Published News
"Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated." - Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood
Far more enduring was the New Deal's intimate partnership with those in the South who preached white supremacy. For this whole period -- the last in American history when public racism was legitimate in speech and action -- southern representatives acted not on the fringes but as an indispensable part of the governing political party.
It actually starts much earlier with Woodrow Wilson who forged a "composite of racism and progressive liberalism" which "came to dominate the Democratic Party, and, with it, the content and boundaries of social reform."
The composite endured after Wilson:
During the 1920s, Alabama's Oscar Underwood and Joseph Robinson of Arkansas led the Democratic Party in the House; Senate Democrats were led by Claude Kitchin of North Carolina until 1923, then by Finis Garrett of Tennessee. With no realistic threat to segregation on the horizon, southern members often allied successfully with western Republican progressives led by Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin and George Norris of Nebraska.
This coalition propelled reform legislation that included the Water Power Act of 1920 and the Merchant Marine Act of the same year, as well as tax laws that maintained the progressive income, inheritance, and excess profits provisions that had been brought in during World War I. It also passed the Maternity and Infancy Welfare Act of 1921, jointly sponsored in the House by the Texas Democrat Morris Sheppard and Iowa Republican Horace Towner, whose pattern of local administration sharply discriminated against black families in the South.
A jury just convicted Kermit Gosnell of first-degree murder in the late-term abortion deaths of three babies. But many more share his guilt.
The IRS' targeting went wider than conservative group, to include any group the Obama administration did not like. They've done this before.
Is the soul of our nation in jeopardy? J. Andrew Reid asks that as he watches the military try to clean itself of all religious influences.
The Obama administration's second installment of sequester scare tactics is working about as well as its first go 'round. Run away:
The White House has endorsed a plan to eliminate FAA spending cuts that have cause air travel delays across the country. The agency has been forced to furlough air traffic controllers as part of the automatic budget cuts that kicked in this spring. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to end the cuts by claiming savings from the draw down of war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. Republicans reject his proposal calling it an accounting gimmick.
Of course it's an accounting gimmick. The point is that Democrats are desperate to extricate themselves from this mess, which they orchestrated in a bone-headed attempt to rile public anger against any spending cuts. Good luck with this, guys. Instead of hurting Republicans -- which was the entire point -- this entirely manufactured crisis has infuriated travelers, who inconveniently (a) seem to recall that the sequester was proposed and signed by Obama, and (b) aren't buying the idea that a tiny reduction in the rate of spending increase is enough to justify disruptive furloughs. They're right on both counts, and even some mainstream media outlets have taken the administration to the woodshed. Here's the Chicago Tribune, Obama's hometown paper that endorsed him twice, upbraiding the president. Zero words minced:
Hours before the federal spending sequester began on March 1, when President Barack Obama predicted that "People are going to be hurt," he did not add, Trust me, I'll make sure of it. But he might as well have, as this week's furloughs of air traffic controllers make obvious. The furloughs reflect panic: Having exaggerated their early predictions that the sequester's small reduction in spending growth would seriously affect Americans, many Democrats are hell-bent to pre-empt those Americans from drawing two logical conclusions: If one level of cuts is this painless, t
Not only does your neighbor George bear a striking resemblance to his bulldog Barry, but chances are, their resemblance is more than skin deep. Turns out that pet owners may also share their dogs' personalities, according to new research.
Researchers from Bath Spa University in England surveyed 1,000 dog owners to determine their personality types. Based on their answers, pet owners were categorized into one or more of these five personality types: extroverted, agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable, and intelligent and creative.
Researchers then drew connections between owners' personality types and what kind of dog they owned. (Does your dog never listen to you? It’s probably not his personality—it’s how he’s been trained. Check out these three tips to fix less-than-perfect pooch behavior.
Here’s what your dog’s breed may be saying about your personality:
It was the novelist Gustave Flaubert who said, "You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it." If the Madame Bovary author is to be believed, the worth of the late new media provacateur Andrew Breitbart would be incalculable indeed.
Interesting piece by the BBC reflecting on the rebalancing of world power.
Another article (this time from the US perspective, via Forbes Magazine) on the theme of American decline. This one posits the following reason: The US no longer honors wealth creation.
What's the definition of lawyer?
The larval form of a politician.
Great idea. Don't let the door..................
A North Carolina lawmaker says he was caught off guard by the angry responses he got to a bill that would require the owners of pit bulls, mastiffs and Rottweilers and other large breeds to undergo criminal background checks.
Rep. Rodney Moore, a Charlotte Democrat who sponsored the bill, tells Law Blog that his office got thousands of emails from people protesting the plan. Many of them were from pit bull owners who attached photos of their dogs looking cute and “passive,” he said.
The legislation died in committee. “I’ve been inundated,” said Mr. Moore. “It’s a good idea, but maybe the language was kind of harsh.” He said he would get stakeholders together to talk about animal-safety issues.
“This is not a state where you can mess with people’s dogs,” one legislative aide told Law Blog.
