Last week, Rep, Mary Franson released a video response to constituent questions.  One of the questions was about welfare.

In the video (since removed, unfortunately), Franson compared welfare to treating people like animals – by creating dependence, making it impossible for them to live without help.  In other words, government treats them like pets, zoo creatures, livestock – creatures of whom they are the master.

Now, food stamp recipients aren’t animals – but the DFL chanting point machine, Carrie Lucking and Denise Cardinal of “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, Greta Bergstrom of “Take Action Minnesota” and most of Minnesota’s lumpen gray mass of leftybloggers – are certainly a bunch of rhetorical hyenas.  They took Franson’s statement, water-boarded it until all the context went away, and put it out there as ‘Mary Franson Compares People On Food Stamps To Animals“.

And that’s how the media – in the bag for the DFL as they almost universally are – ran with it.

It was a lie, of couse; the DFL, being intellectually and morally bankrupt, has had nothing but lies for the past 30 years.

But since misogyny – Rush’s misguided statement about Sandra Fluke, not Bill Maher saying Sarah Palin would diddle Rick Perry if he were black, or Ed Schultz calling Laura Ingraham a “slut”, or Maher calling Palin a “c*nt”, naturally – is in the news, let’s look at the biggest case of misogyny going on in Minnesota right now.

Because lies have consequences.

Franson has been a lighting rod for Minnesota’s demented left for a long time now.  A Central Minnesota teacher and leftyblogger apparently expressly condoned some of the local droogs-in-the-making in bullying one of Franson’s children in school because, in his role as moral judge, jury and executioner, he figured it served her right, having a parent who opposed gay marriage (LL has the audio; it’s a fairly searing indictment of the “Clockwork Orange”-y inner id of way too much of public education today, not to mention the dingo-like morality of a good 80% of Minnesota leftybloggers).  By extension, it served her right, being a conservative woman.

Because women, like blacks and latinos and gays, are supposed to be liberals.  And if they wander off the reservation, there need to be consequences.

And DFLers are promising consequences for Franson’s latest remark (as filtered through the Hyenas and the media).  Franson has received death threats, crude-to-the-point-of-prehensile attacks, and giggly snarks from the loathsome Paul Thissen, and, Saturday morning, a protest on her front lawn – prompting even some of the less-depraved leftybloggers to urge juuuust a smidge of caution.   (Can you imagine the furor if someone like this – who does, by the way, represent the DFL – turned up at a Tea Party?)  Incredibly, House Minority leader Paul Thissen disavowed any knowledge of the threats of violence, and tried to turn it into another snark.

So the story is this:  the hyenas of the Ministry of Truth twist Franson’s statement far out of context to whip up hysteria – part of a long-running campaign to harass Franson and, indeed, all conservative women, to make being involved in politics too emotionally draining for all but the supernaturally-toughest conservative women (and by God, your leading conservative women could make a Navy SEAL cry uncle).  Hysteria duly ensues, with less-mentally-gifted DFLers promising one of their made-to-order mini-riots on Saturday.

The media wants to know…

…if Franson really thinks food stamp recipients are reeeeealy animals?

Franson, fortunately, responded:

The real news story is the death threats and vicious, sexual, misogynist emails I have received in connection with the video that has been taken down and for which I have apologized. I’ve never compared people with animals as I think too highly of the human person. This is why it’s immoral for government to enable dependency, a subject my critics are fierce to avoid. Democrats are content with

the poverty status quo; republicans are not.

I’d be happy to forward to you some of the emails if you are interested. Otherwise, the subject that I understand you wish to interview me about is both stale & dated and

has been eclipsed by violence from the left. I think your viewers would be more interested in the latter than the former.

Best regards,

Mary Franson

It’s more than a little tempting to drive to Alex this weekend with a camera.  Indeed, if there are any conservative activists in the neighborhood, it’d be good to get the festivities on tape.  This blog will run your footage for you.

And I have a feeling I won’t have to shave any context to make it shame the DFL.

PS:  I implied above that there is a concerted rhetorical campaign to so intensely harass conservative women, blacks, latinos and gays to the point that they stay out of politics.  I’m wondering – can you imagine how some DFL hamster like Betty McCollum or Sandy Pappas would melt down if they were the target of the constant misogynistic hatred that the likes of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Laura Ingraham, Mary Franson or any other conservative women are?

Imagining is all we can do, of course.  Because it just.  Doesn’t.  Happen.   Not like this.

Carbonite was one of the companies that dropped its sponsorship of Rush Limbaugh during last week’s snit over the host mischaracterizing Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law school student who is clearly overpaying for both her education and her birth control, as a “slut”.  (She’s a “Democrat/Media (ptr) prop”, to be perfectly accurate).

And that self-righteousness has come home to roost:

However, it hasn’t done much to contribute to his company’s stock price. Since the market opened on Monday through its close today, Carbonite stock (NASDAQ:CARB) has plummeted nearly 12 percent, outpacing the drop of the NASDAQ index in that same time period by nine-and-a-half points. It was also one of the biggest decliners on the NASDAQ on Tuesday.

Maybe the League of Women Voters will pick up the slack?

I woke up this morning and realized I hadn’t written anything about the big anniversary yesterday.  So I’ll do it today.

March 6 was the eighth anniversary of the first-ever broadcast of the Northern Alliance Radio Network.

In the beginning, the idea was a simple trade;  AM1280 would get the promotional mojo that came from associating with a bunch of the leading bloggers in a conservative blog scene that, then as now, was the biggest and best in the US.  We’d get time to do a show.  Everyone would win.

And everyone did win.  I have no less fun doing the show today than I did on Day One.  In fact, it may be more fun – because those first two years made for some weird, if fun, radio.

The first two years, the show basically involved hourly relays from among the crowd of bloggers involved – and it was a crowd.  Ed, King Banaian, John HInderaker, Scott Johnson, Chad the Elder, Brian “Saint Paul” Ward and (at the very beginning) JB Doubtless and Atomizer all tramped in and out of the studio, along with the occasional guest, with me usually directing traffic making sure only one person talked at a time and (often as not) introducing them so the audience would know which of the mass of voices was which.  It’s not a kind of show you hear often on talk radio.  There’s a reason for that.

So those first two years, I was probably more of a traffic cop than a talk show host.  I like being a host a lot more.

It was two years later we split into two, and then three, shows.  People left (John, Scott, Chad, Brian), people joined (Brad Carlson) and joined and left (Michael Brodkorb), but we’re still at three shows on two stations on two weekend days.

It’s also a whack upside the head to note that in my first go-around in radio, I probably had actual jobs for eight of the 13 years; in other words, half of my “radio career” has been spent doing the NARN.

And I gotta say, it’s been the good half!

So as we kick off Year Nine of the NARN, I’d like to thank everyone involved.  General Manager Ron Stone, like John Hunt before him, continues to let us use his valuable air time.  Lee MIchaels, like Nick Novak and Patrick Campion before him, is a great, supportive program director.  Tommy Huynh, like Matt Reynolds and Irina Malanina and the late great Joe Hanson before, keeps making us sound good.

And of course Ed, King and Brad, like John, Scott, Chad, Brian, Michael and even JB and Atomizer before them, continue to help make the NARN the most fun I’ve ever had on the radio, and remain among my best friends off the air, and help make the show one of the highlights of the week.

I joke that “the worst day on the air is better than the best day off the air”.  It’s not really true – or at least, I feel sorry for anyone for whom it is true.  But week-in, week out, for the past 416 weeks and probably close to 400 broadcasts now, doing the NARN has been one of the highlights of my week.

And for way, way more of you than anyone would have figured eight years ago, it’s at least a stop on your weekend listening, too.  And for that I’m profoundly grateful.

To: Certain leftybloggers who’ve appointed themselves as “FACT CHECKERS”
From: Mitch Berg, the most factual blogger there is
Re: Cough it up.

To…well, you know who  you are.

You’ve posited yourself as a “FACT CHECK”-er.  Fair enough, we all have our niche.

So let’s see if you can fill “your” niche, here.

During the debate over the “Stand Your Ground” bill, you repeatedly called the Cornish bill “crap” legislation.  You said that it’d lead to all sorts of problems.   You said it not once, but several times.

I asked, every time, for you to elaborate.  You didn’t.  I’m sure it’s an oversight.

So in your capacity as “FACT CHECK”-er, please tell us:

1. How, exactly, “Stand Your Ground” is “crap” legislation.  And by this, I mean, in which of the 30 states that have “Castle” laws, “Stand Your Ground” laws, or both, has the crime rate risen as a result of the passage of the law?
2. What, in legal terms, does “Stand  Your Ground” mean?  I mean, in your own words.  This one shouldn’t be difficult; I’ve explained it numerous times in this blog.
3. In your own words, what are the real, real-world and legal consequences of these laws?  Please cite examples – don’t just quote from chanting-point blogs that you agree with.
4. You ascribed the bill to the American Legislative Exchange Commission”, aka “ALEC”, AKA “the boogeyman”.  Please substantiate that this bill – which has been in the works in Minnesota in one form or another since 2006 – has any connection to ALEC.   (Thanks to Learned Foot for the reminder).
5. You also claimed that this bill was there to serve some un-named profit motive.  Please describe who “profits” from a change in the presumption of innocence int eh elements of a self-defense claim?  (The only financial impact would seem to be lowering the demand for defense attorneys).  (Thanks, again, to Learned Foot for the reminder).

I went to my first Fourth Congressional District GOP meeting since the redistricting last night.

We got two bits of news:

1. We’re down to one candidate to replace Betty McCollum.  With the withdrawal of Dan Flood, Tony Hernandez is the guy with the hat in the ring.  There’s about a month for someone to jump in.
2. With the addition of all that new territory between the old Fourth and the Saint Croix – Stillwater, Woodbury, Dellwood, Lake Elmo and Afton – most of which skew at least slightly GOP, the Fourth has gone from a 65-35 DFL district (sometimes more like 70-30) to a 60-40 DFL district.

So there’s two bits of good news there.

The Good Candidate: I’ve known Tony Hernandez for a couple of years.  He ran against Dick Cohen in SD…er, 64, right?  Anyway, in 2010, Hernandez ran against Cohen’s sinecure.  And like all Republicans in the city, he got trounced.  But – he was the only Republican in the whole city to get a precinct inside twenty points, and when you’re a Saint Paul Republican, you look for whatever scrap of good news you can find.  When we heard the announcements last night that it was down to Tony, the committee-person next to me said “Hernandez is going to have to work“.   That, naturally, goes without saying.  It’s going to take a superhuman effort.

Fortunately…

The Numbers Are A Tad Less Superhuman: 60-40 is daunting indeed.  But it’s a lot less daunting than 70-30.  The latter is more than 2:1, which in political terms might as well be 50:1.  Betting on 3:2 odds is a whole different critter.

I mean, it’s still  a long shot.  But the Fourth now has the same numbers as the Eighth had two years ago.

Back after Cravaack won, I noted the keys to his victory; lots of hard work, sure – the guy logged a jillion miles, and he’s still doing it.  But hard work without focus is just wasted energy.  Cravaack had good staff – and he ran his district campaign like a military operation, with a chain of command breaking up the district and the work to be done into chunks which an individual (with a day job and a family who was also working their ass off to volunteer) could manage.  And they managed it.

I joked at the time that what the GOP needed was eight former Navy Chief Petty Officers (Army master sergeants, Marine gunnies or Air Force technical sergeants, naturally, would work too), one in each CD – not so much to run, but to manage the campaigns.

And so I was excited to see Flood – a retired Navy senior chief – throwing his hat in the ring.  It’s always fun when your quips come to life.

But Flood’s back out (although it’d be great to have a good CPO working on the campaign, if for no other reason than he could no doubt get things ship-shape, as it were), and unless someone else jumps in and exhibits some fund-raising and organizing mojo very fast, Martinez could be the guy.

And he’s gonna have to work.  And so will all the rest of us.

And that work looks a lot less hopeless now than it did two years ago.

Because while a 60:40 margin is a pretty comfortable one for a good politician…

Betty McCollum is not a good politician.  She is a ventriloquist’s dummy for the various Metro special interests.  She isn’t a representative; she a stenographer and lever-puller for the MFT/AFSCME/MAPE/SEIU/Common Cause and the rest of the DFL’s rouge gallery.  She doesn’t have any beliefs she’s not instructed to have.  She’s overmatched in a debate with her own reflection.  Hearing her talk is like listening to someone reading a list of chanting points and ignoring the punctuation (“The central corridor will bring a lot of new jobs and those are infrastructure jobs and we also support the right to choose and we get behind working families and don’t you know working families need help and that’s why President Obama supports targeted tax cuts and healthcare is a right…” isn’t a direct quote, but if you’ve heard McCollum speak, admit it, you’re laughing now, aren’t you?)

So there you go, Fourth District.  The impossible just got a lot more do-able.

Joe Doeakes from Como Park writes:

Legalized murder

Governor Dayton vetoed the Stand Your Ground legislation that would have made it less risky for honest citizens to defend themselves from criminal attack. He was persuaded by lobbyists who said the law would “legalize murder.”

Wow, legalize murder; that sounds bad. I wonder what “legalize murder” means?

Murder – now, are we talking about plotting and lying in wait to kill someone in cold blood, as Chief Kolb suggested? Mob hits? Gang banging? Because I don’t see the proposed law legalizing those sorts of murders at all.

Or are we using “murder” in the broader sense of “to end a human life?” Because if that’s the case, we already have legalized murder and we’re glad we do.

The Navy SEALS who got Osama Bin Laden ended a human life. The Golden Valley police officer who shot the crazy woman on 394 last Fall, ended a human life. The Good Samaritan who shot the purse snatcher in Minneapolis, ended a human life. The United States has capital punishment for treason, which ends a human life. And don’t even get me started on abortion. Is Mark Dayton suggesting the people who end those lives are murderers? Of course not. Ending those human lives is just fine with him.

“Legalizing murder” doesn’t mean what you think it does. It’s just a scary phrase to trick you into believing the proposed law is a bad thing. Trickery. Deceit. That’s the DFL playbook.

And, this year more than most, it’s all they have.

And I’m still waiting for the mainstream media to FACT CHECK the idiot politicians and lobbyists – Heather Martens, Dave Kolb, Jim Backstrom, Mark Dayton – who trafficked in the phrase.,

Catherine Richert?  You smelling what I’m cooking?

The GOP primary becomes a Möbius strip.

Give conventional wisdom its due – sometimes it’s right.  The political meme entering tonight cast the GOP contest with Mitt Romney as the tenuous front-runner, Rick Santorum as the undisciplined and underfunded challenger, Newt Gingrich as the long-shot and Ron Paul as the wacky neighbor next door.  10 states and 400+ delegates later?

It’s exactly the same.

So what can we take away as Super Tuesday becomes Groggy Wednesday Morning?

• The Song Remains the Same:  Nothing seemingly can break the GOP deadlock as Romney remains a front-runner who has to outspend his competition 6-to-1 in order to eek out a victory and loses when “only” outspending his rivals by smaller margins.  Not that Santorum or Gingrich ought to be bragging.  The Icarus primary of the Not-Romneys has seen both candidate’s wings melt under the media spotlight and while Santorum looks to have at least 3 wins and a “draw” in his Ohio loss, he did nothing on Tuesday to claim the mantle of front-runner.  Ohio’s margin might make it harder for Romney to raise money, but his purse strings stretch far further than Santorum or Gingrich despite an uptick post Feb 7th.
• Hare Apparent:  Newt Gingrich might consider himself the “tortoise” of the primary race, but as we pass the 550 mark in delegates, all the candidates need to start running like bunnies.  Say what you will of Romney’s inability to close out the nomination, his delegate accumulation has been far more tortoise-like, making it almost statistically impossible for Santorum to win enough delegates (to say nothing of Newt).  And what exactly is going to change that?
• Southbound & Down:  The primary calender might – might – change things.  From March 10th to the 17th, the race goes into territory that should be less friendly to Romney.  Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri all vote in that 7 day timespan and represent perhaps Rick Santorum’s last best gasp to alter the trajectory of the campaign.  The problem is that Gingrich remains in the race and is pursuing a southern strategy while Romney is carpetbombing airwaves and mailboxes.  With a still-divided field, Romney doesn’t need to win most of these states.  Instead, he can focus his resources on one or two and hope that Hawaii, voting during this period as well, will keep him racking up just enough delegates and primary wins to look the part of a front-runner.  That element of the contest looks the most likely.  Why?
• Dear God, Let It End:  The media & the punditry have become bored.  And frankly, more than a few voters too.  After 20 debates (with one more, in theory, on March 19th) and countless hours of navel-gazing political spin, there simply isn’t much left to say about any of the remaining candidates.  Barring a completely undiscovered past comment or present gaffe, there isn’t anything likely to arise to change most voters impressions of the field.  And if nothing changes, Mitt Romney becomes the GOP nominee probably around April 24th as 231 delegates will be up for grabs in winner-take-all East coast states.  Not even Gingrich throwing his pledged delegates behind Santorum now necessarily stops that.  So, at least in the minds of the punditry, why wait another month-and-a-half to declare a winner?
• The Animatronics Need Further Testing:  Romney’s robotic Boston speech tonight represented the former Governor at his awkward, halting worst.  Romney stays on message, like a T-1000 with a target in its sights, but still hasn’t had that “I now know why humans cry” moment in relating to the electorate.  Romney will never be able to fully relate to average voters, but then again his general election opponent isn’t exactly a beer and waffles man himself (despite attempts at photo ops to the contrary).  Romney can’t afford to have many more George Bush Sr. “price of milk” moments (although that moment was strongly overhyped as a sign that Bush was out of touch).  And if the price of a stronger nominee is several more months of media boredom – snooze away.

Last month, Minnesota’s American Civil LIberties Union chapter ran a publicity stunt, offering a thousand dollar reward for an example of a case of voter fraud that a Voter ID Amendment would have caught.

Today, the Minnesota Majority took the stunt ball and rran, producing a case and putting in its clam for the reward:

Dan McGrath, executive director of Minnesota Majority, produced court records from an Anoka County case involving voting in the 2008 election. The records concern an Andover woman who was charged with three felonies. According to the records, prosecutors believe she voted in person in her own name, and by absentee ballot in the name of her daughter, who was away at college.

The daughter also voted near her college in the same election. The mother, according to records produced by McGrath, pleaded guilty to one of the charges and was sentenced to probation in August of 2011.

I”ll be asking McGrath for the names.  I’ll bet dimes to dollars the woman voted DFL both times.

But that’s not really the subject of this post.

No, I have two other observations.

Is Jim Ragsdale Gunning For Lori Sturdevant’s Gig?: Ragsdale kicked off his piece with the following, to which I’ve added emphasis:

A small conservative activist group known as the Minnesota Majority, which has been investigating voting irregularities in Minnesota for years, claimed a $1,000 prize offered by the ACLU for finding a case of fraud that a photo ID requirement would have prevented.

So the MInnesota Majority is “small” and “conservative” – but the ACLU is omniscient and balanced?

Why does Ragsdale feel the need to  label Minnesota Majority’s ideology but not that of the ACLU?

And why does he call it “small”, when the MM likely puts more activists out in the field on any given day than the ACLU – which is, let’s not forget, a couple of lawyers in an office in Saint Paul and a “membership” that is largely a list of donors?

Mr. Ragsdale:  Editorialize much?

So How Much Fraud Does The Left Find Acceptable?: Greta Bergstrom, who works for “Take Action Minnesota”, tweeted:

A college student was impersonated by her mom. Seriously? This is the “voting threat” in MN? #mnleg #stribpol

Let’s try to illustrate this for you.  Let’s say that the Koch Brothers forges a ballot on a referendum to ban abortion.  That forged ballot negated the vote of one pro-choice woman.  Would that level of fraud be acceptable?  Just one pro-choice woman?

Think hard, Greta.  Crank that finely-honed progressive propaganda-bot mind up to “puree” and cough up an answer.

You can do it.  I just know you can.

To: Dave Senjem, Kurt Zellers and the rest of the Legislative GOP Caucuses
From: Mitch Berg, Conservative Pugilist Without Portfolio
Re: WTF?

I was talking with a fairly prominent GOP/conservative activist the other day.  He noted that some of you are getting squishy on some core conservative issues – specifically “Right To Work”.

You’re nervous about the amount of money the “labor” movement is going to spend against against you this fall if you pursue this issue.

My question:  If not now, when?  The “labor” movement is spread incredibly thin this year; they’re fighting “Right to Work” in a slew of states, all of them “must-wins” for them.  They have a lot of ill-gotten money, it’s true – but they’ll be playing whack-a-mole in a whole bunch of legislatures.  Next session, and 2014, they will not be.

You were sent to Saint Paul in an epic reversal of fortune from the previous two cycles; you went from plucky but almost irrelevant minority to solid majority in one election.

I’m going to suggest to you that the voters didn’t do that because of anything connoted with the term “Republican Party of MInnesota”, or because they wanted Lori Sturdevant to approve of you.  They threw out the Democrats because you took a courageous stance on the stump, and convinced the voters that they didn’t want Democrats passing the laws.

They did it because the Cauci proposed to change things in this state, and the voters believed them.

So deliver.

That is all.

The First Amendment protects free speech (as well as the press, assembly, and worship provided that the subject isn’t contraception).

But it has limits.

Fraud is not free speech.  You need to speak to commit fraud – “Hey, you have money in Nigeria, and we need $1,000 in legal fees to get it for you!”, right?  But it’s illegal.

It’s not illegal, in most cases, to lie.  There is the odd exception – the Stolen Valor Act which, by the way, makes me uncomfortable; I’d rather have a group of Green Berets set an impersonator straight than some federal prosecutor.    In most other cases, it’s not illegal.

Indeed, in some cases it’s encouraged, even among public servants.  The Supreme Court has said it’s OK for cops and prosecutors to lie to suspects to get information out of them.  That’s acceptable, generally, although it’s led to the odd miscarriage of justice.

But I think there should be a great, shining exception to “freedom of speech”.  Officers of the court should not be able to lie about the law, to their constituents.

There are only two explanations for Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom so grossly misstated the potential effects of the “Stand Your Ground” bill, vetoed yesterday by Governor Dayton.

He Doesn’t Know Any Better And, Like The Strib “Editorial Board”, Just Wrote What He Was Told.  If he’s that ignorant of the laws he’s supposed to enforce, he should not be a County Attorney.

Or…

He Actively Misrepresented The Law To An Audience Including His Constituents. With the goal of influencing public policy (the bill was then in committee), Backstrom wrote an op-ed (not for the first time, mind you) that actively and knowingly tried to mislead the public by lying about the consequences of a law.

I don’t know the legal definition of fraud – and I don’t have to, to still be able to say “this sort of behavior on the part of a court official defrauds and actively disinforms the public, toward a political end”.

And while there never will be, there oughtta be a law.

Commenter “Nate” yesterday, in a comment I thought was worthy of being posted:

It is strangely appropriate that the man who shut down his Senate office for fear of talcum powder now insists all Minnesotans should have a legal duty of cowardice. You may NOT stand up for yourself. If threatened, you MUST RUN AWAY.

Brave, brave Sir Robin

Perhaps James Backstrom warned him about the talc.

It’s not been announced as this is written (3:14PM), but sources tell me that Governor Dayton has vetoed Stand Your Ground.

UPDATE:  Every outstate DFLer had best be looking over their political backs.

And Governor Dayton?  You can retire that “I have twin .357s” bullshit in your next campaign.  Your “I am a Second Amendment supporter” privileges have been revoked.

Rep. Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill – which must be either signed or vetoed by midnight tonight (as this is written, neither has happened, although that may change; I write these posts between 5:30 and 7AM, because, well, I work during the day and can’t always follow the news in real time like some puling Sorosblogger), has come in for the most amazing avalanche of slander over its four years of consideration at various levels.

I’ve pointed out that most of the bill’s detractors – whether politicians, cops or the  DFL-promoting media – are lying when they say (and say, and say) that the bill would “legalize murder”, and that the bill merely changes the presumption of guilt to a  presumption of innocence when one is attempting self-defense on ones own property – in the home, yard, garage, or in the car or at a business one owns.

That’s it.

But some people learn better from seeing examples.

So let’s go through some compare and contrast exercises to look at the differences between current law and the Cornish bill.

A really stupid 10 year old boy enters a homeowner’s property to steal apples.  The boy is unarmed, by the way, and that’s above and beyond the fact that he’s a ten year old boy.  The homeowner comes out of his house with a handgun and shoots the boy, who dies on the scene.  The homeowner claims self-defense.

• Current Law: The homeowner can not prove that the boy was a reasonable threat of death or great bodily harm.  She’s convicted of manslaughter or 2nd degree murder.
• With “Stand Your Ground”:  The police investigation shows no evidence the boy was a threat to anyone.  The county attorney charges the homeowner with manslaughter or 2nd degree murder, and proves it to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.  The jury convicts her.

• Current Law: The homeowner’s claim that “stink-eye” was a threat of death or great bodily harm, his failure to even attempt to retreat from said “stink-eye”, and the unreasonableness of the use of lethal force against an unarmed man (“stink-eye” notwithstanding) is rejected by the jury, who convict him of second-degree murder.
• With “Stand Your Ground”: The police investigation shows that the homeowner was not under threat of death or great bodily harm from the alleged perception of “stink-eye”.  The County Attorney, noting that there is no reasonable doubt that a jury will find “stink eye” not to be a lethal threat, and that using lethal force is not a reasonable response to “stink-eye”, takes the case to trial.  Based on the lack of lethal threat and the unreasonableness of lethal force, the jury finds him guilty of second degree murder; “duty to retreat” is no longer an issue, obviously. The homeowner, breaking into a curious German accent as his lawyer buries his face in his hands during the verdict, yells “But ze law zayz I don’t have to retreat to ze house, and zat I can kill for ze ztink-eye!” as the judge pounds the bench, and then the defendant, with his gavel.

…but it’s not exactly good news.

Or, I suspect, especially valid research.

The Strib finally did it.

The Strib’s editorial board, in serving in its unstated capacity as stenographers for the DFL and its agenda, have written some howlers over the years; countering them has provided a constant source of material for Minnesota’s large, thriving center-right alternative media for a solid decade now.

But over the weekend, they pulled off the unthinkable – the triple three-peat, the three-minute mile, winning 164 games in a regular season of editorial writing.

They wrote an editorial that was absolutely devoid of truth, or of objective fact.  Literally, not one assertion in the entire column about Representative Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill is true, or not presented in a context that isn’t 180 degrees misleading.

An editorial that is, to a moral and ethical “T”, perfectly untrue beyond simple things like “the legislature passed…” or “Jim Backstrom is…”, obviously).

The thought of cataloging all the individual lies in this editorial is almost too daunting.  But if not me, who?

Now that the Legislature has passed a bill that would allow gun owners to use deadly force anywhere they feel threatened, only Gov. Mark Dayton can prevent it from becoming law.

This statement starts out with a bang (as it were), proving the stenographer writer’s absolute ignorance on the subject.  Minnesota law currently says you can use lethal force when you feel threatened.  The bill doesn’t change the justifications for lethal force.  Not at all.   It has nothing to do with how the law-abiding shooter “Feels”.

It has to do with the burden of proof in judging their motives, and only under certain circumstnces.

More later.

Known as an expanded version of the “castle doctrine,” the bill would allow Minnesotans to shoot to kill even if they aren’t at home. The state’s current castle law already allows citizens to use deadly force in their homes to protect themselves.

This statement is proof that the writer is just re-writing a press release from Heather Martens.

Minnesotans – and residents of any state, for that matter – can already use lethal force to defend themselves, in or out of their homes.   Self-defense has been an accepted part of the law since before there was a United States.

The problem in MInnesota is that self defense is called an “affirmative defense”; you plead guilty to shooting someone, with an explanation.  You are then guilty until you prove yourself innocent, and show to the court’s and jury’s satisfaction that you were…:

• An unwilling participant
• in reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm
• that lethal force was justified
• that you made a reasonable effort to disengage.

The “Stand  Your Ground” law would make one change; if you shoot someone on your property – your house, your yard, your garage, in your car or a business you own – the burden of proof switches to the county attorney.   The law-abiding shooter on their own property will be innocent until proven guilty.

And that is all.

But the proposed law, more appropriately called the “shoot first” bill by opponents,

And there’s more proof that the editorial is just a rewrite of a Heather Martens press release.

“Shoot First” bill?

Has anyone on the Strib editorial board’s band of logicians ever pondered what happens if you shoot second?

would let gun owners fire at people they perceive as threats — without the expectation that they should first attempt to avoid trouble if possible.

Another lie, another direct crib from Heather Martens’ chanting points.  Self-defense shooting is always shooting at “perceived threats”.  The bill merely means that, while you’re on your property, the county attorney has the burden of proving that your perception was wrong.

In particular, ‘Shooting people without first trying to avoid trouble” is legal suicide now, and it would be if the law passes.

Minnesota doesn’t need this change. The state already has a conceal-and-carry law, and citizens who choose to arm themselves can already use firearms for protection anywhere within reasonable limits.

Which is true – and irrelevant to the subject of the editorial.

The bill is not about the right to keep and bear arms; that’s in the Constitution.  It’s about the right to use them in legitimate self-defense without an undue legal burden.

And as we saw in last month’s story from Iowa, the burden – being considered guilty until proven innocent – can truly be an undue one.

For years, shoot-first expansion has been among the top legislative priorities for the National Rifle Association. The organization believes that gun owners should have unfettered rights to defend themselves whenever and wherever they feel threatened.

That paragraph is more Heather Martens, from the callow, demonizing reference to the NRA, to the weasel-word that barely camouflages a lie (nobody, neither Cornish nor the NRA, supports an “unfettered” right to kill in self-defense; merely reasonable legal protections for everyone, including the shooter) and the face-palming illogic (again – self-defense is always about whether one “feels threatened”; the devil is in the details; they help determine whether that “feeling” reasonable?)

That’s part of the problem: Defining a threat can be very personal — and mistakes can be deadly. Some gun owners may feel nervous because of the way a group of youths is dressed. Others might find members of a different race or culture to pose a threat.

Heather Martens has been my rhetorical kick-toy for most of the past decade – but to the best of my knowledge, she’s never tried to play the race card.  I suspect this is the Strib’s editorial board taking some editorial license with Martens’ press release.

You can shoot someone today because you don’t like their clothes, or their race, or their “culture”.  You merely have to prove to a jury that you feared being killed or maimed, that lethal force was justified, that you made a reasonable effort to escape the threat of imminent death or mutilation, and that you didn’t seek out the fight.

And the only thing that’ll change – the only thing – under the proposal is that if you are on your property, the county attorney will have to prove that it was wrong.

And the editorial board apparently has no confidence whatsoever in Minnesota’s police or prosecutors’ ability to tell if a shooting is illegitimate – that a shooting was because of fear of the victim’s “race” or “clothes” or “culture” rather than legitimate fear of death.

Whichever is the case, the conclusion – the editorial board is lying – is the same.

And what about those occasions when a person hears a noise and worries that it could be someone who would do them harm? Then there’s the issue of defending one’s life vs. protecting property.

Absolutely none of which changes from current law.  If the police and county attorney investigate and believe that there was no legitimate threat to the property owner, the property owner still has a problem.  The editorial board – like Heather Martens – is lying about this.

The proposed law allows deadly force to be used against anyone who enters a garage, for example, “by stealth or force.” That means a homeowner could injure someone or take a life over the theft of a car, bicycle or lawn mower.

Let’s take this statement at face value – more than it deserves – and compare and contrast.

An unarmed black Somali youth sneaks into a garage to steal a bike.  Homeowner runs to garage and shoots him.  The homeowner claims self-defense – that he “felt threatened”.

Current Law: Since the youth was unarmed and there was no evidence that he was a lethal threat to the homeowner, the homeowner’s affirmative defense fails and he’s convicted of murder or manslaughter.

Proposed Law: Since the police investigation shows the youth was unarmed and there was no evidence that he was a lethal threat to the homeowner, the county charges him with murder or manslaughter, and easily proves him guilty.

That’s it.

As Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom pointed out in a Feb. 15 commentary on these pages (“A bill for the trigger-happy? Bull’s-eye”), the modified law would allow people to shoot first and ask questions later whenever they believed they were threatened, regardless of how a reasonable person would have responded under the same circumstances.

And as I showed, then and above, Backstrom was lying and misrepresenting the law.

It speaks volumes that Backstrom and most other state and national prosecutors, as well as law enforcement groups, oppose the proposal.

Yes; it shows, yet again, that they are in the bag for the DFL.  Which is a fact – urban “law enforcement groups” like the MN Police Chiefs’ association are primarily political organizations; the chiefs, especially those in the bigger cities, are mainly political offices, appointed by and serving at the pleasure of the (always DFL) governments.

More importantly?  These same groups all come out against all Second Amendment expansions.  All of them.  They all predict dire consequences.

And they are always wrong.

They’re on the front lines and understand that deadly force should be the last resort.

And the bill will not change that one iota.  It’ll merely mean prosecutors will have the same burden of proof they have against real criminals.

Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Good Thunder, has supported expanded castle legislation for years, arguing that the change would codify that law-abiding people “have the brains” [love those scare quotes, huh?  – Ed] to understand the seriousness of deadly force.

And the record, nationwide, has shown Cornish’s argument to be resoundingly correct.

Cornish, a former police chief, believes the bill is a logical extension of current law and that the change is needed because citizens need to know that they won’t be prosecuted for defending themselves.

But Cornish can’t point to a single case in Minnesota in which someone acting in self-defense was convicted of anything or sent to jail.

It’s deceptive rhetoric – and it’s untrue.  I sure can.

Thomas McCuiston – a 125-pound black man – fatally shot a 6’1, drunk, racist attacker with a 50-pound weight advantage who was breaking into his home; he was defending his five year old son.  At trial the judge refused to include the part of the statute that referred to “defending ones’ dwelling” into his instructions; they sentenced McCuiston to 15 years.  The appellate judge found that the jury instruction was a reversible error; McCuiston was granted a new trial, where the jury got the right instruction and acquitted McCuiston.

There’s one.  Want another?

Martin Treptow, who shot at a man who’d been road-raging at him and had him blocked in at a stoplight on Highway 10.  The man pointed a gun at Treptow’s pregnant wife as she sat in the passenger seat; Treptow shot the man, who turned out to be an “undercover cop” and member of the now-disgraced Gang Strike Force.  Although Treptow was released without even having his carry permit revoked by the Anoka cops, the Anoka County Attorney leaned on Treptow, promising endless prosecution unless he accepted a deal.  An unemployed security guard, he didn’t have the resources to fight the case; he pled guilty to lesser charges.  It was as complete a miscarriage of justice as I’ve ever seen – and as clear a justification of the Cornish Bill as exists.

Those two cases (and I’ll bank on there being more) distract from the real point, which isn’t necessarily that anyone “goes to jail” because they had to prove their innocence (unlike virtually any real criminal); it’s that they had to spend an average of $50,000 in legal bills against the  unlimited resources of the county attorney to  defeat a presumption of guilt until proven innocent – a financial hit the county attorney’s office can absorb without a second thought, but which breaks many poorer defendants…

…who plead guilty to lesser charges, and thus don’t count as people “sitting in jail because they were wrongly convicted”, because, hey, they confessed to the lesser crime – and the lesser included charge of being too poor to fight the County Attorney!  Indeed, those are the victims of the current system of law; smug upper-middle-class liberals can afford lawyers to fight their way through the system and prove themselves innocent; working class and poor people, like Treptow and McCuiston and Ray Lewis, people who live in lousyh neighborhoods (gutted by DFL policy) who need to defend themselves (against criminals against which the DFL-run city is powerless), but don’t have the resources to fight the county attorney.

So while the editorial is utterly devoid of fact, it is racist, in the way that Strib editorials always are; the racism of “good intentions”, of trying to do the little peoples’ thinking for them.  Even if it means you have to doctor the facts to do it.

So why is the Strib editorial board lying?  Why is it doing a glossy rewrite of an (I’ll guess, with authority) Heather Martens press release and calling it the institutional voice of the newspaper?

The Strib is lying to the people. Where is the accountability?

Other than the slow dripping of market forces pushing it into irrelevance?  There is none.

EXTRA CREDIT QUESTION:  How long until Catherine Richert at MPR’s “Poligraph” “fact-checks” this editorial?

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

The third year law student at Georgetown who wanted to testify to Congress that taxpayers should pay the $100 per month her friend spends on birth control is . . . the victim here?

Not really. Democrats are using a bait-and-switch to justify their “have you no decency, sir” hysterics.

Turns out the friend was prescribed oral contraceptives to treat a cyst condition but the insurance company won’t pay for birth control. It’s really a fight over what medicine is appropriate to treat a medical condition, very common in all health insurance plans. It has nothing to do with forcing the Catholic Church to perform abortions, which what the Democrats wrote into the Obamacare law and now are defending.

“The insurance company won’t pay for my medicine” is completely different from “The Church won’t pay for me to commit a sin.”

But Democrats didn’t admit that up front; they played it as if this was about birth control to prevent pregnancies. Rush took their lies at face value and riffed on that. Now that the true story is coming out, Democrats complain he shot his mouth off without admitting they set him up with their lies.

Bait-and-switch.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

To be fair to the Democrats, (falsely) claiming the GOP is coming for their contraceptives and fanning hysteria is the only campaign they have; Americans are not better off than they were four years ago.

The governor has until midnight tonight – Monday – to sign or veto the Cornish “Stand Your Ground” bill.

I suspect he’ll veto it.  He’ll probably claim the people don’t support it.

Let’s make sure he and his staff know better.

Invest fifteen seconds in furthering freedom.

This will remain at the top of this blog until this issue is resolved.

I just got the news that Chris Tiedeman – political PR guru extraordinaire, and a  longtime friend of this blog – and his wife Sara were involved in a “serious” car accident last night.

Sara and Chris

There are painfully few details.

I’ll ask for your prayers, karmic imprecations, best wishes or whatever your world views call for.

I rarely post on Sundays.

But I had to break the silence to point out that yesterday, the Strib ran an editorial about Rep. Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill that was distinguished by having not one solitary true assertion in it.

Not one.

As egregious as the Strib editors’ assaults against fact (on behalf of the DFL) have always been, I can not recall one in the past that not only so grossly buggers fact in pursuit of supporting the DFL’s agenda, to say nothing of being so morally, ethically and factually void to a physical absolute.

Tomorrow morning at 6AM here on Shot In The Dark.

Here’s Pete Hegseth’s website.

And here’s Michele Bachmann’s.  And here’s the information re contacting the White House in re the Stillwater Bridge.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism – as we finish eight years as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

• Ed and I will be doing the voodoo we do from 1-3PM.  Today we’ll be talking redistricting, the presidential race, and the Dems’ curious ideas about the economy..
• Brad Carlson’s show – “The Closer” – is on from 1-3 on Sunday.
• The King Banaian Show! – King is on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  Join him from 9-11 every Saturday!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream) .
• New – send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• Podcasts are now available on the AM1280 page!  (Ed and I are #2 – Brad is #3).
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

Ted “Mini-Governor” Mondale wants you, the voter, to believe that 4-2=6.

Metropolitan Sports Facility Chairman Ted Mondale said the electronic pull-tab financing mechanism for the state’s $400 million share is solid, despite questions about gambling revenue projections and the bonds the state intends to sell. Mondale also seemed to be hinting that he’s not worried about charitable gambling operators’ complaints about their taxes:

“As it relates to the revenue estimates. We believe that the total pot in the first year will be $72 million. There will be a final negotiation when the bill goes through with the bars and the restaurants, but we think their revenue almost doubles.

That’d be amazing!

Of course, it’d involve gaming revenues taking a huge U-turn from their past ten years’ performance.  Gary Gross at the Examiner unpacks reality (I’ll add some emphasis):

According to this pdf report, the trend continues. In FY2002, gross receipts were $1,435,426,000. That figure had dropped 31% to $989,906,000 in FY2011. To be fair, that represented a 1% increase in receipts from 2010.

That said, that’s the only increase in gross receipts during the FY2002-FY2011 decade:

FY2010 gross receipts dropped 5%.

FY2009 gross receipts dropped 9.6%.

FY2008 gross receipts dropped 9.8%.

FY2007 gross receipts dropped 3.3%.

FY2006 gross receipts dropped by 4.8%.

FY2005 gross receipts dropped by 3.1%.

FY2004 gross receipts dropped by $100,000. That was listed as breaking even.

FY2003 gross receipts dropped by 1.2%.

FY2002 gross receipts dropped by .1%.

When you factor in the fact that only 4% of all receipts get to charities, there isn’t nearly enough revenue to pay off the state’s share of $398,000,000.

Mondale is saying that charitable gaming will not just turn around a constant bleeding away of receipts, but double.

This is more Democrat economics in action.

As we pointed out this morning, the Minneapolis “contribution” is wobbly as well.

DFL economics; based on phantom revenue growth and nonexistant consensus!

And 43% of this state voted for Mark Dayton exactly why?

The Twin Cities media has been painstakingly buffing and spit-shining Senator Amy Klobuchar’s reputation as “the nice Senator” – not just in terms of being uncontroversial, but just plain personable.

And if you meet her at a DFL event, or at the fair, surrounded by her staff and on point, she sure can seem like a nice enough person.

But Luke Matthews at True North has an example against the narrative, and begs to differ:

“We went to Senator Klobuchar’s office. Her lackey at the desk told us she couldn’t meet with us.

 

 

Unfortunately for her, 50 veterans fill up the hallway in that area of the Senator’s office area, and her attempt to sneak down the hall unnoticed was a failure. We gathered around her and explained that we just wanted to talk to her. In a nasty tone, she said “I’m talking to you now, what do you want?” We were all wearing matching Vets for Freedom shirts, and we had scheduled this appointment with her, so ignorance is not an excuse for her behavior. She was nasty and vile to us. One of the concerns many of us who have been to Iraq had was the fate of the Iraqis we had come to know – decent men, women and children who just wanted to live their lives like we do. What would become of those who assisted the U.S. because of their desire for freedom, should Al Qaeda, Iran, and Al Sadr take over? Little miss “for the children” betrayed her liberal hypocrisy by saying that wasn’t her problem and we shouldn’t have gotten involved. When asked if that meant she would rather they were still being brutalized by Saddam, her only response was that we want the same things we just see them differently, or some similar political nothingspeak.”

http://www.redstate.com/hooah_mac/2012/02/26/mn-sen-id-like-a-side-of-delicious-irony/

We have been told, time and time again, that Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar is one of the nicest, most caring, and most respectful people in the world. She’d just like to give the whole world a hug and make everything all better. She’s so popular, she can’t be beat because her genuine concern for her fellow man is so, well, endearing. Klobuchar is salt of the earth.

I believe this salt has lost its saltiness.

Put another way?  The narrator is off the narrative.

Now, I’m always a little leery of articles that try to draw big sweeping conclusions about someone’s personality based on a single, uncorroborated report.  It’d have been nice to get a video on this.  And I don’t vote for “nice people”; I care no more whether a Senator is a son of a bitch in person than I do if she’s black, gay or Moslem, as long as they’re limited-government free-market conservatives.  Which Amy Klobuchar, angry or nice, certainly is not.

Still, the same thing goes the other way; the media’s narrative about Klobuchar is just a tad too monolithic to be real.

But if this is true, and happened as portrayed above – and I’d love to see some corroboration – the Senator’s got some explaining to do.

MPR’s Curtis Gilbert and Jon Collins report that the Minneapolis City Council is not on board with all the triumphalistic high-fiving from the Administration on the Dayton/Rybak stadium plan, as I noted yesterday.

The proposal would peel money away from the part of the city’s (exorbitant) sales taxes that currently support the Convention Center, which under city charter requires a referendum – which, as you recall, was so effective in stopping the taxpayers from being shaken down to build Target Field:

Gary Schiff championed the charter amendment back when he was executive director of the political organization then-called Progressive Minnesota. Now he is a member of the City Council and he said if city money is involved, then the referendum is not negotiable.

“I could never support a plan that circumvents city law,” Schiff said. “I won’t break the law. I’ve sworn to the law as an office holder. And I’m not going to break the city charter.”

Council Member Cam Gordon, who represents areas around the University of Minnesota, said he still opposes the plan because his impression is that it ignores the requirement to hold a referendum.

“I have a concern that ultimately, it’s probably going to be a judge who’ll have to make this decision. Apparently there’s lawyers, maybe in the city, the Vikings, the governor’s office, who are all working on the rationale to make the arguments that this doesn’t violate the charter,” Gordon said. “But there’s probably other lawyers who could read the exact same rules and ordinances and statutes and say it is violating the charter, and so it may end up going to court.”

Council Member Robert Lilligren said he is “philosophically opposed” to public funding for stadiums. He wants a referendum, but he stops short of vowing to vote no on the plan.

“It’s clear that if the legislature wants to see this stadium plan go forward, they will need to write into legislation a way of circumventing the charter amendment,” Lilligren said.

Council Member Lisa Goodman also opposes the stadium plan. Council Members Elizabeth Glidden, Sandy Colvin Roy and Betsy Hodges previously opposed the stadium plan, although they haven’t yet commented on the current package.

So half of Dayton, Rybak and the Downtown Brotherhood’s plan relies on a tax diversion that may be illegal – as I reported yesterday.

As to the other half?  The mainstreams haven’t quite twigged to the fact that the Dayton-Bakk proposal to divert money from the state’s charitable gambling industry relies on some unsupportable figures; it assumes a doubling in charitable gambling receipts, even though as Gary Gross notes, charitable gambling revenues are trending down, not up.

And the tribes haven’t spoken out publicly yet.  But they will.

So – two takeaways:

1. The “Deal” is a turkey.
2. MPR has given you yesterdays’ “Shot In The Dark” today.

Elspeth Reeve at the Atlantic – not necessarily a Breitbart-friendly mag – t on the late conservative alt-media impresario:

To understand Andrew Breitbart’s legacy, you first need to understand what he set out to do. If you happened to encounter him in Los Angeles during the middle of the last decade, when he was transitioning from Matt Drudge’s anonymous No. 2 to building his own web empire, he would happily tell you, in a long, not easy to follow monologue, about the terrible creeping forces of “cultural Marxism.” (To get a taste, here he is talking on the subject at the University of Redlands last September.) As he saw the world, there was still a grand battle raging between capitalism and communism, and the left — the heirs to the Frankfurt School as he constantly reminded people — had manage to twist the entire culture against capitalism. “The left is smart enough to understand that the way to change a political system is through its cultural systems,” he told The New Yorker’s Rebecca Mead in 2010. “So you look at the conservative movement — working the levers of power, creating think tanks, and trying to get people elected in different places — while the left is taking over Hollywood, the music industry, the churches.”

His project was to take that cultural space back for free market conservatives. ƒTo make his brand of economic freedom cool.

“Cool” – with its hipster-turned-marketing overtones – is the wrong term.  Breitbart wanted the forces of freedom – libertarian-conservatives, free-marketeers, dissenters from the big government norm – to stop scoffing at the culture war, and start fighting and winning it.

Greg “Redeye” Gutfeld, writing last summer at Breitbart’s BigHollywood, called Tea Party conservatism the “new punk rock”, a joyous boiling down of whatever you need to boil down – rock and roll or conservative principle – to its very basics; shrink government and Keith Emerson organ solos; free markets and fewer 20 minute drum solos; three-minute songs and cut taxes; build independence, cut dependence.

And like Joe Strummer, David Johannson and Johnny Rotten, Breitbart had his squibs; anyone who’s breaking new ground (or exhuming old ground) will.  Combat Rock and Buster Poindexter and the ’78 US Tour and some of James O’Keefe’s stretchier pieces were all diversions and footnotes to much, much bigger achievements; in Breitbart’s case, the first large, coherent conservative alt-media attempt to engage in popular culture.

The opening lines of his CPAC speech are a brand of conservativism you’re unlikely to see at the Republican National Convention. They sound like rock song lyrics: “Everything has changed, everything has changed in the last few years, conservatives used to take it and we’re not taking it anymore.” He sounded like angry kids railing against oppressive suburban culture. But he also acknowledged that he didn’t quite fit in with the conservative movement and a party that shows no signs of edging closer to his right-wing punk aesthetic.”Two hundred of us went out to the Occupy people to stand toe-to-toe with them to say, ‘We are here and we are not going to take your [artful hand gesture].’ I didn’t say it, I’m on TV right now, I’m a respectful conservative and my mom is watching.”

And it’s that – confronting the poisonous and hateful, calling out the totalitarian, while still engaging in the larger culture that we all, ideally, share – is the great lesson of Breitbart.

And it’s one of the reasons I always loved all his efforts.  Like his former boss Matt Drudge, he didn’t come to the alt-media with a pedigree of working within the journalistic system.  He came not to suck up to the liberal establishment in Hollywood, Journalism, education, “public service” and so many other areas of our culture; he came to criticize, satirize, mock and chasten it.

Which is, of course, why all of us unwashed peasants in the conservative blogosphere got into the game.