Are You Packing Heat? Your Local Newspaper May be Planning to Out You

Posted by Liberty Chick Mar 2nd 2010 at 1:06 pm in Justice/Legal, Politics, media bias

The Ohio Free Press, an independent online news source run by liberty-minded citizens, has its sights fixed on setting the record straight and is taking aim squarely at one newspaper’s editor.

Two and a half years ago, when readers of the Sandusky Register in Ohio opened the paper on June 25, 2007, many were shocked to find their name, age and county of residence published alongside those of nearly 2,700 other law-abiding private citizens.  At the top of the page read only the title, “Sandusky County Concealed Carry List“, accompanied by a menacing graphic with the words “Conceal Carry: Who Needs to Know?” cunningly framed around a gun’s scope.  While the page offered no other content or context whatsoever, the lack of such more than set the tone.  It may as well have been headlined, “Hey – Fear These Scary Gun-Toting People.”

I spoke with Brian Walker at the Ohio Free Press.  He says they wanted to know – without any sort of other context around it, what would have compelled the Register’s managing editor, Matt Westerhold, to publicly disclose this list of everyone in the area who just happens to have a license to carry a concealed handgun. And why, all this time later, are the pages still online, without any sort of explanation for publishing the list printed alongside of it?
But when they asked him, Mr. Westerhold, after first getting another reporter into the room to get on speakerphone with him, replied bluntly, “Absolutely no comment.”
And that was the end of it.
In Ohio, such information is considered confidential and not generally meant to be of the public record.  The statute reads in part that “no person shall release or otherwise disseminate records that are confidential under this division unless required to do so pursuant to a court order.” That would otherwise imply that it is against the law to publish it in your newspaper.  But in Ohio, language now known as the “media access loophole”, found in Ohio Code 29, Chapter 2923.129 Immunity under section (B)(2)(a), was ambiguous enough to provide the newspaper with a way around the law.  That portion of the statute provides that a journalist is permitted to make a written request to a sheriff to view the information, and indicates that the request shall state that disclosure of the information sought would be in the public interest.  It further states that “the journalist shall not copy the name, county of residence, or date of birth of each person…”

The provision was intended for instances where a single record might be pertinent to review as check and balance, such as in the aftermath of an actual shooting occurrence, or to verify that training is being properly conducted.  As it turned out, the words “shall not copy” apparently aren’t clear or strong enough to exclude a journalist from writing down every one of the records in his notes, or from speaking them into a recording device.
And with that, Mr. Westerhold seized upon that last bit of the language to justify publishing all 2,600 plus records.  In the name of public interest and government transparency, of course.
In a follow-up editorial he published only two days later, “It’s about the secrets, not about the gun owners“, Westerhold insisted the newspaper was “taking a stand against government secrecy.”  Somehow, the editor felt that the local government trying to protect the privacy, security and Second Amendment rights of its citizens was being secretive.

Many local residents, citizen activists, associations and business owners were outraged and wrote letters to the editor. Others spoke out and tried to convey to Westerhold the dangerous consequences of his actions.  As National Rifle Association spokeswoman Ashley Varner explained, newspapers that publish this information are putting innocent people at unnecessary risk.

There are women who are hiding from abusive husbands or boyfriends.  These are single women who may be afraid of stalkers, people who have been attacked previously and are threatened with repeat attacks…People with licenses are the most law-abiding citizens in our country.  Less than 2 percent are involved in criminal activity. Criminals do not go through background checks to obtain guns.

And even Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, a Democrat, explained at the time,

Knowledge of who possesses a concealed carry permit may put permit holders at risk of theft attempts,” according to a reply from Strickland’s office to questions about the secrecy provision…(It) may also put those who are not permit holders in greater danger because criminals could know they are not carrying a weapon to defend themselves.

In several follow-ups on the matter, groups like the Buckeye Firearms Association doggedly went after Westerhold, challenging his blatant abuse of his current and former positions with newspapers to openly promote his own anti-concealed-carry agenda.  The organization continued on with some creative investigatory work of its own that produced posts such as “It’s About Privacy (& the Sandusky Register Secretly Employing Sex Offenders)” and one in which they published a host of public record information about Mr. Westerhold himself, including his home address, his mortgage financing information, a photo of his house and the car he drives, and information containing a speeding violation.  (That action in particular even caught the attention and won the praise of Rush Limbaugh).

Most gun owners, while reluctant, expect a certain level of minimal imposition that makes their permit information publicly available to law enforcement officials in the event of a public safety or security issue, provided there are strict controls on how the information is used and assurances that it will be protected.  But the general, blanket publication of this type of information in the media is an entirely different story altogether and is hotly objected, not just by gun advocates, but by advocates for victims of domestic violence, by many law enforcement and public safety officials, and others.
This issue raises very rational objections. Aside from the obvious  – these are law abiding citizens who have a Second Amendment right to carry a gun and have gone through the proper registration process to carry it on their persons and in their homes – there are other reasons for privacy concerns.  Victims of crime and domestic violence take extra precautions to protect their privacy, and some are likely to be carrying a gun. It’s dangerous to publish any information that would tip off abusers to their victims’ locations, much less their armed status.  Others, such as crime witnesses and law enforcement officers are also put at risk when their information is exposed.  And citizens of course are put at risk of being burglarized by those seeking to steal guns.

Yet, in recent years, there has been a concerted effort on the part of much of the media establishment that is decidedly liberal to use local Freedom of Information laws to collect and publish information about law-abiding concealed carry permit holders as though they were common criminals.  Citizens in most states are completely unaware that the media even has access to such information.
Unfortunately, Ohio isn’t the only state in which concealed carry lists have been openly published in the media.  Of the 49 states that permit concealed carry (only Wisconsin does not permit its citizens to carry a concealed weapon, plus the District of Columbia), 28 of those allow public access to the lists of permit holders.  Several have restrictions on how journalists may use such information, but many do not.  And others have language that is somewhat ambiguous with respect to publication in newspapers.  This has left many Second Amendment advocates with the messy undertaking of pressuring state legislators to close loopholes and tighten up legislative language to ensure that citizens with concealed carry permits aren’t treated in the same way as state-registered sex offenders, which is precisely the example to which many of the newspapers have compared the publication of concealed carry lists.
In Arkansas, there is still controversy brewing over the state’s Concealed Carry Privacy Bill that passed last April.  After a newspaper published the list of names and zip codes of concealed carry license holders (see below), language was specifically proposed to protect the privacy of these permit holders; but that language was watered down significantly in the final bill.  The swing vote in that case was cast as “Present” by state Senator Gilbert Baker, a conservative who is now running against Senator Blanche Lincoln for the U.S. Senate.  That instance is making its way back into the news again, especially in light of the current Senate race.

Steve Jones, co-founder of Arkansas Carry, a grass-roots group dedicated to changing Arkansas law, writes about that instance in his most recent article, Arkansas’ CHL Privacy Law, One Year Later.

Of all the opposition that Second Amendment advocates have come up against, it’s actually the establishment media that has often presented the greatest challenge.  In a nation where the media is supposed to serve as that additional arm of our system of checks and balance in protecting our constitutional rights, battling one that maintains an obvious position of bias on the issues of gun rights and privacy is not exactly comforting.

• In February of 2009, the Arkansas Times created controversy when editor Max Brantley published a blog post titled “Annals of Gun Nuttery“, in which he provided readers with a full list of names and zip codes of concealed carry license holders in Arkansas. The list has since been removed from the post, but not after creating a stir and unnecessarily putting some in potential danger.
• Also in February of 2009, citizens in Memphis, Tennessee were outraged when the Commercial Appeal published an online database that allows anyone to search for individuals who hold a concealed carry license.  Editor Chris Peck later published this explanation, chalking the whole thing up to a learning experience.  While he insisted the paper wasn’t trying to infringe upon second amendment rights or invade anyone’s privacy, he likened the public service to that of publishing a sex-offender database, which leads one to believe there’s still a whole lot of “learning” going on over at that paper. Hopefully learning the Second Amendment and the rights of law-abiding citizens.
• In 2007 in Virginia, Roanoke Times editorial writer Christian Trejbal published a piece titled “Shedding Light on Concealed Handguns“, about the process of open government, using permit checks on gun owners as the subject for Sunshine Week.  Some of the research process was cumbersome, as he complained, “A state that eagerly puts sex offender data online complete with an interactive map could easily do the same with gun permits, but it does not.” The editorial then included – as “a gift” – the complete database of those permitted to carry concealed handguns, and he proceeded to cherry pick some names, noting whether or not those individuals are ‘packing’ (his language).  Two weeks later, the paper published a lengthy apology and removed the database, after receiving thousands of angry letters, samples of which are posted here.
• In Medford, Oregon, Jackson County Sheriff Mike Winters denied a request in 2007 from the Medford Mail Tribune for a list of permit holders it intended on utilizing for its newspaper.  The request came after a local teacher applied for a permit to protect herself from a violent ex-husband.  The paper claimed to be acting on behalf of the public’s interest in ensuring open and transparent government.  The sheriff disagreed, citing a security statute, so the paper took him to court.  The newspaper’s editor, Bob Hunter, claimed the paper doesn’t plan to publish the list, though there has been a statewide effort in Oregon and elsewhere across the country to do just that.  In 2010, the case is still active in the court system.  Judges heard the case last month, while anxious permit holders still await the fate of their privacy and security.
• Amongst all the disheartening stories of media outlets behaving in this manner, there is one example that ends well, in upstate New York.  In 2008, when editor Ken Tingley and reporter Nick Reisman of the Post-Star solicited multiple county officials for the names of handgun permit holders, they intended on creating an online searchable database of the information on their paper’s website.  The Saratoga county clerk, Kathleen Marchione, was reluctant, indicating in emails that she was complying with the paper’s request only because she was required by law to do so.  She continued by warning them that publishing such information could jeopardize the safety of residents.  Meanwhile, the North Country Gazette had caught wind of the Post-Star’s plans, and filed its own Freedom of Information request to get copies of the Post-Star’s filings and email correspondence.  They intervened and turned the tables by making the story about the Post-Star’s intentions, which generated enough public outrage to stop the Post-Star’s publication of the list.  To top it off, after the Post-Star tried to deny their intentions, the North Country Gazette went public with the emails.  And the Post-Star went silent on the issue.  You must read the entire story at the North Country Gazette website.

There are similar concealed-carry confidentiality battles going on in many other states, many of which Buckeye Firearms in Ohio has done a fantastic job of researching and reporting in great detail.

Such actions taken by various media outlets are completely out of proportion with the facts about those who legally own a handgun.  Study after study has shown that it’s these individuals who are the most law abiding.  Les Jones notes in his post, “Concealed Carry Permit Holders More Lawful Than Most” some great logic behind why this is the case, and also cites some solid studies to back it up.  These are citizens who don’t want to lose their permit and therefore obey all the rules that holding a concealed carry permit requires of them.  These are also the citizens that are typically the first to step in and save their fellow citizens in the absence of any law enforcement when a real criminal is in the act of committing a violent crime against them.
Gun ownership is a constitutional right.  States can and do make it difficult to own a gun, by instituting all sorts of laws and requiring permits and background checks and fees, and setting limits on when you can purchase guns and how many you can get in a period of time, all in the name of the public’s safety.  Perhaps some of the rules in some states are sensible.  But the bottom line is, the Second Amendment of the US Constitution clearly states, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” We all understand that people care about public safety.  But these are citizens who have legally registered their guns, passed all of the background checks, and are following all of the laws.  What safety benefits do you really gain if you know that your carpool buddy is packing heat?  If anything, stats show you’re probably less likely to be carjacked and killed if someone in that car is armed.  Meanwhile, it’s the carjacker who’s pointing an unregistered, unlicensed gun at you whose name and address weren’t published in your community newspaper.

If I have a legitimate permit and I’m obeying the law, the general public should have no more business knowing whether I carry a gun than it does whether I carry mace, whether I carry a large rock in my backpack, or for that matter whether I have a cup of steaming hot coffee in my car.  Anything is a weapon.  I keep a baseball bat hidden beneath my bed and one under the front seat of my car; should my name and address be published on a list of concealed baseball bat holders so that potential intruders may know that I keep a weapon of self defense?
The guys over at the Ohio Free Press have reinvigorated a story that needs to stay in the public eye.  American citizens must be reminded that our constitutional rights are under attack every day. What’s worse is that the attackers themselves are the Fourth Estate — the press — the very institution that is supposed to serve as the people’s vehicle for checks and balances against our own government.  It’s no wonder so many refer to the mainstream media these days as the Fourth Branch of government.
When describing the bias that exists on the issue of gun rights, Chad D. Baus, Vice Chairman of Buckeye Firearms Association, and NRA-certified firearms instructor, summed up the issue in a post from July 2009:

While the “right to privacy” is spoken highly of by everyone from adulterous politicians to the ACLU, pro-gun activists across the fruited plain are finding that attitudes among the elites are much different when it comes to exercising one’s right to bear arms for self-defense without the judgmental glare of the ignorant and uninformed. It is clear that, while progress is being made, the fight for concealed carry confidentiality is far from over.

Let’s hope the Ohio Free Press and others like them continue on their mission to call out those in the press who have their own agenda and represent a threat to our liberties.  Despite the fact that gun rights is a bipartisan issue, many still view it — and attack anything having to do with guns — as a “right-wing” one.  Perhaps that’s why the government’s not banging down my door to take away my baseball bat.

Yet.

Big Journalism

Seeing the World Through Nancy Pelosi’s Eyes

Posted March 1st, 2010 at 12:39pm in Health Care 
After last week’s disastrous health care summit for the President and his supporters, the left has been scrambling to save face and sell the public not on their plan, but on using the reconciliation process to jam it past the American people. They’ve simply given up on earning any form of widespread public support for the plan, which America has loudly rejected. In fact, the only bipartisan effort in Washington these days is against the Obama-Reid-Pelosi health care agenda. Large numbers of Democrats have joined Republicans doing everything they can to stop Obamacare in its tracks.  Of course, this bipartisanship is strangely labeled obstructionism in today’s media environment.
So now, we have the last respite of the left, forcing their members to either take votes that could end their political careers or bypassing them altogether by only requiring 50 senators and the vice president to pass a bill. Judging from the weekend’s news, the leader of this back door movement is Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The Speaker took to the airwaves to vigorously defend the Democrat plan to pass their health care spending bill, regardless of the lack of Democrat support. Here are a few gems from the weekend:
Speaker Pelosi told CNN’s Candy Crowley on State of the Union: “No, I don’t think…there isn’t a bill. When we have a bill, which we will in a matter of days, then that is the bill that we can sell.” The fact that there isn’t a bill must come as a surprise to the House members who narrowly passed their plan in the middle of the night on November 8, 2009. At the time, Pelosi said: “Oh what a night.”
It must also come as a surprise to the U.S. Senators who narrowly passed their version just after dawn on Christmas Eve. And it must also come as a surprise to President Obama who last week released an outline of proposed changes to the Senate bill which everyone in Washington presumes is the baseline for the continued debate.  In fact, there are currently two bills being considered by the Speaker, the Senate bill which needs a vote in the House and the reconciliation amendment which yes, hasn’t been drafted yet.
Speaker Pelosi would like to presume the American people have missed the last year of debate and are unfamiliar with their plans. However, the American public are very well informed of the Democrat plan, and as Candy Crowley rightly pointed out: “We looked at our polling numbers, just from yesterday, we had almost three-quarters of Americans who said they need to drop this bill…”
Also on State of the Union, Speaker Pelosi said: “A bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes.” Simply saying as your bill represents the views of your opponents, despite them arguing otherwise, does not make a bill bipartisan. This rose colored view of consensus ignores the opposition to this bill from Democrats themselves. To avoid reconciliation in the Senate, Democrats would only need to convince one single Republican to vote with their caucus. Unfortunately, they don’t even have the full support of their own caucus to reach 59 votes. Reconciliation — using 50 Senators and Vice President Biden to use a budget procedure to pass the bill — would disenfranchise Democrats in the Senate as well as Republicans.
Knowing well that American families at Tea Parties across America have articulated the growing consensus against Obamacare better than anyone, Speaker Pelosi said: “We share some of the views of the tea partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, D.C.” Oh, how far we’ve come. It was only last year that she accused this grassroots groundswell of being an “AstroTurf,” or fraudulent movement. She said: “They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town hall meeting on health care.”
Finally, we have recognition by the Speaker that the vote will be one that could be politically costly for Democrats. Pelosi told Elizabeth Vargas on ABC’s This Week: “We’re not here just to self perpetuate our service in Congress.” Of course, nothing is more costly than the number of sweetheart deals the Speaker will need to create to buy support, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) previously did in his chamber.
Speaker Pelosi is clearly optimistic that with the right amount of arm-twisting and legislative trickery, the left can salvage their health care agenda. She should transfer that optimism to her view of the American people. They’ve read her plan. They understand her plan. And they may forgive her if she tables it and starts over as three quarters of Americans are demanding.

Heritage

More Guns, Less Crime

by John Lott

The District of Columbia’s murder rate plummeted by an astounding 25 percent last year, much faster than for the US as a whole or for similarly sized cities. If you had asked Chicago’s Mayor Daley, that wasn’t supposed to happen. The Supreme Court’s 2008 decision to strike down DC’s handgun ban and gunlock requirements should have lead to a surge in murders, with Wild West shootouts. The Supreme Court might keep Daley’s predictions in mind today as they hear the oral arguments on Tuesday in the Chicago handgun ban case.

Everyone in DC now knows that murder rates rose after the handgun ban and fell after they were removed. Unfortunately, Chicago never learned that lesson. The forthcoming third edition of More Guns, Less Crime shows that in the 17 years after its ban on new handguns went into effect, there are only two years where Chicago’s murder rate was as low as it was in 1982. Chicago’s murder rate fell relative to other largest 50 largest cities prior to the ban and rose relative to them afterwards. For example, Chicago’s murder rate went from equalling the average for those other cities in 1982, to exceeding their average murder rate by 32 percent in 1992 and by 68 percent in 2002. There is no year after the ban that Chicago’s murder rate fared as well relative to other cities as it did in 1982.
Similar comparisons exist for the top ten largest cities, the US as a whole, or the counties that boarder Chicago. The accompanying figure shows how Chicago’s murder rates changed relative to the rates in the adjacent counties. In the five years before the ban, Chicago’s murder rate fell by 28 percent relative to those counties. (County level crime data only goes back to 1977.) in the five years after the ban, Chicago’s murder rate doubled relative to those other counties.

It shouldn’t be to surprising that Chicago’s murder rates rose after the ban. Every time gun bans have been tried murder rates have risen. In the United States, gun ban proponents have blamed this failure on easy access to guns in nearby states. But the experience in other countries, even island nations that have gone so far as banning handguns and where borders are easy to monitor, should give gun control supporters such as Mayor Daley and some of the members of the Supreme Court some pause. Whether one looks at Ireland, Jamaica or England and Wales the experience has been the same. Not only didn’t murder rates decline as promised, but the rates actually increased.
The results also confirmed recent research showing that gunlocks increase crime by making it more difficult for citizens to use guns to protect themselves from criminals. In DC’s case, the drop in violent crime is probably more attributable to eliminating the law that guns be locked and unloaded. Relatively few handguns were licensed to the rifles and shotguns that now could be stored loaded and unlocked.
There is a certain irony that so many Chicago politicians understand the protection that handguns provide. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass wrote in 2008 that there are two types of people who are allowed to have handguns in Chicago: “The criminals. And the politicians.” Mayor Daley has round the clock armed bodyguards. Members of the city council get to become deputized police officers.
We all want to take guns away from criminals, but all too frequently gun control laws disarm law-abiding citizens not criminals. Police are extremely important in protecting citizens, indeed probably the single most important factor. But, as the police know all too well, they almost always arrive on the crime scene after the crime has been committed. If the government can’t protect its citizens, the last thing that it should do is make the crime situation even worse.

Big Government

The Left Is Underestimating Opponents Again

by Bob Parks

When going into any kind of competition, I was taught to respect the abilities of an opponent. To not do so results in things we commonly refer to as “upsets”.

Seeing how a lot of liberals aren’t into sports and have disdain for organized competition, the comments by the website “biasedliberalmedia.com” about the comic book’s mocking of Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann (and conservatives in general) by “award-winning Minneapolis artist and political activist Ken Avidor” make perfect sense.

The little guy with the hat with the teabags hanging from it is a “tea-bagger,” a conservative anti-tax activist — representing hundreds of the same who use tea bags as a symbol of one of the first American anti-tax rebellions, the Boston Tea Party. (These people clearly have no idea what “tea bagging” refers to in sexual slang, or they would be even angrier than they are.) Michele is on record as saying that she “hates” taxes. These days she’s not talking about cutting taxes so much; she tends to talk more about the debt that is caused by the failure to tax. But conservatives still have her down as an anti-tax politician even though she has never successfully lowered anyone’s taxes.

‘These people clearly have no idea what “tea bagging” refers to in sexual slang, or they would be even angrier than they are.’
A clear example of the narcissistic underestimation of their ideological opponents.

As it turns out, many on the right DO know what the term means (a slur coming from the tolerant and inclusive) and that’s why they are even angrier, the elected in Washington D.C. are either jumping ship and not seeking reelection, or are abandoning the Democrat efforts in controversial legislation thus giving the Obama Administration no choice but to blame Republican “obstruction” for the lack of his own liberal votes.
So go right ahead insisting that the right is uninformed, uneducated, and clueless while we’re being insulted. Go right ahead assuming we don’t know what’s going on, because as the denigration mounts, so too is the resolve to send Democrats into political oblivion and the funny thing is, know-it-all liberals won’t know what hit them.
And as for “award-winning Minneapolis artist and political activist Ken Avidor”, I’m not sure who issues those ‘awards’ but I think you could find a fifth grader who can do better work and cheaper too.

Big Government

Graft, Greed and Waste in State Government: New Mexico Edition

by Doug Turner  

In early 2008, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson grabbed national attention when he ran for the Democratic nomination for President. He dropped out early in the race but still made headlines for endorsing Obama over Hillary. As thanks, Richardson was named the nominee for Commerce Secretary.  One of the first scandals of the Obama Administration followed almost immediately.  Due to a controversy surrounding a pay-to-play scandal, Richardson was forced to withdraw his name from consideration after only one month.

Richardson quietly slipped out of the national spotlight and most Americans forgot about New Mexico’s corrupt Governor.  Most don’t realize that prosecution for the scandal was quietly discontinued when the Obama team drained the investigator’s budget resource, leaving them unable to pursue prosecution.  The case is still pending and will likely remain that way.
Now back in New Mexico in his final year as Governor, the behavior of a man who was an inconvenient nuisance to the Obama team has revealed itself to be nearly cataclysmic to my state’s future.
Just seven years ago, New Mexico was one of only a handful of states in the black, thanks to the leadership of our previous Republican Governor.  Now, we’ve got an estimated $500 million deficit this year thanks to a government that continues to loot the pockets of taxpayers.
Aside from the absurd corruption, pay-to-play scandals and shady investment deals one of the most obvious evidence of poor management is the sheer size of New Mexico’s government.  With new state agencies and 4,500 new employees, our state government has grown by more than 50% in the last 7 years costing taxpayers $250 million annually. Further, the numbers don’t even include the hundreds of exempt political appointees now drawing a government paycheck.  Those people got jobs as payback for family, favors and financial contributions. Estimates put new political appointees in the neighborhood of 450 costing taxpayers around $50 million a year.
Already I’ve accounted for more than half the budget shortfall, and I haven’t even begun to talk about the fraudulent investment schemes, pay-to-play scandals and pork projects that have nearly sunk our state.
To put it into perspective, for every 100 private sector employees there are 24 state and local government employees.  The average ratio is 12 per 100.  I can assure you, my interaction with government in this state is not twice as good as it was seven years ago.
And now, the Governor who doubled the size of government has to find a way to pay for his distends.  His answer?  Well, it isn’t cutting state employees.  And it isn’t cutting unfriendly regulations to grow small business.   Nope.  His answer is—you guessed it—NEW TAXES.  During our last legislative session, lawmakers proposed taxes on candy, cigarettes, soda and even tortillas.
All proposals died a slow death and our legislatures failed to come up with a budget.  Now, they’ve been called in to a special session that begins next week.
I am running for Governor of New Mexico to put an end to the graft, greed and waste that has run rampant in New Mexico.
The moment I am elected, I will immediately demand the resignation of every unnecessary political appointment.  I made a pledge this week to roll back the number from over 600 to 167.   I have called upon the Democratic candidate, Lt. Governor Diane Denish, to make the same pledge. The Lt. Governor has been trying to distance herself from the present administration’s defective distends, but a promise to return to a reasonable number of political positions would be a substantive statement, should she be willing to make it.   Sadly, I expect silence will be her response.
The issue of bloated government is not limited to New Mexico.  The waste here is merely a reflection of the corruption that is occurring nationally. For those among us who challenge the wisdom of Federal Stimulus dollars, look no further than the state of New Mexico for evidence of its failings.  Those dollars only fuel our inefficient government and do nothing to force our government to fix itself.

Big Government

Former Veep Goes Girly-Man, Has Hissy Fit in Pages of New York Times

Posted by Kyle-Anne Shiver Feb 28th 2010 at 4:10 pm in Climategate, Featured Story

The New York Times continues its painful-to-watch demise with this published hissy-fit from the ultra-feminine side of the prophet of the-sky-is-really-falling gloom, Al Gore. Have your hankies at the ready, ladies.  Get your Pepto Bismol off the shelf, guys.

This piece of pure, dribbling, drooling emoting is going to either make you collapse in a torrent of tears or retch into the nearest barf bag.  The only human beings on the planet to whom this editorial would appeal are a bunch of 13-year-old girls without a single clue between them.
With hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, Al is going all out to save his “investment” in global warming hysteria.  Here, he comes up with histrionics befitting the amount of personal loss he stands to suffer.

His editorial begins:

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

“Attacks on the science of global warming”?  Who is he kidding here?  When people lie through their teeth to make obscene profits on the backs of working people, they deserve vociferous shaming and class action lawsuits.  So far, all anyone has done in the way of “attacks” is to point out the lies and show the sham for what it always was – a vicious, selfish scam to get rich.  Poppycock peddling, like snake-oil selling, has never been held in high esteem.
Al continues his “editorial” in the vein of an adolescent girl writing a please-don’t-leave-me-letter to her boyfriend of the month:

But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.

I couldn’t help but wonder, as I read this piece, whether Al was writing it from his mansion in Tennessee or from his carbon-big-foot mega-houseboat, the Bio-Solar One.  Either way, the hypocrisy just doesn’t get any thicker than this screed.

Al goes on to point out the obvious threat to our national security (a desperate nod to his daily-shrinking male side, no doubt) in not becoming energy independent.  The one gaping hole in this argument, however, is the need to drill-baby-drill on our own land and our own offshore wealth of oil deposits.  Al fails to mention, too, that if we merely make use of our own technology and oil deposits, then we would have no need of Arab oil.  Of course, it takes less than the reasoning capabilities of a tween to realize that if we drill instead of “investing” in all his alternative schemes, then Al will not become the world’s first carbon-credit billionaire.
So, it’s natural for Al Gore to continue his sky-is-falling diatribe.  His life as a jet-setting, Nobel Peace Prize-sharing, Oscar-brandishing celebrity is on the line.  Without the people’s diehard faith in his religion of global warming, Al will be forced to trade his lifestyle of the mega-rich-and-famous for an ignominious and expensive defense of never-ending lawsuits brought by enraged sucker governments and private investors.
Al filled the rest of his “piece” with stuff meant to sound reasonable.  All of it, however, adds up to one thing and one thing only:  Al Gore’s personal fortune is now on the line with stalled cap and trade legislation.  He knows it and he’s going down with his self-made Titanic. The only question remaining is whether we will agree to go down with him.

He closes by quoting Churchill, which is where I had to drop my own hanky and run for the barf bag.
The difference between the threat Churchill and the free world faced with the Nazis and Al Gore’s get-rich-quick-scheme is apparent to anyone with even a grain of common sense.  The Nazi threat was demonstrably real, demonstrably imminent and demonstrably cataclysmic. Churchill didn’t need a flock of grant-gobbling “scientists” ensconced in comfy academic sinecures to convince Londoners that bombs were wrecking their cities.
Al Gore, on the other hand, is propped up only by a bunch of lying, self-promoting “scientists,” a heap of corrupt politicians, a sycophantic media circus, the gasping-for-breath New York Times and a whole lot of signs that read: THE SKY REALLY, REALLY, REALLY IS FALLING!
What is the world coming to, when grown men who call themselves Americans, are reduced in public to fairytale-spewing girly-men?
Al, do America a favor and turn in your man card – pronto.  If you don’t, then we real women of the U.S.A. are sending Sarah Palin over to collect it.


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WaPo Ignores Tea Parties, Astroturfs the ‘Coffee Parties’ — World Amazed

Posted by Frank Ross Mar 1st 2010 at 10:06 am in Tea Parties, media bias

Imagine you’re a month-old political group that exists chiefly on Facebook. You’ve never mounted a protest of any size or significance. You’ve collected $500 in online donations. Your first meeting in the Seattle area generated less enthusiasm than a 2003 demonstration against a local latte tax.

Question: How much media coverage can you realistically expect?

A. A big story in your neighborhood shopper.
B. A little story in your metropolitan daily.
C. A 1,700-word feature story, three photos and an online chat session, all courtesy of the Washington Post.
Answer: C, provided you’re a left-leaning organization with a name and an aim that mock one of the mainstream media’s least-loved populist movements, the Tea Party.
How else to explain the news judgment behind the Post’s February 26 article, “Coffee Party activists say their civic brew’s a tastier choice than Tea Party’s,” which gives bottles of free ink to a barely born group known as Coffee Party USA? As Post writer Dan Zak enthuses:

Furious at the tempest over the Tea Party—the scattershot citizen uprising against big government and wild spending—Annabel Park did what any American does when she feels her voice has been drowned out: She squeezed her anger into a Facebook status update.

In an apparent swipe at the Tea Party, Zak says the Coffee Party’s goals are to:

promote civility and inclusiveness in political discourse, engage the government not as an enemy but as the collective will of the people, push leaders to enact the progressive change for which 52.9 percent of the country voted in 2008.

Zak adds that “the Coffee Party is percolating in at least 30 states…Kind of like the Tea Party did this last year, spawning 1,200 chapters, a national conference and a march on Washington.”
Well, not much like the Tea Party did this last year. Its first event took place last February in Seattle, where 120 taxpayers answered 29-year-old conservative blogger Keli Carender’s call to “protest the porkulus bill.” Demonstrations in Colorado, Arizona and Kansas soon followed, and in March 2009 a throng of 5,000 assembled in Cincinnati for what some observers called the city’s largest protest since the Vietnam War.

In contrast, the Coffee Party drew 15 people to its initial Seattle meeting—deemed “a better turnout than expected”—and was lambasted by several attendees as disorganized and amateurish.
And while the Tea Party quickly coalesced around average Americans’ outrage at irresponsible and unresponsive government, the Coffee Party is still struggling to brew something stronger than Tea Party backlash and hosannas to progressivism. Its Web site features the vague Kumbaya declaration that “we will come together as a community to create collaborative environments for practicing democracy, online and offline.”
None of this, of course, is meant to imply that there’s anything wrong with citizens—liberal or otherwise—using a social networking site to unite in a common, peaceful interest. That’s as much freedom of speech as the Tea Party protests.
The issue is whether the Washington Post applies identical criteria in evaluating the newsworthiness of right- and left-wing citizen activist groups. Key evidence comes, surprisingly, from the newspaper itself.
Last April, the Post’s own media critic, Howard Kurtz, pulled no punches in assessing national coverage of Tea Party rallies: “Most of the mainstream media fell down on the job, ignoring the growing movement or mocking it as a bunch of wingnuts.” Kurtz even zinged his own employer for journalistic dereliction:

The New York Times has run zero stories … The Washington Post has done zip until today, with a story on two planned D.C. parties on Page B-4 … The Boston Globe, published in the city famed for the original tea party: nothing. CNN ran its first news story on the protests Monday … MSNBC’s coverage had consisted of Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox mocking the ‘teabagging.’

But it’s hardly the first time the mainstream media have ignored news that fillets their sacred cows (Climategate, Van Jones, the ACORN scandal) or have used not-ready-for-prime-time citizen activists as ventriloquists’ dummies to mouth their own views (The New York Times’ 2003 hyping of Martha Burk during its quixotic crusade against the Augusta National Golf Club).
In spotlighting the Coffee Party, the Post has promoted another fledgling cause, which counted 9,000 Facebook fans before the article appeared and 37,000 three days later, compared to the nearly 100,000 fans of the Tea Party Patriots. But if cyber-support equaled newsworthiness, the Post would be devoting major space to Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies, which has garnered 1.5 million fans on Facebook.
The Tea Party grew from the grass roots like a lawn on steroids, yet didn’t catch the Post’s eye until tens of thousands of its adherents were practically marching past the newspaper’s front window. Conversely, the Coffee Party received feature-story treatment without ever transcending Web sites and coffee houses.
Bias in The Washington Post’s news coverage? It’s all there in black and white.

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