Tommy Christopher
The view that NSA “whistle blower”-in-exile Edward Snowden is a hero has gained less traction to date than the view that he is a traitor. Nevertheless, the debate rages on. So writes John Avlon in a column in Saturday’s Telegraph (UK), in which he notes that no less a leaker than Daniel (Pentagon Papers) Ellsberg has come out in support of Snowden’s actions, telling The Daily Beast:
To be hired by the Obama Justice Department, you have to satisfy various ideological litmus tests. But apparently you don’t need to understand or appreciate the First Amendment. Knowledge of the First Amendment seems to be regarded as a bug rather than a feature for Justice Department lawyers.
One example is the administration’s baseless prosecutions of peaceful, law-abiding anti-abortion protesters, which has resulted in judges imposing sanctions against the Justice Department for frivolous prosecutions.
Neither the duty to retreat under English Common Law nor pre-Florida “stand your ground” self-defense law would prevent lawful self defense under the circumstances described by George Zimmerman concerning the confrontation with Trayvon Martin.
A young, unarmed African-American man who President Obama said could have been his own son is killed in a public place at the hands of a mixed-race man armed with a hand gun.
1984 in 2013…
A businessman in the British country of Wales has been ordered by local police to either face arrest or remove from display a pull-over shirt exhorting citizens to obey the law, as reported by the South Wales Argus.
Matthew Taylor, owner of Taylor’s Printing Shop in Newport, recently displayed in his shop window a custom made shirt stating “Obey our laws, respect our beliefs or get out of our country.” Somehow, the message is in violation of British law and is punishable by arrest, fine and/or imprisonment.
What goes around, it is said, comes around. And liberals, their ears ever pricked for that elusive dog whistle, have become what they claim tediously often to despise. Two stories from the headlines demonstrate the alacrity with which the left have embraced the twin evils of stereotype and the politics of exclusion.
First, a headline from Mother Jones: “GOP Food Stamps Proposal Would Discriminate Against African-Americans.” The first paragraph neatly summarizes the article’s grievance:
Hispanic custodians at a community college in Denver have filed a grievance against the school on the grounds that they are being discriminated against. CBS Denver reports (h/t Weasel Zippers):
12 custodians from the Auraria Campus filed an EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] complaint against the Auraria Higher Education Center, which is the organization that maintains the campus for Metro State University of Denver, the Community College of Denver and the University of Colorado Denver.
Rubén Hinojosa
Let us stipulate, for starters, as Rep. Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, did, that claiming differences in IQ based on ethnicity is racist. Let us further acknowledge that Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation wrote in his 2009 Harvard doctoral dissertation that “the average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations.”
Controversial fashion designer John Galliano, who was fired from his post as creative director at Christian Dior in 2011 following an anti-Semitic rant, will not be teaching a workshop at Parsons The New School of Design in New York City after all, the school announced today. But it won’t be because Jewish students sounded off in opposition to remarks Galliano had made that led to his ouster from the Paris design firm, which included, “I love Hitler. Your forefathers would be [expletive] gassed, and [expletive] dead.”
All the president’s racists
In his report today on Obama’s nomination of Mel Watt for director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Hans Bader noted that, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, the North Carolina Democrat pushed hard for government programs to help welfare recipients buy homes. Watt was, thus, instrumental in helping to fuel the subprime mortgage bubble.
John Galliano: “Hearts” Hitler
His drunken anti-Semitic ravings two years ago were enough to get him fired from a high-profile job and almost landed him in a Paris jail. They were not enough, however, to persuade New York’s Parsons The New School for Design on Friday from formally hiring legendary clothing designer John Galliano to teach a student workshop — which has Jewish students up in arms.