Hillary Condems Imus, Hillary Accepts Money from Voice with Same Message

It’s what we’ve come to expect from so many of our politicians. I really can’t decide who I think would be worse for our country, Hillary or Obama.

WordPress Upgraded!

I’ve been running a blog or two since 1996. Early on it was all manual. Then, I came across MoveableType and considered myself blessed. Then I started seeing more and more sites move to WordPress. Should I take the leap?

I mean, I’m semi-savvy but by no means a programmer so where do I turn if things go horribly wrong? And they have, believe me! So every time I consider an upgrade, inevitably I’ll put it off for a month or two because I don’t want to be stuck in database permissions hell.

Thus, today finds me home sick with nothing better to do than upgrade WordPress to version 2.1.3. It went off without a hitch. Big thumbs up to the good folks at WordPress, without whom I’d have long since pulled out what’s left of my hair.

Is It the Truth That You’re Defending?

I don’t find myself on the same side of the issue with Penn and Teller very often. But in this case? Nail… meet hammer.

This so makes me think of:

Go ahead, grab your picket sign
And you can find out what you’re protesting later on
It sure feels great to be a part of something, doesn’t it?
Just as long as you belong
Hey, look at this
Little revolutionist
Trying to start a revolution with nothing to revolt against
Is it the truth that you’re defending
Or the chance for you to grab some attention?
Well hey, there’s the pedestal stand up straight
Don’t it feel great?
Everyone can see your face
What’s the cause again?
Why’re you arguing?
It’ll soon be forgotten, so why you bothering?
You’ll be off to the next thing that’ll keep your short fickle attention span stimulated
We’re the products of a spoiled society
So naturally spoiled products are generated

Have No Opinion? by John Reuben

[via Think Sink]

Government Wants to Overtax Internet Radio

Yet another example of what government does best—find new ways to take our money. Please take action. BTW, Pandora is awesome!

Hi, it’s Tim from Pandora,

I’m writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays and broadcast radio doesn’t pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us.

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio:

Capwize Petition

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends – the more petitioners we can get, the better.
Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I’m no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster’s business potential.

I hope you’ll take just a few minutes to sign our petition – it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)

‘Higher’ Education Isn’t

The folks strolling the halls at our nation’s finest universities are often the most different compared to average Americans. Stories like what follows just seems to happen, more often than not, on a college campus somewhere.

Political correctness run amok.

I just heard about this and thought you might find this case of “flag desecration” interesting. It was not Old Glory that was burned or stomped on this time; it was two replicas of banners representing terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah.

College Republicans (CR) hosted an anti-terrorism rally and, according to the Washington Times, “stomped on pieces of paper they had painted to look like flags…” After the incident a Muslim student filed complaints against the CRs because the Arabic script on the paper had the word “Allah” and the stomping was therefore blasphemy.

Unlike the indifference that most university officials have to the burning of the American flag, they quickly responded to this complaint and filed charges against the students for “incivility” and creating a “hostile environment.” The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, aptly called FIRE, is representing the rally organizers and urging the administration to “spare [itself] the embarrassment of fighting the Bill of Rights.”

Surely a university, of all places, recognizes the students’ inherent rights to express their opinions–however unpopular they may be. As Frederick Douglass said, “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.” Expect this type of persecution of political incorrectness only to intensify if Congress passes the “Hate Crimes” bill that is now before them. It will further encourage this type of outrageous behavior displayed by the university. [via FRC]

Planned Parenthood Asks for Additional $100M Tax Money

It’s bad enough that abortions are killing unborn babies, but in my opinion, to do so with taxpayer money is criminal. Now they want even more money.

Just last Friday, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) sent a letter to her Senate colleagues asking for a boost of $100 million, specifically for Planned Parenthood clinics!

All the while, these groups attack pregnancy care centers that don’t perform abortions. In essence, they want to eliminate their competition. Don’t stand for it. Act now!

California Universities Discriminates Against Christians, Yet Again

This is becoming a frightening cycle, where Judeo-Christian students don’t get the same treatment as people of other faiths. From the FRC comes:

In the University of California (U.C.) system, college applicants are tired of having their religious studies marginalized. Students from the Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta have been repeatedly frustrated by college admission officers who reject their college prep credits because they were “based on Christian viewpoints.” The university accepts high school courses on subjects such as Buddhism or existentialism but not those rooted in the Judeo-Christian ethic.

So they respond by joining with other Christians that are already accredited decides to file suit. (No big surprise that it’s California leading the anti-Christian socialistic movement.)

During depositions, a U.C. representative testified that students who are “saved” would not be “adequately prepared” for the rigors of college classes if they were taught from a Christian perspective.

I’d really like to see the whole quote, but if this interpretation is accurate, that’s unbelievable to me.

Other classes that were denied by the U.C.’s system included, “Christianity’s Influence on America” and “Christianity and Morality in American Literature.” Both were described as “too narrow or specialized.” This from a school that has legitimized courses such as “The History of Rap,” “Queer Musicology,” “Sex Change City,” and “The Psychology of the Lesbian Experience.” For a school that’s been listed on the Young America’s Foundation list of “The Dirty Dozen: America’s Most Bizarre and Politically Correct College Courses,” U.C. has limited authority to judge what does and does not qualify as a “quality educational experience.”

The hypocrisy coming from the “tolerant” crowd is disgusting. I urge everyone to get involved in situations like this by spreading the word and telling our elected officials that this isn’t right.

Amillia Taylor Born After Just 21 Weeks

World’s Most Premature Baby Amillia Goes Home After Early Birth

Amillia Taylor is fighting for her life and the odds are against her. She was born at just 21 weeks into the pregnancy four months ago at Miami’s Baptist Children’s Hospital. With no baby born before 23 weeks surviving at length, Amillia has gone home to be cared for under the watchful eye of her parents.

And here we thought our little 5 lb. 5 oz. Barret was small.

“We can deal with lungs and things like that but, of course, the brain is the most important,” Dr. Paul Fassbach told AP. “But her prognosis is excellent.”

I’m rooting for you Amillia!

So why is this important? Because the typical baby is born after 37-40 weeks in the womb. So Amillia is proving that what some “counselors” might be telling expectant mother about the baby being a “formless mass of tissue” is so completely wrong that it should be a crime. Life begins at conception.

Let’s hope the U.S. Supreme Court justices will remember this when they pass down their judgement on partial-birth abortion this spring.

‘Worth the Wait’ Under Fire

How have we become a nation where the “outrage” of a single person makes it preferable to change the whole process? When do the Many answer to the Few? See this example from the FRC:

An abstinence curriculum called “Worth the Wait” will be forced to live up to its name unless a Maryland county decides to reinstate the group after a so-called “controversial lesson.” Despite nine years of service, Montgomery County Schools barred the Rockville Pregnancy Center from teaching the curriculum in its classrooms after the complaint of one parent. To illustrate the effects of peer pressure and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), leaders passed out a piece of gum and asked students to take turns chewing it (some did). The demonstration was completely voluntary, said teachers, and the obvious purpose was to use the student’s wariness about sharing gum to demonstrate the risks of sexual intimacy. According to one of the abstinence educators, the “gum game” had gotten rave reviews from teachers and students alike. However, a school spokesman disagreed. “What this exercise showed is a terrible lack of judgment. It’s disgusting on its face.” Rather than ask the group to discontinue or modify the game, Montgomery County revoked the invitation altogether, creating a dangerous void in the local schools for the life-saving abstinence-until-marriage message. As the group’s Executive Director, Gail Tierney, said, “We saw 6,500 kids last year. Who’s going to talk to them now?”

Yet another example from those who wear “tolerance” like a badge of honor then proceed to be intolerant of those who choose a different path.

DoHS Lied to Congress on Border Security Case

From Steven Elliot of Grassfire.org comes:

While Ron De Jong and I were presenting 304,000 citizen petitions to Rep. Rohrabacher on Capitol Hill, we were shocked when the Congressman informed us that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had admitted to members of Congress…

…that they had lied to Congress about the case against imprisoned agents Ramos and Compean.

Under questioning by Rep. Culberson, a DHS investigator admitted that his department did NOT have evidence to back up a number of outrageous claims including: Mexican/American agents Ramos and Compean “wanted to shoot a Mexican”; confessed to shooting an unarmed suspect; were belligerent to investigators; lied and submitted false reports; and stated during the investigation that the illegal alien did not pose a threat.

So it makes sense that there the pressure to pardon border agents mounts. Clearly this is a story that’s not getting enough National attention as it seems the danger of 9/11 is too far removed; so border security becomes less important in the minds of many.

These border agents deserve justice and it doesn’t look like they’re getting it. If you feel so inclined, please contact your Representatives.

Governor Says ‘Mandatory HPV Vaccinations’

What happened to liberty and freedom?

Governor Rick Perry of Texas (R) bypassed the state legislature last week and issued an executive order requiring every schoolgirl in Texas to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus by the fall of this year. The decision to issue this mandate from the governor’s mansion and to end debate in the state legislature has caused a firestorm of controversy – and it should have. With this one decision, Gov. Perry, a leader with a strong pro-family record, has short-circuited the kind of legislative debate that is most likely to produce a law that will counter the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and protect the constitutional rights of parents to make medical decisions affecting their children’s health.

Your help is needed: Call Gov. Perry at 512-463-2000 and ask him to rescind his executive order and allow the Texas state legislature to vote on this issue.

We shouldn’t just sit by and let the government tell us what’s good for us. Isn’t that our decision?

McConnell Fighting for Judges

Straight from the FRC daily regarding our very own Mitch McConnell:

Being a member of the minority hasn’t dampened Sen. Mitch McConnell’s resolve on judges. In a private meeting with Democrats, McConnell said he would make it his personal mission to confirm the President’s judicial nominees, many of whom have languished for years without a full Senate vote. Citing the last two years of Ronald Reagan’s (the late President would have been 96 today) presidency, when the Senate confirmed an average of 17 circuit nominees, McConnell said he will take a leading role to ensure that target is met. We applaud him for making this vital issue a priority!

Not to even receive an up or down vote is a complete injustice for these men and women. Way to go Mitch!

Restrictions on Grassroots Defeated

We really dodged a bullet here where a 55 to 43 vote successfully removed Section 220 from the new Ethics Bill. Looking at the map you can tell which states wanted the Bennet Amendment (which killed Section 220) and which fought it.

We’ve got to give credit to the handful of Democrats who broke rank to make the better decision for Free Speech in America:

• Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT-)
• Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN-)
• Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND-)
• Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND-)
• Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA-)
• Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE-)
• Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO-)

The idea of cleaning up our political lobbying system is a good one, but there’s a reasonable way to go about it. For more info, visit The Loft.

Senate Bill Looks to Deny Citizens Information

By the people and for the people, that’s what our country was founded on. Now, if the current Senate Bill 1 is any indication, these elected officials want the people to be in the dark.

By calling it Lobby Reform, most Americans will not give it another thought. But it’s a dangerous Bill. Please let your representatives that you don’t support it. If it is passed, groups like the AFA will be forced to do unnecessary paperwork and pay meaningless fines. It’s an attempt to weed out the grassroots organizations who seem to trouble the “important” Representatives with communications.

It boils down to this: Our elected officials don’t want to be bothered by us. Shameful.

Doing Good Where Good Is Needed

Here’s an example of people who are thinking of others before themselves. It’s a message that needs to be heard.

The Volunteers
Cut-and-run is not in their vocabulary.

BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, December 29, 2006 12:01 a.m.

If someone this weekend says “Happy New Year” in Iraq or Afghanistan, would anyone in the world hear it? For many, the people of Iraq and Afghanistan have become like trees falling in an empty forest. The world doesn’t want to hear it. Indeed, the one apparent accomplishment of the Baker-Hamilton report is that it freed people to say that Iraq is a “failure.” Afghanistan, with fewer suicide bombings, never became much of a story in our domestic political wars, and so has largely receded into the mists.

It is ironic that despite the years of our daily engagement in these places, the “information age” has brought us so little knowledge about the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Psychologically, much of America has already cut and run from these two countries.

Some Americans, though, simply won’t.

In April 2004, this column told the story of Spirit of America, organized by Jim Hake, to provide citizen-supported aid to the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then in May 2005 this space was given over to an account of American businesswomen working to help women in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Here in the U.S., the political new year will fill up fast enough with politicians and pundits offering ways to unwind and spindle the commitments America made to Iraq and Afghanistan. So this seemed a good moment to revisit the folks running Spirit of America and the Business Council for Peace. They’re not going to leave.

Spirit of America’s experience in Iraq has followed the same rugged timeline of events as the war. Recall that in April 2004 it raised sufficient monies to rebuild TV stations in Al Anbar province, staffed by Iraqis, to counterbalance propaganda from the likes of al-Jazeera. Those TV stations were built. And they have been destroyed. A sewing center for Iraqi women was similarly destroyed.

This past year, the group got a request from the Army 451st Battalion to help restore the medical facilities at the Najaf Teaching Hospital. The Mahdi militia had occupied it for a time. Spirit of America sent seven cardiac monitors to the hospital’s director, Safaa Hamedi. In October, gunmen killed Dr. Hamedi outside his home.

Still, requests from the Marines and Army continue to arrive at Spirit of America. An Army captain in Afghanistan’s Parwan province asked for medical textbooks for local doctors. SoA sent bee serum to inoculate honey bees at a business in Iraq’s Diyala region. Marine Lt. Jim Wilmott got camping equipment for 200 Iraqi Boy Scouts. At the request of U.S. Embassy personnel, SoA has sent clothing and school supplies for orphans in Baghdad and Basra.

They’ve sent thousands of kids’ backpacks and school supplies requested by soldiers around the country. With the SonoSite ultrasound company, SoA delivered handheld ultrasound machines to the primary hospital in Al Qaim, Iraq, near the Syrian border. “Before this,” said Mr. Hake, “they were using seashells to listen to the sounds of a pregnant mother and baby; the Marines couldn’t believe it.”

Jim Hake says Spirit of America’s contributions have fallen off since 2004 owing to general fatigue with Iraq, “but under the circumstances people continue to be quite generous.” An end-of-the-year funding request raised more than $150,000. “The emails we send to donors are not a good-news operation,” says Mr. Hake. “We don’t want to put a happy face on it. But the information is more encouraging than what they typically hear. The destroyed projects are hardly good news, but there are lots of guys and gals in the military there who are not just marking time, who want to see this work.”

It was about 19 months ago to the day that 13 women from Afghanistan were looking out the windows of the 29th floor of the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan, brought there by a group of American businesswomen who call themselves the Business Council for Peace (Bpeace). One of the women remarked that New York looked “very new.”

The idea was to expose the Afghans, most of them college graduates, to basic business know-how. Bpeace had identified the Afghans as “fast runners,” women with entrepreneurial instincts. Kate Bruggeln, a Council member and retailing specialist, just returned from Kabul, her fourth trip there. Three other Bpeace women were with her.

“These trips to Afghanistan always stagger you in the best way,” she said this week. “Afghanistan is a longer road than our election cycle can endure, but these women are the future of Afghanistan. This isn’t a replay of the last decade. Our group’s been working with them for almost two years. They are making progress.”

The big event on this trip was the preparations to open Rangeen Kaman Artisans, a for-profit cooperative run by 10 of the Bpeace “associates.” Another associate, Afifa, has opened a fitness center for women; it shares electrical power with the RKA store. The Americans are also working with the Afghan Women’s Business Federation to create a business-formation curriculum across the country.

“The thing Afghans fear most is that we’re going to leave,” Ms. Brugelln says. “Not only do they fear it, they predict it, because everyone has done it before. This fourth trip by our group was profoundly meaningful to them. In the face of all the instability, we showed up again. Bpeace won’t be part of the downward spiral.”

Could this determination be a variant of the much-mocked “stay the course”? It is at least an interesting irony that the people who have had their faces deepest in Iraq and Afghanistan the longest, as soldiers or volunteers like these, are the ones inclined to stick it out; while many here whose experience comes off the bloody front page
every day are the ones looking for a way to–there is no other phrase–cut and run.

Groups such as the Spirit of America and the Business Council for Peace may yet be driven out. It is to this country’s credit that early on, they voted with their feet to go in, and regret nothing.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.