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The Web and the nets are agog with wonder today at the latest attempt at thought policing by a White House and a President that seems to be extraordinarily sensitive to even the appearance of criticism. The latest evidence of this is news that Linda Douglass, Mr. Obama's point person for communications on health care, and her video (posted on the WhiteHouse.gov website) urging all "concerned citizens" -- we assume she means those citizens who voted for Barack Obama -- to send her and the other party apparatchiks staffing what passes for the White House Communications Office these days so-called...

MARDELA SPRINGS, Md. - Repeated heckling and shouted interruptions - “Answer the question!’’ “We’re your employers!’’ “You don’t get it!’’ - overtook a town hall-style meeting in rural Maryland this week, as US Representative Frank M. Kratovil Jr. withstood a verbal beating from a partisan crowd airing its displeasure with the healthcare overhaul working its way through Congress. How to disrupt a town hall meetingThe freshman Democrat fielded question after question about rationing, euthanasia, and abortion, as two state troopers stood guard and Kratovil’s staffers looked on nervously. But at least Kratovil was not hung in effigy, as he had...

We are faced with the ultimate nightmare of any democratic republic, and that is the possibility of the tyranny of the majority voting liberty out of existence. Constitutional safeguards are only as good as those charged to safeguard them, and in this respect government officials in every branch of government who take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution have been the worst offenders. The integrity of our political process has been compromised by rampant voter fraud, a tidal wave of illegal campaign contributions and a complicit media. We won’t know just how permanent and deep the damage is...

WASHINGTON -- The only thing worse than bankers making up accounting rules is members of Congress making them up. Repeating its blunder from the 1994 battle over stock options, the staid Financial Accounting Standards Board has buckled to political pressure demanding that it change accounting rules. The FASB voted Thursday to ease the interpretation of rules requiring banks and other big institutions to value their assets on a reasonable basis. The value of the banks' assets is a huge issue for the global economy right now, because banks are required to have a certain amount of cushion to back up...

Thoughtful Americans – people of common sense and good will – know exactly what is going on today in American Politics. Whether or not the proposed absurd, onerous tax penalties are eventually signed into law, we share the outrage you must feel for the utter hypocrisy, heavy handedness, and pure idiocy of our elected officials. There is nothing new about the concept of politicians identifying scapegoats to divert attention from their own ineptness, but they have now taken it to a preposterous level. These polished, practiced hypocrites, aided by the media, are staging a vicious charade aimed at stirring anger...

By Michelle Malkin  •  March 25, 2009 11:48 AM Have you seen this? It’s the handiwork of an “anti-capitalist vigilante group calling itself Bank Bosses Are Criminals.” The broken window is in the home of Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland. His car was also vandalized. The thugs are threatening other targets: The ex-banker’s £3 million Edinburgh house was targeted in the early hours, with at least four ground-floor windows smashed and a black Mercedes vandalised. Police were called at around 4.15am to Morningside, a leafy suburb of the Scottish capital lined with substantial, stone-built...

US President Barack Obama mustered his powerful campaign army on Monday, calling on his millions of supporters to lobby on behalf of his budget and economic plan. The appeal to back the president was made in an email and video sent out by "Organizing for America," the organization which morphed out of Obama's campaign machinery to push his agenda when he entered the White House. In the video, Mitch Stewart, the director of Organizing for America, urged the president's supporters to take part in the "Organizing for America Pledge Project."

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has turned down another challenge to Barack Obama's eligibility to serve president because of his citizenship. The appeal by Cort Wrotnowski of Greenwich, Conn., was denied Monday without comment. Wrotnowski argued that Obama was a British subject at birth and therefore cannot meet the requirement for becoming president. He wanted the high court to halt presidential electors from meeting to formally elect Obama as president.

In his election-night victory speech, Barack Obama said he would be a president for all Americans, not just those who voted for him. But as a candidate he didn't campaign with equal vigor for every vote. Instead, he and John McCain devoted more than 98% of their television ad spending and campaign events to just 15 states which together make up about a third of the U.S. population. Today, as the Electoral College votes are cast and counted state-by-state, we will be reminded why. It is the peculiar mechanics of that institution, designed for a different age, that leave us...

A man wearing a McCain-Palin T-shirt during a Philadelphia celebration on election night was arrested, cuffed and stuffed into a police cruiser, and supporters said it was for no more than wearing the endorsement of the GOP nominees for president and vice-president. Although the man protested that he didn't want to cause any trouble, officers manhandled and arrested him, the video posted on YouTube shows.

Obama to take Internet army to Washington By Frank Greve McClatchy Newspapers Wednesday, November 05, 2008 WASHINGTON — A powerful new lobbying force is coming to town: Barack Obama’s triumphant army of 3.1 million Internet-linked donors and volunteers. In a mass e-mail thanking them, written moments before his Grant Park victory speech, Obama put them on notice. “We have a lot to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next,” he wrote.

The U.S. would no longer use the Electoral College to choose its presidents under a proposal introduced Friday by Florida's Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. Instead, presidents would be picked by popular vote, a method that would have given former Vice President Al Gore the White House after the contested 2000 election. "It's time for Congress to really give Americans the power of one person, one vote," Nelson said in a statement. But changing the system requires a constitutional amendment and a meat grinder of legislative tests. First, Congress must approve the idea, and then 38 state legislatures must ratify...

SAN ANGELO, Texas - A state appellate court has ruled that child welfare officials had no right to seize more than 400 children living at a polygamist sect's ranch. The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the grounds for removing the children were "legally and factually insufficient" under Texas law. They did not immediately order the return of the children. Child welfare officials removed the children on the grounds that the sect pushed underage girls into marriage and sex and trained boys to become future perpetrators. The appellate court ruled the chaotic hearing held last month did not...

Greenwich, CT (AHN) - A controversial plan for a 54,000-square-foot mansion proposed by Russian mogul Valery Kogan was rejected by officials after receiving a flurry of complaints from neighbors saying the house would be too large. The permit was denied Tuesday by the Greenwich Planning and Zoning Commission, halting construction of what would have been the largest single-family residence since the city began reviews back in 2001. Reports revealed that in order to construct the mansion, Kogan and his wife Olga were planning on tearing down a 20,000-square-foot home currently erected on the area they purchased in 2005. Commissioners reportedly...

The Democratic Party is finding itself in a very strange position. They’re approaching a potential situation where neither of their candidates have enough elected delegates to secure the nomination, and the race will turn to the superdelegates to decide. Primary results can then be trumped by the say-so of the “party elites�. Thus, the party who complained that Al Gore “really won� the 2000 election due to the popular vote may nominate Hillary Clinton, who now looks unlikely to win the national Democrat popular vote or the elected delegate count. The schadenfreude of watching the Democratic Party put into a...

Many people with whom I talk about politics with are stunned by my constant assertions that America is not supposed to be a democracy. I credit public education for this. The fact is that most people are almost totally ignorant of history and completely brain-dead about the Constitution. Our Founding Fathers did not give us a democracy, nor did they intend to. They were very well-educated men (especially by today's standards), and they knew, historically, democracies had never worked, even on the small scales when they had been attempted. They knew if democracy wouldn't work on the small scale of...

In the heat of the electoral controversy — the worst possible time to make constitutional decisions — many people, such as Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton, are calling for an end to the Electoral College. Big mistake. Someone once said, Don’t knock down a wall merely because you cannot immediately see what it’s good for. The same can be said for the Electoral College. We should keep in mind that the Founding Fathers were of somewhat better caliber than the politician you are likely to see on television, including those with presidential ambitions. The Electoral College was not an idea floating...

Abstract: "The Irony of Populism: The Republican Shift and the Inevitability of American Aristocracy" analyzes the shift in the role of the Supreme Court following the movement towards a democratic Senate which culminated in the Seventeenth Amendment. The Supreme Court's shift is presented as the inevitable result of the system of mixed government that underlies the constitutional order, which orders American Government into democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical parts. While in the original conception of the constitution the Senate was the aristocratic part, the Senate would become part of the democratic part with the Seventeenth Amendment and prior procedural changes. Into...

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA   DON ADAMS, ET AL.,     PLAINTIFFS        v.   TEAMSTERS LOCAL 115, ET AL.,     DEFENDANTS   CIVIL ACTIONNO. 99-CV-4910   JUDGMENT AND NOW, this 4th day of Sept., 2007, judgment is hereby rendered in favor of defendant Teamsters Local 115 and against plaintiffs Don Adams and Theresa Adams in the amount of $450.10.   William H. Yohn, Jr., Judge IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA   DON ADAMS, ET AL.,     PLAINTIFFS        v.   TEAMSTERS LOCAL 115, ET AL.,     DEFENDANTS   CIVIL ACTIONNO. 99-CV-4910  ...

A movement is sweeping the nation that could eliminate the Electoral College in national elections, and with it much of this country's republican form of government, instead giving unstoppable control over the White House to any coalition the major population centers would choose to create. Maryland's state legislature already has given approval to a proposal that would, in conjunction with other states' efforts, eliminate the college, and similar plans have already been approved by single legislative houses in Hawaii, Colorado and Arizona. In seven more states – Washington, Montana, California, New Mexico, Louisiana, West Virginia and Connecticut – the plans...

More than 4,000 clubbers danced through the rush hour at Victoria station in Britain's biggest flash mob stunt. Revellers responded to e-bulletins urging them to "dance like you've never danced before" at 6.53pm. Party time: the dancing starts at Victoria Station at 6.53pm There were knowing looks and giggles among the casually dressed crowd that gathered from 6.30pm, wearing earphones. A deafening 10-second countdown startled station staff and commuters before the concourse erupted in whoops and cheers. MP3 players and iPods emerged and the crowd danced wildly to their soundtracks in silence - for two hours. University of London student...

RCTV is under fire. The big television station, which has been broadcasting under license in Venezuela for 54 years, sort of the equivalent of FoxNews or CBS, officially loses its right to broadcast at the end of today. But that wasn't all that happened. Like furies, red tshirted Chavista mobs gathered and bayed liked wolves in the days leading up to this end of an era, graffiting and spray-painting the TV station with words like 'expropriacion' along with filthy slogans that if you know Spanish, you can see the equivalent of 'f word' among, racism charges, campesino movement slogans, anti-Vatican...

America's college campuses, once thought to be bastions of free speech, have become increasingly intolerant toward the practice. Visiting speakers whose views do not conform to the prevailing left-leaning political mind-set on most campuses are at particular risk of having their free speech rights infringed upon. While academia has its own crimes to atone for, it's the students who have become the bullies as of late. A disturbing number seem to feel that theirs is an inviolate world to which no one of differing opinion need apply. As a result, everything from pie throwing to disrupting speeches to attacks on...

Mexico leftist to swear in as "legitimate president" By Kieran Murray Mon Nov 20, 1:19 PM ET MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's leftist opposition leader was to swear in as "legitimate president" on Monday to revive his flagging campaign against a July election he says was rigged and to prevent his conservative rival from running the country. Tens of thousands of supporters were expected to cram into Mexico City's vast Zocalo square to see Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador take an oath of office in a ceremony that has no legal weight but could mark the start of new street protests....

Immigration activists plan to mass in front of the Capitol today, renewing their appeal for legislative reform as Congress reconvenes after a recess in which many members experienced a backlash against illegal immigration back home. The turnout at today's rally may provide a barometer of the vitality of the immigrant rights movement, which sent millions to the streets this spring but has generated less public attention in recent months. Local organizers said they expect hundreds of thousands of demonstrators from the East Coast, but protests this week in Phoenix and Chicago drew disappointing crowds. (snip) Immigrant activists are seeking legal...

A violent fight between clans in Khan Yunis in central Gaza on Saturday erupted into an all-out battle in which an officer of the Palestinian Authority (PA)'s new elite army was killed, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. Five children and 24 others were injured in the fracas, which broke out Saturday night between two clans. The newly-created Interior Ministry Executive Force, made up of terrorists from various organizations, tried to break up the fight and was drawn into an armed battle.

In the 1980s, the historian and social critic Christopher Lasch pronounced dead the conventional political categories of right and left and argued for a revitalization of politics through a redefinition of terms. "The idea of a 'left' has outlived its historical time and needs to be decently buried, along with the false conservatism that merely clothes an older liberal tradition in conservative rhetoric."

More than 50,000 people attended the funeral Saturday of a Pakistani student who died while under arrest in Germany for allegedly planning to attack a newspaper that published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. About three dozen people were injured in a stampede when crowds tried to enter the family's home in the Pakistani village of Saroki to see Amer Cheema's face, police and witnesses said. Mourners chanted "God is great!" and "We are slaves of Prophet Muhammad!" Some congratulated Cheema's father, kissing his hand and calling his son a martyr. German police say Cheema, 28, hanged himself in his Berlin...

Politics has a math of its own. Whereas a scientifically minded person might see things this way: One person who says 2+2=5 is an idiot; two people who think 2+2=5 are two idiots; and a million people who think 2+2=5 are a whole lot of idiots—political math works differently. Let’s work backwards: if a million people think 2+2=5, then they are not a million idiots, but a “constituency.” If they are growing in number, they are also a “movement.” And, if you were not only the first person to proclaim 2+2=5, but you were the first to persuade others, then...

THE TRESPASSERS ARE STAGING ANOTHER BOYCOTT

With so much attention paid to Nepal and its ongoing political struggle, it is worth considering who are the self-appointed agents of change. It is also worth noting that while King Gyanendra is somewhat incompetent and assumed extraordinary powers by dissolving the parliament, he was more of a bumbler than a despot. His overreach probably did less direct harm to his subjects than the unrest that has unfolded over the past weeks that has victimized many thousands of Nepali citizens. It turns out that the interests of small business owners and workers that live from hand-to-mouth are being trampled on....

PARIS - President Jacques Chirac on Monday scrapped a controversial part of a youth labor law that triggered massive protests and strikes, bowing to intense pressure from students and unions and dealing a blow to his loyal premier in a bid to end the crisis. Unions celebrated what they called "a great victory," and also were deciding whether to keep up the protests. The top two student union UNEF and FIDL said they would press on with demonstrations Tuesday across France. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who devised the law, had faced down protesters for weeks, insisting that its most...

Viva La Razzle-Dazzle Another Two Cents on Immigration and Labor By David J. Aland 31 March 2006 Every backyard quarterback knows how to do it. “Magicians” – from the most rudimentary prestidigitators to the nationally-televised are experts at it. In the blockbuster musical “Chicago”, it is touted as the most powerful of the attorney’s tools. The art of Razzle-Dazzle is essentially an unsophisticated form of triangulation aimed at distracting an unsophisticated audience from what is really happening. For the last week, the debate over immigration has been little more than that. Immigration challenges every country where the potential for prosperity...

The Electoral College is an antidemocratic relic. Everyone who remembers 2000 knows that it can lead to the election of the candidate who loses the popular vote as president. But the Electoral College's other serious flaws are perhaps even more debilitating for a democracy. It focuses presidential elections on just a handful of battleground states, and pushes the rest of the nation's voters to the sidelines.

High up on my list of annoyances are references to the United States as a democracy and the suggestion that Iraq should become a democracy. The word "democracy" appears in neither of our founding documents – the Declaration of Independence nor the U.S. Constitution. Our nation's founders had disdain for democracy and majority rule. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said in a pure democracy, "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual." During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said that "in tracing these evils to their origin every man...

Maybe I sound like a broken record. But, to be honest, that's what President Bush sounds like to me whenever he invokes the dreaded D-word, as he has frequently in recent speeches about Iraq. I speak of his goal for Iraq and, apparently, the rest of the world – democracy. Now, when I've raised this issue in the past, I've been criticized for "splitting hairs" over semantics. For years, I have been cringing, shuddering, rebuking at the frequent use of the word "democracy" by U.S. policymakers who hold up this political system as the best the world has to offer....

Our leaders don't want to know what we think By Ted Byfield If anything characterizes the prevailing Ottawa attitude on government, it is dread, doubt, suspicion, contempt, loathing and fear of the Canadian people. At bottom, they simply do not think we can be entrusted with any real power over government. In American politics, that the public should have the final say goes without saying. In Canada, every expedient is invoked to prevent this from happening. "We do not want to be ruled by the mob," said one editorialist, arguing against a referendum on gay marriage. And who is "the...

A family that breeds guinea pigs for medical research announced yesterday that it was to close its farm in a final attempt to get back the remains of a relative whose body was dug up by animal rights extremists. David, John and Chris Hall said that Darley Oaks farm in Newchurch, Staffs, would close by the end of the year. Their family, friends and business associates have been subjected to a six-year campaign of terror and intimidation that culminated last October in activists digging up and stealing the remains of Chris Hall's 82-year-old mother-in-law, Gladys Hammond, from St Peter's churchyard...

The passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 ignited, as has often been observed, a more or less perpetual fiscal crisis in California - a chronic gap between the promises and expectations for state and local spending and the ability of the tax system to generate revenue to meet those expectations. Proposition 13 also sparked another phenomenon whose effect has been even wider - government by ballot measure. As the Capitol became increasingly polarized and gridlocked, in part because of the aforementioned fiscal conundrum, the purveyors of political causes, whether on the right or left, increasingly turned to the initiative as...

A majority of Kansans polled say they want public schools to either allow evolution to be criticized or teach other theories alongside it in science classes. And more than one-third of the respondents say the Bible's story of creation is the best explanation for the origin of life. Those findings are part of a poll about evolution conducted June 14-16 for The Wichita Eagle and the Kansas City Star. The results offer encouragement to proponents of the state's proposed new science standards, which are critical of how evolution is taught. But evolution proponents see the results as proof that the...

MEXICO CITY, Nov 23 (Reuters) - A mob beat and burned two Mexican policemen to death on Tuesday on suspicion of trying to abduct schoolchildren. Dozens of residents of the town of San Juan Ixtayopan, on the outskirts of the capital Mexico City, abducted three plainclothes policemen outside a primary school, subjecting them to hours of tauntings and beatings. In chilling scenes broadcast on national television, a crowd gathered around the men, kicking and punching them frequently before setting their bloodied bodies on fire. Two charred bodies lay side-by-side under a street light while a crowd of youths looked on....

Mob Rule on Immigration A mob is a frightening thing. It is driven by angry emotion and its purpose is to intimidate and destroy. Since the 1960s the United States has been increasingly ruled by fear of the mob and the left wing's ability to mobilize a mob is its favorite tactic. Notice that the left wing promotes an agenda that hampers police enforcement of laws that protect life and property from the mob. They also want to disarm the law-abiding citizen. The leftists call this agenda one of "non-violence" and "justice for the oppressed," but this is a lie...

<p>LIRA, Uganda (AP) -- Massive street protests after a massacre by rebels in northern Uganda turned violent Wednesday, with mobs beating rival tribesmen and burning houses and police shooting into the crowd. At least nine people were killed.</p> <p>The protests came shortly after the Ugandan army announced it had killed 21 rebels who massacred dozens of civilians over the weekend at a refugee camp a few miles north of this war-weary town.</p>

A mob of about 100 people, including at least one grammatically challenged vandal, swarmed Boone County Courthouse Square early yesterday morning, pulled a U.S. flag from a pole and burned it. Don Shrubshell photos Above, Marla Marshall, left, supervisor of housekeeping for the Roger B. Wilson Boone County Government Center, and housekeeper Sheree Nichols work today to remove graffiti from the fountain near the Boone County Courthouse. Below, vandals who spray-painted the sidewalk and fountain also removed a U.S. flag, left, and burned it near the fountain. The flag was taken to the office of Boone County Presiding Commissioner Keith...

Republicanism, according to the political philosophy of the Adamses, is the system of liberty under law. To secure liberty requires first that the people be free to choose who shall govern them, so that they can throw off any would-be tyrant. Liberty is the end. Democracy is the means. Because liberty is the higher principle, our Constitution places limits on what democracy may choose. Limited enumerated government powers and the establishment of individual rights are attempts to prevent democracy from destroying liberty. Now today, by some odd historical coincidence, the names of our political parties have come to coincide with...

Recently a conservative fundamentalist preacher said on television that he opposes the campaign of homosexuals to be included in the Civil Rights Act. He said this would give them special privileges – allowing them to sue people whenever rejected for such things as jobs or home loans, a right not available to ordinary citizens. Wow, what a novel concept! A special-interest group getting privileges not available to other people. I wonder if the preacher has noticed that farmers get special government subsidies to "stabilize" their income. Is he aware that corporations use the government to keep competitors – foreign or...