Ann Coulter is a lawyer and author of the best seller, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton. Her most recent book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, is a number one New York Times Best-Seller.

Coulter is the legal correspondent for Human Events and writes a popular syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate. She is a frequent guest on many TV shows, including Politically Incorrect, Larry King Live, Hannity and Colmes, The O’Reilly Factor, American Morning With Paula Zahn, Crossfire, ABC’s “This Week,” Good Morning America, the Leeza Show, and has been profiled in TV Guide, National Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, and George Magazine. She was named one of the top 100 Public Intellectuals by federal judge Richard Posner in 2001.

Coulter clerked for the Honorable Pasco Bowman II of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and was an attorney in the Department of Justice Honors Program for outstanding law school graduates.

After practicing law in private practice in New York City, Coulter worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she handled crime and immigration issues for Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan. From there, she became a litigator with the Center For Individual Rights in Washington, DC, a public interest law firm dedicated to the defense of individual rights with particular emphasis on freedom of speech, civil rights, and the free exercise of religion.

A Connecticut native, Coulter graduated with honors from Cornell University School of Arts & Sciences, and received her J.D. from University of Michigan Law School, where she was an editor of The Michigan Law Review.

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>>Nell Husbands Martin Coulter (090422)

A lot of people claim to be my No. 1 fan -- God bless them -- but my true No. 1 fan left this world last week. My mother quietly stopped breathing last Tuesday, as she slept peacefully, holding my hand.

She was the biggest fan of all of us -- Father, me and my brothers John and Jim.

After reading the eulogy column I wrote for Father last year -- not to excess, probably only about 4,637 times -- Mother realized to her chagrin that she wouldn't be able to read the eulogy column I'd be writing for her, and started hinting that maybe I could rustle up a draft so she could take a peek.

But I couldn't do it, until I had to.

The only thing Mother wanted to be sure my brothers and I included in her remembrances were her contributions to the Republican Party, the New Canaan Republican Town Committee and the Daughters of the American Revolution.

She was a direct descendant of at least a dozen patriots who served the cause of the American Revolution and traced her lineage on both sides of her family to Puritan nonconformists who came to America in 1633 seeking religious freedom on a ship led by Pastor Thomas Hooker. Or, as Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano would call them, "A dangerous right-wing extremist hate group."

Even back in the Puritan days, Mother's female ancestors were brought up on charges for their heretical dressing styles (and then sassed the judge). During the Revolution, one female ancestor, Effie Ten Eyck Van Varick, contributed to the rebel cause by donating lead for bullets from the curtain weights in her home in what was, even then, traitorous, loyalist Manhattan.

Mother's deep-seated political activism saved me on more than one occasion.

At the 2004 Republican National Convention, I was taking my parents to a lot of the parties in New York and, at one of them, Herman Cain walked up to me and told me he was a big fan even though I probably didn't know who he was.

Cain was the former president and CEO of Godfather's Pizza who was then running for the U.S. Senate from Georgia. I had seen him on Fox News'

"Cavuto" -- but I couldn't remember his name for the life of me.

Luckily for me, Mother was standing next to me and she piped in, "I know who you are -- I donated to your campaign." Thank you, Mommy!

Mother probably contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to various conservative outfits over the years -- all in her little $20 checks -- especially to any organization that claimed it was going to stop Hillary. In fact, if they mentioned Hillary in their letter, Mother sometimes made it $25.

My brothers and I always figured we'd have no inheritance, but there would be a lovely memorial to Oliver North somewhere.

Mother may have thought her most notable characteristic was her Republican activism, but, for the rest of us, it was her constant, unconditional love. She was a little love machine, spreading warmth and joy wherever she went.

Every time she'd see me, even after just a few days' absence, she'd hug me as if I had been lost in the Himalayan Mountains for the past 20 years.

On Mother's birthday last year, I had a dinner party for her with Rush Limbaugh, Conrad Black and my friends Peter and Angie.

Mother was always delighted to be with people talking about politics -- actually she told me that, lately, she was delighted to be around any conversations that didn't involve who had a doctor's appointment or who had died that day.

So I let her stay up until 3 a.m. that night, well past her bedtime.

Mother was so happy that after I had her all tucked in and the lights out, I heard her singing herself to sleep.

Even on the rare occasions when I'd be cross with her, she'd completely forget about it, and within 10 seconds would be telling me what a wonderful, precious daughter I was. My brother Jimmy found out recently that she'd even forgotten that he had caused her to miss Reagan's first inauguration by getting in a car accident the night before we were leaving -- and she never should have forgotten that.

Everyone wanted my mother to be his mother. (The "his" in that sentence is grammatically correct and Mother would never let us forget it.) I'm sure everyone thinks he has the perfect mother, but we really did.

Since I was a little girl, friends, relatives and neighbors would bring their problems to Mother. She had a rare combination of being completely moral and completely nonjudgmental at the same time -- the exact opposite of liberals who have absolutely no morals and yet are ferociously judgmental.

You could tell Mother anything, get good counsel and not end up feeling worse about yourself.

Several of Mother's New Canaan friends sent us notes last week, calling her a "gentle lady" and remarking that she never had an unkind word for anyone.

As a family member, I can assure you that -- much to our annoyance -- she really did never have an unkind word for anyone. I mean, except Democrats, but not anyone she knew.

Whenever the rest of us would be making fun of someone -- trust me, always for good and sound reasons -- Mother would somehow manage to muster up a defense of the miscreant. Father would always smile and say, "Your mother defends everyone."

She was, in fact, such a "gentle lady" that I had to go to her doctors'

appointments and hospital visits with her and be her Mother Lion. If officious hospital administrators had told Mother to get off a gurney, go outside in the pouring rain and stand on one foot for three hours before the doctor would see her, she'd thank them profusely and apologize for being such a bother.

She viewed her doctors' appointments as social visits, which is the other reason I'd have to go with her, to make sure we eventually got around to the business end of the appointment.

When she began her final decline last fall, she had to go to her Connecticut doctor without me to find out what was wrong. This was the first time she didn't seem to be getting better after a chemo treatment.

So I had been worrying about her appointment all day, but when I called her that night, she immediately turned the subject to me and asked me how my book was going.

I insisted on knowing if she had seen the doctor and she perked up and brightly told me that, oh yes, she had seen him, he had all my books in his office, he was worried about Obama, too, and he has such beautiful children!

Before she launched into a spirited discussion of his children's extracurricular activities and triumphs on the athletic field, I had to ask her, "Mommy, did the doctor happen to say anything about why you're feeling lousy?"

It turned out, of course, that it was the ovarian cancer -- as well as the massive amounts of poison she had been receiving to kill the cancer over the past five years. That was the beginning of the end.

Now I'll never be able to introduce my Mother to friends and surprise them with her charming Southern accent.

And I'll never see my mother's beautiful face again, at least not for the next several decades here on Earth. I've been looking at her across the room in doctors' offices over the past few years, thinking to

myself: There will come a point when you won't see that face again.

Her angelic face always looked like home to me. My whole life, as soon as I'd see my mother's face I'd know I was safe, whether I was a little girl lost in a department store or a big girl with a problem, who needed her mother.

Thanks to the doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and mother's fighting Kentucky spirit, we got to see that face much longer than anyone ever expected.

So now she's with Daddy and Jesus. Every single day since Daddy died last year, Mother would say how much she missed him and gaze at his photo, telling us what an amazing man he was and repeating his little expressions and jokes. Even though I miss her, I'm glad they're together again.

I don't know about Jesus, but I think Daddy was getting impatient. But Mommy was always running a little bit late.

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Ann Coulter: Uncensored And Uncut

Columns that were too hot to print — plus the very best (and funniest) of her other political commentary

How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)

She’s the author of three New York Times bestsellers: Slander, Treason, and High Crimes and Misdemeanors. She’s the most high-profile and controversial conservative intellectual on the scene today. Yet most publications find her too hot to handle. Her syndicated column, although brimming with her trademark wit and incisive political observations, appears in only a handful of papers. But now, in How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), Coulter collects the best of those columns, including some that no one dared to print before.

In this book, Coulter explains, are “bootlegs, never-released versions, NC-17 versions, lost classics, remixes, extended-play versions, and the director’s cut columns.” She has included here “columns too hot to be published until now - along with the editors’ rejections. These columns, as well as any columns that caused more than the usual ruckus (like my 9/11 ‘kill their leaders’ column) I preserved in their original form - so you can see what the fuss was about. Some columns I added a little to and some I added so much to that they grew from short columns to entire chapters (e.g., the Elian Gonzalez and Confederate flag chapters). Even the unretouched columns are my unretouched columns, as they live on my computer - which was not always the same as the published version.”

Here, then, is the unexpurgated Ann Coulter, unrestrained by cowering editors and politically correct publishers. How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) includes Coulter’s unvarnished take on everything from John Kerry to the essence of being a liberal (“The absolute conviction that there is one set of rules for you, and another, completely different set of rules for everyone else”), from the media’s war on guns to America’s war on terrorism (“I am often asked if I still think we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity. The answer is: Now more than ever”), from the outrageous bias of the New York Times to the self-serving bloat of Bill Clinton’s memoirs.

A sampling of Ann Coulter’s riotous and dead-on wit on:

* The Iraq war and the Democrats: “John Kerry has said that we need to ‘de-Americanize’ the war — I guess on the theory that the ‘de-Americanizing’ process has worked so well for the Democratic Party”

* Gay marriage: “Gays usually bring up the argument about all the straight couples living in ‘sham’ marriages, but I see no point in dragging the Clintons into this”

* Liberals and the military: “The only time liberals pretend to like the military is when they claim to love soldiers so much they don’t want them to get hurt fighting a war”

* Media bias: “Fox News should agree to admit it is conservative if all other media outlets will admit they are liberal”

* Modern anti-Christian bias: “There is no surer proof of Christ’s divinity than that he is still so hated some 2,000 years after his death”

* Journalistic standards: “The only standard journalists respect is: Will this story promote the left-wing agenda?”

* Slick Willie: “What actually happened during the Clinton presidency? No one can remember anything about it except the bimbos, the lies, and the felonies”

* Hillary’s memoirs: “Hillary has already gotten a record $8 million advance from Simon & Schuster for the book — reportedly the most anyone has ever received for rewriting history”

* The Democrats: “The current Democratic Party is a crowd of idle, rich degenerates, the likes of which hasn’t existed since the czar’s court”

* Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl exhibitionism: “Even CBS executives were enraged by MTV’s halftime show, saying they could have gotten the identical show from National Geographic for a fraction of the price”

* The Confederate flag controversy: “It is outrageous for Northern liberals and race demagogues to try to turn the Confederate flag into a badge of shame, in the process spitting on America’s gallant warrior class”

* The Episcopal church: “The Episcopalians don’t demand much in the way of actual religious belief. They have girl priests, gay priests, gay bishops, gay marriages — it’s much like the New York Times editorial board”

* Kerry and tax cuts: “If Democrats want to talk about middle-class tax cuts, couldn’t they nominate someone who hasn’t been a poodle to rich women for the past thirty-three years?”

* Hugh Hefner: “Like the Democrats, Playboy just wants to liberate women to behave like pigs, have sex without consequences, prance about naked, and abort children”

* The New York Times’s war coverage: “Apparently, the Times’s stylebook now requires all reports of violence anywhere within 1,000 miles of Iraq to be dated from Bush’s speech declaring an end to ‘major combat’ operations”

* The Times and crime: “The only cop the New York Times likes is the one in the Village People”

* The parties: “Both parties run for office as conservatives. Once they have fooled the voters and are safely in office, Republicans sometimes double-cross the voters. Democrats always do”

* Islamic terrorism and liberals: “The Times was rushing to assure its readers that ‘prominent Islamic scholars and theologians in the West say unequivocally that nothing in Islam countenances the Sept. 11 actions.’ (That’s if you set aside Muhammad’s many specific instructions to kill nonbelievers whenever possible)”

* Liberals and Christianity: “The only religion that can be constantly defamed and insulted is the one liberals pretend to be terrified of”

* Liberal eulogies for Reagan: “The lesson to draw from what liberals said about Reagan then and what they are forced to say about him now is that the electable Republican is always the one liberals are calling an extremist, Armageddon-believing religious zealot”

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The Color of Demagogy (020117)

THE NEW YORK CITY FIRE DEPARTMENT commissioned a statue of the famous photo of three magnificent firemen hoisting an American flag at Ground Zero on Sept. 11. The men in the photo were all Caucasians, but the statue will instead portray one white, one black and one Hispanic raising the flag.

We should probably be relieved it’s not going to be a statue of three Muslims in burkas raising the flag.

The decision to change the truth was made by the studio making the statue; Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s fire commissioner, Nicholas Scoppetta; along with Forest City Ratner Companies, which owns the property at FDNY headquarters where the statue will be located. Fire Department spokesman Frank Gribbon explained that two of the white men would be eliminated in order to more accurately reflect all of the firemen who died at the World Trade Center.

Except, like the statue, that’s a lie, too. A statue that accurately reflected the racial composition of the New York Fire Department – as well as those who died on Sept. 11 – would have to show 33 firemen raising the flag, one of whom would be Hispanic and one of whom would be black. (Blacks make up 2.7% of the NYFD, and Hispanics 3.2%.)

Liberals love erasing the truth. They call their lies “legally accurate,” “affirmative action,” “saving the Constitution” – and now, “art.” When the truth is gone, brute political power prevails. And manifestly, white men have no political power in modern America. They just rush in to save us when the nation is attacked.

But having emerged from months of therapy, Manhattan liberals have forgotten about planes flying into their buildings and can now cheerfully return to snarling about “angry white men,” “white male oppressors” and “dead white men.” After a few months of applause from terrified Manhattan liberals, firemen are no longer heroes. They are privileged white males again.

It is a privilege that allows them to be discriminated against in college admissions, jobs, government contracts, teaching positions, scholarships and so on.

Liberal race demagogues so love goading white men, they can’t get their story straight on the American flag. The last word on the flag out of the left was that blacks do not share in white America’s jingoistic flag-waving.

Four days after the attack, black firemen in Opa-Locka, Fla., refused to ride on a fire truck that displayed the American flag on the grounds that it was a symbol of the oppression of blacks.

Tennessee state representative Henri Brooks (D, needless to say) has refused to say the pledge of allegiance for nine years because “to stand up and salute that flag that waved over the colonies that enslaved us and did all the horrible things that the institution of slavery represented, would be a slap in the face to my ancestors.”

Syndicated columnist Julianne Malveaux also refuses to say the pledge of allegiance, explaining “my lips can’t move ... I think of [those words] as nothing but a lie. Just a lie.”

In an interview two days after Sept. 11, black singer Alicia Keys said she was “torn” by seeing American flags all over New York. She, too, sees “lies in that flag. I can’t suddenly be all patriotic.”

Yet now, in that presumptuous way of theirs of always speaking for the black man, liberals simply assume that blacks would have wanted to hoist the American flag at Ground Zero. Who are these liberal honkies imputing patriotism to blacks? Haven’t we seen enough of this type of Jim Crow elitism from the left?

Liberals constantly want to have it every single way. They are indignant at the possibility that President Bush might have acted to help Enron. When it turns out he did not, they fume: What? He did nothing! He should have done something!

They hate the American flag, but on the other hand, demanding that two white men be ousted from the Fire Department statue also has its seditious attractions.

Who are they kidding? What they’d really like is a memorial showing a diverse group of Americans burning the flag. Isn’t that the essence of our freedom, really? The right to dissent and not some phony flag-waving?

Liberals are, at best, indifferent to America winning the war in Afghanistan. They falsely proclaim that “of course, everyone” is rooting for America, so they can stop talking about it and get back to stirring up class and race resentments at home.

Meanwhile, three men with real names raised that flag in that photo at Ground Zero: New York City firefighters Dan McWilliams, George Johnson and Billy Eisengrein. We know what they’d do if the situation were reversed.

After World War II, a statue was made of six American servicemen raising the flag at Iwo Jima. (Three of the six raising the flag were killed in the battle.) White male patriarchs didn’t bleach Indian Ira Hayes off the Iwo Jima memorial. Back when the oppressors were white men rather than race demagogues, the truth still counted for something.

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Being Liberal Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry (020207)

DEAR PRESIDENT BUSH:

“[O]ur international problems are utterly intractable, and the sooner we recognize this, the better. ... We should figure out clever ways to declare victory at the first decent opportunity and remove our troops (from Afghanistan).”

Love,

Bruce Ackerman

Yale law professor

(from New York Times column dated Nov. 6, 2001)

Insistent that victory abroad was impossible – one week before Kabul fell – Professor Ackerman breezily invited Bush to engage in a hapless caper of putting Osama bin Laden on trial: “By all means, bring Osama bin Laden to justice and weaken or destroy the Taliban.”

He instructed that “we should satisfy ourselves with limited victories abroad” because “our domestic problems are manageable.” But “ridding the world of terrorism is quite another matter.”

Using the strategy of a drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost (he didn’t lose them there, but the light’s better), Ackerman recommended that the Bush administration leave al-Qaeda alone and concentrate on anti-choice extremists here in the United States.

Thus Ackerman explained: “We should be seriously engaged in anti-terrorism efforts at home. ... [O]ther attacks may well occur – perhaps committed by homegrown extremists.” Of course, other attacks may also well occur – perhaps committed by Yale law professors. Getting al Qaeda will be tricky, but locking up Ackerman is doable.

Feigning objectivity while trying to demoralize the country, Ackerman wrote: “Even if we catch and kill Osama bin Laden, others will take his place.”

It is a commonplace among men – and I do mean men – that civilian troops culled from a liberal democracy will always prevail over barbaric mercenaries with daggers between their teeth. But liberals have no confidence in a free nation. They are invariably mesmerized by the self-advertised brutality of savages.

Not surprisingly, many Times columnists subscribed to Ackerman’s two-part war strategy for America: 1) SURRENDER NOW! and 2) focus on anti-choice extremists at home.

After ceaseless warnings of a “quagmire,” the cover story on the Times’ Week in Review section the week after Kabul fell was titled: “Surprise: War Works After All.”

Point Two of the Ackerman war strategy has been championed most earnestly by Times columnist Frank Rich, providing continuity with his typical National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League press-release style. In October, Rich was denouncing the administration’s ham-handed approach to the war on terrorism on the grounds that Attorney General John Ashcroft had doggedly refused to meet with Planned Parenthood representatives after the anthrax mailings.

This, strangely, was despite the fact that anthrax has never been sent to an abortion clinic, and therefore Planned Parenthood could be of absolutely no help in tracking down the source of the mailings. But as Rich interpreted it, Ashcroft had “gone so far as to turn away firsthand information about domestic terrorism for political reasons.”

According to Rich, abortion clinics had plenty of experience with “such homegrown Talibans as the Army of God.” Planned Parenthood could have provided leads on “the convergence of international and domestic terrorism.”

The “Army of God” turned out to be one guy: a bank robber-cum-anti-abortionist who was already on the FBI’s most-wanted list. Since his escape from prison on bank robbery charges, he had been sending harmless white powder to abortion clinics.

Nonetheless, Rich blathered on, proclaiming that Planned Parenthood had “marshaled the medical and security expertise” to combat terrorism. Demonstrating some of that hard-earned expertise, the “director of security” for Planned Parenthood laughed at “the sight of Mr. Ashcroft and other federal Keystone Kops offering a $1 million reward for anthrax terrorists.” It showed how “little grasp they have of the enemy.”

About one month later, the “Army of God” bank robber was caught, thanks to Ashcroft and other federal Keystone Kops offering a different $50,000 reward on widely circulated wanted posters.

The SURRENDER NOW! strategy was given early moral succor by Maureen Dowd’s pre-war columns in which she repeatedly accused Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld of being out of touch. In Aug. 2001, for example, she said “the urgent question” was “just how conscious of the world around him Rip Van Rummy is.”

Amid a lot of (similarly hilarious) sneering, Dowd snipped that Rumsfeld was “clueless about the press.” (If Dowd ran the Department of Defense instead of killing terrorists, it would be issuing catty press releases on Britney Spears’ underwear and the collapse of Talk magazine.)

Dowd was exultant. “I guess we can close the book on W.’s contention that the best way to run government is with the wisdom of corporate chieftains,” she said. In a ringing peroration, she declared that Rumsfeld – as well as Vice President Dick Cheney – do “not know anything about how the world works.” The “most striking thing is how out of touch they act.”

Al Qaeda must dearly wish it were so.

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Mineta’s Bataan Death March (020228)

According to initial buoyant reports in early February, enraged travelers rose up in a savage attack on the secretary of transportation. Hope was dashed when later reports indicated that the irritated travelers were actually rival warlords, the airport was the Kabul Airport, and Norman Mineta was still with us.

Thanks to the hard work of the Department of Transportation, which had already arrogated to itself responsibility for commercial air safety, 19 Muslim terrorists had absolutely no difficulty in turning four planes into cruise missiles almost simultaneously on Sept. 11, resulting in the death of thousands of Americans.

Outside of government work, that’s known as a “failure.” But in the government, it is grounds for greater responsibility. In its wisdom, Congress turned over yet more power to the Department of Transportation: Nice work – what else can you do for us?

Almost instantly, dreary, wrathful federal bureaucrats conceived of methods to make air travel still worse. Even those of us who burn with an all-consuming hatred for federal bureaucracies had to tip our hats.

First, the government prohibited airport screeners from looking for terrorists. Second, the government scrapped airline pricing systems that allow passengers to pay $2,000 to avoid 50-minute lines. Just like in the Soviet Union of beloved memory, “equality” was the important thing. (Except government officials like Cabinet official Tommy Thompson, who skip the airport lines.) We’ll all die, but at least we’ll all die together.

The only bright side is that in the government’s obsessive drive for “equality,” perhaps airport security guards will be forced to start searching Arabs now, too.

Ethnic profiling is the only reasonable security measure that has been thwarted in the war on terrorism. Every other anti-American, left-wing attack on the war has failed miserably. Liberals denounced military tribunals, FBI interviews with Arab student visitors, the detention of terrorism suspects, monitoring conversations of jailed terrorists and the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo.

All to no avail – except ethnic profiling.

The whole country knows that goosing little old ladies boarding planes is not going to make us any safer. Even left-wing lawyer Floyd Abrams had the sense to say: “There’s a big difference between being interned and being searched a little more at an airport.” But we can’t stop it. Transportation Secretary Mineta is angry and he wants America to suffer.

In early December, “60 Minutes” host Steve Kroft interviewed Mineta about his dogged refusal to permit an extra check of people who look like the next and last 50 terrorists.

Kroft noted that of 22 people on the most-wanted list right now: “[A]ll but one of them has complexion listed as olive. They all have dark hair and brown eyes. And more than half of them have the name Mohammed.” (They are also all males in their 20s and 30s.) Thus, he asked Mineta if such people should be subjected to a little extra scrutiny. “No,” Mineta responded, “not just on that basis alone.”

Other more important factors, Mineta explained, included asking “things like, ‘Did you pay cash for this ticket or charge it on a credit card? Do you have a one-way ticket or a round-trip?’”

Inasmuch as this was Steve Kroft and not Diane Sawyer conducting the interview, there was a relevant follow-up question: “Did the terrorists who flew into the World Trade Center have one-way tickets?” No, Mineta admitted, the Sept. 11 hijackers all had round-trip tickets they bought with credit cards.

Let the record reflect that among President George Bush’s dazzling team of advisers, the only stink-bomb is the one Democratic holdover from the Clinton administration. It is absolutely contemptible that Bush will not rid us of this scourge.

It is safe to assume that it was not Mineta’s stellar accomplishment of having sat on the House Public Works and Transportation Committee for 18 years that has led both Republican and Democratic presidents to seek his services so ardently. He is given plumb government jobs solely and exclusively because he is a minority.

But Secretary Mineta is burning with hatred for America. He has taken the occasion of the most devastating attack on U.S. soil to drone on about how his baseball bat was taken from him as a child headed to one of Franklin Roosevelt’s Japanese internment camps.

As Mineta has endlessly recounted in interviews of late: “I remember on the 29th of May, 1942” – note that he remembers the day – “when we boarded the train in San Jose under armed guard, the military guard, I was in my Cub Scout uniform carrying a baseball, baseball glove and a baseball bat. And as I boarded the train, the MPs confiscated the bat on the basis it could be used as a lethal weapon.”

Good God! A guard took Mineta’s baseball bat as a child, and as a result he’s subjecting all of America to the Bataan Death March! Someone please give him a baseball bat.

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Judge Posner Has the Last Word on 2000 Election Debacle (020307)

Democrats regularly insult the intelligence of half the public in order to win the votes of the terminally stupid. As long as their lies bamboozle enough clods to give them a political edge, they will say absolutely anything. The Easily Demagogued are a key Democratic constituency, right after Steely-Eyed Zealots.

Thus for example, even after Bill Clinton was exposed as a slightly tackier version of Jimmy Swaggart, the Democrats could not stop insulting our intelligence, sonorously intoning that it is not perjury if it’s “just about sex” or — contradictorily — it is also not perjury if the witness personally believed it wasn’t sex.

Further, during the Clintonized presidential election fiasco, the party’s law professor adjuncts fanned out across the airwaves to earnestly explain that the Florida Supreme Court was engaging in a perfectly ordinary act of judicial interpretation when it interpreted “seven days” in the statute to mean “17 days, or as long as it takes for Gore to steal the election.”

And most recently, Democrats have taken the position that the heroic performance of policemen, firemen and the military after 9-11 supports the Democrats’ love of big government. Inasmuch as liberals have spent 20 years relentlessly suing fire departments, police departments and the military, this is a very aggressive position to take. Indeed, every hero of Sept. 11 has been a favorite target of liberal lawsuits. There’s no better way to say “thank you” than to sue for sexual discrimination!

Watching Democrats in action often feels like being the target of a “Candid Camera” set-up. You constantly find yourself wanting to scream, <“Is anyone else watching this?”> As a class, one group that is not keeping tabs on Democratic shenanigans is the media. Thus, when Bill Clinton unleashed his signature weeping routine during a black church service in 1993, the Chicago Tribune factually reported that Clinton “appeared to feel every word and emotion deeply.”

Naturally, it always comes as a great relief when the left’s demagogic hokum is finally exposed despite the best efforts of the press. If the Alan Funt of the Bill Clinton spectacle was Monica Lewinsky, the Alan Funt of the election spectacle is at the opposite end of the IQ spectrum: It is Judge Richard Posner, author of “Breaking the Deadlock.”

Posner, a federal judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, goes through the Democrats’ every legal argument, every sneaky stratagem, every disingenuous claim, like William Tecumseh Sherman marching to Savannah. Point by point, by his relentless logic, he has them trapped whichever way they turn.

The election fracas is the perfect topic for Judge Posner’s analytical, computer-like brain. He is the most frequently cited federal judge. He was a founder of the Chicago Law and Economics movement. The late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan called him one of only two geniuses he had ever met.

So you can pretty well imagine his reaction to the deep cogitations of SCOFLA — the Supreme Court of Florida. Though Posner is not the sort to come out and call SCOFLA a bunch of ambulance-chasers, his precise, unemotional style is far more devastating. Taking a clinical interest in his subject, Posner writes at one point simply that “(o)ne is mystified” by the SCOFLA’s reasoning.

In its first abrogation of clear statutory law, SCOFLA interpreted “seven days” to mean “17 days” and thus unlawfully extended the period before the election could be certified. That decision, Posner says, was “the catalyst for the legal and political broil that ensued.” And it was based on “an unreasonable and not merely unsound interpretation of the statute.”

SCOFLA had concluded that it was entitled to disregard Florida election law on the basis of a general provision in the Florida Constitution that states simply: “All political power is inherent in the people.” Posner treats as an odd curiosity the fact that the court “seems to have regarded” this “people power” clause as superior to the written law. Yet this was the “key” to its decision. Jane Goodall could not have described the SCOFLA’s rationale with greater dispassion.

The SCOFLA’s ludicrous power grab occasionally tries the patience of even this most circumspect academic: “The Constitution is not a brooding omnipresence,” Posner writes, nor do the courts function as a “council of revision” to ensure that statutes “reflect the ‘spirit’ of the Constitution.” Rather, he says: “The courts can invalidate a statute, or interpret it reasonably, but they are not to interpret it unreasonably merely because it does not embody the aspirations that the courts find limned in vague constitutional language.”

And consider that SCOFLA gets off easy in Posner’s account. As he says: “The participants most deserving of criticism, though as yet largely spared it, are the law professors who offered public comments on the unfolding drama.”

If you suspected that the Democrats and their legal and journalistic handmaidens were trying to steal an election in broad daylight, “Breaking the Deadlock” will not relieve your mind. There is no argument, no riposte, no silly liberal sentiment that Posner does not methodically deconstruct. This book is the complete antidote to 36 days of a Clintonized transfer of power.

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Parental Advisory: This Column Discusses ‘Speech’ (020425)

WHENEVER A SUPREME COURT OPINION IS BRISTLING with references to Renaissance paintings, classical mythology, and “art and literature throughout the ages,” you know the court is about to invoke the First Amendment to protect “Bisexual Schoolgirls’ Porn Pictures.”

Writing for the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy struck down a perfectly sensible federal child porn law last week. Though you might think the attorney general was preparing to rip “War and Peace” off the shelves, the law simply extended the reach of the federal child pornography laws to computer-generated “virtual” images of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Without this law, it will be impossible, in practice, to prosecute any child pornography cases.

In order to prohibit, say, “Youngest Teen Sluts in the World!” while leaving the Federalist Papers unmolested, the law carefully defined “sexually explicit” conduct as: “actual or simulated ... sexual intercourse ... bestiality ... masturbation ... sadistic or masochistic abuse ... or lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person.”

In response to this law, Justice Kennedy expounded on William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” – “the most famous pair of teen-age lovers.” He continued: “The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and ... speech is the beginning of thought.”

Oh, cut it out.

The last smut prosecutions for works with any redeeming value whatsoever took place almost four decades ago. Since then, pornographers have been running amok, producing the most degrading pornography imaginable – and then running to the Supreme Court to whine about threats to Shakespeare and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

Some of the more respectable titles taken off the Internet include: “Preteen Pedophilia XXX,” “Kiddie Pix,” “Mary’s Pictures of Young Nude Girls,” “Lolita Angels,” “Preteen Nudist Camp,” “Naked Little School Girls,” “Kiddie Porn Lolitas,” “Rape Lolita,” “Preteen Incest Rape.”

Remember: I’m not the one who says “Preteen Sluts” is protected by the Constitution. Pornography defenders always insist on describing this particular constitutional right in vague euphemisms, such as “material dealing frankly with sex” and “sexually themed material.” If I have to endure Justice Kennedy’s pompous platitudes when we’re talking about “Lolita Angels,” then I’m not politely avoiding the topic.

The nation is swimming in pornography. You can’t turn on TV without seeing simulated sex scenes. And Kennedy is worried that a law banning computer-generated photos of children engaging in sexually explicit acts will put Shakespeare at risk?

If judges pretended to be this confused when interpreting other laws, there could be no laws about anything. Indeed, Depends undergarments would be a necessity on the high court, as justices struggled with whether that feeling in their bellies meant they had to go to the bathroom or needed to burp. Is it “Othello” or is it “Kiddie Pix”?

In addition to Shakespeare, Kennedy claims that if Congress were permitted to outlaw virtual images of children in explicit sex scenes, movies like “Traffic” and “American Beauty” might be made differently. “[L]egitimate movie producers,” Kennedy anxiously warns, might not “risk distributing images in or near the uncertain reach of this law.”

Justice William Rehnquist points out in his dissent that both “American Beauty” and “Traffic” were made (and given awards) while this precise child porno law was on the books. Not only that, but during that time, four of five federal appeals courts were upholding the law. As Rehnquist says: “The chill felt by the court ... has apparently never been felt by those who actually make movies.”

Moreover, the actress who played a teen-age girl in the crucially important simulated sex scene in “Traffic” was not, in fact, a minor. (Why does no one ever say, “‘Casablanca’ was a good movie – but what it really needed was simulated sex scenes with kids”?) Even high-priced lawyers for the porno industry couldn’t come up with more than one “legitimate” Hollywood movie that might possibly – theoretically – fall under the virtual child porn law.

Here is a description, courtesy of an Internet rating service, of just some of the sex scenes from “American Beauty”: “a couple has sex with thrusting, her legs up in the air ... a man is seen from behind masturbating in the shower ... a man masturbates next to his sleeping wife in bed ... a girl stands in front of boy, then takes her bra off and we see her breasts ... a man thinks a male couple is performing fellatio (they are not) ... a father kisses his daughter’s teen-age friend, caresses her clothed breasts and pulls off her jeans until she’s down to her underwear, and opens her shirt, exposing her bare breasts ... a man has several daydreams of a girl in a bathtub with rose petals covering her; he reaches his hand under the water at her crotch level as she puts her head back and moans.”

So Congress can’t ban virtual kiddie porn because the law might make producers think twice before making movies with scenes like that? This is the doomsday scenario? A little chilling might lead to “virtual” watchable movies.

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Forget Roe – What’s His Stand On Cow-Tipping? (020509)

THE CHAIRMAN of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, recently said: “To contend that [Miguel] Estrada, a young attorney with no judicial experience, is the only Hispanic who could be a nominee to a potential vacancy on the Supreme Court does a disservice to the many outstanding Hispanic judges serving in our federal and state courts.”

Actually Bush was just looking for top legal talent, not models for a Benetton ad. And not even a Supreme Court justice. Estrada has been nominated to a federal court of appeals by President Bush. It’s rather churlish for Leahy to complain that Estrada has no judicial experience. He can’t develop judicial experience until he’s on the bench, where the Democrats refuse to put him because he has no judicial experience.

It’s interesting that Leahy complained about Estrada’s youth. After an utterly undistinguished legal career prosecuting cow-tipping cases in Chittenden County, Vt., Leahy was, his Web site boasts, “also the youngest senator (34) elected from the Green Mountain State”!

To be sure, Estrada, 40, has no cow-tipping prosecutions under his belt. But he has argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court, often considered even better experience than practice before the Chittenden County bench. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Clinton, for example, the media briefly stopped hailing Hillary Clinton as the greatest legal mind in the universe in order to rave about Ginsburg’s six arguments before the Supreme Court.

Back when Estrada was first nominated – one year ago – Leahy said: “The nominees who were selected for their qualifications are likely to be confirmed. Those who were selected primarily for their ideology are not likely to be confirmed.” But in the succeeding year, Leahy has refused to grant hearings to a slew of lawyers with astonishing legal qualifications.

Almost 40,000 students graduate from law school every year. Each year, only 33 will clerk for the Supreme Court. Indeed, only three sitting members of the Supreme Court – also a good credential – did so. Estrada is among this elite group, as are at least three other of the nine lawyers Bush chose for appellate courts one year ago.

Estrada clerked for Justice Kennedy and has argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court. John Roberts clerked for Justice Rehnquist and has argued more than 30 cases before the Supreme Court. Jeff Sutton clerked for Justice Scalia and has had 15 arguments before the Supreme Court. Michael McConnell clerked for Justice Brennan and has argued 11 cases before the Supreme Court. None of them have even been given hearings by Leahy.

It turns out what the Democrats mean by “selected primarily for their ideology” means the nominee went to top law schools, had prestigious federal clerkships, went on to distinguished legal careers – but are believed to be Republicans. Evidence of “extreme views” consists of association with the Federalist Society, a group of intellectuals that holds racy legal debates on the privileges and immunities clause, and issues publications with edgy titles like “Reciprocal Compensation Decision Resolves Little.”

As legal scholar Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., explained: “We don’t want this to be a judiciary jammed and packed with people who’ve come out of the Federalist Society with extreme views.”

Consequently, Bush had already purged his list of judicial nominees likely to incite a Democratic witch-hunt. He withdrew the names of two Harvard Law School graduates – one a Supreme Court clerk, one a U.S. congressman – after Democrats discovered with alarm that the two had suspicious associations with the Federalist Society. To get a fair shake from the Democrats, the Federalist Society should change its name to “Communist Party U.S.A.”

In addition to the first nine he chose, Bush even included two Clinton nominees – an unprecedented concession. The Senate Democrats responded to Bush’s olive branch by quickly confirming the two Democrats and refusing to confirm all but one of Bush’s nine nominees.

When that first batch of judicial nominees was announced one year ago, Democrats said they would refuse to hold hearings until the candidates had been vetted by the Democratic Party’s legal adjunct, the American Bar Association. OK: All four of these nominees have been reviewed by the ABA. Three received unanimous “well qualified” ratings (Estrada, McConnell, Roberts), and one received a mixed “well qualified/qualified rating (Sutton).

Still, no hearings.

When Bush recently complained about the massive resistance to his judicial nominees, Leahy angrily denied the accusation, saying: Republicans did it first! In point of fact, Republicans held up nominations of jurists like Frederica A. Massiah-Jackson of Philadelphia, who shouted obscenities at prosecutors from the bench. (“Shut your f***ing mouth,” she exclaimed.) Which Clinton nominee with a half-dozen arguments before the Supreme Court did Republicans refuse to confirm?

But moreover, even if it weren’t a lunatic comparison, what kind of argument is that? The Republicans did it too? This must be the sort of finely honed legal argument one develops prosecuting cow-tipping cases. Perhaps the Federalist Society could finally gain the admiration of Senate Democrats if it too began showcasing the legal logic of bratty 4-year-olds.

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Bush Pays Homage to the Fetishistic Rituals of Liberalism (020620)

INTERRUPTING THE ENDLESS 30-year Watergate retrospective and getting back to the war for a moment, I’ve noticed that liberals are having trouble making any good arguments against Bush, so I thought I’d help them out this week.

In the third presidential debate, George Bush responded to a question about racial profiling by spontaneously denouncing the profiling of Arabs at airports: “Arab Americans are racially profiled ... people are stopped, and we’ve got to do something about that.”

Admittedly, this was before Sept. 11. If Arabs were being stopped at airports before Sept. 11 – and that’s a big if – that was probably wrong. There had been only one terrorist attack here in America by Arabs – the bomb at the World Trade Center in 1993. (This is excluding Sirhan Sirhan, the first Muslim to bring the classic religion-of-peace protest to American shores, when, in support of the Palestinians, he assassinated Robert Kennedy.)

But now it’s after Sept. 11, we’re at war, and Bush is still vexed about profiling Arabs.

Last week, Bush’s Department of Transportation required airport security to search former Vice President Al Gore. There’s a lot not to like about Al Gore, but he’s not a terrorist. Gore said he was glad he was searched. Why? So that a potential terrorist could be spared the trouble?

Searching Al Gore is a purely religious act. It is the purposeless, fetishistic performance of rituals in accordance with the civic religion of liberalism.

It’s not just Bush’s Department of Transportation swearing fealty to the left’s civic religion. A few weeks ago, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “immediately after Sept. 11” when the FBI was trying to stop “a second wave of terrorists out there,” FBI policy was this: “We were not looking for individuals of any particular religion or from any particular country.”

Evidently, the only people the Bush administration thinks it appropriate to search are angry men with smoke pouring out of their trousers.

Fortunately, Fitzpatrick and O’Malley out on the street appear to have had a different idea about whom to roust after Sept. 11. If not, then valiant and hardworking FBI agents are to be commended for their rapid surveillance of 280 million Americans – cheerleaders, dentists, nursing-home residents, Amish, performance artists, professional baseball players and so on – before settling on about a thousand Muslim men to detain.

If it weren’t a laughable lie, Mueller should be fired for demanding that FBI agents chastely ignore religion and nationality when investigating terrorism.

But instead of calling for Mueller’s head, Democrats on the committee demanded that Mueller issue yet more ritualistic professions of faith in liberalism’s civic religion. Only a religious cult would require people to appear before committees and say things that are demonstrably false.

Mueller dutifully complied, repeatedly assuring the assembled clergy that “The bureau is against – has been and will be against – any form of profiling.” He said the new guidelines do not address “members of a particular group and not members of a particular political persuasion or anything along those lines.”

Galileo put up more of a fight.

In his inimitable Stalinist way, Sen. Russell Feingold demanded that no one at the FBI even consider whether racial profiling might have prevented 9-11. Liberals treat racial profiling like the Victorians treated sex. It is not a topic that may be discussed, except to recoil in horror at the practice.

Feingold said he was “very troubled” at seeing government officials “quoted in the press saying that they believe concerns of being accused of racial profiling led the FBI to not act on the Phoenix memo.”

The Phoenix memo was the one noting that a lot of Middle Eastern men were enrolled in American flight schools. Inasmuch as all of the leaders of the terrorist attack were Arabs in American flight schools, it’s not crazy to think that an aggressive investigation of Arabs in American flight schools might have thwarted the attack.

When Mueller came back with some flaccid response, saying he had heard an “indication” of “a possible concern” about racial profiling, Feingold imperiously informed the director: “I was hoping for a different answer.” Not the truth – just a different answer. The only thing he left out was “Comrade.”

Muslim terrorists are trying to nuke Manhattan, and the Senate is conducting Soviet show trials on whether anyone at the FBI is wistfully daydreaming about racial profiling.

Relentlessly pursuing incipient thought crimes at the FBI, Feingold pronounced it “a distortion” to suggest that acting on the Phoenix memo would have constituted racial profiling. The memo, he said, “contained specific information about specific individuals.”

The specific information was this: A lot of Middle Eastern men were attending American flight schools. Excising the portion of that statement that liberals refuse to consider – Middle Eastern men – the only “specific information” is: “People were attending flight schools.”

These are the lunatics the Bush administration is hoping to propitiate by refusing to engage in racial profiling. If an attack comes, I assure you: No one will be praising Bush for abiding by the rules of the cult and carefully searching Al Gore.

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Murdering the Bell Curve (020627)

AT LEAST WE finally have liberals on record admitting there is such a thing as IQ.

Six years ago, Eric Nesbitt, a U.S. airman assigned to Langley Air Force Base, was brutally murdered by Daryl Renard Atkins, a repeat violent criminal. It was a heinous and pointless murder: Atkins already had Nesbitt’s money and car when he unloaded his gun into the defenseless airman. According to a cellmate, Atkins later laughed about the murder.

After hearing the (overwhelming) evidence against him, a jury sentenced Atkins to death.

Last week, the Supreme Court overturned that sentence. The court ruled that the Constitution makes Atkins ineligible for the death penalty if he can prove he is “retarded.” In other words, Atkins avoids his capital sentence if he is at least smart enough to know how to fail an IQ test.

Consider what “retarded” means in this context. It does not mean that Atkins could not understand the difference between right and wrong. The law already accounts for that possibility with the concept of legal insanity. It does not mean he could not assist in his own defense. The law already accounts for that possibility with the concept of legal incompetence.

Nor, incidentally, does it mean that Atkins was so retarded that he could not plan a crime, murder a man and then hide the gun. (The police never retrieved the murder weapon.) Indeed, the jury heard the evidence that Atkins was retarded, but still voted to impose the death penalty.

He’s just dumb – not an uncommon trait among violent criminals. As far back as 1914, criminologist H.H. Goddard concluded that “25% to 50% of the people in our prisons are mentally defective and incapable of managing their affairs with ordinary prudence.” Crimes of violence in particular – murder, rape and assault – are all correlated with low IQs.

Thus, the Supreme Court has now prohibited the death penalty for precisely those people who are most likely to commit death-penalty level crimes.

As noted in the excellent new book, “Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right,” liberals acknowledge the concept of IQ only when attacking Republican presidential candidates or trying to spring a criminal from death row. The court has prohibited IQ tests from being used in hiring as a violation of the Civil Rights Act (Griggs v. Duke Power Co.). But to limit a killer’s culpability, IQ tests are evidently completely reliable.

Back when Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s book “The Bell Curve” was released, liberals denounced the idea of intelligence as a sadistic ploy. Yale University psychologist Robert Sternberg was widely quoted as saying that IQ accounts for less than 10% of the variation in human behavior – including the tendency to commit crimes. “Would you want to make your entire national policy around something that has less than a 10% effect?” No, it turns out – only a national policy prohibiting the death penalty.

The New York Times made the sophisticated argument that one of the authors of “The Bell Curve” (Murray) was “a political ideologue.” While admitting that “The Bell Curve” had created “an aura of scientific certitude,” the Times warned that other scholars would soon “subject its findings to withering criticism.” (Not yet, but soon!) The Times was especially irritated that the book had “ignored the huge gaps in understanding the precise nature of intelligence” and dismissed arguments that low test scores proved only “biased testing.”

But now liberals are overjoyed that such a biased test purporting to measure “intelligence” – a subject that we don’t even vaguely understand – is going to be used to empty the nation’s death rows. In an editorial titled “The Court Gets It Right,” the Times gushed, “there are scores, perhaps even hundreds, of inmates whose low IQs will now qualify them for a sentence reduction to life in prison.”

Now that the topic of “The Bell Curve” is a matter of constitutional law, rather than “pseudo-scientific racism,” “indecent, philosophically shabby and politically ugly,” “disingenuous” and “creepy” – all quotes from the liberal New Republic on the book – let’s turn to the guys who were experts in the field before liberals admitted it was a field.

According to “The Bell Curve,” the truly retarded are far underrepresented in the criminal population because those with very low IQs “have trouble mustering the competence to commit most crimes.” As Justice Scalia put it in dissent, the court’s portrayal of the retarded as “willfully cruel” does not comport with experience. To the contrary, he said, “being childlike generally suggests innocence rather than brutality.”

But we’ve got liberals on the record: The New York Times claims that no matter how heinous their behavior, people with low IQs have “little understanding of their moral culpability.”

If IQ is such a reliable predictor of behavior, will liberals finally agree to use it as the sole basis for admission to University of Michigan Law School? Also, can we get the SAT scores of Times editor Pinch Sulzberger now?

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Liberalism And Terrorism: Different Stages Of Same Disease (020703)

THE NEW YORK TIMES editorial page was in a snit with the Supreme Court this week for its first ruling on the Bush administration’s wartime security procedures. Despite the hysteria at the Times for the assault on “constitutional rights” by Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Supreme Court ruled for Ashcroft.

For now, at least, deportation hearings of suspected terrorists will not be open to the public. This, the Times said, was “troubling.” Sadly, the Constitution does not require that national security be compromised.

Like everything liberals oppose but don’t have a good argument for, all reasonable national security measures are called “unconstitutional.” Whenever liberals are losing on substance, they pretend to be upset about process.

Through their enervating dialogues and endless concerns with constitutional process, liberals have made themselves incapable of feeling hate for the enemy. Refusing to take sides in this war, they busy themselves wailing about every security precaution taken by the Bush administration.

Ashcroft has been incessantly attacked on the op-ed page of The New York Times by the same columnists who are now angrily demanding to know why the Bush administration didn’t imprison all Arabs before Sept. 11. He has been compared to the Taliban. (And you’re not a patriot in this war until a liberal has compared you to the Taliban.)

Bill Goodman of the Center for Constitutional Rights called Attorney General John Ashcroft the Constitution’s “main enemy.” (As Andrew Ferguson said, evidently Osama Bin Laden comes in a close second.)

Sen. Patrick Do-Nothing Leahy has complained about Ashcroft’s “disappointing” failure to run all internal guideline changes past the Senate Judiciary Committee. Instead, Sen. Do-Nothing said, “we’re presented with a fait accompli reflecting no congressional input whatsoever.”

Ashcroft was probably worried Leahy would take as long with procedures for investigating terrorism as he is with Bush’s judicial nominees. If Speedy Gonzalez Leahy were required to review Justice Department guidelines, America would be an Islamic regime before Leahy got around to it.

No matter what defeatist tack liberals take, real Americans are behind our troops 100%, behind John Ashcroft 100%, behind locking up suspected terrorists 100%, behind surveillance of Arabs 100%. Liberals become indignant when you question their patriotism, but simultaneously work overtime to give terrorists a cushion for the next attack and laugh at dumb Americans who love their country and hate the enemy.

The New York Times ran a Tom Tomorrow cartoon sneering about Americans who believe with “unwavering faith in an invisible omniscient deity who favors those born in the middle of the North American land mass.” This is how liberals conceive of America: an undifferentiated land mass in the middle of North America. Like all cartoons specially featured in the Times, there was nothing remotely funny about the cartoon. Its point was simply to convey all the proper prejudices of elitist liberals against ordinary Americans.

While hooting with laughter at patriotic Americans, liberals prattle on and on about the right to dissent as the true mark of patriotism and claim their unrelenting kvetching is a needed corrective to jingoism. (It’s not jingoism, and the only people who use that word are fifth columnists.)

After Sept. 11, liberals are appalled by patriotism with an edge of anger because that might lead America to defend itself. True patriotism, they believe, should consist of redoubled efforts at attacking George Bush.

Movie director Robert Altman (who won the Golden Globe for best director for “Gosford Park”) said, “When I see an American flag flying, it’s a joke. This present government in America I just find disgusting.”

Columbia professor Eric Foner said: “I’m not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House.” I think I know the answer! Thousands of our fellow countrymen dying in a fiery inferno, I’m pretty sure, is “more frightening” than the rhetoric emanating from the White House.

Liberals are angrier at John Ashcroft for questioning angry Arab immigrants applying for crop duster permits than they are about the terrorists. These people simply do not have an implacable desire to kill those who cheered the slaughter of thousands of American citizens. If you can rise above that, if you can move on from that, you weren’t angry in the first place.

During World War II, George Orwell said of England’s pacifists: “Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively, the pacifist is pro-Nazi.”

To paraphrase Orwell, in this war, those who cannot stay focused on fighting the enemy are objectively pro-terrorist.

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More Slander (020711)

ON THE BASIS of the logic on the New York Times editorial page, maybe Bill Clinton did kill Vince Foster. Evidently President Bush is responsible for Enron because he is from Texas and – it is insinuatingly noted – so is Enron! If the left’s physical proximity argument constitutes evidence, I take it back: There are boatloads of evidence that Clinton killed Foster.

Indeed, the entire Republican Party is evidently responsible for various rich liberal “Friends of Bill” who now stand accused of insider trading, such as Martha Stewart and ImClone chief Sam Waksal. Republicans are responsible on the basis of the fact that liberals have spent 20 years calling Republicans “the party of the rich.”

Liberals are like the monkeys in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” who explain: “We all say so, and so it must be true.” Republicans are responsible for Clinton’s pal Martha Stewart because liberals say so. Again, I note: If hysterical partisan insinuation constitutes proof, then we need to reopen the Vince Foster files.

Liberals have no real arguments – none that the American people would find palatable, anyway. So in lieu of actual argument, they accuse conservatives of every vice that pops into their heads, including their own mind-boggling elitism.

The Democratic Party has basically remade itself into a party of left-wing academics and Park Avenue matrons. And then they attack Republicans for being elitist snobs protecting “corporate interests.” It’s bad enough that these rich snobs want to raise our taxes all the time. Having to endure Malibu Marie Antoinettes calling Republicans “the rich” is more than working Americans should have to bear.

Howell Raines, the former editorial page editor of The New York Times, described Ronald Reagan as “making life harder for citizens who were not born rich, white and healthy.” Striking a manly tone, Raines woefully noted that this “saddened” him.

The idea that Reagan was a privileged overlord swatting down working-class wretches with his polo mallet is more delusional than some of Barbra Streisand’s wackier ideas. This was the same Reagan who cut taxes, bombed Libya, stood up to the left’s beloved Soviet Union, built up the military and restored pride in America. (Yes, that Reagan.) Who were these initiatives supposed to appeal to? Martha Stewart? I think not. Average, middle-class Americans voted Reagan back into office for a second term in the largest electoral landslide in history.

But 20 years of propaganda about Republicans being the party of “the rich” has created pre-programmed reflexes. The fact that propaganda works is demonstrated by the fact that people don’t laugh out loud when Democrats try to pin corporate malfeasance on the Republican Party.

Liberals also have many important and substantive backup arguments such as they hate Republicans.

In December 1998, the New York Post described talk-show host Phil Donahue exploding with rage at a Four Seasons party (where the Party of the People mingles) screaming about how he hated Republicans. His wife, Marlo Thomas, apologetically explained: “I don’t know why he’s saying that. He doesn’t really hate all Republicans.” (He probably likes Jim Jeffords, for example.)

In the alternative, liberals thoughtfully explain that Republicans are bigots. In a 1995 interview, Clinton’s Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders called Sen. Jesse Helms a “typical white, Southern male bigot.” It’s a little difficult to imagine a Republican presidential appointee referring to any congressman as being a “typical” member of his race without inciting a blizzard of protest.

But this is standard political debate for the left. It is simply not possible to disagree with liberals about constitutional interpretation, guns, abortion, immigration, racial quotas – or really, anything. Serious political dialogue becomes the exception when political discourse is littered with ad hominem land mines.

By contrast, when Republicans directly quote their opponents, all hell breaks loose. A Republican actually quoting a Democrat verbatim constitutes a McCarthyite witch hunt.

Thus, for example, in 1988, George Bush (41) pulled the old quote-your-opponent trick on Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. During the primaries, Dukakis had said: “I am a strong liberal Democrat. I am a card-carrying member of ACLU.” Those were Dukakis’ precise words. Bush quoted him during one of the debates.

Ten years later, liberals were still fuming about Bush’s dirty rat trick of quoting Dukakis. On July 4, 1999, CNN reporter Bruce Morton cited Bush’s low blow, saying it was a “echo of the late Joseph McCarthy’s card-carrying member of the Communist Party, but it seemed to help Bush.” They’ll stoop to anything to win, those Republicans, even quote their opponents.

Serious political debate evidently consists of randomly accusing your opponent of being a hateful bigot or having some vague ephemeral association with corporate crooks. Those are good arguments.

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Call her Mrs. – Phyllis Schlafly (020718)

EVEN TAKING INTO account the extraordinary capacity of the left for hallucinatory self-aggrandizement, the insipid blather about the feminists and the total radio silence on Phyllis Schlafly is astonishing.

The elite media cast about for women to praise, hailing any female who has achieved the amazing feat of having passed the bar exam, but treat the stunning accomplishments of Phyllis Schlafly like the publisher of the New York Times treats his SAT scores. (It is a dark secret that must not be revealed.) Schlafly simply cannot be mentioned – except for the occasional demeaning caricature.

About the time a young Hillary Rodham was serving as inspiration for the perfect little girl in the Hollywood thriller “The Bad Seed,” Schlafly was remaking the Republican Party.

In 1964, Schlafly wrote “A Choice, Not An Echo,” widely credited with winning Barry Goldwater the Republican nomination for president. The book sold an astounding 3 million copies. (The average nonfiction book sells 5,000 copies.) Goldwater lost badly in the general election, but the Republican Party would never be the same.

Goldwater’s nomination began the retreat of sellout, Northeastern Rockefeller Republicans who hoped to wreck the country with slightly less alacrity than the Democrats. Without Schlafly, without that book, it is very possible that Ronald Reagan would never have been elected president.

As the feminists spent 20 years engaged in a death-match debate over whether it is acceptable for feminists to wear lipstick, Schlafly was writing 10 books, most of them on military policy.

She co-authored “The Gravediggers,” accusing the elite foreign-policy establishment of cheerfully selling out the nation’s military superiority to the Soviet Union. That book sold 2 million copies. She also co-authored the extremely influential (and extremely long, at more than 800 pages) “Kissinger on the Couch,” methodically dissecting Kissinger’s foreign policy and attacking his beloved Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.

Meanwhile, the feminists moved on from the weighty lipstick debate to pornography. (As Irving Kristol has suggested, their primary area of agreement was that 18-year-old girls performing sex on stage should be paid the minimum wage.)

An early and vigorous proponent of a missile defense shield, Schlafly has written extensively about ICBMs and missile-defense treaties. Her work was a major factor in President Reagan’s decision to proceed with the High Frontier technology.

Having reached agreement on the necessity of a minimum wage for prostitutes (oops “sex workers”), feminists turned their inexplicable wrath on the titles “Mrs.” and “Miss.”

About the same time, Schlafly noticed that the Equal Rights Amendment was sailing toward ratification without anyone noticing. When Schlafly took up her battle against the ERA, the Senate had passed it by 84 to 8. The House had passed it by 354 to 23. The ERA was written in to both the Republican and Democratic Party platforms. Thirty states had approved it in the first year after it was sent to the states for ratification. Only eight more states were needed.

But the ERA had not yet faced Phyllis Schlafly. Over the next eight years, thanks to Schlafly and her Eagle Forum, only five states ratified it – but five other states rescinded their earlier ratifications.

What the feminists lacked in linear thinking, they made up for in viciousness, control of the media and Hollywood glitz. As Schlafly said, feminists had “the movie star money and we have the voters.” With an army of women behind her, Schlafly defeated the ERA, beating both political parties, two presidents, the Senate, the House and a slew of Hollywood celebrities.

Soon feminists took up the issue of girl-firemen, demanding to know what possible arguments there were, pray tell, for women not to be firemen. (A short list: their inability to pick up the hose, their tendency to cry and panic when confronted with dangerous situations, the effect on families whose homes are on fire when they open the door and see the female equivalent of Michael Dukakis in a tank.)

Schlafly moved on to ludicrous United Nations treaties, the Violence Against Women Act, sexual harassment law, values-clarification programs and other monstrosities too numerous to catalog. People who dismiss her as a mere demagogue or rabble-rouser either don’t read her work or don’t have any idea what actual “scholarship” is.

She was nearly the first woman ever to attend Harvard Law School – though it did not then admit women, Schlafly’s Harvard professors found her so brilliant that they offered to make an exception for her. (She declined.) Instead, she married, raised six amazingly accomplished children and later attended law school in her 50s – all while fighting the establishment in her free time. She is brilliant, beautiful, principled, articulate, tireless and, most important, absolutely fearless.

That Phyllis Schlafly is the mortal enemy of a movement that claims to promote women tells you all you need to know about the feminists. That most people know more about Madeleine Albright’s brooch collection than Schlafly’s achievements tells you all you need to know about the media.

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Make Liberals Safe, Legal and Rare (020814)

WHENEVER A LIBERAL begins a peevish complaint with “of course, we all agree ...” your antennae should go up. This is how liberals couch statements they assume all Americans would demand they make, but which they secretly chafe at.

Liberal sophistry requires pretending they support, for example, sexual abstinence (for teenagers) and marriage (between heterosexuals); making abortion and drug use “rare”; America’s winning the war on terrorism — and before that, winning the Cold War. Fascinatingly, their proposals for achieving these goals are invariably the opposite of what any normal person might think would work.

Instead of punishing bad behavior and rewarding good behavior, liberals often feel it is the better part of valor to reward bad behavior and punish good behavior. Of course, we all agree that Fidel Castro is a bad man. That’s why we need to lift travel restrictions and trade with Cuba! Of course, we all agree that abortion should be “rare.” That’s why all reasonable regulations of abortion must be fought against like wild banshees! (One proven method of making something “rare” is to make it illegal.)

Their comically counterintuitive positions are inevitably backed up with long, complicated explanations about the dire risk of encouraging “hard-liners,” the enemy’s “paranoia,” or clever points such as “teenagers will have sex anyway.” The arguments not only make no sense ab initio, but openly contradict one another.

While pretending to oppose drug use, The New York Times has supported programs to give addicts needles, referring in a 1998 editorial to “some interesting new ideas” such as “needle exchanges.” In the case of cigarettes, however, liberals enthusiastically embrace the otherwise mystifying concept of punishing bad behavior.

Thus, the Times has cheered on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s obsessive desire to outlaw smoking, referring to his proposed ban on smoking in bars as an attempt to close “a major loophole in the city’s anti-smoking law.” Aren’t people going to smoke anyway? Why not make smoking “safe, legal and rare” — just like abortion?

The liberal clergy at the Times has criticized sex education programs that purport to discourage sexual activity among teenagers, while unaccountably neglecting to hand out condoms and scented candles.

Times theater critic Frank Rich has rhapsodically supported Joycelyn Elders’ genius idea of teaching children to masturbate: “The more people talk about masturbation, the more fears can be dispelled among those young people.” (Thirteen-year-old boys could probably teach him a few tricks.)

So it was striking that a recent op-ed piece in the Times opposed a Bush administration’s plan to encourage marriage. Needless to say, it included the ritualistic disclaimer: “Of course, none of this is to say that marriage is not a wonderful institution.” It seems that, in this one case, “we don’t need government programs to convince people ... that marriage is good for them.”

We do, however, urgently need government programs to teach them that dying of AIDS is bad for them. (At least we finally have the left on record opposing some federal government program other than national defense and an independent counsel investigating a Democrat.)

Currently, liberals pretend to be rooting for America in the war on terrorism. To show their support, they oppose America doing anything. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said: “We are all prepared to give the men and women in law enforcement the latitude necessary to protect our nation.” Despite what “we all” support, Durbin said using appearance to sort potential terrorists from non-terrorists “reflects not only poor judgment, but poor law enforcement.”

Really? Which law enforcement experts concluded that surveilling angry Middle Eastern men with smoke pouring out of their trousers would be “poor law enforcement”? Seems unlikely. For some reason, liberals think it’s fun to give Arab terrorists a chance.

Democrats claim to support invading Iraq — just not yet! As the AP recently reported, “the Democrats always preface comments on Iraq with a general statement that Saddam must go.” Of course we all agree that Saddam must go. But first — there are many worthless objections to be raised.

Sore loser Al Gore has said that before invading Iraq we need to establish peace in the Mideast, create a perfect Jeffersonian democracy in Afghanistan, and get the American-hating French and Germans on board. Also invent cold fusion and put a man on Mars. Then will the time be ripe for a pre-emptive attack!

Liberals also carped pointlessly about the war in Afghanistan last fall. Their principal complaint was that we were going to lose. Among many, many other liberals, columnist Maureen Dowd raised the specter of Vietnam and called Afghanistan “another quagmire.” She said that Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem “may be the last to know that Afghanistan is a stubborn and durable place.”

After we routed the Taliban approximately five minutes later, Dowd said, “The liberation of Afghanistan is a wonderful thing, of course.” Of course. And something you said we couldn’t do.

“Of course we all agree” always means liberals don’t agree, but are under no illusions about the popularity of what they really believe.

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Deploying The Marines For Gay Rights, Feminism And Peacekeeping (020821)

ON A BREAK from lachrymose accounts of Palestinian women weeping for their children, The New York Times has been trying to induce hysteria over the shocking Bush policy of deploying American troops in order to protect American interests. Such self-interested behavior is considered boorish in Manhattan salons.

The only just wars, liberals believe, are those in which the United States has no stake. Liberals warm to the idea of American mothers weeping for their sons, but only if their deaths will not make America any safer.

Thus the Times and various McTimes across the nation have touted the idea that invading Iraq “only” to produce a regime change is unjustifiable, contrary to international law, and a grievous affront to the peace-loving Europeans.

As the left’s new pet, Henry No-Longer-a-War-Criminal Kissinger, put it: “Regime change as a goal for military intervention challenges the international system established by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. ... And the notion of justified pre-emption runs counter to modern international law, which sanctions the use of force in self-defense only against actual, not potential, threats.”

The idea that America would be transgressing the laws of man and God by invading Iraq (unless and until Saddam nukes Manhattan) is absurd.

Does no one remember Clinton’s misadventure in the Balkans? Liberals loved that war because Slobodan Milosevic posed no conceivable threat to the United States. To the contrary, as President Clinton put it: “This is America at its best. We seek no territorial gain; we seek no political advantage.”

Deposing Milosevic, Clinton explained, vindicated no national interest, but was urgent because it was akin to stopping a “hate crime.” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said our purpose in the Balkans was “ending ethnic strife” and creating “multiethnic societies.”

One searches in vain for some description of an American interest in the Balkans.

Instead, Milosevic was denounced — by Clinton, Albright, Tony Blair and the whole croaking chorus — for “genocide.” Clinton’s defense secretary, William Cohen, estimated that 100,000 Albanian civilians “may have been murdered.”

Liberal enthusiasts for our “humanitarian” war in the Balkans, it turned out, were over-hasty in their use of the word “genocide” in connection with Milosevic. In the end, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found fewer than 3,000 bodies, most of them men of military age.

Commentators were soon rushing in to explain that these “new details” did not change the fact that Milosevic had engaged in ethnic cleansing and the forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

That doesn’t make Milosevic a hero, but he’s a piker compared to Saddam, who has gassed tens of thousands of his own people and killed almost a million enemy troops in the war with Iran. Liberals oppose a war with Iraq, despite Saddam’s far more impressive credentials as a mass murderer, because acting against Saddam is in the self-interest of the United States.

The left’s theory of a just war is that: (1) military force must never be deployed in America’s self-interest; and (2) we must first receive approval from the Europeans, especially the Germans. (Good thing we didn’t have that rule in 1941!)

By liberal logic, preventing Saddam Hussein from nuking Manhattan is not sufficient justification for a pre-emptive strike on Iraq because the United States has a special self-interest in not being nuked and therefore can’t be trusted.

Similarly, Israel has less claim to act against Yasser Arafat than NATO did against Milosevic because actual Israelis are getting killed by the terror forces they are battling — so they are self-interested. The Times was warmly enthusiastic about Clinton’s humanitarian effort in Kosovo, but is indignant about Israeli self-defense in Gaza.

Moreover, if forced deportation (aka “ethnic cleansing”) is grounds for a war crimes trial of Milosevic, what is Arafat doing when he demands that all Israeli settlements be removed from the disputed territories of the West Bank? Milosevic gets a trial at the Hague for forced deportations. Arafat stages terrorist attacks to compel the forced deportation of Israelis, and he’s a martyr if Israel messes up his office furniture in Ramallah.

The point — which is always the same point — is that we must not protect ourselves but should just let liberals run the world. Liberals believe they are best qualified in war and peace and forced busing because they aren’t going to suffer the consequences. Thus, they can act freely for “humanity.” If it turns sour, like their adventure in Vietnam, they can always drop it and pin the blame on others.

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Battered Republican Syndrome (020828)

FOR MY ESCAPIST summer reading at the beach this week, I’ve been flipping through Sean Hannity’s fabulous new book, “Let Freedom Ring.” It’s a fine book, with many excellent illustrations of how consistently wrong liberals have been for half a century, give or take a few years. But I must take issue with Sean on one point.

Perplexingly, he writes: “The vast majority of liberals are good, sincere, well-meaning people.” This cheery bonhomie is beginning to sound like the mantra about the “vast majority” of Muslims being peaceful. (And has produced the same good results!) I think it’s time to drop the infernal nonsense about liberals being well-intentioned but misguided. In the spirit of Hannityesque magnanimity, I will say that there is only one thing wrong with liberals: They’re no good.

As Hannity notes, liberals never reciprocate the love conservatives keep sending their way. They don’t like us. They don’t even think we’re human. Of this, I am eternally grateful.

Some of the other things liberals believe are:

* to move beyond discrimination, we must discriminate;

* girls would make excellent Marines;

* running gay marriage announcements in the wedding pages will lead to greater acceptance of homosexuality.

They are wrong about everything. Why would anyone want to be liked by these people?

It’s sort of cute when Sean’s hail-fellow-well-met approach toward liberals is greeted with dismissive grunts. For one thing, I think well enough of Sean to believe he doesn’t really mean it. But how many times must we endure a Republican politician droning on about what a fine human being some heinous Democrat is and what a pleasure it was to work with him, only to have the heinous Democrat grudgingly issue some backhanded compliment about the Republican finally seeing the light on this “one issue”?

In the 1996 vice presidential debates, for example, Al Gore said of his opponent Jack Kemp: “Now I want to congratulate Mr. Kemp for being a lonely voice in the Republican Party over the years on this question” of racism and affirmative action. Kemp responded to this demagogic and baseless slander of the Republican Party by saying: “Affirmative action should be predicated upon need, not equality of reward, blah, blah, blah.” Gee, thanks, Jack.

President Bush, too, has repeatedly set himself up as the test case of what happens when you try to play nice with a Democrat. After the dignified staff of the dignified former president trashed the White House on their dignified exit, Bush downplayed the property damage, saying: “There might have been a prank or two. Maybe somebody put a cartoon on the wall, but that’s OK.”

Anyone who knew anyone moving into the Bush White House knew that it was more than a “prank or two.” But instead of stopping while they were ahead, pocketing Bush’s gracefulness and moving on, the Democrats aggressively attacked Republicans for having falsely accused the Clinton staff of trashing the White House. They cited Bush’s magnanimity as evidence that this was a lie. Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., demanded an apology from the White House. USA Today ran a snippy article titled “Ex-Clinton staffers on vandalism: Got proof?” Former Clinton press secretary Jake Siewert insinuatingly asked why there were no records of the alleged damage.

And then the full GAO report came back: The Party of the People had done $15,000 worth of property damage to the People’s House. Extend an olive branch to Democrats and they bite your hand off.

Bush has invited Sen. Teddy Kennedy to the White House for movie night (to watch the Kennedy hagiography “Thirteen Days”), brought him over to discuss education several times, named a federal building after one brother and gushingly praised the other.

The adulterous drunk who cheated at Harvard and killed a girl at Chappaquiddick responded to these overtures by attacking Bush. “It takes more than good intentions to make a difference,” Kennedy said. Asked about Bush’s intelligence (a meaningless concept in college admissions but a scientifically provable quality in the cases of Republican presidents and death-row inmates), Kennedy pointedly said only that he found Bush, “engaging and personable.”

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., dismissed Bush’s overtures toward Kennedy as calculated political gamesmanship.

(Pop quiz: Did a Republican or Democrat say this about a member of the opposing party – “Your thoughtfulness truly amazes me. ... Thank you, my friend, for your many courtesies. If the world only knew.” Answer: That was Sen. Trent Lott on Teddy Kennedy.)

When Bush named the Department of Justice building after Robert Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy Cuomo displayed the renowned Kennedy graciousness by viciously attacking the Bush administration at a pre-dedication ceremony. Noting that her daughter was in the audience, Kennedy Cuomo said: “Kara, if anyone tries to tell you this is the type of justice system your grandpa embraced, you just don’t believe it.”

This is as we have come to expect from a family of heroin addicts, statutory rapists, convicted and unconvicted female-killers, cheaters, bootleggers and dissolute drunks known as “Camelot.” Why would anyone want such people as their “good friends”?

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Murder For Fun and Prophet (020904)

IN “THE TRUST” by Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones, a fawning historical account of the New York Times and the family behind it, the authors describe how the Newspaper of Record conspired to hide information about the Holocaust:

“A July 2, 1944, dispatch citing ‘authoritative information’ that 400,000 Hungarian Jews had already been deported to their deaths and an additional 350,000 were to be killed in the next three weeks received only four column inches on Page 12, while that same day a story about Fourth of July holiday crowds ran on the front page.”

To find out what the enemy is up to in the current war, you keep having to turn to obscure little boxes at the bottom of Page A-9 of the Newspaper of Record.

In a little-noticed story almost exactly one year after Muslims staged the most horrific terrorist attack the world has ever seen, a Muslim en route from Germany to Kosovo emerged from the airplane bathroom and tried to strangle a stewardess with his shoelaces. (Not that there’s anything unpeaceful about that.)

That story was squirreled away in small box at the very bottom of Page A-9 of the Times. In the entire Lexis Nexis archives, only three newspapers reported the incident. Not one mentioned that the attacker was a Muslim. It was a rather captivating story, too. Earlier in the flight, the Muslim responded to the stewardess’s offer of refreshments by saying, “I’d like to drink your blood.” (Not that there’s anything unpeaceful about that.)

Also last week, another practitioner of the Religion of Peace, this one with ties to al-Qaida, tried to board a plane in Sweden with a gun. This story did not merit front-page coverage at The New York Times.

On July 4 this year, an Egyptian living in California — who had complained about his neighbors flying a U.S. flag, had a “Read the Koran” sticker on his front door, and expressed virulent hatred for Jews — walked into an El Al terminal at the Los Angeles airport and started shooting Jews. (Not that there’s anything unpeaceful about that.)

The Times casually reported the possibility that his motive was a fare dispute. Four days after the shooting, the story vanished amid an embarrassed recognition of the fact that any Muslim could snap at any moment and start shooting.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (generally found around Page A-12 of the Times), Americans have been cowed into perseverating that Islam is a “religion of peace.” Candid conversations about Islam are beyond the pale in a country that deems Screw magazine part of our precious constitutional freedoms.

If the 9/11 terrorists had been Christians, the shoelace strangler a Christian, the gun-toting Swedish Muslim a Christian, the Los Angeles airport killer a Christian and scores of suicide bombers Christians, I assure you we would not be pussyfooting around whether maybe there was something wrong with Christianity.

In a fascinating book written by two Arab Muslims who converted to Christianity, Ergun Mehmet Caner and Emir Fethi Caner give an eye-opening account of Islam’s prophet in “Unveiling Islam: An Insider’s Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs.”

Citing passages from the Hadith, the collected sayings of Muhammad, the Caners note that, by his own account, the founder of Islam was often possessed by Satan. The phrase “Satanic Verses” refers to words that Muhammad first claimed had come from God, but which he later concluded were spoken by Satan.

Muhammad married 11 women, kept two others as concubines and recommended wife-beating (but only as a last resort!). His third wife was 6 years old when he married her and 9 when he consummated the marriage.

To say that Muhammad was a demon-possessed pedophile is not an attack. It’s a fact. (And for the record, Timothy McVeigh is not the founder of Christianity. He wasn’t even a Christian. He was an atheist who happened to be a gentile.)

Muslims argue against the Caners’ book the way liberals argue against all incontrovertible facts. They deny the meaning of words, posit irrelevant counterpoints, and attack the Caners’ motives.

Ibrahim Hooper, with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says that by “6 years old” the Hadith really means “16 years old” and “9” means “19” — numbers as similar in Arabic as they are in English. Hooper also makes the compelling argument that the Caner brothers — who say they wrote their book out of love for Muslims whom they want to see in heaven — are full of “hate.”

Other Islamic scholars concede the facts but argue that Muhammad’s marriage to a 6-year-old girl was an anomaly. Oh, OK, never mind. Still others explain that Muhammad’s marriage to a 6-year-old girl was of great benefit to her education and served to reinforce political allegiances.

So was she really 16, or was it terrific that he had sex with a 9-year-old to improve her education? This is like listening to some Muslims’ earlier argument-in-the-alternative that the Zionists attacked the World Trade Center, but America brought the attack on itself anyway.

Muhammad makes L. Ron Hubbard look like Jesus Christ. Most people think nothing of assuming every Scientologist is a crackpot. Why should Islam be subject to presumption of respect because it’s a religion? Liberals bar the most benign expressions of religion by little America. Only a religion that is highly correlated with fascistic attacks on the U.S. demands their respect and protection.

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So Three Arabs Walk Into A Bar ... (020918)

AN AMERICAN CITIZEN overheard three Muslims at a Shoney’s restaurant laughing about Sept. 11 over breakfast.

“If people thought Sept. 11 was something, wait till Sept. 13.”

“Do you think that will bring it down?”

“Well, if that won’t bring it down, I have contacts. I’ll get enough to bring it down.”

Patriot Eunice Stone took down their license plate numbers and called the police as the mirthful Muslims left. (I’d give you the names, but they’re too complicated. There’s a reason they use numbers at Guantanamo.) Despite the racist hysteria sweeping the nation, the police did not rush out and start rounding up Arabs. They interviewed Stone in person to evaluate her credibility and corroborate her story.

That night, a little after midnight, one of the two cars being driven by the Muslims ran a toll booth — at least according to everyone but these beacons of truth. Law enforcement officials soon descended on the cars. According to accounts in The New York Times, the men were uncooperative, refused to answer basic questions, gave false information and told contradictory stories. A bomb-sniffing dog reacted to the presence of explosives in both vehicles. After a careful search, however, no explosives were found and the men were released.

Naturally, therefore, the men and their families accused Americans, especially Southerners, of being ignorant racists. “Just because of the way we look or the way we choose to live our lives, we’re persecuted,” said the sister of one. Demonstrating her own open-mindedness, she explained the entire incident by saying, “Unfortunately, they stopped in a restaurant in Georgia.” No prejudice in that.

It’s interesting that the Muslims’ denial of Stone’s account was instantly and universally treated as having precisely the same credibility as Bill Clinton denying he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. Even the Islamic Al Sharptons simply assume these guys are lying. The Muslims now say they didn’t do it. Their defenders say they were joking. (Who knew the Religion of Peace was so darn funny? Did you hear the one about the release of VX gas in Disneyland?)

By my count, the Muslims have given at least five versions of what happened. Eunice Stone has given one consistent story. She has been interrogated by law enforcement officials and is corroborated by another witness.

According to the Boston Globe, the Three Stooges first told law enforcement officers they did it on purpose. Stone, they said, was watching them too closely and this got the poor little darlings’ undies in a bundle. So they decided to scare her. One year after Muslims murdered thousands of people on American soil, evidently it’s rude to look at three Muslim men decked out in Arabic garb.

Next, the Muslims told reporters that Stone had “put a little salt and pepper into her story.” A stunned CNN correspondent blurted out: “Salt and pepper?” He reminded them what Stone had heard them say. “Well, yes, whatever,” came the reply.

Third, they tried out the hysterical-woman defense — used to great effect by Democrats in the Clinton era. One of the Muslims tauntingly demanded to know “how many other people witnessed this event that supposedly took place, first of all?” Well, at least one other person. Stone’s son was there and he heard the conversation exactly the same way. He just thought the men were playing his mother and him for suckers. (The Muslims might want to try the Clintonian “she wants to write a book” defense.)

Fourth, the Muslims leapt to their very favorite explanation, the one they haul out at the slightest provocation for almost any occasion: Pogrom-oriented Americans were victimizing them. In a stirring sermon, one of the Arabs advised Americans to “read about other people and read about what they believe before we jump to conclusions.”

Yes, it’s manifestly absurd for anyone to think Muslims might blow something up. In point of fact, it is only by not reading that Americans have been deluded into spouting the Soccer-Momism about Islam being a “religion of peace.” Actually, reading would provide dozens upon dozens of contrary examples from the last year alone.

While I could be jumping the gun — the night is still young — it now appears that their final answer is: They were talking about a car. They didn’t say anything about 9/11 or 9/13, but the “bring it down” bon mot referred to bringing a car down to Florida. This occurred to them only after meeting with their lawyers. Oh, OK.

No one in the press has bothered to investigate the “car” story further. No one believes them, so what’s the point? It would be like chasing down Gennifer Flowers to ask her if it really happened only “once.”

Non-terrorist Muslims are crying wolf when they play these games — talking about blowing up buildings in restaurants, taking a lighter to their sneakers on commercial aircraft, and spending a long time shaving in airplane bathrooms. Intentionally or not, they are giving the real terrorists a cushion for the next attack.

Instead of preying on America’s hatred of prejudice, these aspiring Scottsboro Boys should capitalize on America’s capacity for forgiveness, admit they did something really stupid, and stop lying.

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Dems to Torch: Only Crooks Who Can Win (021002)

DEMOCRATIC SEN. ROBERT TORRICELLI’S announcement that he was pulling out of the New Jersey Senate race this week looked like a confession of guilt in a Soviet show trial. In the reflection of his dewy eyes, you could almost see Terry McAuliffe mouthing the words to him from the audience. Especially the part where he paid tribute to the great Bill Clinton, to whom Torricelli evidently owes his deeply ingrained sense of ethics.

Torricelli will leave public office with just the clothes on his back, a Rolex watch and other assorted jewelry, a TV set, a couple of racks of Italian suits, some Jets tickets, a grandfather clock and three paper sacks filled with small, unmarked bills.

But the Democrats had no qualms with the gifted senator (get it?) until he fell behind in the polls. Only then did the call come for Torricelli to withdraw. It had to be done. A woman’s right to kill a child is on the line! If Torricelli loses, the Senate could tip to the Republicans, which would be a disaster of unspeakable consequence.

Specifically, Democrats will not be able to obstruct the president in performing his constitutional duty to appoint judges. A vacancy on the Supreme Court could materialize and, against overwhelming historical odds, Bush’s appointee might be one of five votes to strike down Roe v. Wade. Then – God forbid – the public would be allowed to vote on an important issue! In some of the less-enlightened states, the public might not recognize the fundamental human right to suck the brains out of little babies.

Apart from treason, this is all the Democratic Party stands for anymore.

Republicans can only marvel at the Democrats’ gall and Stalinist party discipline. Vernon Jordan is probably on the phone to Revlon right now trying to get Torricelli that nice job once designated for Monica. If Republicans played like Democrats, President Bush would have offered Torricelli an ambassadorship not to withdraw from the race.

The Democrats’ 11th-hour switch is in violation of state election law, which puts a 51-day limit on withdrawing from an election. This is not a random filing requirement. Torricelli’s Republican opponent, Douglas R. Forrester, has designed an entire campaign – polls, advertisements, issues – on the assumption that he was running against a specific candidate. As soon as his campaign against that candidate began to work and he pulled ahead, Democrats switched the candidate.

One may assume that violating the law did not even break the Democrats’ stride. The nettlesome part must have been explaining to Torricelli that he was to be replaced by former Sen. Frank Lautenberg – whom Torricelli famously, and not without justice, despises.

This entire spectacle is a sham. If Lautenberg is elected, he will resign so that the Democratic governor can appoint a replacement. Torricelli was a place-holder for the campaign, and now Lautenberg will be a place-holder for the election.

Democrats wail about every vote counting when they need to steal votes after an election. But in New Jersey they won’t even tell the voters who the candidate is. If Democrats could get away with it, they’d claim to be running “Ronald Reagan” in all elections and then fill the seats with the equivalent of James Carville.

(Perhaps the Democratic governor could recycle another of his appointees, New Jersey’s poet laureate Amiri Baraka, who has been causing a stir lately with poems about how the Jews bombed the World Trade Center.)

When Strom Thurmond was approximately 150 years old, the Republicans couldn’t get him to resign just two years early to ensure that a Republican governor would appoint his successor. Republicans couldn’t even get all Republican senators on board to remove a Democratic president who was a known felon and probable rapist. Meanwhile, not one Democratic senator diverged from the party line on Clinton.

Democrats insist that their losing candidates be taken off the ballot 38 days before an election – if that will help them win a majority in Congress. They keep dead candidates on the ballot – if that will help them win a majority in Congress. They put conservative candidates on the ballot in the South and Midwest – if that will help Democrats win a majority in Congress.

Two days before Torricelli “decided” to pull out of the New Jersey race, Patsy Mink, a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, died of pneumonia. Unlike Torricelli, Mink is evidently irreplaceable. The Democrats have insisted that her name remain on the ballot. It will cost the taxpayers of Hawaii millions of dollars to run a special election if she wins.

When Democratic Senate candidate Mel Carnahan died in a plane crash just three weeks before the 2000 election, his wife, Jean, volunteered to be appointed to the seat if he won. Carnahan was behind in the polls before the plane went down, but in an outpouring of sympathy for the grieving widow, the dead man won an upset victory.

Now, two years later, the widow is again campaigning on the slogan: “Keep the flame alive.” That’s considered a good issue in a Senate campaign. Talking about the war is a dirty campaign trick.

While Democrats encourage voters to ignore the Democrats’ position on the war in the upcoming congressional elections and instead to concentrate on tiny local issues – such as sympathy for the candidate’s deceased husband – it is they who have nationalized all congressional elections. As the New Jersey scam proves, it’s all about control of Congress.

In a gallant statement celebrated as The New York Times’ Quote of the Day, Torricelli said: “I will not be responsible for the loss of the Democratic majority in the United States Senate.” He also won’t end up on the Clinton death list now either. Nor will Saddam Hussein if Democrats have their way. The only items remaining on the Democrats’ death list are honest elections and a million unborn babies.

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Media Muslim Makeovers! (021030)

AFTER ALL THE speculation about the sniper terrorizing Maryland and Virginia, at last we have some cold hard facts. He is a Muslim. He converted to Islam 17 years ago. He changed his name to John Muhammad. He belonged to Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. He cheered the terrorist attack of Sept. 11. He registered his getaway vehicle with the DMV on the anniversary of Sept. 11 – writing down the time of registration as 8:52 a.m.

Naturally, therefore, the mainstream media have decided the crucial, salient fact about sniper John Muhammad is that he is a Gulf War veteran. Thus, the New York times described the snipers as: “John Allen Muhammad, 41, a Gulf War veteran, and John Lee Malvo, 17, a Jamaican.”

They are now hot on the trail of whether Osama bin Laden ever served with the U.S. military in the Gulf War.

“The good part of being a Democrat is that you can commit crimes, sell out your base, bomb foreigners, and rape women, and the Democratic faithful will still think you’re the greatest.”

To review recent events, last year, 19 Muslims slaughtered thousands of Americans on U.S. soil. Since then, one Muslim tried to blow up a U.S. commercial jet with a shoe bomb and another Muslim shot up Los Angeles airport. The Religion of Peace has also been active abroad, decapitating an American journalist and blowing up a French tanker. In the last few weeks alone, Muslims bombed a nightclub in Bali and were narrowly prevented from slaughtering hundreds of theater-goers in Moscow.

Inasmuch as the nation is at war with Islamic terrorists, you might think it would be of passing interest that the sniper is a Muslim. But you need a New York Times decoder ring to figure out that GULF WAR VETERAN John Muhammad is a Muslim. The main clue is the Times’ repeated insistence that Islam had absolutely nothing to do with the shootings.

Wrestling with the freakish development that a practitioner of the Religion of Peace is a killer, the Times has even rushed to print with the completely unsubstantiated speculation that John Muhammad had recently rejected Islam. Experts explained that a “rapid and bizarre change in religious beliefs” is common among “serial killers.” One doctor said a change in religious beliefs before committing violent crimes is “a fairly well-known phenomenon in clinical psychiatry,” adding that he “was not diagnosing Mr. Muhammad’s condition.”

His condition? He’s a Muslim. That’s his condition and his diagnosis. It may be time to update the DSM-IV by adding “Jihad Impulse-Control Disorder” to its index of official diagnoses.

In addition to copious articles intimating that John Muhammad was practically not even a Muslim, the media have universally concluded that there is “no evidence” connecting him to al-Qaida. Of course, it will be difficult to find any evidence, having instantly pronounced the case closed.

In one hard-hitting investigative piece on Muhammad, for example, the Times produced amazing details from his life, including conversations with relatives, neighbors, friends and ex-girlfriends. The article droned on about how he met one ex-girlfriend – her job, her hobbies, her hopes and dreams. But when she said, “We stopped talking after he asked me about religion,” the Times dropped the subject and moved on to the next topic.

After weeks of blithe theorizing that the sniper was an “angry white male” – based on invidious and offensive stereotypes – aren’t we entitled to a little theorizing about Muhammad’s terrorist ties? There is surely more evidence that he was a member of al-Qaida than that he abandoned Islam before carrying out the sniper attacks.

Emerging as al-Qaida’s leading spokesman in America, the Times has also blacked out the information that the terrorists who seized a Moscow theater last week were practitioners of the Religion of Peace.

I note again: America is at war with Islamic fanatics. But in a prolix front-page article about the “hostage siege” in Russia, the Times referred to the Islamic fanatics who stormed the theater exclusively as the “captors,” the “separatists” and the “guerrillas.” One searches in vain for a clear statement that the Moscow hostage crisis was yet another enterprise of the Religion of Peace.

The only hint that the “captors” were even Muslims was the Times’ dismissive description of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reaction to the terrorists’ demands. Instead of acquiescing, Putin “cho(se) to cast the rebels as international Islamic terrorists.” The Times knows a cheap political ploy when it sees one.

In one of the oddest attempts to soften depictions of Islam – the one religion the media respects – the Times has apparently banned the word “burka” from its pages. (Burkas have gotten such a bad name recently!) Instead, one reads only about the “burka-style gowns” of the Islamic terrorists in Moscow or the “burka-like robes” of women in Bahrain. (How about: The swastika-like adornment on the skinhead’s forearm.)

Not to be outdone by the Times, CNN has valiantly insisted on calling John Muhammad by his Christian name. The night the snipers’ names were first released, CNN’s Jeanne Meserve repeatedly called Muhammad two names he does not answer to: “Here are the names. John Allen Williams, aka Muhammad Williams, and also a John Lee Malvo.” Williams isn’t his name. It’s not even “Muhammad Williams.” It is John Allen Muhammad.

After assuring viewers “we will deal with this carefully,” Aaron Brown summed up Meserve’s report, saying, “We will say again that these two men, John Allen Williams and John Malvo – and I’m not clear on the spelling on Malvo ...” While telling whoppers about Muhammad’s name, he’s fretting about spelling issues.

The next night Brown slipped and mistakenly called Muhammad by his actual name. He was quickly corrected by Kelli Arena:

BROWN: “And then it was sometime later that they got the second name, Muhammad or Williams, I guess.”

ARENA: “Right, Williams.”

Perhaps CNN should go whole hog and start describing Muhammad as a member of the “religious right” whose name is “Jerry Falwell.”

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The Democratic Party: The Gift That Keeps On Giving! (021113)

AFTER LAST WEEK’S drubbing in the midterm elections, the Abortion Party (formerly known as the Democratic Party) is looking for direction. Happily, both the party brass and base are coalescing around the idea that the Democrats were not adequately insane.

Thus, for example, discussing the Democrats’ bloodbath on National Pubic Radio, Robert Kuttner said the Democrats had “blurred their differences with President Bush on key issues like whether to have a tax cut ... whether to have a social outlay that benefits ordinary people. They tried to blur their differences with the president on the war ...”

I can only say: Get that man a microphone! I wholeheartedly agree. What this last election proves, as the New York Times has clearly explained, is that the people want expensive ‘60s-style government programs, a mammoth tax increase, a depleted, anemic military and an enormous welfare state. (Duh.)

Hauling poor old Walter Mondale out of retirement to defend Jimmy Carter’s record was definitely a step in the right direction. (New slogan idea – “The Democratic Party: The Gift That Keeps On Giving!”) But it’s not enough. In the interest of good sportsmanship, I have some other suggestions to help the Democrats clarify their differences with the Republicans.

First, the Democratic Party needs to have a lot more anti-war rallies in which Jesse Jackson embraces Ramsey Clark and liberals go around calling one another “comrade.” The public cries out for the opinions of doddering old Stalinists in berets. Do not fall for the canard about left-wing kooks undermining the work of liberals who look normal.

That’s what Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., thought, and look what happened to him. Of the three Democrats arguably responsible for the election fiasco – Terry McAuliffe, Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt – surely the least culpable was Gephardt, the original phony “NASCAR Democrat.” But picking up on the Clinton strategy of blame the innocent and promote the guilty, only Gephardt resigned.

Second, the Democrats definitely need to speak out more forcefully against the Boy Scouts. So far, their hatred of the Boy Scouts has been frankly weak-kneed. Two years ago, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., introduced a bill to revoke the Boy Scouts 84-year-old federal charter because they discriminate against gays. Despite the votes of several Democrats, the bill was narrowly rejected in a 362-12 vote.

It’s a hopeful sign that Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is on track to succeed Gephardt as House minority leader. She signed a letter to President Clinton frantically urging him to resign as honorary president of the Boy Scouts. But to really uncompact the Democrats’ message, they need to take a two-fisted approach toward this wholesome, all-American organization. This is no time for subtlety: The Democrats need to present a clear alternative. Demand that the Boy Scouts be outlawed. Go after the Boy Scouts like you’re going after the Klan!

Third, there is still plenty of room to curry more favor with the teachers’ unions. Democrats should start demanding really, REALLY small class sizes. Right now the critical ratio is supposed to be 20 students to 1 teacher. Hundreds of studies have failed to produce any correlation between class size and student achievement. In fact, the United States has far smaller class sizes than Japan and far worse test scores.

But don’t let that slow you down! A clear message for the Democratic Party is at stake. Democrats need to start demanding one teacher, one teacher’s assistant, one backup teacher’s assistant and one auxiliary backup teacher’s assistant for every student. Instead of a ratio of 20 students to 1 teacher, they should insist on .03 students for every teacher.

Fourth, it’s time to roll out Hillary’s national health-care plan again. Desperate times call for desperate measures. But this time, it should not be limited to American citizens. Let the Republicans oppose extending a prescription-drug program to the citizens of all nations!

Fifth, it’s not enough to oppose a missile-defense system because it “won’t work.” Everyone knows Democrats haven’t the first idea how a squirt gun operates, much less complicated missile technology. It’s time to oppose Star Wars on the grounds that – even if it works – it will protect only the top 1% of earners.

Sixth, the Muslim snipers terrorizing Maryland and Virginia present a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to promote voter registration for felons. Now is the time to rush Jesse Jackson to their holding cells with voter-registration cards. Also, the lead gunman was 17 years old. Refer to him as a “child” while hysterically denouncing the death penalty for “juveniles.” Perhaps the French could even make the younger sniper an honorary citizen, like Mumia. I only regret that Leonard Bernstein isn’t around to throw a cocktail party for them.

Finally, as Hillary Kessler-Godin (New York!) wrote in a letter to the New York Times last Thursday: “The party needs to bring out the two best weapons in its arsenal, Bill and Hillary Clinton.” No question about it. In fact, it ought to be part of the Democratic Party platform that Bill Clinton is required to campaign with every Democratic candidate running for any office in the land. Also, Ms. Kessler-Godin has to start attending the anti-war rallies.

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Journalism: Where Even The Men Are Women (021231)

MOST JOURNALISTS are so stupid, the fact that they are also catty, lazy, vengeful and humorless is often overlooked. I generally avoid mentioning even widely published lies about me, or I’d never have time to do the things that provoke liberals to lie about me. But inasmuch as one of the media’s favorite pastimes is to invent inane quotes and attribute them to me, I thought we could use a few examples to probe the need for lithium among the scribbling profession.

One apocryphal quote that has long perplexed me was the one falsely attributed to me in Salon.com by Christina Valhouli, renowned expert on “fat farms” and “squishy tummies.” (See www.curve-film.com.) What I never said, but fat-farm expert Valhouli thinks I should have said, and that has now appeared in the Washington Monthly, The Washington Post and hundreds of Web sites, is this: “Women like Pamela Harriman and Patricia Duff are basically Anna Nicole Smith from the waist down. Let’s just call it for what it is. They’re whores.” (Aren’t all women somewhat similar “from the waist down”? No wonder liberals are so eager for sex education classes.)

I have wracked my brain to understand why a fat-farm expert and “plus size” historian would do me such a bad turn. Readers? Anyone?

One of my favorite fabricated statements was the one created for me by Andrew Grossman of The Hollywood Reporter. He was reporting an exchange on the “Today” show about my 9/11 column in which I said of the terrorists and their sympathizers: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” “Today” host Katie Couric asked me if I thought that was the best way to battle terrorism.

Here is my precise answer: “Well, point one and point two, by the end of the week, had become official government policy. As for converting them to Christianity, I think it might be a good idea to get them on some sort of hobby other than slaughtering infidels. I mean, perhaps that’s the Peace Corps, perhaps it’s working for Planned Parenthood, but I’ve never seen the transforming effect of anything like Christianity.”

Grossman’s full account of this exchange in The Hollywood Reporter was: “‘Do you still believe that’s the best way to fight terrorism?’ Couric demanded. That quote was taken out of context, Coulter insisted.”

My parents are still waiting for the day that I formulate an argument as succinct and elegant as: “That was taken out of context. Now I’ll go back to eating my turkey.” Even my worst enemies would not believe I was a nonparticipant in an argument about me. This is the form of stupidity I admire the most: How should I know how to work Lexis Nexis? Apart from being a college professor, there is no easier job in the universe than being a journalist. For 99.999% of writers, there is no heavy lifting, no physical danger, no honest day’s work. Andrew Grossman has found a way to make it even easier. No research!

At the other end of the spectrum are energetic journalists who missed the class on “editing.” They think all Ann Coulter quotes are one long ticker tape that may be cut up and strung together at random to produce any imaginable point.

On Dec. 8, 1998, the topic on “Rivera Live” was how long an impeachment trial would take. Alan Dershowitz said it would take up to 10 months. Geraldo Rivera said three months. Lawyer Roy Black offered the important and persuasive point that “people with a brain” wanted me to stop talking.

This is the relevant exchange about the length of the impeachment trial (which took about one week):

MS. COULTER: The idea that a Senate trial would go on and on and on is absurd. It would take about a week. ...

PROF. DERSHOWITZ: Can you make a tape of that? Yeah, Geraldo, make a tape of that and replay that over and over again as we get into the sixth week, the 10th week, the 20th week, the 30th week, the 40th week. We’ll have Ann Coulter saying, “It will take a week. It will take a week.”

Ms. COULTER: Well, I don’t know. So far, I could be quoted back to myself many times, like on the Secret Service privilege, the attorney-client privilege, the dead man’s privilege. Really, my track record is pretty good on predictions.

On another TV show the following March, about the time Hillary Clinton was first thinking about running for Senate and her presumed opponent was Rudolph Giuliani, I said I thought Whitewater would prevent Hillary from challenging Giuliani. Now we’ll never know.

The Washington Monthly reported my quotes as: “I think (Whitewater)’s going to prevent the first lady from running for Senate. ... My track record is pretty good on predictions.”

They get an A for effort on that one. Little Andrew Grossman wouldn’t even look up the show he was writing about. These people found two different quotes, in two different places, on two different TV shows, on two different topics, three months apart, and patched them together without dates to try to make a monkey out of me. I’ve also said “yes.” How about stringing these sentences together to make me look brilliant: Will Jimmy Carter win the Nobel Peace Prize, Madonna make a movie that bombs and North Korea develop nuclear weapons? Ann Coulter: “Yes.” I think I’m owed that.

Finally, for an example of journalists’ fine-tuned sense of humor, the winner is this e-mail sent out by CBSNews.com a few weeks ago, which requires no comment: “Quote of the Day: ‘I’m just glad Strom Thurmond isn’t around to see this.’ — conservative syndicated columnist Ann Coulter’s take on the Trent Lott controversy. At last check by CBS News, the world’s most famous 100-year-old was doing fine.”

From their commitment to exactitude to their terrific sense of humor, all of the feminists’ very best qualities now dominate the profession of journalism. Journalists’ quotes are as accurate as feminists’ statistics about anorexia.

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Axis Of Stupidity (030108)

WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH included North Korea in the axis of evil last year, foreign policy experts concluded that he was a moron. On the basis of years of scholarship and close study, the experts pointed out that Iran, Iraq and North Korea were — I quote — “different countries.” As Tony Cordesman, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explained, “these are three very different countries here.” USA Today sniffed that there was no axis because, “The countries have more differences than similarities.” Koreans don’t even look like Iranians.

Moreover, as the ponderer class repeatedly reminded us, President Clinton had struck up a brilliant agreement with the North Koreans in 1994, with guidance from Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jimmy Carter. The deal consisted of this fair trade: The Clinton administration promised North Korea 500,000 tons of fuel oil annually and $4 billion to construct a pair of nuclear reactors for “electricity”; in exchange, North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

We were assured that the North Koreans had been peaceful little lambs since then. As Clinton himself said of North Korea, “I figure I left the next administration with a big foreign policy win.” Alas, he said, Bush had squandered that “win.” Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, concurred: “When we left office, we left on the table the potential of a verifiable agreement to stop the export (from North Korea) of missile technology.”

USA Today said that “even critics concede the regime seems to have kept its promises so far regarding nuclear weapons and missile tests.” But Bush had botched the peace agreement with his “hot-war posturing” — “a simplistic policy of hubris that alienates allies and inflames problems that can be managed more benignly.”

The principal area of disagreement among the ponderers was what on earth could have provoked Bush to call North Korea part of the axis of evil in the first place. One popular explanation was ... Enron! Antony Blinken, a Clinton national security staffer, said Bush’s axis of evil gambit was intended to distract the public’s attention from “things less comfortable, like the economy and the Enron scandal.”

Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, took a break from denouncing America’s treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo to opine that “Bush’s State of the Union speech was best understood by the fact that there are mid-term congressional elections coming up in November.”

Robert Scheer wrote in the Los Angeles Times that Bush’s axis of evil drivel was the “rationale for a grossly expanded military budget.” Throwing North Korea into the mix was an obvious scam, Scheer said, because, “North Korea is a tottering relic of a state whose nuclear operation was about to be bought off under the skilled leadership of the South Korean government when Bush jettisoned the deal.”

And then in October 2002, the North Koreans admitted that immediately after signing Clinton’s 1994 “peace” agreement, they had set to work building nuclear weapons. A few months after that, U.S. intelligence forces tracked an unmarked ship carrying Scud missiles from North Korea to Yemen.

It was beginning to look like an “axis of evil.” The experts had never paused to consider the possibility that Bush had called North Korea part of an “axis of evil” because North Korea was part of an axis of evil.

With impeccable timing, just two weeks before North Korea admitted it had been feverishly developing nuclear weapons since the mid-’90s, New York Times columnist Bill Keller snootily referred to North Korea as among “the countries the White House insists on calling the axis of evil.”

A week later — or one week before North Korea owned up to its nuclear weapons program — Keller’s op-ed rival at the Times, Nicholas Kristof, wrote: “In 1994 the vogue threat changed, and hawks pressed hard for a military confrontation with North Korea. ... In retrospect, it is clear that the hawks were wrong about confronting North Korea. Containment and deterrence so far have worked instead, kind of, just as they have kind-of worked to restrain Iraq over the last 11 years, and we saved thousands of lives by pressing diplomatic solutions.”

Instead of owning up to their ludicrous attacks on Bush and unrestrained praise for Clinton’s “peace” agreement, the ponderers once again concluded that Bush was a moron. Bush, it seems, had somehow provoked the North Koreans to build nuclear weapons by being mean to them. Robert J. Einhorn, who helped negotiate Clinton’s masterful 1994 peace deal, said Bush’s “tough rhetoric” had “unnerved the North Koreans.” Derek Mitchell, another veteran of the Clinton administration, agreed: “We did call them the ‘axis of evil.’”

Time magazine was a rare voice of honesty amid the claptrap. “In January, Bush said the three states were seeking weapons of mass destruction and posed a grave and growing danger.” On the evidence, Time said, “he’s right.”

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Democrats Don’t Have The Constitution For Racial Equality (030122)

ALL THE BLATHER about the University of Michigan race discrimination case has at least proved one thing: The Supreme Court’s abandonment of legal reasoning has taken the public by storm! Now everyone treats constitutional law as if it is an ongoing referendum about various public policy issues. Pundits simply assume state colleges are allowed to create a racial stew. It’s just a question of whether this or that system is desirable as a public policy matter. We hear about stigmas, legacies, SAT scores, athletes – all of which have nothing to do with the Constitution.

Even the wackiest Supreme Court rulings always make a big show of pretending to consult the Constitution before announcing, for example, that Christmas displays must have a particular ratio of reindeer to virgins. I don’t know whom the Supreme Court thought it was fooling, but Americans were not fooled. The Growing Constitution has grown into a collection of primal urges, devoid of law. People believe their wild irrational appetites should find expression in Supreme Court opinions. We await Supreme Court rulings like primitives waiting for a wart healer’s cure. Liberals love this system of pretend-law, because it allows them to get away with murder – sometimes literally, as in Roe v. Wade.

Like everyone else in the universe, I too have strong opinions about how universities should run their admissions systems. But there is no Ann’s Opinion Clause in the Constitution. There is, however, an Equal Protection Clause.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits states from discriminating on the basis of race. It says: Nor shall any state “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” That amendment grew out of the Republicans’ first big dust-up with the Democrats over race – the Civil War. Then, as now, Democrats demanded the right to discriminate on the basis of race. The 14th Amendment sternly informed Democrats that they would have to stop. Democrats dropped slavery but desperately clung to state-sanctioned race discrimination for another hundred years.

It took a Supreme Court ruling in 1954 and a Republican president sending in the National Guard to force Democrats to stop their infernal race discrimination. In the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause prohibited the states from engaging in race discrimination in education. Democrats responded with massive resistance.

Ten years later, Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, expanding upon the nondiscrimination principle of the Equal Protection Clause. Among other things, the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits any institution that receives federal funds – i.e., Harvard – from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin. Though only a bare majority of Democrats voted for the act, it seemed as if the Democrats were finally going to mend their ways and truly embrace a color-blind society.

Alas, they were just resting up for the next battle. After taking a few years off, the Democrats got back into race discrimination in a big way. They apparently thought they could fool us by switching which race they thought should be discriminated against. It must be something in Democratic genes. They just love race discrimination.

So now we have idiots like Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., saying race discrimination is no different than colleges admitting legacies. One difference is – as Terry Eastland famously said – we didn’t fight a civil war to stop colleges from giving a preference to the children of alumni. But Biden says colleges shouldn’t stop obsessing with race “unless we’re going to eliminate it all, all incentives, like, for example, in the case in Michigan everybody is talking about now. You know you get four points if you’re a legacy ...” Sure, that’s just like getting 20 points for being black.

Biden thinks if he gets applause from a student audience, he must have made a legal argument. He seems to imagine he is actually learning law from watching Court TV. His next irrelevant point was: “Give me a break. I mean how many people would get into Harvard, Yale and the rest of these places if their father had not gone?” There’s an answer to that! This columnist did the math! On the basis of their SAT scores, 82% of legacies admitted to Harvard would have been admitted to Harvard even if they were not legacies. Only 45% of blacks admitted to Harvard would have been admitted to Harvard if they were not black.

But I’ve been tricked into arguing a nonissue by Biden’s imbecility. If colleges wanted to admit only legacies, or only tuba players, or only people who got astonishingly low SAT scores – to ensure some of their graduates would be U.S. senators one day – the Constitution wouldn’t stop them.

What the states, including state colleges, cannot do under the Constitution is discriminate on the basis of race. What even private colleges cannot do under federal law – if they accept federal funds – is discriminate on the basis of race. Neither the Constitution nor federal law says anything about discrimination on the basis of SAT scores, legacies or athletic ability. We’ve had a civil war, a constitutional amendment, a Supreme Court ruling, a National Guard mobilization and a federal civil rights law to try to get the Democrats to stop with the race discrimination. All we can do now is sit back and wait for the wart healers to speak.

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Liberals Trade Crusading Anger For Hardheaded Realism (030312)

SINCE NEW competitive media have forced liberals to confront opposing points of view, they seem to have abandoned emotionalism as their main argument. Their new posture is mock hardheaded realism. Liberals flex their spindly little muscles and announce that everything that used to make them cry – guns, racial profiling, torturing suspects – simply doesn’t work: The fact is, it doesn’t work, this is according to several studies, and no, you can’t see them, why would you ask?

Thus, for example, after decades of womanly hysteria about guns, we started getting statements like this from Fox News Channel’s Alan Colmes to Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America: “Let’s talk about some hard and cold facts, Larry. The fact of the matter is, Larry, that the odds that a home will be the scene of a homicide are much greater if there’s a gun in the home.” Soccer moms across America shot up straight at that one and said: I did not know that!

As the inestimable economist John Lott has shown, the study behind this flagrantly dishonest “cold hard fact” assumed that anyone killed by a gun in or near a home where anyone owned a gun was, therefore, killed by “a gun in the home.” The study merely attests to the fact that people who live in high-crime neighborhoods tend to own guns. This is like the joke about diets causing people to be fat because most people on diets are fat. Or, as Lott says, on that theory of causation, hospitals must cause people to die because lots of people who die have been hospitalized recently. (Lott exposes dozens of such phony “studies” and shibboleths about guns in his splendid new book, “The Bias Against Guns.”)

After 19 nearly identical-looking Muslim men hijacked four airplanes and murdered 3,000 Americans, people weren’t in much of a mood for liberal preachiness about racial profiling. So instead of screaming and trying to make Americans feel guilty, liberals took a hardheaded realist approach. Asked if there was anything wrong with ethnic profiling at airports after 9-11, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz said: “Yes, it doesn’t work.” Other, better ideas, he said, were face-recognition technology and national ID cards. These would work great – assuming we know who the terrorists are. But if we knew who the terrorists were, the only plane they’d be boarding would be on its way to Guantanamo.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said that using appearance as a factor in screening airplane passengers “reflects not only poor judgment, but poor law enforcement.” Good law enforcement apparently consists of goosing white paraplegics before they fly. On CNN, Juliette Kayyem, from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, assured viewers that “no one is disagreeing with” extra scrutiny for potential terrorists. But profiling “won’t work.” Al-Qaida, she said, “exists in places from Algeria to Zimbabwe.” Since we’re in America, wouldn’t it be a big help if we could screen out the Americans? Liberals think “it doesn’t work” has such a nice ring to it that the patent falsity of what they’re saying should not detract from their argument.

After Sen. Teddy Kennedy tried to block federal funding for the government’s program to fingerprint and photograph people entering the country from 25 Muslim nations, his sleazy back-door maneuver was defended on Fox News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor” by Sarah Eltantawi of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Eltantawi said it was a “huge mischaracterization” to think she was going to complain about racial profiling. “That’s not the argument I’m here to make.” To the contrary, her objection – and Kennedy’s objection – was that fingerprinting and photographing immigrants from terrorist-producing countries is “completely inefficient.” And we all know Teddy Kennedy cannot abide inefficiency!

The recent capture of al-Qaida leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has led to an epidemic of “it doesn’t work” claims with regard to torture. Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, former legal counsel to the CIA, National Security Agency and State Department, has been quoted as saying, “We don’t use torture because it doesn’t work.” Torture indisputably works when you know you’ve got the right guy. We know who Mohammed is; we know he has information we want. There may be good and sufficient moral reasons for not torturing people for information, but efficacy is not among them.

It’s as if liberals held focus groups on how to best present their ridiculous ideas and were told: Passion you’ve got! But what respondents say you lack is: intellection, thinking things through, understanding elementary human nature, and a basic awareness of what people are like. If conservatives have not yet persuaded liberals to give up on socialism and treason, we have at least gotten them to fake linear thinking. The next hurdle is substance.

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Shock And Awe Campaign Routs Liberals (030409)

LIBERALS ARE NO longer a threat to the nation. The new media have defeated them with free speech – the very freedom these fifth columnists hide behind whenever their speech gets them in hot water with the American people. Today, the truth is instantly available on the Internet, talk radio and Fox News Channel. No wonder liberals accuse Matt Drudge of absurd sodomic acts, call Rush Limbaugh a “big fat idiot,” and say “really stupid people” watch Fox News Channel – as anti-war actress Janeane Garofalo said between assuring us that Saddam Hussein has no weapons of mass destruction.

After the Dixie Chicks’ lead singer, Natalie Maines, informed a concert hall on foreign soil that “just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas,” the New York Times reported that for several days there was not “a ripple about the remark.”

Then Matt Drudge posted it on his website. The Drudge Report has been getting 11 million hits a day recently. In response to the instant uproar, including radio boycotts and public CD burnings, Maines was forced to issue a written apology for the remark. Then Maines explained it was a “joke,” which is only slightly less enraging than being told to “chill out.” At the Country Music Television awards last Monday, the very mention of the Dixie Chicks prompted booing.

Weeks after the Dixie Chicks imploded, Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder showed he’s still got a way with words by repeatedly smashing a George W. Bush mask against the stage during a concert. Predictable heckling and booing broke out – robust even by Pearl Jam concert standards. Vedder asked in astonishment: “You’re booing the story, right? You’re not booing me?” Published claims that dozens of fans walked out at this point seem dubious, since that would require Pearl Jam’s fan base to still number in the dozens.

Vedder continued with a rambling diatribe against the war, during which he announced – in a worldwide exclusive – that next year Americans will no longer be allowed to speak. When someone yelled at him to shut up, Vedder shouted down the dissenters with a microphone and 50,000 amps, saying, “I don’t know if you heard about this thing called freedom of speech, man.” This qualified as one of the most profound public statements ever punctuated with the term “man.”

Soon, Vedder was backpedaling faster than a Dixie Chick: “Just to clarify ... we support the troops.” To prove it, he cited his short haircut: “How could we not be for the military? I mean, look at this [expletive] haircut.” Vedder said his remarks had been “misconstrued.” The band issued a statement saying Vedder was just talking about “freedom of speech.”

Also celebrating “free speech” recently was Columbia University professor Nicholas De Genova. Speaking at a “teach-in” a few weeks ago, he said patriots were white supremacists and that the “only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military.” Most charmingly, De Genova said: “I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus,” referring to the dismembered bodies of American servicemen being dragged through the streets of Somalia in 1993. De Genova was given rousing applause from the college audience when he said: “If we really [believe] that this war is criminal ... then we have to believe in the victory of the Iraqi people and the defeat of the U.S. war machine.”

The speech by this esteemed member of our nation’s higher education system was followed by other Columbia professors, such as Eric Foner, who tepidly took exception only to De Genova’s description of patriots as white supremacists. (Has anything good ever come of a “teach-in”? Even the promisingly titled “die-ins” always fail to deliver.)

The university initially responded to complaints about De Genova by issuing the usual traitors’ dodge: free speech! But the uproar continued, eventually propelling the president of the university, Lee Bollinger, to say that De Genova’s “million Mogadishus” comment “crosses the line.”

Most auspiciously, Peter Arnett was fired from NBC for pinch-hitting for Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein’s minister of propaganda. Consider that Arnett has retailed propaganda for the Iraqi regime about a “milk factory” being bombed by the Americans in 1991 – and that didn’t get him fired. He has bragged that he would allow American servicemen to die rather than reveal enemy war plans he had acquired as a journalist – that didn’t get him fired. Arnett once falsely reported that the U.S. military used poison gas on American defectors – and then hid behind his producers’ skirts when CNN was forced to retract the report and fire the producers. That didn’t get him fired.

Like Columbia University, NBC initially tried to stand by Tokyo Pete this time, issuing a statement that called his reporting “outstanding” and saying simply that his interview with Iraqi TV “was done as a professional courtesy.” By 7 o’clock the next morning, deluged with thousands of e-mails demanding Arnett’s head, NBC fired him.

Freedom of speech isn’t working out so well for liberals now that they aren’t the only ones with a microphone. It’s not so much fun when the rabbit’s got the gun.

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Liberals Meet Unexpected Resistance (030430)

THOUGH MANY had anticipated a cakewalk for the media in undermining the war on terrorism, instead liberals are caught in a quagmire of good news about the war. Predictions that liberals would have an easy time embarrassing President Bush have met unexpected resistance. They’re still looking for the bad news they said was there. Experts believe the media’s quagmire results from severely reduced troops. The left’s current force is less than half the size of the coalition media that undermined the Vietnam War.

It’s been a tough few weeks all around for the anti-war crowd. On Sunday, the London Telegraph reported that documents had been discovered in Baghdad linking Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden. Hussein and bin Laden had a working relationship as far back as 1998, based on their mutual hatred of America and Saudi Arabia. As we go to print, it’s Day Four of the New York Times’ refusal to mention these documents.

Government documents have also been found in Iraq showing that a leading anti-war spokesman in Britain, Member of Parliament George Galloway, was in Saddam Hussein’s pay. Scott Ritter, former U.N. arms inspector turned peacenik turned suspected pederast, immediately defended Galloway in a column in the London Guardian. With any luck, Tariq Aziz will now step in to defend Ritter.

At least Tariq Aziz knows he lost the war. American liberals are still hoping for a comeback. But the war was so successful, they don’t have any arguments left. They can’t even sound busy. In their usual parody of patriotism, liberals are masters of the long-winded statement that amounts to nothing. They can’t go on TV and say nothing. But all they have are some broken figurines to complain about.

They said chemical weapons would be used against our troops. That didn’t happen. They predicted huge civilian casualties. That didn’t happen. They said Americans would turn against the war as our troops came home in body bags. That didn’t happen. They warned of a mammoth terrorist attack in America if we invaded Iraq. That didn’t happen. Just two weeks ago, they claimed American troops were caught in another Vietnam quagmire. That didn’t happen.

Now the biggest mishap liberals can seize on is that some figurines from an Iraqi museum were broken – a relief to college students everywhere who have ever been forced to gaze upon Mesopotamian pottery. We’re not talking about Rodins here. So the Iraqis looted. Oh well. Wars are messy. Liberalism is part of a religious disorder that demands a belief that life is controllable.

At least we finally got liberals on the record against looting. It seems the looting in Iraq compared unfavorably with the “rebellion” in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict. When “rebels” in Los Angeles began looting, liberals said it was a sign of frustration – they were poor and hungry. As someone noted at the time, apparently they were thirsty as well, since they hit a lot of liquor stores. Meanwhile, the Iraqis were pretty careful about targeting the precise source of their oppression. Their looting concentrated on Saddam’s palace, official government buildings – and the French cultural center.

However many precious pots were stolen, it has to be said: The Iraqi people behaved considerably better than the French did after Americans liberated Paris. Thousands of Frenchmen were killed by other Frenchmen on allegations of collaboration with the Nazis. Subsequent scholarship has shown that charges of “collaboration” were often nothing more than a settling of personal grudges and family feuds. This was made simple by the fact that so many Frenchmen really did collaborate with the Nazis. The French didn’t seem to resent the Nazi occupation very much. Nazi occupation is their default position. They began squirming only after Americans came in and imposed democracy on them.

Despondent over the success of the war in Iraq, liberals tried to cheer themselves up with the politics of personal destruction – their second favorite hobby after defending Saddam Hussein. Responding to the question of whether the Supreme Court should hold sodomy to be a fundamental constitutional right, Republican Sen. Rick Santorum made the blindingly obvious point that a general right to engage in consensual sex would logically include adultery, polygamy and any number of sex acts prohibited by the states.

For the limited purpose of attacking Santorum, liberals agreed to stipulate that adultery is bad. After spending all of 1998 ferociously defending adultery as something “everyone” does and “everyone” lies about, liberals claimed to be shocked to the core that anyone would compare homosexuality to such a morally black sin as adultery. (While we’re in a sensitive mood, how about the name “the DIXIE Chicks”? Isn’t that name provocative to African-Americans?)

When you get liberals to come out against both looting and adultery in the same week, you know the left is in a state of total disarray. They shouldn’t feel so bad. Their boys put up a good fight in Iraq for 17 days.

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Global Warming: The French Connection (030528)

INASMUCH AS June is around the corner and it’s still winter, it is time to revisit the issue of “global warming.” A sparrow does not a spring make, but in the Druid religion of environmentalism, every warm summer’s breeze prompts apocalyptic demands for a ban on aerosol spray and paper bags. So where is global warming when we need it?

In 1998, President Clinton denounced Republicans for opposing his environmental policies, citing Florida’s inordinately warm weather: “June was the hottest month they had ever had – hotter than any July or August they had ever had.” This, after the Senate rejected the Kyoto Treaty by the slender margin of 95-0. In fact, all the world’s major industrial powers initially rejected the treaty, including Japan. That’s right: Even Kyoto rejected Kyoto.

That same year, CNN’s Margaret Carlson remarked that when her neighbors experienced temperate weather at Christmas, global warming was the word on everyone’s lips. Adding to the world’s supply of hot air, she said global warming was the big sleeper issue.

Well, this year, Washington, D.C., had the coldest February in a quarter-century. What are the scientific conclusions of Ms. Carlson’s neighbors now? In a single day in February, New York got its fourth-deepest snowfall since 1869. Baltimore got more snow in February than in any other month in recorded history. I wish there were global warming.

In 1995, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced a computer model purportedly proving “a discernible human influence on global climate.” According to the U.N., there was not enough evidence to determine if Saddam Hussein was a threat, but the evidence is in on global warming.

The key to the U.N.’s global warming study was man’s use of aerosol spray. You have to know the French were involved in a study concluding that Arrid Extra Dry is destroying the Earth. In a world in which everyone smelled, the French would be at no disadvantage. Aerosol spray. How convenient.

According to global-warming hysterics, global warming would begin at the poles, melt the ice caps, and then the oceans would rise. On the basis of such fatuous theories, in August 1998, the host of NPR’s “Science Friday,” Ira Flatow, told his listeners to look out their windows and imagine the ocean in their own back yards. Explaining that receding glaciers in Antarctica would dramatically lift sea levels, he warned that their grandchildren could be “hanging fishing poles out of New York skyscrapers,” thus qualifying as the world’s all-time greatest “fishing story.”

Since then, evidence disproving “global warming” has been pouring in. God knows how many trees had to be sacrificed to print new data refuting global warming.

In January 2002, the journal Science published the findings of scientists who had been measuring the vast West Antarctic ice sheet. Far from melting, it turns out the ice sheet is growing thicker. The researchers were Dr. Ian R. Joughin, an engineer at the jet propulsion laboratory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Pasadena, Calif., and Dr. Slawek Tulaczyk, a professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

About the same time, the journal Nature published the findings of scientist Peter Doran and his colleagues at the University of Illinois. Rather than using the U.N.’s “computer models,” the researchers took actual temperature readings. It turned out temperatures in the Antarctic have been getting slightly colder – not warmer – for the last 30 years.

The chief scientist for Environmental Defense, Michael Oppenheimer, responded to the new findings by urging caution and warning that “there is simply not enough data to make a broad statement about all of Antarctica.” That’s interesting. We didn’t have to wait for more data when lunatics curtailed the use of nuclear energy in this country on the basis of the movie “The China Syndrome.” That was hard scientific evidence.

We didn’t wait for more data when DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) was banned on the basis of Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring,” which brainwashed children into believing DDT would kill all the birds. American soldiers in World War II were bathed in DDT. Jews rescued from Nazi death camps were doused in DDT. It was a miracle invention: Tiny amounts of DDT kill disease-carrying insects with no harm to humans, protecting them from malaria, dengue and typhus. But in 1972, the U.S. banned one of the greatest inventions in modern history.

Now environmentalists are in a panic that African nations will use DDT to save millions of lives. Last year, 80,000 people in Uganda alone died of malaria, half of them children. The United States and Europe have threatened to ban Ugandan imports if they use DDT to stop this scourge. Environmentalists would prefer that millions of Africans die so that white liberals may continue gazing upon rare birds.

Liberals don’t care about the environment. The core of environmentalism is a hatred for mankind. They want mass infanticide, zero population growth, reduced standards of living and vegetarianism. Most crucially, they want Americans to stop with their infernal deodorant use.

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We Don’t Care (030604)

SEETHING WITH RAGE and frustration at the success of the war in Iraq, liberals have started in with their female taunting about weapons of mass destruction. The way they carry on, you would think they had caught the Bush administration in some shocking mendacity. (You know how the left hates a liar.)

For the sake of their tiresome argument, let’s stipulate that we will find no weapons of mass destruction – or, to be accurate, no more weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps Hussein was using the three trucks capable of assembling poison gases to sell ice cream under some heretofore undisclosed U.N. “Oil For Popsicles” program.

Should we apologize and return the country to Saddam Hussein and his winsome sons? Should we have him on “Designer’s Challenge” to put his palaces back in all their ‘80s Vegas splendor? Or maybe Uday and Qusay could spruce up each other’s rape rooms on a very special episode of “Trading Spaces”? What is liberals’ point?

No one cares.

In fact, the question was never whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We know he had weapons of mass destruction. He used weapons of mass destruction against the Kurds, against the Iranians and against his own people.

The United Nations weapons inspectors repeatedly found Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, right up until Saddam threw them out in 1998. Justifying his impeachment-day bombing, Clinton cited the Iraqi regime’s “nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.” (Indeed, this constitutes the only evidence that Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction: Bill Clinton said he did.)

Liberals are now pretending that their position all along was that Saddam had secretly disarmed in the last few years without telling anyone. This would finally explain the devilish question of why Saddam thwarted inspectors every inch of the way for 12 years, issued phony reports to the U.N., and wouldn’t allow flyovers or unannounced inspections: It was because he had nothing to hide!

But that wasn’t liberals’ position.

Liberals also have to pretend that the only justification for war given by the Bush administration was that Iraq was knee-deep in nukes, anthrax, biological weapons and chemical weapons – so much so, that even Hans Blix couldn’t help but notice them.

But that wasn’t the Bush administration’s position.

Rather, it was that there were lots of reasons to get rid of Saddam Hussein and none to keep him. When President Bush gave the Hussein regime 48 hours’ notice to quit Iraq, he said: “(A)ll the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end.” He said there would be “no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.”

Liberals kept saying that’s too many reasons. The New York Times’ leading hysteric, Frank Rich, complained: “We know Saddam Hussein is a thug and we want him gone. But the administration has never stuck to a single story in arguing the case for urgent pre-emptive action now.” Since liberals never print retractions, they can say anything. What they said in the past is never admissible.

Contrary to their current self-advertisements, it was liberals who were citing Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction – and with gusto – in order to argue against war with Iraq. They said America would suffer retaliatory strikes, there would be mass casualties, Israel would be nuked, our troops would be hit with Saddam’s chemical weapons, it would be a Vietnam quagmire.

They said “all” we needed to do was disarm him. This would have required a military occupation of Iraq and a systematic inspection of the 1,000 or so known Iraqi weapons sites without interference from the Hussein regime. In other words, pretty much what we’re doing right now.

Remember? That’s why liberals were so smitten with the idea of relying on U.N. weapons inspectors. As their title indicates, “weapons inspectors” inspect weapons. They don’t stop torture, abolish rape rooms, feed the people, topple Saddam’s statues or impose democracy.

In January this year, The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof cited the sort of dismal CIA report that always turns up in the hands of New York Times reporters, warning that Saddam might order attacks with weapons of mass destruction as “his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.” He said he opposed invading Iraq as a pure matter of the “costs and benefits” of an invasion, concluding we should not invade because there was “clearly a significant risk” that it would make America less safe.

In his native tongue, weaselese, Kristof claimed he would be gung-ho for war if only he were convinced we could “oust Saddam with minimal casualties and quickly establish a democratic Iraq.” We’ve done that, and now he’s blaming the Bush administration for his own idiotic predictions of disaster. Somehow, that’s Bush’s fault, too. Kristof says Bush manipulated evidence of weapons of mass destruction – an act of duplicity he calls “just as alarming” as a dictator who has weapons of mass destruction.

If Americans were lied to, they were lied to by liberals who warned we would be annihilated if we attacked Iraq. The left’s leading intellectual light, Janeane Garofalo, was featured in an anti-war commercial before the war, saying: “If we invade Iraq, there’s a United Nations estimate that says, ‘There will be up to a half a million people killed or wounded.’” Now they’re testy because they fear Saddam may never have had even a sporting chance to unleash dastardly weapons against Americans.

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I Dare Call It Treason (030625)

THE MYTH OF “McCarthyism” is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times. Liberals are fanatical liars, then as now. The portrayal of Sen. Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. Liberals weren’t hiding under the bed during the McCarthy era. They were systematically undermining the nation’s ability to defend itself, while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy’s name. Liberals denounced McCarthy because they were afraid of getting caught, so they fought back like animals to hide their own collaboration with a regime as evil as the Nazis. As Whittaker Chambers said: “Innocence seldom utters outraged shrieks. Guilt does.”

At the time, half the country realized liberals were lying. But after a half century of liberal myth-making, even the disgorging of Soviet and American archives half a century later could not overcome their lies. In 1995, the U.S. government released its cache of Soviet cables that had been decoded during the Cold War in a top-secret undertaking known as the Venona Project. The cables proved the overwhelming truth of McCarthy’s charges. Naturally, therefore, the release of decrypted Soviet cables was barely mentioned by the New York Times. It might have detracted from stories of proud and unbowed victims of “McCarthyism.” They were not so innocent after all, it turns out.

Soviet spies in the government were not a figment of right-wing imaginations. McCarthy was not tilting at windmills. He was tilting at an authentic communist conspiracy that had been laughed off by the Democratic Party. The Democrats had unpardonably connived with the greatest evil of the 20th century. This could not be nullified. But liberals could at least hope to redeem the Democratic Party by dedicating themselves to rewriting history and blackening reputations. This is what liberals had done repeatedly throughout the Cold War. At every strategic moment this century, liberals would wage a campaign of horrendous lies and disinformation simply to dull the discovery the American people had made. They had gotten good at it.

There were, admittedly, a few rare and striking exceptions to the left’s overall obtuseness to communist totalitarianism. John F. Kennedy’s pronouncements on communism could have been spoken by Joe McCarthy. For all his flaws, Truman unquestionably loved his country. He was a completely different breed from today’s Democrats. Through the years, there were various epiphanic moments creating yet more anti-communist Democrats. The Stalin-Hitler pact, Alger Hiss’ prothonotary warbler, information about the purges and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” – all these had their effect.

But after World War II, the Democratic Party suffered a form of what France had succumbed to after World War I. The entire party had lost its nerve for sacrifice, heroism and bravery. Beginning in the ‘50s, there was a real battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. By the late ‘60s, the battle was over. The anti-communist Democrats had lost.

In 1972, George McGovern, darling of left-wing radicals, was the Democratic presidential candidate. Tom Hayden, leader of Students for a Democratic Society and an instigator of the Chicago riots, became a Democratic state senator in California. (In 1968, Staughton Lynd wrote of Tom Hayden: “On Monday, Wednesday and Friday he was a National Liberation Front guerilla, and on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, he ... was on the left wing of the Democratic Party.”) Black Panther Bobby Rush would go on to become a Democratic congressman. Todd Gitlin, a former president of SDS, would soon be a frequent op-ed columnist for the New York Times. By the time of the 1991 Gulf War, only 10 Senate Democrats voted with President Bush to use troops against Saddam Hussein. If the old Democratic Party was merely obtuse, the new Democratic Party was a beachhead of domestic anti-Americanism. This was the new Democratic Party.

Clinton was the left’s last best hope for proving they could too handle the presidency. Having tricked the American people into entrusting a Democrat with the White House (on a plurality vote), they had to defend him from any lie, any felony, any reprehensible, contemptible conduct he threw their way. When Clinton first showed his fat oleaginous mug to the nation, the Republicans screamed he was a draft-dodging, pot-smoking flim-flam artist. Had the Republicans turned out to be right again, it would have sounded the death knell for the Democratic Party.

So the Democrats lied. Through their infernal politics of personal destruction, liberals stayed in the game for a few more years.

Unless we fight for proper treatment of history and counter the nonsense images of McCarthy, no history can be safe from the liberal noise machine. Someday, school children will be taught that all of America cringed with terror at Ken Starr, whose evil designs on the nation were frustrated only through the sacrifice of brave liberals. People will have vivid images of the pounding boots of Starr’s subpoena-servers and the Gestapo-like wails of alarms as Ken Starr arrived to kick in the doors of innocent Americans and storm through their bedrooms. It will be the Reign of Terror under Ken Starr.

Bill Clinton will be revered in high school history books as the George Washington of his day who, along with patriots Larry Flynt and James Carville, “saved the Constitution.” He will be honored with a memorial larger than the Washington Monument (though probably with the same general design).

People will believe that. And liberals will continue unabashedly invoking a lie in order to shield their ongoing traitorous behavior.

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Liberal Alternative Patriotism (030702)

ON OUR NATION’S birthday, it is appropriate to honor the five men who did the most to defend our freedom in the last century. The names are easy to remember – they are the five men most loathed by liberals: Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, Whittaker Chambers and Ronald Reagan.

McCarthy died censured and despised at 48 years old, his name a malediction. Hoover is maligned for having been a mad spymaster and is lyingly smeared as a cross-dresser – by people who admire cross-dressers. Nixon was forced to resign the presidency in disgrace. Though persecuted in his day, Whittaker Chambers is not hated today only on a technicality: The MTV generation doesn’t know who he is. They’d hate him too, but it would take research. By contrast, Ronald Reagan has prevailed over the left’s campaign of lies only because the American people do remember him – so far.

Notwithstanding the left’s fantastic lies, these men won a 50-year war because of the abiding anti-communism of the American people. These are the heroes of the Cold War, and all have been personally reviled for their trouble.

The left’s shameful refusal to admit collaboration with one of the great totalitarian regimes of the last century – like their defense of Bill Clinton – quickly transformed into a vicious slander campaign against those who bore witness against them. Caught absolutely red-handed, liberals started in with their typical bellicose counterattacks. Half a century ago, Louis Budenz, an ex-communist informant, warned investigators that if they dared go after the Communist Party, they would be subjected to savage attacks, never “honest rebuttal.” Unless the American people understood that, he said, all was lost.

Absurdly, liberals claim to hate J. Edgar Hoover because of their passion for civil liberties. The left’s exquisite concern for civil liberties apparently did not extend to the Japanese. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt rounded up Japanese for the internment camps, liberals were awed by his genius. The Japanese internment was praised by liberal luminaries such as Earl Warren, Felix Frankfurter and Hugo Black. Joseph Rauh, a founder of Americans for Democratic Action – and celebrated foe of “McCarthyism” – supported the internment.

There was one lonely voice in the Roosevelt administration opposed to the Japanese internment – that of J. Edgar Hoover. The American Civil Liberties Union gave J. Edgar Hoover an award for wartime vigilance during World War II. It was only when he turned his award-winning vigilance to Soviet spies that liberals thought Hoover was a beast.

Liberals deemed it appropriate to throw Japanese citizens into internment camps on the basis of no evidence of subversive activity whatsoever. But it was outrageous for the FBI director to spy on high government officials taking their orders from Moscow. As we now know, Hoover didn’t need to engage in much surveillance to know who the Soviet agents were – he already knew from decrypted Soviet cables.

Liberals sheltered communists, Hoover was on to them, so they called him a fag. With precisely as much evidence as they had for McCarthy’s alleged homosexuality, the left giddily “gay”-baited J. Edgar Hoover. Their sensitivity to homophobia was matched only by their sensitivity to the civil rights of Japanese.

While Hoover was alive, any journalist who could have proved he was “gay” would have won a Pulitzer Prize. But they couldn’t get Hoover on a jaywalking charge. Only after he was dead did liberals go hog-wild inventing lurid fantasies about Hoover showing up at Washington cocktail parties in drag (perhaps not recognizing their own Pamela Harriman).

In 2003, the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival put on a musical comedy about Hoover’s apocryphal homosexuality in “J. Edgar! The Musical,” written by Harry Shearer and Tom Leopold. While slandering a dead man with impunity, rich celebrities – in Aspen, Colo., no less – paid tribute to their own dauntless courage. For the second year in a row, the festival celebrated the First Amendment, giving its “Freedom of Speech Award” to millionaire leftist Michael Moore, in an event hosted by Joe Lockhart, former press secretary to a president whose IRS audited people who engaged in free speech against him. The executive director of the festival, Stu Smiley, said the purpose of the festival was “to reacquaint ourselves with people who have sacrificed for their right to express themselves.”

Liberals’ conception of sacrifice is rather broad, including:

* to work for up to three weeks for less than $1 million;

* and to not be showered with praise by Veterans of Foreign Wars while burning the American flag.

Americans should thank God that McCarthy, Hoover, Nixon, Chambers and Reagan were men enough to make real sacrifices.

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No Quagmire Here! (030903)

ANOTHER PRESIDENT began a war promising a “chance to test our weapons, to try our energy and ideas and imagination for the many battles yet to come.” He said that as conditions change, “we will be prepared to modify our strategy.” The heralded modifications never came, nor did an end to the war. President Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty turned out to be a bigger quagmire than Vietnam. Would that the Democrats would give the war in Iraq as much time to succeed as they are willing to give the “War on Poverty,” now entering its 40th year.

Instead of poor people with hope and possibility, we now have a permanent underclass of aspiring criminals knifing one another between having illegitimate children and collecting welfare checks. It is an ironclad law of economics that if you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it. But liberals were shocked and bewildered to discover that when they subsidized illegitimacy, they got more of it.

The War on Poverty took a crisis-level illegitimacy rate among blacks in the mid-1960s (22%) and tripled it to 69%. It transformed a negligible illegitimacy rate among whites (2%) to emergency proportions (22.5%) – higher than the black illegitimacy rate when Daniel Patrick Moynihan heralded the War on Poverty with his alarmist report on black families, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” (Demonstrating the sort of on-the job-training that has so impressed Hollywood elites, the state with the second highest rate of white illegitimacy is Howard Dean’s Vermont.) Overall, the illegitimacy rate has skyrocketed from about 8% to 33.8%.

If George Bush’s war on terrorism were to go as well as the Democrats’ war on poverty, in a few decades we could have four times as many angry Muslims worldwide plotting terrorist violence against Americans.

Or how about an “exit strategy” for New York City’s war on high rents? Rent control was introduced as a temporary wartime measure during World War II. Sixty years later, the Germans have been subdued – but government bureaucrats in New York are still setting rents, leading to the surplus of affordable housing for which the city is duly famous. The anointed live in lush five-bedroom apartments in marquee buildings for $350 a month while newcomers are forced to bid up the few units in what’s left of the housing market, paying thousands of dollars per month to live in rat-infested tenements.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor recently upheld a 25-year failed experiment in race discrimination for college admissions. She breezily announced a pull-out date of 2028. Liberals admired O’Connor’s Solomon-like resolution of a festering national problem and did not concern themselves with the absence of an “exit strategy.”

But George Bush – with the widespread support of the American people and the U.S. Congress – acts to take out a lunatic supporting Islamic terrorism, and within six months, all the Democratic presidential candidates are clamoring for an “exit strategy.” Bush should promise the Democrats that there will be peace and democracy in Iraq long before the Democrats conceive of an exit strategy to the war on poverty, the war on high rents, and the war on white kids applying to Michigan Law School.

The party of diversity is in lockstep in supporting all those idiotic programs. They’re working just great. But our servicemen come under attack while clearing out a swamp of murderous fanatics who seek the death of all Americans and the Democrats have had enough.

To be fair, encouraging Democrats to come up with new ideas is fraught with danger. One Democrat who has recently demonstrated her out-of-the-box thinking is Mattie Hunter, a Democratic state senator in Illinois. (You knew she was a Democrat when the New York Times neglected to provide a party affiliation.) After a fired employee returned to the auto supply warehouse in Hunter’s district to gun down six of his former colleagues, she demanded an investigation into ... the circumstances of the gunman’s firing. “How did they do it?” she said. “Did they just say, ‘We’re going to fire you’? Was it done professionally? In today’s day, everyone is under a lot of pressure. When someone loses their job, it’s a shock and tragedy in itself.”

Perhaps Hunter could propose a War on Firing Employees. In 50 years, 69% of all employees will be shooting up their workplaces, but the Democrats will urge patience in working out the bugs.

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Here’s A Traitor! (030917)

DURING MY recent book tour, I resisted the persistent, illiterate request that I name traitors. With a great deal of charity – and suspension of disbelief – I was willing to concede that many liberals were merely fatuous idiots. (In addition, I was loathe to name names for fear that liberals would start jumping out of windows.) But after the Times’ despicable editorial on the two-year anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attack, I am prepared – just this once – to name a traitor: Pinch Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times.

To be sure, if any liberal could legitimately use the stupid defense, it is the one Sulzberger who couldn’t get in to Columbia University. At a minimum, Columbia has 400 faculty members who start each day by thinking about how to get their kooky ideas onto the Times’ op-ed page. For an heir to the Times not to attend Columbia, those must have been some low SAT scores.

But the clincher was an editorial on the two-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attack, in which the Times endorsed the principle of moral equivalence between the United States and the 9-11 terrorists. In the Times’ meandering, mind-numbing prose, it explained that the terrorists may have slaughtered thousands of Americans in a bloody attack on U.S. soil – but the U.S. has had imperialistic depredations of its own!

By not opposing a military coup by the great Augusto Pinochet against a Chilean Marxist, Salvador Allende, the Times implied, the U.S. was party to a terrorist act similar to the 9-11 attack on America. This is how the Times describes Pinochet’s 1973 coup: “A building – a symbol of the nation – collapsed in flames in an act of terror that would lead to the deaths of 3,000 people. It was Sept. 11.”

Allende was an avowed Marxist, who, like Clinton, got into office on a plurality vote. He instantly hosted a months-long visit from Castro, allowing Castro to distribute arms to Chilean leftists. He began destroying Chile’s economy at a pace that makes Gray Davis look like a piker. No less an authority than Chou En-lai warned Allende that he was pursuing a program that was too extreme for his region.

When Gen. Pinochet staged his coup against a Marxist strongman, the U.S. did not stop him – as if Latin American generals were incapable of doing coups on their own. And – I quote – “It was Sept. 11.” Parsed to its essentials, the Times’ position is: We deserved it.

This from a paper that has become America’s leading spokesman for the deposed Baathist regime in Iraq. Interestingly, we started to lose this war only after the embedded reporters pulled out. Back when we got the news directly from Iraq, there was victory and optimism. Now that the news is filtered through the mainstream media here in America, all we hear is death and destruction and quagmire – along with obsessive references to the date on which Bush declared an end to major combat operations.

See if you can detect a pattern:

* “Since the beginning of the Iraq war, 292 soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Kuwait, including 152 since President Bush declared on May 1 that major American combat operations had ended.” (Sept. 13, 2003)

* “So far, 290 American troops have died in Iraq or Kuwait since the beginning of the Iraq war, including 150 since President Bush declared on May 1 that major American combat operations had ended.” (Sept. 12, 2003)

* “It was impossible to watch Mr. Bush’s somber speech without remembering that four months ago, when the president made his ‘Top Gun’ landing on an aircraft carrier and declared an end to ‘major combat operations,’ ...” (Sept. 8, 2003)

* “The speech was Mr. Bush’s first extended address about Iraq since he declared an end to major combat operations in a May 1 speech.” (Sept. 8, 2003)

* “When President Bush declared an official end to major hostilities in Iraq in May, Reuters moved (a reporter) to Baghdad to give him a safer assignment.” (Sept. 7, 2003)

* “Since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq, hundreds of violent and disruptive attacks have been waged by an array of forces ...” (Sept. 7, 2003)

* “Eleven British soldiers have been killed since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1.” (Sept. 5, 2003)

Hey – does anyone know when Bush declared major combat operations had ended? Because I think there may have been one article in the sports section of the Times last week that didn’t mention it. The Times is even taking shots at the war in the Arts section, stating authoritatively in a recent movie review: “And with the war in Iraq threatening to turn into a Vietnam-like quagmire ...” (How about getting some decent, impartial reporters embedded at the Times?)

Apparently, the Times’ stylebook now requires all reports of violence anyplace within 1,000 miles of Iraq to be dated from Bush’s speech declaring an end to “major combat” operations. How about dating everything from the number of months since Jayson Blair was fired or the number of years since Pinch Sulzberger got his SAT scores back and realized he wasn’t going to Columbia?

I gather the Times is trying to convey something by the infernal references to Bush’s speech declaring an end to major combat in Iraq – but what? That we haven’t turned a savage fascist nation into a peace-loving democracy overnight? Iraq is considerably better off than Chile was under Salvador Allende – the Times’ second favorite world leader after Saddam Hussein.

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I Guess You’re Right: There Is No Liberal Media Bias (031008)

RESPONSE TO INTERVIEW QUESTIONS OF EDWARD NAWOTKA FOR PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY

QUESTION: FRANKEN CLAIMS THAT THERE ARE NUMEROUS FALSEHOODS IN YOUR BOOK, ESPECIALLY BURIED IN THE FOOTNOTES. . . . WHO IS ULTIMATELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ERRORS, YOU, THE PUBLISHER, OR BOTH?

I see we’re off to a good start! In your interview with Al Franken, after suggesting that some readers may want Franken to run for president, you ask him hardball questions like:

— “It’s got to be a little grating to see your book on the same New York Times bestseller list as the Ann Coulter book.”

— “You fact checked Ann Coulter’s book and found a lot of inconsistencies, outright lies, and quotes that are taken out of context. Who is responsible for those kinds of errors, the author or the editors?”

— “How should booksellers deal with this?”

You ask me questions like these:

— “[W]ho is ultimately responsible for the errors [in your book], you, the publisher, or both?”

— “What gives—was this an honest mistake or malfeasance as he suggests?”

— “Why all the name calling?”

Apparently, Ed, it never occurred to you that Franken’s allegations of errors in my book — or “outright lies” as you put it — are false.

It’s interesting that the most devastating examples of my alleged “lies” keep changing. As soon as one is disproved, I’m asked to respond to another. This is behavior normally associated with tin-foil-hat conspiracy theorists. One crackpot argument after another is shot down — but the conspiracy theorists just move on to the next crackpot argument without pause or reconsideration. Certainly without apology.

So before responding to the two alleged “lies” you cite from Franken — the source of all wisdom — I shall run through a few of the alleged “lies” from Franken’s book that I have already been asked to respond to — and which have now been dropped by the Coulter hysterics as they barrel ahead to the next inane charge.

FRANKEN’S VERY FIRST CHARGE AGAINST ME IS THAT I TOLD A REPORTER FROM THE OBSERVER THAT I WAS “FRIENDLY” WITH FRANKEN, WHEN IN FACT, WE ARE NOT “FRIENDLY.”

Needless to say, I never claimed to be friendly with Al Franken. Inasmuch as I barely know Franken, a normal person might have looked at that and realized the reporter misunderstood me. But apparently Franken thinks he has a pretty cool name to drop — the oddest case of reverse name-dropping I’ve ever heard of.

I don’t hear about this “lie” so much anymore.

FRANKEN HYSTERICALLY ACCUSES ME OF “LYING” FOR CALLING MY “ENDNOTES,” “FOOTNOTES” IN INTERVIEWS ON MY BOOK.

Yes, notes at the end of a book are technically “endnotes,” not “footnotes.” Franken will have to take his case up with the New York Times, the LA Times, and the Washington Post and the rest of the universe — all of which referred to my 780 endnotes as “FOOTNOTES.” Also God, for inventing the concept of “colloquial speech.”

I don’t hear so much about this “lie” anymore.

FRANKEN CLAIMS I COMPLAIN THAT CONSERVATIVES DON’T GET ON TV ENOUGH.

Inasmuch as I am on TV a lot, this would be an hilarious point. Too bad I never said it. My book Slander — which Franken seems to have gone over with a fine-toothed comb — would have been a good place to make that point if I wanted to make it. Slander contains an entire chapter on the media, and yet I never claim that conservatives are not on TV enough. What I say is: “Democrats in the media are editors, national correspondents, news anchors, and reporters. Republicans are ‘from the right’ polemicists grudgingly tolerated within the liberal behemoth.”

By the way, I also say: “The distinction between opinion journalism and objective news coverage is seemingly impossible for liberals to grasp.” Franken’s absurd description of my point proves it.

I haven’t heard so much about this “lie” anymore.

I CLAIM EVAN THOMAS’S FATHER WAS THE SOCIALIST PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, NORMAN THOMAS.

Franken drones on and on for a page and a half about how Norman Thomas was not Evan Thomas’s father — without saying that he was Evan’s grandfather. This was one of about five inconsequential errors quickly corrected in Slander — and cited one million times by liberals as a “LIE.” Confusing “father” with “grandfather” is a mistake. Franken’s deliberate implication that there was no relationship whatsoever between Norman and Evan Thomas is intentional dishonesty.

I haven’t heard so much about this “lie” anymore.

I INCORRECTLY CLAIMED DALE EARNHARDT’S DEATH WAS NOT MENTIONED ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE NYT THE DAY AFTER HIS DEATH.

In my three bestselling books — making the case for a president’s impeachment, accusing liberals of systematic lying and propagandizing, arguing that Joe McCarthy was a great American patriot, and detailing 50 years of treachery by the Democratic Party — this is the only vaguely substantive error the Ann Coulter hysterics have been able to produce, corrected soon after publication.

CONGRATULATIONS LIBERALS!!!

The Columbia Journalism Review was crowing about this great victory over Ann Coulter a year ago. A search of “coulter” and “earnhardt” on Google turns up over 1,000 hits. Now Franken dedicates another two pages in his book to it. I believe this triumph of theirs has been sufficiently revisited by now. At least I didn’t miss the Ukrainian famine. <Cf.> Pulitzer prize winning New York Times reporter Walter Duranty.

I don’t heard so much about this “lie” anymore.

FRAZIER MOORE, A FANTASIST FOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, WROTE AN ARTICLE ACCUSING ME OF USING “ROUTINELY SLOPPY” RESEARCH AND “CONTRIVED” FACTS. LIKE YOU, THE AP FANTASIST TREATS FRANKEN AS THE SOURCE OF ALL WISDOM, CITING ONE KILLER EXAMPLE FROM FRANKEN:

“Here’s one: On pages 265-266, Coulter blasts New York Times writer Thomas Friedman for opposing racial profiling in a December 2001 column. She quotes (and credits) several passages that seem to back up her complaint. But it turns out that Coulter misappropriated Friedman’s words in a way that has nothing to do with racial profiling or anything else addressed in his column, as anyone who reads it will discover. His column actually drew the less-than-startling conclusion that a new age of terrorism threatens our personal safety and our free society.”

This is what is known as “bicycle accident reporting.” I defy anyone to explain what head-injury boy is trying to convey in his crucial, accusatory sentence: “Coulter misappropriated Friedman’s words in a way that has nothing to do with racial profiling or anything else addressed in his column.”Huh? The AP could throw a deck of cards out the window and wait to see who picks up the four of clubs to find someone who writes better than Frazier Moore.

But as long as I’m already breaking my rule about not responding to meritless, overwrought attacks, I’ll go for broke and break my rule about not responding to gibberish. Apparently, head-injury-boy here is very upset about how I characterize a Friedman column and it has something or other to do with racial profiling.

In the column at issue, titled “Fly Naked,”Friedman spends 6 of 10 paragraphs discussing airport security after 9-11 and concludes that flying naked is the only solution, because, inter alia: “It’s much more civilized than racial profiling.” I wrote: “New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman sniffed that racial profiling was not ‘civilized.’” I’m really trying to grasp the lie in that statement, but I don’t see it.

Incidentally, contrary to head-injury boy’s characterization, only four paragraphs at the end of the Friedman column discuss “personal safety and our free society” — as anyone who reads it will discover! I salute the AP’s unorthodox affirmative action program, but they might want to assign reporters who are not developmentally disabled to write the articles accusing me of “sloppy” research and “contrived” facts.

I haven’t heard much about this “lie” since the AP article came out and normal people took the trouble to look up Friedman’s column and post it on the internet.

Now you spring two all-new alleged “outright lies” on me. I shall respond to these two, and then I’m through. Henceforth, I shall rely on sensible people to see that I have answered the liberal hate groups’ first 17 rounds of indignant charges against me. If they had a better example out there, we would have heard it before the 18th round.

First, you say: “AT ONE POINT [FRANKEN] ACCUSES YOU OF HAVING TAKEN A QUOTE FROM A BOOK REVIEW QUOTING A BOOK (P. 14 OF FRANKEN’S BOOK) TO ARGUE YOUR POINT. DO YOU FEEL THIS IS AN ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF WHAT YOU WROTE? AN ACCURATE USE OF A QUOTE? IF NOT, THEN WHY? IF YES, THEN WHO IS ULTIMATELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ERRORS, YOU, THE PUBLISHER, OR BOTH?”

I’m not sure I grasp the accusation here and I’m sure you do not. I wrote: “For decades, the New York Times had allowed loose associations between Nazis and Christians to be made in its pages.” Among the quotes I cited, one came from a New York Times book review. The quote made a loose association between Nazis and Christians. New York Times book reviews are printed in the pages of the New York Times. The Times allowed that quote to run in its pages. How else, exactly, are you suggesting I should have phrased this, Ed?

Second, you say: “LIKEWISE, [FRANKEN] ACCUSES YOU OF SLOPPY RESEARCH, IN SO FAR AS YOU APPEAR TO HAVE MISSED A NUMBER OF NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLES CITING SUCH THINGS AS SPEECHES BY JESSE JACKSON. WHAT GIVES—WAS THIS AN HONEST MISTAKE OR MALFEASANCE AS HE SUGGESTS?

It was neither, but thanks for asking. I wrote: “In an upbeat message delivered on British TV on Christmas Day, 1994, Jesse Jackson compared conservatives in the U.S. and Great Britain to Nazis: “In South Africa, the status quo was called racism. We rebelled against it. In Germany, it was called fascism. Now in Britain and the U.S. it is called conservatism.’ The New York Times did not report the speech.”

The New York Times did not, in fact, report the speech. Franken does not say otherwise. My guess is — and this is just a stab in the dark — Franken doesn’t say otherwise because he can’t say otherwise, inasmuch as . . . THE NEW YORK TIMES DID NOT REPORT THE SPEECH. What Franken says is that my search method was faulty — though, somehow, it still managed to produce the truth! (To wit: The New York Times did not report the speech.)

Among my searches, I searched the New York Times database for all of December, 1994 and January 1995 for: “Jesse Jackson and Germany and fascism and South Africa.”(In my footnotes, I often give my readers clear descriptions of some of the Lexis-Nexis searches I ran — something, as far as I know, no other writer does.)

Franken does not mention the lines I had just quoted from Jackson’s speech — you know, the one that was NOT reported in the New York Times — but refers to it only as a “controversial speech.”He then acts incredulous that I would run a search for “Jesse Jackson and Germany and fascism and South Africa,” as if I tossed in the terms “Germany”“fascism”and “South Africa”for no reason whatsoever. To my observation that this search turned up no documents, he says sarcastically: “Well, yeah.”

To borrow a line from a trained journalist: What gives, Ed? Was this an honest mistake or malfeasance?

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Massachusetts Supreme Court Abolishes Capitalism! (031127)

LAST WEEK, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court discovered that the state constitution – written in 1780 – requires the state to allow gay marriages. The court gave the legislature six months to rewrite the law to comply with the heretofore unnoticed gay marriage provision in a 223-year-old constitution, leaving countless gay couples a scant six months to select a silverware pattern. Out of respect for my gay male readers, I’ll resist the temptation to characterize this ruling as “shoving gay marriage down our throats.”

The Massachusetts Constitution was written by John Adams, who was quite religious. It is the most explicitly Christian document since the New Testament, with lots of references to “the great Legislator of the universe.” Adams certainly would have been astonished to discover that the constitution he wrote provided for gay marriage – though one can see how a reference to two men marrying might get lost among the minutiae about the common good and “duty of all men in society, publicly and at stated seasons, to worship the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe.”

The main lesson from the court’s discovery of the hidden gay-marriage clause is that these judges are in the wrong job. If they can find a right to gay marriage in the Massachusetts Constitution – never before detected by any human being – we need to get them looking for Osama bin Laden. These guys can find anything!

And if we don’t get Massachusetts judges out of the country soon, we could start reading headlines like: Mass. Supreme Court Abolishes Capitalism; Gives Legislature 6 months to Nationalize All Industry.

The Democratic presidential candidates reacted with glee to the court’s gay-marriage ruling, relieved that they could talk about gay marriage instead of their insane ideas on national defense. But then they realized this meant they would have to talk about gay marriage.

Except for the nut candidates who always forget to lie about their positions, all the Democratic presidential candidates earnestly insist that they oppose gay marriage. They are for “civil unions” with all the legal rights of marriage. But not marriage! No sir.

As governor of Vermont, Howard Dean actually signed a bill providing for these magical “civil unions.” Having already been forgiven for his remarks about the Confederate flag by both of the black people currently living in Vermont, now Dean wants to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their flower shops. But even Dean emphasized that Vermont’s civil union law does not legalize gay “marriage.”

And even in Ben-and-Jerryville, it took a court to force the state to recognize civil unions by discovering that right in the Vermont Constitution. (WHERE’S OSAMA?)

The big argument for “civil unions” – but not marriage! – is that gays are denied ordinary civil rights here in the American Taliban. This is where gays usually bring up the argument about all the straight couples living in “sham” marriages, but I see no point in dragging the Clintons into this.

The classic formulation was given by John Kerry in the Democratic debate earlier this week: “What we’re talking about is somebody’s right to be able to visit a loved one in a hospital, somebody’s right to be able to pass on property, somebody’s right to live equally under the state laws as other people in the country.” You would think there were “Straights Only” water fountains, the way Democrats carry on so (as if any gay man would drink non-bottled water).

Apparently, health care in this country is better than we’ve been led to believe if so few Americans have ever been to a hospital that they think there’s a guest list. In case you don’t know: Gays already can visit loved ones in hospitals. They can also visit neighbors, random acquaintances and total strangers in hospitals – just like everyone else.

Gays can also pass on property to whomever they would like, including their cats. Every few years you read about some daft rich widow leaving her entire estate to a cat. It’s perfectly legal. You just need to write a will. Liberals have figured out how to get abortions for 13-year-old girls without their parents’ permission. But we’re supposed to believe that they just can’t get their heads around how a gay guy could leave property to his partner.

As for “living equally under the state laws as other people in the country,” unless Kerry is referring to the precise thing he claims to oppose – gay marriage – gays do live equally under the state laws as other people in the country. There are no special speed-limit laws or trespassing laws or murder laws for gays. There is, however, some evidence of gay profiling with regard to the enforcement of fashion “don’ts.”

What gays can’t do is get married – something all Democrats swear up and down to oppose. Instead, the Democrats demand “civil unions” and then throw out a series of red herrings to explain why. In fact, the only difference between what the Democrats claim to support (civil unions) and what they claim to oppose (gay marriage) is the word “marriage.” As John Kerry explained: “I think the term ‘marriage’ gets in the way of what is really being talked about here.”

Republicans ought to try that: We don’t support “guns” – the term “gun” gets in the way of what is really being talked about here – we want choice in personal security devices. We don’t want a “ban” on partial-birth abortions; we just don’t want there to be any of them. We don’t support “tax cuts”; we support a “union” between people and about 60 to 70% of their money. We don’t support “war” with Iraq; we are talking about somebody’s right to be able to visit a loved one in a hospital. (Huh?)

Except the difference is: All those positions are popular with voters, so Republicans don’t have to lie. The Democrats’ purported opposition to gay marriage is like all their other phony policy statements that are the opposite of what they really believe.

When they’re running for office, all Democrats claim to support tax cuts (for the middle class), to support gun rights (for hunters) and to “personally oppose” abortion. And then they get into office and vote to raise taxes, ban guns and allow abortions if a girl can’t fit into her prom dress.

The common wisdom holds that “both parties” have to appeal to the extremes during the primary and then move to the center for the general election. To the contrary, both parties run for office as conservatives. Once they have fooled the voters and are safely in office, Republicans sometimes double-cross the voters. Democrats always do.

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How To Talk To A Liberal (010222)

WHEN I BEGAN swooning for George W. Bush during the Republican primaries, my friends warned me that I was going to have to eat my words. It’s now a month into his presidency, and I’m even more doe-eyed about Bush than ever. Among other feats, Bush has figured out how to talk to liberals. This has solved one of life’s eternal mysteries, like “How high is up?”

The liberal’s highly complex and intellectual argument against principled conservatism is this: Republicans are mean. Republicans always figured that since they weren’t mean, that should be enough. But the facts were irrelevant. These were devil words muttered by a political cult, not reasoned arguments.

One of the most arresting examples of the sophisticated Republicans Are Mean argument occurred in reference to Pat Buchanan. If you ever actually tuned in to CNN’s “Crossfire” when Buchanan was on, he’d be smiling, laughing, telling jokes — generally while sitting next to a scowling, bitter Bill Press. (In the interest of not only honesty but also irony, I should rush to add that off-air, Bill Press is one of the nicest people on TV.)

But for reasons that only the faithful can understand, it simply became a part of the liberal orthodoxy that Buchanan was an “angry white man.” In case any of the cult members missed the memo on Pat being angry, William Schneider used the word “angry” four times to describe either Pat or his supporters in one single short column in the National Journal.

So we knew liberals would not believe their own eyes if what they saw conflicted with their political orthodoxy. Since actual evidence wouldn’t suffice, and arguments citing facts and evidence were even more useless, it was difficult for Republicans to know where to begin with these liberals.

This put conservatives at a distinct disadvantage. For the last couple of decades now, name-calling has been the principal argument liberals have deployed against conservative arguments.

If Republicans opposed the National Endowment for the Arts, they were said to hate art. If Republicans opposed the Department of Education, they were said to hate teachers. If Republicans opposed the Environmental Protection Agency, they were said to hate the environment. Opposition to the government spending money on anything was invariably attacked as hatred for the thing money was to be spent on.

What it took George Bush to figure out was that to counter the left’s intricate Republicans Are Mean argument, all you had to do was to go around calling yourself nice.

I could have thought about that for 50 years and still have been stumped.

Not only does George Bush’s strategy have the virtue of simplicity, but it is also a distinct improvement over the typical Republican method of wooing Democrats, which is to give away the store.

To the contrary, President Bush has been like a runaway train pushing through his campaign promises to support tax cuts, a missile defense system and faith-based social service programs. When one of his conservative Cabinet nominees came under attack and was forced to withdraw, Bush found yet another minority female for the post — even more conservative than the last.

As a New York Times reporter described Bush’s approach to political opponents: “Mr. Bush is a bipartisan love machine.” At the same time, his tax cut proposal “does not bow even a millimeter to many Democrats’ concerns,” and it is not clear “whether all his smooth, sweet talk truly signals any inclination toward ideological flexibility” — a.k.a., giving away the store.

Admittedly, when Bush first began with the “compassionate conservatism” theme, many of us took umbrage. In a typical soliloquy on “compassionate conservatism,” Bush said: “I know this approach has been criticized. But why? Is compassion beneath us? Is mercy below us? Should our party be led by someone who boasts of a hard heart?”

If you didn’t happen to be a Democrat, you were likely to sit back scratching your head wondering what the heck Bush was talking about. Who criticizes compassion? Who exactly boasts of having a hard heart? Which Republican candidate maintains compassion is beneath us? Of whom, pray tell, was he speaking?

The answer, of course, was: no one. No real corporeal being, that is. He was referring to Republican ghosts haunting liberal imaginations. Bush treats liberals like small children having their first nightmare: Don’t worry, honey, I’ll just wave a magic wand and make all the ghosts go away. I’m a compassionate conservative.

And darn if it didn’t work. As evidence that it did work, observe that liberals still use their second favorite principled epithet against Republicans: They call Bush dumb — just like Dwight Eisenhower and that old bumbling guy who won the Cold War. But they don’t call Bush mean.

It was always so simple. The mistake Republicans have been making was to treat liberals like adults. It took George Bush to treat them in an age-appropriate manner and start arguing with liberals at their own level.

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Racial Profiling In University Admissions (010405)

LAST WEEK, my old law firm won a spectacular court victory against my law school prohibiting it from engaging in racial discrimination in admissions. Thank heaven I’ve graduated. I don’t think I could take the piety and hysteria now engulfing the University of Michigan.

Explaining the importance of discriminating against citizens on the basis of their race, Michigan President Lee Bollinger told The New Yorker magazine: “I happen to be rereading ‘Richard II.’ ... There’s an exchange between Gaunt and Bolingbroke, father and son, just as the son is being banished. The advice the father gives the son — how utterly, utterly poignant and convincing it is. The father says, ‘Just think of it as a vacation.’”

And that, boys and girls, is why Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter had to be rejected from the University of Michigan. This is the academic equivalent of “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”

Q: Did you have sexual relations with that woman?

A: As Polonius says, “I will go seek the king.”

Of course, Bollinger’s “think of it as a vacation” argument is no less compelling than the many — and I mean many — other arguments for racial discrimination. It’s a constantly changing tableau of justifications for the unjustifiable. Just when you finally defeat one liberal sophistry for “affirmative action,” it drops it into the Orwellian memory hole and a new sophistry appears in its place. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

About a decade ago the argument for race discrimination was the role-model theory: Blacks could only learn from other blacks. But that was no standard at all — presumably everybody could use a role model. Even the Supreme Court refused to endorse a “role model” exception to the 14th Amendment. That was displaced with an argument that was almost its precise opposite: Blacks can only learn if they are sitting next to whites. This was abandoned when it turned out to be too embarrassing an argument for anyone but federal judges to make.

Then the argument was that discriminating against whites would put more doctors, lawyers and bankers in black neighborhoods. But admission to college isn’t a commission with the Peace Corps, and black professionals wanted to make money as much as the next guy.

Not only that, but the “giving back to the community” theory suffered a serious setback when it turned out the affirmative-action doctor celebrated for taking Allen Bakke’s place at medical school was “giving back to the community” by maiming and killing his black patients.

At one time, discrimination against whites was said to be a remedy for 400 years of slavery. Twenty years later, it was evident that this supposed “remedy” was incapable of ever producing a cure.

Then it had nothing to do with 400 years of slavery at all. Reverse discrimination — or “discrimination” — was merely an offset for bad schools in poor communities. (All white people are assumed to have attended fancy schools in affluent neighborhoods.) This was an obvious lie since the black beneficiaries of affirmative action were often the children of doctors and lawyers, while poor whites from Appalachia were still being excluded.

Defense of the Indefensible, Argument No. 17: Racial discrimination against whites is intended to compensate blacks for general societal discrimination. That argument disappeared under the specter of a flood of Asians who presumably face discrimination, too. A perennial favorite was: “Suppose you have two equally qualified applicants ...” That bubble burst when it was revealed that universities were admitting blacks with scores about three standard deviations below the whites who were rejected.

Then it was claimed that racial preferences were no different from preferences for the children of alumni. In undergraduate admissions at Michigan (we also sued them), four points are awarded for being the child of an alumnus, three points for a good essay, and a hefty 12 points for a perfect SAT score.

Being born black is worth 20 points. Thus, an applicant with perfect SATs, an excellent essay and alumni parents gets fewer points for all that than simply for being black. So The Washington Post was not being precisely accurate when it described Michigan’s affirmative action program as merely “giving an edge” to minorities — “as it does to the children of alumni.”

Finally — the rationalization that won’t go away — racial discrimination against whites is necessary to promote “diversity.” Stipulating to the incredibly racist assumption that skin color predetermines opinions, 20 years of affirmative action has produced college campuses with more uniformity of opinion than a Stalinist re-education camp.

After a student protester at Michigan denounced the recent prohibition on race discrimination at the law school (“Diversity is a good thing for everybody”!), someone offered a counterargument. The protester cut him off, saying “I hate devils.” That’s “diversity” in action.

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All The News We Get From the ACLU (010426)

IN CASE YOU aren’t able to read ACLU press releases for yourself, The Associated Press and The New York Times will helpfully restate them for you as important, breaking “news.”

Describing the criminal alien provisions being reviewed by the Supreme Court this week, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Web site calls them “anti-immigrant laws” that in 1996 “tore down our national welcome sign to immigrants.” The New York Times touts the provisions as “actions Congress took against legal aliens at the height of the national anti-immigrant fervor in 1996.” The AP says the law was “enacted five years ago amid what critics call an anti-immigrant fervor.”

These amazingly similar descriptions wouldn’t necessarily be suspicious, except that they are comically false. It is a hard, cold fact that the criminal alien provisions at issue emanated from the most pro-immigrant office on Capitol Hill — Sen. Spencer Abraham’s office. Indeed, it was Sen. Abraham who spearheaded the fight against restrictions on legal immigration that same session.

Evidently, Abraham did not assume “immigrant” was synonymous with “felon.” Nor did the Senate Judiciary Committee, which passed Abraham’s criminal alien amendments in lopsided votes.

The ACLU claims the change effected by the 1996 law required that immigrants convicted of certain felonies be deported. No longer, the ACLU says, could criminal aliens simply “pay their debt to society” and “go on with their lives.” The New York Times repeated the claim, stating: “The legislation Congress approved ... required the deportation of immigrants convicted of certain crimes.”

Suppose you were just born yesterday. Would you believe that immigrants who commit felonies in this country were not subject to deportation until the 1996 Congress thought of it? In fact, noncitizens whose conception of the American dream was to come here and commit felonies had always been subject to deportation.

The problem was: Deportable criminal aliens weren’t being deported. Legal legerdemain had so bollixed up the system that the Immigration and Naturalization Service was deporting only about 4% of convicted criminal aliens per year.

Consequently, by 1996, roughly half a million deportable criminal aliens were happily residing in the United States, committing new crimes and having illegitimate children — whom the criminals would then cite as “family” to avoid deportation. Just a few years ago, a California congressman stated that “in Los Angeles County, more than half of incarcerated illegal aliens are rearrested within one year.”

At the rate the INS was deporting criminal aliens, it would have taken 23 years to deport all the criminal aliens living in the United States — assuming no immigrant ever committed another felony. (Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper than reading the ACLU’s press release to get the all facts.)

What the 1996 law did was reduce the copious “review” for orders of deportation entered against convicted criminals. The criminal conviction itself was still subject to every pointless, dilatory tactic permitted felons who are U.S. citizens. But the order of deportation could no longer be gamed to avoid deportation without end.

The AP insanely claimed that the “legal question basically boils down to this: Do immigrants living in the United States legally but without citizenship have the same rights in federal courts as U.S. citizens?” Um, actually, we don’t need the Supreme Court to answer that. You just need to think about it for two seconds to realize — the answer is no. Immigrants can be deported. Citizens — even extremely undesirable citizens like reporters — can’t be.

The only question before the Supreme Court is whether Congress really meant to limit the number of time-consuming administrative and court hearings that could be demanded by criminal aliens before the INS deports them.

Also straight from the ACLU Web site, the Times and AP recount various sob stories about harmless felons about to be deported under a cruel and heartless law. Typically the criminal offense is described as a “minor drug charge” committed many years ago on a dare.

News stories about criminals of any sort always have to be read like Manhattan real estate ads. If an elevator is not mentioned, it’s a fifth-floor walk-up. If the ad does not expressly say “grt vu,” the apartment looks onto a brick wall. If it doesn’t state “bathtub,” there isn’t one.

The ACLU’s lead plaintiff — the man the ACLU chose for their test case to challenge the law — is one Enrico St. Cyr. According to the Times, Enrico “entered the United States legally in 1986 but was convicted of a drug charge early in 1996.” You can search the entire Lexis-Nexis archive and you won’t get more information than that on Enrico’s crime.

In fact, despite his notable accomplishment of having “entered the United States legally,” Enrico is a major narcotics trafficker. He was already serving time on one drug trafficking charge when he was sentenced to 10 years on another.

But you’d have to look beyond the ACLU press release to know that.

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‘Centrist’ In Liberal-Speak (010510)

THE NEW YORK TIMES has demanded that Senate Democrats block Bush’s “judicial ideologues,” whom, the Times predicts, will compare unfavorably to “Clinton’s centrist judicial choices.”

As one Clinton “centrist” nominee said to a female prosecutor appearing in her courtroom: “Shut your f***ing mouth.” Another lawyer received this admonition from the centrist judge: “I don’t give a s**t.” That was the criminal’s messiah: Judge Frederica A. Massiah-Jackson of the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.

One time, Massiah-Jackson betrayed the identity of two undercover officers in her courtroom, announcing to the assembled criminals — “take a good look at these guys ... and be careful out there.”

When asked about this episode by a stunned Senate Judiciary Committee, Massiah-Jackson first said she did not recall the incident, twice refused to comment, once categorically denied it (despite contemporaneous news accounts), and finally gave a cockamamy account of having been misunderstood.

Only after the undercover officers had submitted statements to the committee describing how Massiah-Jackson had flamboyantly exposed them in open court did the judge begin to recall the incident with greater clarity. In “reconstructing the incident,” she said she had been instructing school children present in the courtroom to respect police officers.

The story didn’t really hang together because, on account of being undercover and all, undercover officers would not be identifiable to schoolchildren as police officers.

Be that as it may, it turned out Massiah-Jackson had already stated on the record that she was talking to criminal defendants, not any alleged school children in the courtroom. At a later hearing, the D.A. had raised the incident with Massiah-Jackson, and she cavalierly dismissed the D.A.’s outrage, saying: “I do say that to certain defendants.”

In another classic Massiah-Jackson moment, Commonwealth vs. Johnson, the judge sentenced the brutal rapist of a 10-year-old girl to the statutory minimum. She apologized to the rapist for even that much time: “I just don’t think the five to 10 years is appropriate in this case even assuming you were found guilty.” She refused the D.A.’s offer to present a pre-sentence report and victim-impact statement, saying: “What would be the point of that?” (The five-year sentence was not crippling. After his release, the defendant was re-arrested for raping a 9-year-old boy.)

In another special moment for the whole Rainbow Coalition, when Massiah-Jackson was informed that both the defendant and victim in a rape case had AIDS, she said: “Why are we having a trial? We are talking about life expectancy of three years for both of them. What difference? What kind of punishment can we give (the defendant)? ... What’s the purpose of the trial long range?”

In light of the fact that Massiah-Jackson had just announced there was no purpose in trying the defendant, the prosecutor requested that the judge recuse herself. She refused, and the victim died while the recusal motion was on appeal. The trial proceeded before Massiah-Jackson, who sentenced the defendant to one year of probation, allowing him to serve no time for a vicious rape and beating. (“What’s the purpose?”)

Sentencing a defendant who had slashed a woman in the face with a straight razor while stealing her purse, Massiah-Jackson refused to apply a sentence enhancement for use of a deadly weapon. When the D.A. noted that the enhancement was required, the centrist judge accused her of being “vindictive.” Massiah-Jackson was reversed on appeal for ignoring the enhancement.

Indeed, Massiah-Jackson was reversed in a number of criminal cases. But in response to the Judiciary Committee request that she provide a list of her reversals — a pro forma request — she repeatedly claimed she had not been reversed in a single criminal case.

After having been caught in this and other lies, “centrist” Massiah-Jackson decided to withdraw her nomination. The New York Times was in a high dudgeon. Not because Massiah-Jackson had sneered at AIDS victims and rape victims, shouted obscenities from the bench or outed undercover cops, but because of the “judicial mugging” the Senate had put her through. The judge at least would return to the state bench “with her honor intact,” the Times editorialized. “Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the Senate.”

Indeed, even after all this came out about Massiah-Jackson (despite the encumbrance of the judge’s tendency to lie), she was avidly supported for a life-tenured federal judgeship by: The New York Times, top Philadelphia law firms, judges, Philadelphia Mayor Edward G. Rendell, the NAACP, the Barristers’ Association of Philadelphia Inc., the Hispanic Bar Association, the Asian American Bar Association of the Delaware Valley and — surprise — the Philadelphia Bar Association.

When Bush’s judicial nominees come under attack from the same groups for failing to be duly “centrist,” remember what they mean by that.

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Disestablish The Cult Of Liberalism (010615)

THIS WEEK the Supreme Court upheld the right of religious groups to participate in the beautiful mosaic of after-school activities. No new territory was broken: The case was almost identical to another case in which the Supreme Court reversed the exact same court years ago. This was massive resistance.

Justice Clarence Thomas remarked on the oddity of having to reverse the same court twice, noting that while the appellate courts aren’t required to cite all the Supreme Court’s precedents, they might want to cite the last time they were reversed on the same facts.

At least the 6-3 decision gives us an accurate count of the atheists on the court, probably as accurate as my dream of giving them all polygraph tests someday. (“Do you believe in a Higher Being ... no, seriously.”) Concerned someone might be reading Leviticus during school hours, Justice David Souter dissented in a hair-splitting exegesis about the precise time classes let out (2:56 p.m.), vs. the time the organizers would enter school property (2:30 p.m.).

The New York Times’ obligatory hysterical denunciation of the decision revealingly complained: “(C)hildren that young are unlikely to discern that the religious message of authority figures who come to the school each day to teach does not carry the school’s endorsement.”

It is simply taken for granted that it’s desirable for children to revere “authority figures” at government schools. Normally those authority figures are teaching the youngsters to put condoms on zucchini or training them in the catechism of recycling. Sending a mixed message about government “authority figures” might interfere with the state’s ability to turn small children into Good Germans inculcated in the liberal religion.

It’s well past time for liberalism to be declared a religion and banned from public schools. Allowing Christians to be one of many after-school groups induces hysteria not just because liberals hate religion. It’s because the public school is their temple. Children must be taught to love Big Brother, welcoming him to take over our schools, our bank accounts, our property, even our toilet bowls.

We’re told the First Amendment requires a separation of church and state, which, just as an incidental matter, is completely false. The whole point of the Constitution is to separate the federal government from the individual.

In keeping with the general theme, the First Amendment provides that Congress cannot establish a religion — but nor can it stop the states from establishing religions. That’s why it says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Dear Congress: You may be eligible for a free country. You do nothing.

The only thing that tempers my annoyance with the canard about states not being allowed to establish religions is imagining the kind of established religion we’d have in New York. We’d be doing daily devotionals to Saint Hillary.

Still, it is a fact that when the First Amendment was ratified, several states had established religions. Fortunately for the burgeoning minority religions in those states, the established religions were things like “Episcopalianism” and “Congregationalism” rather than “Liberalism.”

It’s hard to imagine now, but before the official government religion was liberalism — devoted to class warfare, ethnic hatred and intolerance — Americans were kind to one another. They managed to get along even without ACLU lawsuits. Thus, when there were enough practitioners of other faiths in a state to be bothered by the established religion, the majority just disestablished themselves.

Back to the New Country: Two malcontents at the Virginia Military Institute recently sued to ban VMI’s tradition of saying a non-denominational prayer at mealtime. The cadets are not required to recite the prayer or even bow their heads. Merely having to stand while listening to an invocation of God is apparently very upsetting for them. (I’d hate to see these guys under fire.)

A typical rendition of the VMI dinner prayer goes like this: “Almighty God, we give our thanks for VMI, for its reputation, spirit and ideals. Let your favor continue toward our school and your grace be abundantly supplied to the Corps. Now, O God, we receive this food and share this meal together with thanksgiving.”

It doesn’t get any more sectarian than that. How about: “Designer of the Universe (if you’re out there) ...”

Religious people keep cheerfully going back and trying to formulate some prayer that won’t make liberals angry. But the problem won’t go away. No prayer that assumes a belief in a Higher Being will ever be acceptable. God has no part in the religion of sex education, environmentalism, feminism, Marxism and loving Big Brother.

In a totally unsurprising development, liberals finally suspended their opposition to the death penalty in the case of Timothy McVeigh. He was the sworn enemy of the established religion of Big Brother. Too bad he never stumbled into one of those after-school Christian meetings.

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National Organization For Worms (010720)

WHY ARE FEMINISTS the principal lobbying group for Congressmen Who Had Affairs With Missing Interns? In the case of missing intern Chandra Levy, they’re not even covering for a president who will save their precious Roe v. Wade.

Indeed, Rep. Gary Condit has been so successfully portrayed as a “CONSERVATIVE RIGHT-WING Democrat” that it would probably be safe even for Dan Rather to mention the story on CBS News. Really clearing the way for Rather, Condit was apparently a member of a congressional Bible study group. (Can anybody make heads or tails of this commandment?)

The feminist enthusiasm for Condit goes something like this: Feminists have always stood for freedom of “choice” (unless it involves something other than abortion, adultery or sodomy), and isn’t it wonderful that Chandra Levy was able to choose to have an affair with a married man? Congratulations, Chandra!

If you think I’m making this up, here is what Gloria Jacobs, editor of Ms. Magazine said about Chandra on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor”: “I think the idea is that what feminism always wanted for women is the right to choose their partners, their own sexuality, whether they’re young women or older women. ... I think it’s really that one would have hoped that as women had more access to power that this wouldn’t be the way they would have to go about it. But everybody makes their own choices.”

Feminists are actually trying to claim credit for the dumb decision of a girl who is now missing. Anyone who sees a connection between Chandra’s choice of sexual partners and her disappearance is probably the sort who thinks promiscuous sexual behavior has some metaphysical link to venereal disease, abortion and divorce, too. If rumors are correct that Chandra was pregnant, a very broad definition of the “right to choose” could be at work. Another triumph for feminism!

It wasn’t just the Ms. magazine editor. The airwaves are lousy with liberal women putting in a kind word for adultery these days.

On Fox News Channel’s “The Edge With Paula Zahn,” Eleanor Clift said: “Congressman Condit, so far, is guilty of having extramarital affairs, and that is something that a number of congressmen are probably familiar with.”

On “The O’Reilly Factor,” Geraldine Ferraro said: “If every member of Congress or every public official in Washington were to resign because they’ve been having an affair, dear God ...”

On “CNN Late Edition,” Rep. Chris “Rape Is Not Impeachable” Shays, “R”-Conn., said: “I mean, if infidelity is a test, there would be a number of members of Congress that should resign.”

I love the idea that a mass exodus from the U.S. Congress would constitute some terrible tragedy. How could we ever replace these Titans! But what’s with the neurotic compulsion to assert that half of Washington is committing adultery? How do these girls know what’s going on in other people’s “zones of privacy”?

There has been only one serious sex survey ever conducted in America, released in 1994. (Time magazine called it “the first truly scientific survey of who does what with whom in America.”) Using peer-approved methods, a team of researchers at the University of Chicago surveyed thousands of respondents over several years. They concluded that 75% of married men and 85% of married women have never been unfaithful.

By contrast, Alfred Kinsey’s purported “study” in the ‘40s concluded that 50% of men cheat. The reason his study is discounted by scientists — but revered at Playboy magazine — is that his sample group consisted of prostitutes, prisoners and inmates in mental institutions.

I can understand why I would want to lump members of Congress in with this crowd, as a measure of my esteem. But why do liberals want to make that argument? They’re the ones who think we should be sending more of our money to these clowns. What are the feminists up to?

I put the question to a leading scholar of feminism, the author of the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on “feminism.” She explained that 30 years ago what bugged feminists was that men had affairs and everyone thought it was cute, whereas women had affairs and they were sluts. It wasn’t the immorality but the double standard that had them hopping mad. And there are two ways of eliminating a double standard. Since feminists figured they couldn’t change men, their goal was simply to even the score.

So in a maniacal pursuit of equality — we’ve fully transitioned into my analysis now — these querulous little feminists stripped women of the sense that they can rely on the institution of marriage and gave men license to discard their wives. But at least women can choose to be pigs now, too! This is what happens when you allow women to think about public policy. It’s also what happens when you start assuming the whole country has the mores of prostitutes, criminals, mental patients and, evidently, congressmen.

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The ACLU’s Speech Exception To The Pornography Amendment (010810)

THE ACLU is getting a lot of credit these days for defending our precious First Amendment right to scribble sadistic child pornography. Convicted child pornographer Brian Dalton recently pleaded guilty in an Ohio court to a second pandering offense. He later claimed his journal was intended to be used exclusively as his private masturbatory aid, winning the undying devotion of self-proclaimed civil libertarians.

People seem to take enormous psychic satisfaction in defending Brian Dalton’s creepy journal. Oh sure, we get the dutiful statements of personal revulsion at Dalton’s fantasies. But, oddly, the more repellent his writings are, the more they give Dalton’s defenders the self-satisfying sensation of rising above the angry mob calling for his head.

It doesn’t matter that there is no angry mob, since everyone is with Dalton. Still, there could be an angry mob.

Defending counterintuitive positions makes people feel like abstract intellectuals, capable of grasping the larger point beyond the ken of the little people. But just because something is counterintuitive doesn’t make it true. (College students everywhere, just beginning to practice this annoying pretension, are staring blankly at that last sentence.)

Acceding to the nonexistent pressure from hoi polloi and punishing Dalton for his journal, the argument goes, would be the first step on a slippery slope to fascist thought police banning all controversial opinion.

Slippery slope arguments are always stupid. Please stop making them. What people think they mean by “slippery slope” is that the principle at the top of the slope is indistinguishable from the principle at the bottom of the slope. That’s a bad principle argument, not a “slippery slope” argument.

For a slippery slope argument to work, what is at the bottom of the slope must be more horrifying than what is at the top of the slope. Obviously, therefore, there’s a difference between the top and the bottom. If you can see a difference, so can the law. That’s how we end up with exceptions to general rules.

At this very moment, for example, you are prohibited from engaging in speech that: expropriates the official NBC logo, reveals Coca-Cola’s secret formula, defames a private person, would likely incite violence, unduly exploits someone else’s work, is a false boast about a product, gives investment advice without registering with the SEC, is too loud, or rebroadcasts Hugo Zacchini’s entire human cannonball act (see Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co.).

And yet somehow the dark night of fascism has not descended over America. Indeed, no one gives these speech exceptions a moment’s thought. They are not sufficiently counterintuitive to tweak the pseudo-intellectual instinct.

Dalton’s journal is obscene — an exception to free speech with a longer pedigree than many other exceptions. If criminalizing Dalton’s journal today means the thought police will be confiscating Republican Party pamphlets tomorrow, why didn’t prohibiting the Gay Olympics from using the Olympic trademark do the same?

Even more galling than the intellectual pretensions and annoying arguments of Dalton’s defenders is hearing the ACLU praised for its stalwart defense of the First Amendment. This is on the order of congratulating William Tecumseh Sherman for his defense of the South.

In its take-no-prisoners approach to the First Amendment, the ACLU brought a lawsuit against the Lubbock Independent School District demanding that high school students’ extracurricular, private religious speech be banned. The ACLU’s anti-speech position has been repeatedly rejected by the Supreme Court, including just last term in Good News Club v. Milford Central School.

The ACLU won a prior restraint prohibiting an Avis employee from using a specified set of derogatory words in the workplace in Aguilar v. Avis Rent A Car System. The late Justice Stanley Mosk, a liberal, dissented from the California Supreme Court’s endorsement of this novel interpretation of the First Amendment, noting that the injunction banned speech that other employees would never even hear. It was mind control, pure and simple.

The ACLU has argued that a private employer’s irritating religious statements to an employee were not protected expression and could be banned as a violation of the establishment clause. The Oregon Supreme Court unanimously rejected the ACLU’s position in Meltebeke v. Bureau of Labor and Industries.

Taking another “absolutist” view of the free speech clause, the ACLU argued that the University of Virginia was required to deny student activity funds to a religious magazine, Wide Awake. In Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of University of Virginia, the Supreme Court held that the denial violated religious students’ free-speech rights.

The Massachusetts ACLU argued that the organizers of a St. Patrick’s Day parade did not have free-speech rights to exclude a contingent of gay marchers. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston. (The national ACLU, realizing the jig was up, filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court taking no clear position).

Listening to the ACLU on speech may not be a “slippery slope,” but it’s a bad principle. The ACLU would see that Dalton’s journal is obscene only if it mentioned God or referred to females as “broads.”

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This Is War (010912)

[Kwing Hung: so much emotion!!]

BARBARA OLSON kept her cool. In the hysteria and terror of hijackers herding passengers to the rear of the plane, she retrieved her cell phone and called her husband, Ted, the solicitor general of the United States. She informed him that he had better call the FBI — the plane had been hijacked. According to reports, Barbara was still on the phone with Ted when her plane plunged in a fiery explosion directly into the Pentagon.

Barbara risked having her neck slit to warn the country of a terrorist attack. She was a patriot to the very end.

This is not to engage in the media’s typical hallucinatory overstatement about anyone who is the victim of a horrible tragedy. The furtive cell phone call was an act of incredible daring and panache. If it were not, we’d be hearing reports of a hundred more cell phone calls. (Even people who swear to hate cell phones carry them for commercial air travel.)

The last time I saw Barbara in person was about three weeks ago. She generously praised one of my recent columns and told me I had really found my niche. Ted, she said, had taken to reading my columns aloud to her over breakfast.

I mention that to say three things about Barbara. First, she was really nice. A lot of people on TV seem nice, but aren’t. (And some who don’t seem nice, are.) But Barbara was always her charming, graceful, ebullient self. “Nice” is an amazingly rare quality among writers. In the opinion business, bitter, jealous hatred is the norm. Barbara had reason to be secure.

Second, it was actually easy to imagine Ted reading political columns aloud to Barbara at the breakfast table. Theirs was a relationship that could only be cheaply imitated by Bill and Hillary — the latter being a subject of Barbara’s appropriately biting bestseller, Hell to Pay. Hillary claimed preposterously in the Talk magazine interview that she discussed policy with Bill while cutting his grapefruit in the morning. Ted and Barbara really did talk politics — and really did have breakfast together.

It’s “Ted and Barbara” just like it’s Fred and Ginger, and George and Gracie. They were so perfect together, so obvious, that their friends were as happy as they were on their wedding day. This is more than the death of a great person and patriotic American. It’s a human amputation.

Third, since Barbara’s compliment, I’ve been writing my columns for Ted and Barbara. I’m always writing to someone in my head. Now I don’t know who to write to. Ted-and-Barbara were a good muse.

Apart from hearing that this beautiful light has been extinguished from the world, only one other news flash broke beyond the numbingly omnipresent horror of the entire day. That evening, CNN reported that bombs were dropping in Afghanistan — and then updated the report to say they weren’t our bombs.

They should have been ours. I want them to be ours.

This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack. Those responsible include anyone anywhere in the world who smiled in response to the annihilation of patriots like Barbara Olson.

We don’t need long investigations of the forensic evidence to determine with scientific accuracy the person or persons who ordered this specific attack. We don’t need an “international coalition.” We don’t need a study on “terrorism.” We certainly didn’t need a congressional resolution condemning the attack this week.

The nation has been invaded by a fanatical, murderous cult. And we welcome them. We are so good and so pure we would never engage in discriminatory racial or “religious” profiling.

People who want our country destroyed live here, work for our airlines, and are submitted to the exact same airport shakedown as a lumberman from Idaho. This would be like having the Wehrmacht immigrate to America and work for our airlines during World War II. Except the Wehrmacht was not so bloodthirsty.

“All of our lives” don’t need to change, as they keep prattling on TV. Every single time there is a terrorist attack — or a plane crashes because of pilot error — Americans allow their rights to be contracted for no purpose whatsoever.

The airport kabuki theater of magnetometers, asinine questions about whether passengers “packed their own bags,” and the hostile, lumpen mesomorphs ripping open our luggage somehow allowed over a dozen armed hijackers to board four American planes almost simultaneously on Bloody Tuesday. (Did those fabulous security procedures stop a single hijacker anyplace in America that day?)

Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.

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Attack France! (011220)

AS PUNDITS MULL whether America’s next target in the war on terrorism should be Iraq or a smaller quarry first – such as the Sudan or Somalia – it’s time to consider another petri dish of ferocious anti-American hatred and terrorist activity. The Bush doctrine is: We are at war not only with the terrorists, but also with those who harbor them.

We’ve got to attack France.

Having exhausted itself in a spirited fight with the Nazis in the last war, France cannot work up the energy to oppose terrorism. For decades now, France has nurtured, coddled and funded Islamic terrorists. (Moreover, the Great Satan is getting a little sick of our McDonald’s franchises being attacked on behalf of notoriously inefficient French dairy farmers.)

At the 1972 Olympics, Muslim terrorists assassinated 11 Israeli athletes and one German policeman. Five years later, acting on intelligence from Israeli secret police, French counterespionage agents arrested the reputed mastermind of the massacre, Abu Daoud. Both Israel and West Germany sought the extradition of Daoud. Afraid of upsetting Muslim terrorists, France refused on technical grounds and set him free.

In 1986, Libyan agents of Moammar Gadhafi planted a bomb in a West Berlin discotheque, killing an American serviceman and a Turkish woman. Hundreds more were injured. President Reagan retaliated with air strikes against Libyan military targets – including Gadhafi’s living quarters.

Quaking in the face of this show of manly force, France denied America the use of its airspace. As a consequence, American pilots were required to begin their missions from airbases in Britain. When the pilots finally made it to Tripoli, tired from the long flights and showing a puckish sense of humor, they bombed the French embassy by mistake. POW! So sorry, our mistake.

France has repeatedly decried economic sanctions against Iraq and has accused the United Nations of manufacturing evidence against Saddam Hussein. The U.N., not even the Great Satan. The French U.N. ambassador dismissed aerial photographs of Iraqi military trucks fleeing inspection sites just before U.N. weapons inspectors arrived as – quote – “perhaps a truckers’ picnic.”

Along with the rest of the European Union, France sends millions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority every year. Sucking up to the P.A. has really paid dividends to the craven butterbellies. While visiting Arafat in Gaza last year to announce several million more dollars in aid, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin was attacked by angry, stone-throwing Palestinian students.

Earlier this year, France connived with human-rights champions China and Cuba to toss the United States off the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Sudan took America’s place, and, if its diplomats are not too bogged down with human torture and slave trading, they are very much looking forward to attending the meetings.

This summer, Paris made Mumia Abu-Jamal an honorary citizen of Paris. In America’s cowboy, bloodlust, rush-to-judgment approach to the death penalty, this convicted Philadelphia cop-killer has been sitting on death row – and giving radio interviews and college commencement addresses – for 20 years. Since “Mumia” sounds like a Muslim terrorist, Parisians can use the same bumper stickers for the war.

Two weeks into America’s war on terrorism, Le Figaro began calling for “American restraint.” In polls, 47% of the French said they believed the U.S. military action was failing. Seventeen percent thought it was working (which was – admittedly – 17% more than on the New York Times editorial page). Flaunting France’s well-established reputation as a fearsome fighting machine, the French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, immediately advised the United States to stop bombing Afghanistan.

The first indictment to come out of the Sept. 11 attacks was of a French national, Zacarias Moussaoui. He is believed to be the intended 20th hijacker on Bloody Tuesday. France quickly moved to extend consular protection for Moussaoui. Intriguingly, French Justice Minister Marylise Lebranchu has demanded that Moussaoui not be executed.

Mlle. Lebranchu seems to have forgotten, but WE ARE THE GREAT SATAN! We also have Moussaoui. It’s annoying enough when these celebrated Nazi slayers refuse to extradite terrorists on the grounds that America does not observe the pristine judicial formalities of their pals, China, Cuba and the Sudan. But under what zany theory of international law does France think it can tell us what to do with a terrorist we caught right here on U.S. soil?

The Great Satan is wearying of this reverse hegemony, in which little pipsqueak nations try to impose their pipsqueak values on us. Aren’t we the ones who should be arrogantly oppressing countries that unaccountably do not have the death penalty?

And now, as America goes about building support for an attack on Iraq – guess who’s complaining? The turtlenecked chickens are terrified of offending fanatical Muslims and inviting a terrorist attack, but Arab leaders are supposed to face down the vastly larger populations of crazies living in their own countries. While France whines, Turkey – a predominantly Muslim country, I note – is preparing its airstrips for a possible U.S. attack on Iraq.

If this is a war against terrorism and not a Eurocentric war against Islam, the conclusion is ineluctable: We must attack France. What are they going to do? Fight us?

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We’ll Pay Them Reparations Later (011227)

IN RESPONSE TO THE attempted bombing last week of an American Airlines jet by Tariq Raja — aka Abdel Rahim, aka Richard “Saltonstall” Reid IV, aka “Biff” — the airlines sprang to action with random passenger shoe checks.

According to The New York Times, there is no discernible pattern in the airlines’ choice of fliers targeted for aggressive footwear examination. At the Atlanta airport, for example, the passengers whose shoes were searched “included a flight attendant, an elderly black man, a white man wearing a cowboy hat and boots, and an Asian woman with two small children.”

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman responded to this latest attack by summarily announcing that our only choices are to “become less open as a society” or simply “to live with much higher levels of risk.”

I think I have another solution. It’s something I like to call “ethnic profiling.” My logic is this: There is a common thread hidden within 20 years of relentless attacks on America by Muslim extremists: In every one of these attacks by Muslim extremists, there appears to be one or more Muslim extremists involved. This ought to help the airlines engage in more accurate risk assessment.

Tariq “Biff” Raja attended the same mosque as Zacarias Moussaoui, the suspected 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attack. (The New York Times has yet to report Tariq’s connection to the mosque, though the paper will surely print that fact before any of the media will ever breathe a word about the story reported in the San Francisco Examiner that American jihadist John Walker’s father left Mrs. Walker for another man.)

The men who used passenger jets to attack America on Sept. 11 were Muslim extremists.

Last year, our warship, the USS Cole, was attacked by Muslim extremists.

In 1998, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Muslim extremists, killing 212 people and wounding thousands.

In 1996, Muslim extremists exploded a truck bomb outside an Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 and injuring hundreds more.

In 1995, five Americans were killed in a car bomb explosion executed by Muslim extremists.

In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed by Muslim extremists, killing six and injuring thousands.

Also in 1993, Muslim extremists plotted to assassinate then U.S. President George Bush. (Intriguingly, the word “assassin” comes from a Muslim sect active in the 11th to 13th centuries known as “the Assassins” for their religious practice of murdering infidels.)

In 1988, another passenger jet, Pan Am flight 103, was bombed by Muslim extremists, killing 270 people.

In 1986, Muslim extremists bombed a West Berlin discotheque frequented by U.S. servicemen.

In 1985, Muslim extremists seized an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, and murdered Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old, wheelchair-bound American.

In 1983, Muslim extremists blew up U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American servicemen.

In 1982, Muslim extremists bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 49 people, including 17 Americans.

In 1979, Muslim extremists stormed the U.S. Embassy in Iran and held American Embassy staff hostage for 444 days.

So naturally, it took the airlines completely by surprise last week when the passenger who tried to detonate a sneaker bomb on a passenger jet turned out to be a Muslim extremist. Doggedly imitating an Alzheimer’s joke, the airlines instantly began ever more intrusive examinations of elderly black men, cowboys and Asian women with small children.

Meanwhile, al-Qaida just keeps on coming. The chairman of the London mosque attended by Moussaoui and Raja told the British Broadcasting Corp. he believes there are hundreds more Islamic extremists in Britain lying in wait for their chance to become suicide bombers. He expressed incredulity at the idea that Rahim could have planned the sneaker bomb plot on his own.

Yet the Times’ Friedman, in a commonplace formulation, sniffs that ethnic profiling is not “civilized” and then gratuitously attacks “religious fundamentalists of any stripe.”

I don’t know. Amish extremists have been rather quiescent lately. If all this carnage and murder had been executed by anti-abortion extremists rather than Muslim extremists, it is unlikely that Friedman would be pussyfooting around the issue by referring to the culprits as “political extremists of any stripe.”

The refusal to make a connection between Muslim extremists and unending violence by Muslim extremists borders on psychopathological disturbance. Usually the nonsense liberals spout is kind of cute, but in wartime their instinctive idiocy is life-threatening.

In 1996, Osama bin Laden mocked the United States, saying: “Your problem will be how to convince your troops to fight, while our problem will be how to restrain our youths to wait for their turn in fighting.”

Our “youths” have taken Kabul, dropped daisy-cutters on Osama’s cave, and are now sleeping in their boots in the middle of an Afghan winter while dreaming of Iraq.

But on another front — the commercial aircraft war-zone opened by al-Qaida — bin Laden is right: We refuse to fight. Bedraggled smelly men who make Talibanist John Walker look like Beaver Cleaver are getting on airplanes with C4 explosive material, and we commend ourselves for being so “civilized.”

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Supreme Court Opinions Not Private Enough (031203)

THE FIRST killing of an abortion doctor by an anti-abortion activist happened in 1993. Since then, six more people have been killed in attacks on abortion clinics, which is fewer people who ended up dead by being in the vicinity of recently released Weatherman Kathy Boudin. Most of the abortionists were shot or, depending upon your point of view, had a procedure performed on them with a rifle. This brings the total to: seven abortion providers to 30 million fetuses dead, which is also a pretty good estimate of how the political battle is going.

The nation embarked on its abortion holocaust in 1973, when the Supreme Court astonished the nation by suddenly discovering that the Constitution mandated a right to abortion, despite there being nothing anyplace in the Constitution vaguely hinting at abortion.

Everyone knew the decision in Roe v. Wade was a joke. The decision hinged on the convenient notion of “privacy,” which, oddly enough, still fails to protect my right to manufacture methamphetamine, saw off shotgun barrels or euthanize the elderly, privately or otherwise. Even Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz has said the decision was wrong.

During oral argument in Roe, the entire courtroom laughed when the lawyer arguing for abortion law ticked off a string of constitutional provisions allegedly violated by Texas’ abortion law – the due process clause, the equal protection clause, the Ninth Amendment “and a variety of others.” According to the “The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court” by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, the law clerks felt as if they were witnessing “something embarrassing and dishonest” about the decision-making process in Roe, with the justices brokering trimesters and medical judgments like a group of legislators. Never has the phrase “judge, jury and executioner” been more apt than with regard to this landmark ruling.

The nation was so shocked and enraged by the ruling in Roe that ... state legislatures meekly rewrote their laws in accordance with the decision. The Supreme Court building wasn’t burned down. No abortion doctors were killed for the next two decades. No state dared ignore the ruling in Roe. Even when dealing with lawless tyrants, conservatives have a fetish about following the law.

Instead, Americans who opposed abortion spent the next 20 years working within the system, electing two presidents, patiently waiting for Supreme Court justices to retire, fighting bruising nomination battles to get three Reagan nominees and two Bush nominees on the court. Then they passed an abortion law in Pennsylvania that was immediately appealed to the Supreme Court. At that point, Republican presidents had made 10 consecutive appointments to the Supreme Court. Surely, now, at long last, Americans would finally be allowed to have a say on the nation’s abortion policy.

But the Supreme Court upheld the “constitutional right” to abortion announced in Roe. The decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey was written by Reagan’s biggest mistake, Sandra Day O’Connor, his third-choice candidate Anthony Kennedy, and “stealth nominee” David Hackett Souter. The court’s opinion declared that it was calling “the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution.” Eight months later, the first abortion doctor was killed.

Meanwhile, conservatives responded the way conservatives always do. They went back to the drawing board and came up with a plan. It was the same plan that hasn’t worked for 30 years: Elect a Republican president, wait for openings on the court and keep your fingers crossed. It’s been going swimmingly so far. We can’t even get the stunningly brilliant Harvard law graduate and Honduran immigrant Miguel Estrada a spot on a court of appeals.

Having literally gotten away with murder for a quarter century, the court is getting wilder and wilder, deferring to “international law” and issuing nutty pronouncements more appropriate to a NAMBLA newsletter.

In the past few years, federal courts have proclaimed a right to sodomy (not in the Constitution), a right to partial-birth abortion (not in the Constitution), a right not to have a Democratic governor recalled (not in the Constitution), a right not to gaze upon the Ten Commandments in an Alabama courthouse (not in the Constitution), a ban on the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance (not in the Constitution), and a ban on voluntary student prayers at high-school football games (not in the Constitution).

These bizarre rulings illustrate the notion of the Constitution as a “living document,” one which rejects timeless moral principles so as to better reflect the storylines in this week’s episode of “Ally McBeal.” You may like or dislike the end result of these rulings, but – as subtly alluded to above – none of these rulings come from anything written in the Constitution.

In response to the court’s sodomy ruling last term, conservatives are talking about passing a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. It’s really touching how conservatives keep trying to figure out what constitutional mechanisms are available to force the courts to acknowledge the existence of the Constitution. But what is the point of a constitutional amendment when judges won’t read the Constitution we already have? What will the amendment say? “OK, no fooling around – we really mean it this time!”

While conservatives keep pretending we live in a democracy, liberals are operating on the rule of the jungle. The idea of the rule of law is that if your daughter is raped and murdered, you won’t go out and kill the guy who did it. In return for your forbearance, you get to vote for the rulers who will see that justice is done. But liberals cheat. They won’t let us vote on an increasingly large number of issues by defining the entire universe – abortion, gay marriage, high-school convocations – as a “constitutional” issue.

In what weird parallel universe would Americans vote for abortion on demand, affirmative action, forced busing, licensing of gun owners and a ban on the death penalty? Whatever dangers lurk in a self-governing democracy, the American people have never, ever passed a law that led to the murder of 30 million unborn children.

Judges are not our dictators. The only reason the nation defers to rulings of the Supreme Court is because of the very Constitution the justices choose to ignore. At what point has the court made itself so ridiculous that we ignore it? What if the Supreme Court finds a constitutional right to cannibalism? How about fascism? Does the nation respond by passing a constitutional amendment clearly articulating that there is no right to cannibalism or fascism in the Constitution?

Is there nothing five justices on the Supreme Court could proclaim that would finally lead a president to say: I refuse to pretend this is a legitimate ruling. Either the answer is no, and we are already living under a judicial dictatorship, or the answer is yes, and – as Churchill said – we’re just bickering over the price.

It would be nice to return to our federalist system of government with three equal branches of government and 50 states, but one branch refuses to live within that system. How about taking our chances with a president and the Congress? Two branches are better than one.

There may be practical difficulties with the president and the states ignoring the court’s abortion rulings – though there’s nothing unlawful about following the Constitution and I for one would love to see it. But there is absolutely no excuse for the Massachusetts legislature jumping when Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall says “jump.”

Marshall, immigrant and wife of New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, has recently proclaimed a right to gay marriage for all of Massachusetts. She has further demanded that the legislature rewrite the law in accordance with her wishes. One imagines Marshall leaping off the boat at Ellis Island and announcing: “I know just what this country needs! Anthony! Stop defending Pol Pot for five minutes and get me on a court!”

Granted, one can imagine how a woman married to the likes of Anthony Lewis might long for the sanctuary of a same-sex union. But that’s no reason to foist it on Massachusetts.

Ms. Marshall has as much right to proclaim a right to gay marriage from the Massachusetts Supreme Court as I do to proclaim it from my column. The Massachusetts legislature ought to ignore the court’s frivolous ruling – and cut the justices’ salaries if they try it again.

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The Party Of Ideas (031120)

WITH ECONOMIC growth and name recognition of the average Democratic presidential candidate both running at about 7%, the Democrats are in trouble. Unable to rouse more than the Saddam-supporting left with their kooky foreign-policy ideas, the Democrats had been counting on a lousy economy.

It turns out that, given a choice between “shock and awe” and “run and hide,” the American people prefer the former. Now that the Bush tax cuts have already started to kick in and boost the economy, it was beginning to look as if the Treason Lobby would have nothing to run on.

But the Democrats have discovered a surprise campaign issue: It turns out that several of them have had a death in the family. Not only that, but many Democrats have cracker-barrel humble origins stories and a Jew or lesbian in the family. Dick Gephardt’s campaign platform is that his father was a milkman, his son almost died and his daughter is a lesbian. Vote for me!

So don’t say the Democrats aren’t the party of ideas. As they keep reminding us, their ideas are just too darn complex to fit on a bumper sticker. Consequently, the Democrats can’t tell us their ideas until after the election. Instead, their version of a political campaign is to stage a “Queen for a Day” extravaganza – which has special resonance in the case of the Democrats.

Al Gore famously inaugurated the family tragedy routine at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, where his idea of an inspiring political speech was to recount the story of his son being hit by a car. At the 1996 convention, Gore told a tear-jerker about his sister’s long, painful death from lung cancer. It got to the point that Gore’s family members had to fear any more runs for higher office.

In the current campaign, Gephardt has taken to spinning out a long, pitiful tale of his son’s near-death three decades ago. If a lingering family medical tragedy is the main qualification for becoming a Democratic presidential candidate, what’s Michael Schiavo waiting for?

At dozens of campaign stops, Mrs. Gephardt weeps anew as her husband tells the same gut-wrenching story over and over again. The relevance of his son’s illness to Gephardt’s run for the presidency is this: It inspired Gephardt’s call for national health insurance. With his wife softly weeping in the background, he intones, “I get it.”

At least when Gephardt exploits a family tragedy, he doesn’t expect praise for not exploiting a family tragedy. John Edwards injects his son’s fatal car accident into his campaign by demanding that everyone notice how he refuses to inject his son’s fatal car accident into his campaign.

Edwards has talked about his son’s death in a 1996 car accident on “Good Morning America,” in dozens of profiles and in his new book. (“It was and is the most important fact of my life.”) His 1998 Senate campaign ads featured film footage of Edwards at a learning lab he founded in honor of his son, titled “The Wade Edwards Learning Lab.” He wears his son’s Outward Bound pin on his suit lapel. He was going to wear it on his sleeve, until someone suggested that might be a little too “on the nose.”

If you want points for not using your son’s death politically, don’t you have to take down all those “Ask me about my son’s death in a horrific car accident” bumper stickers? Edwards is like a politician who keeps announcing that he will not use his opponent’s criminal record for partisan political advantage. I absolutely refuse to mention the name of my dearly beloved and recently departed son killed horribly in a car accident, which affected me deeply, to score cheap political points.

I wouldn’t want John Edwards to be president, but I think even Karl Rove would be willing to stipulate that the death of a son is a terrible thing.

Howard Dean talks about his brother Charlie’s murder at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. Bizarrely, after working on the failed George McGovern campaign, Charlie Dean went to Indochina in 1974 to witness the ravages of the war he had opposed. Not long after he arrived, the apparently ungrateful communists captured and killed him. Hey fellas! I’m on your s— CLUNK!

Howard Dean wears his brother’s battered 1960s belt every day. (By contrast, Ted Kennedy honors the memory of his deceased family members with several belts every day.) Dean told Dan Rather about his brother’s death at some length on CBS News: “It gave me a sense that you ought to live for the moment with people; that you really – you really need to tell people you love them if you love them. It was certainly the most awful thing that ever happened to our family. It was terrible for my parents; it was even worse for them than it was for us.”

Dammit, if a man wants to be my president, I have a right to know where he stands on the issue of when to tell the people you love that you love them! Couldn’t the Democratic Party go back to plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock like Sen. Joe Biden, rather than plagiarizing “Lifetime: TV for Women”? Do any men at all vote for the Democrats anymore?

Carol Moseley Braun’s personal tragedy is that she’s being forced to run for president even though it turns out the Democrats won’t need her to split the black vote anyway. Please, can I drop out now? Al Sharpton is only polling at 2%. I hate this!

Sharpton is the counterpoint to his sob sisters in the Democratic Party. Sharpton libeled innocent men in the Tawana Brawley case. He inflamed angry mobs in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, leading to the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum. He incited an anti-Semitic pogrom against a Jewish-owned clothing store in Harlem, Freddy’s, ending in a blaze of bullets and fire that left several employees dead. So while the other Democrats talk about their personal tragedies, Sharpton goes around creating personal tragedies.

In addition to having a number of family deaths among them, the Democrats’ other big idea – too nuanced for a bumper sticker – is that many of them have Jewish ancestry. There’s Joe Lieberman: Always Jewish. Wesley Clark: Found Out His Father Was Jewish in College. John Kerry: Jewish Since He Began Presidential Fund-Raising. Howard Dean: Married to a Jew. Al Sharpton: Circumcised. Even Hillary Clinton claimed to have unearthed some evidence that she was a Jew – along with the long lost evidence that she was a Yankees fan. And that, boys and girls, is how the Jews survived thousands of years of persecution: by being susceptible to pandering.

Clark said that when he discovered he was half-Jewish, he remembered growing up in Arkansas and feeling “a certain kinship” with Jewish families in the dry-goods business. (I, too, have always felt a certain kinship with Calvin Trillin.)

The Democrats’ urge to assert a Jewish heritage is designed to disguise the fact that the Democrats would allow the state of Israel to perish as Palestinian suicide bombers slaughter Jewish women and children. Their humble-origins claptrap is designed to disguise the fact that liberals think ordinary people are racist scum. Their perverse desire to discuss the deaths and near-deaths of their children is designed to disguise the fact that they support the killing of more than a million unborn children every year. (Oh, by the way, what did their milkman and millworker fathers think about abortion?)

If the Democrats start extolling you – get a gun.

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The ‘Mainstream’ Is Located In France (031029)

THE NEWSPAPER that almost missed the war in Iraq because its reporters were in Georgia covering the membership policies of the Augusta National Golf Club has declared another one of President George Bush’s judicial nominees as “out of the mainstream.” The New York Times has proclaimed so many Bush nominees “out of the mainstream” that the editorial calling California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown “out of the mainstream” was literally titled: “Out of the Mainstream, Again.”

Among Bush’s “many unworthy judicial nominees,” the Times said, Brown is “among the very worst” – more “out of the mainstream” than all the rest! Even Teddy Kennedy, who might be well advised to withhold comment on a woman’s position relative to a moving body of water, has described Brown as “out of the mainstream,” adding, “Let’s just hope this one can swim.”

Liberals are hysterical about Justice Brown principally because she is black. Nothing enrages them so much as a minority who does not spend her days saying hosannas to liberals.

On the basis of its editorial positions, the Times seems to have called a bunch of racist Southern election supervisors out of retirement to cover judicial nominations for the paper. The only difference is, instead of phony “literacy” tests, now we have phony “mainstream” tests. Amazingly, no matter how many conservative minorities Bush sends up, the Times has not been able to find a single one who is “qualified.” The Times thinks Justice Brown should be the maid and Miguel Estrada the pool boy.

According to the Times, Brown has “declared war on the mainstream legal values that most Americans hold dear.” What the Times means by “mainstream legal values” is: off-the-charts unpopular positions favored by NAMBLA, the ACLU and The New York Times editorial page.

Thus, for example, opposition to partial-birth abortion – opposed by 70% of the American people – is “out of the mainstream.”

Support for the death penalty – supported by 70% of the American people – is “out of the mainstream.”

Opposition to government-sanctioned race discrimination – which voters in the largest state in the nation put on an initiative titled Proposition 209 and enacted into law – is “out of the mainstream.”

Opposition to gay marriage – opposed by 60% of the American people – is “out of the mainstream.”

Failing to recognize that totally nude dancing is “speech” is “out of the mainstream.”

Questioning whether gay Scoutmasters should be taking 14-year-old boys on overnight sleepovers in the woods is “out of the mainstream.”

I guess if your “mainstream” includes Roman Polanski, Michael Moore, Howard Dean and Jacques Chirac, then Brown really is “out of the mainstream.” This proverbial “stream” they’re constantly referring to is evidently located somewhere in France.

Liberals are always complaining that they haven’t figured out how to distill their message to slogans and bumper stickers – as they allege Republicans have. Though it can’t be easy to fit the entire Communist Manifesto on a bumper sticker, I beg to differ. (Bumper sticker version of the current Democratic platform: “Ask me about how I’m going to raise your taxes.”)

The problem is, if Democrats ever dared speak coherently, the American people would lynch them. Fortunately for liberals, soccer moms hear that a nominee is “extreme” and “out the mainstream” and are too frightened to ask for details. (Ironically, based on ticket sales and TV ratings, soccer is also out of the mainstream.)

In addition to the fact that she is black and “out of the mainstream,” the first item in the Times’ bill of particulars against Brown was this:

“She regularly stakes out extreme positions, often dissenting alone. In one case, her court ordered a rental car company to stop its supervisor from calling Hispanic employees by racial epithets. Justice Brown dissented, arguing that doing so violated the company’s free-speech rights.”

Despite the Times’ implication that Brown was “dissenting alone” in this case, she was not. The opinion of the California Supreme Court in the case, Aguilar v. Avis, was as closely divided as it gets: 4-3. Among the dissenters was Stanley Mosk, who was once described by the Los Angeles Times as “the court’s most liberal member.” When Mosk died in 2001, his obituary in The New York Times described him as “the only liberal on the seven-member court.” I suppose if the Times had mentioned that a prominent liberal jurist had agreed with Brown in Aguilar, it would be harder to frighten silly women with that “out of the mainstream” babble.

But the real beauty part of Brown’s dissent in Aguilar is that she was vindicating a constitutional principle that is second in importance only to abortion for liberals: no prior restraints on speech.

In a major victory for Avis, the jury rejected almost all of the claims against Avis by Hispanic employees, but did find that two managers – only one of whom still worked at Avis – had called Hispanics names. So the lower-court judge got the idea to issue an injunction prohibiting one single Avis manager from ever using derogatory language about Avis’ Hispanic employees.

The injunction was broad enough to prevent the manager from using such language in his home, out of earshot of his employees, in a joking or friendly manner, as part of a hypothetical example, or even if his speech were incapable of creating a “hostile environment” under the law. Questions were also raised about whether he was even allowed to chuckle at the little dog in those “Yo quiero Taco Bell” TV commercials. It was basically a bill of attainder against this one manager (who was himself married to a Hispanic).

I note that liberals laughed at the idea that a “hostile environment” could be created by a single incident of a governor dropping his pants and asking a subordinate to “kiss it.” But the mere speculative threat of a manager saying “wetback” – one time – was such a threat to the stability of the nation that the Times backed a prior restraint on the manager’s speech.

Usually The New York Times is citing the law’s antagonism to prior restraints on speech in order to wax eloquent about the Supreme Court’s “landmark decision in the Pentagon Papers case.” In a ruling that celebrated the very essence of the First Amendment, the court ruled that the government couldn’t stop the Treason Times from publishing classified national-security documents. As the Times put it, that case had “made it clear that only a showing of concrete, immediate risk to the nation could justify a judicial order imposing a prior restraint on any kind of publication.”

But apparently, there is one interest even more vital than preventing an immediate risk to the nation: stopping a supervisor someplace in America from ever using the word “spic.” Anyone who disagrees is “out of the mainstream.” And any minority who is not duly grateful to liberals for supporting prior restraints against certain words is only qualified to be the maid.

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With Half His Brain Tied Behind His Back (031015)

SO LIBERALS have finally found a drug addict they don’t like. And unlike the Lackawanna Six – those high-spirited young lads innocently seeking adventure in an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan – liberals could find no excuses for Rush Limbaugh.

After years of the mainstream media assuring us that Rush was a has-been, a nobody, yesterday’s news – the Rush painkiller story was front-page news last week. (Would anyone care if Howell Raines committed murder?) The airwaves and print media were on red alert with Rush’s admission that, after an unsuccessful spinal operation a few years ago, he became addicted to powerful prescription painkillers.

Rush Limbaugh’s misfortune is apparently a bigger story than his nearly $300 million radio contract signed two years ago. That was the biggest radio contract in broadcasting history. Yet there are only 12 documents on LexisNexis that reported it. The New York Times didn’t take notice of Rush’s $300 million radio contract, but a few weeks later, put Bill Clinton’s comparatively measly $10 million book contract on its front page. Meanwhile, in the past week alone, LexisNexis has accumulated more than 50 documents with the words “Rush Limbaugh and hypocrisy.” That should make up for the 12 documents on his $300 million radio contract.

The reason any conservative’s failing is always major news is that it allows liberals to engage in their very favorite taunt: Hypocrisy! Hypocrisy is the only sin that really inflames them. Inasmuch as liberals have no morals, they can sit back and criticize other people for failing to meet the standards that liberals simply renounce. It’s an intriguing strategy. By openly admitting to being philanderers, draft dodgers, liars, weasels and cowards, liberals avoid ever being hypocrites.

At least Rush wasn’t walking into church carrying a 10-pound Bible before rushing back to the Oval Office for sodomy with Monica Lewinsky. He wasn’t enforcing absurd sexual harassment guidelines while dropping his pants in front of a half-dozen subordinates. (Evidently, Clinton wasn’t a hypocrite because no one was supposed to take seriously the notion that he respected women or believed in God.)

Rush has hardly been the anti-drug crusader liberals suggest. Indeed, Rush hasn’t had much to say about drugs at all since that spinal operation. The Rush Limbaugh quote that has been endlessly recited in the last week to prove Rush’s rank “hypocrisy” is this, made eight years ago: “Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. ... And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.”

What precisely are liberals proposing that Rush should have said to avoid their indignant squeals of “hypocrisy”? Announce his support for the wide and legal availability of a prescription painkiller that may have caused him to go deaf and nearly ruined his career and wrecked his life? I believe that would have been both evil and hypocritical.

Or is it simply that Rush should not have become addicted to painkillers in the first place? Well, no, I suppose not. You’ve caught us: Rush has a flaw. And yet, the wily hypocrite does not support flaws!

When a conservative can be the biggest thing in talk radio, earning $30 million a year and attracting 20 million devoted listeners every week – all while addicted to drugs – I’ll admit liberals have reason to believe that conservatives are some sort of super-race, incorruptible by original sin. But the only perfect man hasn’t walked the Earth for 2,000 years. In liberals’ worldview, any conservative who is not Jesus Christ is ipso facto a “hypocrite” for not publicly embracing dissolute behavior the way liberals do.

In fact, Rush’s behavior was not all that dissolute. There is a fundamental difference between taking any drug – legal, illegal, prescription, protected by the 21st Amendment or banned by Michael Bloomberg – for kicks and taking a painkiller for pain.

There is a difference morally and a difference legally. While slamming Rush, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz recently told Wolf Blitzer, “Generally, people who illegally buy prescription drugs are not prosecuted, whereas people who illegally buy cocaine and heroin are prosecuted.” What would the point be? Just say no to back surgery?

I haven’t checked with any Harvard Law professors, but I’m pretty sure that, generally, adulterous drunks who drive off bridges and kill girls are prosecuted. Ah, but Teddy Kennedy supports adultery and public drunkenness – so at least you can’t call him a hypocrite! That must provide great consolation to Mary Jo Kopechne’s parents.

I have a rule about not feeling sorry for people worth $300 million, but I’m feeling sentimental. Evan Thomas wrote a cover story on Rush for Newsweek this week that was so vicious it read like conservative satire. Thomas called Rush a “schlub,” “socially ill at ease,” an Elmer Gantry, an actor whose “act has won over, or fooled, a lot of people.” He compared Rush to the phony TV evangelist Jim Bakker and recommended that Rush start to “make a virtue out of honesty.” (Liberals can lie under oath in legal proceedings and it’s a “personal matter.” Conservatives must scream their every failing from the rooftops or they are “liars.”)

As is standard procedure for profiles of conservatives, Newsweek gathered quotes on Rush from liberals, ex-wives and dumped dates. Covering himself, Thomas ruefully remarked that “it’s hard to find many people who really know him.” Well, there was me, Evan! But I guess Newsweek didn’t have room for the quotes I promptly sent back to the Newsweek researchers. I could have even corrected Newsweek’s absurd account of how Rush met his current wife. (It’s kind of cute, too: She was a fan who began arguing with him about something he said on air.)

Thomas also made the astute observation that “Rush Limbaugh has always had far more followers than friends.” Needless to say, this floored those of us who were shocked to discover that Rush does not have 20 million friends.

So the guy I really feel sorry for is Evan Thomas. How would little Evan fare in any competitive media? Any followers? Any fans? Any readers at all? And he’s not even addicted to painkillers! This week, Rush proved his motto: He really can beat liberals with half his brain tied behind his back.

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It’s The Winter Solstice, Charlie Brown! (030924)

DAVID LIMBAUGH’S new book, “Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity,” will make you cry for your country. (But don’t pray for your country if you’re anywhere near a public school!) Released this week, Limbaugh’s copiously researched book documents how the courts, the universities, the media, Hollywood and government institutions react to any mention of Christianity like Superman recoiling from kryptonite, Dracula from sunlight, or Madonna from soap and water. His straight, factual narrative of what is happening in our public schools makes you wonder how much longer America can survive liberalism.

In a public school in St. Louis, a teacher spotted the suspect, fourth-grader Raymond Raines, bowing his head in prayer before lunch. The teacher stormed to Raymond’s table, ordered him to stop immediately and sent him to the principal’s office. The principal informed the young malefactor that praying was not allowed in school. When Raymond was again caught praying before meals on three separate occasions, he was segregated from other students, ridiculed in front of his classmates, and finally sentenced to a week’s detention.

Before snack time in her kindergarten class in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., little Kayla Broadus held hands with two of her classmates and recited this prayer: “God is good, God is great, thank you, God, for my food.” The alert teacher pounced on Kayla, severely reprimanded her, and reported her to the school administration. In short order, the principal sent a sternly worded letter to Kayla’s parents advising them that Kayla was not allowed to pray in school, aloud or with others.

The school board then issued a triumphant press release crowing about its victory over a kindergartner praying before snack time. Thus was creeping theocracy in Saratoga Springs stopped dead in its tracks! Kayla’s mother brought a lawsuit, winning Kayla the right to pray out loud. But she was still prohibited from holding hands with others while she prayed. Hearing the G-word in kindergarten might interfere with the school’s efforts to teach proper sexual techniques in the first grade.

Thanks to the vigilance of an alert teacher at Lynn Lucas Middle School outside of Houston, two sisters carrying Bibles were prevented from bringing their vile material into a classroom. The teacher stopped the students at the classroom door and marched them to the principal’s office. (Maybe it was just the sight of public school students carrying a book of any kind that set off alarm bells.) The sisters’ mother was called and warned that the school intended to report her to Child Protective Services. When the mother arrived, the teacher threw the Bibles in the wastebasket, shouting, “This is garbage!”

In another display of tolerance at Lynn Lucas Middle School, school administrators snatched three students’ books with covers displaying the Ten Commandments, ripped the covers off, threw them in the garbage, and told the students that the Ten Commandments constituted “hate speech.” (Also, it would be insensitive to expose the Ten Commandments to students who had never been taught to count to 10.)

After the massacre at Columbine High School, students and families were invited to paint tiles above student lockers. The school district had taken all reasonable precautions, immediately deploying an army of secular “grief counselors” with teddy bears to descend on the school after the attack. Nonetheless, some students painted their tiles with “objectionable” messages, such as: “4/20/99: Jesus Wept” and “God Is Love.” This would not stand: The school removed 90 tiles with offending religious messages.

A federal court upheld the school’s censorship of the religious tiles. Of course, Columbine school officials had earned a measure of deference after having inculcated such a fine sense of morality in their students that two boys could walk into school one day and stage a bloody massacre. You don’t argue with a track record like that.

Not all mentions of religion constitute “hate speech.” In Tupelo, Miss., school administrators methodically purged all Christmas carols of any religious content – and then led the children in a chant of: “Celebrate Kwanzaa!” At Pattison Elementary school in Katy, Texas, Christmas songs are banned, but students are threatened with grade reductions for refusing to sing songs celebrating other religious faiths.

In New York City, the chancellor of the Department of Education prohibited the display of Nativity scenes in public schools, while expressly allowing the Jewish menorah and the Islamic star and crescent to be displayed. Some would say that was overkill inasmuch as New York City is already the home of the world’s largest public display built in commemoration of Islam: Ground Zero.

Between issuing laws prohibiting discrimination against transgendered individuals and running up a $38 billion deficit, the California Legislature mandated a three-week immersion course in Islam for all seventh-graders. A “crash course” in Islam, you might call it, if that weren’t so ironic. Students are required to adopt Muslim names, plan a trip to Mecca, play a jihad game, pray to “Allah, the Compassionate” and to chant “Praise to Allah! Lord of Creation!” They are encouraged to dress in Muslim garb. Students are discouraged, however, from stoning girls at the school dances, abusing their “Jew” math teachers or blowing up their classmates.

A popular student textbook, “Across the Centuries,” treats the Inquisition and Salem witch-hunts as typical of Christianity, but never gets around to mentioning the Muslims’ conquest of Spain, the Battle of Tours, or the execution of Jews in Qurayza. Or 9-11.

There is no surer proof of Christ’s divinity than that he is still so hated some 2,000 years after his death. Limbaugh’s “Persecution” covers it all in staggering, heartbreaking detail. His methodical description of what is happening in our public schools alone will call to mind the hate speech banned in Columbine: “Jesus Wept.”

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It’s Like Christmas In December! (031217)

SAY, HAS ANYONE asked Dick Gephardt if this falls under “miserable failure”?

Obviously we’ll have to wait for all the politics to play out, but at this stage it’s hard to say which was worse for Howard Dean: the capture of Saddam Hussein or Al Gore’s endorsement. Until Sunday, Gov. Mean’s big applause line in speeches has been to sneer about the Bush administration’s failure to catch Saddam Hussein. It seems the governor is better at prescribing bitter pills than at swallowing them.

In a speech to the Pacific Council the day after Saddam was captured, Dean nearly choked on the words, “The capture of Saddam is a good thing,” and then quickly added, “but the capture of Saddam has not made America safer.” (Possible headline: “Dean Says Saddam’s Capture Good Thing, Just Not Really Good Thing.”) If George W. Bush announced that a cure for cancer had been discovered, Democrats would complain about unemployed laboratory rats.

On Fox News Sunday, Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., said of Saddam’s capture: “This is a great opportunity for this president to get it right for the long term. And I hope he will be magnanimous, reach out to the U.N., to allies who’ve stood away from us.”

It’s as if he were reading my mind! After listening to all the bellyaching from European leftists for the past eight months, I think I speak for all Americans when I say I’ve been on tenterhooks waiting for the right opportunity to grovel to the French. And now we have it – a major win is the perfect opportunity! That Kerry has an uncanny sense for what the average American is thinking.

Actually, he lost me with that one. Maybe it’s a good opportunity for the French and the United Nations to reach out to us, but by what logic is this an opportunity for us to reach out to them? As I understand it, the situation is: We caught Saddam. So the obvious next move is ...

(a) Put him on trial.

(b) Get information from him.

(d) Turn him over to the Iraqis.

(e) Appeal to the French.

What was interesting about Kerry’s suggestion was that it was the exact same suggestion liberals were making when they claimed the war was going badly. The day before Saddam’s capture, the New York Times editorialized: “The way to deal with all that is going wrong in Iraq remains as clear as it was on the day that Mr. Bush declared an end to major combat operations. ... Instead of driving away France, Germany, Russia and Canada with financial sanctions, the president should be creating the room for compromise ...” Damn that Bush. He squandered the good will of a bunch of people who hate our guts.

Apparently, this is what liberals mean by “a plan”:

Military setback: Appeal to the French.

Military victory: Appeal to the French.

Saddam captured: Appeal to the French.

Osama captured: Appeal to the French.

Osama catches Saddam: Appeal to the French.

In 24 months, Bush has perceptibly degraded terrorist operations throughout the world. The rebuilding in Iraq is going better than could possibly be expected. Liberals don’t care. They just want to turn everything over to the French. (And, apparently, the recent capture of Saddam presents us with a golden opportunity to do so!) The Birchers were right about these people. They believe in world government more than they believe in the United States.

One strongly suspects that the White House sat on the story of Saddam’s arrest for a day so the Times could put out its regular Sunday bad news: “A Baghdad Neighborhood, Once Hopeful, Now Reels As Iraq’s Turmoil Persists,” “Saboteurs, Looters and Old Equipment Work Against Efforts to Restart Iraqi Oil Fields,” “It’s Going to Be a Bloody Christmas,” “Dean Strives for a Nuanced Approach to Foreign Policy.” The New York Times hasn’t looked this foolish ... well, I guess since the day before.

Liberals should perk up. It’s not all bad news. True, Saddam Hussein has been captured. But Norman Mineta is still at large.

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Vegan Computer Geeks For Dean (031210)

THE COVER STORY in this week’s New York Times magazine described Howard Dean’s hardcore support as consisting primarily of impotent nosepickers hoping to make some friends and unsuccessful auditioners for Gap commercials. That is to say, the followers (as opposed to leaders) of tomorrow.

Their passion for Dean was aptly summarized by 24-year-old Lauren Popper – the “official representative” at a Dean campaign office one particular night. Though she “broke into tears several times while trying to explain” the allure of the Dean campaign, Popper managed to convey that she was first attracted to Dean based on his policy of having a state social worker visit every new mother in Vermont (not to be confused with the Arkansas policy from the 1980s in which the governor would visit every woman who was hoping to become pregnant). Not that I’m trying to privatize anything here, but in my home state of Connecticut, a new mother is traditionally visited by her own mother.

Popper added that Dean’s becoming president was “a side effect” of the Dean campaign. Cold comfort to the candidate, I imagine. Rather, she said: “This campaign is about allowing people to come together and tell their life stories.”

With quotes like that, it’s not going to be easy to tone down the Republicans’ overconfidence in the coming presidential campaign. But lately I’ve noticed that a lot of Democrats are comparing inevitable nominee Howard Dean to George McGovern and wearily predicting a landslide for Bush. That’s not the fighting spirit we expect from the party that will go to the smallest town in North Dakota to remove the Ten Commandments!

Whenever liberals all start singing from the same hymnal, they are up to no good. (Or since we’re talking about American liberals here, maybe I should say, “when they all start reading from the same Quran.”)

I believe the game plan is this: The Democrats will spend the next 11 months ruefully admitting that it’s going to be a 50-state landslide for Bush. Republicans will engage in their normal partisan cheerleading, and everyone will seem to be agreed that Bush is going to win a 50-state landslide. Then, if the final tally is anything short of that – if it’s a 40-state landslide for Bush – the New York Times will be able to crow about Bush’s poor showing and run headlines like: “Americans Still Deeply Divided on War.”

This is precisely what happened in the 1998 midterm elections. That year, Republicans made history by winning a majority in both Houses of Congress for the third straight time. Just four years earlier, millions of Americans who had never voted Republican in their entire lives did it for the first time. In 1998, they did it a third time. Though Republicans lost five seats in the House, they held their majority. The Democrats half-century stranglehold on the House was over.

The Los Angeles Times headline the next day was typical: “Democrats Exult in Victories as GOP Takes Stock of Losses; Elections: Republicans Retain Control of Congress, But Their Leadership There Is Weakened. Defeats Undercut Impeachment Drive and Reopen Party Divisions.”

I suppose it’s possible the Democrats’ predictions of catastrophe and ruin in the upcoming presidential election are genuine. It is beyond dispute that Howard Dean is a more appalling candidate than George McGovern ever was.

McGovern was an authentic war hero in World War II. Howard Dean showed up at the Army recruiting office with a note from his doctor and a fake limp to get out of serving in Vietnam – before repairing to Aspen for several months of skiing. In Dean’s defense, I suppose that, technically speaking, “spinelessness” would be considered a debilitating back condition. (According to the New York Times, this is the same as taking off in jets that fly at the speed of sound while training to be a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard.)

Moreover, the North Vietnamese were savage beasts, but they never attacked America on its own soil. It’s a little different to be anti-war now.

But we live in a different country. Apparently, some Americans think choosing the leader of the free world should be a process of people coming together to tell their life stories. (At least that’s a step up from the Democrats’ 1996 presidential campaign, which, if I remember correctly, was about people telling their stories to grand juries.)

In case Al Gore hasn’t called you personally at home in the last 10 minutes to remind you: In the last election, this country gave a slight plurality of the popular vote to Al Gore. A plurality voted for Bill Clinton – twice. In the middle of a titanic struggle with a Soviet totalitarianism, this country elected Jimmy Carter president. If that’s not enough to keep you up at night, here’s one more: Hillary Clinton’s “disapproval” rating has yet to reach 100%.

Forget landslides: It’s a wonder that Republicans ever win any elections at all.

Consider that approximately 100 million people vote in presidential elections. The total population eligible to vote – including the infirm, the insane, the incapacitated and the bored – is only 180 million strong. And 20 million Americans work for the government. Or at least appear on government payrolls. It gets a little complicated when you’re trying to define “work” in the context of a government employee.

Indeed, more Americans work for federal, state or local government than work in any form of manufacturing. We crossed that Rubicon about 10 years ago.

Admittedly, mixed in with employees in public welfare and housing and community development, there is one lone category of federal employee that tends to vote Republican: the military. That’s why George Bush recently flew halfway around the globe to serve them turkey.

But according to the 2002 census, there are more civilian employees working for the post office than for national defense or international relations of any kind (829,587 to 680,645). The entire military, both civilian and armed forces, employs fewer than 2 million people.

Meanwhile, there are about 10 million government teachers or other education bureaucrats. (For a profession that is so overworked, undercompensated and undervalued, there sure are a lot of them.)

Then there are the 22 million Americans on food stamps. And of course there are the 39 million greedy geezers collecting Social Security. The greatest generation rewarded itself with a pretty big meal.

Still millions more Americans poach off your salary through literally incalculable government largesse, such as government contracts, corporate welfare, and all the bureaucratic quagmires for which there is no exit strategy, like the earned-income tax credit, disability payments and workman’s comp.

It’s interesting how difficult it is to locate information about the number of people living off the taxpayer. The government knows how many Alaskan natives have at least a bachelor’s degree and live in a two-bedroom home, but it’s impossible to track down precisely how many voters get checks from the government.

At a minimum, there must be at least 60 million Americans who draw salaries, in whole or in part, from the government. This is based on the assumption that – except for members of the Supreme Court – there is probably very little overlap between government workers and Social Security recipients. Any overlap is surely more than made up for by the various other government payees.

And we just keep getting more and more of them. Even when the private sector is suffering through recessions, job reductions, cutbacks, plant closings, unemployment – the taxpayer is still hiring! Hey, someone’s got to process those extended unemployment benefits Ted Kennedy keeps demanding.

Fortunately, there are some Americans who vote against their base self-interest for the good of the nation. God help us if the Democratic Party ever wavers on its three major planks: abortion, gay marriage and banning the Boy Scouts. (Perhaps they could save a step by figuring out how to automatically abort all future Boy Scouts.)

Consequently, the Parasite Party starts with a guaranteed 40% of the vote. They could run a muskrat for president, they could run a stalk of asparagus, they could run an insane person – in fact that appears to be their plan for next year – and the Democrats would get 40% of the vote. The Democratic Party pays people to vote for big government and then claims wide popularity for its heinous policy prescriptions. Phrased differently: “Americans Still Deeply Divided on War.”

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When Blue States Attack (031224)

UTTERING the standard liberal cliche a few years ago, Richard Reeves described “representatives of the new South” as “Republicans of old puritan definition, righteous folk afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun.” (I’ll skip the context of Reeves’ insight, except to note that apparently aging liberals view sodomy with a chubby intern in the back office as “having fun.”)

Like all beliefs universally held by liberals, Reeves’ aphorism is the precise opposite of the truth.

It’s the blue (Democratic) states that are constantly sending lawyers to the red (Republican) states to bother everyone. Americans in the red states look at a place like New York City – where, this year, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade featured a gay transvestite as Mrs. Claus – and say, Well, I guess some people like it, but it’s not for me.

Meanwhile, liberals in New York and Washington are consumed with what people are doing in Alabama and Nebraska. Nadine Strossen and Barry Lynn cannot sleep at night knowing that someone, somewhere, is gazing upon something that could be construed as a religious symbol.

It’s never Jerry Falwell flying to Manhattan to review high-school graduation speeches, or James Dobson making sure New York City schools give as much time to God as to Mother Earth, or Pat Robertson demanding a creche next to the schools’ Kwanzaa displays. (Is it just me, or is Kwanzaa becoming way too commercialized?)

But when four schools in southern Ohio have displays of the Ten Commandments, sirens go off in Nadine Strossen’s Upper West Side apartment. It will surprise no one to learn that the American Civil Liberties Union promptly sued and the schools are now Ten Commandments-free. (At least students in the Ten Commandments schools, as opposed to schools in New York, Washington and Los Angeles, might reasonably be expected to know how to count up to 10.)

From the Chelsea section of Manhattan, the gay, Bronx-born Puerto Rican executive director of the ACLU, Anthony Romero, tossed and turned all night thinking about the Ten Commandments display on the Elkhart, Indiana, municipal building, which had been there, without incident, since 1958. The ACLU sued and the monument was hauled off.

In Ohio, Richland County Common Pleas Judge James DeWeese had a framed poster of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. The ACLU sued and the Ten Commandments came down. Compare that to the late New York judge Elliott Wilk, who famously displayed a portrait of communist revolutionary Che Guevara on his office wall. (Che, Castro, Hussein – evidently the only bearded revolutionary these people don’t like is Jesus Christ.) And yet, no one from Ohio ever sued Wilk.

The ACLU got word of a Ten Commandments monument in a public park in Plattsmouth, Neb. (pop. 7,000), and immediately swooped in to demand that the offensive symbol be removed. Not being from New York, Plattsmouth didn’t want to litigate. Soon cranes were in the park ripping out a monument that had sat there, not bothering anyone, for 40 years.

ACLU busybodies sued Johnson County, Iowa, demanding that it remove a Ten Commandments monument that had been in a public courtyard a since 1964. Within a year, the 2,500-pound granite monument was gone.

Mail-order minister Barry Lynn’s Americans United for Separation of Church and State – a group curiously devoid of both Americans and churchgoers – sued little Chester County, Pa., demanding that it remove a Ten Commandments plaque that has hung on the courthouse wall since 1920.

“The Upper West Side and Malibu United” also sued the city of Everett, Wash., demanding the removal of a Ten Commandments monument in front of the police station. AU legal director Ayesha Khan explained they had nothing like that back in Pakistan and look how well things turned out there.

(Perhaps in addition to the usual processing requirements for new immigrants, there should be a form that says: Welcome to America! You will no longer have to live in a mud hut, earn 32 cents a year, and have members of your family periodically dragged off and shot. However, you may, on occasion, have to see people praying.)

The alleged legal basis for removing all of these Ten Commandments monuments is the establishment clause of the First Amendment. That clause provides: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The vigilant observer will note instantly that none of the monuments cases involves Congress, a law or an establishment of religion.

Monuments are not “laws,” the Plattsmouth, Neb., public park is not “Congress,” and the Ten Commandments are not a religion. To the contrary, all three major religions believe in Moses and the Ten Commandments. Liberals might as well say the establishment clause prohibits Republicans from breathing, as that it prohibits a Ten Commandments display. But over the past few years, courts have ordered the removal of dozens and dozens of Ten Commandments displays.

How a local judge acknowledging a higher power with a symbol used by all three major religions is the same as Congress establishing a national religion remains a legal mystery – like, how the University of Michigan can use one admissions standard for blacks and another for whites and yet it’s not race discrimination.

How about a truce? The intolerant religious fanatics in the red states will continue not complaining about high taxes, secular education and gay-rights parades in the blue states, and the proponents of tolerance in the blue states will stop bothering everyone in the red states.

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Place Your Right Hand On The Quran And Repeat After Me (031230)

THE AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union began its onslaught against Alabama Judge Roy Moore in 1995, when an ACLU lawyer, depressed that he was not chosen to play Mrs. Claus in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade that year, wrote a letter to all the state judges in Alabama protesting their practice of having a prayer in the courtroom every few weeks. (Obviously you can’t have prayer in court: It might distract all the people holding their hand over a Bible and swearing before God almighty to tell the truth.)

Everything had been going just fine in Alabama – no defendant had ever complained about the practice – but upon receiving a testy letter from the ACLU, all the other Alabama judges immediately ceased and desisted from the foul practice of allowing prayer in court. Judge Moore did not.

For resisting the ACLU’s bullying, Moore became High Value Target No. 1. Soon the ACLU and its ilk were filing lawsuits and anonymous ethics complaints against Moore. The ACLU along with the Southern Poverty Law Center sued Moore for having a Ten Commandments plaque in his courtroom. (Poverty had been nearly eliminated in the South until a poor person happened to gaze upon Moore’s Ten Commandments – and then it was back to square one.)

An affirmative action, Carter-appointed judge (oh sorry, I forgot – we’re only allowed to say that about Clarence Thomas) found that the Ten Commandments plaque violated the First Amendment. Apparently, in a little-noticed development, Judge Moore had become “Congress,” his Ten Commandments plaque was a “law,” and the plaque established a national religion. The Taliban had better legal justification to blow up centuries-old Buddha statues in Afghanistan.

The then-governor of Alabama, “Fob” James, responded to the inane ruling by saying he’d send in the Alabama National Guard if anyone tried to take down Moore’s Ten Commandments.

That’s all it took. The Alabama Supreme Court backed off from a confrontation with the governor by dismissing the ACLU’s suit on technical grounds.

Both Moore and James were soon re-elected in landslides, Moore to chief justice. Liberals reacted to the overwhelming popularity of the state officials who resisted the ACLU by accusing them of stirring up the Ten Commandments dispute as a publicity stunt. The president of the Alabama ACLU said “the whole thing is political,” and that Moore and James were using it as an election issue. The ACLU sues, and for not surrendering immediately, state officials are media whores.

Thus, according to Time magazine, Judge Moore has been on a “crusade” since – in Time’s own words – “he defended his right to display” the Ten Commandments. It “should have surprised no one” the magazine continued, when Moore installed the Ten Commandments monument in the courthouse lobby and “forced a showdown by refusing to remove it.”

In other words, Moore defended himself from one ACLU lawsuit and then – as if that weren’t enough! – he did not instantly surrender when the ACLU filed a second lawsuit. That guy sure knows how to get publicity.

Indeed, Moore maintained his disagreement with the ACLU’s interpretation of the Constitution as creating a universal ban on God right up until he was out of a job.

A lot of conservatives said Moore was wrong to refuse to comply with the court’s idiotic ruling. The conservative argument for enforcing manifestly absurd court rulings is that the only other option is anarchy.

But we are already living in anarchy. It’s a one-sided, “Alice in Wonderland” anarchy in which liberals always win and conservatives always lose – and then cheerfully enforce their own defeats. Oh, you see an abortion clause in there? OK, I don’t see it, but we’ll enforce it. Sodomy, too, you say? OK, it’s legal. Gay marriage? Just give us a minute to change the law. No prayer in schools? It’s out. Go-go dancing is speech, but protest at abortion clinics isn’t? Okey-dokey. No Ten Commandments in the courthouse? Somebody get the number of a monument removal service.

What passes for “constitutional law” can be fairly summarized as: Heads we win, tails you lose. The only limit on liberal insanity in this country is how many issues liberals can get before a court.

Apparently the only thing standing between a government of laws and total anarchy is the fact that conservatives are good losers. If we don’t give liberals everything they want, when they want it, anarchy will result. We must obey manifestly absurd court rulings, so that liberals obey court rulings when they lose.

Point one: They almost never lose. Point two: They already refuse to accept laws they don’t like. They do it all the time – race discrimination bans, bilingual education bans, marijuana bans. They refuse to accept the Electoral College when their candidate wins the popular vote, and they refuse to accept sexual harassment laws when their president is the accused. If you don’t let them win every game, they walk off with the football.

I’m not sure what horror is supposed to befall the nation if the liberals started ignoring the law more than they already do, but apparently it would be even worse than a country in which the Ten Commandments have been stripped from every public space, prayer in schools is outlawed, sodomy is a constitutional right, and more than 1 million unborn children are aborted every year.

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The Jesus Thing (040107)

WHEN THEY were fund-raising, the Democratic candidates for president all claimed to be Jewish. Now that they are headed for Super Tuesday down South, they’ve become Jesus freaks. Listening to Democrats talk about Jesus is a little like listening to them on national security: They don’t seem terribly comfortable with either subject.

To ease Democrats into the Jesus thing, the Democratic Leadership Council is holding briefings for Democratic candidates teaching them how to talk about religion. The participants were warned that millions of Americans worship a supreme being whose name is not Bill Clinton. As has been widely reported, the DLC gingerly suggests that Democrats start referring to “God’s green earth.”

Democrats never talk about believing in something; they talk about simulating belief in something. Americans believe in this crazy God crap that we don’t, so how do we hoodwink them into believing we believe in God? It’s part of the casual contempt Democrats have for the views of normal people.

What is arresting is the Democrats’ fantastic habit of openly talking about how they plan to fake out the American people. The Democrats candidly say: How do we make sure the Americans don’t know what we’re really thinking? Let’s get a Southerner, let’s talk about Jesus, let’s talk about NASCAR — white Southern guys seem to like that. Let’s see ... If we could get a general on the ticket, Americans will forget how much we hate the military and long to see America humiliated.

Never has a major political party talked so openly about their plans to fool the voters. It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. They seem not to realize the people they are talking about are listening and might not be fooled.

In the current New Republic magazine, Peter Beinart points out that the capture of Saddam has hurt the anti-war cause and left the Democrats with nothing to say. He proposes that Democrats pretend to support the war on terrorism by calling for a massive campaign to catch Osama. Yeah, let’s try that. That’ll fool ‘em.

In the debate this week, John Kerry responded to a question about how he would appeal to Southerners by saying he could put a Southerner on his ticket. As Howard Dean has explained, they’re stupid enough: It’s just a bunch of white guys in pickup trucks with Confederate flags.

Dean himself has recently made the fascinating discovery that a lot of Americans believe in God. Hold the phones — the Democrats have a soothsayer in their midst! Next, Dean will be announcing that he’s just discovered how important this sex thing is.

Before the poll numbers came out on religious belief in America, Dean said: “We have got to stop having our elections in the South based on race, guns, God and gays.” Higher taxes, gay marriage, abortion on demand and surrender in Iraq -– that’ll do the trick in Mississippi!

Then about a month ago, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a poll showing that people who regularly attend religious services supported Bush 63% to 37%, and those who never attend religious services opposed him 62% to 38%. When you exclude blacks (as they do in Vermont), who are overwhelmingly Baptist and overwhelmingly Democratic, and rerun the numbers, basically any white person who believes in God is a Republican.

The only Democrats who go to church regularly are the ones who plan to run for president someday and are preparing in advance to fake a belief in God.

Though Dean is pursuing the Jesus thing with a vengeance, the results so far have been mixed. In Iowa last week, Dean said, “Let’s get into a little religion here,” and then began denouncing Christian minister Jerry Falwell. “Don’t you think Jerry Falwell reminds you a lot more of the Pharisees than he does of the teachings of Jesus?” I don’t even know what Dean means by that. I am sure his audience doesn’t.

Rapping with reporters about God on the campaign plane, Dean said, “(I)f you know much about the Bible, which I do” — and then proceeded to confuse the Old Testament with the New Testament.

Dean illiterately claimed his favorite book of the New Testament was the Book of Job. (He said his least favorite was the Book of Numbers and then explained how he planned to balance the budget.) Having already complained to DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe about other Democrats attacking him, Dean recently said: “I’m feeling a little more Job-like recently.” That’s comforting. A few snippy remarks from the likes of Dick Gephardt and Dean thinks it’s the wrath of the God of Abraham. Yeah, that’s definitely the guy we want leading the nation in perilous times.

Dean’s epiphanic religious awakening occurred over a bike path –- and that’s his version of what happened. He was baptized Catholic and raised an Episcopalian, but left the Episcopal Church in a huff when he finally found his true religion: environmentally friendly exercise.

The Episcopals don’t demand much in the way of actual religious belief. They have girl priests, gay priests, gay bishops, gay marriages — it’s much like The New York Times editorial board. They acknowledge the Ten Commandments — or “Moses’ talking points” — but hasten to add that they’re not exactly “carved in stone.” After Bush said that the most important philosopher to him was Jesus Christ, the Episcopal bishop in Des Moines, Iowa, C. Christopher Epting, pronounced the answer “a turnoff.” So there isn’t a lot of hair-shirt-wearing and sacrifice for the Episcopalians.

But the bike path incident was too much for Dean. A key tenet of the Druidical religion of liberals is non-fossil fuel travel. So Dean left the Church of the Proper Fork because the Episcopal Church in Montpelier hesitated before ceding some of its land for a bike path.

On CNN, Judy Woodruff asked in amazement, “Was it just over a bike path that you left the Episcopal Church?”

Dean: “Yes, as a matter of fact it was.”

Dean waxed expansive on the theological implications of bike paths, saying: “I didn’t think that was very public-spirited.”

But recently, Dean has leapt even beyond the DLC-recommended “God’s green earth” and begun talking about Jesus, saying, “He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2,000 years, which is pretty inspiring when you think about it.” Gosh, Jesus is giving Oprah a run for her money. Also, Christ died for our sins, but let’s not get into the hocus-pocus part of Christianity. The gist of the New Testament is about bike paths.

Dean’s relationship with Jesus is a little like David Lloyd George’s relationship with the Slovaks. At the Treaty of Versailles conference, the British prime minister was heard to whisper: “Who are the Slovaks again? I can never place them.”

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What Happened To Your Queer Party Friends? (040121)

THE ENDLESS receding nightmare of the Iowa caucuses has finally produced something interesting: The Democrats have one hellacious catfight on their hands.

After all the hoopla about Howard Dean’s new mass movement of “Deaniacs,” it appears that blanketing Iowa with self-righteous 20-year-olds in orange wool caps may not have been the ideal campaign strategy. Dean’s distant third-place finish makes you want to ask him the question Jack Nicholson put to his down-and-out gay neighbor in “As Good As It Gets”: “What happened to your queer party-friends?”

At the behest of the Democratic Party establishment, the media dutifully destroyed Howard Dean, the legitimate leader of the opposition. Democratic voters are so obedient to the media, they followed their media puppet masters and instantly switched from Dean to John Kerry.

But Dean still has the money and foot soldiers and endorsements to stay in the fight for the foreseeable future. And being from Vermont, Dean should do well in New Hampshire. I went to a public school, but if I remember my high school geography correctly, New Hampshire and Vermont are the same state.

Until Kerry won Iowa, Wesley Clark was viewed as the pre-eminent electable Democrat principally because he’s a Republican. Howard Dean has already said he believes Clark is a fine fellow but truly a Republican. In response, Gen. Clark immediately put on a third sweater.

Sadly, it may turn out that Clark’s whole raison d’etre is now gone. Never was so much money, media, chicanery, Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna, conniving and Cabala deployed to promote a quote-unquote “electable” Democrat.

Clark was supposed to be the phony American to stop Dean, but Kerry is the even better phony American! And he’s already stopped Dean in Iowa!

Kerry and Clark now represent the two major wings of the Democratic Party — the Kennedy wing and the Clinton wing. One drowns you after the extramarital affair; the other one calls you a stalker.

Other than that, there isn’t a hair’s difference between any of the Democrats on any substantive issues.

All the Democrats are for higher taxes. All of them favor Hillary’s socialist health care plan. All of them are for higher pay for teachers and nurses — and no pay at all for anyone in the pharmaceutical or oil industries, especially Halliburton executives, who should be sent to Guantanamo. All the Democrats believe the way to strike fear in the hearts of the terrorists is for the federal government to invest heavily in windmills.

All the Democrats oppose the war. And all the Democrats who took a position on the war before it began were for it, but now believe that everything Bush did from that moment forward has been bad! bad! bad! This is with the exception of Joe Lieberman who, as an observant Jew, is forbidden to backpedal after sundown on Fridays. Representing a large flabby chunk of the Kennedy wing, Ted Kennedy gave a speech last week in which he called the liberation of Iraq a “political product.” Then again, Ted Kennedy calls Chivas Regal “that life-sustaining liquid.”

Finally, all the candidates are willing to sell out any of these other issues in service of the secret burning desire of all Democrats: abortion on demand. If they could just figure out a way to abort babies using solar power, that’s all we’d ever hear about.

For all his talk, even Dick Gephardt was willing to abandon blue-collar workers in a heartbeat. The Teamsters haven’t asked for much, only two big votes in the past decade: (1) Oppose NAFTA, and (2) support drilling on a small, godforsaken patch of the Alaskan wilderness, as the people who actually live there have been begging us to do for decades. Like all the other Democrats, Gephardt voted against the Teamsters — but with Barbra Streisand — to oppose drilling in the godforsaken Alaskan wilderness.

When Gephardt entered politics he was pro-life. But then, like Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Dennis Kucinich and scores of other Democrats with national ambitions, he quickly figured out that position wasn’t, well ... viable. In short order he had adopted the whole NARAL party line. That’s how you woo old-time union Democrats.

On Monday night, Gephardt was shocked to discover that blue-collar Democrats have gone the way of patriotic Democrats: They’re all Republicans now. (But thanks for that NAFTA vote a decade ago!)

You knew Gephardt was toast when even responsible journalists have started using words like “decent” and “solid” to describe the two-faced weasel from Missouri. Though I suppose “decent” has a pretty broad meaning in a party that still admires Bill Clinton.

The Iowa caucus was just another one of the Democrats’ ongoing public debates about how to fake out the American people. Fifty percent of Iowa Democrats participating in the caucus said they “strongly disapprove” of the war with Iraq and another 25% “somewhat disapprove.”

But more important to Democrats than their pacifism was “electability.” The entire Iowa electorate was committed to the proposition: How do we fool the neighbors? In the end, the caucus-goers chose a decorated war hero who voted in favor of the very war that 75% of them oppose. So much for the anti-war fever sweeping the country. The Democrats aren’t even man enough to run a genuine coward for president.

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Just A Gigolo (040128)

AFTER THE New Hampshire primary, Dennis Kucinich’s new slogan is: “.001% of America Can’t Be Wrong!” John Edwards’ new slogan is: “Vote for Me or We’ll See You in Court.” Joe Lieberman’s new slogan is: “Sixth Place Is Not an Option.” (Bumper sticker version: “Ask Me About My Delegate.”) Al Sharpton’s new slogan is “Hello? Room Service?” Wesley Clark’s new slogan is: “Leading America’s War on Fetuses.” Howard Dean’s new slogan is: “I Want to Be Your President ... And So Do I!”

That leaves John Kerry (new slogan: “Nous Sommes Nombre Un!”), who is winning Democratic voters in droves on the basis of his superior ability to taunt George Bush for his lack of combat experience. Like every war hero I’ve ever met, John Kerry seems content to spend his days bragging about his battlefield exploits. Wait, wait ... Let me correct that last sentence: like no war hero I’ve ever met ...

As everyone has heard approximately 1 billion times by now, Kerry boasts that he has REAL experience with aircraft carriers, and if Bush wants to run on national security, then ... BRING IT ON!

I note that when George Bush directed that precise phrase at Islamic terrorists who yearn to slaughter American women and children, liberals were enraged at the macho posturing of it. But they feel “Bring it on!” is a perfectly appropriate expression when directed at a dangerous warmonger like George Bush. (“Bring it on!” was deemed better than Kerry’s first impulse, “Let’s get busy, sister!”)

Kerry was indisputably brave in Vietnam, and it’s kind of cute to see Democrats pretend to admire military service. Physical courage, like chastity, is something liberals usually deride, but are tickled when it accidentally manifests itself in one of their own. One has to stand in awe of Kerry’s military service 33 years ago. Of course, that’s where it ends, including with Kerry — inasmuch as, upon his return from war in 1970, he promptly began trashing his fellow Vietnam vets by calling them genocidal murderers.

But if Bush can’t talk to Kerry about the horrors of war, then Kerry sure as hell can’t talk to anyone about the plight of the middle class. Kerry’s life experience consists of living off other men’s money by marrying their wives and daughters.

For over 30 years, Kerry’s primary occupation has been stalking lonely heiresses. Not to get back to his combat experience, but Kerry sees a room full of wealthy widows as “a target-rich environment.” This is a guy whose experience dealing with tax problems is based on spending his entire adult life being supported by rich women. What does a kept man know about taxes?

In 1970, Kerry married into the family of Julia Thorne — a family estimated to be worth about $300 million. She got depressed, so he promptly left her and was soon seen catting around with Hollywood starlets, mostly while the cad was still married. (Apparently, JFK really was his mentor.) Thorne is well-bred enough to say nothing ill of her Lothario ex-husband. He is, after all, the father of her children — a fact that never seemed to constrain him.

When Kerry was about to become the latest Heinz family charity, he sought to have his marriage to Thorne annulled, despite the fact that it had produced two children. It seems his second meal ticket, Teresa Heinz, wanted the first marriage annulled — and Heinz is worth more than $700 million. Kerry claims he will stand up to powerful interests, but he can’t even stand up to his wife.

Heinz made Kerry sign a prenuptial agreement, presumably aware of how careless he is with other people’s property, such as other people’s Vietnam War medals, which Kerry threw on the ground during a 1971 anti-war demonstration.

At pains to make Kerry sound like a normal American, his campaign has described how Kerry risked everything, mortgaging his home in Boston to help pay for his presidential campaign. Technically, Kerry took out a $6 million mortgage for “his share” of “the family’s home” — which was bought with the Heinz family fortune. (Why should he spend his own money? He didn’t throw away his own medals.) I’m sure the average working stiff in Massachusetts can relate to a guy who borrows $6 million against his house to pay for TV ads.

Kerry’s campaign has stoutly insisted that he will pay off the mortgage himself, with no help from his rich wife. Let’s see: According to tax returns released by his campaign, in 2002, Kerry’s income was $144,091. But as The Washington Post recently reported, even a $5 million mortgage paid back over 30 years at favorable interest rates would cost $30,389 a month — or $364,668 a year.

The Democrats’ joy at nominating Kerry is perplexing. To be sure, liberals take a peculiar, wrathful pleasure in supporting pacifist military types. And Kerry’s life story is not without a certain feral aggression. But if we’re going to determine fitness for office based on life experience, Kerry clearly has no experience dealing with problems of typical Americans since he is a cad and a gigolo living in the lap of other men’s money.

Kerry is like some character in a Balzac novel, an adventurer twirling the end of his mustache and preying on rich women. This low-born poseur with his threadbare pseudo-Brahmin family bought a political career with one rich woman’s money, dumped her, and made off with another heiress to enable him to run for president. If Democrats want to talk about middle-class tax cuts, couldn’t they nominate someone who hasn’t been a poodle to rich women for past 33 years?

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Boobs In The News (040204)

JUST TO give you a snapshot of the current Democratic Party, in the primaries this week, Dennis Kucinich got three times as many votes in North Dakota as Joe Lieberman did.

After that, Lieberman quit the race. In sympathy with Lieberman and facing similar odds — I’m quitting the race too. To my supporters: Hey, we didn’t go all the way, but just look how much we accomplished! In his concession speech, Lieberman thanked each one of the Democratic presidential candidates for contributing to the race and thanked Al Sharpton in particular for inciting no additional violence against the Jews.

Former front-runner Howard Dean sat out this week’s primaries, but still managed to make news by ridiculing the FCC’s plan to investigate MTV’s halftime show at the Super Bowl. Dean pronounced the proposed investigation “silly.” He explained that, as a doctor, a naked breast is “not exactly an unusual phenomenon for me.”

That’s an interesting standard. Presumably a primetime exhibition of Janet Jackson having a full pelvic exam and pap smear would not be “exactly an unusual phenomenon” for Dean either. Let’s just be grateful Dean’s not a proctologist.

Meanwhile, the rest of the country was not so copacetic about being flashed with what The New York Times called Janet Jackson’s “middle-aged woman’s breast.” Janet Jackson said she decided to add “the reveal” following the final rehearsal, which I found pretty shocking. Not the reveal — the fact that the number in question was actually rehearsed. Even CBS executives were enraged by MTV’s halftime show, saying they could have gotten the identical show from National Geographic for a fraction of the price.

Speaking of boobs, after sustaining his first losses in two primaries Tuesday night, senator and trophy husband John Kerry has said he’s going to concentrate on solidifying the support of his base. People like David Gest, Claus von Bulow and Tom Arnold. Liberals laughed at George Bush for citing Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher, but are impressed that John Kerry’s favorite philosopher is Louis Prima (“Just a Gigolo”).

Kerry thinks people are dying to hear his economic plan. In fact, the only economic plan most male voters want to hear about is how Kerry snookered two babes worth hundreds of millions of dollars into marrying him.

Kerry may as well start giving out dating tips. He’s running out of other ideas. A few weeks ago, The Washington Post reported that Kerry has taken more money from paid lobbyists than any other senator over the past 15 years. In a face-saving move, Senator Botox has quietly dropped the part of his stump speech where he inveighs against Washington special interests: “We’re coming, you’re going, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Interestingly, these were also Senator Kerry’s words to his first wife after he hooked up with Teresa Heinz.

Not only that, but according to Kerry’s principal cheerleaders — Teddy Kennedy and The New York Times — Kerry absolutely refuses to talk about his Vietnam service. Kennedy insists that Kerry “just won’t talk about” Vietnam. Apparently Vietnam was a brief, death-defying interlude that Kerry would simply prefer not to discuss. You might say it’s his Chappaquiddick.

In the objective part of a factual news story, The New York Times reported that Kerry “has been careful to avoid being seen as exploiting his service politically.” He simply will not do it. This came as a shock to most Americans who were discovering for the very first time that Kerry had served in Vietnam.

While there is indisputably nothing cooler than having fought for your country, John Kerry’s status as a Vietnam veteran is unlikely to change a single vote. Military guys will support Bush, and liberals don’t admire bravery. The only reason Democrats will tolerate someone who fought on the same side as the United States is to fuel their rage against Bush.

After starting the Vietnam war, the Democratic Party suddenly decided it was an illegal, immoral, undeclared war, and soldiers like John Kerry were baby killers. Today, vast majorities of Democratic primary voters tell pollsters they opposed the war in Iraq — which their darling Kerry voted for. Kerry’s sole appeal is that he gives pacifist cowards cover to fume about Bush.

Just a few years ago, the Democrats thought a pot-smoking draft-dodger would make a splendid president. But now they are enflamed at the thought that Bush didn’t fight in Vietnam! In other words, it’s honorable to march in anti-American protests in Europe when America is at war, but not to be a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard.

Democrats know they can’t beat Bush, but they intend to enjoy being hysterical about him throughout the campaign. Calling Bush a draft-dodger, which he is not, will join the Democrats’ list of other cogent, reasoned arguments, such as “You’re stupid” and “Halliburton!”

Democrats think they invented war heroes, but being a war hero didn’t help Bob Dole. It didn’t help George Herbert Walker Bush. It didn’t help John McCain. The Democrats didn’t invent war heroes. What they invented is the scam of deploying war heroes to argue for surrender.

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Cleland Drops A Political Grenade (040211)

FORMER Sen. Max Cleland is the Democrats’ designated hysteric about George Bush’s National Guard service. A triple amputee and Vietnam veteran, Cleland is making the rounds on talk TV, basking in the affection of liberals who have suddenly become jock-sniffers for war veterans, and working himself into a lather about President Bush’s military service. Citing such renowned military experts as Molly Ivins, Cleland indignantly demands further investigation into Bush’s service with the Texas Air National Guard.

Bush’s National Guard service is the most thoroughly investigated event since the Kennedy assassination. But the Democrats will accept only two possible conclusions to their baseless accusations: (1) Bush was “AWOL,” or (2) the matter needs further investigation.

Thirty years ago, Bush was granted an honorable discharge from the National Guard –– which would seem to put the matter to rest. But liberals want proof that Bush actually deserved his honorable discharge. (Since when did the party of Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd get so obsessed with honor?)

On “Hardball” Monday night, Cleland demanded to see Bush’s pay stubs for the disputed period of time, May 1972 to May 1973. “If he was getting paid for his weekend warrior work,” Cleland said, “he should have some pay stubs to show it.”

The next day, the White House produced the pay stubs. This confirmed what has been confirmed 1 million times before: After taking the summer off, Bush reported for duty nine times between Nov. 29, 1972, and May 24, 1973 — more than enough times to fulfill his Guard duties. (And nine times more than Bill Clinton, Barney Frank or Chuck Schumer did during the same period.)

All this has been reported — with documentation — many times by many news organizations. George magazine had Bush’s National Guard records 3 1/2 years ago.

All available evidence keeps confirming Bush’s honorable service with the Guard, which leads liberals to conclude ... further investigation is needed! No evidence will ever be enough evidence. That Bush skipped out on his National Guard service is one of liberals’ many nondisprovable beliefs, like global warming.

Cleland also expressed outrage that Bush left the National Guard nine months early in 1973 to go to Harvard Business School. On “Hardball,” Cleland testily remarked: “I just know a whole lot of veterans who would have loved to have worked things out with the military and adjusted their tour of duty.” (Cleland already knows one — Al Gore!)

When Bush left the National Guard in 1973 to go to business school, the war was over. It might as well have been 1986. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had already lost the war, and President Nixon had ended it with the Paris peace accords in January. If Bush had demanded active combat, there was no war to send him to.

To put this in perspective, by 1973, John Kerry had already accused American soldiers of committing war crimes in Vietnam, thrown someone else’s medals to the ground in an anti-war demonstration, and married his first heiress. Bill Clinton had just finished three years of law school and was about to embark upon a political career — which would include campaign events with Max Cleland.

Moreover, if we’re going to start delving into exactly who did what back then, maybe Max Cleland should stop allowing Democrats to portray him as a war hero who lost his limbs taking enemy fire on the battlefields of Vietnam.

Cleland lost three limbs in an accident during a routine noncombat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends. He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up. He could have done that at Fort Dix. In fact, Cleland could have dropped a grenade on his foot as a National Guardsman –- or what Cleland sneeringly calls “weekend warriors.” Luckily for Cleland’s political career and current pomposity about Bush, he happened to do it while in Vietnam.

There is more than a whiff of dishonesty in how Cleland is presented to the American people. Terry McAuliffe goes around saying, “Max Cleland, a triple amputee who left three limbs on the battlefield of Vietnam,” was thrown out of office because Republicans “had the audacity to call Max Cleland unpatriotic.” Mr. Cleland, a word of advice: When a slimy weasel like Terry McAuliffe is vouching for your combat record, it’s time to sound “retreat” on that subject.

Needless to say, no one ever challenged Cleland’s “patriotism.” His performance in the Senate was the issue, which should not have come as a bolt out of the blue inasmuch as he was running for re-election to the Senate. Sen. Cleland had refused to vote for the Homeland Security bill unless it was chock-full of pro-union perks that would have jeopardized national security. (“OH MY GOD! A HIJACKED PLANE IS HEADED FOR THE WHITE HOUSE!” “Sorry, I’m on my break. Please call back in two hours.”)

The good people of Georgia — who do not need lectures on admiring military service — gave Cleland one pass for being a Vietnam veteran. He didn’t get a lifetime pass.

Indeed, if Cleland had dropped a grenade on himself at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a U.S. senator in the first place. Maybe he’d be the best pharmacist in Atlanta, but not a U.S. senator. He got into office on the basis of serving in Vietnam and was thrown out for his performance as a senator.

Cleland wore the uniform, he was in Vietnam, and he has shown courage by going on to lead a productive life. But he didn’t “give his limbs for his country,” or leave them “on the battlefield.” There was no bravery involved in dropping a grenade on himself with no enemy troops in sight. That could have happened in the Texas National Guard — which Cleland denigrates while demanding his own sanctification.

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File Under: ‘Omission Accomplished’ (040218)

LIBERALS are hopping mad about last week’s column. Amid angry insinuations that I “lied” about Sen. Max Cleland, I was attacked on the Senate floor by Sen. Jack Reed, Molly Ivins called my column “error-ridden,” and Al Hunt called it a “lie.” Joe Klein said I was the reason liberals were being hysterical about George Bush’s National Guard service.

I would have left it at one column, but apparently Democrats want to go another round. With their Clintonesque formulations, my detractors make it a little difficult to know what “lie” I’m supposed to be contesting, but they are clearly implying — without stating — that Cleland lost his limbs in combat.

It is simply a fact that Max Cleland was not injured by enemy fire in Vietnam. He was not in combat, he was not — as Al Hunt claimed — on a reconnaissance mission, and he was not in the battle of Khe Sanh, as many others have implied. He picked up an American grenade on a routine noncombat mission and the grenade exploded.

In Cleland’s own words: “I didn’t see any heroism in all that. It wasn’t an act of heroism. I didn’t know the grenade was live. It was an act of fate.” That is why Cleland didn’t win a Purple Heart, which is given to those wounded in combat. Liberals are not angry because I “lied”; they’re angry because I told the truth.

I wouldn’t press the point except that Democrats have deliberately “sexed up” the circumstances of Cleland’s accident in the service of slandering the people of Georgia, the National Guard and George Bush. Cleland has questioned Bush’s fitness for office because he served in the National Guard but did not go to Vietnam.

And yet the poignant truth of Cleland’s own accident demonstrates the commitment and bravery of all members of the military who come into contact with ordnance. Cleland’s injury was of the routine variety that occurs whenever young men and weapons are put in close proximity — including in the National Guard.

But it is a vastly more glorious story to claim that Cleland was injured by enemy fire rather than in a freak accident. So after Saxby Chambliss beat Cleland in the 2002 Georgia Senate race, liberals set to work developing a carefully crafted myth about Cleland’s accident. Among many other examples, last November, Eric Boehlert wrote in Salon: “(D)uring the siege of Khe Sanh, Cleland lost both his legs and his right hand to a Viet Cong grenade.”

Sadly for them, dozens and dozens of newspapers have already printed the truth. Liberals simply can’t grasp the problem Lexis-Nexis poses to their incessant lying. They ought to stick to their specialty — hysterical overreaction. The truth is not their forte.

One of the most detailed accounts of Cleland’s life was written by Jill Zuckman in a lengthy piece for The Boston Globe Sunday magazine on Aug. 3, 1997:

Finally, the battle at Khe Sanh was over. Cleland, 25 years old, and two members of his team were now ordered to set up a radio relay station at the division assembly area, 15 miles away. The three gathered antennas, radios and a generator and made the 15-minute helicopter trip east. After unloading the equipment, Cleland climbed back into the helicopter for the ride back. But at the last minute, he decided to stay and have a beer with some friends. As the helicopter was lifting off, he shouted to the pilot that he was staying behind and jumped several feet to the ground.

Cleland hunched over to avoid the whirring blades and ran. Turning to face the helicopter, he caught sight of a grenade on the ground where the chopper had perched. It must be mine, he thought, moving toward it. He reached for it with his right arm just as it exploded, slamming him back and irreparably altering his plans for a bright, shining future.

Interestingly, all news accounts told the exact same story for 30 years — including that Cleland had stopped to have beer with friends when the accident occurred (a fact that particularly irked Al Hunt).

“He told the pilot he was going to stay awhile. Maybe have a few beers with friends. ... Then Cleland looked down and saw a grenade. Where’d that come from? He walked toward it, bent down, and crossed the line between before and after.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Dec. 5, 1999)

“(Cleland) didn’t step on a land mine. He wasn’t wounded in a firefight. He couldn’t blame the Viet Cong or friendly fire. The Silver Star and Bronze Star medals he received only embarrassed him. He was no hero. He blew himself up.” (The Baltimore Sun, Oct. 24, 1999)

“Cleland was no war hero, but his sacrifice was great. ... Democratic Senate candidate Max Cleland is a victim of war, not a casualty of combat. He lost three limbs on a long-forgotten hill near Khe Sanh because of some American’s mistake ...” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sept. 29, 1996)

The story started to change only last year when the Democrats began citing Cleland’s lost Senate seat as proof that Republicans hate war heroes. Indeed, until the myth of Republicans attacking Cleland for his lack of “patriotism” became central to the Democrats’ narrative against George Bush, Cleland spoke only honorably and humbly about his accident. “How did I become a war hero?” he said to The Boston Globe reporter in 1997. “Simple. The grenade went off.”

Cleland even admitted that, but for his accident, he would have “probably been some frustrated history teacher, teaching American government at some junior college.” (OK, I got that wrong: I said he’d probably be a pharmacist.)

Cleland’s true heroism came after the war, when he went on to build a productive life for himself. That is a story of inspiration and courage. He shouldn’t let the Democrats tarnish an admirable life by “sexing up” his record in order to better attack George Bush.

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W.W.J.K: Who Would Jesus Kill? (040310)

WILLIAM SAFIRE, The New York Times’ in-house “conservative” — who endorsed Bill Clinton in 1992, like so many conservatives — was sure Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ” would incite anti-Semitic violence. Thus far, the pogroms have failed to materialize.

With all the subtlety of a Mack truck, Safire called Gibson’s movie a version of “the medieval ‘passion play,’ preserved in pre-Hitler Germany at Oberammergau, a source of the hatred of all Jews as ‘Christ killers.’” (Certainly every Aryan Nation skinhead murderer I’ve ever met was also a devoted theater buff and “passion play” aficionado.)

The “passion play” has been put on in Germany since at least 1633. I guess 1633 would be “pre-Hitler.” In addition, Moses walked the Earth “pre-Hitler.” The wheel was invented “pre-Hitler.” People ate soup “pre-Hitler.” Referring to the passion play as “pre-Hitler” is a slightly fancier version of every adolescent’s favorite argument: You’re like Hitler!

Despite repeated suggestions from liberals — including the in-house “conservative” and Clinton-supporter at the Times — Hitler is not what happens when you gin up Christians. Like Timothy McVeigh, the Columbine killers and the editorial board of The New York Times, Hitler detested Christians.

Indeed, Hitler denounced Christianity as an “invention of the Jew” and vowed that the “organized lie (of Christianity) must be smashed” so that the state would “remain the absolute master.” Interestingly, this was the approach of all the great mass murderers of the last century — all of whom were atheists: Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

In the United States, more than 30 million babies have been killed by abortion since Roe v. Wade, vs. seven abortion providers killed. Yeah — keep your eye on those Christians!

But according to liberals, it’s Christianity that causes murder. (And don’t get them started on Zionism.) Like their Muslim friends still harping about the Crusades, liberals won’t “move on” from the Spanish Inquisition. In the entire 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition, about 30,000 people were killed. That’s an average of less than 100 a year. Stalin knocked off that many kulaks before breakfast.

But Safire argues that viewers of “The Passion” will see the Jewish mob and think: “Who was responsible for this cruel humiliation? What villain deserves to be punished?”

Let’s see: It was a Roman who ordered Christ’s execution, and Romans who did all the flaying, taunting and crucifying. Perhaps Safire is indulging in his own negative stereotyping about Jews by assuming they simply viewed Romans as “the help.”

But again I ask: Does anyone at the Times have the vaguest notion what Christianity is? (Besides people who go around putting up nativity scenes that have to be taken down by court order?) The religion that toppled the Roman Empire — anyone?

Jesus’ suffering and death is not a Hatfields-and-McCoys story demanding retaliation. The gist of the religion that transformed the world is: God’s only son came to Earth to take the punishment we deserved.

If the Jews had somehow managed to block Jesus’ crucifixion and He had died in old age of natural causes, there would be no salvation through Christ and no Christianity. Whatever possible responses there may be to that story, this is not one of them: Damn those Jews for being a part of God’s plan to save my eternal soul!

Gibson didn’t insert Jews into the story for some Machiavellian, racist reason. Christ was a Jew crucified by Romans at the request of other Jews in Jerusalem. I suppose if Gibson had moved the story to suburban Cleveland and portrayed Republican logging executives crucifying Christ, the left would calm down. But it simply didn’t happen that way.

Of course, the original text is no excuse in Hollywood. The villains of Tom Clancy’s book “The Sum of All Fears” were recently transformed from Muslim terrorists to neo-Nazis for the movie version. You wouldn’t want to upset the little darlings. They might do something rash like slaughter 3,000 innocent American civilians in a single day. The only religion that can be constantly defamed and insulted is the one liberals pretend to be terrified of.

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Al-Qaida Barks, The Spanish Fly (040317)

AFTER A terrorist attack by al-Qaida that left hundreds of their fellow countrymen dead, Spanish voters immediately voted to give the terrorists what they want — a Socialist government that opposes America’s war on terrorism. Al-Qaida has changed a government.

Until the bombings last week, the center-right Popular Party of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar had been sailing to victory. But then the al-Qaida bombs went off and Spaniards turned out in droves to vote against the government that had been a staunch Bush ally in the war on terrorism. (I guess it’s OK for a Spanish Socialist to “politicize” a terrorist attack just to get elected.)

In a videotaped message, the al-Qaida “military commander” for Europe claimed credit for the bombings, saying that the terrorist attack was meant to punish Spain for supporting the war in Iraq. The message came as a total shock to liberals who have been furiously insisting that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with al-Qaida.

Apparently al-Qaida didn’t think so. After the Madrid bombings, it looks like liberals and terrorists will have to powwow on whether there was an Iraq/al-Qaida link. Two hundred dead Spaniards say there was.

The New York Times called the Spanish election “an exercise in healthy democracy.” And an ATM withdrawal with a gun to your head is a “routine banking transaction.” Instead of vowing to fight the people who killed their fellow citizens, the Spanish decided to vote with al-Qaida on the war. A murdering terrorist organization said, “Jump!” and an entire country answered, “How high?”

One Spaniard who decided to switch his vote in reaction to the bombings told the Times: “Maybe the Socialists will get our troops out of Iraq and al-Qaida will forget about Spain so we will be less frightened.” That’s the fighting spirit! If the violent Basque separatist group only killed more people, Spain would surely give them what they want, too.

After his stunning upset victory, Socialist Party leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero vowed to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq if the United States does not turn over Iraq to the United Nations. He also vowed that all of Spain’s remaining trains will run on time.

Zapatero said the war with Iraq had “only caused violence” and “there were no reasons for it.” One reason for the war, which would seem to be a sufficient reason for a more manly country, is that the people who just slaughtered 200 Spaniards didn’t like it.

But, like the Democrats, the Spanish hate George Bush more than they hate the terrorists. Zapatero said the war in Iraq was based on “lies” and called on President Bush and Tony Blair to “do some reflection and self-criticism.” So don’t think of the Spanish election as a setback for freedom — think of it as a preview of life under President John Kerry!

What kind of lunatic would blame Bush for 200 Spaniards killed by al-Qaida bombs? Oh wait — Howard Dean just did. Summarizing the views of Socialists everywhere, Dean said: “The president was the one who dragged our troops to Iraq, which apparently has been a factor in the death of 200 Spaniards over the weekend.”

Yes, with 1,700 dead or injured Spaniards, George Bush certainly has some explaining to do. What have the terrorists ever done besides kill and maim thousands of innocent civilians? Bush isn’t fully funding “No Child Left Behind,” for God’s sake!

Before he was put into office because he supported policies favored by al-Qaida terrorists, appeasement candidate Zapatero said: “I want Kerry to win.” Kerry is also supported by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, who broadcasts Kerry speeches over Radio Pyongyang with favorable commentary.

So now Kerry really does have two foreign leaders on record supporting him: a Socialist terrorist-appeaser and a Marxist mass murderer who dresses like Bea Arthur.

Zapatero predicted that his own victory would help the anti-war party “in the duel between Bush and Kerry.” Would you mind repeating that, sir? I was distracted by that large white flag you’re waving.

However Spain’s election affects Americans, we can be sure that Spain’s surrender to terrorism hasn’t been lost on the terrorists. It’s difficult to imagine the American people responding to a new terrorist attack by deciding to placate the terrorists, as the Spanish did. A mollusk wouldn’t react that way to an attack. Only a liberal could be so perverse.

No matter how many of our European allies may surrender to the terrorists, America will never be alone. This is a country founded in a covenant with God by people who had to flee Europe to do it.

Sailing to the New World in 1630 on the ship Arabella, the Puritans’ leader and governor, John Winthrop, said Americans were entering into a covenant with God to create a “city upon a hill.” We would be judged by all the world if we ever broke that covenant. But if we walked with God, “We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when 10 of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies.” He has intervened in our affairs before, such as in 1776, 1861 and 1980.

With the Spanish election, we are witnessing a capitulation to savagery that makes full-scale war inevitable. The Democratic candidate wants to represent godless Europeans. The Republican candidate wants to represent Americans. As Winthrop said: “The eyes of all people are upon us.”

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Crazy-Like-A-Fox News Viewer (040512)

Last week, John S. Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, delivered a lecture during “Ethics Week” of the Society of Professional Journalists. The speaker has not yet been announced for “Abstinence Week” of the Society of Professional Whores.

Showing the fierce independence of the mainstream media, Carroll’s speech was yet another liberal rant about the threat to freedom and democracy posed by the Fox News Channel. Carroll cited the hoax poll liberals quote every 10 minutes that purports to show people who watch Fox News are ignorant retards.

The poll was taken by the “Program on International Policy Attitudes,” which specializes in polling Americans about pointless little factoids loved by liberals. One PIPA poll, for example, asked whether “so far this year, more Israelis or more Palestinians have died in the conflict, or is the number roughly equal?” To the shock and dismay of the researchers, “only 32% of respondents were aware that more deaths have occurred on the Palestinian side than on the Israeli side.”

There was no poll question about which group was more likely to die as a result of suicide bombings against innocent civilians and which as a result of strategic strikes against known terrorists. During World War II, PIPA would have been issuing indignant press releases announcing that “only 32% of respondents are aware Hitler is kind to his dog.”

The most famous PIPA poll claims to demonstrate that “the Fox News audience showed the highest average rate of misperceptions” about the war with Iraq — by which they mean “misperceptions of pointless liberal factoids about the war with Iraq.” You say the average American can’t regurgitate liberal talking points on command? Well, I’ll be darned! And the public schools are trying so hard!

The poll asked questions like this: “Is it your impression that the U.S. has or has not found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al-Qaida terrorist organization?” Sixty-seven percent of Fox News Channel viewers said the United States had found evidence of a link. Liberals view this as a “misperception.”

Admittedly the evidence may not be as “clear” as the evidence proving a link between Osama bin Laden and Halliburton, but among other evidence connecting Iraq to al-Qaida, consider just these three items.

Last year papers were found in Iraqi intelligence headquarters documenting Saddam’s feverish efforts to establish a working relationship with al-Qaida. In response to Iraq’s generous invitation to pay all travel and hotel expenses, a top aide to Osama bin Laden visited Iraq in 1998, bearing a message from bin Laden. The meeting went so well that bin Laden’s aide stayed for a week. Iraq intelligence officers sent a message back to bin Laden, the documents note, concerning “the future of our relationship.”

In addition, according to Czech intelligence, a few months before the 9-11 attacks, Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague.

Finally, a Clinton-appointed federal judge, U.S. District Court judge Harold Baer, has made a legal finding that Iraq was behind the 9-11 attacks — a ruling upheld by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals last October. When some judge discovers a right to gay marriage in a 200-year-old document written by John Adams, Americans are forced to treat the decision like the God-given truth. But when a federal judge issues a decision concluding that Iraq was behind the 9-11 attacks, it is a “misperception” being foisted on the nation by Fox New Channel.

Interestingly, liberals refuse to believe Czech intelligence on the Prague meeting ... because the CIA doesn’t believe it. Apparently, this is the lone, singular assertion by the CIA that liberals wholeheartedly trust. The CIA also concluded that evidence of WMDs in Iraq was — in the words of CIA director George Tenet — a “slam dunk case.” But liberals hysterically denounce that CIA conclusion as a “misperception” created by Fox News Channel.

Thus another question in the PIPA poll was this: “Since the war with Iraq ended, is it your impression that the U.S. has or has not found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?” Thirty-three percent of Fox News viewers said they believed the U.S. had found WMDs, compared to only 11% of those smart NPR listeners. (How about asking NPR listeners which kills more children — handguns or buckets?)

By “weapons of mass destruction,” what liberals mean is: missiles pointed at Washington, D.C., with their “Ready to Fire” lights blinking ominously and their warhead payloads clearly marked “Weapons of Mass Destruction! Next Stop, The Great Satan America!” — basically what you might see on an episode of the original Batman TV series. When we didn’t find that, the “Bush lied, kids died!” screaming began.

David Kay’s report said we hadn’t found “stockpiles” of WMDs in Iraq, but we have found:

— chemical and biological weapons systems, plans, “recipes” and equipment, all of which could have resumed production on a moment’s notice with Saddam’s approval;

— reference strains of a wide variety of biological-weapons agents (found in the home of a prominent Iraqi biological warfare scientist);

— new research on brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin;

— a prison laboratory complex for testing biological weapons on humans;

— long-range missiles (prohibited by United Nations resolutions) suitable for delivering WMDs;

— documents showing Saddam tried to obtain long-range ballistic missiles from North Korea;

— facilities for manufacturing fuel propellant useful only for prohibited Scud-variant missiles.

Sorry to bore Fox News viewers with these facts. I’m doing it as a favor to readers of the Los Angeles Times.

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This Is History Calling – Quick, Get Me Rewrite! (040603)

The invasion of Iraq has gone fabulously well, exceeding everyone’s expectations – certainly exceeding the doomsday scenarios of liberals. The Bush-haters’ pre-war predictions – hundreds of thousands dead, chemical attacks on our troops, retaliatory terrorist attacks in the United States, an invasion by Turkey, oil facilities in flames and apocalyptic environmental consequences – have proven to be about as accurate as Bill Clinton’s “legally accurate” statements about Monica Lewinsky.

Inasmuch as they can’t cite any actual failures in Iraq, liberals busy themselves by claiming the administration somehow “misled” them about the war.

As I understand it, there would be no lunatics shouting “Bush lied, kids died!” if Paul Wolfowitz had admitted before the war that Saddam “probably hadn’t rebuilt his nuclear program” – the one that was unilaterally blown up by the Israelis in 1981, thank God. What Wolfowitz should have said is that “proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the way you think about law enforcement, and I think we’re much closer to being in a state of war than being in a judicial proceeding.”

Liberals would be all sugar and sweetness if only – instead of blathering about nukes, nukes, nukes – Wolfowitz had forthrightly conceded back in 2002 that “there’s an awful lot we don’t know, an awful lot that we may never know, and we’ve got to think differently about standards of proof here.”

Also, I assume we wouldn’t be hearing that the administration is frustrated by its failure to instantly create a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq if Wolfowitz had said something like, “[W]ell, Japan isn’t Jeffersonian democracy, either.” If only Wolfowitz had lowered expectations by saying that “even if [Iraq] makes it only Romanian style, that’s still such an advance over anywhere else in the Arab world.”

Also, the media would have no grounds for complaint if Wolfowitz had said Iraqi democracy “is not the president’s declared purpose of ‘regime change’ in Iraq, which is to get rid of a very bad man.” If only he had mentioned that Saddam Hussein “has been known to have children tortured in front of their parents.”

But guess what? That is exactly what Wolfowitz did say! All these quotes are from a Sept. 22, 2002, article in the New York Times magazine written by Bill Keller, now editor-in-chief at the seditious rag. The last paragraph about Saddam’s torture of children are Keller’s paraphrases of Wolfowitz; the rest are direct quotes from the wily neoconservative himself.

But you’d have to put liberals in Abu Ghraib to get them to tell the truth about what people were saying before the war – and then the problem would be that most liberals would enjoy those activities. (No torture has yet been devised that could get a liberal to mention the poor, beleaguered Kurds dancing in the streets because Saddam is gone.)

To refresh everyone’s recollection, before the war began, the Democrats’ argument was that Iraq was not an “imminent” threat to the United States. The Republicans’ argument was: By the time the threat is imminent, Chicago will be gone. Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address specifically responded to the Democrats’ demand that we wait for nuclear and biological threats to be “imminent” before we act. But now, liberals want to have their Nigerian yellow cake and eat it, too.

In January 2003 – or three months after Sen. Tom Daschle voted for the Iraq war resolution hoping to fool the voters of South Dakota this November – he was horrified that Bush seemed to be actually contemplating war with Iraq! According to Daschle, Bush should have waited for Iraq to grow into a problem of crisis proportions before deciding to do anything – citing the Cuban missile crisis as a model to be emulated. “If we have proof of nuclear and biological weapons,” Daschle asked, “why doesn’t [Bush] show that proof to the world as President Kennedy did 40 years ago when he sent Adlai Stevenson to show the world U.S. photographs of offensive missiles in Cuba?”

The answer is and was: Because by the time Saddam had nuclear weapons, we wouldn’t be able to do anything. That’s why it’s known as the “Cuban missile crisis,” not the “Cuban missile triumph.”

Before the war, Democrats were carping about the Bush administration’s inability to predict the future and tell us everything that would happen in Iraq after the war. On MSNBC in September 2002, for example, Robert Menendez, D-N.J., was complaining that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld “didn’t have an answer for what happens in a post-Saddam Iraq.” But now liberals are acting as if the Bush administration said they knew exactly what would happen after liberating a country from a 30-year barbaric dictatorship – and got it wrong.

The good news is: Liberals’ anti-war hysteria seems to have run its course. I base this conclusion on Al Gore’s lunatic anti-war speech last week. Gore always comes out swinging just as an issue is about to go south. He’s the stereotypical white guy always clapping on the wrong beat. Gore switched from being a pro-defense Democrat to a lefty peacenik – just before the 9-11 attack. He grew a beard – just in time for an attack on the nation by fundamentalist Muslims. He endorsed Howard Dean – just as the orange-capped Deaniacs were punching themselves out. Gore even went out and got really fat – just before America officially gave up carbs. This guy is always leaping into the mosh pit at the precise moment the crowd parts. Mark my words: Now that good old Al has come lunging in, the anti-war movement is dead.

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The Unsubstantiated Heroism of Hanoi John (040901)

The New York Times has a new typewriter key for the Swift Boat Veterans story that reads: “the unsubstantiated charges of the Swift Boat Veterans.”

Unsubstantiated? It was Kerry – not the Swift Boat Veterans – who told The Washington Post: “I wish they had a delete button on LexisNexis.” The Swift Boat Veterans haven’t been forced to retract any of their story. Meanwhile, John Kerry has been issuing about a retraction a day since the Swift Boat Veterans started talking.

Most recently, Kerry has had to backpedal on the circumstances surrounding his first Purple Heart. Kerry has described the action on Dec. 2, 1968, for which he received a Purple Heart as his “first intense combat.” The Swift Boat veterans say Kerry came under no enemy fire that day and that his injury, such as it was, resulted from the ricochet of a grenade fired by Kerry himself. (This rules out the Purple Heart but does qualify him for another “Boy, is my face red” citation, with clusters.)

Among the eyewitnesses who say Kerry came under no enemy fire on Dec. 2, 1968, is John Kerry himself. According to Douglas Brinkley’s book, “Tour of Duty,” Kerry wrote in his diary nine days later, on Dec. 11, 1968: “We hadn’t been shot at yet.” His campaign is still trying to figure out how to claim that Kerry couldn’t have known this because he wasn’t even on his own swiftboat at the time.

A Kerry campaign official first explained the discrepancy by essentially explaining that it depends on what the meaning of “we” is. Kerry, the official said, apparently had a nontraditional understanding of the word “we” to mean: “others not including me.” “We”: another two-letter word successfully parsed by a Democrat!

Another Kerry campaign official, John Hurley, has since admitted that it is “possible” that Kerry’s first Purple Heart came from a self-inflicted wound.

The Kerry campaign has refused to release Kerry’s

personal Vietnam papers on the grounds that Kerry is required by contract to grant Kerry hagiographer Doug Brinkley exclusive access to the archive. But then Brinkley contradicted the campaign saying the papers are Kerry’s property and in his full control.

On the bright side, the Kerry campaign is considering releasing the director’s cut of Kerry’s own filmed re-enactments of his war “heroics” – which, by the way, makes Kerry the first person ever to form a war re-enactment club during the actual war.

Kerry had long maintained that he did not attend the 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in Kansas City, Mo., where the assassination of U.S. senators was discussed. Kerry campaign spokesman David Wade said, “Kerry was not at the Kansas City meeting.” Later, FBI files showed Kerry was at the meeting. Now Kerry admits he was there.

So I think that means John Kerry attended as many V.V.A.W. meetings at which the assassination of U.S. senators was discussed as he did meetings of the Senate Intelligence Committee on which he later sat.

And let’s not forget that Kerry was caught telling a big, dirty, stinky lie about being in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968. What kind of adult tells a lie like that? (Answer: The kind who carries a home-movie camera to war in order to re-enact combat scenes and tape fake interviews with himself.)

One of the principal witnesses for Kerry’s version of his heroics in Vietnam is Jim Rassman, who says Kerry “saved his life” after a Viet Cong mine knocked Rassman off his boat. Though Kerry would have us believe that – in addition to being baby killers – his fellow servicemen were planning on leaving Rassman to die, several eyewitnesses say another boat was about 20 yards behind Kerry’s boat in getting to Rassman. (Kerry’s boat was positioned slightly closer to Rassman because the moment the mine exploded, Kerry’s boat fled the scene and returned only when Kerry was certain there was no enemy fire.)

It is indisputable that other men were being pulled out of the water right and left after a Viet Cong mine blew one of the swiftboats four feet in the air. How come none of those guys got Bronze Stars? Did they pull men out of the water in a less heroic way?

The way Kerry and Rassman tell it, you would think Kerry saved Rassman’s life by staging a daring, high-speed commando raid on a prisoner of war camp. I was pulled from churning surfs a dozen times before I was 10 years old, each time exclaiming, “YOU SAVED MY LIFE!” but I’m not seeking out the people who fished me out of the water and demanding that they run for president.

In determining whose memory is more accurate, it’s worth mentioning that Kerry and Rassman can’t even get their stories straight about whose boat Rassman was on. Among the many accounts out there are these:

In his own Aug. 10, 2004, Wall Street Journal op-ed, Rassman says he was on Kerry’s boat: “The second blast blew me off John’s swiftboat, PCF-94 ...”

But according to the Kerry campaign press release: “On March 13, 1969, Rassman, a Green Beret, was traveling down the Bay Hap river in a boat behind Kerry’s when both were ambushed by exploding land mines and enemy fire coming from the shore.”

On Page 106 of the book “John F. Kerry, The Official Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best,” Rassman is on a boat behind Kerry’s.

In his Kerry campaign pamphlet, “Tour of Duty,” hagiographer Brinkley resolves the conflicting accounts by having Rassman fall off both the boat that hit the mine (PCF-3) and Kerry’s boat. (What would we do without historians?)

Another account has Rassman on the S.S. Minnow stubbornly insisting that Kerry’s service in Vietnam consisted of just a three-hour tour ... a three-hour tour ...

Perhaps like the many and various meanings of the word “we,” liberals use the word “unsubstantiated” to mean “tested repeatedly and proved true.”

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The More John Kerry Changes, The More He Stays The Same (040908)

There’s been a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth among the Democrats since Vice President Cheney said if the country makes the wrong choice on Election Day, “then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.” (I mean there is weeping among Democrats who aren’t actually rooting for us to get hit again because “we deserve it!”)

I believe this is one of those “issues” Democrats claim to be champing at the bit to discuss – in lieu of discussing the charges of the Swift Boat veterans. In fact, there is no more important issue in this election: Which candidate will best protect America from terrorist attack? Hint: It’s not the guy whose running mate (sounding so much like Sean Hayes from “Will and Grace” it was eerie) said their message to the terrorists was: “We will destroy youuuuuuu!”

Of course, it gets complicated trying to do a side-by-side comparison of the candidates’ positions on terrorism since we don’t know which John Kerry is running for president. The one who opposes war with Iraq or the one who supports it? The one who opposes the Patriot Act or the one who voted for it? The one who wants to work with the allies, or the one who ridicules them when they support America?

The only way Kerry’s constantly changing positions on little matters like war would seem rational is if we found out he was using a Ouija board to determine his positions – much as he’s using a crystal ball to predict when we should start removing U.S. troops from Iraq. Six months – whoops, no, four years. Stupid crystal balls – they never work!

Republicans have been having raucous fun trying to predict what Kerry’s next policy shift will be. Education? AIDS? Pollution? Dang! He picked women’s rights! OK, here’s another dollar. Give me three more balls, please.

While waiting for the Ouija board to give us Kerry’s final answer on the Iraq war, perhaps we could get an answer on something simpler – like whether or not Kerry owns an SUV.

During the Democratic primaries, Kerry went to Michigan and bragged to the Detroit News: “We have some SUVs. We have a Jeep. We have a couple of Chrysler minivans. We have a PT Cruiser up in Boston. I have an old Dodge 600 that I keep in the Senate. ... We also have a Chevy, a big Suburban.” He was starting to sound like a used-car dealer in a giant cowboy hat peddling his wares in a cheesy, low-budget late-night TV commercial: “We got Jeeps, we got PT Cruisers, we got minivans, and they’re priced to move, folks ...”

But a few months after Kerry won the Michigan primary in February, the feckless opportunist told a bunch of environmentalists: “I don’t own an SUV.” When pressed on the apparent contradiction, Kerry explained: “The family has it. I don’t have it.” We’re still waiting for reaction from some group calling themselves “SUV Owners for the Truth.”

As I recall, when it came to funding his campaign last January with a $6 million mortgage on the “family” home in Boston – owned by Kerry’s billionaire wife – he was not so picky about what he owns and what she owns. Back then, Kerry had somewhat more liberal views on the notion of “community property” – or maybe that was just the pre-nup talking.

The “family” angle could also explain Kerry’s positions on the wall in Israel: His wife supports it and he opposes it!

Speaking to an Arab group in Michigan in October 2003, Kerry called Israel’s erection of a wall between Israeli and Palestinian areas “another barrier to peace.”

But a few months later, Kerry got on the fence on the subject of the wall. Adding clarity to the subject, his campaign issued a memo in February, saying Kerry took the precise opposite position of his earlier position. The memo said: “John Kerry supports the construction of Israel’s security fence to stop terrorists from entering Israel. The security fence is a legitimate act of self-defense ...”

So the wall was either (1) a barrier to peace or (2) a legitimate act of self-defense. The campaign then said Kerry had meant to say the real barrier to peace was Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.”

While Kerry works out his positions, apparently the voters have decided that their legitimate act of self-defense is to vote for Bush.

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Never Trust A Liberal Over 3 (040721)

In the ‘80s, a friend of mine knew a Russian dissident who was always heatedly denouncing the Soviet Union and assuring everyone that he had been completely immune to Soviet propaganda. Then one day, after returning from the Wright Brothers museum in North Carolina, he smugly informed my friend that Americans have their own propaganda: “You think the Wright brothers invented flight — ha ha — everyone knows that was the Mozhaisky brothers!”

This is what Republicans are like today. They swear up and down not to trust the liberal media, but as soon as that very media demonize some Republican, half our party is ready to dump him. Currently the Republican liberals would most like to see gone is Dick Cheney. There’s a basketful of Republicans I’d be very pleased to see removed from office. Dick Cheney ain’t one of them.

Another candidate liberals told us was a disaster for the party was Ronald Wilson Reagan. In 1976, Newsweek’s Hal Bruno said Republican “party loyalists” feared that Reagan would produce “a Goldwater-style debacle from which there is no comeback.” Though the “Republican right wing” was gleeful at the prospect of a real conservative like Reagan purifying the party, Bruno wrote, “it could be a purification indistinguishable from suicide.”

In polls of the Democratic and Republican National Committees taken by U.S. News and World Report in early 1980, Democrats overwhelmingly claimed to believe George Herbert Walker Bush was a more formidable candidate than Reagan. “We HOPE they’ll run Reagan,” liberals said.

Taking their cue on “electability” from the Democrats — always a great idea! — a majority of Republican committeemen also thought future one-termer Bush was more “electable.” (If only Al D’Amato had been around, he could have recommended dropping Reagan and replacing him with Colin Powell or John McCain.)

Pay attention to what happened next: Reagan went on to win two landslide elections for president, transform the nation’s politics, and dismantle the Democrats’ favorite country, the USSR. He not only never lost a general election, Reagan also never won by less than a landslide margin. Reagan’s triumph was then promptly jettisoned by Mr. “Electable,” who broke his “read my lips” pledge and unceremoniously ended the Republicans’ 12-year control of the White House.

Other Republicans we’ve been told were a disaster for the party are Newt Gingrich — who produced the jaws-of-life to tear Congress from the Democrats — and Ken Starr — who was responsible for the impeachment and utter humiliation of Bill Clinton.

Like Thomas Sowell’s definition of a “racist” (“a conservative winning an argument with a liberal”), the definition of an “unpopular Republican” is “a Republican the Democrats would like to be rid of.” Whenever liberals are being hysterical about a Republican, it’s because that Republican is not good for the Democrats.

I promise you, if McCain, Powell or even Rudy Giuliani were put on the ticket, the liberal lovefest would come to a screeching halt. We’d finally get a little investigative reporting on liberals’ favorite Republicans — and who knows what’s in those closets. (Let’s just hope McCain and Giuliani don’t have any messy divorces in their past!) Heaven help us if any of them have ever worked for a successful corporation.

Liberal love lasts just long enough to get the job done. The most famous instance of a Republican taking advice from Democrats occurred when former President Bush broke his pledge and raised taxes. The instant Bush capitulated, a staffer at the DNC hit a stopwatch and, for one hour, liberals showered Bush with affection. Maureen Dowd, then-reporter for The New York Times, compared Bush to Eisenhower and gushed he had dropped “the slash-and-burn approach” and was “trying to take a moderate, bipartisan approach.”

But as Friedrich Schiller wrote, “Once the Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go.” Having tricked the dolt into raising taxes, liberals soon turned on Bush with a vengeance. No longer a bipartisan Eisenhoweresque statesman, Bush became merely an impediment to the Democrats getting a real tax-raiser like Bill Clinton in the White House. Soon Dowd was describing Bush as one of the “elite males in possession of large fortunes” who lacked “empathy with middle-class and poor Americans hurt by a recession.”

Liberals even taunted Bush for being so unprincipled as to raise taxes. Dowd said of Bush: “Will he learn the power of fixed principles in leadership, or will he continue to engage in waffling and expedient stances on issues like abortion, civil rights and taxes?”

Never, in the history of the Democratic Party, have they taken advice from us. I thought the Democrats should run Dennis Kucinich for president. I even promised them that a lot of Republicans would vote for a Kucinich-Sharpton ticket! But I didn’t see any Democrats taking my advice. Of course, Democrats have never had to face the sound chamber of an all-conservative media. (They will in my gulag.)

We don’t have to adopt all the Democrats’ traits — incessant lying, utter shamelessness, criminal behavior and lots of crying — but Republicans need to tattoo this truism on their arms: It’s never a good idea to take advice from your enemies.

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C-BS (040915)

Why do TV commentators on CBS’ forgery-gate insist on issuing lengthy caveats to the effect that of course this was an innocent mistake and no one is accusing Dan Rather of some sort of “conspiracy,” and respected newsman Dan Rather would never intentionally foist phony National Guard documents on an unsuspecting public merely to smear George Bush, etc., etc.?

I’ll admit, there’s a certain sadistic quality to such overwrought decency toward Dan Rather. But how does Bill O’Reilly know what Dan Rather was thinking when he put forged documents on the air? I know liberals have the paranormal ability to detect racism and sexism, but who knew O’Reilly could read an anchorman’s mind just by watching him read the news?

What are the odds that Dan Rather would have accepted such patently phony documents from, say, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?

As we now know, CBS’ own expert told them there were problems with the documents — the main one being that they were clearly fakes dummied up at a Kinko’s outlet from somebody’s laptop at 4 a.m.

According to ABC News, document examiner Emily Will was hired by CBS to vet the documents. But when she raised questions about the documents’ authenticity and strongly warned CBS not to use the documents on air, CBS ignored her. Will concluded: “I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply.”

Within hours of the documents being posted on CBS’ Web site, moderately observant fourth-graders across America noticed that the alleged early ‘70s National Guard documents were the product of Microsoft Word. If that wasn’t bad enough, The New York Times spent the following week hailing Rather for his “journalistic coup” in obtaining the documents that no other newsman had (other than Jayson Blair).

By now, all reputable document examiners in the Northern Hemisphere dispute the documents’ authenticity. Even the Los Angeles Times has concluded that the documents are fraudulent — and when you fail to meet the ethical standards of the L.A. Times, you’re in trouble.

In Dan Rather’s defense, it must be confessed, he is simply a newsreader. Now that Walter Cronkite is retired, Rather is TV’s real-life Ted Baxter without Baxter’s quiet dignity. No one would ever suggest that he has any role in the content of his broadcast. To blame Dan Rather for what appears on his program would be like blaming Susan Lucci for the plot of “All My Children.”

The person to blame is Ted Baxter’s producer, Mary Mapes. Mapes apparently decided: We’ll run the documents calling Bush a shirker in the National Guard, and if the documents turn out to be fraudulent we’ll:

a) Blame Karl Rove;

b) Say the documents don’t matter.

But if the documents are irrelevant to the question of Bush’s Guard duty, then why did CBS bring them up? Why not just say: “The important thing is for you to take our word for it!”

Interestingly, the elite (and increasingly unwatched) media always make “mistakes” in the same direction. They never move too quickly to report a story unfavorable to liberals.

In 1998, CNN broadcast its famous “Tailwind” story, falsely accusing the U.S. military of gassing American defectors in Laos during the Vietnam War. (This was part of liberals’ long-standing support for “the troops.”) The publishing industry regularly puts out proven frauds such as: “I, Rigoberta Menchu” (a native girl’s torture at the hands of the right-wing Guatemalan military), “Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture” (a liberal fantasy of a gun-free colonial America), “Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President” (a book by a convicted felon with wild stories of George Bush’s drug use), and the unsourced nutty fantasies of Kitty Kelley.

In a book out this week, Kelley details many anonymous charges against the Bush family, such as that Laura Bush was a pot dealer in college, George W. Bush was the first person in America to use cocaine back in 1968, and he also regularly consorted with a prostitute in Texas who was then silenced by the CIA.

Kelley backs up her shocking allegations with names of highly credentialed people — who have absolutely no connection to the events she is describing. No one directly involved is on the record, and the people on the record have never met anyone in the Bush family. In other words, her stories have been “vetted” enough to be included on tonight’s “CBS Evening News” with Dan Rather.

The New York Times review blamed Kelley’s gossip mongering on “a cultural climate in which gossip and innuendo thrive on the Internet.” Kelley has been writing these books for decades, so apparently, like the Texas Air National Guard, Kelley was on the Internet — and being influenced by it — back in the ‘70s. As I remember it, for the past few years it has been the Internet that keeps dissecting and discrediting the gossip and innuendo that the major media put out.

Curiously, all this comes at the precise moment that speculation is at a fever pitch about whether Kitty Kelley is in the advanced stages of syphilis. According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: “Approximately 3% to 7% of persons with untreated syphilis develop neurosyphilis, a sometimes serious disorder of the nervous system.

Dr. Jonathan Zenilman, M.D., associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, has found there is an “inter-relationship” between STDs and truck routes in Baltimore. I’m not at liberty to reveal the names of my sources, but there are three or four highly placed individuals in the publishing industry who say Miss Kelley or someone who closely resembles her is a habitue of truck routes in Baltimore.

While opinions differ as to whether Miss Kelley’s behavior can be explained by syphilis or some other STD, people who went to Harvard — and Harvard is one of the top universities in the nation — say her path is consistent with someone in the advanced stages.

Amid the swirling dispute over her STDs, there is only one way for Kelley to address this issue: Release her medical records. As someone who would like to be thought of as her friend said anonymously: “For your own good, Ms. Kelley, I would get those medical records out yesterday.” This doesn’t have to be public. She may release her medical records to me, or if she’d be more comfortable, to my brothers.

Since TV commentators have assured me that Dan Rather is an equal opportunity idiot, Kelley had better clear all this up before someone slips this column to CBS. As a precaution I’ve written this on a 1972 Selectric typewriter.

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Dan Rather: Fairly Unbalanced (040922)

I believe we now have conclusive proof that:

(1) Dan Rather is not an honest newsman who was simply duped by extremely clever forgeries; and

(2) We could have won the Vietnam War.

A basic canon of journalism is not to place all your faith in a lunatic stuck on something that happened years ago who hates the target of your story and has been babbling nonsense about him for years. And that’s true even if you yourself are a lunatic stuck on something that happened years ago (an on-air paddling from Bush 41) who hates the target of your own story and has been babbling nonsense about him for years, Dan.

CBS’ sole source authenticating the forged National Guard documents is Bill Burkett, who’s about as sane as Margot Kidder was when they dragged her filthy, toothless butt out of somebody’s shrubs a few years back. Burkett has compared Bush to Hitler and Napoleon, and rambles on about Bush’s “demonic personality shortcomings.” (This would put Burkett on roughly the same page as Al Gore.)

According to USA Today, an interview with Burkett ended when he “suffered a violent seizure and collapsed in his chair” – an exit strategy Dan Rather has been eyeing hungrily all week, I’m sure. Burkett admits to having nervous breakdowns and having been hospitalized for depression.

At a minimum, the viewing public should have been informed that CBS’ sole “unimpeachable” source of the forged anti-Bush records was textbook crank Bill Burkett in order to evaluate the information. (“Oh no, not that guy again!”) The public would know to use the same skeptical eye it uses to watch the “CBS Evening News With Dan Rather” itself.

Whoever forged these documents should not only be criminally prosecuted, but should also have his driver’s license taken away for the stupidity of using Microsoft Word to forge 1971 documents.

And yet this was the evidence CBS relied on to accuse a sitting president of a court martial-level offense 50 days before a presidential election.

As of Sept. 20, Dan Rather says he still believes the documents are genuine and says he wants to be the one to break the story if the documents are fake. (Dan might want to attend to that story after his exclusive report on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.) Rather is also eagerly awaiting some other documents Burkett says he has that prove Bush is a brainwashed North Korean spy.

By now, the only possibilities are: (1) Dan Rather knew he was foisting forgeries on the nation to try to change a presidential election or (2) “Kenneth” inflicted some real brain damage when he hit Rather in the head back in 1986.

Liberals keep telling us to “move on” from the CBS scandal – which means we’re really onto something. They act surprised and insist this incident was a freak occurrence – an unfortunate mistake in the twilight of a great newsman’s career.

To the contrary, such an outrageous fraud was inevitable given the mendacity and outright partisanship of the press.

Burkett didn’t come to CBS; CBS found Burkett. Rather’s producer, Mary Mapes, called Joe Lockhart at the Kerry campaign and told him he needed to talk to Burkett. Lockhart himself is the apotheosis of the media-DNC complex, moving in and out of Democratic campaigns and jobs with the mainstream media, including at ABC, NBC and CNN.

CBS was attempting to manipulate a presidential election in wartime. What if CBS had used better forgeries? What if – like Bush’s 30-year-old DUI charge – the media had waited 72 hours before the election to air this character assassination?

There is one reason CBS couldn’t wait until just before the election to put these forgeries on the air: It would be too late. Kerry was crashing and burning – because of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. (Funny that the Swift Boat veterans haven’t been able to get on Kerry PR agency CBS News.)

Despite a total blackout on the Swift Boat Veterans in the mainstream media, the Swifties had driven Kerry’s poll numbers into the dirt long before the Republican National Convention – proving once again that it’s almost impossible for liberals to brainwash people who can read.

Even the New York Times had to stop ignoring the No. 1 book on its own best-seller list, “Unfit for Command,” in order to run front-page articles attacking the Swift Boat Veterans.

The “Today” show has given Kitty Kelley a chair next to Katie Couric until Election Day. (It’s now Day Seven of Kelley’s refusal to produce records concerning charges that she is in the final stages of syphilitic dementia.) At least they’re more likely to get the truth in Kitty Kelley’s book than in Doug Brinkley’s “Tour of Duty.” But Katie hasn’t had time to interview the Swift Boat veterans.

CBS showcased laughable forgeries obtained from a man literally foaming at the mouth in order to accuse the president of malfeasance. But CBS would never put a single one of the 264 Vietnam veterans on the air to say what they knew about Kerry.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth show the role of the individual in history. It wasn’t Republican strategists who finished Kerry off two months before the election; it was the American people. The Swift Boat veterans came along and kicked Kerry in the shins and no matter how much heat they took, they were brave and wouldn’t give up. The veterans who served with Kerry told the truth and the American people listened (as soon as they managed to locate a copy of “Unfit for Command” hidden on one of the back shelves at their local bookstores).

CBS was forced to run a fake story so early in the campaign that it was exposed as a fraud – only because of the Swift Boat vets. These brave men, many of them decorated war heroes, have now not only won the election for Bush, they have ended Dan Rather’s career.

It’s often said that we never lost a battle in Vietnam, but that the war was lost at home by a seditious media demoralizing the American people. Ironically, the leader of that effort was Rather’s predecessor at CBS News, Walter Cronkite, president of the Ho Chi Minh Admiration Society.

It was Cronkite who went on air and lied about the Tet offensive, claiming it was a defeat for the Americans. He told the American people the war was over and we had lost. Ronald Reagan said CBS News officials should have been tried for treason for those broadcasts.

CBS has already lost one war for America. The Swift Boat Vets weren’t going to let CBS lose another one.

==============================

Happy Giving Tree Festival To All, And To All A Good Night! (041222)

Since the attack of 9-11, we’ve won two wars, liberated millions of people from monstrous regimes, presided over one election in Afghanistan and are about to see elections in Iraq and among the Palestinian people. Focusing like a laser beam on the big picture, liberals are upset that, during this period, the secretary of defense used an autopen.

An autopen is a mechanical arm that actually holds a pen and is programmed to sign letters with a particular person’s precise signature. Imagine a President Al Gore, with slightly more personality, signing all official government letters – that’s an autopen. (You can relax now, there will be no more exercises imagining a President Al Gore.)

There are 300 million Americans who have a constitutional right – an actual right, not a phony one invented by Harry Blackmun – to write to government officials. Every government office you’ve ever heard of in Washington, D.C., uses autopens with abandon.

As president, Clinton sold burial plots in Arlington Cemetery and liberals shrugged it off. What really gets their goat is the autopen. Evidently, the important thing was that every one of those pardons Clinton sold for cash on his last day in office was signed by Bill Clinton personally.

It occurred to someone (who obviously has the best interests of America at heart!) that among the letters Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sends out there must be condolence letters to the families of servicemen who died for their country. So liberals are in a lather that those letters were signed by autopen.

On the bright side, this is the first war America has been in where the number of casualties is small enough that it would even be theoretically possible for a Defense secretary to sign each condolence letter personally. When Democrats were running the Vietnam War, letters of condolence often began, “To whom it may concern” and were addressed to “occupant.”

Most politicians were mum about Autopen-gate, inasmuch as they respond to letters from constituents with dying children in letters signed by autopen. Not Sen. Chuck Hagel, D-Neb. He criticized Rumsfeld for the autopen, saying: “My goodness, that’s the least that we could expect out of the secretary of defense, is having some personal attention paid by him.”

It would save everyone a lot of trouble if the New York Times would just go ahead and put Hagel on the cover of the Sunday magazine with the headline: “COURAGE.” Even now, Hagel can apparently count on no reporters dropping by his office to investigate whether he uses an autopen.

I’ve been so damn upset that Rumsfeld uses an autopen that I’ve barely had time to enjoy the “Giving Tree” season. Actually, I think it’s time to come clean with my readers and admit that I belong to a small religious cult that celebrates the birth of Jesus this week. So things have been a little hectic.

And if the best liberals are going to give me to argue about this week is Autopen-gate, then: (1) I shall sleep well knowing that the secretary of defense has made so few mistakes for the past four years that liberals are reduced to carping about his autopen, and (2) I’m going to re-gift one of my interviews not published in the United States so I have time to buy more Ann Coulter action figures for Christmas, or as the Blue States call it, “December 25.”

Interview by Carlos Baroni, Oriana d’America, Italy, October 2004

Q: Many liberals are rich, come from the East Coast, are white, studied at the Ivy university. You are rich (I hope), come from Connecticut, are white and studied at Cornell. Why do you hate the liberals?

A: Because I know so many of them. Liberals are clueless, amoral sexual degenerates, communists and pacifists – no offense to you or your readers intended, of course.

Q: You said the USA’s worst enemy are the liberals.

A: So what’s the question? The enemy within is often far more damaging than the enemy outside. Does the name “Mussolini” – great believer in extensive government direction of the economy, just like the Democrats – ring a bell?

Q: Why do Europeans prefer liberals than conservatives?

A: Because you’re all a bunch of atheists, humanists and moral relativists. Love the food, though! And don’t get me started on the shoes you wonderful people make! They’re to surrender for!

Q: Do Europeans love Kerry more or hate Bush more?

A: Hate Bush. No one loves John Kerry, including John Kerry. Europeans are wrong on policy, not clinically insane.

Q: Who will win the elections 2004?

A: That’s for the Supreme Court to sort out, you ignorant foreigner.

Q: If Kerry should win, what will the changes in the USA be?

A: He’s got this exciting new plan for Iraq I think you Italians may have heard of. It’s called “unconditional surrender.” Today, Christianity is legal and gay marriage is illegal. If Kerry wins, these will be reversed.

Q: And the world?

A: That will be up to the United Nations.

Q: Is it right, the Iraqi conflict?

A: No, it’s wrong. The rabid savages who are fighting American troops should give up immediately.

Q: What’s your opinion about the U.S. media? Are they actually free?

A: Pravda had certain shortcomings in Soviet days, but at least it was honest enough to admit being a Communist Party newspaper.

Q: Our American image comes from movies. But Hollywood isn’t the real America ...

A: The real America is Hollywood, Fla.

Q: Does tolerant Islam exist or not?

A: If it does exist, it’s keeping an extremely low profile.

Q: Is it possible to export democracy?

A: Yes. Ever heard of “Italy”?

Q: Who are the three best U.S. presidents of the century? And the three best in any time?

A: Century: Reagan, Coolidge, Harding. Ever: Washington, Reagan, Lincoln.

Q: What is your opinion about the center-left leader in Europe? Zapatero, Blair, Schroeder?

A: Zapatero is Spanish for “Chamberlain.” I would campaign for Blair for U.S. president. Schroeder – what is the Italian word for “scumbag”?

Q: And about center-right? Berlusconi, Chirac?

A: Chirac is center-right? Better lay off the grappa, Primo. Berlusconi: LOVE him!!

Q: Your last book is called “How to Talk to a Liberal.” With which words?

A: A baseball bat is best. But if you absolutely must use words, something like: “Grow up.”

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE VERNAL EQUINOX!

Love,

Ann Coulter

(autopen)

==============================

Calling the kettle gay (050302)

It’s been a tough year for Democrats. They lost the presidential election, their favorite news outlets have been abjectly humiliated, they had to sit through a smashingly successful election in Iraq, and most painfully, they had to endure unwarranted attacks on a cartoon sponge. So I understand liberals are upset. Let go, let God ... Oops – I’m talking to liberals! Let go, let Spongebob ...

Democrats tried working out their frustrations on blacks for a while, but someone – I can’t remember who, but it probably wasn’t Sen. Robert Byrd – must have finally told them it really wasn’t helping to keep disparaging every single black person in a position of authority in this Republican administration.

So now liberals are lashing out at the gays. Two weeks ago, the New York Times turned over half of its op-ed page to outing gays with some connection to Republicans. There is no principled or intellectual basis for these outings. Conservatives don’t want gays to die; we just don’t want to transform the Pentagon into the Office of Gay Studies.

By contrast, liberals say: “We love gay people! Gay people are awesome! Being gay is awesome! Gay marriage is awesome! Gay cartoon characters are awesome! And if you don’t agree with us, we’ll punish you by telling everyone that you’re gay!”

In addition to an attack on a website reporter for supposedly operating a gay escort service and thereby cutting into the business of the Village Voice, another Times op-ed article the same day gratuitously outed the children of prominent conservatives.

These are not public figures. No one knows who they are apart from their famous parents. I didn’t even know most of these conservatives had children until the Times outed them.

Liberals can’t even cite their usual “hypocrisy” fig leaf to justify the public outings of conservatives’ family members. No outsider can know what goes on inside a family, but according to the public version of one family matter being leered over by liberals, a prominent conservative threw his daughter out of the house when he found out she was gay.

Stipulating for purposes of argument that that’s the whole story – which is absurd – isn’t that the opposite of hypocrisy? Wouldn’t that be an example of someone sacrificing other values on the mantle of consistency?

Outing relatives of conservatives is nothing but ruthless intimidation: Stop opposing our agenda – or your kids will get it. This is a behavioral trope of all totalitarians: Force children to testify against their parents to gain control by fear.

It’s bad enough when liberals respond to a conservative argument by digging through the conservative’s garbage cans; it’s another thing entirely when they start digging through the garbage cans of the conservative’s family members. (On behalf of conservatives everywhere, I say: Stay out of our gay relatives’ cans.)

Liberals use these people and then discard them. Has John Kerry had lunch with his pal Mary Cheney lately? What ever happened to Newt Gingrich’s gay half-sister? Did she have any further insights to impart other than that she was gay?

Already this year, the glorious story of one conservative’s gay child has gotten 58 mentions on Lexis-Nexis, including seven shows on CNN (eight if you include “On the Record With Greta Van Susteren”) – and none on Fox News (unless you include “On the Record With Greta Van Susteren”).

The 2004 Gay Conservative Offspring story got 29 mentions on Lexis-Nexis, including in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the International Herald Tribune and five shows on CNN. (This story wasn’t as much fun for liberals inasmuch as they were forced to mention that the conservative had adopted the troubled, mixed-race child at age 15, contradicting their earlier claims that the conservative was a racist.) There is not a single mention of this gay poster boy in the Lexis-Nexis archives since the last sadistic mention of him in an article from October 2004. Liberals ruin a family and then moveon.org.

Meanwhile, William J. Murray, the son of prominent atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair – and the named plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that banned school prayer – came out as a Christian in 1980. There are only two mentions of it in the Lexis-Nexis archives: Facts on File and the Washington Post.

The Lexis-Nexis library for 1980 may be smaller than it is today, but it has articles from major newspapers, which the New York Times was still considered in 1980. (There are, for example, two Times stories mentioning the rumor that Ronald Reagan dyed his hair in the Lexis-Nexis archives for 1980.) No mention of the son of America’s most notorious atheist becoming a Christian.

Two years later, Murray wrote a riveting book about his spiritual transformation from the sordid misery of atheism to Christianity, “My Life Without God.” There were only five articles mentioning the book on Lexis-Nexis: four wire services and one article in the Washington Post. None in the Times.

Unlike the gay children of conservatives, who are used as liberal props and then dropped, Murray has remained in the news for decades as a powerful Christian spokesman. Perhaps this is because a spiritual journey from atheism to Christianity is of more intellectual interest than an announcement of one’s sexual preference. It’s just not as likely to be gloated over in purportedly serious news outlets like CNN or the New York Times. Let go, let Spongebob ...

==============================

It’s only funny until someone loses a pie (townhall.com, 050414)

Ann Coulter

Liberals enjoy claiming that they are intellectuals, thrilled to engage in a battle of wits. This, they believe, distinguishes them from conservatives, who are religious fanatics who react with impotent rage to opposing ideas. As one liberal, Jonathan Chait, put the cliche in the New Republic: Bush is an “instinctive anti-intellectual” and his administration hostile to “fact-driven debate.” In a favorable contrast, Clinton is “the former Rhodes scholar who relished academic debates.” Showing his usual reverence for fact-checking, the New York Times’ Paul Krugman says the Republican Party is “dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research.”

I’m not sure how these descriptions square with the fact that liberals keep responding to conservative ideas by throwing food. (Remember the good old days when liberals’ “fact-driven” ideas only meant throwing money at their problems?)

Last October, two liberals responded to my speech at the University of Arizona – during question and answer, no less – by charging the stage and throwing two pies at me from a few yards away. Fortunately for me, liberals not only argue like liberals, they also throw like girls. (Apologies in advance to the Harvard biology professors who walked out on Larry Summers in a demonstration of their admiration of “research,” not “revelation” – but this may account for the dearth of female pitchers in Major League Baseball.)

Unfortunately for them, Republican men don’t react favorably to two “Deliverance” boys trying to sucker-punch a 110-pound female in a skirt and heels. The geniuses ended up with bloody noses and broken bones.

It’s really outrageous how conservatives respond to liberals who are just trying to engage in a “fact-driven debate.” How typical of Republicans to go on the offensive just because a female has been physically attacked. Instead of capturing and subduing my attackers, those strong Republican men should have been trying to understand why they threw the pies.

In the five months following the liberal ass-whupping in Arizona – I mean “fact-driven debate” – all was quiet on the Eastern Front. College liberals still couldn’t formulate a coherent argument, but they seemed to want to avoid ending up in jail having to explain to their cellmates that they were in for trying to hit a girl (and missing).

Then on March 19, all charges were dismissed against the “Deliverance” boys – including a felony charge for $3,000 worth of damage to school property. Inexplicably, this outcome did not instantly lead to widespread rioting and looting in South Central Los Angeles.

Democrat Barbara LaWall is the Pima County attorney who allowed the liberal debate champions to walk. LaWall brags on her website about “holding criminals accountable.” She didn’t say anything about liberals, however. Be forewarned, conservatives: Do not expect the law to protect you in Pima County.

In the three weeks following the dismissal of all charges against my attackers, three more conservatives were attacked on college campuses.

On March 29, liberals’ intellectual retort to a speech by William Kristol at Earlham College was to throw a pie. On March 31, liberals enjoyed the hurly-burly of political debate with Pat Buchanan at Western Michigan University by throwing salad dressing. On April 6, liberals engaged David Horowitz on his ideas at Butler University by throwing a pie at him.

If you close your eyes, it’s almost like you’re listening to Ludwig Wittgenstein!

If there had been that many attacks on Muslims in the weeks following the 9-11 attack, we’d still be watching Showtime specials about it. (In liberals’ defense, this is what they must resort to when there are no student newspapers with conservative editorials to burn.)

At the risk of provoking one of those brainy liberals to throw more food, here’s an idea: In order to reduce physical assaults on conservative speakers, maybe we should increase the price. But, to the contrary, when conservative speakers are physically attacked on college campuses, university administrators ignore the attacks, Democrat prosecutors somehow manage to get the charges dismissed, and Democrat flacks like Chait and Krugman pretend they missed the news that day.

What might work better is some form of disincentive to liberals who engage in violent behavior whenever they hear an idea they don’t like but can’t come up with words to dispute. The punishment doesn’t have to be severe – just a small fraction of the wailing and healing that occurs every time there’s a hoax “hate crime” on a college campus. (But which still serve a valuable function by calling attention to the issue of hate crimes.)

Last year, classes were canceled and demonstrations held at Claremont College after a white, Catholic visiting professor claimed her car had been vandalized with racist and anti-Semitic slurs. This – at the very moment she was giving a talk on intolerance!

It was just a little too ironic. The incident had all the exquisite timing of an “ABC After-School Special” about hate crimes. But as one student angrily told the Los Angeles Times, the suggestion that it was a hoax is “so sick. They are in denial. People don’t want to accept that a well-educated, liberal community can have hate.” Needless to say, the vandalism turned out to have been perpetrated by the professor herself.

Or maybe physical attacks on conservatives could merit a small slice of the rage and indignation directed at the display of racist symbols. Last year, a white student at a high school in Washington State was accused of taunting a black student with a noose. In response, the white student was immediately expelled from school. He was charged with a felony. There was a series of town-wide discussions. The U.S. Justice Department sent in mediators. And two more years were suddenly added to Whoopi Goldberg’s career.

I think Kristol, Buchanan, Horowitz and I would be perfectly happy if college liberals merely brandished symbols at us. Speaking for myself, I would be unhappy if they didn’t. But these Rhodes scholar geniuses with a taste for “fact-driven debate” can’t even achieve the level of argument practiced by the average juvenile delinquent. They’re still stuck at the intellectual level of 2-year-olds in high chairs throwing food.

==============================

Ann Coulter on Time’s cover (WorldNetDaily, 050418)

WND columnist subject of 6,000-word story, strange photo

The new issue of Time magazine hitting the streets today boasts a cover story on conservative flamethrowing WND columnist and author Ann Coulter – and a cover photo some fans are calling “bizarre.”

Coulter told Matt Drudge last night Time used a more flattering photo of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.

While the story itself, written by Time’s John Cloud, is generally quite favorable, Coulter and her fans are focused on the strange cover photo that seems to distort the image of the tall, thin, blond pundit.

“Is it just me or did they photograph Ann making her head look big?” wrote one fan on an Internet bulletin board. “It seems out of proportion to the rest of her toned body. Reminds me of the O.J. picture.”

“That is the most freaky picture of Ann Coulter I’ve seen,” said another.

Cloud begins his piece by pointing out that Coulter blushed when she caught the “white-hot hatred” stare of a Manhattanite at the table adjacent to the interviewer and his subject.

“They’re terrible people, liberals,” Coulter is quoted as saying. “They believe — this can really summarize it all — these are people who believe you can deliver a baby entirely except for the head, puncture the skull, suck the brains out and pronounce that a constitutional right has just been exercised. That really says it all. You don’t want such people to like you!”

Coulter is compared with other conservatives on the scene – from Rush Limbaugh to Sean Hannity to George Will and Thomas Sowell.

“But no one on the right is so iconic, such a totem of this particular moment,” writes Cloud. “Coulter epitomizes the way politics is now discussed on the airwaves, where opinions must come violently fast and cause as much friction as possible. No one, right or left, delivers the required apothegmatic commentary on the world with as much glee or effectiveness as Coulter. It is almost impossible to watch her and not be sluiced into rage or elation, depending on your views. As a congressional staff member 10 years ago, Coulter used to help write the nation’s laws. Now she is far more powerful: she helps set the nation’s tone.”

The piece quotes the Rev. Jerry Falwell, another WND columnist, as saying: “I think Ann is a brilliant girl, and she’s got the quickest mouth in the East. Now, I probably won’t use her on Sunday morning in my church because she is capable of getting a little aggressive.”

“That’s right: Ann Coulter burns too fiercely for both the temples of the secular left – the New York Times — and of the religious right — Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church. But it’s suspicious when conventional wisdom ossifies around someone so thoroughly. Why does she make so many people itch?” asks Cloud.

The Time report also says Coulter has a reputation for carelessness with facts, and if you Google the words “Ann Coulter lies,” you will drown in results.

“But I didn’t find many outright Coulter errors,” reports Cloud. “One of the most popular alleged mistakes pinging around the Web is from her appearance on Canadian TV news in January, when Coulter asserted that ‘Canada sent troops to Vietnam.’ Interviewer Bob McKeown said she was wrong. ‘Indochina?’ Coulter tried. McKeown said no. Finally, Coulter said haltingly, ‘I’ll get back to you.’ ‘Coulter never got back to us,’ McKeown triumphantly noted, ‘but for the record, like Iraq, Canada sent no troops to Vietnam.’ What he didn’t mention was that Canada did send noncombat troops to Indochina in the 1950s and again to Vietnam in 1972.”

==============================

Drag liberals into the light (townhall.com, 050429)

Ann Coulter

Democrats are in an incomprehensible rage over the filibuster. DON’T STOP READING! I AM NOT GOING TO DISCUSS THE HISTORY OF THE FILIBUSTER! Republicans have got to learn to stop getting into technicalities with the Democrats. They win in the dark; we win in the light. And it doesn’t get much darker than a discussion of the Senate filibuster.

It’s no excuse that the Democrats are lying. They do that all the time. Republicans have got to learn to let it go.

In one sentence Republicans should state that the so-called “nuclear option” means: “Majority vote wins.” (This is as opposed to the Democrats’ mantra, which is “Our side always wins.”)

I am sublimely confident that normal Americans will not be shocked to learn that a Republican Senate plans to confirm the judicial nominees of a Republican president – despite the objections of radical elements of a party that is the minority in the Senate, the minority in the House, the loser in the last two presidential races, the minority in state governorships, and the minority in all but a tiny number of very small but densely populated enclaves in this country that need to tax Rush Limbaugh, even though he lives in another state, just to keep all their little socialist programs afloat.

The question Republicans need to ask is: Why do the Democrats want to keep judicial nominees like Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen off the federal bench?

As I understand it, the reason Democrats are in a blind rage about Priscilla Owen is that, as a state court judge in Texas, Owen interpreted a law passed by the Texas Legislature requiring parental consent for 14-year-old girls to have abortions to mean that parental consent was required for 14-year-old girls to have abortions.

I think Americans need to hear Democrats explain that.

Democrats oppose Janice Rogers Brown because she’s black. One cartoon on Blackcommentator.com shows President Bush introducing Brown to Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, with Bush saying, “Welcome to the bench, Ms. Clarence – I mean, Ms. Rogers Brown. You’ll fit right in!”

Let’s see, what do those four have in common? Two secretaries of state, a former general, a former professor and a Supreme Court justice ... What’s the common thread? I know there’s something – but what is it?

There’s a whole array of groups opposed to Brown: People for the American Way, the National Women’s Law Center, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Feminist Majority, the Aryan Nation and so on.

But their actual objections to Brown are somewhat opaque. The Web page of “People for a Small Slice of the Upper West Side Way” contains a lengthy diatribe on Brown’s nightmarish extremism while managing never, ever to give one specific example. In fact, if you take out “Janice Rogers Brown” and replace it with “Tom DeLay,” it makes just as much sense when you read it.

This is what we get by way of explanation on the horror show that is Janice Rogers Brown:

* “ideological extremism”

* “aggressive judicial activism”

* “even further to the right than the most far-right justices”

* “prone to inserting conservative political views into her appellate opinions”

* “many disturbing dissents”

* “a disturbing tendency to try to remake the law”

* “extreme states’ rights and anti-federal-government positions”

* “working to push the law far to the right”

* “doesn’t hate America and all that it stands for”

OK, I made up that last one.

Conservatives never attack liberal judges this way. We simply say: He found the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional ... He found a right to gay marriage in a state constitution written in 1780 by John Adams ... He ruled that smelly homeless people have a constitutional right to stink up public libraries and scare patrons ... He excluded 80 pounds of cocaine found in the defendant’s car on the grounds that it was reasonable to run from the police when the police are viewed as “corrupt, violent and abusive.”

Democrats want to terrify people by claiming Bush’s judicial nominees are nutcase extremists hell-bent on shredding the Constitution – as opposed to liberals’ preferred method of simply rewriting it on a daily basis – but they’re terrified that someone might ask them what they mean by “extremist.” So let’s ask!

If the details helped liberals, I promise you we’d be hearing the details. Most important, if liberals could win in the court of public opinion, they wouldn’t need the federal courts to hand them their victories in the first place. The reason liberals refuse to elaborate on “extremist right-wing ideologue” is that they need liberal courts to give them gay marriage, a godless Pledge of Allegiance, abortion on demand, nude dancing, rights for pederasts, and everything else they could never win in America if it were put to a vote.

Republicans are letting them get away with it by allowing the debate on judges to consist of mind-numbing arguments about the history of the filibuster. Note to Republicans: Of your six minutes on television, use 30 seconds to point out the Democrats are abusing the filibuster and the other 5 1/2 minutes to ask liberals to explain why they think Bush’s judicial nominees are “extreme.”

==============================

The Pie-Proof Ann Coulter on Hecklers (Foxnews, 050504)

SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: Ann Coulter is under attack again. On April 18, Coulter gave a speech at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Critics immediately labeled the talk a hate speech and the president of the university even weighed in, saying that Coulter crossed the line and may have violated campus policy.

So is free speech under attack at American universities? Is it time to get tough on liberal hecklers? Ann Coulter joins us, the author of, what, her now fourth best-selling book, “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must).”

First of all, we have a bigger story about what happened last night. We’re going to get to that in just a second here, because last night was probably the worst of...

ANN COULTER, AUTHOR: No, not at all.

HANNITY: Not really?

COULTER: Last night was one of the best ones, I’d say.

HANNITY: I do occasional college speeches. But when I go in there, I know exactly what I’m getting. You expect the heckling. You expect the protesting. You expect the controversy.

COULTER: Oh, it’s a lot of fun.

HANNITY: You thrive on this. You love this.

COULTER: A good time is had by all.

HANNITY: Let’s go back to the pie-throwing incident — this guy attacked you. Where were you speaking then, in Arizona?

COULTER: Right, the University of Arizona.

HANNITY: Now, here it is. But they missed you. They have bad aim.

First, they charged them. Then they dropped the charges. And now they’ve re-charged them?

COULTER: Apparently. I only follow it through the newspaper accounts.

HANNITY: And you will testify against the people that attacked you?

COULTER: Yes, although, I keep telling them, “Yes, if you call me.” But I think the prosecutor might want to, I don’t know, talk to someone who prosecutes for a living, because the idea that they need to call me is preposterous. You just showed all the evidence they need.

That shows all elements of the crime. There’s no talking. There’s no need for cross-examination. I mean, me just going and describing it in words is not as strong evidence as that tape is. Somehow you got a hold of it. I think the prosecutor can get it.

HANNITY: Last night was really particularly vulgar. And we’ll get to that in a second. Why is this happening, though, generally speaking?

COULTER: That’s a great question. And I have to say, I would not be very happy if I were a liberal right now.

And you know, it used to be that they would stand up and try to trap you in a question, some sort of hypocrisy or something, or spring something on you, you haven’t thought of before. And, OK, that wasn’t particularly successful, but at least there was some linear thinking involved.

It is so far beyond that. They’re children having tantrums.

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: On behalf of liberals, I can speak for myself at least. They should let you speak, because the more you speak, the better my side looks. So I would rather have you speak.

It is wrong to attack anybody, certainly physically. You’re on that stage. You’re not a large person. Something comes at you, it’s dark. Having been on stages, people don’t understand what it’s like when you’re on a stage. You’re being charged. You don’t know what’s happening. You don’t know what’s coming.

COULTER: Right, and it’s also a sucker punch. I can put a pie in Bruce Lee’s face if he is standing giving a talk and you run at him. But I wouldn’t have missed the way they missed me.

COLMES: But the president of St. Thomas College says you violated the controversial issues policy stating that members and guests are expected to treat each other with dignity. And that’s what he is claiming about what happened there. I don’t know what that means. But I wasn’t there.

COULTER: I don’t either, but neither was he.

COLMES: Did you not treat fellow audience members with dignity in your responses?

COULTER: Far more dignity than their questions deserved. No, I’m much nicer to college liberals than I am to you, for example, because I figure you’re an adult, these are young kids.

COLMES: I can take it. I can handle it.

COULTER: Right, you can take it. So in general, I am much politer to them. I have to say St. Olaf’s and St. Thomas questions were stunningly bad, so bad I can’t even remember. I can remember the ones last night.

But I think there really is a problem on college campuses and if you want liberalism to continue in this country — I don’t — but just to give you a little tip: Liberal students are being let down by their professors, by the world.

I mean, they’re buffeted along by a liberal media. They have liberal public school teachers. They go to college. They have liberal professors. They don’t know how to argue. They can’t put together a logical thought, whereas you could put a college Republican on TV right now and he can debate you...

HANNITY: Yes, they’re good.

COULTER: ... and do a credible job. But liberals, they throw food, they curse.

HANNITY: Last night, it got particularly crude. And we actually even have some video.

COULTER: You can’t show the video of the question.

HANNITY: No, we can’t. And we’re going to get reaction to this video from a speech that she was giving last night that got really out of hand in Texas.

COLMES: A student named Ajai Raj asked an obscene question and began making obscene hand gestures as the police escorted Mr. Raj out and arrested him for disorderly conduct. Here is what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AUDIENCE: Let him go! Let him go! Let him go!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let him go!

AUDIENCE: Let him go!

AUDIENCE: Shame, shame, shame!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLMES: He was arrested for asking an obscene question. I mean, what did he do that earned him an arrest?

COULTER: He asked one of the more intelligent questions from the liberals.

COLMES: Not from what I read, nothing we could repeat, even on cable.

COULTER: No, that’s right.

COLMES: No, but it was an obscene question. It was totally out of order. But why was he escorted out though? Why was he arrested?

COULTER: I don’t know. I don’t work for campus police. And I like question-and-answer. And like I said, compared to the questions the other liberals were asking, it was no worse than the other ones.

COLMES: But were you shocked?

COULTER: There were more f-words and a-words used in his question.

COLMES: Is there a part of you though that kind of enjoys the attention and the controversy from this kind of event?

COULTER: No, not the controversy and not the attempted physical attacks that have failed miserably. But no, I love the question-and-answer. I love to see liberals try to thrash their way to a coherent argument. And actually, I think it’s fun to debate.

And like I say, liberal students are really being let down because I’m not gelling that. I mean, take this question last night. Even if he removed the obscenity from it, the reason it came up was — and my controversial speech was my defense of a 5,000-year-old institution, marriage.

That’s controversial on a college campus. And I defended it by, you know, pointing out that marriage promotes civilization. You have a lack of barbarity and savagery, what you don’t see in societies without a marriage institution.

I said nothing about sodomy. I didn’t say it was unnatural, or immoral or they would be struck down by God. And he stood up and said, “Well, you were saying you respect the sanctity of marriage. Well, what about a man who goes home every night and ‘f’s his wife in the ‘a’?” So even taking out the obscenities, his question doesn’t make any sense. Oh, he’s an impressive-looking fellow, too.

COLMES: Here is my advice to liberals: They should watch the way I destroy your arguments every time you come on this show and they would be fine.

COULTER: No, I was making this point during the break. I think we have got to get college Republicans to start putting up their best debater against you on college campuses to show liberals to introduce them to the process of linear thinking and logical thought.

COLMES: I’ll see the headlines in the conservative press, “Colmes Loses to College Republican.”

COULTER: College Republicans are good debaters.

COLMES: All right, but have you ever, debated a liberal that made sense other than me? You can’t say all liberals don’t ask intelligent questions.

COULTER: It’s pretty bad on college campuses now. I have spoken at Harvard a couple of times since 2001, and they would not humiliate themselves. They were above it all. So those questions were pretty good.

Penn State, very good questions, but I don’t think those were coming from liberals. I think they were just interested students, maybe even conservatives, asking questions. Where else have I gotten good questions? I think that’s it.

HANNITY: Apparently this guy had interrupted the whole speech, correct? He was a heckler? He was one of those troublemakers?

COULTER: Yes, I can’t tell them apart. A good-looking guy like that, he doesn’t really stand out in the leftist crowd.

HANNITY: You were talking about gay marriage. And he makes this very insulting remark, apparently made some very crude gestures on the way out.

COULTER: I didn’t really notice. I was just pointing out what a persuasive point he had just made. Who was he trying to persuade by that?

HANNITY: You speak at a lot more college campuses than I ever have. But I find I usually end up fighting with the liberal college professors.

COULTER: No, they sit in the back hiding...

HANNITY: And then attack you later.

COULTER: ... and then attack me when I’m gone.

HANNITY: Yes, well, that happens, too.

COULTER: Like this university professor did, apparently.

No, I thought the guy that should have been arrested was the Arab student who said he supported his fellow Arabs. He was very angry at me. And since I had been talking with enthusiasm about the recent Iraq elections, I said, “Which Arabs are you supporting? The ones who flew planes into the buildings or the ones who just voted in Iraq?”

HANNITY: What did he say?

COULTER: He wouldn’t answer. No, he is the one I want the name of.

HANNITY: He wouldn’t answer?

COULTER: Wouldn’t answer that.

HANNITY: You asked him a simple question, that question, and he wouldn’t answer?

COULTER: I support my fellow Arabs. Which ones? No, he wouldn’t answer it.

HANNITY: And what is the reaction of everyone else? You have a lot of Republicans on college campuses that love you.

COULTER: Oh, yes. No, usually, I have to say the disruptive ones are a small — and they aren’t disruptive. I mean, I like the question-and-answer.

HANNITY: Yes.

COULTER: Challenging questions are a little more fun than someone standing up and engaging in a Tourette’s Syndrome at the mike, but that’s kind of funny, too.

HANNITY: What should happen to people that are attacking speakers like you, and Buchanan, and Kristol and David Horowitz? What should happen to them?

COULTER: On the basis of what happened to the ones that physically attacked me, I hope they try it again.

HANNITY: Jail time?

COULTER: No. Apparently, the college Republican women gave them a beating they won’t forget.

HANNITY: What happened to them?

COULTER: According to eyewitnesses I talked to, one got a broken shoulder and one got a broken nose. And I mentioned again, neither of their sucker-punch surprise missiles came near me. They throw like girls.

COLMES: Well, I’m glad you’re in good health. By the way, you know, Ralph Nader has been attacked, Bill Gates, you know, the head of the Sierra Club...

COULTER: Not on college campuses and not by conservatives.

COLMES: We don’t know who did it. I don’t know if it was other liberals.

COLMES: Well, the venue is not as important as the fact that it happened. It shouldn’t happen.

COLMES: Thanks for being here. Stay safe. Stay away from pies.

==============================

Coulter’s F-bomber a future journalist? (WorldNetDaily, 050505)

Student heckler wrote for college paper, Ann rips liberals who throw food, curse

The University of Texas student arrested after asking an obscenity-filled question of WorldNetDaily columnist Ann Coulter is a former reporter for the college’s newspaper, and is said to be defending his actions in more graphic language.

Ajai Raj, 19, a sophomore whose major is English at the Austin campus, was taken into custody and charged with disorderly conduct following his vulgar question and lewd hand gestures following a speech by the conservative pundit Tuesday night.

“He worked for us for about two weeks, then he just stopped showing up,” Robert Inks, managing editor of the Daily Texan, told WND. “He was not acting on behalf of the newspaper [at the Coulter speech]. The guy was speaking completely on his own.”

An open letter from Raj posted on DemocratsUnderground.com suggests no remorse for his actions.

I have no regrets. Was I jackass? Yes. Oh, Christ, yes. But here’s the question people ought to ask themselves. Did I deserve to be arrested? Did the cops need to rough me up for saying bad words at what was at least masquerading as an open dialogue? Do the people of Texas – hell, of America – feel that “potty mouth” belongs on the list of punishable crimes along with “aggravated assault” and “armed robbery”? ...

I know I didn’t slay the insidious evil that is Ann Coulter, but I did give her pause. She can easily go to another college or hoedown or whatever and spew her tired rhetoric without worrying about me. But I’m not the only one who feels this way. Other people will call her on her s—.

Online messageboards have been kept busy with reaction to Raj.

# “Ajai, you’re a hero! Coulter is an obnoxious pig who spreads hatred and stupidity wherever she goes. It’s good to know that there are some smart people around who don’t fall for her B.S.”

# “Twerps like this make my day! The more that Joe Average hears about this type of stupidity from liberal Democrats, the more they vote Republican. Keep up the good work, dorkbreath.”

# “In a little place called reality, you would get your head caved in for sport. You are a waste of human flesh and a wussy to boot.”

LowerMyBills

A search of the Daily Texan’s archives indicates three stories written by Raj between March 9 and March 23, covering the lack of diversity at UT, the state’s attorney general encouraging open records, and the death of a UT freshman who was hit by a taxi while walking home from a party.

In an essay dated April 18 posted on PartyCampus.com, Raj says he was arrested this spring on marijuana charges.

“When me and the motley members of my cell block were led in front of a judge, I learned that, according to our ‘justice’ system, a straight-A college kid holding a bag of weed is as bad a criminal as a guy who beats his wife and kid. ... I learned that every single cop in this God-forsaken county thinks he’s the King of S— Mountain, and that they missed their chance to be comedic wunderkinds. It takes a real man to make fun of a guy who’s in a futile situation and has nothing to do but take your s—.”

Coulter, who was previously attacked with a custard pie at an October appearance at the University of Arizona, said last night on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes” program that liberal-minded students have been let down by their instructors.

“They’re buffeted along by a liberal media, they have liberal public schoolteachers, they go to college, they have liberal professors,” Coulter said. “They don’t know how to argue, they can’t put together a logical thought. ... Liberals – they throw food, they curse.”

Coulter, a best-selling author as well as columnist, says she was defending traditional marriage at the event, when Raj came to the microphone to ask his question.

“I defended it by pointing out that marriage promotes civilization. You have a lack of barbarity and savagery – what you don’t see in societies without a marriage institution. I said nothing about sodomy. I didn’t say it was unnatural or immoral or that he would be struck down by God. And he stood up and said. ‘Well, you say you respect the sanctity of marriage, well what about a man who goes home every night and F’s his wife in the A?’ So even taking out the obscenities, his question doesn’t make any sense. What does that have to do with my point? ... Who was he trying to persuade by that?”

According to the police report, Raj then ran back toward his seat, making a motion with his hand “simulating masturbation,” and was arrested as an officer escorted him from the library, with Raj’s supporters chanting “Let him go!”

“Intelligent questions are a little more fun than someone standing up and engaging in a Tourette’s syndrome at the mic, but that’s kind of funny, too,” Coulter said.

She jokingly noted there was another student at the event who may have been more deserving of arrest, as he said he supported his fellow Arabs and was very angry with Coulter.

“I said, ‘Which Arabs are you supporting, the ones who flew planes into the buildings, or the ones who just voted in Iraq?’” Coulter said. “He wouldn’t answer.”

==============================

Vulgar heckler arrested at Ann Coulter speech (WorldNetDaily, 050505)

Protesters rip ‘racist, sexist, anti-gay, right-wing bigot’

A University of Texas student was arrested last night amid F-word-laced heckling and shouting during a speech on campus by WorldNetDaily columnist Ann Coulter, prompting discussion on talk radio across America today.

The student, sophomore Ajai Raj, was approached by campus police officers after asking Coulter a vulgar question during a question-and-answer session, according to the Daily Texan student newspaper.

The paper said that prior to the $30,000 event, co-sponsored by the Texas Union Student Events Center and Student Endowed Centennial Lectureship Committee, the International Socialist Organization protested outside of the meeting hall at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum.

About a dozen people held up signs with slogans such as “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, right-wing bigot go away” and “Stop the new McCarthyism.”

The booing began early into Coulter’s speech, the Daily Texan said, when she told a joke aimed at abortion advocates: “I wonder why those ‘I Heart Partial-Birth Abortion’ T-shirts aren’t selling better.”

Coulter criticized liberals for undemocratic reactions to the Iraq war and the president’s judicial appointments.

“They’re always trying to act like they’re oppressed,” she said. “So let’s do it. Let’s oppress them.”

The paper said one student asked Coulter why universities and institutions invite her even though she “advocates terrorism against liberals.”

Coulter pointed to her book sales, with four New York Times best-sellers.

During the question-and-answer session, the booing and heckling became so overwhelming that Coulter said she would have to leave unless the hecklers were silenced.

The noise died down until Coulter addressed the issue of same-sex marriage, which led to the arrest of Raj.

After affirming she believed marriage is between a man and a woman, Raj asked approached the microphone to ask a question.

“You say that you believe in the sanctity of marriage,” the student said. “How do you feel about marriages where the man does nothing but —— his wife up the —?”

According to the police report, he then ran back toward his seat, making a motion with his hand “simulating masturbation.”

“The police came down and started escorting him out,” said event organizer Josh Campbell on today’s Rush Limbaugh radio show. “He resisted that and then they arrested him. So, it’s not like they were arresting him because of what he said, they were arresting him because he was using lewd remarks and lewd gestures and then resisted them escorting him out. ...

“At that point, I would say probably 30 or 40 liberals in the audience jumped up out of their chairs, ran out of the auditorium claiming police brutality, and we were purged of about 80% of the liberals that were there, so it was great!”

A friend of Raj, Jeffrey Stockerwell, claimed officers violently seized Raj and illegally searched him after his question.

Police charged Raj with disorderly conduct, a Class C misdemeanor.

The paper said representatives of an activist group, Austin People’s Legal Collective, took statements from everyone at the scene in case it ended up in court.

The group says it is “committed to the fight against global capitalism as well as, but not limited to, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, militarism and imperialism.”

“I’m just amazed by how they can use these tactics and feel like they’re getting anywhere,” a woman attending the event told Limbaugh. “I was very turned off by it.”

Rush Limbaugh

Limbaugh responded: “This was nothing more than a bunch of liberals that can’t argue with her, that can’t defeat her, can’t pretend to play along with her in the arena of ideas. It’s a typical liberal tactic – shut it down. If you don’t agree with it, you don’t want to hear it. And you don’t want to hear it, you make sure somebody doesn’t say it. And if somebody is gonna come say it, then you come make ‘em pay a price for saying it. ...

“Isn’t it interesting the left fears words more than anything else? They fear words, they fear the U.S. military. Here you have Saddam Hussein – 300,000 to a million people dead and buried in mass graves, rape rooms, torture – that doesn’t bother them at all. But what we say about cleaning that situation up scares the ever-living daylights out of them. ... They know they’re losing. They know they’re in the minority.”

==============================

The devil is out of details (WorldNetDaily, 050504)

Liberals have been unusually hysterical the past few weeks. But we’re not getting much in the way of details – which is odd because the devil is usually found in the details. As we reviewed vis-a-vis the judiciary in last week’s column, whenever liberals won’t give you details, it’s because the details don’t help them.

We keep hearing Tom DeLay’s name uttered in angry, accusatory tones, but I still don’t know what law he’s supposed to have broken. As far as I can tell, DeLay didn’t even cheat at golf during that trip to Scotland. But you know what liberals always say: “Where there’s nothing, there’s fire.”

As long as liberals can keep repeating “Tom DeLay” and “ethics violation” in the same sentence and get the media to throw a grade-A hissy fit – and it’s so hard to tease that out of the mainstream media when it comes to a Republican – they’ve got themselves a scandal!

Close your eyes and even now you can hear Aaron Brown saying: “Embattled Rep. Tom DeLay came under fire again today when it was disclosed that his Permanent Record showed he refused to take a nap once while in kindergarten. We turn now live to Wolf Blitzer with former kindergarten teacher Louise Millicuddy in Livingston, Texas. Wolf, could this bombshell spell the end for the combative Tom DeLay?”

How about asking the Democrats – I would recommend asking Rep. Rosa DeLauro this -– to explain precisely which law they believe DeLay broke? People will have already left the building before we get the most basic outline of the allegation. These are the same legal geniuses who looked at dozens of Whitewater-related felony convictions and said, “Crime? What crime?”

DeLay’s own constituents seem to like him, unless you include Democrats claiming to be Republicans. Liberals never tire of this trick or imagine that it could ever become any less believable. Turn on talk radio right now and you’ll hear some liberal caller claiming to be a lifelong Republican scandalized by the Bush tax cuts – or some other policy that has been a mainstay of the Republican Party for at least a century. The callers are always teachers. (No wonder our kids aren’t learning – their teachers are always on the phone with talk-radio shows pretending to be Republicans.)

A ringleader of the DeLay witch-hunt in Texas is Patricia Baig, who took out a full-page advertisement in a Texas newspaper calling for DeLay’s resignation. Baig signed her letter, “A Texas Republican for Ethical Reform.”

There is no record of Baig ever voting in a Republican primary, belonging to any Republican clubs or contributing to any Republican politicians in Texas or anywhere else.

To the contrary! Baig contributed to the Democrat who ran against DeLay in his last election. She used her maiden name for the ad, calling herself “P.A. Perine (Texas Republican).” She is a substitute teacher.

All of that was duly noted by a New York Times reporter. (If we are good and decent people, conservatives will put that reporter on a 24-hour watch to make sure he isn’t killed in the middle of the night.) But liberals think they can fool normal people with their road-to-Damascus “I used to be a Republican” conversion stories. They can’t even fool the New York Times!

Baig’s entire retort to the absence of any evidence that she is a Republican was to say that lots of Republicans don’t vote in Republican primaries or contribute to Republican candidates (which, in her defense, is at least a better excuse than Kevin Phillips’.)

So, like their theories on “global warming,” a liberal’s claim to be a Republican is a non-disprovable assertion involving a lot of hot air.

Another conservative getting the Emmanuel Goldstein treatment is John Bolton, Bush’s nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations. The charge against Bolton consists of the allegation that he is an absolute beast to his co-workers.

Have the Democrats heard about Katie Couric? As the New York Times described it last week: “America’s girl next door has morphed into the mercurial diva down the hall. At the first sound of her peremptory voice and clickety stiletto heels, people dart behind doors and douse the lights.” (Funny, I do the same thing when I’m watching the “Today” show at home by myself.)

Things have gotten so bad at “Today,” sometimes they show that videotape of Katie’s lower bowel exam just to lighten things up.

Can’t Barbara Boxer do something to protect the staff of NBC’s “Today”? They’re at least Americans. First they had to live through the horrors of the Bryant Gumbel years, and now this. Also, I can’t be completely clear here, because somebody could get killed, but why isn’t a certain lamp-throwing junior senator from New York helping them out? Oh wait – I think I know why ...

I repeat: Bolton has been nominated to be ambassador to the United Nations. It’s not like it’s an important job. Get a grip, people! He’s not replacing Paula Abdul on “American Idol.”

The U.N. is an organization with thousands of people from all over the world with one thing in common: They badly need to be yelled at, preferably by a guy who looks like Wilford Brimley. When did collegiality with representatives from North Korea and Syria become a pressing national issue?

Why just imagine if Bolton raised his voice in front of Sudan’s ambassador, or (gasp!) Burma’s! I mean, Myanmar’s! (Sorry, military junta that runs Myanmar!)

Democrats are enflamed at the idea of Bolton mistreating representatives of slave-traders and dictators, but won’t lift a finger to help the staff of “Today.” We used to be a country that cared about ratings genocide.

The only silver lining to the Democrats’ efforts to kill Bolton’s nomination is that if they succeed, Bush could nominate Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council instead. (Alan Keyes!) Maybe then we could finally get on with the important work of quitting the U.N. and kicking them out of New York. Isn’t it somebody else’s turn to host those guys yet?

==============================

Reagan’s Biggest Mistake Finally Retires (050706)

The fundamental goal of the next Supreme Court justice should be to create a record that would not inspire Sen. Chuck Schumer to say, as he did of Justice O’Connor last week: “We hope the president chooses someone thoughtful, mainstream, pragmatic — someone just like Sandra Day O’Connor.” That’s our litmus test: We will accept only judicial nominees violently opposed by Chuck Schumer.

Showing what a tough job it is to be president, when Bush announced O’Connor’s resignation, he called her “a discerning and conscientious judge and a public servant of complete integrity.” I assume he was reading from the script originally drafted for Justice Rehnquist’s anticipated resignation, but still, he said it.

Cleverly, Bush also made a big point of noting that Reagan appointed O’Connor, reminding people that whatever mistakes Bush may have made, at least he didn’t appoint O’Connor.

It’s hard to say which of O’Connor’s decisions was the worst. It’s like asking people to name their favorite Beatle or favorite (unaborted) child.

Of course, it was often hard to say what her decision was, period. In lieu of clear rules, or what we used to call “law,” O’Connor preferred conjuring up five-part balancing tests that settled nothing. That woman could never make up her mind!

In a quarter-century on the highest court in the land, O’Connor will have left no discernible mark on the law, other than littering the U.S. Reports with a lot of long-winded versions of the legal proposition: “It depends.”

Some say her worst opinion was Grutter v. Bollinger, which introduced a constitutional rule with a “DO NOT USE AFTER XXXX DATE.” After delivering a four-part test for when universities are allowed to discriminate on the basis of race (a culturally biased test if ever there was one), O’Connor incomprehensibly added: “The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.”

So now constitutional rules come with expiration dates, bringing to mind the image of O’Connor proffering one of her written opinions to Justice Scalia and asking, “Does this smell bad to you?” Strangely enough, she failed to specify which month and day in the year 2028 that affirmative action would no longer be justifiable under the Constitution.

Others say her worst decisions came in the area of religion. In determining the constitutionality of religious displays on public property and government aid to religion, Justice O’Connor evidently decided she preferred her own words, “entanglement” and “endorsement,” to the Constitution’s word “establishment.”

No one could ever understand O’Connor’s special two-prong entanglement/endorsement test — including Justice O’Connor. Over the years, she struggled to resuscitate her own test by continually adding more tines to the prongs.

Among the tines to the “endorsement” prong is the “outsider” test, requiring that the government not make a nonbeliever feel like an “outsider.” But wait! There are spikes on those tines!

O’Connor discovered a spike off the Feelings tine of the Endorsement prong, which requires the court’s evaluation of the feelings of the nonbeliever to be based on a “reasonable observer” who embodies “a community ideal of social judgment, as well as rational judgment.”

It’s often said that O’Connor’s problem is that she is not a judge, but a legislator. On the basis of her bright idea to replace 10 blindingly clear words in the Constitution (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”) with a 40-page manual of flow charts and two-pronged, four-tined, six-spiked tests, she wouldn’t have made much of legislator, either. O’Connor’s real calling was as a schoolyard bully, maliciously making up rules willy-nilly as she went along.

Processing the religion cases through the meat grinder of her own multipart tests, O’Connor found it was unconstitutional for a Reform rabbi to give a nonsectarian prayer at a high school graduation. It was also unconstitutional for a courthouse in Kentucky to display a framed Ten Commandments along with other historical documents.

In the latter case, McCreary v. ACLU, O’Connor haughtily added this bit of advice to religious believers: Visionaries “held their faith ‘with enough confidence to believe that what should be rendered to God does not need to be decided and collected by Caesar.’”

Religion may be able to get along without the government, but apparently sodomy and abortion cannot. Those, O’Connor found, were special rights protected by the Constitution.

O’Connor took sadistic glee in refusing to overturn Roe v. Wade in the face of the unending strife it has caused the nation. (And it hasn’t been easy on 30 million aborted babies either.)

She co-authored the opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey which upheld Roe v. Wade, gloating: “(T)o overrule under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason ... would subvert the Court’s legitimacy beyond any serious question.” Yes, the court has really crowned itself in glory with those abortion decisions.

At least she would not overrule a precedent for something as trivial as a human life. Overruling a precedent would require a really, really compelling value like our right to sodomize one another.

Thus, in the recent sodomy case Lawrence v. Texas, which overruled an earlier case that had found no constitutional right to sodomy (risibly titled Bowers v. Hardwick), O’Connor specifically cited criticism of Bowers as a reason to overrule it. “(C)riticism of Bowers has been substantial and continuing,” O’Connor explained in her concurrence. When “a case’s foundations have sustained serious erosion, criticism from other sources is of greater significance.”

Mercifully, O’Connor was concurring only in Lawrence, so there is no multipronged test for sodomy under the Constitution.

For all the blather about O’Connor’s moderation and pragmatism and motherly instincts, Mommie Dearest signed on to the most monstrous opinion in the history of the court, Stenberg v. Carhart, which proclaimed a heretofore unnoticed constitutional right to puncture the skull of a half-delivered baby and suction its brains out — just as the framers so clearly intended.

In her 2003 memoir, Miss Pragmatic-Consensus wrote, “Humility is the most difficult virtue,” which perhaps explains why she never attempted it.

Every human being on the globe has heard the lachrymose tale of O’Connor being offered the job of secretary after her graduation from Stanford Law School. Bushmen in Africa weep at the unfairness of it all — though not as bitterly as O’Connor does.

O’Connor spent the last quarter-century paying America back. With no offense intended to the nonbelievers who are “reasonable observers” embodying “a community ideal of social judgment, as well as rational judgment,” thank God the punishment is finally over.

==============================

A blogger meeting Ann Coulter (050105)

On Jan. 3, I met Ann Coulter at an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. She was glowing, stunning, radiant. Better than ever. She was wearing a powder blue shirt, black pants, black boots and a cross around her neck made of diamonds. I hadn’t seen her since the Republican convention. Since then, the President had been decisively re-elected, her book How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) hit the New York Times best-seller list, where it remains, and some dopes threw pies at her during a speech she was giving at the University of Arizona and missed.

“I sort of like liberals now,” she said, taking a sip of white wine. “They’re kind of cute when they’re shivering and afraid. They’re so pathetic and sad. They can’t come up with a fight. I mean, if the best you’re going to give me to argue about is Rumsfeld’s auto-pen ….

“I’m rooting for the faction of the Democratic Party—like Nancy Pelosi, quoted in yesterday’s New York Times, and I think this is the dominant faction—taking the position that our ideas are fine. That’s right, class, do not change anything about what we believe. We’ve just got to package the wine in new bottles. We need a new way of delivering our message, but the message is perfect! We just need to advertise RU-486 at NASCAR or something—that’ll do the trick!

“I think the trick is, they need to obfuscate their message,” she said. “Democrats always have these open public discussions on how they can fake out the American people, so that’s one wing—let’s not tell them what we believe—and the other wing is, Our message is perfect. Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Why was 2004 a great year?

“I’m thinking about putting up a reward on my Web page for any liberal who will mention either Afghanistan or the Kurds,” she said. “I mean, 85% of Iraq is free, it’s beautiful—we have about 300 troops patrolling the entire Kurdish area. These poor beleaguered Kurds are free, are happy, are dancing in the streets, and liberals simply won’t mention them. I certainly thought Afghanistan was going to be a tougher nut to crack than Iraq—the Russians couldn’t take Afghanistan! They’ve basically been at war for a hundred years—even when nobody’s there, they’re at war with one another. We took Afghanistan in a month, and now they’ve had elections and women vote, and they didn’t vote for some crazy lunatic mullahs. So that’s a pretty good year.”

The Iraqi people didn’t seem to have that great a Christmas.

“That’s right! But they’ll be opening Christmas presents soon enough,” she said. “And then they’ll be happy. We’ll see, but things are going pretty well, and in most cases better than expected. We’re going to transform the Middle East by the time Bush leaves office, or it will be within shouting distance of there. I think Arabs flying planes into our skyscrapers will be as likely as a Japanese kamikaze pilot.”

What would have to happen to make you say it was a bad idea to invade?

“That’s a good question. It would be a mistake if we just futz around and the whole country became like one long Falluja. I thought we were wasting way too much time on that. This is a war, let’s go in and win it. Just take the city! I think if it got to the point where it was going on for six, seven years, and it was just Americans patrolling without killing anyone—I’m getting a little fed up with hearing about, oh, civilian casualties. I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning.”

Nuke North Korea?

“Right—and this is tied to my point that, in Iraq, let the Marines do their job. There may be some civilian casualties—that’s known as war. Americans can live with that. And when did we become the guardian of the world to prevent all civilian casualties, ever—how about our civilians?”

After we bomb North Korea, what’s the next country we should invade?

“Iran. Though that’s the beauty part of Iraq: It may well not be necessary. Because precisely what I’m saying with nuking North Korea—despite that wonderful peace deal Madeline Albright negotiated with the North Koreans, six seconds before they feverishly began developing nuclear weapons. They’re a major threat. I just think it would be fun to nuke them and have it be a warning to the rest of the world.”

What about Mecca?

“Seriously, I think the rest of the countries in the Middle East, after Afghanistan and Iraq, they’re pretty much George Bush’s bitch,” she said. “I think they know we’re serious: We have a President who can do what he thinks is right, whether or not there are a bunch of liberals carping, and no matter what the letter writers to The New York Times have to say about being ashamed for their country.”

What will liberals say when George Bush leaves office?

“They will say: ‘Many people would like to give George Bush credit for transforming the entire Middle East. But it was inevitable, it was going to happen anyway. It would have happened under John Kerry.’”

Have you met anyone in the administration?

“Briefly I met Gonzalez and Karl Rove years ago—very briefly, like at a dinner—and I’ve pretty much been attacking them ever since. I kind of avoid meeting politicians, because then I can’t attack them.”

What would happen if you visited the White House?

“I was invited to the White House Christmas party, but I couldn’t go. I was busy. Maybe next year. But I’m not really someone who wants to meet people generally. It’s just not that big a thing for me. The one person I really want to meet and have my picture taken with is Jesse Helms. He kept America safe before Reagan came in. He was Senator No. He’s a great American.”

How badly are Republicans hoping that the Dems nominate Hillary?

“It would be a lot of fun and I think they might well,” she said. “The advantage Hillary has is the crazies—which is to say, the base of the Democratic party—love her, adore her, no matter what she says or does. She can come out for curbing illegal immigration. She could come out for parental notification and against partial-birth abortion and the crazies will still say, ‘No, she’s our gal. She is Madame Hillary.’”

Do you have a perverse admiration for her?

“Ewwww, no. As with John Kerry, I generally don’t admire people who get ahead on somebody else’s coattails. She’s like the anti-feminist. No, except she isn’t—because all feminists behave that way and pretend to be, ‘Oh, I’m a strong woman.’ They’re all weak and pathetic. Have you ever seen Citizen Kane? You know, he marries the nightclub singer and then wants to make her a great opera singer, because he controls all news in America; even though the audience is booing and throwing paper airplanes, all the headlines on every newspaper is ‘Susan Alexander Sweeps Chicago!’ That is what it’s like to be a liberal in America, whether you’re Susan Sontag or Hillary Clinton. No matter how pathetic and useless and everyone can be booing you, throwing paper airplanes—you can be incomprehensible like Susan Sontag, a ‘genius,’ a ‘public intellectual’! Did you try reading anything she’s ever written? What was the point of it? And Hillary, constantly voted the most admired woman.”

What should we remember about Bill Clinton?

“Well, he was a very good rapist. I think that should not be forgotten. I don’t think it’s fading. I winced when I saw him on TV today—what is Bush thinking, what is that? It reminds everyone of basically the worst episode in American history: Clinton talking on the phone with Congressmen about sending American troops to the Balkans while being serviced by Monica Lewinsky under the desk. And liberals didn’t mind that—but they’re upset that George Bush waited 48 hours to fly back from Crawford, Tex. If they’d shown half the indignation they showed at George Bush for not immediately turning over the entire United States treasury to Indonesia—where the Indonesians are all wearing Osama bin Laden T-shirts, by the way. Did you see that the Sri Lankans would not accept medical teams from Israel? ‘It’s a natural disaster, we’re dying, send help! No Jews.’ Oh-kay. Lovely people.”

What’s a major flaw of the Republican Party?

“They don’t trust themselves enough and they get nervous about running a real Republican. Our problem is exactly the reverse of the Democrats, who have to prevent the American people from understanding what they really believe. The more they know about what we really believe, the more they like us, as opposed to the image of conservative or Republican.”

Would you do a TV show with Al Franken?

“No, he’s physically repulsive. TV—we’re talking about where people see you. I have friends I trust who are smart who would put together a good TV show, and they came up with some ideas. And I can tell you straight out, we’ve basically given up. There is no liberal worthy of debating me, and I won’t do a TV show unless I have a liberal counterpart.”

Maureen Dowd?

“No. I promise you, she wouldn’t do it—she’s whiny, she’s not funny. What we’re looking for is good-looking, male, liberal, half a brain. They don’t even have to be smart.

“The one person I really want to sit down with and figure out why he thinks he’s a liberal is Larry David,” she said. “Because that’s the most brilliant TV show—it is conservative humor, and you can’t tell me it’s not. It’s all politically incorrect. And people I know who’ve worked with him say he’s really sweet, so there is nothing about him that should make him a liberal—and yet he flew from Los Angeles to Boston to sit at the Democratic National Convention.

“He can’t be a liberal! It’s got to be a generation thing. I’m sweeping the youth of America. I just noticed that most of my fans are college kids, I mean, it’s striking. And all these old people who ought to be conservatives still think of themselves as liberals. I would bet you anything if Larry David were 20 years old, he would be a right-wing lunatic.”

Will Rudolph Giuliani ever be President?

“I love Giuliani, but I just think he needs to switch his position on abortion. We’re a pro-life party. And I don’t think half the country realizes he claims to be pro-choice. He’s a Catholic kid from Queens, he was in the opera club—c’mon! These New York Republicans, they don’t have a feel for the red states like I do. I give all of my speeches out in the red states—I know America and it is not New York. And they say, ‘Oh, now, we could run a pro-choice candidate and that would get moderates in the Northeast to vote for us—and those right-wing Christians, they’ll vote for us anyway.’ No, they won’t!”

She said she’s not a big fan of the current Mayor.

“I think anyone would be better,” she said. “Michael Bloomberg is Marie Antoinette in all senses. He has no constituency to respond to, he’s raising taxes through the roof, he will not cut any programs, and by cutting out smoking … I mean, the tax base that has been hurt, the bars, the restaurants that have been hurt—it’s totally Marie Antoinette. In New York, people live in apartments the size of this table. Our dining room is the restaurant community of New York. We’re not all Michael Bloomberg, where we can invite people over to our huge hall and dining room. And to not allow people to smoke in our dining room is so Marie Antoinette. Oh, I loathe him.”

Why do liberals often say violent things?

“Forget what they say, they are violent,” she said. “They were slashing tires on Election Day. I was physically attacked this year. I hear MoveOn.org has a bounty for anyone who throws a pie in my face. Neither of those guys hit me. I think one is still in prison. It is a funny thing, that they ended up in prison—enjoying the benefits of gay marriage. One guy with a broken shoulder and one with a broken nose. And that was when I was traveling totally unprotected. Let ‘em try it again, they’ll end up dead.”

Condoleezza Rice being appointed Secretary of State is a huge deal, right?

“Yes, liberals are going to have figure out a way to cut her out of all the pictures. It’s going to be like Stalinist Russia: ‘Say, who’s that black woman standing next to Bush? No, never mind—it’s probably someone he’s arresting! It’s the maid!’ No, they’re going to start to notice. And it is I think curious, the issue Democrats have with blacks: They do not attack Spanish conservatives the way they attack black conservatives. With black conservatives, Democrats immediately go to the old racist stereotypes. It’s instantly that ‘they’re incompetent, they’re stupid.’ Look at the attacks on Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice. They try to refuse to recognize her. They’re specifically engaging in racist attacks on her: ‘Oh yeah, not up to the job. She’s not competent. She’s a dummy.’ Bush, they tell us, is dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. He is the puppet and the puppet master is Dick Cheney, or it’s Donald Rumsfeld and he’s just being run around by these wily neocons. But when it comes to Condoleezza Rice, she’s the puppet of the dumb guy—that’s how dumb she is.”

Could she say something about black conservatives?

“During the gay-marriage debate, these black ministers would come on TV and say things no white conservative would say. ‘Sodomy? You’re going to burn in hell for that!’ And I realized to my delight that if we can get blacks to be conservatives, we have an entire race of Ann Coulters. They do not care about politically correct. It would be so much fun. And they are conservative! I’m going to specifically appeal to them. I decided it’s the only free speech I’m willing to give this year. I will go to a black church and talk about gay marriage. The brothers aren’t big on queer theory. The four groups most opposed to gay marriage are blacks, Hispanics, old people and blue-collar workers—i.e., the four pillars of the Democratic Party.”

How was her Christmas in New York?

“Oh, it was so much fun this year, because saying ‘Merry Christmas’ is like saying ‘F— you!’ I’ve said it to everyone. You know, cab drivers, passing people on the street, whatever. And they come up with the ‘Happy holidays.’

“‘Merry Christmas.’ I mean, it really is an aggressive act in New York.”

==============================

How about Ted Kennedy’s privacy (050901)

Sen. Teddy Kennedy has demanded that the Bush administration waive attorney-client privilege and release internal memos John Roberts worked on while in the solicitor general’s office 15 years ago, all of which were supposed to be held in the deepest confidence. Apparently, Kennedy thinks public officials have no right to keep even their attorney-client communications secret.

This surprised me because the senator is such a strong advocate of the (nonexistent) “right to privacy.” And not just in the way most drunken, Spanish quiz-cheating, no-pants-wearing public reprobates generally cherish their own personal right to privacy. I mean privacy in the abstract.

I know as much about the “right to privacy” as I know about any other made-up, nonexistent right, but I would have thought that any “right to privacy” would protect confidential attorney-client conversations at least as much as, say, abortions in public buildings.

But I’ll have to defer to the expert.

Consequently, applying the principle even-handedly to members of the executive branch as well as the legislative branch, I demand that Kennedy immediately waive all attorney-client privilege relating to his communications with his lawyer after he drove Mary Jo Kopechne off the bridge at Chappaquiddick. It’s time to clear up, once and for all, the many questions that have swirled around Kennedy since Chappaquiddick.

Oops – “swirled” may have been a poor choice of words there. How about “floated”? Nope. “Surfaced”? Oooh – even worse, in terms of irony. “Come to light”? OK, now I’m just being obtuse. “Beset”? Yes, that’s better.

Youth is no defense. John Roberts was 26 years old when he wrote the documents that Kennedy demands on behalf of the Senate. Kennedy was 36 when he drove Mary Jo Kopechne off a bridge.

If the Senate needs to know what Roberts thought about the law at age 26, then the Senate certainly needs to know what Kennedy thought about the law at age 36, when he drowned a girl and then spent the rest of the evening concocting an alibi instead of calling the police.

This isn’t a “rehash” of Chappaquiddick; it’s never been hashed. The Senate needs to know whether Kennedy was guilty of manslaughter. How else can the Senate be expected to carry out its constitutional duty to expel Kennedy unless Kennedy makes these key documents available?

We’ll pick them up in the same van we send to collect John Kerry’s military records and Bill Clinton’s medical records.

While we wait, here’s my guess as to what those attorney-client conversations sounded like, based on the facts in Leo Damore’s book “Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Cover-Up”:

Interview with client Teddy Kennedy, July 19, 1969:

Teddy: May I approach the bench?

Lawyer: It’s not a bench, Teddy. It’s my desk. And no, you can’t have another Chivas Regal.

Teddy: (Hiccup)

Lawyer: Let’s start at the beginning.

Teddy: I’m going to say you were driving.

Lawyer: No, you are not saying I was driving.

Teddy: OK, someone in your family was driving.

Lawyer: They weren’t even in Massachusetts that week. Can we move on? Why didn’t you call the police after the accident, Teddy?

Teddy: I had to protect my political career, obviously. But this wasn’t just about me! I was thinking about future drunk, philandering U.S. senators who may or may not have just drowned some chick they met at a party.

Lawyer: But what about Mary Jo —

Teddy: Yes, precisely! How would it look if I, a United States senator, were driving off to a secluded beach at midnight with a beautiful, nubile female after a private party? How would that look?

Lawyer: But Mary Jo was still alive for two hours —

Teddy: Did I mention my wife was pregnant? You think I should have reported the accident now, Mr. Smartypants?

Lawyer: She was trapped in that car, struggling to breathe!

Teddy: Do you know that two of my brothers were assassinated?

Lawyer: She was still alive! You could have saved her!

Teddy: Yeah, and say goodbye to my presidential ambitions. There was the future of the country to consider – as well as the future of the Chivas Regal company and all their employees. I am a Kennedy. I have a divine right to the presidency. I had to put that ahead of my lawyer’s conscience. Anyway, Mary Jo was driving.

Lawyer: Teddy, we can’t say Mary Jo was driving.

Teddy: What if some phony witness claimed that the driver stopped to ask for directions. Wouldn’t that prove it was a woman driving?

Lawyer: But what about the witnesses?

Teddy: We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Hey, what’s so funny? Did I just say something funny?

To be continued ...

==============================

The perfect alibi ...I’ll drink to that! (part 2)

Ann Coulter

September 8, 2005 | printer friendly version Print | email to a friend Recommend to a friend

In light of the fact that Sen. Teddy Kennedy feels lawyer-client privileged materials should be produced in the case of a public servant – such as John Roberts – we now continue with my imaginary version of Teddy’s confidential communications with his lawyer the day after he drove Mary Jo Kopechne off a bridge at Chappaquiddick.

Interview with client Teddy Kennedy, July 19, 1969 (based on the facts in Leo Damore’s book “Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Cover-Up”):

Lawyer: Let’s get back to the night of the accident. Why didn’t you call the police?

Teddy: Stop nagging me! Mary Jo was driving. I wasn’t even in the car.

Lawyer: No, Teddy. People saw you leave the party together.

Teddy: I had spurned her sexual advances and the poor girl was distraught. That’s probably why she drove off the bridge.

Lawyer: A police officer saw you behind the driver’s wheel speeding toward the bridge with a blonde in the passenger seat shortly before the accident.

Teddy: I asked Mary Jo to take the wheel after realizing I was too drunk to drive.

Lawyer: Now I know you’re lying.

Teddy: How would that cop like a new NASA facility named after him?

Lawyer: You were soaking wet when you got back to the cottage.

Teddy: I went for a swim.

Lawyer: Fully clothed?

Teddy: I like to go for a little dip after a night of drinking and attempted extramarital sex. It clears my head.

Lawyer: There were any number of houses with lights on near the bridge – these are people who like you, Teddy – but they can’t understand why you didn’t ask them to call for help.

Teddy: I can’t remember anything that happened that night! It seems like I was wandering for days, dizzy from the loss of oxygen after my heroic attempts to rescue Mary Jo. If you think about it, it was a lot like my brother Jack’s rescue of his men on PT-109. He was driving when the ship got hit, and he didn’t save all of them either. (Teddy singing now) The car was in, the Chappaquiddick bay, fearless man, who jumps and swims, a man who means, just what he says ...

Lawyer: What are you doing?

Teddy: It’s a song I’m writing. I call it “The Ballad of Mary Jo.”

Lawyer: You already told your confidant Paul Markham and your cousin Joseph Gargan the truth.

Teddy: Yes, get those names. They’ll back me. Mary Jo was driving.

Lawyer: You’re going to ask all these people to perjure themselves for you?

Teddy: I already have. They’re balking of course, but I left them no choice.

Lawyer: What do you mean you’ve left them no choice?

Teddy: When they dropped me at the dock after they tried diving for Mary Jo, I told them I would report the accident the moment I got back to my hotel. But they knew I was lying. An hour went by and no police had come by to question them? They knew I hadn’t reported it. They’re as guilty as I am!

Lawyer: Well, arguably, you are more guilty, inasmuch as you drove off the bridge —

Teddy: Mary Jo was driving. And I’ve been drowning my sorrows ever since. Get it? “Drowning my sorrows”? Can I at least have a beer?

Lawyer: – and then you went to absurd lengths back at the hotel to create an alibi for yourself – drying off and changing clothes, making a point of complaining to the hotel owner about the noise from the next room even though everyone was sound asleep at that hour, asking the hotel owner to tell you what time it was.

Teddy: That was a nice touch, wasn’t it?

Lawyer: How can you explain that behavior as anything other than trying to create an alibi?

Teddy: Are you listening? I’m a married man! Mary Jo was a babe! I was drunk, speeding toward a secluded beach with her. Do you think we were going to look for seashells? Now how would that look?

Lawyer: Hey – what are you doing with that neck brace?

Teddy: Look! Now it’s a hat! Hey – there aren’t any cameras in here, are there?

Lawyer: I don’t know how I’m going to get you out of this ...

Teddy: Do you know who I am? I am a Kennedy! JFK, Jackie O, Camelot, Prohibition-era rum-running Kennedy clan – any of that ring a bell? The judge is a Democrat, and the weenie DA keeps sending me mash notes promising not to prosecute. Ha ha! He must think I need a new chauffeur!

Lawyer: You are in a lot of trouble, Teddy.

Teddy: I’ve got it all in hand. Hey, I’m feeling a little loaded. Which side of this neck brace is up? My press conference is in 10 minutes.

==============================

Lie down with strippers, wake up with pleas (Townhall.com, 060419)

by Ann Coulter

However the Duke lacrosse rape case turns out, one lesson that absolutely will not be learned is this: You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you don’t hire strange women to come to your house and take their clothes off for money.

Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men’s houses and take your clothes off for money. (Does anyone else detect a common thread here?)

And if you are a girl in Aruba or New York City, among the best ways to avoid being the victim of a horrible crime is to not get drunk in public or go off in a car with men you just met. While we’re on the subject of things every 5-year-old should know, I also recommend against dousing yourself in gasoline and striking a match.

Everyone makes mistakes, especially young people, but the outpouring of support for the victims and their families is obscuring what ought to be a flashing neon warning for potential future victims.

Whenever a gun is used in a crime, there are never-ending news stories about how dangerous guns are. But these girls go out alone, late at night, drunk off their butts, and there’s nary a peep about the dangers of drunk women on their own in public. It’s their “right.”

Yes, of course no one “deserves” to die for a mistake. Or to be raped or falsely accused of rape for a mistake. I have always been unabashedly anti-murder, anti-rape and anti-false accusation — and I don’t care who knows about it!

But these statements would roll off the tongue more easily in a world that so much as tacitly acknowledged that all these messy turns of fate followed behavior that your mother could have told you was tacky.

Not very long ago, all the precursor behavior in these cases would have been recognized as vulgar — whether or not anyone ended up dead, raped or falsely accused of rape. But in a nation of people in constant terror of being perceived as “judgmental,” I’m not sure most people do recognize that anymore.

It shouldn’t be necessary to point out that girls shouldn’t be bar-hopping alone or taking their clothes off in front of strangers, and that young men shouldn’t be hiring strippers. But we live in a world of Bill Clinton, Paris Hilton, Howard Stern, Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman,” Democratic fund-raisers at the Playboy Mansion and tax deductions for entertaining clients at strip clubs.

This is an age in which the expression “girls gone wild” is becoming a redundancy. So even as the bodies pile up, I don’t think the message about integrity is getting through.

The liberal charge of “hypocrisy” has so permeated the public consciousness that no one is willing to condemn any behavior anymore, no matter how seedy. The unstated rule is: If you’ve done it, you can’t ever criticize it — a standard that would seem to repudiate the good works of the Rev. Franklin Graham, Malcolm X, Whittaker Chambers and St. Paul, among others.

Every woman who has had an abortion feels compelled to defend abortion for all women; every man who’s ever been at a party with strippers thinks he has to defend all men who watch strippers; and every Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton feels the need to defend duplicity, adultery, lying about adultery, sexual harassment, rape, perjury, obstruction of justice, kicking the can of global Islamo-fascism down the road for eight years and so on.

This is crazy. (I can say that because I’ve never been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. Although I did test positive for “Olympic fever” once.)

In no area except morality would a sane person believe he can’t criticize something stupid because he’s done it. How about: If you’ve ever forgotten to fill up your car and run out of gas, you must forevermore defend a person’s right to ignore the gas gauge. Or if you’ve ever forgotten to wear a coat in cold weather and caught a cold, henceforth you are obliged to encourage others not to dress appropriately in the winter.

This deep-seated societal fear of being accused of “hypocrisy” applies only to behavior touching on morals.

But we’re all rotten sinners, incapable of redemption on our own. The liberal answer to sin is to say: I can never pay this back, so my argument will be I didn’t do anything wrong.

The religion of peace’s answer is: I’ve just beheaded an innocent man — I’m off to meet Allah!

I don’t know what the Jewish answer is, but I’m sure it’s something other than, “therefore, what I did is no longer bad behavior” — or the Talmud could be a lot shorter.

The Christian answer is: I can never pay this back, but luckily that Christ fellow has already paid my debt.

==============================

Coulter exposes liberals’ ‘Godless religion’: New book launching 6-6-06 her most controversial (WorldNetDaily, 060530)

Set to launch on 6-6-06, best-selling author Ann Coulter throws open the doors of the “Church of Liberalism” in her latest and most controversial book to date.

“If a Martian landed in America and set out to determine the nation’s official state religion, he would have to conclude it is liberalism, while Christianity and Judaism are prohibited by law,” Coulter writes in “Godless: The Church of Liberalism.”

The WND columnist argues that while many Americans are outraged by liberal hostility to traditional religion, to focus solely on the Left’s attacks on Judeo-Christian tradition is to miss a larger point: Liberalism is a religion—a godless one.

“Liberals love to boast that they are not ‘religious,’ which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion,” she writes.

“Of course liberalism is a religion. It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as ‘religion.’”

Chapter headings in Coulter’s “Godless” include “On the Seventh Day, God Rested and Liberals Schemed” and “Liberals’ Doctrine of Infallibility: Sobbing Hysterical Women” and “The Holiest Sacrament: Abortion.”

Coulter is the author of four New York Times bestsellers: “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must),” “Treason,” “Slander,” and “High Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

In her new book, available now through the WND Book Service at a discount of 32%, Coulter takes on what she calls the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

For liberals, evolution is the touchstone that separates the enlightened from the benighted. But Coulter neatly reverses the pretense that liberals are rationalists guided by the ideals of free inquiry and the scientific method. She exposes the essential truth about Darwinian evolution that liberals refuse to confront: It is bogus science.

Writing with a keen appreciation for genuine science, Coulter reveals that the so-called “gaps” in the theory of evolution are all there is – Darwinism is nothing but a gap. After 150 years of dedicated searching into the fossil record, evolution’s proponents have failed utterly to substantiate its claims. And a long line of supposed evidence, from the infamous Piltdown Man to the “evolving” peppered moths of England, has been exposed as hoaxes. Still, liberals treat those who question evolution as religious heretics and prohibit students from hearing about real science when it contradicts Darwinism. And these are the people who say they want to keep faith out of the classroom?

Liberals’ absolute devotion to Darwinism, Coulter shows, has nothing to do with evolution’s scientific validity and everything to do with its refusal to admit the possibility of God as a guiding force. They will brook no challenges to the official religion.

==============================

A religion or a cult? (Townhall.com, 060616)

by David Limbaugh

With all the controversy surrounding Ann Coulter’s new book “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” some might overlook important substantive points she has made.

Critics may say, “Precisely. That’s our complaint with Ann. Her insulting remarks deflect attention from the points she’s trying to make.”

Not so fast. Whether she intended it this way or not, the “harsh” remarks she made in the book have proven one of her theses in a way the book alone could not have done — at least not as effectively.

She contends that liberals have employed certain “human shields” to advance their unpopular arguments, especially those pertaining to the war on terror. These people have either earned respect, like military heroes, or become sympathetic figures through personal tragedy, like Cindy Sheehan and the widows of 9/11 victims.

As a result of their status, these individuals are entitled to say anything they want, not just as a matter of free speech, which no one would dispute, but with full immunity from criticism. Their actions and statements cannot be challenged, no matter how ludicrous, no matter how destructive.

The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said as much when she wrote that it’s “inhumane” for Bush not “to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute” (cited by Coulter, p. 127).

Sorry, but that presumably well-meaning statement is just flat wrong, and wrongheaded. If it were true, we could delegate authority over the nuclear “football” to grieving parents of soldiers killed in action and let them unleash our ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) on suspected terrorist strongholds. Forget “collateral damage,” their moral authority is absolute.

Let’s start out with the truism that Cindy Sheehan and the 9/11 widows are entitled to an abundance of sympathy because of their losses. Perhaps they should even be given some slack for saying offensive things in the height of their grief.

But what about when they deliberately and repeatedly inject themselves into the public vortex by issuing vitriolic, malicious slander against the president of the United States, such as calling President Bush a terrorist, or embracing foreign, America-hating dictators like Hugo Chavez? Do Americans have a right to call them on it? Can Sheehan or the “Jersey Girls” say anything, no matter how detrimental to America’s image or national interest, without fear of contradiction?

Should we nod with feigned approval at the irresponsible statements of Congressman John Murtha or Senator John Kerry because they were in combat? Conversely, should those with no military background be foreclosed from the public debate on the war, as “chicken hawks”? Preposterously, liberals answer yes to both questions.

But the more important point is: Liberals don’t really believe that the opinions of veterans or family members of war victims are entitled to deference or “absolute moral authority.”

As usual, the liberals’ outrage is highly selective. It is not the people or their circumstances that are sacrosanct, but their liberal positions. Liberals accorded none of their precious war-hero deference to John O’Neill and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Indeed, they called them liars — when they weren’t — and much worse. They have savaged combat-decorated Marine Ollie North. They have no use for retired generals supporting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Not on their lives would they defend 9/11 widows or mothers of war victims in support of President Bush’s war effort.

Nor is it harshness, offensiveness or insulting tones that bother them; otherwise, they’d have to denounce 90% of the Democratic Party’s leadership for the vicious slander they’ve hurled at George W. Bush for six years or at Justice Clarence Thomas. They would excommunicate from their movement cartoonists for their racist depictions of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. They would condemn Michael Moore and the entire lineup at Air America. And they would be outraged at the defamatory drumbeat against Ann Coulter herself and portray her as a victim. One major newspaper called her book “pornography,” a magazine called for her to kill herself, a major news anchor said she had trampled on something “sacred,” and New York Daily News featured her on the cover as “Coulter the Cruel.”

Coulter’s comments pale in comparison to the nastiness that routinely comes out of liberals’ mouths about conservatives, as when Sen. Harry Reid called President Bush a liar and Alan Greenspan a hack. So please, spare us the indignation.

What really bothers most liberals is not Ann Coulter’s tone, but the substance of her criticisms. You dare not challenge liberal orthodoxy; otherwise, you are fair game for the very kind of mistreatment, abuse and intolerance they profess to decry in others. All of which further proves the thesis of Ann’s book: Liberalism is a religion whose sacred tenets may not be challenged; for some, it might even be a cult.

==============================

On the Seventh Day, God Rested and Liberals Schemed (Townhall.com, 060606)

by Ann Coulter

The following is an exclusive look at chapter one of Ann Coulter’s new book, Godless. Ann Coulter skewers the Left, and Townhall.com has the first look.

GODLESS: The Church of Liberalism, Chapter One
On the Seventh Day, God Rested and Liberal Schemed

They exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator. . . . Therefore, God gave them up to passions of dishonor; for their females exchanged the natural use for that which is contrary to nature.—Romans 1:25–26

Liberals love to boast that they are not “religious,” which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion. Of course liberalism is a religion. It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as “religion.”

Under the guise of not favoring religion, liberals favor one cosmology over another and demand total indoctrination into theirs. The state religion of liberalism demands obeisance (to the National Organization for Women), tithing (to teachers’ unions), reverence (for abortion), and formulaic imprecations (“Bush lied, kids died!” “Keep your laws off my body!” “Arms for hostages!”). Everyone is taxed to support indoctrination into the state religion through the public schools, where innocent children are taught a specific belief system, rather than, say, math.

Liberal doctrines are less scientifically provable than the story of Noah’s ark, but their belief system is taught as fact in government schools, while the Biblical belief system is banned from government schools by law. As a matter of faith, liberals believe: Darwinism is a fact, people are born gay, child-molesters can be rehabilitated, recycling is a virtue, and chastity is not. If people are born gay, why hasn’t Darwinism weeded out people who don’t reproduce? (For that, we need a theory of survival of the most fabulous.) And if gays can’t change, why do liberals think child-molesters can? Pedophilia is a sexual preference. If they’re born that way, instead of rehabilitation, how about keeping them locked up? Why must children be taught that recycling is the only answer? Why aren’t we teaching children “safe littering”?

We aren’t allowed to ask. Believers in the liberal faith might turn violent—much like the practitioners of Islam, the Religion of Peace, who ransacked Danish embassies worldwide because a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Mohammed. This is something else that can’t be taught in government schools: Muslims’ predilection for violence. On the first anniversary of the 9/11 attack, the National Education Association’s instruction materials exhorted teachers, “Do not suggest that any group is responsible” for the attack of 9/11.

If a Martian landed in America and set out to determine the nation’s official state religion, he would have to conclude it is liberalism, while Christianity and Judaism are prohibited by law. And not just in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where it’s actually on the books, but throughout the land. This is a country in which taxpayers are forced to subsidize “artistic” exhibits of aborted fetuses, crucifixes in urine, and gay pornography. Meanwhile, it’s unconstitutional to display a Nativity scene at Christmas or the Ten Commandments on government property if the purpose is to promote monotheistic religion.

Nearly half the members of the Supreme Court—the ones generally known as “liberals”—are itching to ban the references to God on our coins and in the Pledge of Allegiance. They resisted in 2004 on procedural grounds only because it was an election year. The absence of a divinity makes liberals’ belief system no less religious. Liberals define religion as only those belief systems that subscribe to the notion of a divine being in order to dismiss other religions as mere religion and theirs as something greater. Shintoism and Buddhism have no Creator God either, and they are considered religions. Curiously, those are two of the most popular religions among leftists—at least until 9/11, when Islam became all the rage.

Liberalism is a comprehensive belief system denying the Christian belief in man’s immortal soul. Their religion holds that there is nothing sacred about human consciousness. It’s just an accident no more significant than our possession of opposable thumbs. They deny what we know about ourselves: that we are moral beings in God’s image. Without this fundamental understanding of man’s place in the world, we risk being lured into misguided pursuits, including bestiality, slavery, and PETA membership. Liberals swoon in pagan admiration of Mother Earth, mystified and overawed by her power. They deny the Biblical idea of dominion and progress, the most ringing affirmation of which is the United States of America. Although they are Druids, liberals masquerade as rationalists, adopting a sneering tone of scientific sophistication, which is a little like being condescended to by a tarot card reader.

Liberals hate science and react badly to it. They will literally run from the room, lightheaded and nauseated, when told of data that might suggest that the sexes have different abilities in math and science. They repudiate science when it contradicts their pagan beliefs—that the AIDS virus doesn’t discriminate, that there is no such thing as IQ, that nuclear power is dangerous and scary, or that breast implants cause disease. Liberals use the word science exactly as they use the word constitutional.

Both words are nothing more or less than a general statement of liberal approval, having nothing to do with either science or the Constitution. (Thus, for example, the following sentence makes sense to liberals: President Clinton saved the Constitution by repeatedly ejaculating on a fat Jewish girl in the Oval Office.) The core of the Judeo-Christian tradition says that we are utterly and distinctly apart from other species. We have dominion over the plants and the animals on Earth. God gave it to us, it’s ours—as stated succinctly in the book of Genesis. Liberals would sooner trust the stewardship of the Earth to Shetland ponies and dung beetles. All their pseudoscience supports an alternative religion that says we are an insignificant part of nature.

Environmentalists want mass infanticide, zero population growth, reduced standards of living, and vegetarianism. The core of environmentalism is that they hate mankind. Everything liberals believe is in elegant opposition to basic Biblical precepts.

- Our religion says that human progress proceeds from the spark of divinity in the human soul; their religion holds that human progress is achieved through sex and death.

- We believe in invention and creation; they catalogue with stupefaction the current state of our diminishing resources and tell us to stop consuming.

- We say humans stand apart from the world and our charge is Planet Earth; they say we are part of the world, and our hubristic use of nature is sinful.

- We say humans are in God’s image; they say we are no different morally from the apes.

- We believe in populating the Earth until there’s standing room only and then colonizing Mars; they believe humans are in the twilight of their existence.

Our book is Genesis. Their book is Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the original environmental hoax. Carson brainwashed an entire generation into imagining a world without birds, killed by DDT. Because of liberals’ druidical religious beliefs, they won’t allow us to save Africans dying in droves of malaria with DDT because DDT might hurt the birds. A few years after oil drilling began in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, a saboteur set off an explosion blowing a hole in the pipeline and releasing an estimated 550,000 gallons of oil. It was one of the most devastating environmental disasters in recent history. Six weeks later, all the birds were back. Birds are like rats—you couldn’t get rid of them if you tried.

The various weeds and vermin liberals are always trying to save are no more distinguishable than individual styles of rap music. The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River in Maine, was halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant previously believed to be extinct. Liberals didn’t even know this plant still existed, but suddenly they were seized with affection for it. They had been missing it all that time! (Granted, the rediscovery of the Furbish lousewort has improved the lives of every man, woman, and child in America in ways too numerous to count, but even so . . . ) Liberals are more upset when a tree is chopped down than when a child is aborted. Even if one rates an unborn child less than a full-blown person, doesn’t the unborn child rate slightly higher than vegetation? Liberals are constantly warning us that man is overloading the environment to the detriment of the plants. Howard Dean left the Episcopal Church—which is barely even a church—because his church, in Montpelier, Vermont, would not cede land for a bike path. Environmentally friendly exercise was more important than tending to the human soul.

That’s all you need to know about the Democrats.

Blessed be the peacemakers who create a diverse, nonsexist working environment in paperless offices. Suspiciously, the Democrats’ idea of an energy policy never involves the creation of new energy. They want solar power, wind power, barley power. How about creating a new source of energy? Nuclear reactors do that with no risk of funding Arab terrorists or—more repellent to liberals—Big Oil Companies. But in a spasm of left-wing insanity in the seventies, nuclear power was curtailed in this country.

Japan has nuclear power, France has nuclear power—almost all modern countries have nuclear power. But we had Jane Fonda in the movie The China Syndrome. Liberals are very picky about their admiration for Western Europe.

Now it turns out even Chernobyl wasn’t as bad as people thought. In a feat of Soviet engineering, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded in 1986, sending chunks of the reactor core flying into nearby farms and igniting a fire at the reactor that burned for ten days. It was the worst nuclear disaster in history—finally giving us a nuclear power plant that killed more people than died in Teddy Kennedy’s car. But as the New York Times reported in September 2005, “Nearly 20 years after the huge accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, a new scientific report has found that its aftereffects on health and the environment have not proved as dire as scientists had predicted.” Instead of tens of thousands of cancer deaths from acute radiation exposure, there were 4,000. Only 50 deaths were directly attributable to the explosion. There has been no increase in leukemia, birth defects, or fertility problems in the surrounding area.

And, I mention again, this was in the Soviet Union. Soviet engineers couldn’t make Jell-O. They’d show up at the World’s Fair and stare at a flush toilet like it was a rocket ship. They turned half of Germany into an inefficient manufacturing center. Do you know how hard that is? It’s like botching a train wreck. Of course the Soviets screwed up nuclear power! Instead of taking the environmentalist hamstrings off the muscular American economy—so we can split atoms, drill, mine, and strip—the Democrats want to preside over our state-managed descent into hell.

Liberals want us to live like Swedes, with their genial, mediocre lives, ratcheting back our expectations, practicing fuel austerity, and sitting by the fire in a cardigan sweater like Jimmy Carter. If one posits that we have a fixed amount of energy and have to start rationing it, then we are dying as a species. The theory of vegetarianism is that Americans consume “too much” energy. It takes a lot of energy to grow corn to feed animals to feed us—so why don’t we become a bunch of grazing farmyard animals ourselves? We can eat grass and share our energy with the birds!

Environmentalists’ energy plan is the repudiation of America and Christian destiny, which is Jet Skis, steak on the electric grill, hot showers, and night skiing. Perennially irritating to environmentalists is mankind’s single greatest invention: the flush toilet. You knew it had to happen. Apostles of “dry toilets” insist that we “have to get beyond flush-and forget technology,” as it was put by Sim Van der Ryn, founder of the Ecological Design Institute. Flush-and-forget abortions are one thing, but this is solid human waste we’re talking about! Apparently, we need to spend more time thinking about our excrement. Van der Ryn explained that the goal was “to deal with one’s own waste as close to the source as possible”—precisely the opposite of what humans have wanted to do with their excrement since the beginning of time.

Nonflush toilets were first introduced in America—well, originally by the Indians—but then again in the sixties by a Rockefeller scion who promoted a “dry toilet” called the Clivus Multrum. They pop up again every few years but, oddly enough, never seem to catch on. Dry toilets are like the metric system of human waste disposal.

In 1995, the New York Times was enthusiastically reporting on the move away from mankind’s greatest invention by homeowners “fed up with overdevelopment, contaminated ground water, and overflowing septic tanks”—but evidently not fed up with living on top of their own excrement. These homeowners were creating environmentally friendly ways to keep their excrement close to them. They created miniature wetlands in their backyards, solar toilets, or composting toilets. Only recently have advocates of nonflush toilets begun to recognize their product’s central shortcoming, which is the natural human aversion to the “routine emptying of excrement from the toilets.”

Instead of the organic method of living in your own excrement, most people prefer the inorganic method of flushing it away from themselves. Consequently, the federal government has done the next best thing for the official state religion, which is to make it a felony to replace a 1.3-gallon toilet bowl with an old-fashioned 7-gallon toilet bowl—or as we call it, “a working toilet.”

The whole purpose of living in your own excrement is to save . . . water. Water. Liberals are worried we’re going to run out of something that literally falls from the sky. Here’s an idea: Just wait. It will rain. Every possible personal use of water combined—steam baths, swimming pools, showers, toilets, and kitchen sinks—amounts to less than 10% of all water usage. Agricultural use accounts for about 70% of water usage and industrial use more than 20%. But again in 2003, the Greens were calling flush toilets “an environmental disaster.” They want us to go to the bathroom outdoors because, you know, we’re animals.

Question: Are liberals clueless about waste management? Answer: Do bears crap in the woods? Liberals have fervently believed that humans are a blight on the Earth since Thomas Malthus penned “An Essay on the Principle of Population” in 1798. Like the flushless toilet, it’s an idea that won’t die. In the 1970s, Paul Ehrlich wrote the best-selling book The Population Bomb, predicting global famine and warning that entire nations would cease to exist by the end of the twentieth century—among them, England. “[I]t is now too late,” he wrote, “to take action to save many of those people.” In 2001—despite the perplexing persistent existence of England—the Sierra Club listed Ehrlich’s Population Bomb as among its books recommended by Sierra readers.

How many trees had to be chopped down to make the paper for all those copies of The Population Bomb?

Liberals beatify health, no-smoking, camping, non–fossil-fuel travel, organic foods—all while creating exotic new diseases in pursuit of polymorphous perversity. Don’t be confused by your capacity for reason! We’re just apes. A chief ingredient of the liberal religion is the bestialization of humanity. So on one hand, we have to give up SUVs, snowmobiles, and indoor plumbing, but on the other hand, at least we get the funky bestial behavior. (Including actual bestiality— keep reading!)

They believe in the coarse physical appropriation of women by men—hookups, trophy wives, strip clubs. Through movies, magazines, and TV, liberals promote a cult of idealized beauty that is so extreme as to be unimaginable. We must listen to Hollywood airheads like Julia Roberts and George Clooney because they are beautiful.

Today’s worship of physical perfection is more grotesque than Hitler’s notion of the Aryan.

Ugly feminists—or as the New York Times describes them, “by the standards of the time, unlovely”—impotently rail against “sexist men” and “sexual harassment” while simultaneously promoting the view that sex has no sacred purpose, it’s just for fun.

Sex must be dissociated from the idea of raising children, liberated from the transmission of humanity. It’s a natural function that should carry no more moral consequence than drinking a glass of water, as their demiurge Lenin said. It’s in our genes, and therefore it cannot be immoral. We’re beasts. Let’s rock!

Toward the goal of divorcing sex from reproduction, liberals will lie about anything. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court discovered a constitutional right for married couples to buy contraceptives, premised on the Court’s assertion that marriage is a “sacred” institution, protected by “a Right to Privacy older than the Bill of Rights itself.” Within a decade, Justice William Brennan would dump the married stuff and extend the right to contraceptives to unmarried people.

In a classic boneheaded, factless, legislative pronunciamento, in Eisenstadt v. Baird (March 22, 1972), Brennan wrote, “It is inconceivable that the need for health controls varies with the purpose for which the contraceptive is to be used when the physical act in all cases is one and the same.” Ten years later, the New York Times named AIDS in a May 11, 1982, article headlined “New Homosexual Disorder Worries Health Officials.”

A year after Eisenstadt, the malleable “right to privacy” metastasized from a right to contraception for married couples to a right to destroy human life in Roe v. Wade.

What about the poor little tyke’s privacy? The question misses the point.

“Constitutional right” means “Whatever Liberals Want.” Society cannot legislate what goes on “in the bedroom.” But if we can’t legislate what goes on in the bedroom, why can’t I hide money from the IRS under my mattress?

The cult of liberalism is preposterously fixated on youth—all the while devaluing life at the end, by demanding a “right to die.” Richard Lamm, the Democratic governor of Colorado, famously said in 1984, “We’ve got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life.” How about you first, Dick?

Instead of seeking wisdom, liberals desire to be seen as clever by being counterintuitive, crazy, and outré. They have an irreducible fascination with barbarism and will defend anything hateful—Tookie, Mumia, Saddam Hussein, Hedda Nussbaum, abortion, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, New York Times columnist Frank Rich. If Hitler hadn’t turned against their beloved Stalin, liberals would have stuck by him, too. Liberals defend unreason against reason and then call themselves rationalists. They are too important to be bothered by the things that frighten middle-class people worried about the equity in their homes. The truly pathetic liberals are the ones who aren’t rich but ape the belief structure of fabulously wealthy Hollywood leftists anyway. Like the bums who stood outside restaurants during the Depression with toothpicks in their mouths, they seem not to realize that the crucial part of being rich is that you have money, not attitudes.

The whole panoply of nutty things liberals believe flows from their belief that man is just another animal. (And not just Kanye West—they’re talking about all men.) Only their core rejection of God can explain the bewildering array of liberal positions: We must save Tookie Williams, while slaughtering the unborn. We must eat natural foods, but the right to acquire disease in casual hookups is a holy ritual. We must halt human development so that the Furbish lousewort can be fruitful and multiply, but humans are multiplying too much and threatening the biosphere of the Furbish lousewort. Women are no different from men, but we need a library of laws and codes to protect women from sexual harassment. As Chesterson said, where we once had a few big rules, now we need an encyclopedia of little rules.

Usually zealots can’t make money doing insane things. But liberals have the entire taxpayer-funded “education” apparatus to support them. Public schools are what columnist Joe Sobran calls “liberalism’s reproductive system.” In lieu of teaching Biblical truth, which—are you sitting down?—used to be the purpose of education, the government schools teach an “amalgam of liberalism, feminism, Darwinism, and the Playboy philosophy.” No longer content to ruin their own children, liberals insist on being subsidized by the taxpayer to ruin everyone else’s children, too. (Remember the good old days when bums and malcontents would ruin your children for free?)

Among the things the Supreme Court has held “unconstitutional” are prayer in public schools, moments of silence in public schools (which the Court cleverly recognized as an invidious invitation to engage in “silent prayer”), and displays of the Ten Commandments in public schools. In 1992, the Court ruled it “unconstitutional” for a Reform rabbi to give a nonsectarian invocation at a high school graduation ceremony on the perfectly plausible grounds that Rhode Island was trying to establish Reform Judaism as the official state religion. (Opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy.)

Yes, those scheming Jews have had their eyes on the Ocean State as long as I can remember. Let one Reform rabbi say a prayer in a school there, you might just as well change the state’s name to “Jewland.” Even the rare sane rulings from the Supreme Court face massive resistance from the lower courts. Liberal judges feel free to disregard the Supreme Court to achieve the overriding objective of keeping real religion out of government schools. All-important “precedent” matters only when we’re talking about Roe v. Wade, not rulings on religion.

In a 2001 opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court upheld the right of religious groups to participate in after-school activities along with other clubs. It was the second time the High Court had instructed the schools to stop specifically singling out religious groups for discrimination. (One imagines the sound of a rooster crowing if that same court denied the church groups a third time.)

Indeed, the case Good News Club v. Milford Central School was nearly identical to another case in which the Supreme Court had reversed the exact same court a few years earlier. In his majority opinion, Justice Thomas remarked on the oddity of having to reverse the same court twice on the same issue. Thomas said that while the appellate courts aren’t required to cite all the Supreme Court’s precedents, they might want to take note of the last time they were reversed on the exact same facts.

Concerned that someone might be reading Leviticus during school hours, Justice David Souter dissented from Thomas’s opinion in a hairsplitting exegesis about the precise time classes let out (2:56 p.m.) versus the time the organizers would enter school property (2:30 p.m.). Then again, I suppose arguments about the precise moment something begins have never been liberals’ strong suit. At least the 6–3 decision gave us an accurate count of the atheists on the Court, probably as accurate as my dream of giving them all polygraph tests someday. (Do you believe in a Higher Being? . . . No, seriously.)

Public schools are forbidden from mentioning religion not because of the Constitution, but because public schools are the Left’s madrassas. According to Cornell law professor Gary Simson, sex education courses that teach abstinence until marriage are unconstitutional because they violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Simson says recommending sexual abstinence to teenagers is wrong because it “teaches that this one belief is the only proper one.”

Liberals used to tell us they were teaching fisting to fourth-graders because “kids are going to have sex anyway!” (Yes, “fisting” is exactly what it sounds like; have a nice day!) Now they’ve dispensed with that and openly concede that they believe virtue is just one of many equally valid points of view that must be counterbalanced with the argument for promiscuity, group sex, fisting, and other lifestyle choices. At least the crazy Muslims get funding from Saudi Arabia for their madrassas. Liberals force normal Americans to pay for their religious schools.

While any reference to Moses in the schools is strictly prohibited, school authorities can force minors to attend sexually explicit presentations on anal sex and condom use. In 1992, Chelmsford (Massachusetts) High School hired Suzi Landolphi to give a mandatory “AIDS Awareness presentation” to the entire school, apparently designed to reach the one or two human beings on Planet Earth who hadn’t heard about AIDS.

By her own account, Landolphi is the product of a broken family. She says her mother was an alcoholic who committed suicide, her father physically abused her, and she herself was a chronic bed wetter until age ten. Landolphi was a five-time loser at marriage. So she is definitely the sort of person most parents would want talking to their children about sex. Naturally, the Chelmsford High School administrators realized they had found an Aristotle in their midst.

In her presentation, “Hot, Sexy, and Safer,” Landolphi began by telling the teenagers—who were forced by school authorities to be there—”I can’t believe how many people came here to listen to someone talk about sex, instead of staying home and having it yourself.” In the dry legal language of the complaint later filed by parents of some of the students, Landolphi also “used profane, lewd, and lascivious language to describe body parts and excretory functions,” including “eighteen references to orgasms, six references to male genitals, and eight references to female genitals.” (And that was just while thanking the school principal for inviting her.) She asked students to show their “orgasm faces” in front of a camera—which would certainly come in handy for any future on-camera careers in the adult film industry. She invited a male student on stage to lick a condom with her.

After discussing anal sex, Landolphi remarked that one would be “in deep sh—.” She told one male student he “had a nice butt” and another that his baggy pants were “erection wear.” This did not constitute sexual harassment under the law, because, like Bill Clinton, Landolphi supports abortion rights, one may assume. She concluded ninety minutes of this relentless vulgarity by asking a female student to place an oversized condom on the head of a male student and blow it up.

Like most people who enjoy talking to strangers about sex, Miss Landolphi, to put it as charitably as possible, is physically repulsive in appearance. With a presentation that was about as erotic as phone sex with Andrea Dworkin—or actual sex with Andrea Dworkin, come to think of it—Landolphi may have inadvertently promoted abstinence among the student body by generating widespread aversion to the various activities she described.

It’s no wonder Bible Belt, right-wing Christians get the greatest enjoyment out of sex (another scientific study hated by liberals)—they never have to endure listening to liberals talk about sex.

Parents of Chelmsford students immediately brought suit alleging that by forcing their children to attend Landolphi’s presentation without prior notice, the school had violated their privacy right to direct the upbringing of their children. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit could find no such right in the “living Constitution.” The “right to privacy” refers to the right of unmarried couples to obtain contraception. It encompasses the right to kill an unborn baby. It means the right of men to sodomize one another. Where these parents got the idea that “privacy” included their right to keep their children from being forced to make “orgasm faces” in school was anybody’s guess.

Tellingly, the federal appeals court also rejected the parents’ Free Exercise claim, questioning “whether the Free Exercise Clause even applies to public education.”

Thus, the court declared a clearly visible Constitutional clause—not buried in the penumbras—officially inapplicable to government schools. (Perhaps what threw them off was the fact that the free exercise of religion—unlike abortion, gay marriage, and sodomy—is specifically mentioned in the Constitution. You can see how that would be confusing.) Allowing parents to interfere with their children’s education might impair the state’s efforts to indoctrinate children into the official state religion of promiscuity, recycling, and freeing Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Colleges pick up where the public schools leave off, inculcating students in the religion of hating America and hating God. While college professors like the University of Colorado’s Ward Churchill act like on-the-edge radicals for calling American bond traders “little Eichmanns,” professors are the most cosseted, pussified, subsidized group of people in the U.S. workforce. They have concocted a system to preemptively protect themselves for not doing their jobs, known as “tenure.” They make a lot of money, have health plans that would make New York City municipal workers’ jaws drop, and work—at most—fifteen hours a week.

In theory, the only job requirement of a college professor is to be intelligent, provocative, and open-minded, but their reigning attribute is that they are ignorant, boring, and narrow-minded. These zealous pagans teach the official state religion of liberalism as axiomatic truth.

The stupidest of their students become journalists, churning out illiterate attacks on dissidents from the liberal religion. Within a few weeks of each other in early 2006, both Rolling Stone and Newsweek magazines displayed their ignorance of Biblical passages cited during interviews. In a Rolling Stone interview, Republican senator Sam Brownback criticized countries like Sweden that had legalized gay marriage, quoting the line from Matthew “you shall know them by their fruits.”

The interviewer, Jeff Sharlet, interpreted Brownback’s scriptural quotation as a homophobic slur. Soon gay groups were demanding an apology from the senator. (All I can say to that is: how niggardly of them.)

Meanwhile, Newsweek ran an article about the looming danger of evangelicals learning to debate, noting that Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University had the number-one debate club in the country. The reporter quoted Falwell saying, “We are training debaters who can perform assault ministry.” These evangelicals are scary! Newsweek later ran a correction stating: “Newsweek misquoted Falwell as referring to ‘assault ministry.’

In fact, Falwell was referring to ‘a salt ministry’—a reference to Matthew 5:13, where Jesus says, ‘Ye are the salt of the earth.’ We regret the error.”

When Al Gore tried to suck up to Christians during the second presidential debate in the 2000 campaign, he utterly mangled Scripture— and not one mainstream media reporter noticed. By way of explaining his nutty environmental beliefs, Gore said, “In my faith tradition, it is written in the book of Matthew, ‘Where your heart is, there’s your treasure also.’ And I believe that we ought to recognize the value to our children and grandchildren of taking steps that preserve the environment in a way that’s good for them.”

Gore had not merely transformed a core Christian belief into a Confucian fortune cookie, he had reversed Christian doctrine. The actual Bible—Matthew 6:21—says precisely the opposite of what Gore said, admonishing us to make heaven our only treasure—”For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Not only were Bible illiterates in the media unaware of Gore’s faux pas, they actually praised Gore for his brilliant use of Scripture to appeal to the God voters. Writing in Slate, William Saletan said Gore scored points in the second debate when he “answered a question about the environment by quoting from the scripture of my ‘faith tradition.’ The quote—’Where your heart is, there is your treasure also’— had nothing to do with the environment but everything to do with projecting heart and faith.”

It also had nothing to do with Scripture.

Father Richard John Neuhaus describes being interviewed by a reporter about the pope and referring to the pope by one of his formal titles, “the Bishop of Rome.” The reporter responded, “That raises an interesting point. Is it unusual that this pope is also the bishop of Rome?” In another interview, Neuhaus told a reporter that political corruption had “been around ever since that unfortunate afternoon in the garden.” This time, the reporter mulled it over before asking, “What garden was that?”

In defense of the American educational system, every single one of these reporters knew how to put on a condom.

In 2003, reporters hounded British prime minister Tony Blair about whether he had prayed with George Bush—as if they were asking whether the world leaders had shot heroin together or shared a hooker. There was so much negative publicity over Blair praying with Bush that Blair’s handlers forbade him to attend church with Bush later that year. It’s hard to imagine an activity Bush and Blair could have shared that would have been more scandalous, short of taking an SUV to an all-men’s club that allowed cigar smoking.

In the book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer writes of the Bush administration, “This, after all, is a country led by a born-again Christian . . . who characterizes international relations as a biblical clash between forces of good and evil. The highest law officer in the land, Attorney General John Ashcroft, is a dyed-in-the-wool follower of a fundamentalist Christian sect—the Pentecostal Assemblies of God of America . . . and subscribes to a vividly apocalyptic worldview that has much in common with key millenarian beliefs held by the Lafferty brothers and the residents of Colorado City.”

Yes, it’s really those devout Christians we have to keep our eyes on. Who can ever forget all the rioting and bloodshed around the world after hip-hop impresario Kanye West appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine as the crucified Jesus?

Krakauer—my guess, not a Christian—is worried about a theocracy based on one born-again Christian in the cabinet of a Christian president and compares Ashcroft to psychopath murderer Dan Lafferty, a member of a radical Mormon sect who brutally murdered a twenty four-year-old woman and her child. Comparing the attorney general to Lafferty is roughly the equivalent of saying, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who belongs to the same religious sect as the Son of Sam . . .”

If liberals are on Red Alert with one born-again Christian in the cabinet of a Christian president, imagine how they would react if there were five. Between 25 and 45% of the population calls itself “born-again” or “evangelical” Christian. Jews make up less than 2% of the nation’s population, and yet Clinton had five in his cabinet. He appointed two to the Supreme Court. Now guess which administration is called a neoconservative conspiracy?

Whether Jews or Christians, liberals are always on a witch hunt against people who appear to believe in God.

Incidentally, the country was also allegedly led by an evangelical Christian when Jimmy Carter was president—you know, the kind of evangelical Christian who appears prominently in pornographic magazines while running for president. I guess that 1976 interview with Playboy was enough to do penance with liberals for believing in God.

Liberals are constantly accusing Christians of being intolerant and self-righteous, but the most earnest Christian has never approached the preachy intolerance of a liberal who has just discovered a lit cigarette in a nonsmoking section. (Or who has just discovered two born again Christians in a Republican administration.)

Howard Dean calls the Republican Party “evil.” (Somebody better keep an eye on that guy Dean. One of these days he’s liable to say something crazy.) In 2005, Representative Nancy Pelosi told Democrats they should vote against the Republican budget “as an act of worship,” which at least is preferable to liberals’ usual devotional of offering to perform oral sex on Democrat presidents who keep abortion legal. (Former Time magazine White House correspondent Nina Burleigh told the Washington Post in 1998, “I’d be happy to give [Clinton oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”)

Democrats get on their high horses about evil corporations making obscene profits, but try pointing out to them that trial lawyers also make enormous profits suing corporations owned by people who make less than trial lawyers. They think you’re just being obtuse for not understanding that trial lawyers are doing God’s work.

Halliburton helps produce the oil and gasoline that keep us warm, feed us, allow us to travel, power our world, and so on. What do trial lawyers produce again?

The moment self-righteousness takes over, you are dealing with dangerous psychopaths. Liberals are constantly accusing Christians of monumental self-righteousness for daring to engage in free speech or for voting in accordance with their religious beliefs. Compare that with the behavior of practitioners of the liberal religion. Liberals felt entitled to excuse Stalin’s murderous regime on the grounds that he was simply trying to build a Communist paradise. Because they passionately believed in Marxism, liberals thought they had a right to lie about being Soviet spies. Yeah, well, some people passionately believe in white supremacy. How about George Clooney making a sympathetic movie about true-believing white supremacists and the evil prosecutors who forced them to name names?

If liberals could cut Stalin slack, there is no behavior they cannot excuse as justified by their passion. A president who was credibly accused of rape and displayed a pervasive pattern of what used to be known as “sexual harassment” was above reproach in liberal eyes. He had saved partial birth abortion! (Thus the charming tributes.)

Liberals consider it self-evident that they are being persecuted simply for wanting to do the right thing and always believe their critics’ motives are vile and corrupt—which may be why Liberty University routinely kicks their butts in debate.

The people who call Republicans “evil” subscribe to a political platform that essentially consists of breaking the Ten Commandments one by one. They are for adultery, lying about adultery, covetousness, killing the unborn, and stealing from the middle class (the “rich”) and giving to teachers and trial lawyers (the “poor”). They create new myths and a new priesthood all to justify a worldview that is the rejection of the Judeo-Christian vision of man’s role in the universe. They have more shibboleths than the Old Testament tribe of Gileadites— Halliburton; global warming; antichoice; “Bush lied, kids died!” And they are full of towering, smug, intolerant, self-righteous rage.

If Democrats ever dared speak coherently about what they believe, the American people would lynch them. So they claim to believe in God, much as Paul Begala claims to go “duck hunting” (liberal code for “antiquing”). At the beginning of the 2004 presidential campaign, the Democratic Leadership Council held briefings to teach Democratic candidates how to simulate a belief in God. To ease the Druids into it, the DLC recommended using phrases like “God’s green earth.” (The DLC also suggested avoiding the use of phrases such as “goddamned, motherf—ing Republicans!”)

During the primaries, Howard Dean began goading the press to talk about religion but, after claiming the Book of Job was his favorite book in the Bible, was unable to place it in the correct Testament. Regular Talmudic scholars, these Democrats.

Throughout the 2004 campaign, the Democrats were looking for a Democrat who believed in God—a pursuit similar to a woman searching for a boyfriend in a room full of choreographers. The religious outreach coordinator hired by the Democratic National Committee was Brenda Bartella Peterson, who had signed a brief to the Supreme Court advocating the removal of “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Apparently, Madalyn Murray O’Hair was unavailable.

The religion adviser to John Kerry’s presidential campaign was Mara Vanderslice. She had previously been the religious outreach coordinator for Howard Dean—an assignment that would have required the patience of Job, whoever the hell he was.

Vanderslice had spoken at rallies cosponsored by the radical gay group ACT UP, famous for a protest at St. Patrick’s Cathedral at which its members spat the Eucharist on the floor. She had been an organizer of violent protests in Seattle and Washington, D.C., when liberals reacted as any normal person would by smashing Starbucks windows and torching police cars because some bankers had come to town for a meeting.

Vanderslice majored in “peace studies” at Earlham College. There she was a member of the Marxist-Leninist group that supported convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. That’s devoutly religious for a Democrat. In fact, by Democratic standards Vanderslice was a veritable C. S. Lewis.

According to The Nation magazine, Vanderslice “cornered” Kate Michelman of NARAL Pro-Choice America at the 2004 Democratic convention (in the proverbial “back alley,” one can only hope) to ask Michelman for help “in convincing Catholics that Kerry was really against abortion.” (“NARAL” is an acronym for something with “abortion” in the title, but we don’t know what because the NARAL webpage won’t use the word abortion.) Inasmuch as NARAL’s raison d’être is to keep abortion legal until the baby is around age thirteen, either Kerry’s religion adviser was casually enlisting NARAL to help lie to the American people or she is even dumber than the average Democrat.

At a church service at the Democratic National Convention held for People of Faith for Kerry (not to be confused with Muslims for Kerry), the church displayed a cloth sign proclaiming: “Lesbians, Gays & Friends at Old South Church” are “Open and Affirming.” James Forbes of the Riverside Church in Manhattan delivered the sermon, in which he called for “full employment,” “a true livable wage,” “universal access to pre-kindergarten and childcare programs,” a “progressive tax policy,” and various other items specifically mentioned during the Sermon on the Mount.

And Democrats remain genuinely mystified as to why they didn’t win the 2004 election. After the Democrats failed to get a majority of Americans to vote for them in the seventh straight presidential election—since Jimmy Carter won with 50.1% of the vote in 1976—liberal minister Jim Wallis leapt into the breach. He proposed to teach the Democrats how to “reframe” their language to make people think they believe in God. We don’t believe this crazy God crap, but let’s fake out the American people so we can enact gay marriage and partial birth abortion, and ban God from the Pledge of Allegiance. His big idea is to redefine Jesus’ genuine, personal, volitional love for the poor as the same as their impersonal, coercive, compassionless welfare machinery. (Wallis’s favorite part of the Gospel begins, “Blessed are the economically disadvantaged in spirit . . .”)

The Democrats got off to a good start after the 2004 election when the new head of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, denounced Republicans as “pretty much a white Christian party.” (Even when sneering at Christians—Christians!—Democrats use blacks for cover.) To be sure, 80% of the Republican Party is white and Christian, slightly higher than the nation as a whole, which is 70% white and Christian. Democrats cannot conceive of “hate speech” toward Christians because, in their eyes, Christians always deserve it.

After lashing out at Christians for no reason, Dean went on to say the Democrats are “more welcoming to different folks, because that’s the kind of people we are.” In addition to Christians, whom liberals hate, the Democrats are not particularly welcoming of “folks” who do not believe it is a Constitutional right to stick a fork in a baby’s head. They are not welcoming to people who think a human life is more important than a bird’s life. They don’t welcome judges who display the Ten Commandments in their courtrooms. They are not welcoming to people who believe marriage really is a sacred institution and not just an opportunity to sneak a right to contraception into the Constitution. They are not welcoming to people who think a multiple murderer gang leader like Tookie Williams should be given the death penalty. They are extremely unwelcoming to blacks who stray from the liberal orthodoxy and become Republicans. And David Geffen is distinctly unwelcoming to people who try to walk on the public beach that abuts his house in Malibu.

Democrats revile religion but insist on faking a belief in God in front of the voters claiming to be “spiritual.” They can’t forthrightly admit they are Druids, so they “reframe” their constant, relentless opposition to every Biblical precept as respect for “science” or the “Constitution”—both of which they hate. Their rage against us is their rage against the Judeo-Christian tradition. I don’t particularly care if liberals believe in God. In fact, I would be crestfallen to discover any liberals in heaven. So fine, rage against God, but how about being honest about it? Liberals can believe what they want to believe, but let us not flinch from identifying liberalism as the opposition party to God.

The preceding is an exclusive look at chapter one of Ann Coulter new book, Godless. Ann Coulter skewers the Left, and Townhall.com has the first look.

Ann Coulter is the author of How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), Treason, Slander, and High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

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Hey you, browsing ‘Godless’ – buy the book or get out! (WorldNetDaily, 060608)

Ann Coulter

The long-anticipated book “Godless: The Church of Liberalism” was finally released this week. If the New York Times reviews it at all, they’ll only talk about the Ann Coulter action-figure doll, so I think I’ll write my own review.

“Godless” begins with a murder at the Louvre and then takes readers on a roller-coaster ride through the Church of Liberalism in a desperate game of cat and mouse in which the hunter becomes the hunted – with a twist at the end you simply won’t believe! It’s a real page-turner – even the book-on-tape version and large-print edition! Who knew a book about politics could make such an ideal gift – especially with Father’s Day just two weeks away!

The main problem with “Godless” is that I had to walk through the valley of darkness to find it. You will have to push past surly bookstore clerks, proceed past the weird people in the “self-help” section, and finally past the stacks and stacks of Hillary Clinton’s memoirs. If all else fails, ask for the “hate speech” section of your local bookstore. Ironically, if you find “Godless” without asking for assistance, it’s considered a minor miracle.

This is not a book about liberals. I stress this in anticipation of Alan Colmes hectoring the author to name names. (For people who resented being asked to “name names” during the 1950s, these liberals sure aren’t shy about demanding that conservatives do the same today.)

It is a book about liberalism, our official state religion. Liberalism is a doctrine with a specific set of tenets that can be discussed, just like other religions.

The Christian religion, for example, frowns on lying and premarital sex. That is simply a fact about Christianity. This does not mean no Christian has ever lied or had premarital sex. Indeed, some Christians have committed murder, adultery, thievery, gluttony. That does not mean there’s no such thing as Christianity any more than videotape of Rep. William Jefferson accepting cash bribes means there’s no such thing as congressional ethics rules.

Similarly, the liberal religion supports abortion, but that doesn’t mean every single liberal has had an abortion. We can rejoice that liberals do not always practice their religion.

“Godless” examines a set of beliefs known as “liberalism.” It is the doctrine that prompts otherwise seemingly sane people to propose teaching children how to masturbate, allowing gays to marry, releasing murderers from prison and teaching children that they share a common ancestor with the earthworm. (They haven’t yet found the common ancestor ... but like O.J., the search continues.)

The demand that their religion be discussed only with reference to specific individuals – who is godless? are you saying I’m godless? – is simply an attempt to prevent us from talking about their religion. This tactic didn’t work with “Slander” or “Treason,” and it’s not going to work now.

It’s not just that liberals ban Reform rabbis from saying brief prayers at high-school graduations and swoop down on courthouses and town squares across America to cart off Ten Commandments monuments. The liberal hostility to God-based religions has already been copiously documented by many others. “Godless” goes far beyond this well-established liberal hostility to real religions.

The thesis of “Godless” is: Liberalism is a religion. The liberal religion has its own cosmology, its own explanation for why we are here, its own gods, its own clergy. The basic tenet of liberalism is that nature is god and men are monkeys. (Except not as pure-hearted as actual monkeys, who don’t pollute, make nukes or believe in God.)

Liberals deny, of course, that liberalism is a religion – otherwise, they’d lose their government funding. “Separation of church and state” means separation of your church from the state, but total unity between their church and the state.

Two months ago, the 9th Circuit held that a school can prohibit a student from exercising his First Amendment rights by wearing a T-shirt that said “Homosexuality Is Shameful.”

Even the left’s pretend-adoration of “free speech” (meaning: treason and pornography) must give way to speech that is contrary to the tenets of the church of liberalism on the sacred grounds of a government school.

How might the ACLU respond if a school attempted to ban a T-shirt that said something like “Creationism Is Shameful”? We’d never hear the end of warnings about the coming theocracy.

In fact, students are actually required to wear “Creationism Is Shameful” T-shirts in Dover, Pa., where – thanks to a lawsuit by the ACLU – the liberal clergy have declared Darwinism the only true church, immunized from argument. Ye shall put no other God before it. Not one.

Liberals believe in Darwinism as a matter of faith, despite the fact that, at this point, the only thing that can be said for certain about Darwinism is that it would take less time for 1) a single-celled organism to evolve into a human being through mutation and natural selection than for 2) Darwinists to admit they have no proof of 1).

If only Darwinism were true, someday we might evolve public schools with the ability to entertain opposable ideas about the creation of man.

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Party of rapist proud to be godless (Townhall.com, 060614)

by Ann Coulter

I thought I’d put off that column on ethanol subsidies I’d been planning to write this week and instead address the topic that has so riveted the nation — the hot new book “Godless: The Church of Liberalism.”

First of all, I’m getting a little fed up with people trying to make money off my book. Worthless little cable TV shows with teeny-tiny audiences, ridiculous legislators and tabloid newspapers are all trying to make a name for themselves off the profundity of “Godless.”

Second, let’s pause for a moment to observe that two facts are now universally accepted: Liberals are godless and Hillary’s husband is a rapist.

My book makes a stark assertion: Liberalism is a godless religion. Hello! Anyone there? I’ve leapt beyond calling you traitors and am now calling you GODLESS. Apparently, everybody’s cool with that. The fact that liberals are godless is not even a controversial point anymore.

In addition to the consensus position that liberals are godless, no one has made a peep about that swipe I took at Hillary, proposing that she have a chat with her husband before accusing others of being “mean” to women in light of Juanita Broaddrick’s charge that Bill Clinton raped her. Hillary beat a hasty retreat on her chubby little legs and is now hiding behind Rahm “Don’t Touch My Tutu” Emanuel.

Yes, the Democrats’ pit bull, Rahm Emanuel, is a former ballerina. And they wonder why the concerted effort of the MSM (as we call the mainstream media) and the Democratic Party can’t lay a finger on me. A ballerina. Hey, if the padded, silky shoe fits ...

The establishment’s current obsession with me is the MSM’s last stand. They’ve deployed the whole lineup of yesterday’s power brokers against me, and all they’ve accomplished is to make my book the No. 1 book in the country. In other words, their efforts to defeat me have just created more people like me. Now who’s stuck in an unwinnable quagmire, losers?

Take note, conservatives: No American need ever fear the liberal establishment again. It’s all over but the sobbing.

Back when there were only three TV stations and no Internet, talk radio or Fox News, it used to be so easy for the MSM to destroy reputations — Joe McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Robert Bork, Dan Quayle, Oliver North, Clarence Thomas, Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, Paula Jones and Linda Tripp, to name a few of the MSM’s prey.

Liberals aren’t having so much fun now that the rabbit has the gun.

Last Wednesday, Brian Williams began the “NBC Nightly News” — currently watched exclusively by old ladies in nursing homes — with a report on “civility” in America, which has apparently been horribly despoiled by my book. Williams complained that the “explosion in our media, our deafening national noise level and our changing mores have made this a much different era in America than the one our parents grew up in.”

Oh, the civility of having only three TV stations back in our parents’ day! It was even more civil in the Soviet Union where there was only one TV station.

In precisely five minutes on the Media Research Center’s Web site, I turned up some random examples of the sort of civility we got from the MSM before the alternative media allowed conservatives to be heard, too. These are all-new quotes I’ve never even seen before. There are about a hundred more in my book “Slander.”

# On Ronald Reagan: “I predict historians are going to be totally baffled by how the American people fell in love with this man (Ronald Reagan) and followed him the way we did.”—>

# On Pat Buchanan: “On the road I travel to the mall in Wheaton, Md., two white men severely beat two black women Tuesday. One was doused with lighter fluid, and her attacker tried to set her afire. Both men cursed the women for being black. I couldn’t help but shudder: That could have been me. This heinous act happened only hours after Pat Buchanan voters gave him 30% of the vote in the Maryland GOP presidential primary.” —>

# On Lee Atwater: “(Lee Atwater) was a scoundrel, one of the darkest figures to dominate our recent politics, a man with a comprehensively cynical view of his fellow creatures. ... He made it in the most improbable way, learning to dress at Brooks Brothers and keep his funky white trash wickedness too. ... In running campaigns that played on racial divisions, he was something worse than a bigot; he was a man who pretended to be a bigot in hope that it would sell.” —>

# On Newt Gingrich: “So how do you put an end to what Jim Wright called ‘mindless cannibalism’? Do you put a muzzle on Newt Gingrich?” —>

Ah, the civility of the old media! Sadly for the MSM, the Silent Majority is silent no more.

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Coulter’s most daring book ever launches today: On 6-6-06, ‘Godless’ takes readers into inner sanctum of ‘Church of Liberalism’ (WorldNetDaily, 060606)

Bestselling author Ann Coulter’s decision to launch her latest and most explosive book today – 6-6-06, a date some have linked to the “mark of the beast” from the Book of Revelation – is a bad omen for liberals.

“Godless” is available for purchase as of today, but even before it’s official “street date” of 6-6-06 the book has skyrocketed up bestseller charts, currently No. 5 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list, and No. 2 on the nonfiction chart.

“Liberals love to boast that they are not ‘religious,’ which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion,” she writes.

Coulter is the author of four New York Times bestsellers: “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must),” “Treason,” “Slander,” and “High Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

In her new book, available now through the WND Book Service at a discount of 32%, Coulter takes on what she calls the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

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Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter (WorldNetDaily, 060606)

In past #1 bestsellers, Ann Coulter has revealed how liberals lie about their conservative opponents (Slander). She’s shown how the Left routinely stands with America’s enemies against America herself (Treason). She’s even defended liberalism’s ultimate bogeyman: Joe McCarthy.

But now, Coulter ups the ante once again. In Godless: The Church of Liberalism, she shows how liberal hostility to traditional religion stems from the fact that liberalism is itself a religion — a godless one. And, she reveals, thanks to the liberals who dominate our courts, our government bureaucracies, our schools, and our media, liberalism is now the established religion of our country.

Inside the Church of Liberalism

Though liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, argues Coulter, it bears all the attributes of a religion itself. In Godless, she throws open the doors of the Church of Liberalism, showing us:

* its sacraments (abortion)

* its holy writ (Roe v. Wade)

* its martyrs (from Soviet spy Alger Hiss to cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal)

* its clergy (public school teachers)

* its churches (government schools, where prayer is prohibited but condoms are free)

* its doctrine of infallibility (as manifest in the “absolute moral authority” of spokesmen from Cindy Sheehan to Max Cleland)

* and its cosmology (in which mankind is an inconsequential accident)

Then, of course, there’s the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Writing with a keen appreciation for genuine science, Coulter reveals that the so-called “gaps” in the theory of evolution are all there is — Darwinism is nothing but a gap. After 150 years of dedicated searching into the fossil record, evolution’s proponents have failed utterly to substantiate its claims. And a long line of supposed evidence, from the infamous Piltdown Man to the “evolving” peppered moths of England, has been exposed as hoaxes. Still, liberals treat those who question evolution as religious heretics and prohibit students from hearing about real science when it contradicts Darwinism. And these are the people who say they want to keep faith out of the classroom?

Fearlessly confronting the high priests of the Church of Liberalism and ringing with Coulter’s razor-sharp wit, Godless is the most important and riveting book yet from one of today’s most lively and impassioned conservative voices.

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Thank God for Ann Coulter (Townhall.com, 060609)

Review by Ben Shapiro (bio | archive | contact )

“Liberals love to boast that they are not ‘religious,’ which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion,” writes Ann Coulter at the beginning of her new tour de force, Godless: The Church of Liberalism.

Coulter backs up her provocative thesis with her usual biting wit and cutting humor. Instead of focusing on the presence of leftist bias in the media (Slander) or the left’s rewriting of history in pursuit of its oft-treacherous ends (Treason), Coulter hones in on the basic ideals inspiring the ideology of liberalism. As Coulter strips liberalism down to its bare essentials, it becomes evident that, as she puts it, liberalism “is no longer susceptible to reduction ad absurdum arguments. Before you can come up with a comical take on their worldview, some college professor has already written an article advancing the idea.” Liberalism is indeed a Godless religion—and, as Coulter demonstrates, the secular religion of the left is a religion bereft of moral fiber.

It’s not that the atheism of the secular left makes Coulter unhappy. It’s that they lie about their religion. Jews don’t pretend that Judaism is a scientific theory; Christians don’t pretend that Christianity is provable in a laboratory. Liberals, however, pretend that their religion is provable and intellectually superior, while at the same time labeling the traditionally religious backwards buffoons. “I don’t particularly care if liberals believe in God,” she writes. “In fact, I would be crestfallen to discover any liberals in heaven. So fine, rage against God, but how about being honest about it?”

Coulter jumps into her expose with alacrity. Her second chapter, “The Passion of the Liberal: Thou Shalt Not Punish The Perp,” reminds us that Coulter isn’t simply a terrific writer who makes it impossible to drink while reading her work (this produces the famed “Coulter milk-out-the-nose phenomenon”). She’s also a legal scholar.

Coulter gives a brief and compelling history of Supreme Court idiocy with regard to criminal law. The absurd 1961 Supreme Court decision Mapp v. Ohio, announcing that the “exclusionary rule” barring evidence obtained “illegally” by police had to be applied on the state level, is one well-deserved target of her pen: “In order to vindicate the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, the criminal goes free … This would be like a rule intended to reduce noise during an opera that mandated shooting the soprano whenever anyone in the audience coughed,” Coulter writes.

Coulter continues her devastating evaluation of liberalism’s cult of criminality with her in-depth discussion of the Willie Horton case. Willie Horton, as all political science majors know, is trotted out routinely by leftists in order to show that Republicans are truly racists. (I was treated to a showing of the famed “Willie Horton” commercials by Professor Lynn Vavreck, Political Science 40, UCLA, February 26, 2002.)

The real story is somewhat different.

Willie Horton was a convicted first degree murderer sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole (known as LWOP in legal circles). Michael Dukakis, then the governor of Massachusetts, “lustily” backed the weekend furlough program designed to re-introduce criminals to society. As Coulter points out, LWOP convicts have no need for such re-introduction, since they should never re-enter society. Dukakis felt differently, and under his watch, 82 first degree murderers were furloughed, including Horton.

Horton took off to Maryland, where he proceeded to sadistically torture Maryland resident Cliff Barnes and rape and torture Barnes’ fiancée Angela Miller.

Naturally, this became a campaign issue (first raised by Al Gore) in the 1988 presidential election. Liberals, however, insisted that this issue was only an issue because Horton happened to be black. “The only reason the Democrats cried racism over the Willie Horton ads was that it was one of the greatest campaign issues of all time,” Coulter writes. “Horton was the essence, the heart, the alpha and omega of liberal ideas about crime and punishment, to wit: Release the guilty. Willie Horton showed the American people exactly what was wrong with liberal theories about crime.”

Then there’s the liberal theory about life: it only matters if we’re talking about convicted murders (no, please don’t fry them!), not if we’re talking about unborn innocents (suck ‘em into a sink). Abortion for liberals, as Coulter explains, is “The Holiest Sacrament.” “No matter what else they pretend to care about from time to time—undermining national security, aiding terrorists, oppressing the middle class, freeing violent criminals—the single most important item on the Democrats’ agenda is abortion,” she avers.

There is no doubt that she is correct. Democratic politicians have abandoned every group they purport to support at one time or another—except for feminists who proclaim that abortion-on-demand is a godless-given-right. The Democrats’ undying and unwavering support for abortion-on-demand would condemn them to electoral damnation time after time, so Democrats simply lie about their policy positions.

That’s why liberals require that every single judge pay homage to the “holy writ” of Roe v. Wade, the most ridiculous legal decision in American history. Here’s Coulter: “There’s no there there—there’s nothing to talk about in Roe. Denounce, laugh at, ridicule, attack—yes. Discuss—no.”

Chapter 6 discusses the left’s worship of public school teachers. “Attack the Boy Scouts, boycott Mel Gibson, put Christ in a jar of urine—but don’t dare say anything bad about teachers,” writes Coulter. Coulter concisely explains the salary structure for public school teachers, who make more per hour than architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, statisticians … and the list goes on. At the same time, the quality of our public education system has been consistently declining for decades. “With public schools like this, students are going to learn, if they are going to learn, because of their parents, not because of any inspiration they get from schools,” Coulter rightly states. But because public school teachers’ unions are sacrosanct, the education system must not be reworked; to even suggest reworking the system would imply criticism of public school teachers.

The remainder of the book is dedicated to Coulter’s refutation of the left’s ad hominem and utterly hypocritical attack on the “non-science” of religion.

Religion isn’t science, Coulter says, but neither is liberalism. Liberalism is a religion, pure and simple: “Listening to liberals invoke the sanctity of ‘science’ to promote their crackpot ideas creates the same uneasy feeling as listening to Bill Clinton cite Scripture. Who are they kidding? Liberals hate science. Science might produce facts impervious to their crying and hysterics.”

Measuring IQ (except when liberals have high IQs), mentioning that AIDS almost primarily affects homosexuals and bisexuals (and their spouses), preventing frivolous lawsuits based on junk science (see Edwards, John), DDT use; using adult stem cells (embryonic stem cells are favored, though); breast implants are (well, except for use in pornography)—all are nonsensically opposed by liberals.

Most dear to me, as a Harvard Law student, is Coulter’s take on the bizarre liberal attack on deposed Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who had the audacity to suggest that differences between men and women might not be caused by society, but rather—gasp!—by nature: “These delicate hothouse flowers [female Harvard professors] have a completely neurotic response to something someone else says—and then act like it’s Summers’s fault. Only a woman could shift the blame this way. If I hit you with a sledgehammer, that is my fault. But if I propose a scientific idea and you vomit, I think that’s really more your fault.” Hear, hear!

After compiling the evidence of liberal catechism, Coulter finally turns her bazooka on the foundation of liberalism itself: Darwinism. Coulter systematically picks apart the studies cited in support of species-to-species evolution, which are often religiously-adhered-to forgeries or speculative exercises. “These aren’t chalk-covered scientists toiling away with their test tubes and Bunsen burners,” she writes. “They are religious fanatics for whom evolution must be true and any evidence to the contrary—including, for example, the entire fossil record—is something that must be explained away with a fanciful excuse, like ‘our evidence didn’t fossilize.’”

But evolution isn’t just a religious theory, Coulter states. There’s a reason that Marx and Hitler relied on Darwinism to bolster their horrific worldviews. Coulter quotes Hitler’s Mein Kampf, in which he proclaimed that his goal was “to promote the victory of the better, the stronger, and to demand the submission of the worse and the weaker … [in accordance with] the eternal will that rules this universe.” When you take God out of the picture, says Coulter, man becomes just another animal, fighting for survival of the fittest.

Naturally, Godless has provoked liberals to the point of apoplexy. Instead of fighting the main argument of Coulter’s book, liberals (and some conservatives) have latched onto page 103, in Coulter’s fifth chapter. The basic point of the chapter is that Democrats cannot win the battle of ideas, and so have chosen to send “only messengers whom we’re not allowed to reply to. That’s why all Democratic spokesmen these days are sobbing, hysterical women.”

Coulter specifically takes to task the so-called “Jersey Girls,” four liberal partisan widows whose husbands were murdered on 9/11. Here’s the inflammatory passage, in relevant part: “These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them … These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.”

Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) responded to this passage thusly: “Perhaps her book should have been called ‘Heartless.’” 2004 Democratic presidential candidate (and Jersey Girl-endorsed nominee) Senator John Kerry (D-MA) likewise stated, “we owe all the 9/11 families Ann Coulter slandered so much more than just outrage. We owe them thanks. And we also owe it to them to put the focus where they originally put it when, in the middle of their grieving, they stood up to demand answers and action from a government that invoked their husbands’ memories for political reasons …”

Really, now. I understand that Hillary doesn’t want to read Godless, and I understand that John Kerry owes a debt of gratitude to the Jersey Girls for cutting him some campaign commercials. Nonetheless, reading the context of the quote might be worthwhile. Clearly Coulter isn’t claiming that the Jersey Girls popped champagne as the planes hit the Twin Towers – she’s claiming that they have taken advantage of every available microphone to pose as national security experts, then claimed the sanctuary of victimhood when attacked politically. There is no doubt that this is absolutely true. Kerry proves Coulter’s point when he blabbers on about the debt of gratitude we owe to the Jersey Girls for selflessly subsuming their grief to rip the Bush Administration. Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal has made the exact same point as Coulter (OpinionJournal.com, April 14, 2004): “Nor can anyone miss, by now, the darker side of this spectacle of the widows, awash in their sense of victims’ entitlement, as they press ahead with ever more strident claims about the way the government failed them.” Yes, Coulter’s language is more direct than Rabinowitz’s. But that’s why Coulter is Coulter. And that’s why Godless is so deliciously good.

Liberalism has run out of ideas, so it seeks to shut down debate. Criminals must be freed because the courts say so. Abortion on demand must be provided because (1) women say so, and you’re not a woman, or if you are, shut up, you haven’t had an abortion and (2) the courts say so. Public education may not be fixed because if you want to fix it, you hate teachers. With regard to AIDS, the environment, stem cell research, and the origins of life, liberals label their own views “science” and those of their opponents “religious bigotry.” And with regard to national security, liberals trot out victims who agree with their point of view – and if you don’t agree, you need to shut up. Ann Coulter won’t shut up. Thank God.

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Coulterian Contempt: A magnificently unapologetic lady. (National Review Online, 060613)

What Ann Coulter intended to say in her new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, has so far been drowned out by hysterical denunciations because of a lone passage where she wrote savagely about four 9/11 widows. Many people by now think the book is all about 9/11 widows.

Which hasn’t stopped this magnificently unapologetic lady from launching her book straight to the top of the bestseller list. Good for her. If Coulter commits any indefensible excesses, they are small beans compared to her substantive, incisive, important main point.

Godless is actually about the calcification of liberalism into a form of religion, half-jokingly identified by Coulter with Druidism. What’s religious about secular liberalism? The theologian Paul Tillich defined “religion” as a person’s “ultimate concern.” Whatever matters most to you, whatever tells you what else should matter and why, that is your religion.

Values are by definition religious, whether you believe they come from a God (like Jews or Christians do) or not (like Buddhists). Having turned from God, secularism automatically turns to another religion, by whatever name you call it.

The Secular Church even merits to be capitalized, since it forms a fairly unified ideology. As Coulter puts it, “Everything liberals believe is in elegant opposition to basic Biblical precepts.

“Our religion says that human progress proceeds from the spark of divinity in the human soul; their religion holds that human progress is achieved through sex and death.

“We believe in invention and creation; they catalogue with stupefaction the current state of our diminishing resources and tell us to stop consuming.

“We say humans stand apart from the world and our charge is Planet Earth; they say we are part of the world, and our hubristic use of nature is sinful.

“We say humans are in God’s image; they say we are no different morally from the apes…”

Actually Coulter may not realize how complete the “elegant opposition” truly is. Thus she goes off on a riff about the environmentalist crusade against flush toilets:

In 1995, the New York Times was enthusiastically reporting on the move away from mankind’s greatest invention by homeowners ‘fed up with overdevelopment, contaminated ground water, and overflowing septic tanks’—but evidently not fed up with living on top of their own excrement.”

Dry bathroom plumbing is repulsive alright, as I can testify. The futuristic new Seattle Public Library, where I’m writing this, has environmentally sensitive “waterfree” urinals and they reek. But what’s anti-biblical about it? Interestingly, the Bible addresses the question of living on top of one’s own waste, as animals do. In Deuteronomy (23:14), the Israelites in the desert are instructed to keep a shovel handy and relieve themselves outside the camp.

But perhaps, like Coulter, I digress.

The biggest chunk of the book goes where few conservatives so far have dared to tread. Of her eleven chapters, four comprise a sustained assault on liberalism’s holy of holies, Darwinism. She’s clear, well informed, and unmoved by any fear that someone may call her a “fundamentalist” for criticizing “Darwiniacs”:

Darwiniacs love to cite…the [evolutionary] progress from the reptile’s multiboned jaw to the jaw of mammal-like reptiles with fewer bones, leading inexorably to the single-boned mammal jawbone with two bones moving to the ear. The jawbone metamorphosis didn’t prove evolution, but here at last was one small part of the fossil record that was not wildly inconsistent with the theory of evolution…. That’s ‘proof’ when it comes to the state religion [i.e. secularism]: For not disproving evolution, the vertebrate jawbone is said to prove evolution.

Nice point.

In the end, evolutionists’ only argument is contempt. The cultists know that if people were allowed to hear the arguments against evolution for just sixty seconds, all would be lost.

She exaggerates, but who cares? What is most valuable about Coulter is the trademarked contempt that she breathes forth. It’s why her books sell better than pretty much any other conservative’s do.

Obviously, dispassionate analysis should be expected most of the time, from most of us. But let’s say a word in favor of rollicking disgust poured out upon liberal pieties. There is the constant danger of inhaling too deeply from the fumes of the respect you insist on giving to those you disagree with. The result can be a subtle assimilating of some of their values.

Darwinism provides the classic illustration. Because it’s sacrosanct in the liberal viewpoint, and because it has a scientific aura, even conservatives are frequently intimidated into assuming that if Darwinists say the software in the cell (DNA) wrote itself, then surely it must be so.

The Coulterian contempt, the utter disdain for secularist orthodoxy not least on the subject of Darwin, may provide a bit of spine at a moment, like now, when we could use some.

—David Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and the author, most recently, of Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History.

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Coulter: I’ve never had sex with a liberal: ‘Godless’ author makes admission on ‘Tonight Show with Jay Leno’ (WorldNetDaily, 060615)

Despite reams of media hype about George Carlin appearing with Ann Coulter on “the Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” there were no political fireworks during the segment featuring the controversial author of “Godless.”

“This is the last time we have eHarmony match up the guests,” Leno clowned during his opening monologue last night.

Carlin, the 69-year-old anti-establishment comedian appeared before Ann Coulter to promote his voice work in the new Pixar film, “Cars,” only made one reference to Coulter’s conservative politics when Leno introduced her, as he shuffled his position down the couch on stage.

“I never thought that when Ann Coulter came out, I would have to move to the right. But I did,” Carlin joked, to audience laughter.

During the course of Leno’s questioning of Coulter, he asked her, “Have you ever had sex with a liberal?”

When Coulter responded, “No,” Leno said, “Really? You should try it. See what it’s like.”

“I’ve read about it in Esquire,” responded the author.

Coulter says liberals are “obsessed” with one sentence of one chapter in her new N.Y. Times No. 1 best-seller, where she discussed four 9-11 widows using the deaths of their husbands to push a political cause.

Coulter is the first publicly to take on the New Jersey widows who pushed for an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The women also backed Democrat John Kerry’s presidential candidacy in 2004.

“These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much,” Coulter wrote in “Godless.”

Leno asked, “Is the point of the book to move forth your conservative ideas – what you think – or is it to sell books?”

“It is to make a point, and now that it is the No. 1 book in the country, I think that point will be made,” Coulter said to loud applause. “The funny thing about this is I’m calling liberals ‘Godless.’ Oh, they’re cool with that. Just don’t attack the Jersey Girls.”

Leno asked why Coulter used the term “broads” to refer to the widows in her book, while calling them “women” during a previous television appearance.

“Men use the word ‘broads’ all the time to talk about women,” Coulter responded. “If we’re getting to that level of parsing my language, there will be no end to this.”

“Liberals love to boast that they are not ‘religious,’ which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion,” Coulter writes in what may be her most controversial book yet. “Of course liberalism is a religion. It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as ‘religion.’”

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Coulter catapults to No. 1 on N.Y. Times: ‘Godless’ is her 5th consecutive title to make list (WorldNetDaily, 060615)

Ann Coulter – meet the New York Times.

Actually, the author-columnist has had the pleasure of meeting one of her favorite media targets in the past.

“Godless,” her newest book to rankle liberals worldwide, just became Coulter’s fifth straight title to make the New York Times bestsellers list – and it debuts in its first week in the No. 1 spot.

“Liberals love to boast that they are not ‘religious,’ which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion,” she writes in what may be her most controversial book yet. “Of course liberalism is a religion. It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as ‘religion.’”

Coulter has been attacked by Hillary Clinton, members of Congress, fellow pundits and even two New Jersey legislators calling for the book to be banned statewide.

Coulter is the author of four other New York Times bestsellers: “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must),” “Treason,” “Slander,” and “High Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Most of the criticism of Coulter is focused on comments in her book about four 9-11 widows using the deaths of their husbands to push a political cause.

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Exclusive Interview: Liberals, Bush, and Israel: A Chat With Ann Coulter (Jewish Press, 060704)

By: Avraham Shmuel Lewin

Ann Coulter is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including the current Godless: The Church of Liberalism.

Coulter, who writes a popular and controversial syndicated column, is a frequent guest on many TV shows, including Hannity and Colmes, Wolf Blitzer Reports, Scarborough Country, The O’Reilly Factor.

Coulter consistently raises the ire of liberals, most recently when she castigated several 9/11 widows for using their status to score political points against the Bush administration.

America knows Ann Coulter’s views on liberals and liberalism in America, but little is known about her views on Israel. Ms. Coulter addressed that and other questions in an interview last week with The Jewish Press.

Jewish Press: Why is it that liberals can attack and ridicule you and other conservatives and it’s considered within the realm of free speech, but when someone like you lashes out at liberals you are silenced and castigated? How do you explain this liberal double standard?

Ann Coulter: You said it yourself: the famed liberal double standard (although I think now they’re calling it “multi-standardizing”). There’s one set of rules for them and another, much stricter set of rules for everyone else.

How do you explain the phenomenon of so many American Jews identifying with liberal views and policies that often go against Jewish interests?

Absolutely baffling. But it is changing. I believe about 40% of Jewish males under 30 voted for Bush in the last election.

Moreover, both America and Israel are quite popular with Jews who actually practice the Jewish faith in some way. President Reagan’s approval rating in the chassidic community was off the scale (something like 90%) – surpassed only by his approval from residents of Grenada.

Why, when it comes to terrorism in Afghanistan or Iraq, does the U.S. apply a strong hand – but when it’s Palestinian terrorism against Israel, there’s not the same tenacity and determination?

Probably because of the formidable left-wing lobby, which has now added anti-Semitism to its sins.

Many conservatives have been increasingly disappointed with President Bush’s performance on issues like immigration, the economy and of course the war in Iraq as it drags on. Do you share their dismay?

Like most, I am utterly baffled by Bush’s position on illegal immigration (amnesty for illegals, no serious wall at the border). But President Bush has fought the war on terrorism magnificently, completely ignoring liberal naysayers who want us to capitulate to savagery. For that, he deserves our support.

Even though the 2008 presidential election is still more than two years away, what’s your early guess of who the Democratic and Republican candidates might be?

Absolutely no idea. My most interesting prediction at this stage – since she is the clear front-runner – is that the Democratic nominee might possibly not be Hillary.

Have you ever written about Israel? If not, why not?

I rarely write about any country other than the U.S. There are too many big juicy fish to fry right here at home! Also, I’m a Protestant girl from Connecticut and there are many other capable writers who know a lot more about the subject than I do. In fact, I just started a screenplay about a Connecticut shiksa like me trying to become an expert on Israel. It’s called “Mission Impossible IV.”

Have you ever visited Israel?

No, but I have been to Miami if that’s any help.... Actually, I would like to go, but I’ve been too busy keeping my eye on liberals here at home for the past several years to have taken any vacations. My parents went to Israel a few years ago and loved it. I definitely will go some day.

While we know how you feel about liberals in America, what’s your opinion on the liberals in Israel like Shimon Peres, Ehud Olmert and others like them who gave away the Gaza Strip and plan to give away the West Bank, which many perceive as a victory for terrorism?

No one can be as contemptible as American liberals. I am informed, for example, that, in Israel, even liberals serve in the military.

What are your feelings about the disengagement from Gaza last year? Since Israel’s withdrawal from the area over 500 rockets have been fired from Gaza into Jewish communities. Al Qaeda has moved into the territory abandoned by Israel. Iran is looking to establish an embassy there. Egypt has accused the Gaza terrorists as targeting them as well.

My first thought is that the Jewish people may not drive as hard a bargain as I’ve always been led to believe. I take it this is part of a long-term Israeli strategy to achieve lasting security by giving up some disputed areas while re-doubling efforts to protect their new, smaller boundaries with measures such as the security wall, which I understand has been very effective in keeping suicide bombers out. By the way, would you happen to know where the U.S. could get one of those walls? One about, oh, seven hundred miles or so long? No special reason, just curious.

What about the planned withdrawal from the West Bank, from which rockets can hit Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Israel’s International Airport?

If you start a war and lose, you lose your land. Next.

Have you ever thought of running for elected office?

No, but if I did, I’d run for the U.S. Senate from New York. Those people will elect just about anybody!

Have you been threatened, physically or in any other way, for being so outspoken against liberals?

Frequently on college campuses – or as we call them, “America’s madrassas,” I’ve had food thrown at me and I’ve been cursed out in the foulest language imaginable.

Has the response to your new book been largely congratulatory or disparaging?

Overwhelmingly congratulatory.

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Top secret interview exposed! (Ann Coulter, 060705)

By Ann Coulter

It was nice to see The New York Times commemorating Independence Day this week with a tribute to its favorite Revolutionary War hero, Benedict Arnold. Times editor Bill Keller spent the day attending Revolutionary War battle re-enactments, where he passed the Continental Army’s secret battle plans to the British.

This week I plan to reveal my own top secret information: an interview I did with the New York Post the week my current No. 1 best seller, “Godless,” was released. On account of an important breaking story on Angelina Jolie’s new tattoo, the Post never found room to run the long interview I wasted my time answering for the Post’s Larry Getlen.

Once considered a legitimate daily, the Post has been reduced to tabloid status best known for Page Six’s breathless accounts of Paris Hilton’s latest ruttings, and headlines like “Vampire Teen — H.S. Girl Is Out for Blood.” How crappy a newspaper is the Post? Let me put it this way: It’s New York’s second-crappiest paper.

Maybe the Post’s constant harassment of me is an attempt to shake me down for protection money like they did with billionaire businessman Ron Burkle. I have sold a LOT of books — more books, come to think of it, than any writers at the New York Post.

Here’s Part 1:

NY POST: Vitriol aside for a moment, how would you define a liberal, politically speaking?

A: Naive, misinformed fanatical Mother Earth-worshipers and fervent America-haters — and those are their good traits.

NY POST: In “Godless,” you lump many views you disagree with under the banner of a liberal religion. But many Democrats (as with Republicans) disagree amongst themselves on many of these issues. Do you consider all Americans who vote Democrat to be liberals?

A: Or fools.

NY POST: How many liberals do you think there actually are in this country?

A: Way too many, but that’s just a rough estimate. You know, somewhere in the ballpark of “way too many.”

NY POST: Your books, like Bill O’Reilly’s, generally go to No. 1. But so do Michael Moore’s and Al Franken’s. What do you think this says about the real nature of what Americans believe, politically and ideologically?

A: Judging by your list, that half of them are patriotic.

NY POST: In the last two presidential elections combined, the number of people who voted for the Democrat and the number who voted for the Republican were pretty close to even. Isn’t it safe to say that the country rests somewhere in the middle of conservatism and liberalism?

A: Yes, I think the results of the last “American Idol” vote pretty much proved that.

NY POST: Your characterization of liberals paints them as extremists. But with people like Pat Robertson telling us how God keeps telling him who He’s angry at, isn’t it fair to say that there are extremists on both sides?

A: Pat Robertson opposes capital punishment, opposed the impeachment of Bill Clinton and supports trade with China, just for starters. Seems like a pretty mixed bag to me. So what makes you call him extreme? That he believes he has dialogue with the Lord? Do liberals now call anyone who thinks this an “extremist”?

NY POST: Do you believe there is a political middle? If so, how would you define it?

A: There is no more a “political middle” than there is a family in America with 2.3 children. People with opinions take sides. Contrary to what you’ve heard, it’s actually more important to stand for something than it is for everybody to “just get along.”

NY POST: You speak in the book of “Muslims’ predilection for violence,” accepting it as a given. But many would argue that many Muslims, in this country and others, lead average, everyday lives, and denounce violence. How is painting all Muslims as violent any different than looking at the Crusades, or at any of the Christian extremist groups around today, and saying, “All Christians are murderers?”

A: Quite obviously, referring to “Muslims’ predilection for violence” is not the same as saying, “All Christians are murderers.” It would be the same if I had said, “All Muslims are murderers.” You didn’t do too well on the analogies section of the SATs, did you?

NY POST: You say that “without a fundamental understanding of man’s place in the world” (by which you mean God), we risk being lured into, among other things, slavery. But weren’t the American slaveholders devout Christians?

A: They may have been devout Christians, but they weren’t being good Christians by holding slaves. That’s the point: Any Christian slaveholder had to violate Christianity to own slaves.

Thus — and obviously — the abolitionist movement was fueled by Christians, much as the anti-abortion movement is today.

I’m sure in the year 2106 some future Ann Coulter will be asked to explain why some Christians had abortions 100 years earlier. Christians sometimes lapse into the church of liberalism by doing bad things, just as liberals sometimes lapse into our church by doing good things.

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Who knew Congressman Foley was a closeted Democrat? (townhall.com, 061004)

By Ann Coulter

At least liberals are finally exhibiting a moral compass about something. I am sure that they’d be equally outraged if Rep. Mark Foley were a Democrat.

The object lesson of Foley’s inappropriate e-mails to male pages is that when a Republican congressman is caught in a sex scandal, he immediately resigns and crawls off into a hole in abject embarrassment. Democrats get snippy.

Foley didn’t claim he was the victim of a “witch-hunt.” He didn’t whine that he was a put-upon “gay American.” He didn’t stay in Congress and haughtily rebuke his critics. He didn’t run for re-election. He certainly didn’t claim he was “saving the Constitution.” (Although his recent discovery that he has a drinking problem has a certain Democratic ring to it.)

In 1983, Democratic congressman Gerry Studds was found to have sexually propositioned House pages and actually buggered a 17-year-old male page whom he took on a trip to Portugal. The 46-year-old Studds indignantly attacked those who criticized him for what he called a “mutually voluntary, private relationship between adults.”

When the House censured Studds for his sex romp with a male page, Studds — not one to be shy about presenting his backside to a large group of men — defiantly turned his back on the House during the vote. He ran for re-election and was happily returned to office five more times by liberal Democratic voters in his Martha’s Vineyard district. (They really liked his campaign slogan: “It’s the outfit, stupid.”)

Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy referred to Studds’ affair with a teenage page as “a brief consenting homosexual relationship” and denounced Studds’ detractors for engaging in a “witch-hunt” against gays: “New England witch trials belong to the past, or so it is thought. This summer on Cape Cod, the reputation of Rep. Gerry Studds was burned at the stake by a large number of his constituents determined to torch the congressman for his private life.”

Meanwhile, Foley is hiding in a hole someplace.

No one demanded to know why the Democratic speaker of the House, Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, took one full decade to figure out that Studds was propositioning male pages.

But now, the same Democrats who are incensed that Bush’s National Security Agency was listening in on al-Qaida phone calls are incensed that Republicans were not reading a gay congressman’s instant messages.

Let’s run this past the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: The suspect sent an inappropriately friendly e-mail to a teenager — oh also, we think he’s gay. Can we spy on his instant messages? On a scale of 1 to 10, what are the odds that any court in the nation would have said: YOU BET! Put a tail on that guy — and a credit check, too!

When Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee found unprotected e-mails from the Democrats about their plan to oppose Miguel Estrada’s judicial nomination because he was Hispanic, Democrats erupted in rage that their e-mails were being read. The Republican staffer responsible was forced to resign.

But Democrats are on their high horses because Republicans in the House did not immediately wiretap Foley’s phones when they found out he was engaging in e-mail chitchat with a former page about what the kid wanted for his birthday.

The Democrats say the Republicans should have done all the things Democrats won’t let us do to al-Qaida — solely because Foley was rumored to be gay. Maybe we could get Democrats to support the NSA wiretapping program if we tell them the terrorists are gay.

On Fox News’ “Hannity and Colmes” Monday night, Democrat Bob Beckel said a gay man should be kept away from male pages the same way Willie Sutton should have been kept away from banks. “If Willie Sutton is around some place where a bank is robbed,” Beckel said, “then you’re probably going to say, ‘Willie, stay away from the robbery.’”

Hmmmm, let’s search the memory bank. In July 2000, the New York Times “ethicist” Randy Cohen advised a reader that pulling her son out of the Cub Scouts because they exclude gay scoutmasters was “the ethical thing to do.” The “ethicist” explained: “Just as one is honor bound to quit an organization that excludes African-Americans, so you should withdraw from scouting as long as it rejects homosexuals.”

We need to get a rulebook from the Democrats:

# Boy Scouts: As gay as you want to be.

# Priests: No gays!

# Democratic politicians: Proud gay Americans.

# Republican politicians: Presumed guilty.

# White House press corps: No gays, unless they hate Bush.

# Active-duty U.S. military: As gay as possible.

# Men who date Liza Minelli: Do I have to draw you a picture, Miss Thing?

This is the very definition of political opportunism. If Republicans had decided to spy on Foley for sending overly friendly e-mails to pages, Democrats would have been screaming about a Republican witch-hunt against gays. But if they don’t, they’re enabling a sexual predator.

Talk to us Monday. Either we’ll be furious that Republicans violated the man’s civil rights, or we’ll be furious that they didn’t.

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What can I do to make your flight more uncomfortable? (Ann Coulter, 061122)

Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether.

Witnesses said the imams stood to do their evening prayers in the terminal before boarding, chanting “Allah, Allah, Allah” — coincidentally, the last words heard by hundreds of airline passengers on 9/11 before they died.

Witnesses also said that the imams were talking about Saddam Hussein, and denouncing America and the war in Iraq. About the only scary preflight ritual the imams didn’t perform was the signing of last wills and testaments.

After boarding, the imams did not sit together and some asked for seat belt extensions, although none were morbidly obese. Three of the men had one-way tickets and no checked baggage.

Also they were Muslims.

The idea that a Muslim boycott against US Airways would hurt the airline proves that Arabs are utterly tone-deaf. This is roughly the equivalent of Cindy Sheehan taking a vow of silence. How can we hope to deal with people with no sense of irony? The next thing you know, New York City cab drivers will be threatening to bathe.

Come to think of it, the whole affair may have been a madcap advertising scheme cooked up by US Airways.

It worked with me. US Airways is my official airline now. Northwest, which eventually flew the Allah-spouting Muslims to their destinations, is off my list. You want to really hurt a U.S. air carrier’s business? Have Muslims announce that it’s their favorite airline.

The clerics had been attending an imam conference in Minneapolis (imam conference slogan: “What Happens in Minneapolis — Actually, Nothing Happened in Minneapolis”). But instead of investigating the conference, the government is now investigating my favorite airline.

What threat could Muslims flying from Minnesota to Arizona be?

Three of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 received their flight training in Arizona. Long before the attacks, an FBI agent in Phoenix found it curious that so many Arabs were enrolled in flight school. But the FBI rebuffed his request for an investigation on the grounds that his suspicions were based on the same invidious racial profiling that has brought US Airways under investigation and into my good graces.

Lynne Stewart’s client, the Blind Sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman, is serving life in prison in a maximum security lock-up in Minnesota. One of the six imams removed from the US Airways plane was blind, so Lynne Stewart was the one missing clue that would have sent all the passengers screaming from the plane.

Wholly apart from the issue of terrorism, don’t we have a seller’s market for new immigrants? How does a blind Muslim get to the top of the visa list? Is there a shortage of blind, fanatical clerics in this country that I haven’t noticed? Couldn’t we get some Burmese with leprosy instead? A 4-year-old could do a better job choosing visa applicants than the U.S. Department of Immigration.

One of the stunt-imams in US Airways’ advertising scheme, Omar Shahin, complained about being removed from the plane, saying: “Six scholars in handcuffs. It’s terrible.”

Yes, especially when there was a whole conference of them! Six out of 150 is called “poor law enforcement.” How did the other 144 “scholars” get off so easy?

Shahin’s own “scholarship” consisted of continuing to deny Muslims were behind 9/11 nearly two months after the attacks. On Nov. 4, 2001, The Arizona Republic cited Shahin’s “skepticism that Muslims or bin Laden carried out attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.” Shahin complained that the government was “focusing on the Arabs, the Muslims. And all the evidence shows that the Muslims are not involved in this terrorist act.”

In case your memory of that time is hazy, within three days of the attack, the Justice Department had released the names of all 19 hijackers — names like Majed Moqed, Ahmed Alghamdi, Mohand Alshehri, Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi and Ahmed Alnami. The government had excluded all but 19 passengers as possible hijackers based on extensive interviews with friends and family of nearly every passenger on all four flights. Some of the hijackers’ seat numbers had been called in by flight attendants on the planes.

By early October, bin Laden had produced a videotape claiming credit for the attacks. And by Nov. 4, 2001, The New York Times had run well over 100 articles on the connections between bin Laden and the hijackers — even more detailed and sinister than the Times’ flowcharts on neoconservatives!

Also, if I remember correctly, al-Qaida had taken out full-page ads in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter thanking their agents for the attacks.

But now, on the eve of the busiest travel day in America, these “scholars” have ginned up America’s PC victim machinery to intimidate airlines and passengers from noticing six imams chanting “Allah” before boarding a commercial jet.

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No Wonder They’re Afraid of Brit Hume (townhall.com, 070503)

By Ann Coulter

I just woke up from watching the Democrats’ debate last Thursday, and I am rested and ready to report!

Someone needs to tell the Democrats to stop talking about their families. I know they’re trying to demonstrate their “family values,” but using actual, live human beings to illustrate the freakish ideas of the Democratic base just makes normal people uncomfortable.

When Chris Dodd was asked about gay marriage, he said he always thinks of his little daughters — aged 2 and 5 — and imagines them turning out to be lesbians, saying he would want them treated equally.

To prove his bona fides to the environmentalist nuts, Obama said: “We’ve also been working to install lightbulbs that last longer and save energy. And that’s something that I’m trying to teach my daughters, 8-year-old Malia and 5-year-old Sasha.”

So we finally have an answer to the question: What do Democrats teach their daughters? Is it:

(a) integrity

(b) character

No! The answer is: (d) They teach their daughters to use low-energy lightbulbs. This is so important that it apparently bears mentioning during a debate under high-intensity TV studio lights.

(How many kids does it take to screw in a lightbulb? In the Barack household, evidently, it takes two.)

“Best in Show” for cringe-inducing mentions of family members went to John Edwards. In the single most appalling moment of the debate, John Edwards reminisced about the time his father, who was sitting in the audience, totally humiliated him as a child.

“I can remember vividly my dad after church once Sunday, when I was about 10 years old, taking us — it’s our whole family — into a restaurant. I was dressed up. I was very proud to be there, and we sat, got our menus, looked at the menus, and the waitress came over and my father said, ‘I’m sorry. We have to leave.’ I didn’t understand. ‘Why? Why do we have to leave?’ And I was embarrassed. I found out when we got outside the reason we had to leave is he couldn’t pay the prices that were on the menu.”

Thanks for the memories, Pop!

The not-visibly-insane Democrats all claim they’ll get rough with the terrorists, but they can’t even face Brit Hume.

In case you missed this profile in Democrat machismo, the Democratic presidential candidates are refusing to participate in a debate hosted by Fox News Channel because the hosts are “biased.” But they’ll face down Mahmoud Ahmadinejad!

At this, even Hillary Clinton was thinking, “Come on, guys — let’s grow a pair.”

Obama was asked to name “America’s three most important allies around the world” — a question rejected as “too easy” on Fox’s new game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” Any politically savvy 11-year-old could have named Britain, Australia and Israel.

B. Hussein Obama answered: “the European Union.” Which is (a) not a country, and (b) not an ally.

What was his next guess? Epcot Center?

In addition to not being a country, the “European Union” happens to be composed of people who hate our guts. It is the continent where Moveon.org-style lunatics are the friendly, pro-American types and the rest are crazy Muslims.

Obama did eventually mention Japan as an ally — along with China and Afghanistan — which would have been a better answer to the question: “Who are America’s four or five most important allies?” But at least he named a country that could conceivably be called “an ally.”

Of course, it took Obama less time to remember an American ally than it took John Edwards to remember Jesus. Edwards was asked who his “moral leader” was — and he was stuck for an answer.

I had time to shout “Jesus” at the TV 20 times, exhaust myself, and have a sandwich before Edwards finally coughed up “mah lowrd.” Even then it appeared that Edwards was not actually naming the Savior but exclaiming, “Mah lowrd, that’s a tough question!”

Edwards then put “mah lowrd” (assuming that was his answer) on a par with other moral leaders such as his father — who had embarrassed him so as a child — and his wife. (When he mentioned his spouse as a “moral leader,” Hillary visibly tensed for fear that she might be asked the same question.)

In fairness to Edwards, asking a trial lawyer to name his favorite moral leader is like asking the president of Iran to name his favorite Jew. (Answer: George Soros.)

If you’re keeping score, that’s two major religions the Democrats lack a working knowledge of — Christianity and Islam.

==============================

Liberals Beware: Coulter’s Latest Book Is Offensive... and Hilarious! (townhall.com, 071002)

By Lisa De Pasquale

Best-selling author Ann Coulter has been reducing liberals to “sputtering rage” for nearly a decade. During that time, the Left has hopefully, but inaccurately, declared the end of her career more a dozen times. In Coulter’s new book, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans, she writes, “Uttering lines that send liberals into paroxysms of rage, otherwise known as ‘citing facts,’ is the spice of life. When I see the hot spittle flying from their mouths and the veins bulging and pulsing above their eyes, well, that’s when I feel truly alive.”

I’ve reviewed several of Coulter’s books, but this review is a little different. I’ll let Coulter explain: “I also wish to thank Lisa De Pasquale who reviewed tapes, Nexis transcripts, eight years of columns, five books, and random interviews to gather the bulk of the quotes used in this book. Lisa is now America’s leading Ann Coulter historian.” (Let the hate mail begin!)

If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans is like Cliff’s Notes for liberals who are perennially shocked and conservatives that are in on the joke. The many Coulter fans that read her column every week and bought her previous five best sellers may wonder if the new book will be new to them. In addition to lengthy chapter introductions, most of this book will be new to fans.

What bothers Coulter’s detractors more – her rhetoric, her success, or that she’s even allowed to talk? Even before her media tour began, the liberal crackpots at Media Matters are already demanding that NBC, CNBC and MSNBC stop hosting her on their programs and boycott the blonde commentator. By the way, I should take this time to thank Media Matters for their unintentional help. Their obsession with transcribing Coulter’s TV and radio interviews was quite useful while researching for the book. When If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans becomes a New York Times best seller, perhaps Media Matters will boycott itself.

Coulter’s new book is a reminder of her battles with the leftist language police. While the details of her “career-ending” moments might be fuzzy, the words are still here in black and white. Reporters ask “Is this the end of Ann Coulter?” while her fans, new and old, roll their eyes and buy books for themselves and their friends. Most importantly, Coulter doesn’t just weather the storm, she makes her targets irrelevant and in politics, that’s the worst thing to be.

On last night’s Hannity & Colmes, Coulter said, “My human punch lines are gone and I’m still here.” (After doing months of research, I can’t seem to turn it off.) Indeed, liberals can no longer snooker Americans into believing that any of their messengers have some sort of absolute moral authority. Following, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Americans saw these phony messengers as irrelevant to policy debate. Perhaps the most definitive example of this is John Edward’s spiral into oblivion. Don’t take my word for it, check the Vegas odds. According to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, “Some of the best developed evidence on the power of prediction markets comes from political markets set up by the University of Iowa. These markets have been running since 1988 and have maintained a record of prediction accuracy much better than that of the Gallup polls.”

According to Intrade.com, every time the Edwards presidential campaign (via Elizabeth Edwards) tries to engage Coulter in a catfight, his price plummets. His lowest point was after Elizabeth Edwards’ “surprise” call-in to Hardball with Chris Matthews in June 2007. Now that can’t be good for a girl’s self-esteem. Next thing you know he’ll be asking Elizabeth, “Does this tie make me look fat?”

Coulter believes it’s important to go after liberal’s influential institutions. Why waste one’s time with a minion when you can take down the leader? Coulter writes, “This is why I attack the New York Times and Harvard, rather than loser liberals in the red states whose idea of a bold statement is to pass gas in church. I’ll get into it with the rulers of your little army. They at least call the shots.”

“America’s leading Ann Coulter historian” was pleasantly surprised after reading the book cover to cover. In past book reviews, I’ve included several of my favorite quotes.

This time I’m telling Townhall readers: Just buy the book.

==============================

Ann Coulter’s Big No-No (townhall.com, 071029)

By Burt Prelutsky

Many people, knowing that I’m Jewish, have asked me if I was deeply offended by Ann Coulter’s observation that Jews are unperfected Christians. I could tell that I disappointed them when I said that I wasn’t even slightly upset.

For one thing, I am not religious. What people do or don’t believe, theologically speaking, is none of my business, except in the case of Islamics who want the rest of us dead or at least kneeling to Mecca.

But how is it my concern what people believe if it gets them through the bad times or it helps them to lead decent lives? I think the 10 Commandments and the Golden Rule make a lot of sense, but I don’t feel the need to believe that Noah set sail with the world’s largest zoo or that Jonah set up housekeeping in the belly of a whale. In the immortal words of Ira Gershwin, I’m of the opinion that it ain’t necessarily so. But, heck, I’ve been wrong before and I have two divorces to prove it.

Although I’ve never met Ms. Coulter, I’m a fan of hers. Not only do I nearly always agree with the woman, but I think she’s an awfully good writer. She’s got a nice style — straightforward and extremely sprightly. Occasionally, she even makes me laugh, which is something that the other pundits quite wisely never even attempt.

Unlike most of the non-religious people I know, I am not opposed to religion. In fact, I tend to prefer believers to agnostics and atheists. They don’t seem to be nearly as self-righteous and self-important. Perhaps it’s unavoidable that if a man doesn’t believe in a superior power, it tends to make him view himself as the center of the universe.

Some time ago, I wrote a piece in which I contended that there were large numbers of Muslims who thought that blowing up innocent women and children was a sure path to paradise, whereas Christians believed that a lifetime of good deeds was a better way. I realized that I was using shorthand to get my message across, but I was hardly prepared for all the e-mail I received from disgruntled Christians, all of whom wanted to remind me that good deeds meant nothing, and that the only way to get past the Pearly Gates was to accept Jesus Christ as one’s savior.

I didn’t object to their setting me straight, but I must confess I found the notion that if, on their death beds, Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden accepted Jesus into their hearts, they would get to Heaven, but my grandparents wouldn’t, rather unsavory. But, as I said, what other folks believe is their business.

It’s by their actions that I judge people. And in my experience, American Christians are essentially kind, tolerant, admirable people. I did not take Ann Coulter’s statement as an example of hate speech. Frankly, I don’t believe she has an anti-Semitic bone in her body. What I do find bizarre is that so many Jews, who side with the Arabs against Israel and whose children applauded Ahmadinejad at Columbia University, are demanding Coulter’s head on a pike.

Finally, we shouldn’t forget that Coulter has a new book out. By uttering those few rather benign words on Donny Deutsch’s show, she has garnered a million dollars worth of free publicity, guaranteeing that “If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans” will be a blockbuster.

Well, inasmuch as I have a book, “The Secrets of Their Success,” a collection of interviews I’ve conducted with the likes of Gerald Ford, Billy Wilder, Art Linkletter, Henry Mancini, Ginger Rogers and Jerry Herman, coming out soon, I’ve been much impressed with her marketing skills.

In fact, if I’m lucky enough to get on Mr. Deutsch’s show, I think I just might suggest that Christians are unperfected Jews.

==============================

Pretend to be all you can be (townhall.com, 071003)

By Ann Coulter

Not content to wait for my book to come out, Senate Democrats are demanding a censure resolution against Rush Limbaugh. Ah, the memories ...

In my experience, having prominent Democrats censure you on the Senate floor is the equivalent of 50 book signings. Or being put on the cover of The New York Times magazine 20 years ago when people still read The New York Times magazine. They should rename Senate censure resolutions “Harry Reid’s Book Club.”

Liberals are hopping mad because Rush Limbaugh referred to phony soldiers as “phony soldiers.” They claim he was accusing all Democrats in the military of being “phony.”

True, all Democrats in the military are not phony soldiers, but all phony soldiers seem to be Democrats.

If we are to believe the self-descriptions of callers to talk radio and the typical soldier interviewed on MSNBC, the military is fairly bristling with Moveon.org types.

The reality is quite the opposite. While liberals have managed to worm themselves into every important institution in America, from the public schools to the CIA to charitable foundations, they are shamefully absent from the military.

As noted in that great book that came out this week, “If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans”:

“According to a Military Times survey taken in September 2004, active-duty military personnel preferred President Bush to Kerry by about 73% to 18%. Sixty percent describe themselves as Republican and less than 10% call themselves Democrat (the same 10% that MSNBC has on its speed-dial). Even among the veterans, Republicans outnumber Democrats 46% to 22%.”

So there aren’t a lot of anti-war military types for the media to turn into this month’s “It Girl.” (If conservatives ran the media, there would be a constant stream of government employees admitting to sloth and incompetence, welfare recipients admitting to being welfare cheats and public schoolteachers who support school vouchers.) Sometimes liberals get desperate and have to concoct Tawana Brawley veterans.

In addition to famous fake soldiers promoted by the anti-war crowd, like Jesse MacBeth and “Winter Soldier” Al Hubbard, even liberals with actual military experience are constantly being caught in the middle of some liberal hoax.

Al Gore endlessly bragged to the media about his service in Vietnam. “I took my turn regularly on the perimeter in these little firebases out in the boonies. Something would move, we’d fire first and ask questions later,” he told Vanity Fair. And then we found out Gore had a personal bodyguard in Vietnam, the most dangerous weapon he carried was a typewriter, and he left after three months. Although to his credit, Gore did not put in for a Purple Heart for the carpal tunnel syndrome he got from all that typing.

Speaking of which, John Kerry claimed to be a valiant, Purple Heart-deserving Vietnam veteran, who spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia — until he ran for president and more than 280 Swift Boat Veterans called him a liar. We’ve been waiting more than 20 months for Kerry to make good on his “Meet the Press” pledge to sign form 180, which would allow the military to release his records.

Then there was Bill Burkett, who gave CBS the phony National Guard documents; Scott Thomas Beauchamp, The New Republic’s fantasist anti-war “Baghdad Diarist”; and Max Cleland, whose injuries were repeatedly and falsely described as a result of enemy fire.

Liberals will even turn a war hero like Pat Tillman into an anti-war cause celebre posthumously — so he can’t disagree. Tillman died in a friendly fire incident that occurred — unlike Max Cleland’s accident — during actual combat with the enemy.

Because they are screaming, hysterical women, liberals treat friendly fire like a drunk driving accident. But friendly fire has been a part of war from time immemorial.

Liberals have an insane, litigious view of the military: There’s been an accident in warfare, let’s sue! It’s as mad as the line from “Dr. Strangelove”: “Gentlemen! No fighting in the War Room!” Golly jeepers, accidents can’t happen in a war!

Contrary to the insinuations of his family, we don’t know what Pat Tillman would say about the war he volunteered for, but we do know that he was a patriot until death. And we know what other patriots have said about friendly fire during a war.

In his book “Faith of My Fathers,” John McCain describes how demoralized American prisoners of war in Vietnam were when they didn’t hear any bombing for years. Finally, after a long bombing halt, Nixon renewed aerial bombing of North Vietnam in December 1972.

Our bombers couldn’t know with precision where the enemy was holding (and torturing) our troops. McCain and the rest of those POWs could easily have been hit and killed by an American bomb.

But the POWs weren’t denouncing the U.S. military for risking their lives with “friendly fire.” They weren’t crying Mommy, investigate this! Get me a trial lawyer! If their camp had been hit by American bombs, it would have been as the POWs were shouting: “God bless President Nixon!”

That’s from their own mouths; that’s what’s in their hearts. Friendly fire — to a nation that hasn’t lost its wits — is part of waging war.

If Democrats don’t want to hear about “phony soldiers,” maybe they should stop trying to edify us with these bathos-laden hoaxes.

==============================

Ann Coulter’s Theology: Offensively Accurate (townhall.com, 071014)

By Kevin McCullough

[KH: right on!!]

Why CNBC’s Donny Deutsch likes to bait Christians into answers he doesn’t like, to only then berate them for his dislike of them is a wee bit unexplainable. Deutsch did it to my friend Stephen Baldwin as he attempted raise awareness about the dangerous impact of peep show/porn houses that operate near schools, and this past week he laid the same strategy on Ann Coulter. Both Coulter and Baldwin spoke to me shortly after their appearances (but prior to the airing of the taped segments) with a bit of bewilderment as to how the events had unfolded.

The problem was Ann would have none of it.

Deutsch invited Ann to describe what the world would look like if she had her say. One aspect of her answer was that the world would be more Christian:

DEUTSCH: Christian — so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?

COULTER: Yes.

DEUTSCH: We should all be Christian?

COULTER: Yes. Would you like to come to church with me, Donny?

Deutsch was not amused:

DEUTSCH: So you don’t think that was offensive?

COULTER: No. I’m sorry. It is not intended to be. I don’t think you should take it that way, but that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. We believe the Old Testament. As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to, you know, live up to all the laws. What Christians believe — this is just a statement of what the New Testament is — is that that’s why Christ came and died for our sins. Christians believe the Old Testament. You don’t believe our testament.

Despite the rather precise, clear, and distinct explanations that Ann offered up, Deutsch continued to imply that Ann was anti-Semitic, religiously bigoted, and even educationally ignorant.

The problem was - he was describing himself.

Unfortunately many people will only scan headlines, hear the gossip, and assume Ann Coulter is a religious bigot. Sadly some goons are now responding in ways that have attempted to threaten Ann’s physical safety.

As I replayed some of the more pithy soundbytes on my show - based in New York City - our phone lines flooded with response from both Christians and Jews. The first half dozen or so to get through in fact all seemed Jewish and most were stunned at the silliness with which Deutsch conducted himself. And note this please... not ONE of them were offended by what Ann Coulter had stated.

The fact that Jews and Christians share the Old Testament as a source of truth that guides their life is a bit of common ground unlike any two other faith systems in the world. The fact that they come to different conclusions - particularly as to how the prophecies of that text are fulfilled is not surprising though. Simply put Christians believe that Yeshua fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy and was in fact the promised Messiah. Thus we count his teaching and the remainder of the New Testament as sacred inspired text. We believe it to be as every bit much part of the scripture as the Old. Jews come to different conclusions.

Secular or only culturally observant Jews like Deutsch have sometimes attempted to read more into the label of Christianity than what is there. Examples of this include the ridiculous attempt to describe Adolph Hitler as a practicing Christian, when there is far more evidence in his life’s actions and writings that he was perhaps entirely demon possessed. Also telling are the examples of the closeness Christians and Jews have shared throughout modern history - even Hitler-era examples such as Corrie Ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Serious Christians as well as serious Jews have a unique ability to sit across the table from one another, share a meal, talk - even about religion - without feeling the need to come to blows. Hence why Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, and Michael Medved - are not merely people I have great esteem for, but men I consider to be true friends.

Prager and Medved have both even consistently argued for the strengthening of what has traditionally been a strong alliance between the Jewish community and the Evangelical church. I’ve heard both of them remark on multiple occasions, that perhaps there has never been “a more true friend” to the Jewish people than today’s Evangelical Christian.

Long story short - Ann Coulter’s theological perspective was accurate if she were being asked to answer the questions from the distinctly Christian viewpoint. Feigning outrage, yet in reality probably thankful for the free publicity his show received because of it, Deutsch did not demonstrate any evidence anti-Semitism on Coulter’s part.

What was demonstrated was that Ann has a knack for offending the ignorant.

Knowing that he could play the anti-Semite card without much scrutiny on his end was a cheap ploy to gain exposure at Ann’s expense. Ann is not a perfect person, but on this issue she stood fast and true. Anyone who took offense only demonstrated that they either do not understand their own belief system well enough to feel confident in it, or that they are not very good listeners.

I believe with Deutsch one could argue the case for both!

==============================

Progressives Agree: “God’s Chosen People” Are Racist (townhall.com, 071115)

By Lisa De Pasquale

Following the outrage over Ann Coulter’s interview with CNBC’s Donny Deutsch, members of the media used it as an opportunity to tell the American people that they should be offended by her restatement of Christian doctrine and the New Testament.

Given that there are billions of people of all denominations who believe their religion to be the path to salvation, it’s not much of a stretch for those religions to cite their virtues over those of other religions.

Coulter said, “That is what Christians consider themselves, perfected Jews.” Let’s apply the media’s hysteria about “perfected Jews” to another religious tenet. The following is a satirical illustration of the use of the term “God’s chosen people.” None of the quotes are made up, but perhaps they give a more honest view of how “progressives” feel about Judaism.

BEGIN MEDIA HYSTERIA

A tenet of Judaism has mocked non-Jews for thousands of years. We are constantly being told that we are not “God’s chosen people.” It damages our self-esteem and mocks our life choices. The notion of “God’s chosen people” is pervasive in Jewish doctrine. According to Wikipedia:

In the Jewish prayerbook (the Siddur), chosenness is referred to in a number of ways. The blessing for reading the Torah reads “Praised are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has chosen us out of all the nations and bestowed upon us his Torah.”

In the “Kiddush”, a prayer of sanctification in which the Sabbath is inaugurated over a cup of wine, the text reads “For you have chosen us and sanctified us out of all the nations, and have given us the Sabbath as an inheritance in love and favour. Praised are you, Lord, who hallows the Sabbath.”

In the “Kiddush” recited on festivals it says, “Blessed are You … who have chosen us from among all nations, raised us above all tongues, and made us holy through his commandments.”

Thomas Jefferson, who was a SLAVE OWNER, used this phrase, perhaps unaware of its offensive roots. He said, “Those who labor in the earth are the Chosen People of God, if ever he had a chosen people.”

This phrase is so permanently sealed in our lexicon that even those not traditionally considered “chosen people” have adopted its usage, perhaps to curry favor with the “chosen” or because they are uncomfortable in their own skin and have tribe-envy. Christian evangelical Jerry Fallwell said, “I believe that the people of Israel are the chosen people of God.”

In the Baltimore Jewish Times, Neil Rubin wrote, “The Christian right, I know, is a complicated and diverse community – just like us Jews. But some in that camp mean no harm to us. In fact, quite the opposite. As I talk to members of their community, I see a desire to speak to ‘God’s chosen people.’”

The people that Rubin talks to are ignorant. “God’s chosen people” is offensive to Christians, Muslims, Scientologists, and Wiccans, among many others. That’s why it is up to those of us with a more progressive, respectful view for the myriad of spiritual belief systems that exist to educate others. Progressive Jostein Gaardner is the author of Sophie’s World, which has sold over 30 million copies in 53 languages. In Norway’s leading newspaper, he wrote, “We do not believe in the notion of God’s chosen people. We laugh at this people’s fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God’s chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.”

There are countless victims that are left behind by the “chosen people.” In a forum for a Petition to Bring the Troops Home, there are several progressive net-activists that feel slighted by this xenophobic notion. They write:

— them Communist B@$t@rd$ even sacrificed kids too. And they get by with it and are called God’s chosen People.. Isn’t that sickening?

— the talmud is more barbaric than the old testament and teaches jewish supremacy. I don’t understand why people call the jews God’s chosen people when they have such beliefs.

The time has come to end the radical, divisive language of “God’s chosen people.” Call your Senator or Congressman today and demand they condemn all of those who use this fundamentalist, hateful language!

END MEDIA HYSTERIA

If the media was consistent, that’s how they would react to “God’s chosen people.” Instead, they get their talking points from the unperfected kooks at Media Matters that neurotically pine over every word uttered by Ann Coulter. In condemning Coulter’s comments, the media’s objective isn’t to defend Judaism, but to incite phony hysteria and advance Media Matters’ agenda to silence conservatives. If you have a problem with the New Testament, take it up with its authors, not with Coulter.

==============================

McCarthyism: The Rosetta Stone of Liberal Lies (Foxnews, 071108)

By Ann Coulter

When I wrote a ferocious defense of Sen. Joe McCarthy in Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, liberals chose not to argue with me. Instead they posted a scrolling series of reasons not to read my book, such as that I wear short skirts, date boys, and that Treason was not a scholarly tome.

After printing rabidly venomous accounts of McCarthy for half a century based on zero research, liberals would only accept research presenting an alternative view of McCarthy that included, as the Los Angeles Times put it, at least the “pretense of scholarly throat-clearing and objectivity.”

This week, they got it. The great M. Stanton Evans has finally released Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies. Based on a lifetime’s work, including nearly a decade of thoroughgoing research, stores of original research and never-before-seen government files, this 672-page book ends the argument on Joe McCarthy. Look for it hidden behind stacks of Bill Clinton’s latest self-serving book at a bookstore near you.

Evans’ book is such a tour de force that liberals are already preparing a “yesterday’s news” defense — as if they had long ago admitted the truth about McCarthy. Yes, and they fought shoulder to shoulder with Ronald Reagan to bring down the Evil Empire. Thus, Publishers Weekly preposterously claims that “the history Evans relates is already largely known, if not fully accepted.” Somebody better tell George Clooney.

The McCarthy period is the Rosetta stone of all liberal lies. It is the textbook on how they rewrite history — the sound chamber of liberal denunciations, their phony victimhood as they demean and oppress their enemies, their false imputation of dishonesty to their opponents, their legalization of every policy dispute, their ability to engage in lock-step shouting campaigns, and the black motives concealed by their endless cacophony.

The true story of Joe McCarthy, told in meticulous, irrefutable detail in Blacklisted by History, is that from 1938 to 1946, the Democratic Party acquiesced in a monstrous conspiracy being run through the State Department, the military establishment, and even the White House to advance the Soviet cause within the U.S. government.

In the face of the Democrats’ absolute refusal to admit to their fecklessness, fatuity and recklessness in allowing known Soviet spies to penetrate the deepest levels of government, McCarthy demanded an accounting.

Even if one concedes to on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand whiners like Ronald Radosh that Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson didn’t like communism, his record is what it was. And that record was to treat Soviet spies like members of the Hasty Pudding Club.

Rather than own up to their moral blindness to Soviet espionage, Democrats fired up the liberal slander machine, which would be deployed again and again over the next half century to the present day. In hiding their own perfidy, liberals were guilty of every sin they lyingly imputed to McCarthy. There were no “McCarthyites” until liberals came along.

Blacklisted by History proves that every conventional belief about McCarthy is wrong, including:

That he lied about his war service: He was a tailgunner in World War II;

That he was a drunk: He would generally nurse a single drink all night;

That he made the whole thing up: He produced loads of Soviet spies in government jobs;

That he just did it for political gain: He understood perfectly the godless evil of communism.

Ironically, for all of their love of conspiracy theories — the rigging of the 2000 election, vote suppression in Ohio in 2004, 9/11 being an inside job, oil companies covering up miracle technology that would allow cars to run on dirt, Britney Spears’ career, etc., etc. — when presented with an actual conspiracy of Soviet spies infiltrating the U.S. government, they laughed it off like world-weary skeptics and dedicated themselves to slandering Joe McCarthy.

Then as now, liberals protect themselves from detection with wild calumnies against anybody who opposes them. They have no interest in — or aptitude for — persuasion. Their goal is to anathematize their enemies. Blacklisted by History removes the curse from one of the greatest patriots in American history.

==============================

Whoreable Behavior (Ann Coulter, 080312)

This is a disaster for Hillary Clinton.

According to the wiretaps, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was delighted to be getting the prostitute “Kristen” again. At least he knew her name. It took Monica Lewinsky’s boyfriend six sexual encounters to remember her name (bringing his lifetime average to 8.2).

You know that queasy feeling you get thinking about Bill Clinton back in the White House again? Now you remember why. Hillary Clinton couldn’t feel worse about the Spitzer case if she were an actual New Yorker.

Proving that Karl Marx got everything wrong — more bad news for Hillary — history is indeed repeating itself, but, contra Marx, the first time as farce, the second time as tragedy. Clinton’s scandal was hilarious; Spitzer’s is just depressing.

Most people outside of New York can’t grasp the enormity of Spitzer’s political free fall.

Eliot Spitzer was the golden boy with an absolutely charmed life. His parents were the children of Jewish immigrants, who created a Ralph Lauren lifestyle for their children.

Spitzer’s father made half a billion dollars in New York real estate and raised three high-achieving children — two lawyers and a neurosurgeon. In a family like that, becoming governor of New York makes you the black sheep.

Spitzer went to the best schools — Horace Mann, Princeton and Harvard Law School. He must have written some good papers.

He lives at the perfect address (Fifth Avenue and 79th St.) with his perfect Harvard Law School-educated Southern Baptist wife — whose parents must be telling her they told her so right about now — and their three perfect daughters. (Admittedly, the apartment is a gift from Dad: A mere top-flight education doesn’t get you an apartment overlooking Central Park.)

And now Spitzer’s entire anal-retentive, good paper-writing life has collapsed in the horrifying image of a frenzied masturbator. This is the most complete coup de grace imaginable, short of an assassin’s bullet.

Spitzer’s life is ruined. It doesn’t matter if he has defenders who will wail, “It’s his private life!” It doesn’t matter if he fights the charges. It doesn’t matter if this was a political prosecution. As Talleyrand said: “It’s worse than a crime; it’s a blunder.”

Eliot Spitzer, Harvard Law graduate and Fifth Avenue denizen, is forevermore: “Client No. 9.”

Forget about his career — those around him better have him on suicide watch. Dudley Do-Right is on tape in a white-knuckle negotiation with pimps about payment for a prostitute. (Let’s just be thankful that there’s no anti-Semitic expression for Jews haggling about money.)

No one will ever be able to look him in the eye again. How can Spitzer hold a press conference when reporters won’t stop giggling at him?

Spitzer can’t go to the restaurants he used to frequent. He can’t go to the Whitney Museum near his apartment. He can’t go to track meets at his daughters’ expensive private school. He can’t show his face in public.

The golden boy’s disgrace is deep and subliminal; it can’t be expunged.

One shudders to imagine the sepulchral gloom pervading the Spitzer home this week. At least Hillary would liven the place up with some lamp-throwing.

Whatever Spitzer’s flaws, he was a pristine product of wealth and attainment. And he threw away a star-studded life of accomplishment in a wanton, reckless pursuit of sex with prostitutes.

There’s no prettifying what Spitzer has done. The Web site of the “Emperor’s Club VIP” whorehouse patronized by Spitzer heroically claims the prostitutes — or “models” — are chosen for their “level of education, family background, intelligence, personality.”

One can almost hear the typical John, heavy-breathing into the phone: “And this one you call ‘Busty Betty’ — does she come from a good family? Parents still together? What church do they attend?”

Surprising no one, police wiretaps indicate that the “models” were semi-literate, could not learn to swipe a credit card and seemed invariably to be on drugs. That’s what you get for $2,000 an hour in this charming business.

After one prostitute missed an appointment and left a “crazy” text message for one of her pimps, the procurer remarks that the girl is on drugs. It seems, the procurer adds, “a lot of these girls deteriorate to this point.”

Behold the “victimless” crime of prostitution. Hard to believe these girls would turn to drugs. Having sex with strangers for money, nothing to live for ... just thinking about it makes me want to take drugs.

It’s absurd to talk about Spitzer’s problem being “hypocrisy” — as if everything would be fine if only he had previously advocated legalized prostitution.

It’s absurd to talk about “alpha males” and political power — an alpha male does not bring his family shame and disaster. Who was more alpha than Ronald Reagan? Think he ever had a “whore problem”? This is more like a dog who wee-wees on your leg.

It’s absurd to talk about legal defenses. This guy has fallen from the pinnacle of New York society to being a disgrace to his class. He’s the Ivy League version of Paris Hilton.

That was always the advantage Clinton had: We never expected any better. He went from Skunk Trot, Ark., to Skunk Trot, Ark. Spitzer fell from Fifth Avenue to Skunk Trot, Ark.

==============================

Hillary: Swiftboated! (townhall.com, 080327)

By Ann Coulter

Hillary is being “swiftboated”!

She claimed that she came under sniper fire when she visited in Bosnia in 1996, but was contradicted by videotape showing her sauntering off the plane and stopping on the tarmac to listen to a little girl read her a poem.

Similarly, John Kerry’s claim to heroism in Vietnam was contradicted by 264 Swift Boat Veterans who served with him. His claim to having been on a secret mission to Cambodia for President Nixon on Christmas 1968 was contradicted not only by all of his commanders — who said he would have been court-martialed if he had gone anywhere near Cambodia — but also the simple fact that Nixon wasn’t president on Christmas 1968.

In Hillary’s defense, she probably deserves a Purple Heart about as much as Kerry did for his service in Vietnam.

Also, unlike Kerry, Hillary acknowledged her error, telling the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “I was sleep-deprived, and I misspoke.” (What if she’s sleep-deprived when she gets that call on the red phone at 3 a.m., imagines a Russian nuclear attack and responds with mutual assured destruction? Oops. “It proves I’m human.”)

The reason no one claims Hillary is being “swiftboated” is that the definition of “swiftboating” is: “producing irrefutable evidence that a Democrat is lying.” And for purposes of her race against matinee idol B. Hussein Obama, Hillary has become the media’s honorary Republican.

In liberal-speak, only a Democrat can be swiftboated. Democrats are “swiftboated”; Republicans are “guilty.” So as an honorary Republican, Hillary isn’t being swiftboated; she’s just lying.

Indeed, instead of attacking the people who produced a video of Hillary’s uneventful landing in Bosnia, the mainstream media are the people who discovered that video.

I’ve always wondered how a Democrat would fare being treated like a Republican by the media. Now we know.

It’s such fun watching liberals turn on the Clintons! The bitter infighting among Democrats is especially enjoyable after having to listen to Democrats hyperventilate for months about how delighted they were to have so many wonderful choices for president.

Now liberals just want to be rid of the Clintons — which is as close to actual mainstream thinking as they’ve been in years. So the media suddenly notice when Hillary “misspeaks,” while rushing to make absurd excuses for much greater outrages by her opponent.

Liberals are even using the Slick Willy defense when Obama is caught fraternizing with a racist loon. When Bill Clinton was exposed as a philandering, adulterous, pathological liar, his defenders said that everybody is a philandering, adulterous, pathological liar.

And now, when B. Hussein Obama is caught in a 20-year relationship with a raving racist, his defenders scream that everybody is a racist wack-job.

In the Obama speech on race that Chris Matthews deemed “worthy of Abraham Lincoln,” B. Hussein Obama defended Wright’s anti-American statements, saying:

“For the men and women of Rev. Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table.”

So in the speech the media are telling us is on a par with the Gettysburg Address, B. Hussein Obama casually informed us that even blacks who seem to like white people actually hate our guts.

First of all: Watch out the next time you get your hair cut by a black barber over the age of 50.

Second, Rev. Wright’s world wasn’t segregated.

And third, what about Wright’s wanton anti-Semitism? All the liberals (including essence-besplattered Chris Matthews) have accepted Obama’s defense of Wright and want us to understand Wright’s “legitimate” rage over his painful youth in segregated America.

But the anti-Semitic tone of Wright’s sermons is as clear as his rage against the United States. Rev. Wright calls Israel a “dirty word” and a “racist country.” He denounces Zionism and calls for divestment from Israel.

In addition to videos of Rev. Wright’s sermons, Obama’s church also offers for sale sermons by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, whom Rev. Wright joined on a visit to Moammar Gadhafi in Libya in 1984. Just last year, Obama’s church awarded Farrakhan the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award, saying Farrakhan “truly epitomized greatness.”

What, pray tell, is the legitimate source of Wright’s anti-Semitism? I believe Brother Obama passed over that issue entirely in his “conversation,” even as he made the obligatory bow to Israel’s status as one of our “stalwart allies.” Why does crazy “uncle” Wright dislike Jews?

Will liberals contend that these remarks were “taken out of context”? Maybe Wright’s church was trying to say that Farrakhan isn’t great when it said he “epitomized greatness.” Who knows? We weren’t there.

Can liberals please educate us on the “legitimate” impulses behind Rev. Wright’s Jew-baiting?

==============================

The New York Times vs. Helms, Part 529,876 (townhall.com, 080710)

by Ann Coulter

Last Friday, on the Fourth of July, the great American patriot Jesse Helms passed away. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson also went to their great reward on Independence Day, so this is further proof of God.

Helms is now the second great American patriot I’ve always wanted to meet and never will, at least in this lifetime. The only other one is the magnificent Reagan aide Lyn Nofziger. (Wikipedia quote: “I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.”)

After a week of hundreds of Helms obituaries — one or two of which were not completely dishonest — I will mention just a few items that were not addressed or given sufficient attention.

The two most obsessively discussed topics among Senate staffers are: (1) Who is the stupidest senator? (Sen. Barbara Boxer pulled into the lead when Sen. Lincoln Chafee retired), and (2) which senators are beastly and which are wonderful to their staff?

When I worked in the Senate in the ‘90s, the two senators famous for being absolute princes to work for were Sen. Helms and — it pains me to tell you this, so you know it has to be true — Sen. Teddy Kennedy. (He was so nice to his staffers, he frequently offered them rides home in his car after parties.)

I never knew — and you never knew, unless you read one of the two honest obituaries this past week — that in 1962 Helms and his wife “Dot” adopted a 9-year-old orphan with cerebral palsy. They already had two daughters and Helms was 41 years old at the time. But it was Christmastime and they read about Charlie in a newspaper. He said all he wanted for Christmas was a mother and father.

In the 1976 North Carolina Republican primary, Helms engineered Ronald Reagan’s upset victory over Gerald Ford, the sitting president. That victory carried Reagan to the convention and made him the front-runner in 1980. The night Reagan won the 1980 presidential election, Helms famously uttered the beautiful words: “God has given America one more chance.”

In 1984, Helms’ re-election campaign was the then-most expensive Senate race in history. His Democratic opponent, Gov. Jim Hunt, received campaign contributions from the usual dotty liberals: Barbra Streisand, Phil Donahue, Marlo Thomas, Paul Newman, Woody Allen — all, no doubt, steeped in North Carolina politics.

Shockingly, Hunt also received a donation from Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the nonpartisan, totally objective, straight-down-the-middle New York Times. Which I guess explains the nasty obituary last week.

Meanwhile, Helms received contributions mostly from America’s two most dangerous fringe groups: housewives and businessmen. His few celebrity supporters included Gene Autry and Ellin Berlin, wife of composer Irving Berlin, the patriotic Jewish immigrant who wrote “White Christmas” and “God Bless America.”

Other Republicans loved to run in years when Helms was up for election because, like a Marine exposing himself to enemy fire to let his comrades escape, all the Hollywood money would be dedicated to defeating Helms.

On election night 1984, a friend of mine was at a Republican victory party in Michigan when suddenly a group of Hasidim broke out in cheering and dancing. Was “Fiddler on the Roof” being made into a major motion picture? He looked up at the mammoth TV screen. It read: “Jesse Helms Wins North Carolina.”

Helms was viciously and falsely portrayed as a racist — including in the totally objective New York Times obituary last week. In January 1963, a decade before Helms would run for office, he editorialized about Harvey Gantt, the first black student to be admitted to Clemson University in South Carolina.

Helms praised Gantt to the skies, saying he had “stoutly resisted the pose of a conquering hero” and had “turned away from the liberal press and television networks which would glorify him.” Gantt, Helms said, just wanted to be an architect and “Clemson is the only college in South Carolina that can teach him how to be one.”

Funny how that little tidbit didn’t make the Times obituary. They must have cut it for “space.”

Helms was for integration; he was simply against “movements.” He would later hire James Meredith, who was the first black to attend the University of Mississippi — with the assistance of federal troops. By 1989, Meredith’s views had come around to those of Helms, not the other way around.

After years of reading and studying and attending law school at Columbia University, Meredith concluded that blacks had been better off when they worked for themselves and not for white liberals. (Having worked for white liberals myself, I couldn’t agree more.) Meredith claimed Helms fired him as domestic policy adviser after a year because he was too right-wing for Helms.

Which reminds me: I’ll have to try to meet Meredith before the next Fourth of July.

Liberals discount Helms’ hiring of Meredith on the grounds that Meredith had wandered off the reservation. (Blacks are allowed to have only one set of political views.) It just shows you how stupid liberals are: Blacks don’t live on reservations; Indians do.

It’s pretty much the same thing liberals are accusing B. Hussein Obama of right now. In its July 4 editorial, the Times harangued Obama for his diversions from the liberal line on Iraq, the domestic surveillance bill, capital punishment and guns. I believe the editorial was titled something like, “Get in Line, N-word.”

To paraphrase Dan Quayle, to be called a racist by these people is a badge of honor. Rest in peace, Jesse Helms: New York Times stock was recently lowered to a notch above junk bond status.

==============================

Silver’s Bravery Not An Act (Ann Coulter, 090318)

I wish I could ask Ron Silver what he thinks of the AIG bonuses. He’d have some original take — maybe propose re-opening the bonuses paid to Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick for their yeoman’s work running Fannie Mae into the ground and then collecting bonuses of $90 million and $24.7 million, respectively. Or maybe he’d just make a joke.

But I can’t ask him anymore because Ron died of a rare esophageal cancer last Sunday.

So now there is one less person in the world who never chooses his positions to feed a pompous ego or to stroke his self-image as a thinking person. There was no point to posturing for Ron: His social standing in Hollywood was revoked the moment he supported Bush and the Iraq War.

Perhaps Ron always spoke his mind, but I didn’t know him when he was “brave”; I only knew Ron when he was actually brave.

I’ve noticed that words like “brave” and “courageous” are mostly used nowadays to mean “left-wing..” We’re constantly asked to admire the monumental courage of Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Janeane Garofalo and the Dixie Chicks — sometimes even by other people.

But for my younger readers, what courage traditionally meant was risking the disapprobation of people you know. It was about losing friends, losing work and losing status where you live — not alienating people you will never meet. Insulting people in Kansas when you live in Los Angeles is not speaking truth to power; it’s speaking anything to serve power.

One thing you cannot say about Ron’s magnificent speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention is that he did it to go with the flow in Hollywood, to take the path of least resistance, to win easy applause. Ron did lose work, lose friends and lose his entire social apparatus.

Ron didn’t say what he said to get any kind of reaction, but because he believed it. He was an intellectual trapped in an actor’s body.

Amid the antiques at his beautifully appointed Park Avenue pre-war, there were piles and piles of magazines and newspaper articles on topics ranging from Sunni Muslims to Darwinism. Nearly every room was lined with books, most of them dog-eared.

When I needed to stay with Ron for a few weeks once, he’d get up hours before I did, read all the major newspapers and leave the interesting articles circled at the foot of my bed.

This might be the nicest thing a man could ever do for me. Hey, skip the bagel and fresh coffee — bring me that op-ed page and a pair of scissors! It was like a fabulous Park Avenue hotel with a clipping service.

During his long-shot chemo treatments at “the spa,” as he called Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Ron turned his chemo rooms into Command Central. Most people doze off during chemo; Ron would be sitting upright, watching the news, checking his laptop and making cell phone calls, seemingly oblivious to the poison being injected into his arm.

He’d often come to church with me on Sundays — while insisting he favored the “Original Testament,” as if the New Testament were an act of judicial activism. He just liked to hear an intellectual lecture on the Bible — and always perked up when the minister began discussing the “Original Testament.”

On Sundays when we had communion, Ron would pop the host in his mouth as soon as the tray passed him, approvingly observing that matzo was served at church.

No ideas frightened him, which is part of the reason why we were always laughing, even when we were arguing.

Ron sometimes told me of the cruelty directed at him by his former friends, but never with bitterness or for publication — although I’m tempted to get it off my chest even if he didn’t want to get it off his chest. You know who you are.

As with his impending death, Ron mostly joked about his banishment from the plutocracy. When I off-handedly mentioned in December 2004 that I had to get a Christmas tree, he told me he’d like to help, but having recently spoken at the Republican National Convention, the last thing he needed was to be seen walking through the streets of New York carrying a Christmas tree.

After an aborted operation on his cancer in July 2007, as soon as I saw Ron in his hospital bed, I told him I had Christians across the country praying for him. He said, “That’s good, because the Jews are praying for me to die.”

Here he was joking only hours after being told his cancer was inoperable and he had mere months to live. Nearly two years later, he was gone. Luckily for him, he now faces a Maker who rewards bravery, but despises “bravery.”

==============================

Liberal Taliban Issues Fatwa Against Miss California (090513)

Not even Dick Cheney can incite the blood-curdling rage of liberals at the sight of a sexy Evangelical Christian. Paula Jones, Katherine Harris, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and, most recently, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, have all come under a frenzy of attacks from liberals.

Christians are supposed to be fat, balding sweaty little men with bad complexions. It's liberals who are supposed to be the sexy ones. (I know that from watching "The West Wing" and all movies starring Julia Roberts.)

But sadly for liberals, in real life, the fat, balding sweaty little guy with the bad complexion is Perez Hilton and the smoking-hot babe is Carrie Prejean.

This apparent contradiction incites violent anger in liberals, triggering their famous "fight or flight" response. So liberal masturbators are, once again, launching furious attacks on a beautiful Christian in a fit of pique similar to the one directed at Joan of Arc.

First, the Miss USA contest held a press conference to announce that Prejean had breast implants. Take a Christian position in public and Satan's handmaidens will turn all your secrets into front-page news.

Next, a photographer released a single cheesecake photo of Prejean. This prompted liberal reporters who have never met a Christian to proclaim that Christians were outraged by the photo. Liberals believe abortion is a sacrament, but smoking, wearing short skirts and modeling lingerie are mortal sins. (And if wearing women's underwear is a basis for being disqualified from the pageant, that's the end of Perez Hilton's judging career.)

Then on Monday some genuine "semi-nude" photos were released. These were not what we'd call appropriate for a Christian. In a curiously similar attack, the left's final attempt to destroy Paula Jones was to lure her into appearing naked in Penthouse magazine. Oh well.

Christians aren't people who believe they are without sin; they're people who know they're sinners and are awestruck by God's grace in sending his only Son to take the punishment they deserve.

This is in contradistinction to liberals, all of whom believe they're on a fast track to heaven on the basis of being "basically good" people -- and also believe that anyone who disagrees with that theological view is evil.

Finally (so far, anyway), reporters gleefully released the divorce records of Prejean's parents. Because when you want the truth, what is more reliable than angry accusations traded in the middle of an acrimonious divorce?

Liberals used the divorce papers to argue that Prejean had some deep-seated psychological disturbance causing her to oppose gay marriage. Symptoms of this debilitating illness include a belief in some sort of "god" and a reverence for the Bible.

It's not as if Prejean's special talent in the Miss USA contest was to perform an opposite-sex marriage. (Or, as the president and I call it, "marriage.") She didn't even volunteer her "controversial" views on marriage. Rather, she was asked for her opinion on gay marriage and gave it -- in an answer wrapped in so many layers of sugar it took 10 minutes to get to the point.

"Well, I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. You know what, in my country, in my family, I do believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that's how I was raised, and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman."

What a vicious hate-monger! Any second there I was expecting her to bust out a "by golly!" or an "oh my gosh!" Angry gay-marriage supporters should be happy they didn't get my version of that answer. It contains some terms you won't find in your Bible.

Liberals wouldn't attack James Dobson with the amount of bile they've directed at a 21-year-old beauty contestant. It's not just Christianity -- it's women liberals hate.

From Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso and Bertrand Russell, who treated women -- mostly their mistresses -- like dogs, to Teddy Kennedy and Bill Clinton in our own day, liberals are ferocious misogynists. They share Muslims' opinion of women, differing only to the extent that liberals also support a women's right to have an abortion and to perform lap dances.

You'd be better off in a real burqa than under the authority of a liberal American male.

I'm not sure we needed a psychological profile of Prejean to figure out why she holds the same position on gay marriage as: the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards and his mistress, and the vast majority of the American people.

But what is crying out for an explanation is why every bubble-head TV news anchorette from a nice, churchgoing red state ends up adopting the political views of Karl Marx.

From Katie Couric on CBS to Norah O'Donnell on MSNBC, the whole stable of TV anchorettes weirdly have the exact same politics as their liberal masters. It's the ideological burqa women are required to wear to work in the mainstream media. As with a conventional burqa, it enforces conformity and severely restricts the vision.

The only way to protect yourself is to do the liberal male's bidding, as the bubble-head anchorettes do, or stand on the rock of Christianity.

Now, another beautiful Christian has thrown off the liberal burqa, thereby inciting mass hysteria throughout the liberal establishment. Prejean doesn't care. She is blazing across the sky, as impotent nose-pickers jockey for a piece of her reflected light by hurling insults at her.

==============================

Notre Dame Holds First Alan Keyes Fundraiser (090520)

How about for next year's graduation ceremony Notre Dame have an abortionist perform an abortion live on stage? They could have a partial-birth abortion for the advanced degrees.

According to liberals, the right to kill babies was enshrined by the Founding Fathers in our Constitution -- and other constitutional rights are celebrated in public.

The right to bear arms is honored in 21-gun salutes, turkey shoots, Civil War re-enactments, firearms demonstrations and, occasionally, at Phil Spector's house.

The right to petition the government for redress of grievances is celebrated at political rallies, tea parties, marches, protests and whenever Keith Olbermann has a fight with his cat.

The free exercise clause is observed in church services, missionary work, peyote-smoking Indian rituals, and for a few days after every time Bill Clinton gets caught having an extramarital affair.

So instead of inviting a constitutional lawyer to yammer on about this purported constitutional right, why not show it being practiced?

How about a 21-vacuum hose (D&C) salute? Maybe have the Notre Dame marching band form a giant skull-piercing fork? How about having the president throw out the ceremonial first fetus, like on opening day in baseball? I'm just brainstorming here, folks -- none of this is written in stone.

Being such a prestigious institution, Notre Dame could probably get famed partial-birth abortion practitioner George Tiller to do the demonstration at next year's graduation. Obama could help -- inasmuch as Tiller the abortionist is a close friend of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

This is a "constitutional right" like no other.

Even its supporters are embarrassed by the exercise of this right. They won't practice the right in public -- they won't even call abortion by its name, preferring to use a string of constantly changing euphemisms, such as "reproductive health" and "choice."

It would be as if gun owners refused to use the word "gun" and the NRA's motto were, "Let's all work together to keep hunting safe, legal and rare."

Liberals were awestruck by Obama's statesmanlike speech at Notre Dame, but whatever he says about abortion is frothy nonsense because we're not allowed to vote on abortion policy in America. If it's a "constitutional right," we can no more vote on abortion than we could vote on free speech.

With Roe v. Wade, abortion supporters ripped the issue out of the democratic process -- limb from limb, you might say -- and declared their desired outcome a "constitutional right." They have hysterically defended that lawless decision for the last quarter-century.

All of Obama's soothing words about joining hands and not demonizing one another are just blather as long as that legal monstrosity remains the law of the land.

Showing his open-mindedness, Obama asked, "How does each of us remain firm in our principles ... without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?" (What do I have to do to get you murderers and you non-murderers to shake hands and be friends?)

A good start would be letting us vote.

Liberals can be all sweet reason as long as their preference for abortion on demand is lyingly called a "constitutional right," immutable to the tiniest alteration by the voters.

In the minuscule areas where abortion policy can be affected, Obama has shown his passion for compromise by always taking the most extreme pro-abortion position.

On his third day in office, Obama overturned the "Mexico City Policy," which prohibited U.S. taxpayer money from being spent on overseas organizations that perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.

Obama has filled his administration with Planned Parenthood veterans and friends of partial-birth abortionists.

As an Illinois state senator in 2002-2003, Obama repeatedly blocked and voted against the "Born Alive Act," which would have allowed doctors to give medical care to babies who somehow survived abortions and remained alive, wholly apart from their mothers.

Even the extremist National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League declined to take a position on the bill. The same bill in the U.S. Senate passed unanimously -- and that means that abortion-happy nutcake Barbara Boxer voted for it.

But Obama apparently thought it was important to affirm a woman's critical right to fourth-trimester abortions.

Here's my idea for how we can "live together as one human family," as Obama proposed at Notre Dame: Go ahead, demonize pro-lifers, Obama -- call us "right-wing ideologues." But just once, support one little policy that will save a single unborn child.

==============================

**Harry Reid’s Negro Problem (Ann Coulter, 100113)

The recently released book “Game Change” reports that Sen. Harry Reid said America would vote for Barack Obama because he was a “light-skinned” African-American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

The book also says Bill Clinton called Sen. Ted Kennedy to ask for his endorsement of Hillary over Obama, saying of Obama: “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.”

And we already knew that Obama’s own vice president, Joe Biden, called Obama “articulate” and “clean” during the campaign. (So you can see why Biden got the vice presidential nod over Reid.)

Democrats regularly say things that would end the career of any conservative who said them. And still, blacks give 90% of their votes to the Democrats.

Reid apologized to President Obama, and Obama accepted the apology using his “white voice.” So now all is forgiven.

Clinton also called Obama to apologize, but ended up asking him to bring everybody some coffee.

Now the only people waiting for an apology are the American people who want an apology from Nevada for giving us Harry Reid.

Reid will be the guest of honor at a luncheon in Las Vegas this week hosted by a group called “African-Americans for Harry Reid.” That’s if you can call two people a “group.”

They used to be called “African-Americans for David Duke,” but that was mostly a social thing. Now they’re doing real political organizing.

If this gets off the ground, “African-Americans for Harry Reid” will be a political juggernaut that cannot be denied. Their motto: “We Will Be Heard — As Soon As I Get This Gentleman’s Coffee.”

Reid has also picked up an endorsement from the United Light-Skinned Negro College Fund. And Tiger Woods is considering endorsing him. He is the one light-skinned half-black guy right now who’s thrilled with Reid’s comments.

Reid’s defenders don’t have much to work with. Their best idea so far is that at least he said “Negro” and not “Nigra.”

Liberals are saying that since Reid was pointing out Obama’s pale hue in support of his run for the presidency, it was OK to praise his skin color and non-Negro dialect. (Reid is denying reports that in 2007 he said to Obama: “You should run. You people are good at that.”)

In fact, Reid didn’t endorse Obama until after Hillary dropped out of the race. It turns out, he also admired Hillary for her light skin and the fact that she only uses a Negro dialect when she wants to.

In the alternative, liberals are defending Reid by claiming he said nothing that wasn’t true, though he may have used “an unusual set” of words — as light-skinned Reid-defender Harold Ford Jr. put it.

As long as we’re mulling the real meaning of Reid’s words and not just gasping in awe at the sorts of things Democrats get away with saying, I think Reid owes America an apology for accusing the entire country of racism. A country, let us note, that just elected a manifestly unqualified, at least partially black man president.

On the other hand, Reid couldn’t have been expecting Republicans to vote for a Democrat, so I gather Reid was accusing only Democratic voters of being racists.

I don’t disagree with that, but I’d like to get it in writing.

I think the Democratic platform should include a statement that the Democrats will not vote for dark-skinned blacks with a Negro dialect. Check with Harry Reid on the precise wording, but something along the lines of “no one darker than Deepak Chopra.”

The “whereas” clauses can include the Democrats’ history of supporting slavery, segregation, racial preferences, George Wallace and Bull Connor — and also a precis of their treatment of dark-skinned Clarence Thomas.

BREAKING NEWS: Hoping to curry favor with the African-American community, Sen. Reid was arrested late this afternoon after breaking into his own home.

Democrats couldn’t win an election without the black vote, but the Democratic Party keeps treating blacks like stage props, wheeling them out for photo-ops and marches now and then but almost never putting them in charge of anything important.

President Bush appointed the first black secretary of state and then the first black female secretary of state. Meanwhile, the closest black woman to Bill Clinton was his secretary, Betty Currie.

The one sitting black Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, was appointed by a Republican.

The head of the Republican National Committee is black — medium-skinned, but liberals treated Michael Steele like a dark-skinned black when they threw Oreo cookies at him during the Maryland gubernatorial campaign in 2002.

After the 2000 election, Democrats had a chance to make one of the rare smart Democrats, Donna Brazile, head of the Democratic National Committee. Brazile had just run a perfectly respectable campaign on behalf of that bumbling buffoon Al Gore.

She also happens to be black. Again, blacks give 90% of their votes to the Democrats.

But the Democrats skipped over Brazile and handed the DNC chairmanship to the goofy white guy in lime green pants, Howard Dean.

UPDATE: Harry Reid has just apologized to the light-skinned people of Haiti for the 7.0 earthquake that hit them Tuesday afternoon.

The single most insulting remark made about blacks in my lifetime was Bill Clinton’s announcement — after being caught in the most humiliating sex scandal in world history — that he was “the first black president.”

He did not call himself “the first black president” when liberals were dancing and singing to Fleetwood Mac at his inauguration. He did not call himself “the first black president” when he was feeling our pain and being lionized by the media. He did not call himself “the first black president” when he was trying to socialize health care or passing welfare reform.

Not until he became a national embarrassment did Clinton recognize that he was “the first black president.”

At least he could finally get his own coffee.

==============================

Oh, Canada! (townhall.com, 100324)

by Ann Coulter

Since arriving in Canada I’ve been accused of thought crimes, threatened with criminal prosecution for speeches I hadn’t yet given, and denounced on the floor of the Parliament (which was nice because that one was on my “bucket list”).

Posters advertising my speech have been officially banned, while posters denouncing me are plastered all over the University of Ottawa campus. Elected officials have been prohibited from attending my speeches. Also, the local clothing stores are fresh out of brown shirts.

Welcome to Canada!

The provost of the University of Ottawa, average student IQ: 0, wrote to me — widely disseminating his letter to at least a half-dozen intermediaries before it reached me — in advance of my visit in order to recommend that I familiarize myself with Canada’s criminal laws regarding hate speech.

This marks the first time I’ve ever gotten hate mail for something I might do in the future.

Apparently Canadian law forbids “promoting hatred against any identifiable group,” which the provost, Francois A. Houle advised me, “would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges.”

I was given no specific examples of what words and phrases I couldn’t use, but I take it I’m not supposed to say, “F— you, Francois.”

While it was a relief to know that it is still permissible in Canada to promote hatred against unidentifiable groups, upon reading Francois’ letter, I suddenly realized that I had just been the victim of a hate crime! And it was committed by Francois A. Houle (French for “Frank A. Hole”).

What other speakers get a warning not to promote hatred? Did Francois A. Houle send a similarly worded letter to Israel-hater Omar Barghouti before he spoke last year at U of Ottawa? (“Ottawa”: Indian for “Land of the Bed-Wetters.”)

How about Angela Davis, Communist Party member and former Black Panther who spoke at the University of Zero just last month?

Or do only conservatives get letters admonishing them to be civil? Or — my suspicion — is it only conservative women who fuel Francois’ rage?

How about sending a letter to all Muslim speakers advising them to please bathe once a week while in Canada? Would that constitute a hate crime?

I’m sure Canada’s Human Rights Commission will get to the bottom of Francois’ strange warning to me, inasmuch as I will be filing a complaint with that august body, so I expect they will be reviewing every letter the university has sent to other speakers prior to their speeches to see if any of them were threatened with criminal prosecution.

Both writer Mark Steyn and editor Ezra Levant have been investigated by the Human Rights Commission for promoting hatred toward Muslims.

Levant’s alleged crime was to reprint the cartoons of Mohammed originally published in a Danish newspaper, leading practitioners of the Religion of Peace to engage in murderous violence across the globe. Steyn’s alleged crime was to publish an excerpt of his book, “America Alone” in Maclean’s magazine, in which he jauntily described Muslims as “hot for jihad.”

Both of them also flew jet airliners full of passengers into skyscrapers in lower Manhattan, resulting in thousands of deaths. No, wait — that was somebody else.

Curiously, however, there was no evidence that either the cartoons or the column did, in fact, incite hatred toward Muslims — nor was there the remotest possibility that they would.

By contrast, conservative speakers are regularly subjected to violent attacks on college campuses. Bill Kristol, Pat Buchanan, David Horowitz and I have all been the targets of infamous campus attacks.

That’s why the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute (a sponsor of my Canada speeches) and the Young America’s Foundation (a sponsor of many of my college speeches) don’t send conservatives to college campuses without a bodyguard.

You’d have to be a real A-Houle not to anticipate that accusing a conservative of “promoting hatred” prior to her arrival on a college campus would in actuality — not in liberal fantasies of terrified Muslims cowering in terror of Mark Steyn readers — incite real-world violence toward the conservative.

The university itself acknowledged that Francois’ letter was likely to provoke violence against me by demanding — long after my speech was scheduled, but immediately after Francois disseminated his letter — that my sponsors pony up more than $1,200 for extra security.

Also following Francois’ letter, the Ottawa University Student Federation met for 7 1/2 hours to hammer out a series of resolutions denouncing me. The resolutions included:

“Whereas Ann Coulter is a hateful woman;

“Whereas she has made hateful comments against GLBTQ, Muslims, Jews and women;

“Whereas she violates an unwritten code of ‘positive-space’;

“Be it resolved that the SFUO express its disapproval of having Ann Coulter speak at the University of Ottawa.”

At least the students didn’t waste 7 1/2 hours on something silly, like their studies.

At the risk of violating anyone’s positive space, what happened to Canada? How did the country that gave us Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, Martin Short, Dan Aykroyd and Catherine O’Hara suddenly become a bunch of whining crybabies?

After Tuesday night, the hatred incited by Francois’ letter is no longer theoretical. The police called off my speech when the auditorium was surrounded by thousands of rioting liberals — screaming, blocking the entrance, throwing tables, demanding that my books be burned, and finally setting off the fire alarm.

Sadly, I missed the book burning because I never made it to the building.

But, reportedly, a Canadian crowd hasn’t been this excited since they opened a new Tim Hortons. Local reporters couldn’t make out what the crowd was chanting, but it was something about “Molson” and a “sled dog.”

I’ve given more than 100 college speeches, and not once has one of my speeches been shut down at any point. Even the pie-throwing incident at the University of Arizona didn’t break up the event. I said “Get them!”, the college Republicans got them, and then I continued with my rambling, hate-filled diatribe — I mean, my speech.

So we’ve run this experiment more than 100 times.

Only one college speech was ever met with so much mob violence that the police were forced to cancel it: The one that was preceded by a letter from the university provost accusing me of hate speech.

(To add insult to injury, Francois didn’t even plan to attend my speech because Tuesday is his bikini wax night.)

If a university official’s letter accusing a speaker of having a proclivity to commit speech crimes before she’s given the speech — which then leads to Facebook postings demanding that Ann Coulter be hurt, a massive riot and a police-ordered cancellation of the speech — is not hate speech, then there is no such thing as hate speech.

Either Francois goes to jail or the Human Rights Commission is a hoax and a fraud.

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God Hates Judges (townhall.com, 100407)

by Ann Coulter

In an opinion that may have been written by Heidi Montag, a federal court of appeals recently threw out a jury verdict in favor of a father, Albert Snyder, who had sued protesters at his son Matthew’s funeral for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Solely because Matthew was a Marine, a Kansas-based cult, consisting mostly of members of a single family, traveled to Maryland in order to stand outside Matthew’s funeral with placards saying things like, “God Loves Dead Soldiers,” “God Hates You,” “You’re Going to Hell,” “Semper Fi Fags,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “Thank God for IEDs” and “God Hates Fags.”

But wait, it gets funnier.

The cult’s leader/father is Fred Phelps, who calls America a “sodomite nation of flag-worshipping idolaters.” Since you won’t read it anyplace else, Phelps has run for public office five times — as a Democrat.

The Fred Phelps cult members travel around the country and hold vile signs outside military funerals because they believe that the reason American soldiers die in wars is that God hates the U.S.A. because it tolerates homosexuals.

I’ll leave it to others to speculate as to why the very thought of male homosexuality gets Fred Phelps into such a lather.

Snyder has appealed his case to the Supreme Court, and now the court will have to decide whether the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) can ever exist in a country with a First Amendment.

Unlike many legal concepts, the tort of IIED is not an obscure legal doctrine written in pig Latin. It means what it says: speech or conduct specifically intended to inflict emotional distress. The usual description of the tort of IIED is that a reasonable man viewing the conduct would react by saying, “That’s outrageous!”

The Second Restatement of Torts (1965) defines IIED as conduct “so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.”

As a respected New York judge, Judith Kaye, described it, “The tort is as limitless as the human capacity for cruelty.” Inasmuch as IIED claims are made based on all manner of insults, rudeness, name-calling and petty affronts, the claim is often alleged, but rarely satisfied.

But if a group of lunatics standing outside the funeral of a fallen American serviceman with hateful signs about the deceased does not constitute intentional infliction of emotional distress, then there is no such tort recognizable in America anymore.

The protesters weren’t publishing their views in a magazine, announcing them on a “Morning Zoo” radio program, proclaiming them on some fringe outlet like “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” — or even standing on a random street corner. Their protest was held outside a funeral for the specific purpose of causing pain to the deceased’s loved ones.

But the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals noticed that the cult’s malicious signs contained words, and that words are “speech” ... which is protected by the First Amendment! (Or was it the Seventh?) Anyway, that was basically the end of the court’s analysis.

True, speech will often be involved in inflicting emotional distress on someone, say, for example, standing outside a funeral with signs that say “God Hates You!”

Similarly, words are used in committing treason (“The Americans are over here!”), robbery (“Your money or your life!”) and sexual harassment (“Have sex with me or you’re fired.”). Copyright law prohibits speech that uses someone else’s words, and insider trading and trade-secrets laws prohibit the use of words revealing insider information or trade secrets.

The fact that “speech” was involved in the Fred Phelps cult’s assault on Matthew Snyder’s funeral is a mundane and irrelevant fact. The question is: Did that speech constitute intentional infliction of emotional distress? Hey, look! That reasonable man over there is nodding his head “yes.” If so, the First Amendment is as irrelevant as it is to a copyright law violation.

The Supreme Court has upheld shockingly restrictive bans on speech outside of abortion clinics: content-based restrictions on the speech of pro-lifers singing, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

Is abortion more sacrosanct than a son’s funeral? Is singing “Jesus loves the little children” deserving of less First Amendment protection than placards saying, “God Loves Dead Soldiers”? Hey, reasonable man over there — got a minute?

Even the Fred Phelps cult’s “epic” posted online and accusing the Snyders of raising their son badly, which would seem to have the strongest claim to First Amendment protection, would not be protected in other contexts. Last week in Massachusetts, nine teenagers were criminally charged with cyberbullying, based in part on malicious postings about the victim on their Facebook pages.

Thanks to idiot lawyers, who think it makes them sound smart to say “Black is white” and “Up is down,” one of the biggest problems in society today is the refusal to draw lines. Here’s a nice bright line: Holding malevolent signs outside the funeral of an American serviceman who died defending his country constitutes intentional infliction of emotional distress.

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New York Times Reader Kills Dozens In Norway (Ann Coulter, 110727)

The New York Times wasted no time in jumping to conclusions about Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who staged two deadly attacks in Oslo last weekend, claiming in the first two paragraphs of one story that he was a “gun-loving,” “right-wing,” “fundamentalist Christian,” opposed to “multiculturalism.”

It may as well have thrown in “Fox News-watching” and “global warming skeptic.”

This was a big departure from the Times’ conclusion-resisting coverage of the Fort Hood shooting suspect, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. Despite reports that Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar!” as he gunned down his fellow soldiers at a military medical facility in 2009, only one of seven Times articles on Hasan so much as mentioned that he was a Muslim.

Of course, that story ran one year after Hasan’s arrest, so by then, I suppose, the cat was out of the bag.

In fact, however, Americans who jumped to conclusions about Hasan were right and New York Times reporters who jumped to conclusions about Breivik were wrong.

True, in one lone entry on Breivik’s gaseous 1,500-page manifesto, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” he calls himself “Christian.” But unfortunately he also uses a great number of other words to describe himself, and these other words make clear that he does not mean “Christian” as most Americans understand the term. (Incidentally, he also cites The New York Times more than a half-dozen times.)

Had anyone at the Times actually read Breivik’s manifesto, they would have seen that he uses the word “Christian” as a handy moniker to mean “European, non-Islamic” — not a religious Christian or even a vague monotheist. In fact, at several points in his manifesto, Breivik stresses that he has a beef with Christians for their soft-heartedness. (I suppose that’s why the Times is never worried about a “Christian backlash.”)

A casual perusal of Breivik’s manifesto clearly shows that he uses the word “Christian” similarly to the way some Jewish New Yorkers use it to mean “non-Jewish.” In this usage, Christopher Hitchens and Madalyn Murray O’Hair are “Christians.”

I told a Jewish gal trying to set me up with one of her friends once that he had to be Christian, and she exclaimed that she had the perfect guy: a secular Muslim atheist. (This was the least-popular option on the ‘60s board game Dream Date, by the way).

Breivik is very clear that you don’t even have to believe in God to join his movement, saying in a self-interview:

Q: Do I have to believe in God or Jesus in order to become a Justiciar Knight?

A: As this is a cultural war, our definition of being a Christian does not necessarily constitute that you are required to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus.

He goes on to say that a “Christian fundamentalist theocracy” is “everything we DO NOT want,” and a “secular European society” is “what we DO want.”

“It is enough,” Breivik says, “that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christian-atheist.” That statement doesn’t even make sense in America.

At the one and only meeting of Breivik’s “Knights Templar” in London in 2002, there were nine attendees, three of whom he describes as “Christian atheists” and one as a “Christian agnostic.” (Another dozen people mistook it for a Renaissance Faire and were turned away.)

Breivik clearly explains that his “Knights Templar” is “not a religious organization but rather a Christian ‘culturalist’ military order.” He even calls on the “European Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu community” to join his fight against “the Islamization of Europe.”

He doesn’t believe in Christianity or want anyone else to, but apparently supports celebrating Christmas simply to annoy Muslims.

Breivik says he is “not an excessively religious man,” brags that he is “first and foremost a man of logic,” calls himself “economically liberal” and reveres Darwinism.

But Times reporters had their “Eureka!” moment as soon as they heard Breivik used the word “Christian” someplace to identify himself. No one at the Times bothered to read Breivik’s manifesto to see that he doesn’t use the term the way the rest of us do. That might have interfered with the paper’s obsessive Christian-bashing.

Other famous killers dubbed conservative Christians by the Times include Timothy McVeigh and Jared Loughner.

McVeigh was a pot-smoking atheist who said, “Science is my religion.”

Similarly, Breivik says in his manifesto that “it is essential that science take an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings” –- a statement that would be incomprehensible to all the real scientists, such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Newton, Mendel, Pasteur, Planck, Einstein and Pauli, all of whom believed the whole purpose of science was to understand God.

The Tucson shooter, Jared Loughner, was lyingly described by the Times as a pro-life fanatic. Not only did more honest news outlets, such as ABC News, report exactly the opposite — for example, how Loughner alarmed his classmates by laughing about an aborted baby in class — but Loughner’s friends described him as “left wing,” “a political radical,” “quite liberal” and “a pothead.” Another said Loughner’s mother was Jewish.

The only reason Timothy McVeigh has gone down in history as a right-wing Christian and Jared Loughner has not — despite herculean efforts by much of the mainstream media to convince us otherwise — is that by January 2011 when Loughner went on his murder spree, conservatives had enough media outlets to reveal the truth.

As explained in the smash best-seller “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America,” the liberal rule is: Any criminal act committed by a white man with a gun is a right-wing, Christian conspiracy, whereas any criminal act committed by a nonwhite is the government violating someone’s civil liberties.

It’s too bad Breivik wasn’t a Muslim extremist open about his Jihadist views, because I hear the Army is looking for a new psychiatrist down at Fort Hood.

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Editorial: The ‘fabulous’ Ann Coulter (National Post, 110812)

Many people believe “gay conservative” to be an oxymoron - like “Jewish defensive end” or “Saudi pole dancer.” But as no less an authority on conservatism than Ann Coulter argues, that’s not the case: “If you’re born gay, why would you be liberal? . Gays are a demographic group with one of the highest incomes in America, they are victims of crimes. [Muslim fundamentalists] don’t think too highly of them . Abortion isn’t at the top of [the gay] list, I’m guessing. And, by the way, as soon as liberals find a gay gene, guess who’s going to get aborted?”

Makes sense to us. But such views have made Ms. Coulter a bête noire in American conservative circles - where explicit homophobic bigotry still is on display at mainstream conservative events.

In 2009 and 2010, progress was made when the influential and well-attended Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) took on the gay conservative group GOProud as a sponsor - an unprecedented gesture. But socially conservative groups protested GOProud’s inclusion. Some even boycotted. And this year, in a move announced July 29, the American Conservative Union voted to bar GOProud from participating in this year’s conference.

But many prominent American conservatives, including anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and rising star Andrew Breitbart, have noisily dissented from CPAC’s anti-gay posture. Ms. Coulter has gone even further: This week, she joined GOProud’s Advisory Council as honorary chair. (Before that, she had performed as a keynote speaker at GOProud’s - unfortunately titled - 2010 HOMOCON fund-raising event.) Her official title will be “Gay Icon.”

“I am honoured to serve in this capacity on GOProud’s Advisory Council, and look forward to being the Queen of Fabulous,” she declared.

As Ms. Coulter’s critics have been quick to point out, her campy posturing aside, she still opposes gay marriage, and continues to make provocative comments about identity politics. (She distinguishes, for instance, between those people “born gay” and “all those angry gays, causing trouble for everybody. I don’t even think they were born gay. I think they just are angry at their fathers” - although, as with much of what Ms. Coulter says, it’s hard to know whether she is being serious or not.) But so what? Being “tolerant” in this context doesn’t require that you sign on to the whole litany of gay political campaigns. It just mean that you accept people on the basis of their beliefs, not their biological identity.

No political movement can call itself modern and hate-free if its leaders exclude any group of people because of their religion, race or sexual identity. Whatever else Ann Coulter’s critics may hurl at her, she plainly gets this. And American conservatism would be a healthier movement if it took her lead on this issue.

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So A Comatose Guy Walks Into a Bar (Townhall.com, 110914)

Ann Coulter

Liberals are on their high horses about a single audience member at CNN’s Republican debate whom they believe wanted a hypothetical man without health insurance in a hypothetical coma to die — hypothetically.

(Democrats want people in comas to die only when they are not hypothetical but real, like Terri Schiavo.)

I concur with the audience member who shouted “Yes!” This has nothing to do with any actual people in comas — the people Democrats want to kill — it’s just a big “screw you” to the moderator.

Following up on Brian Williams’ showboating questions at last week’s Republican debate about the execution of the innocent and starving children with distended stomachs, this week, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer launched his question about an imaginary comatose man without health insurance.

As Rep. Ron Paul began to discuss the pitfalls of collectivism, Blitzer kept interrupting him, concluding with, “But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?”

That’s when an audience member yelled out “Yes!” — allowing liberals to luxuriate in self-righteousness, the likes of which we have not seen since the Jersey Girls demanded a Homeland Security Department be created because their husbands died.

Normal people are sick of liberals’ emotional stories that play to soccer moms, but always seem to pave the way for disastrous social policies that benefit only left-wing special-interest groups.

Whenever liberals start loftily insisting on our obligation to our fellow man with these tear-jerkers, you know some heinous public policy is coming. As soon as the dust settles, you won’t see any innocent victims being helped, only trial lawyers, government employees and other Democratic constituencies.

Obama campaigned for his national health care bill with a sad story about a campaign supporter who died of breast cancer soon after his election because — he said — she couldn’t afford health insurance, so she didn’t get a breast cancer scan in time to stop the disease.

He somberly told embarrassed audiences: “She insisted she is going to be buried in an Obama T-shirt.” (As it looks like we all will, unless we get a new president next year.)

Apart from the fact that free breast cancer screening was available right in his supporter’s hometown of St. Louis, she undoubtedly would have been able to afford excellent health insurance ... except the government outlawed affordable health insurance.

Thanks to accumulated government mandates on insurance companies at that time, imposed by both the state and federal government, Obama’s Missouri supporter was allowed to buy health insurance only provided it covered: chiropractors, speech therapists, hearing therapists, psychologists, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists (Missouri), as well as mental health benefits, unlimited hospital stays for newborns and mothers, and reconstructive surgery after mastectomy (federal).

When starting her own business and struggling to make ends meet, the Obama supporter might have been better served by a cheaper policy that covered only, say, actual medical problems.

But the government didn’t permit her that option. Obama’s poster-child for government-run health insurance was a victim of government-micromanaged health insurance.

It would be as if the government prohibited us from buying cars unless they were Lexus SUVs, fully loaded with every possible option.

Then, when most Americans couldn’t afford to buy a car, the Democrats could demand we pass “ObamaCar.” Wolf could have asked: “A healthy 30-year-old young man decides, ‘I’m not going to spend $100,000 or $200,000 for a car because, you know, I don’t need it.’ But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it. Who’s going to pay if he needs a car to escape a hurricane, for example? Who pays for that?”

Why are the only two options always a behemoth government program or the guy dies?

The subject is a baby kitten, but the real beneficiaries are the people with great government jobs, fantastic pensions, long vacations, and self-paced and self-evaluated working environments.

As for Brian Williams’ grandstandy question to Gov. Rick Perry about Texas’ execution rate (“Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?”): There is no credible evidence that a single innocent person has been executed in this country since at least 1950.

There is, however, a lot of evidence that innocent people have been killed when murderers were not executed.

Indeed, one of the most infamous cases of a former death row inmate being released and then killing again comes from Texas. Kenneth McDuff had been given three death sentences for kidnapping and murdering three teenagers, repeatedly raping one.

But he was sprung from prison after the Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty in 1972 and then Texas began releasing inmates to relieve prison overcrowding. McDuff went on to kill more than a dozen people, provably eight more. He was finally executed by Gov. George Bush in 1998, two decades after his post-death row rape and murder spree began.

Someone ought to calculate the carnage liberals foisted on this country beginning in the late-’60s with their “compassionate” approach to rapists and serial killers like McDuff — consequences that liberals were fully immunized from in their safe, ivory tower neighborhoods. Let’s ask Michael Dukakis to run the numbers.

Regarding Williams’ baby seal question about starving children in Texas with distended stomachs: No one is starving in this country. The only bloated stomach problem affecting America’s poor is a medical condition known as “obesity.”

According to the General Accounting Office, in 2008, the federal government had 18 separate food programs that spent $62.5 billion each year to feed the poor. And that was before the Food Stamp President assumed office.

I would venture to guess that the only children in America who have ever suffered from kwashiorkor, the condition that causes distended bellies, were victims of child abuse — at the hands of the sort of monsters Williams is so opposed to executing.

People aren’t buying the left’s emotional appeals about imaginary victims anymore. The audience member’s “Yes!” was a way of laughing in the moderators’ faces for trying to pull that crap.

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If I Were A Liberal ... (Ann Coulter, 111026)

If I were a liberal, I would have spent the last week in shock that a Democratic audience in Flint, Mich., cheered Vice President Joe Biden’s description of a policeman being killed. (And if I were a liberal desperately striving to keep my job on MSNBC, I’d say the Democrats looked “hot and horny” for dead cops — as Chris Matthews said of a Republican audience that cheered for the death penalty.)

Biden’s audience whooped and applauded last week in Flint when he said that without Obama’s jobs bill, police will be “outgunned and outmanned.” (Wild applause!)

I suppose liberals would claim they were applauding because they believe Obama’s jobs bill will prevent these murders. Which reminds me: Republicans believe the death penalty prevents murders!

Which belief bears more relationship to reality?

In a case I have previously mentioned, Kenneth McDuff was released from death row soon after the Supreme Court overturned the death penalty in 1972 and went on to murder more than a dozen people.

William Jordan and Anthony Prevatte were sentenced to death in 1974 for abducting a teacher, murdering him and stealing his car. They came under suspicion when they were caught throwing the murder weapon from the stolen vehicle in a high-speed car chase with the cops and because they were in possession of the dead man’s wallet, briefcase and watch.

The Georgia Supreme Court overturned their capital sentences in an opinion by Robert H. Hall, who was appointed by Gov. Jimmy Carter.

Hall said that the death sentences had to be set aside on the idiotic grounds that the jurors had overheard the prosecutor say that the judge and state supreme court would have the opportunity to review a death sentence, which might have caused them to take their sentencing role less seriously.

(If the facts had been the reverse, the court would have overturned the death sentences on the grounds that the jurors did not take their sentencing decision seriously, under the misapprehension that no judge or court would second-guess them.)

Prevatte was later released from “life in prison” and proceeded to murder his girlfriend. Jordan escaped and has never been found.

As president, Carter appointed Hall to a federal district court.

Darryl Kemp was sentenced to death in California in 1960 for the rape and murder of Marjorie Hipperson and also convicted for raping two other women. But he sat on death row long enough — 12 years — for the death penalty to be declared unconstitutional. He was paroled five years later and, within four months, had raped and murdered Armida Wiltsey, a 40-year-old wife and mother.

Kemp wasn’t caught at the time, so he spent the next quarter-century raping (and probably murdering) a string of women. In 2002, his DNA was matched to blood found on the fingernails of Wiltsey’s dead body. Although Kemp was serving a “life sentence” for rape in a Texas prison, he was months away from being paroled when he was brought back to California for the murder of Wiltsey.

His attorney argued that he was too old for the death penalty. He lost that argument, and in 2009, Kemp was again given a capital sentence. He now sits on death row, perhaps long enough for the death penalty to be declared unconstitutional again, so he can be released to commit more rapes and murders.

Dozens and dozens of prisoners released from death row have gone on to murder again. No one knows exactly how many, but it’s a lot more than the number of innocent men who have been executed in America, which, at least since 1950, is zero.

What is liberals’ evidence that there will be more rapes and murders if Obama’s jobs bill doesn’t pass? Biden claims that, without it, there won’t be enough cops to interrupt a woman being raped in her own home — which would be an amazing bit of police work/psychic talent, if it had ever happened. (That’s why Americans like guns, liberals.)

Obama’s jobs bill tackles the problem of rape and murder by giving the states $30 billion ... for public school teachers.

Only $5 billion is even allotted to the police, but all we keep hearing about are the rapes and murders that Democrats are suddenly against (as long as being “against” rape and murder means funding public school teachers and not imprisoning or executing rapists and murderers).

Finally, did Flint use any money from Obama’s last trillion-dollar stimulus bill to hire more police in order to prevent rape and murder? No, Flint spent its $2.2 million from the first stimulus bill on buying two electric buses.

Even if what Flint really needed was buses and not cops, for $2.2 million, the city could have bought seven brand-new diesel buses and had $100,000 left over for streetlights.

Rather than reducing the rate of rape and murder, blowing money on “green” buses is likely to increase crime, since people will be forced to spend a lot more time waiting at bus stops for those two buses.

It’s going to be a long wait: The “green” buses were never delivered because the company went out of business — despite a $1.6 million loan from the American taxpayer.

But if I were a liberal, I wouldn’t acknowledge these facts, or any facts. I would close my eyes, cover my ears, demand that MSNBC fire Pat Buchanan and the FCC pull the plug on Fox, and pretend to believe that taxpayer-funded “green” projects and an ever-increasing supply of public school teachers were the only things that separated us from Armageddon.

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