op ed review 7/14
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
George Zimmerman found not guilty of murder in Trayvon
Martin's death
The jury in the Trayvon Martin case on Saturday night
acquitted George Zimmerman, but it should never have gotten that far.
An AP reporter, unhappy with the verdict, asks, “So we can
all kill teen agers now?”
“Department of Justice reportedly organized pro-Trayvon Martin protests….Group actively
worked to foment unrest, spending thousands of taxpayer dollars on travel and
hotel rooms to train protestors." The DoJ operatives were "deployed
to Sanford, FL to work marches, demonstrations, and
rallies," and "to provide support for protest deployment" and
"technical assistance to ... event organizers."
As if more evidence were needed about the tragedy of black
education, Rachel Jeantel, a witness for the prosecution in the George
Zimmerman murder trial, put a face on it for the nation to see. Some of that
evidence unfolded when Zimmerman´s defense attorney asked 19-year-old Jeantel
to read a letter that she allegedly had written to Trayvon Martin´s mother. She
responded that she doesn´t read cursive, and that´s in addition to her poor
grammar, syntax and communication skills. Jeantel is a senior at Miami Norland
Senior High School.
Remember Aurelia Fedensin? She’s the former investigator for
the State Department Inspector General who blew the whistle on Hillary
Clinton’s State Department covering up scandals and squashing investigations
around the world. Fedensin and her family have already been hassled with intimidating
displays of force by the same State Department that seemed relatively
untroubled by an ambassador allegedly chasing underage prostitutes through the
streets of Belgium.
Knowing that her allegations would be explosive, Fedensin wisely retained the
services of a law firm called Schulman & Mathias of Dallas, Texas.
Which just got robbed in a Watergate-style break-in.
The Texas
abortion bill passed both houses of the state legislature by whopping
majorities. It passed the House 98-49 and it passed the Senate 19-11. Those are
large majorities by any definition. The modest bill bans abortions after 20
weeks and elevates standards at abortion clinics to be on par with standards at
ambulatory surgical centers. But after the final vote in the Senate, President
Obama chose to criticize the bipartisan majorities that passed the bill.
Former Border Patrol agents call Senate’s immigration plan
‘a huge waste of resources’
President Obama says amnesty for illegal aliens can provide
a big boost to the economic recovery.
The second-largest employer in America is Kelly Services, a
temporary work provider.
The Tea Party-affiliated group Americans for Prosperity is
launching a $1 million ad campaign opposing ObamaCare.
The leaders of three major U.S. unions, including the highly influential
Teamsters, have sent a scathing open letter to Democratic leaders in Congress,
warning that unless changes are made, Obamacare will “destroy the foundation of
the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.” If that’s not bad enough, the Affordable Care
Act, if not modified, will “destroy the very health and wellbeing of our
members along with millions of other hardworking Americans.”
Obama slated to name five openly homosexual foreign
ambassadors
“Dominicans Freak Out Over Obama's Gay Ambassador Pick”
The folks at Pew set out to determine the network with the
most obvious bias, what Pew calls the most “opinionated.” The winner, and hence
the loser in the race for the viewers the advertisers covet most, is MSNBC. Pew
finds that fully 85 percent of MSNBC “content” is commentary, not news.
_______________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Mark Steyn Zimmerman
case's legal absurdities astound 7/13
Just when I thought the George Zimmerman "trial"
couldn't sink any lower, the prosecutorial limbo dancers of the State of Florida magnificently
lowered their own bar in the final moments of their cable-news celebrity.
In real justice systems, the state decides what crime has
been committed and charges somebody with it. In the Zimmerman trial, the
state's "theory of the case" is that it has no theory of the case:
Might be murder, might be manslaughter, might be aggravated assault, might be a
zillion other things, but it's something. If you're a juror, feel free
to convict George Zimmerman of whatever floats your boat. Nailing a guy on
something, anything, is a time-honored American tradition: If you can't
get Al Capone on the Valentine's Day massacre, get him on his taxes……
If, for the purposes of American show trials, a Hispanic who
voted for a black president can be instantly transformed into a white racist,
there's no reason why he can't be a child abuser, too. The defense was notified
of this novel development, on which the prosecution (judging by the volume of
precedents assembled) had been working for weeks or more likely months, at 7:30
that morning. If you know your Magna Carta, you'll be aware that "no
official shall place a man on trial ... without producing credible witnesses to
the truth of it." But the rights enjoyed by free men in the England of
King John in 1215 are harder to come by in the State of Florida eight centuries later.
So the prosecutors decided, the day before the case went to
the jury, that Zimmerman was engaged in an act of child abuse that had somehow
got a bit out of hand: no "credible witnesses" to this charge had
been presented in the preceding weeks, but hey, what the hell? Opposing
counsel, taking the reasonable position that they'd shown up to defend Mr.
Zimmerman of murder and had had no idea until that morning that he was also on
trial for child abuse, check bouncing, jaywalking, an expired fishing license,
or whatever other accusation took the fancy of the State of Florida, asked for
time to research the relevant case law. Judge Debra Nelson gave them until 1
p.m. At that point, it was 10.30 a.m. By the time the genius jurist had
returned to the bench, she had reconsidered, and decided that "child
abuse" would be a reach too far, even for her disgraceful court.
The defining characteristic of English law is its
distribution of power between prosecutor, judge and jury. This delicate balance
has been utterly corrupted in the United States to the point where today at the
federal level there is a conviction rate of over 90 percent, which would
impress Mubarak and the House of Saud, if not quite yet, Kim Jong-Un. American
prosecutors have an unhealthy and disreputable addiction to what I called, at
the conclusion of the trial of my old boss Conrad Black six years ago,
"countless counts." In Conrad's case, he was charged originally with
17 crimes, three of which were dropped by the opening of the trial and another
halfway through, leaving 13 for the jury, nine of which they found the defendant
not guilty of, bringing it down to four, one of which the Supreme Court ruled
unconstitutional and the remaining three of which they vacated, only to have
two of them reinstated by the lower appeals court. In other words, the
prosecution lost 88 percent of the case, but the 12 percent they won was enough
to destroy Conrad Black's life.
Multiple charges tend, through sheer weight of numbers, to
favor a result in which the jury convict on some and acquit on others and then tell
themselves that they've reached a "moderate" "compromise"
as befits the reasonable persons they assuredly are. It is, of course, not
reasonable. Indeed, the notion of a "compromise" between conviction
and acquittal is a dagger at the heart of justice.
________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"Democrats want 30 million new voters and they will say
anything to get there: It's a crisis! Illegal immigrants are 'living in the
shadows'! ... We're told, 'You don't know what it's like to live in the
shadows!' Yes, you're right, and that proves it's not a crisis. Sorry to sound
legalistic, illegal aliens, but you broke the law and ... you know you broke
the law. You hid in the backs of trucks, traveled across remote desert
locations, ran from U.S.
agents and stole American IDs. It's supposed to be uncomfortable to break the
law. We aren't required to grant amnesty to people just because they've put
themselves in the awkward position of being here illegally. (Or because the
Democrats need 30 million new voters.) If illegals were Republicans, Chuck
Schumer would be a 'Minuteman,' patrolling the Mexican border 24-7."
-Ann Coulter
"Egyptians learned the hard way that, whatever their
cultural preferences, full-strength Islam comes at a price. Egypt has a
wheat crisis, and a fuel crisis, and the World Food Program estimates that 40
percent of the population is suffering from 'physical or mental' malnutrition.....
Even in a multicultural age, liberal Americans casually assume that 'developing
countries' want to develop into something like a Western democracy. But Egypt
only goes backwards."
-Mark Steyn
"[S]marter government sounds like a good idea. I mean,
here's what the government is doing now: the IRS just accidentally released
thousands of people's social security numbers. Frankly, it doesn't seem like
the government could get much dumber. But do you really think Obama (with the
help of Biden!) are capable of making things smarter? Is there any indication
they even know what smarter is? Frankly, these days I'd settle for a less
malicious government. Until then, I'd rather the government stay dumb."
-Frank J. Fleming
__________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Cloward-Obama: By now
it’s abundantly clear that there is not an honest bone in the Obama
administration’s body; as Mary McCarthy said of fellow traveler Lillian
Hellman, “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘a” and ‘the’.” Everything
with these people is a bait-and-switch, and nothing more so than their
“signature achievement,” the Patient Deflection and Unaffordable Care Act,
better known as Obamacare. From the start, it was clear that the “health care”
law had nothing to do with health care. It barely had anything to do with
insurance……the act was a naked power grab by the federal government. …I think
it’s exactly what they’ve hoped and planned for all along: that the faster they
wreck the system, Cloward-Piven-style, the faster they’ll get to the
“single payer” (i.e., you) mechanism they’ve wanted all along…
Texas
police confiscate jars of urine, feces,
paint from abortion bill protesters at state house
_________________________________________________________________________
BOOKS
Bestselling new action-adventure memoir/battle plan by James
O´Keefe, “Breakthough: Our Guerilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy”. “I was 27 years-old, five years into my
self-created career as a citizen journalist, and I had already been arrested,
imprisoned, nearly killed during my coerced "community service,"
commended along with Hannah Giles by the House of Representatives for exposing
ACORN, publicly accused of everything from racism to rape, lauded by the
governor of New Jersey for exposing a corrupt union, pursued recklessly on an
Interstate by a teacher I caught on tape, denounced by
Keith Olbermann as the "worst person in the world," applauded for
causing major resignations at NPR, sued multiple times, slandered by half the
working journalists in America, and finally inspired to expose voter fraud in
the heat of a presidential election.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/07/before_james_rosen_there_was_james_okeefe.html#ixzz2YyaFdjnB
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
There is an undertone of black comedy in Muslim terrorist
trials where committed Jihadists are pitted against politically correct judges
and lawyers who keep trying to convince them that they really aren’t Muslim
terrorists. The Nidal Hasan case is a high stakes game because Obama Inc. has
gone all in on claiming that Hasan isn’t a terrorist, but just a case of
workplace violence. They swapped out the skeptical judge for a friendly judge
and gave him every bit of leeway. But Hasan has sabotaged the plan by deciding
to act as his own attorney and convince everyone that he really is a Muslim
terrorist.
The White House says the decision to delay implementation of
Obamacare’s employer mandate was made because “a dialogue with businesses”
revealed the need to reduce the reporting burden it placed on employers. This tale
is enough to make a cat laugh. This crew doesn’t do “dialogue.” Your BS
detector badly needs a tune up if it didn’t start buzzing when Valerie Jarrett
blogged, “We’re listening.” The delay is obviously due to the ineptitude of the
Obama administration, and this is the fourth major provision of PPACA to be
repealed or delayed for the same reason.
While Barack Obama has often been compared to leaders of the
past, it´s unlikely anyone has yet associated him with Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Ruler
of the Seleucid Empire between 175 and 164 B.C., King Antiochus is best known
for the persecution of Jews, and one story from the second book of Maccabees is
particularly relevant here. As the passage tells us, the king was bent on
forcing a Jewish woman and her seven sons to, of all things, eat pork. This
brings us to a similar situation in our time: King Obama´s contraception
mandate.
____________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"Liberty
is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty."
-Calvin
Coolidge
"But constant experience shows us that every man
invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it
will go."
-Montesquieu
posted by gary at
7:12 AM
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