration is telling 51% of the population to stick it to the other 49%.
And ask yourself “is this the society I want to live in?”

On the Northern Alliance broadcast this yesterday, Ed and I talked with Minnesota State Representative Tom Emmer.  Emmer is seeking the GOP nomination to run for governor in 2010, and at first meeting he seems like a great candidate; I’m looking forward to meeting the rest of the GOP contenders (and in cases, meeting them again).

But he wasn’t on the show to campaign this time.  He was there to promote his latest legislative initiative, House File 2376 – also known as the Firearms Freedom Act.

And I think that there is genius in this initiative – not just in strengthening our Second Amendment rights, but in re-establishing the Tenth.

Work with me, here.

Thirty years ago, the Second Amendment was practically dead in the United States.  Gun control was sweeping the nation.  The courts accepted a vapid and fraudulent interpretation of an otherwise-insignificant case as the primary legal precedent dealing with the Second Amendment.  The rights of the law-abiding hit ebb-tide by the mid-seventies.

And then a grass-roots movement germinated, and took hold; the plebeians, infinitely wiser than their putative masters on matters of liberty, started fighting back.  And starting in the early 1980s, they started turning the tide – one vote, one town, one legislature at a time,

“Shall-Issue” concealed carry laws – which put the burden on the state to prove that the citizen sould not have the ability to bear the arms they keep – are a useful bellwether.  In 1983, there were all of eight states with these laws.  But the movement – a force of workadaddy, hugamommy citizens who squeezed activism into their spare time between work and family – started organizing movements, city by city and state by state, to change the laws.  And now, 26 years later, 39 states are either shall-issue or have no restrictions on the law-abiding whatsoever; only two states (Wisconsin and Illinois, which has such a peaceful place) still pay unthinking, lobotomized fealty to the orc ideal that a disarmed, passive citizenry is best.

And this victory was won one voter, one street, one bill at a time.  From the “bottom”, “up”.

And Tom Emmer’s bill – actually borrowed from similar bills that have become law in Montana, Tennesee and South Carolina – is part of a national, grassroots effort to start that same dynamic for the second-least-appreciated amendment in the Constitution, the Tenth.

The Tenth Amendment has fallen on hard times since the 1930’s; the Fed, operating under the cover of several key court cases, has been able to insinuate federal power into a range of places and subjects that would have made the founding fathers blanche.

(For the benefit of the Obama supporters in the audience, the Tenth Amendment reads “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” where “the people” mean exactly what Heller says it means; you and I).

The overreach of the Obama Administration casts this effort into stark relief; it underscores the urgency of the mission.   The Tenth Amendment is supposed to help protect the people from gross overreach by the federal government.  The implications of a weak Tenth Amendment are obvious; the government can claim almost anything is “interstate commerce” as a pretext for regulation.

The benefits of a strong Tenth?  The implications everything from taxation to Roe Vs. Wade.
And I think the Firearms Freedoms acts being introduced in other states (as Emmer’s is being introduced in Minnesota) are a great way to marry the power, passion and grassroots savvy of the most freedom-loving people in America with the need to push government back out of huge swathes of American life, and to do to the Interstate Commerce Act what the Right to Keep and Bear Arms movement has done to Gun Control.

If you live in Minnesota, get on your phone, call your legislator, and let them know that the same groundswell of people that pushed the Minnesota Personal Protection Act through to law after eight years of trenchfighting is still out there, looking for more notches on its belt.

If you live elsehwere?  Your mission is clear; let your legislators know that the Tenth Amendment isn’t (overregulated, over-taxed) chicken-feed.  Support the Firearms Freedom Act in your state.

It’s not just about guns.

In Steve Van Zandt’s classic 1985 “We Are The World”-era group protest ditty “Sun City”, Eddie Ruffin, joining a group of other singers promising not to play South Africa’s “Sun City” entertainment complex and lamenting the Reagan Administration’s policy of “constructive engagement” (which either property recognized national sovereignty or was prima facie evidence that the US was a racist nation, depending on who you asked), plaintively asked “…someone tell me why are we always on the wrong side?”

I’m starting to know the feeling.

The term “military coup” has gotten a bad reputation in the United States.  Justifiably so; the US was founded at least party with a sense of institutionalized paranoia about the military usurping power from the democratically-elected government.  And most military coups in our lifetimes have been dismal, miserable things, the stuff of banana republics and tinpot dictators.

But some military coups have their values. The Turkish constitution provides for military coups to prevent theocratic takeovers of Islam’s first secular republic.   And two of history’s worst dictators – Hitler and Stalin – rightfully feared military coups against them; Stalin purged his officer corps so ruthlessly it nearly destroyed the Red Army as a fighting force on the eve of World War II; Hitler spent endless time, effort and occasional brutality to bring the aristocratic Prussian Junker officer class to heel, and still came within a whisker of being toppled (in the Von Stauffenberg plot dramatized in the Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie). In societies plagued by violent, ruthless homicidal left-wings, the miltiary is sometimes a beacon of sanity; Franco’s Spain was nobody’s paradise, but career soldier Franco’s goal in the ruthless liquidation of the left was to leave Spain ready for democracy.  He was a brutal man, but he, like a lot of soldiers, put his country first.
And, it would seem, if you believe in the rule of law rather than the rule of men (especially currently-fashionably-left-of-center men), the coup in Honduras would seem to be a candidate for “good”, or at least “lesser of two evils”, status.

Pam Geller at AmThink breaks down how very, very wrong the Obama Administration’s response in Honduras has been:

What just happened in Honduras? A military coup, destroying democratic rule? No. What just happened in Honduras was an example of how democracy works – and yet more confirmation that Barack Obama is not on the side of freedom, but of tyranny. The United Nations, the leftopaths in the mainstream media, and the radical U.S. President are trying to paint what happened in Honduras as a coup. It was not. It was a democracy at work, saving itself from a Hugo Chávez-backed takeover.
The real story behind the chaos in Honduras is a huge story that needs to be exposed to the world. And the bottom line is that Obama got it wrong, again.

You have to write real slow to explain some of this stuff to the “Government Uber Alles” lefty community in this country.  Fortunately, Geller breaks it down  well:

Take this hypothetical: imagine that Barack Obama announced that he was going to hold a referendum on legalizing a third term for himself. Imagine that even his attorney general, Eric Holder, advised him that it was illegal. Imagine that the Supreme Court ruled that holding the referendum was unconstitutional. In spite of that, let’s imagine that Obama coerced the FEC into holding the referendum anyway. Then – let’s further imagine — we found out that Venezuelan strongman Chávez (who has pulled off a similar power grab in his own country) was financing the referendum. What should the Joint Chiefs do in such a case? And if they removed Obama from office, would they be destroying the Constitution or preserving it?

This is exactly what has occurred in Honduras, to a tee. The Honduras Attorney General and their Supreme Court did exactly that – ruled that President Manuel Zelaya’s referendum was unconstitutional. The Honduran Generals did what they had to do. But then Chávez, Zelaya’s friend and ally, announced: “I have put the armed forces of Venezuela on alert.” And at that point Barack Obama spoke out – to side with Zelaya, Chávez and dictatorship. Obama said he was “deeply concerned” about what was happening in Honduras and called upon that nation to “respect democratic norms.”

What we have here, of course, is a clash of cultures.  Obama is defending “democratic norms”.  Chicago-style.

Obama is on the same side as Chávez, Ortega and the Castro brothers.

If you look carefully, I think you will find many of us were warning you about that before the election.

And the irony is thick. In a press conference on June 23, Obama said: “I’ve made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not interfering with Iran’s affairs.” He never called upon the Iranian mullahs to “respect democratic norms.” On the contrary, he ostentatiously refuses to “meddle” in Iran, where individuals are courageously risking life and limb for the idea of free elections. Brutal Islamic nazis are crushing dissent, and Obama talks about “lively debate.” Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami spoke out Thursday against what he called a “velvet coup against the people and democracy.” Obama has sided with that coup, while in Honduras, Obama and the whores at the United Nations have no qualms about interfering to back a Chávez proxy. On Tuesday, U.N. General Assembly piled on, condemning the “coup” in Honduras and demanding that Zelaya be returned to office. It passed – by acclamation – a resolution calling upon all member states not to recognize the new government.

For all the left’s barbering about Bush’s alleged plans to abuse Democracy, Obama has done more damage in six months than Bush was accused of trying in eight years.

…it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Just remember – Anderson Cooper would have called all of the people above “teabaggers” too.

Andrew Malcolm in the LATimes on Obama’s audible on a press conference:

Here’s the scary thing for the new White House: the terrifying words “Jimmy Carter” have started appearing in print and on the air, recalling the ex-Georgia governor’s ineptness and…….apparent powerlessness in handling his Iranian (hostage) issues in the late 1970s. That impression lead to 12 years of Reagan-Bush Republican White Houses.

Which has got to scare the Administration.

Of course, Obama can still salvage this one; quite easily, in fact, if he recognizes (unlikely as this is) that the Mullahs are not dealing with him in good faith, and that all of his olive branches (which every Administration since Reagan has presented them, by the way) are being used for basiji riot batons.

Is Obama so committed to the notion of repudiating Bush’s Wilsonian doctrine that he’ll ignore the fact that stoking emnity with the US helps keep the mullahs in power?  And that he’s no less a target for this enmity than Bush or Reagan were?

On the one hand – is Obama “committed” to anything?

On the other – Obama has built his entire foreign policy (to the extent that he has one at all) on the ideal that terrorist theocrat thugs are people too, and deserve just as much respect as the British Parliament.

…like “we” face in Iran, I was in high school.  The people of Poland – Slavic, but very westernized; devoutly religious, but with a small-“l” liberal history; communist for a generation, but against the will of most of the people; a vassal state subservient to a nation most Poles hated with a viscerality that’d curl most Americans’ nose hair – were demonstrating, and eventually rioting, for freedom.

Like the Iranian people, the Poles were ruled with an iron fist by a despotic ruling clicque that was unpopular withthe people – but the people only had so much say in matters.  The candidates in their “elections” were carefully vetted by the rulers; those that stepped out of line – foreigners or domestics – were jailed and harassed.  Assemblies of dissidents were attacked by gangs of government goons; Iranians are besieged by Basiji, Poles were pummeled by the ZOMO.

Of course, historical parallels are an intoxicating mirage; they’re almost inevitably a small island of attention-getting, synchronous factors among a sea of differences.

One key difference:  There was, in Poland, one institution standing between the demonstrators and the Russians; one institution whose focus was more nationalistic than on the ideology (whether communist or western), that could step in to buffer the Polish state from suffering what the Czechs did in 1967, and the Hungarians in 1956 (and it seems hard to believe that more time has passed since the Solidarnosci era than passed between Budapest and Gdansk). The Polish Army – subservient to the Soviets, but with a long history of Polish nationalism – stepped in and ruled the country as a de facto military dictatorship until Communism started to crumble; like Franco’s rule in Spain, it arguably prevented a much worse Communist takeover, and – again, arguably – paved the way for Poland’s relatively stable democracy.

There is, to my knowledge, no such force in Iran today.  The Shah actually built the Iranian Army to fill that role, thirty-odd years ago; it seems likely the mullahs have purged any such impulses from the military.   Indeed, the Iran/Iraq war served much the same purposes for rulers on both sides; Hussein and Khomeini used the war to affirm their respective grips on power.

And on the other side?  After the 1980 elections, Ronald Reagan led an unlikely coalition to covertly smuggle aid to the Polish labor movement; Margaret Thatcher worked with NATO to set up the pipeline; Pope John Paul II, nee Karol Wojtyla, a Pole, openly used the Catholic Church (to which over 90% of Poles belong) to subvert the communists, and surreptitiously made it part of the underground railroad of covert aid; Layne Kirkland of the AFL-CIO – nominally a sworn political enemy of Reagan’s – made the union contacts that closed the circle and got the money through.

Aid came from all over, thirty years ago; foundations sprang up to scour for donations big (the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters) and small (I ponied up $20) to send to the Polish workers.

But George W. Bush, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, did no such thing (according to Michael Ledeen) to get aid to the Iranian labor movement, and Obama seems unlikely to start.  Indeed,what precious little Bush seems to have earmarked to support democracy in Iran may have been erased.
And when it was time for an American president to call the despots’ bluff?

One American president went to Communism’s front door and threw down:

Does anyone see Barack Obama calling a dictator’s bluff?

Don’t get me wrong; the time isn’t always right for all of the actions above.  Had Reagan given the same speech at the Brandenburg Gate in, say, 1981, it would have been a very different thing.

But can anyone imagine Barack Obama going to the Brandenburg Gate and saying anything other than “present”?

Can you imagine him challenging the mullahs like that?

Convince me.

And Sotomayor on the bench explains a big, nasty consequence – the SCOTUS equivalent of the “consequences” of hitting a bicyclist in your car while driving recklessly and being introduced to your new roommate in jail, big, lonely Otis…

…oh, my.  That took an ugly turn.  Let’s refocus, shall we?

Sotomayor’s take on judicial activism:

“Court of appeals is where policy is made…and I know, I know this is on tape and I should never say that, courts don’t [makes scare quotes in the air] make law, I know [growd giggles as she regroups].  I know, I know, I’m not promoting it, I’m not advocating it, I know…

Not really [Mitch makes scare quotes in the air] condemning it, either, are [more scare quotes] we?

Rove breaks Sotomayor down [video].

UPDATE:  Rumor has it that Sotomayor is so far to the left on the Second Amendment, Amnesty and other issues that the Administration knows she can’t get confirmed, even with the libs’ headlock on the Senate.  Sotomayor is, so the theory goes, a campaign sop to Latinos.

Twila Brase writes from the Capitol:

It’s 1:15 a.m. and I want to report the good news. We won! The gavel came down at midnight, the Minnesota legislature adjourned in the nick of time, and the Baby DNA warehousing bill to repeal genetic privacy and DNA ownership rights at birth, never came up for a vote!

This is your success!

Your citizen petitions, the many people who attended the legislative hearings, your emails and phone calls to legislators, the Sue Jeffers show on KTLK, CCHC’s new Protect Baby DNA cards, the Glenn Beck Program, Reps. Tom Emmer and Mary Liz Holberg, Sen. David Hann’s great questions during the Senate hearing, the “Do NOT Repeal Genetic Privacy” stickers we all wore, my opportunity to speak at the Tea Party, our meeting with  Governor Pawlenty, the CCHC report on newborn screening and eugenics, the filing of the lawsuit against the Department, local TV news coverage (esp. WCCO-TV), the prayers of many people, and the unexpected informational hearing on genetic privacy led to this success.

Twila represents the Citizen’s Committee on Healthcare, and she’s been lobbying against the Baby DNA bill – which would allow the state to collect a DNA database from the state’s newborns without any form of parental consent – for years.

Of course, the battle isn’t over.  Check in with the CCHC to get and stay up on this teeth-grinding bit of government arrogance.

It’s hard to find solid attribution for the quote “Democracy can only survive until the people discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury”.  PJ O’Rourke in Parliament of Whores attributed it to De Tocqueville, if memory serves…

…but it really doesn’t matter.  Whomever said it – or even if it was entirely manufactured by the Libertarian Party back in the seventies, for that matter – the old, utterly true saying is getting a whole new chapter, nationwide and according to the new Minnesota Poll, amongst ourselves.

Minnesotans oppose new taxes – on themselves.  They do support more for that amorphous “The Rich” that seems to have all the money:

When it comes to a broader increase — income tax hikes for most Minnesotans — nearly 60 percent said that would be unacceptable.Half of the poll respondents said they think the state should use a combination of unspecified tax increases and spending cuts to help erase the state’s $4.6 billion deficit, while another 40 percent said the balancing should be achieved primarily through spending cuts alone. Only 4 percent favored squaring the books primarily with tax increases.

Most respondents favored tax increases on “The Rich” rather than “Me”, according to the poll results.

Given that the MNPoll routinely grossly oversamples DFLers – the party built on Robbing From “The Rich” And Giving To Government – this makes perfect sense; in the DFL’s world, there’s always someone else with money to take.

Let’s see how many leftybloggers try to use this “poll” has justification for a spending orgy, shall we?

Greg Gutfeld catalogues the racism, hatred and rage [links to video] at the Tea Parties.

Garafolo, Napolitano and Coopero are onto something here.

Yesterday and Tuesday, we noted that the left, locally and nationally, is engaging in class-action slander, based around getting people to believe that:

Conservative dissent equals murder.

It’s not an isolated trend.

It’s not new.

And it’s not an accident.

———-

“The dangerous right” is a well-worn trope in American political/media history.  It is also – to invoke Orwell’s aphorism about dictators needing enemies – entirely predictable.

Three weeks ago Philip Jenkins wrote an excellent history about the “Dangerous Right” media meme in American Conservative.  It’s an oldie, all right (emphasis added):

From 1938 through 1941, the media regularly presented stories suggesting that the U.S. was about to be overwhelmed by ultra-Right fifth columnists, millions strong, intimately allied with the Axis powers. (Actual numbers of serious militants were in the low thousands at most.) Reportedly, the militant Right was armed to the teeth and plotting countless domestic terror attacks—bombings in New York and Washington, assassinations and pogroms, the wrecking of trains and munitions plants. Plotters were rumored to have high-placed allies in the military, raising the specter of a putsch. The ensuing panic was orchestrated by newspapers and radio and reinforced by films, newsreels, and comic books. Historians characterize these years as the Brown Scare.

In other words, standing in the way of FDR, the New Deal and the dawn of enlightened “liberalism” and Hope and Change itself was a shadowy, secret army – why, one might almost call it a “vast, right-wing conspiracy”!

And when liberals come to office with big, sweeping, “transformative” plans?  Well, the “enemy among us” needs to be trotted out as well:

After JFK’s election in 1960, the devoutly anti-Communist Minutemen took first place in liberals’ demonology. As in the 1930s, the far Right was supposed to be closely tied to out-of-control military officers. Remember fictional treatments of the time like “Dr. Strangelove” and “Seven Days in May”? Once more, too, the supposed threat from far-Right extremism surfaced in mainstream politics, especially during the 1964 elections…As in the 1930s, the extremists existed, and some hotheads contemplated violence. But once again, a yawning gulf separated the reality of the threat from the public perception.

In our lifetimes – so far – the worst fell during the Clinton years:

Between 1995 and 2001, America suffered the Great Militia Panic, when exposés of ultra-Right violence became a media staple. For liberal press outlets, America was facing a clear and present danger from the militias, from Nazis and skinheads, and even from dissident elements within U.S. Special Forces. Liberals accused the anti-Clinton Right of providing extremists with ideological aid and comfort. An impressive outpouring of books—peaking in 1996—warned of an imminent terrorist disaster. Typical titles raised the shadow of America’s Militia Threat, Terrorists Among Us, or The Birth of Paramilitary Terrorism in the Heartland. One book warned of the Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City is Only the Beginning.

I always found it ironic how lefties accused conservatives of “wetting their pants in terror” about islamic terrorism after 9/11, after living through the waves of “mommy, there’s a militiaman under my bed!” that swept the nation during the Clinton years

The news media was open to the most improbable charges of right-wing atrocities. In 1996, television news shows discovered a (wholly spurious) wave of arson attacks in which white extremists were allegedly wiping out the nation’s black churches.

As recently as a decade ago, “terrorism” in the American public consciousness meant, almost entirely, domestic right-wing activism…by far the worst consequence of the Militia Panic was the massive underplaying of Islamic terrorism in U.S. public discourse and the disproportionate focus on the domestic far Right. Liberal columnists scoffed knowingly at terrorism experts who warned about foreign militants like al-Qaeda, when every informed observer knew that the real menace was internal.

I remember lefty pundits on about 9/13 furrowing their brows and warning us that right-wing domestic terror was still the “real danger”, as the Twin Towers still burned.  They were – it is hard to remember – that deluded.

By the way – does any of this sound familiar (emphasis again added)?  Elements of this phenomenon anticpate blogging itself by about sixty years:

If the more bizarre accusations sound like the common currency of the show trials in Stalin’s Russia in these very years, that is no coincidence. The main exposés of fascist conspiracy emanated from Communist Party journalists like Albert Kahn and John Spivak. (Spivak himself was an operative for the Soviet NKVD.) Charges circulated through Kahn’s newssheet The Hour before being picked up in the liberal press. The Red agenda was straightforward in that the Brown Scare allowed the Left to discredit any opponent of radical New Deal policies. Scratch the surface of any enemy of the Left, they claimed, and you would find a fascist spy, a lyncher, a storm trooper.

Or a member of a “vast, right-wing” and now “eliminationist” “conspiracy”.
The conclusion is near the beginning, and it is damning (emphasis added):

Based on the record of past Democratic administrations, in the near future terrorism will almost certainly be coming home. This does not necessarily mean more attacks on American soil. Rather, public perceptions of terrorism will shift away from external enemies like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah and focus on domestic movements on the Right. We will hear a great deal about threats from racist groups and right-wing paramilitaries, and such a perceived wave of terrorism will have real and pernicious effects on mainstream politics. If history is any guide, the more loudly an administration denounces enemies on the far Right, the easier it is to stigmatize its respectable and nonviolent critics.

Like me.

Like Representative Bachmann.

Like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Bernie Goldberg.

Like you, you bitter, gun-clinging Jesus freak, you.

———-

When I’d heard that the DNC had hired linguist George Lakoff, I openly worried that the left was embarking on a campaign of violence – violence against the language. It would be a campaign to control how the language itself imparts perceptions about politics.  It’s a battle the Democrats have been winning for decades, if only because they’re the only ones that show up.

The parallels with Orwell’s 1984, where language was being systematically engineered to reflect first political orthodoxy and, eventually, nothing at all, are impossible to miss.

In Mike Judge’s overlooked classic movie Idiocracy, society falls because idiots outbreed smart people.  Despots and demigogues have long known that the best way to take over a society is to win over the thugs and the dolts; the pen is, at least in the short term, not mightier than the sword or, in this case, the truncheon. Noriega had his Dignity Battalions; Mugabe, the Gukurahundi; Hitler and Mao and Stalin, the Sturmabteilung and Hitlerjugend, the Red Guards, the Komsomol, the legions of dedicated true believers who didn’t have to think, just do; to smear the Jew, the Bourgeois, the Wreckers today, and to beat, imprison and kill them tomorrow.  For society’s own good.

And the Big Left today has, on a rhetorical plane, the same basic thing; the legions of the ingenuous, the dedicated but not-excessively-bright, the people who are willing to suspend the rules of civility and decency in service of…

…what?  The meme that “Some of your fellow citizens’ beliefs will lead to mass murder!”?

I’d like to think that continuing to take the high road is the right response to this class-action slander.  I’m less confident in this all the time. Indeed, as I noted yesterday, DHS Secretary Napolitano has tipped the left’s hand.

Let’s try to roll it all together tomorrow.

Reading this piece reminds me – tomorrow afternoon is the Minnesota Tea Party. It’ll be at the Minnesota State Capitol Grounds and, thankfully, it starts after working hours for a change, running from 5-8!

Yes, indeed – I’ll be there. There’s a list of speakers – some excellent leaders in the fight against government wastrelcy, and a couple radio guys from stations that are either johnny-come-latelies or mavis-left-earlies from the limited government movement – but I’ll be there to meet people.  That’s who this thing is all about.

Hope to see you there.

Ed and I will be talking with Ezra Levant about his battle with the Alberta “Human Rights Commission“, and its’ portents for Western civilization.

Levant’s battle with the “Human Rights” police and the Canadian left (motto: “What the American Left wants to be! – ed.) foreshadow what faces every voice of conscience in a place run by the untrammeled left.

Tune in.  If you’re not outraged, you need to check for a pulse.  And if that outrage doesn’t lead you to action, you’ll need to check for a conscience.

A Japanese fleet attacks Pearl Harbor, sinking much of the US battle fleet.  They also seize the Philippines and much of the East Indies.

But they miss the aircraft carriers – which lead a devastating riposte at the head of a US response fuelled by America’s unparalleled economic and idustrial might that drives the Japanese back to home waters and, eventually, vanquish them.

History?

Well, sure.  But it’s also the plot of a work of “fiction” – the 1925 cult classic The Great Pacific War by Hector Bywater.  The book lacked some of the technological changes that affected the war that followed half a generation later – but it got the broad strokes right.

It was, of course, a work of fiction, albeit prescient.  On the other side of the world, it was a work of non-fiction, Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, released about the same time, that had people around the world going “If only we’d paid attention” – long after it was too late to do anything about it.

You have the opportunity to do what the readers of The Great Pacific War and Mein Kampf couldn’t, this Saturday on the Northern Alliance Radio Network; see into our future and, maybe, given a certain amount of wisdom and a lot of energy, change things.

Ed and I will be talking with Ezra Levant about his battle with the Alberta “Human Rights Commission“, and its’ portents for Western civilization.

And unlike so much punditry about the collapse of the civilization we so treasure, it’s coming to you while you can still do something about it.

Tune in.  Listen.  Be outraged.

Let that outrage turn into something else.

I’ve taken my shots at Dems’ “Get Out The Vote” efforts, in that they tend to be not so much educational (as have been the GOP GOTV efforts I’ve seen) as logistical.  Democrat GOTV efforts were wonderfully summed up by the delightfully dissociative Jennifer Vogel in her classic article, “F*CK THE SUBURBS”, in some dismal little Seattle freebiezine a few years ago:

A poll volunteer approached and embarked upon a lengthy explanation. The African woman interrupted. “Kerry,” she said loudly. “I want Kerry.” That was that.

To sum it up: teach a [fill in the label of choice] the name you want filled in, tell them what that name is going to give them, and send them to the polls.

Which is fine, where “fine” equals “legal”. But is it what our democracy is supposed to be striving for?

The franchise is a vital part of democracy – but not as an end unto itself.  It’s supposed to be the first step in a process that leads to good, publicly-minded people of whatever party being sent downtown, or to Saint Paul, or to Washington.

And if the only thing people know about the process is a name and a list of programs, then that’s what the people are going to send off to run your city, county, state or nation.

So while I proposed yesterday to have an all-day national three-for-one happy hour on election day, to keep idiots away from the polls, a little consideration (and spending Saint Patricks Day in downtown Saint Paul, among the raving-drunk pseudo-Oirish reminding me how awful and ugly a drunk populace is), leads me to a better idea.

It’s time to reinstitute the poll test.

In order to vote, everyone should get at least a “D”on a test to make sure they’ve been paying attention to their city, state, and world. The test is non-partisan, gender/race/culture blind, and only makes sure people are actually paying attention to what their government is and how it’s supposed to work.

Here’s an example:

1. Who is your city’s current mayor?  [If the mayor’s race is on the ballot (or any races below, for that matter) it’d be omitted]
2. Does your city have a council, a commission, or a manager?
3. What ward [precinct, city council district, whatever] do you live in?
4. Who is your current city council representative?
5. What county do you live in?
6. Who is your current County Commission representative?
7. Who is the Governor?
8. Who is your State Representative?
9. Who is your State Senator?
10. Name at least four of your state’s constitutional offices and/or officers? (Hint:  Governor [fill in the governor] is one of them).
11. What are the three branches of our State and Federal government?
12. What Congressional District do you live in?
13. Who is your current congressional representative?
14. How many Senators does your state send to the United States Senate?  If guessing, get as close as possible to the actual number without going over.
15. Name as many of your state’s current US Senators as possible.
16. Name at least four cabinet departments or members:  (hint: Secretary of State is one example).
17. Who is the current President of the United States?

Now, should anyone who can’t get at least 60% of these questions correct even be voting?

No, I think that’s the kind of thing a citizen should be able to know to take part in our democracy.  I mean, why should people vote for the control off offices and institutions they don’t understand?

Liberals will respond “That’s Racist!”  Liberals also say “that’s racist” when their pad thai comes to them undercooked or when they get a parking ticket.  What they’re really saying is that “our factory schools – the ones that kids outside the ruling class go to, the ones we want to mandate everyone go to, especially all those minorities, don’t teach the basic of citizenship” – in other words, who’s the racist, here?

Next Saturday on NARN Volume 2, we’ll be interviewing Ezra Levant. The former publisher of Canada‘s Western Standard, Levant was hounded by Canada’s PC police (they literally are that, in Canada) over…

…well, tune in.

 If you care about free speech, this will be a must-listen interview.

Next Saturday on the Northern Alliance Radio Network!

Dutch Supreme Court finds that insulting Islam doesn’t libel individual Moslems:

In a victory for freedom of speech the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in favor of a man who stuck a poster in his window with the text: ‘Stop the tumour that is called Islam’. The court ruled the man did not insult muslims by insulting the religion of islam.

Just when I thought the whole world was going nuts.

Speaking of which; the NARN “Headliners” broadcast is scheduling a rather prominent free-speech figure for an upcoming show.  Stay tuned to this space.

It’s Orwell 101; the authoritarian/totalitarian state has to have an enemy to justify piddling on the Rights of Man.

I know, I know; the left spent the last eight years caterwauling emptily about the same thing – the threat that the War on Terror was just a pretext to gut Americans’ civil liberties.  It’s not to say that the price of Liberty isn’t eternal vigilance; it’s not even to say that the left was crying wolf.

It might seem, though, that they’re projecting a bit.  The Obama Administration is apparently weighing using the US military to help the Mexican military fight the narcotraficantes weighing using the US military to help the Mexican military fight the narcotraficantes that have made northern Mexico as dangerous as Iraq so far this year:

The U.S. military is in a better position to provide Mexico’s military with training, resources and intelligence as its southern neighbor battles deadly drug cartels, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says…”I think we are beginning to be in a position to help the Mexicans more than we have in the past. Some of the old biases against cooperation with our—between our militaries and so on, I think, are being set aside,” Gates said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.””It clearly is a serious problem,” he said.

But yes, of course – it’s our civil liberties that are at fault:

A U.S. report has found that weapons in the drug killings are coming from north of the border. Mexican authorities are outgunned by the drug cartels because the criminals are receiving their high-powered arms from the United States, Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday…”They want to clearly stop the guns from the United States going south. We want to stop the drugs coming north,” Emanuel said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “That border is important to us and Mexico is a key ally of ours.”

We’ve called BS on this claim for quite some time; what self-respecting thug would use a measly semi-automatic, civilianized “Assault Weapon” when they can get, for a fraction of the price, fully-automatic weapons from Central American legacy terrorist groups, from the Mexican and other co-opted Latin American militaries, or from gun-merchants who can turn cartel drug money into first-world hardware for the asking.

No, the Administration needs a boogieman.

A domestic, right-wing boogieman.

So, gun owners; are you ready to boogie?

The Brits deny Geert Wilders – critic of Islamofascism – entrance to the UK because it might upset Moslems who are busy picking on Jewish kids.

US Senators jump on board for a reprise of the “Fairness Doctrine”.

And a dictator messes with a hero who’s already notched one dictatorship:

Nobel laureate, former Polish prime minister, and hero of the Cold War Lech Walesa will not be allowed to visit Venezuela ahead of that country’s referendum on extending the rule of Hugo Chavez. El Jefe told Venezuelan media that Walesa was unwelcome in Caracas, where he was set to meet with opposition student groups, and would be prevented from entering the country. After Walesa cancelled his visit, Chavez claimed that he would, in fact, be allowed through customs but would be “closely monitored” on his visit.

The left’s chattering classes around the world can not handle criticism of them or those they deign to protect.

By the way, look for Jon Stewart or Keith Olberman to start bagging on Lech Wałesa sooner than later.

So now that Obama is President, is dissent still the highest form of patriotism?

Is “Questioning Authority” still a virtue?

Is “speaking truth to power” still a something to uphold and revere?

Just checking.

For some reason I don’t feel as safe as before. Since about noon.

Weird.

Lileks on Twitter reminded me:

All those people who expected Bush to declare martial law today must be crestfallen. Man, he disappointed *everybody.*

Nary a single concentration camp for dissenters.

Who’da thunk it?