Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Obama plays masterful Edgar Bergen to the church's Charlie McCarthy

John F. Kennedy made a financial contribution to fellow anti-communist and WWII Navy veteran Richard M. Nixon when, early in his political career, Nixon was running against a Democrat who was soft on Communism. Some have attributed this to cynical motives, but in all likelihood this contribution predated both men's cynicism, and thus expressed genuine solidarity against Communism and its enablers in the American Left.

Barack Obama, by contrast, has unmistakable Marxist impulses and can be described without caricature as a disciple of Saul Alinsky, author of
Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals. But Obama, too, is aware of the advantages of straying across the line to forage in Conservative orchards. The Obama campaign recognized early on that the Left has no credibility with centrist Americans under its own name, owing to decades of condescension and outright hostility to American religion, mores and working-class culture.

With only a brief, quickly suppressed gaffe that disparaged white Pennsylvanians for "clinging" to their guns and churches, the Obama machine has exercised remarkable message discipline by co-opting the Christian label, and has used social conservatives' language to soften the distinctions that will be painfully evident once Obama appoints his cabinet and nominates his judges.

The Black Church has apparently put itself entirely at the disposal of the Obama campaign. But Obama has also made major inroads in the white evangelical and Catholic communities. He has drawn endorsements from former pro-life stalwarts Douglas Kmiec and Frankie Schaeffer, and a divorced white Florida name-it-and-claim-it Megachurch preacher couple who will go unnamed here.


This was possible, of course, only with the collaboration of Obama's confederates in the mass media. The New York Times, for example, has mastered the technique of putting Leftist words in conservatives' mouths, often by identifying apostates as conservatives long after they cross over to make separate peace with the Left.

The
Times article about the Supreme Court's Heller decision last week is a case in point:

October 21, 2008
Ruling on Guns Elicits Rebuke From the Right
By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON — Four months after the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess guns, its decision is under assault — from the right.
Two prominent federal appeals court judges say that Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in the case, District of Columbia v. Heller, is illegitimate, activist, poorly reasoned and fueled by politics rather than principle. The 5-to-4 decision in Heller struck down parts of a District of Columbia gun control law.

The judges used what in conservative legal circles are the ultimate fighting words: They said the gun ruling was a right-wing version of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that identified a constitutional right to abortion. Justice Scalia has said that Roe had no basis in the Constitution and amounted to a judicial imposition of a value judgment that should have been left to state legislatures.

Comparisons of the two decisions, then, seemed calculated to sting.

“The Roe and Heller courts are guilty of the same sins,” one of the two appeals court judges, J. Harvie Wilkinson III, wrote in an article to be published in the spring in The Virginia Law Review.

Similarly, Judge Richard A. Posner, in an article in The New Republic in August, wrote that Heller’s failure to allow the political process to work out varying approaches to gun control that were suited to local conditions “was the mistake that the Supreme Court made when it nationalized abortion rights in Roe v. Wade.”

Sharp criticism of a recent Supreme Court decision by federal appeals court judges is quite unusual, though these two judges — both Reagan appointees — are more outspoken than most.
Judge Wilkinson, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., was recently considered for a spot on the Supreme Court. Judge Posner, of the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, is perhaps the most influential judge not on the Supreme Court.
Not all conservatives agree with the critics, of course. Robert A. Levy, a libertarian lawyer who was a principal architect of the victorious strategy in the Heller case, rejected the comparison to Roe.

The two sides in the Heller case claimed to rely on the original meaning of the Second Amendment, based on analysis of its text in light of historical materials. The amendment says, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The more liberal justices said the amendment protected only a collective right tied to state militias, thus allowing most gun control laws. The more conservative justices found an individual right and struck down parts of a District of Columbia gun control law.

In Judge Wilkinson’s view, the upshot of the court’s extensive historical analysis was that “both sides fought into overtime to a draw.”

Others said the quality of the combat was low. “Neither of the two main opinions in Heller would pass muster as serious historical writing,” Jack Rakove, a historian at Stanford, wrote on the blog Balkinization soon after the decision was issued.

The strong reaction from the right after Heller was preceded, with a sort of symmetry, by liberal support for an individual-rights reading of the Second Amendment. For much of the 20th century, the conventional view of the amendment had been that it only protects a collective right. (Warren E. Burger, after retiring as chief justice in 1986, called the individual rights view “one of the greatest pieces of fraud — I repeat the word ‘fraud’ — on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen.”)

But some prominent liberal law professors, including Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard, Akhil Reed Amar of Yale and Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas, have concluded, sometimes reluctantly, that the amendment in fact protects an individual right. Professor Levinson’s seminal 1989 article in The Yale Law Journal captured the tone of the enterprise. It was called “The Embarrassing Second Amendment.”

In an interview, Professor Levinson said, “The result in Heller is eminently respectable.” But he added that he understood why some conservatives were upset. “People say the Roe court was too interventionist,” he said. “So is the Heller court from that perspective.”

Judge Wilkinson’s basic critique is that the majority, like that in Roe, used an ambiguous text to impose its policy preference on the nation, at great cost to the democratic process and to local values. He assumed, as most experts do, that the decision would apply to the states.

“In both Roe and Heller,” Judge Wilkinson wrote, “the court claimed to find in the Constitution the authority to overrule the wishes of the people’s representatives. In both cases, the constitutional text did not clearly mandate the result, and the court had discretion to decide the case either way.”

Judge Posner built on themes in his recent book “How Judges Think,” which argued that constitutional adjudication by the Supreme Court is largely and necessarily political. The Heller decision, he wrote in The New Republic, “is evidence that the Supreme Court, in deciding constitutional cases, exercises a freewheeling discretion strongly flavored with ideology.”

Indeed, Judge Wilkinson wrote, “Some observers may be tempted to view Heller as a revenge of sorts for Roe” or “a sort of judicial tit-for-tat.” As Judge Posner put it, “The idea behind the decision” in Heller “may simply be that turnabout is fair play.”

Mr. Levy, who helped win Heller, said some conservatives wanted almost all decisions to be made by the political branches rather than the courts.

“But these are constitutional rights,” Mr. Levy, now chairman of the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group, said of the rights protected by the Second Amendment. “They are not rights consigned to the legislature.”

The analogy to Roe, he went on, is misguided. There is no reference to abortion in the Constitution.

The Second Amendment, by contrast, indisputably protects a right to keep and bear arms, though there is sharp disagreement about the scope of the right. Mr. Levy said the natural reading of the amendment, one supported by historical materials, was that it protected an individual right.

In his article, Judge Wilkinson wrote that he “readily agreed” that Roe “involved the more brazen assertion of judicial authority.” But he added that the Roe and Heller cases shared a number of common flaws, including “a failure to respect legislative judgments,” “a rejection of the principles of federalism” and “a willingness to embark on a complex endeavor that will require fine-tuning over many years of litigation.”

Judge Wilkinson saved particular scorn for a brief passage in Justice Scalia’s opinion that seemed to endorse a variety of restrictions on gun ownership. “Nothing in our opinion,” Justice Scalia wrote, “should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

Whatever else may be said about the Second Amendment, Judge Wilkinson wrote, those presumptions have no basis in the Constitution. “The Constitution’s text,” he wrote, “has as little to say about restrictions on firearm ownership by felons as it does about the trimesters of pregnancy.”

Mr. Levy, too, said he was not a fan of the passage. “I would have preferred that that not have been there,” he said. “It created more confusion than light.”

It is too soon to say much about the legacy of Heller. But Judge Wilkinson said that Heller, at a minimum, represented “the worst of missed opportunities — the chance to ground conservative jurisprudence in enduring and consistent principles of restraint.” At worst, he warned, “There is now a real risk that the Second Amendment will damage conservative judicial philosophy” as much as Roe “damaged its liberal counterpart.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 23, 2008 An article on Tuesday about conservative criticism of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the application of the Second Amendment to gun control in the District of Columbia omitted two words from a passage in the decision concerning gun regulations that remained presumptively lawful. “Nothing in our opinion,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority, “should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” The words “felons and” were omitted.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Obama's Campaign Would Have Been the Envy of Nixon, Maybe Even Gordon Liddy

JFK had a spirited contest with his Republican opponent Richard Nixon in 1960, and even his own son John Jr. joked about the voter fraud in Chicago that helped turn the tide in JFK's favor. But it's safe to say JFK and his brother Bobby would have been aghast at the spectacle of Democratic law enforcement and prosecutors marshalling the coercive powers of the state against political speech by his opponents.

Obama has been silent as his organization has put together a law enforcement campaign against his adversaries that would have made Nixon envious.

There is much that the disgraced Republican would have been still more envious of: the mainstream media's silent complicity and abstention from any serious investigation of the Obama organization's campaign against dissent, the internal discipline within the Obama campaign - no "John Dean" ratting Obama out, no "Deep Throat" informing investigative reporters (who in any case haven't the least inclination to discredit Obama), no "Alexander Haig" recruiting coup d'etat participants. And externally, Obama faces no "John Sirica" or "Sam Ervin" figure. Truly, Obama is blessed.

This WorldNetDaily article describes some of the intimidation the
Obama campaign is bringing to bear in Missouri and Pennsylvania, important
battleground states in the upcoming election.


Prosecutors for Obama hunting for 'lying ads'
'Truth Squad' using sheriffs, DAs to police bias against candidate
WorldNetDaily

A team of Obama-supporting prosecutors and sheriffs in Missouri is preparing to pursue legal challenges to any presidential campaign ads deemed to be false or misleading.

KMOV-TV in St. Louis reports District Attorney Robert McCulloch, a past president of the National District Attorneys Association, said that whether the ads could be attributed to an opponent's campaign itself, or another organization, "If they're not going to tell the truth, somebody's got to step up and say, 'That's not the truth. This is the truth.' "

The effort appeared to be part of a move by the Obama campaign to block advertisements to which it objects. The campaign also sent "threatening" letters to several news agencies in Pennsylvania and Ohio demanding they stop airing ads exposing Obama's gun stance, according to the National Rifle Association.

The NRA's Political Victory Fund condemned the attempt at censorship.

"Barack Obama and his campaign are terrified of the truth," said Chris W. Cox, chairman of organization. "Sen. Obama's statements and support for restricting access to firearms, raising taxes on guns and ammunition and voting against the use of firearms for self-defense in the home are a matter of public record. NRA-PVF will make sure that everyone knows of Obama's abysmal record on guns and hunting."

The Obama campaign declined to respond to a WND request for comment.

The NRA said Obama sent "cease and desist letters" to news outlets in the two states, "denouncing the ads and demanding their removal from the airwaves."

"Barack Obama would be the most anti-gun president in our nation's history. That's the truth," said Cox." NRA-PVF has the facts on our side. No amount of running from or lying about his record and then intimidating news outlets in the hope of deceiving American gun owners and hunters is going to work. Those strong arm tactics may work in Chicago, but not in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and not as long as NRA-PVF has anything to say about it."

The warnings were from Obama lawyer Robert Bauer, who told station managers that in order to stay in the Federal Communication Commission's good graces, they should not air the ads.

Josh Marquis, an Oregon prosecutor who serves as a spokesman for the NDAA, said the comments from Missouri don't sound like the McCulloch he knows.

"I'm really surprised. I know Bob," Marquis told WND.

The KMOV report said the Obama campaign asked members of Missouri's law enforcement to target anyone who "lies" or issues misleading television ads. Formation of the Obama "Truth Squad" was the result, the report said.

McCulloch declined to return a call from WND seeking comment.

The KMOV report said the campaign was being conducted by McCulloch and another prosecutor, Jennifer Joyce, along with a number of sheriffs throughout the state.

"They will be reminding voters that Barack Obama is a Christian who wants to cut taxes for anyone who makes less than $250,000 a year. They also say they plan to respond immediately to any ads and statements that violate Missouri's ethics laws," the report said.

"We want to keep this campaign focused on issues," Joyce told the station. "We don't want people to get distracted. Missourians don't want to be distracted by the divisive character attacks."

The campaign was assembled to "set the record straight," they said.

Officials with the Missouri Sheriff's Association declined to talk about any sheriffs who might be involved in the campaign.

At the blog Gateway Pundit, the reaction was immediate.

"St. Louis and Missouri Democrat sheriffs and top prosecutors are planning to go after anyone who makes false statements against Obama during his campaign. This is so one sided I can't even being to describe how wrong this agenda is," writes blogger Jim Hoft.

Hoft said Joyce and McCulloch "are threatening to bring libel charges against those who speak out falsely against Barack Obama."

Missouri blogger Doctor Bulldog commented: "Don't think they will stop with just the local radio and television stations. Oh, no. We bloggers are next on the chopping block. It doesn't matter if it is the truth. It only matters if Obama deems it a lie (i.e. – something that can cause damage to his bid to be president). Basically, no one is free to criticize Obama here in Missouri."

In the St. Louis Examiner, a commentary said, "Look, politicians are all about lies. It may be annoying (I find it entertaining), but that's for their opponents and good-government groups to counter – not law enforcement. … Even if the officeholders joining the 'truth squad' are nominally stepping out of their official roles in order to put on their (political) party hats and play politics, it's inappropriate. They wield too much power to use it to wag their fingers at people who say un-nice things about political hopefuls. Prosecutors and sheriffs are, after all, normally thought of as people with the clout to put their targets behind bars."

Marquis told WND politicians keep their right to have a political opinion and express it, but the DA's organization strives hard not to be partisan.