Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and its Shameless Cover-Up

IMAGINE A GOVERNMENT agency designed for the specific purpose of investigating and preventing the unlawful use, manufacture, and possession of firearms. Now imagine this agency engaging in an operation that not only goes against that purpose, but actually seeks to accomplish the opposite, by actively encouraging the sale of firearms to people whose ties to organized crime and gun violence are well known– and that this operation involves sending firearms across an international border into a country that this agency, and the government of which it is a part, purposely failed to warn, inform, or request permission from.

That, in a nutshell, is the Obama administration’s “Fast and Furious” program, whose development, bloody results, and ongoing cover–up are comprehensively documented and presented by investigative journalist Katie Pavlich in her new book, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and its Shameless Cover–Up (Regnery, 2012). In the book’s ten chapters and 222 pages (of which nearly sixty are appendices and meticulously cited endnotes), Pavlich makes the case that the Obama administration’s “gunwalking” operation “wasn’t a ‘botched’ program, [but] a calculated and lethal decision” by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, with the full knowledge and assent of the Departments of Justice and of Homeland Security, “to purposely place thousands of guns into the hands of ruthless criminals” (p. 162).

The plan was simple – and both clearly and blatantly stupid (Pavlich quotes ATF agent Peter Forcelli as saying, “I can’t think of a single, logical strategy as to why [Fast and Furious] would have worked” [p. 47]). ATF agents like Hope MacAllister, the lead case agent for Fast and Furious, approached Phoenix–area gun stores and “requested” their cooperation with a program that would allow for the monitoring, tracking, and (ostensibly) prosecuting of gun buyers for deadly Mexican drug cartels (pp. 46–47; as the ATF has the ability to pull gun shops’ licenses, this was far more of an involuntary deputization than a simple request for assistance). Cameras were installed in the cooperating gun shops, and ATF agents watched as “straw purchasers,” or cartel gun mules, made massive firearms purchases in cash.

From this point, the ATF (and its DOJ masters) planned to track the purchased guns to their end users, thereby gaining insight into the cartels and gaining the ability to do far more damage to these violent organizations than they would have been able to simply by arresting each “straw purchaser” they caught. Unfortunately, the Mexican government was intentionally kept in the dark, and none of the decision–makers at DOJ or ATF evidently considered the consequences or repercussions that would result from allowing thousands of weapons, from 9mm pistols to massive 50-caliber BMG longrifles, “walk” across America’s southern border and directly into the hands of some of the deadliest people in the western hemisphere.

THOUGH U.S. ATTORNEY Dennis Burke and Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley – both employees of Obama-appointed Attorney General Eric Holder, who has had an antagonistic relationship with the truth regarding Fast and Furious (pp. 129, 132–3, 150, 154, etc.) – ensured that cartel purchases from involuntarily deputized Phoenix gun shops remained monitored, they actively prevented agents from “interdicting weapons” that were en route to Mexico, and the relevant criminal cases were dropped as soon as the suspects and their newly–acquired weapons crossed the border (p. 42).

As dealers began voicing concern to the ATF over the guns the agency had tasked them with selling to cartel-related buyers, they were reassured that “guns weren’t being sent over the border and into Mexico” (pp. 56-58), and the DOJ publicly claimed that ATF “has never knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to suspected gunrunners” (p. 81). In one case, a cartel buyer requested five times the number of 9mm firearms that a gun store had in stock. When the dealer reached out to the ATF to request guidance, he was told to order the additional guns and make the sale.

Fast and Furious weapons began to turn up at murder scenes throughout Mexico and in the southern U.S., as anybody but the ATF and DOJ decision-makers could have predicted (a map is provided in image 4, between pp. 104–105; these include the murder of Agent Brian Terry and of the brother of a Mexican Attorney General). The Mexican government had purposely been kept in the dark about the program, and though the revelation of its existence and its scope caused an outrage, Obama’s State Department staunched Mexico’s outcry by threatening to cut off $500 million in U.S. anti-cartel aid if criticism of Fast and Furious did not cease (pp. 110–111). At the same time, DOJ was issuing gag orders regarding the program (p. 101) and leaders within ATF were doing their best to intimidate and ostracize whistleblowers (pp. 115–121). Further, instead of focusing on cartel buyers and drug–related gun violence, the DOJ railed against American gun shops, accusing them of serving as “the gun locker of the Mexican drug cartels” (p. 43) and declaring that “Mexican Drug Lords go shopping for war weapons in Arizona” (p. 71) – without, as Pavlich notes, “mention[ing] that the gun shops that had sold these guns would not have done so had it not been on orders from the ATF” (ibid).

In addition to demonstrating the intentional nature of ATF’s gunwalking program, and the lunacy of those involved in planning and executing it, Pavlich also records the descent of that agency from enforcement of the law to bureaucratic nonsensicality (a theme begun in the introduction, written by AFT Special Agent Jay Dobyns [pp. 1–8]). For example, on page 43, she conveys ATF Special Agent Peter Forcelli’s recounting of a 2010 case concerning a suspect who was “believed…to be sending grenades out of the [U.S.], trafficking parts for grenades into Mexico, and then building the explosives for the cartels.” Emory Hurley’s directive to the agents: “[D]o not let [the suspect] leave the country, but if you catch him leaving the country, we won’t prosecute him.” The suspect, Jean Baptiste Kingery, was eventually caught attempting to cross the U.S.–Mexico border “with grenade parts and components packed in his tires,” but after offering “a full–blown confesion…that he had been making grenades for the cartels and smuggling explosives over an international border,” Hurley and Dennis Burke “dismissed the case and Kingery went free” (ibid).

THE PROSE IS slightly clunky at times, and the book’s organization could be improved. The latter is most apparent with regard to the proximity between the presentation of evidence about Fast and Furious, and the author’s efforts to draw a direct line from the operation to purported efforts by President Obama and Attorney General Holder to severely curtail gun rights in America. This is not to say that the subject isn’t relevant to the overall narrative; in fact, it is very important to consider the evidence Pavlich presents in support of her assertion that, “Under Eric Holder, the ATF was deputized to change the nation’s gun laws by putting in place a shadowy operation designed to prove a falsehood: that weapons sold by U.S. gun shops, especially ‘assault weapons,’ are the cause of Mexico’s drug violence. By creating public outrage, President Obama, Eric Holder, and other administration officials, all with longstanding records of hostility against the Second Amendment, hoped to reinstate the assault weapons ban, which had been one of their early, but failed, political goals” (p. 154). However, while Pavlich demonstrates the existence of these efforts, the overall narrative might have been better served by relegating commentary on them to a chapter or two at the end of the book.

Additionally, the book’s presentation as a largely continuous narrative actually masks some of its most outrageous revelations about Fast and Furious and its cover–up. The author occasionally drops bombshells in the middle of pages and paragraphs, but continues on with the narrative without allowing the reader a moment to fully absorb their impact. For example, on page 55, Pavlich notes in passing that “On June 10, 2010, as complaints from ATF agents in Mexico escalated, Hope MacAllister asked the National Tracing Center to hold off on tracing gun that were being recovered in Mexico. The [NTC] waited for instructions on when to resume tracing the guns. They never received such orders. It appeared the Phoenix office did not want the Mexican government or ATF agents in Mexico to know that so many of the guns were traceable to gun shops cooperating with Fast and Furious.” Given the fact that the entire program was based on tracing the firearms that had been sold by forcibly–deputized gun shops and allowed by the ATF to walk over the Mexican border, the revelation that MacAllister ordered an indefinite halt to the tracing of these guns is a major bombshell, and was almost certainly worthy of more attention in the text than it received (the narrative continues immediately after that paragraph with a shift to David Voth’s claims of the “great progress” being made by the operation).

However, these minor shortcomings do not do much to take away from the book’s purpose or its overall impact, which should be to open the general public’s eyes to the enormity of this scandal, and to force media to acknowledge it despite their best efforts not to since it became public knowledge nearly two years ago. The book closes with another bombshell (this time in summation of the evidence and narrative presented throughout the book. Pavlich writes, “There are still 1,400 Fast and Furious guns missing, and ATF agents are not actively trying to track them down. Ten thousand rounds of ammunition were sold to cartel–linked straw buyers under the watch of the ATF. Eight hundred of the original 2,500 weapons sold through Fast and Furious have already been linked to criminal activity. We can be certain this is only the beginning” (p. 154).

The media have largely been silent on Fast and Furious since the public became aware of the operation in the wake of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder in December 2010. The eye–opening case presented in this book should not only force the media to do their jobs and pay attention, but it should also serve as an instrument of information for the voting public as a whole during this campaign season, as the executive who is ultimately responsible for this scandal and those who implemented it (and covered it up) is actively seeking an electoral mandate for a second term in office.

Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and its Shameless Cover–Up, by Katie Pavlich (ISBN 978-1-59698-321-2; 222 pages; $27.95), is published by Regnery.

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Where Is The Balance?

In the past week, I’ve been called a bigot, a hater, had people wish I died, and had people wish Christians had died, been rounded up and killed, or experienced their own personal holocaust.

All this came from proponents of gay marriage. The media won’t cover most of this. The media sees most stories as victims versus victimizers and those who support gay marriage are the victims. They get the positive media coverage.

In reality, though, throughout this week I’ve seen a number of Christians engaged in as much hate filled rhetoric as gay marriage proponents, including the pastor in North Carolina who encouraged parents to beat up their gay acting sons.

As a Christian, I cannot support gay marriage, nor can I accept practicing homosexuality as anything but a sin. At the same time, there are a lot of Christians out there who seem convinced they aren’t sinners. In fact, we are all sinners and as I have matured in my faith, I have a harder and harder time understanding how so many Christians can be so tolerant of so much sin, but treat homosexuality as some sin set apart from all other sins making it a worse sin than, for example, adultery.

This is a political blog and I try to leave my theological ramblings for special occasions, but I think this needs to be said.Christianity is a religion premised on God’s love. We are to hate sin, but we are to love sinners. For non-Christians, that may make them rage about Christian hypocrisy, but it should not. I have gay friends. They all know where I stand on this issue. But they also know that I know that I too am a sinner. For me to love myself and hate them would just be sin on top of sin. We all, like sheep, have gone astray and I am no better than they are nor they better than me.

Hearing a pastor encourage parents to commit violence on their sons because they may be gay is offensive to me. Hearing Christians refer to gays with slurs is offensive. At the same time, hearing gay rights proponents wish Christians would die is equally offensive. Hearing gay rights proponents derisively call a Christian a bigot for standing on principle is offensive.

What many people tend to forget is that Christianity is not a religion premised on some of us getting to heaven and others not. Christianity is actually a religion premised on not one single person getting to Heaven. All of us are on the express train to hell. All of us.

I no more belong in Heaven than the Pope or Billy Graham and they no more belong in Heaven than me. None of us belong there.

We get there by God’s own grace given through our saving faith in Christ. Believing in Christ gets us a “get out of jail free” card, but that card does not mean we don’t belong in jail.

Those of us who are going to Heaven view ourselves as passing through this place. But we have an obligation to fight for what we believe in and to stand up for our values. We know not just that society, over several thousand years, worked out that marriage between a man and woman is the best organization for society and we should not change that just because some people think it would make them happy or be fair.

We also, as Christians, know that marriage is an institution set up by God where man and woman become one being designed to glorify God. That’s why we can’t support changing marriage’s definition.

But as I defend marriage as it exists, and recognize that many opponents on this issue will see anything Christians say and do as examples of bigotry and hate, we Christians should reflect our values with love of our fellow sinners, not condoning violence.

Liberals view the Golden Rule as they do the Commerce Clause — a theological blank slip to justify any action they want as the commerce clause is a constitutional blank slip to do whatever they want legally.

Evangelical Christians should remember the Golden Rule and treat others with the love and respect we wish to be shown. But we should also know the limits of application for the Golden Rule and remember that sometimes loving others means saying no.

The balance in an increasingly secular world is difficult for Christians to maintain. As the world comes down on our values, it is easy to react back with hostility. But as I noted on twitter the other day, for all the people calling me a bigot and saying I am out of step with the advance of history, my response is that I am not concerned about being on the right side of history. I am concerned about whose side I am on, on the last day of history.

There will be a last day. And though I may lose in this lifetime, on the last day Christ wins and I through him.

There are real rights and real wrongs and we should not be so eager to accommodate this world as to be silent on right and wrong. But we should not be so eager to show our separation from this world by pouring out contempt for others who, like ourselves, have fallen short of the glory of God.

The balance is not easy, but let’s try not to go wobbly.

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Washington Post Story On Romney Begins To Unravel

Dispatches from the Meme Wars.

So this morning the Washington Post runs a story detailing what kind of a jerk Mitt Romney was in high school. This is a surprise, right? A high school kid being a jerk. This has never ever happened before. Why, you might well ask, would the Washington Post devote valuable time and space to writing about this event? And why, you might well follow up, is this worth posting about when everyone should be talking about the environment?

The answer is easy. It builds a meme and it translates Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage from a liability into a perceived strength.

If you missed this is the graf that has the left exercised:

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

Of course the story gets much sadder with Romney presumably responsible for the guy’s failed life and death from cancer.

He came out as gay to his family and close friends and led a vagabond life, taking dressage lessons in England and touring with the Royal Lipizzaner Stallion riders. After an extreme fit of temper in front of his mother and sister at home in South Bend, he checked into the Menninger Clinic psychiatric hospital in Topeka, Kan. Later he received his embalmer’s license, worked as a chef aboard big freighters and fishing trawlers, and cooked for civilian contractors during the war in Bosnia and then, a decade later, in Iraq. His hair thinned as he aged, and in the winter of 2004 he returned to Seattle, the closest thing he had to a base. He died there of liver cancer that December.

He kept his hair blond until he died, said his sister Chris. “He never stopped bleaching it.”

There are unanswered questions here, like what this has to do with anything, how a high school dropout bummed around Europe taking dressage lessons and, my favorite, how getting an “embalmer’s license” led to a culinary career? But the Post doesn’t address them.

The main source for this vignette is a former classmate of Romney’s named Stu White. According to the Washington Post:

“I always enjoyed his pranks,” said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney’s who went on to a career as a public school teacher and has long been bothered by the Lauber incident.”

But ABC News reports

“White was not present for the prank, in which Romney is said to have forcefully cut a student’s long hair and was not aware of it until this year when he was contacted by the Washington Post.”

From this it is pretty clear that the Lauber incident did not unfold in the way the Washington Post describes, if, indeed, it happened at all. (h/t to the Daily Caller)

Why this and why now?

As we’ve mentioned before this is all part of a process to brand Romney as a vicious, thoughtless, out-of-touch rich guy. It is really Obama’s only hope as he can’t possibly win if he runs on his objective accomplishments.

This story has obviously been in the works for a while but the news value of it is questionable. It is the basic oppo dump material that the Washington Post obediently churns out on Republicans. As Major Garrett reports in National Journal, the whole Biden-evolving postion idea was a scam to allow Obama to support gay marriage:

Did Obama sacrifice huge swaths of swing voters? Probably not. The polls have shifted to net favorable on the question of same-sex marriage and independents are unlikely to punish Obama for a policy position consistent with everything else he’s done on gay issues. Social conservatives will, of course, be aggrieved. But they were already.

Also, consider this on the gay-marriage pronouncements: Biden was first, Obama second. That the two happily reversed the common order of things ought to tell you something about their relationship (solid), their understanding of tactics (advanced), and how they can play Washington’s chattering class for fools (easily).

But suddenly, the nothingburger story developed by the Post had a hook. In fact it had a hook that could effectively frame the entire story to fit into the overarching Obama campaign. Obama was against gay marriage, but then he met parents of friends of his daughters who were gay and the subject was discussed at family dinners and he changed his mind. Another “gutsy call” in which he took an unpopular position after carefully weighing everything, and, of course, consulting his deeply held Christian faith.

Romney, on the other hand, when he went to an elite private school for elite rich kids relentlessly bullied a kid who was gay and continues his bullying and homophobia to this day by not supporting homosexual marriage. It all fit. And the Post was able to make good on its investment.

The ABC story makes it clear that there are other Romney classmates lining up to dish on him, presumably after they sign with a literary agent:

One former classmate and old friend of Romney’s – who refused to be identified by name – said there are “a lot of guys” who went to Cranbrook who have “really negative memories” of Romney’s behavior in the dorms, behavior this classmate describes as “evil” and “like Lord of the Flies.”

The classmate believes Romney is lying when he claims to not remember it.

“It makes these fellows [who have owned up to it] very remorseful.  For [Romney] not to remember it? It doesn’t ring true.  How could the fellow with the scissors forget it?” the former classmate said.

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Dear Tea Party, Applaud Rand Paul

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has stepped up to the plate to fight reauthorization of the crony capitalist Export-Import Bank.  I wrote yesterday that the Tea Party is losing on this issue despite the heroic efforts of  Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) and other members who agree that the Ex-Im Bank is a high offense against free market capitalism.

The Export-Import Bank was created in 1934 by FDR to facilitate trade between the United States and other nations.  It has become an institution where foreign entities receive loans to buy goods from government favored U.S. companies.  The Ex-Im Bank is corporate welfare plain and simple.

House Republicans and Democrats held hands to pass this legislation on a 330-93 vote yesterday. The legislation extends the life of the Ex-Im Bank and adds $40 billion in loan authority.  The bill came over to the Senate today and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) immediately tried to pass the bill.

The Hill reports that Reid wanted to sneak the bill through the Senate without a recorded vote.

Senate Democrats are hoping to follow their counterparts in the House and quickly pass legislation renewing the Export-Import Bank on Thursday. Senate Democrats hope to pass H.R. 2072, the Securing American Jobs Through Exports Act, by unanimous consent, according to a Senate Democratic aide.

It looks like many Republicans have embraced the Ex-Im Bank.  Tim Carney writes in the Washington Examiner today that Republicans are joining President Obama and Democrats to embrace crony capitalism.

On Wednesday, a large majority of Republican congressmen voted to reauthorize Ex-Im (whose current charter expires later this month) and increase to $140 billion the legal limit on taxpayer exposure from Ex-Im financing. Currently, taxpayers are exposed to nearly $100 billion in Ex-Im loans and loan guarantees. By supporting Ex-Im, instead of trying to kill it, Republicans aren’t merely calling into question the concept of free enterprise, they are passing up the chance to make President Obama’s corporate welfare a central theme of the 2012 election. The stage had been set, economically and politically, for the GOP to wage a free-market populist campaign against Obama.

Daniel Horowitz argues that  opposing crony capitalism and corporate welfare should be low hanging fruit for Republicans.

Headed into this election, we have a golden opportunity to draw a sharp contrast with Obama on the issue of government involvement on behalf of corporations, otherwise known as crony capitalism.  While we have a long way to go in educating people about the vices of personal entitlement programs, we have already won the political battle against corporate entitlements.  So why won’t Republicans pocket the victory and oppose all corporate welfare?

Good question.  I can give you my top 10 reasons to end the Export-Import Bank, yet these examples of Ex-Im incompetence have been ignored by too many right-leaning Members of Congress.

There is still a slim chance that the bill authorizing the Export-Import Bank fails in the Senate when they vote next week.  If conservatives can convince Republicans to abandon the idea that taxpayer backed loans should be used as a means to reward large corporate interest to the detriment of non-government favored corporate interests.

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Communists, Cop-Killers, and Cocaine: Why the Washington Post Focuses on Romney Instead

Let's Focus on Undocumented Fifty Year Old Events Because Otherwise We'll Have To Talk About The Economy

Now this is just silly. The Washington Post can’t be bothered to worry about Barack Obama’s college years, college transcripts, communist friends, cocaine use, or cop-killing plotters in whose living room he first launched his major political career, but they can get in the really way back machine to 1965 and Mitt Romney’s high school years.

Mitt Romney cut a hippy’s hair at his preparatory high school. A day after Barack Obama caved on gay marriage, the Washington Post “coincidentally” says Mitt Romney cut the hair of a boy who “was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality.”

Let’s leave out the fact that the kid who got his haircut was subsequently thrown out of school for smoking one cigarette, but we’re to believe that the assailants of his hair, witnessed by many, were ignored. Oh, and the guy who got is hair cut never, ever, ever mentioned it, including to family, and died in 2004 so it can’t be verified. But a handful of students who now probably support Barack Obama have a crystal clear memory of events from 50 years ago. The people who were adults at the time of the incident and still alive have no memory of it, but remember Romney and said he was never a disciplinary problem.

N*gg*rhead rock, anybody?

After four years of ignoring Barack Obama’s bullying of religious groups and others from inside the White House, it’s fair game to go after Mitt Romney as a supposed high school bully.

I guess we won’t hear the left whining any more when we mention Barack Obama eating a dog since, as they are quick to point out, he was a kid when it happened.

We have now had more in depth examination of Mitt Romney by the Gang of 500 than of Barack Obama.

We do not really know much about Barack Obama’s constituent record in the Illinois Legislature.

We still don’t know his college transcripts.

We still don’t know what exactly he did for ACORN in his community organizing time.

We still don’t know all the details about the depth of the cocaine use Barack Obama admitted to in his book. Likewise, we know very little about his drug use in high school beyond just a few lines of reporting from 2007.

We know very little, outside of his own autobiographical spin, about how he overcame his rage at white people — something he wrote about, but again, as a politician in an autobiography.

We still don’t know about just how many communists Barack Obama chose to surround himself with.

We still know very little about Barack Obama’s ties to Bill Ayers and the media sure hates to talk about Barack Obama getting his major political start in Bill Ayers’ living room.

But the press is perfectly happy to go back several decades to tell us every salacious detail about Mitt Romney the teenager.

This reminds me of 1992 all over again. The George H. W. Bush team wanted to go focus on Bill Clinton the draft dodger from Vietnam because they couldn’t fight on the economy. Unlike 1992, Barack Obama has the media doing it for him.

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At Emory University, Darwin’s Bullies Smear Commencement Speaker, Dr. Ben Carson of Johns Hopkins

From the diaries.

The serious problem of bullying in junior high and high school has received some overdue attention lately. Lee Hirsch’s documentary Bully is in theaters and highly recommended.

But don’t think that bullying in academic settings is exclusively a phenomenon of adolescence. Adults also bully adults. That’s what is happening now at Emory University in Atlanta.

You can be a brilliant, innovative pediatric neurosurgeon at a sky-scraping top medical school, in addition to being a generous philanthropist with an inspirational up-from-dire-poverty personal story, plus a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, and a best-selling writer whose memoir was turned into a TV movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr.

But in the hands of academic bullies, if you once shared your critical thoughts on evolutionary science and its moral implications — well, everything else about you suddenly dwindles to very little.

Dr. Ben Carson of Johns Hopkins University is today’s target. He’s scheduled to give the Commencement address and receive an honorary degree at Emory this coming Monday. But close to 500 faculty members, students and staff protested, drawing up a gravely formulated letter to the Emory Wheel, the student newspaper, expressing their “concerns.” Over what? Carson had no intention of speaking about evolution but someone dug up an impromptu interview he once gave to a publication associated with his Christian denominationon that subject.

The protestors – lead by Professors ArriEisen, Jaap De Roode, Nicole Gerardo, and IlyaNemenman — distorted Dr. Carson’s position on the moral implications of Darwinian materialism and insinuatingly questioned his grasp of the science behind evolution. Emory hasn’t withdrawn the invitation and the letter’s signatories don’t demand that. But they try to make him sound like a fool, putting in his mouth the absurd opinion that “those who accept the underlying principle of biology and medicine are unethical.”

Carson in fact explained that he’s not impressed by the evidence for Darwinian theory. He also commented on why a materialist philosophy is at odds with free will and how that makes it tough to offer a coherent account of moral principles.

The academic bullying that Emory’s faculty has visited on Dr. Carson is not an isolated episode. Scientists who ask tough questions about evolutionary theory are routinely intimidated and silenced by advocates of Darwinian orthodoxy.

Journalists and courts of law have documented a variety of other, far more disturbing cases of bullying for Darwin, at academic institutions including Jet Propulsion Laboratory at CalTech, the University of Kentucky, Iowa State University, the Smithsonian Institution, and elsewhere.

Emory’s spokesman, meanwhile, has struggled to explain how a Darwin-critic could possibly have received such an invitation.”Our leading life scientists would define our views on evolution,” he sniffed, “and the number of signatories on that petition would probably speak to that.” This is a shameful, and shaming, way to welcome a guest.

The onus is on university officials now to defend Dr. Carson’s right to hold a dissenting view, and to promptly reaffirm that Emory is pleased and honored to have him. Discovery Institute is gathering signatures on a petition making exactly that point. Please sign.

Dr. Carson’s unwelcoming welcome sends a message to less renowned and therefore less bullet-proof scholars. If they open their mouth to question Darwin, fellow academics will not only disagree but will hurt them by misrepresenting their opinions.

Imagine the results if he were someone else: a young scientist seeking a strong start to his career, a not so young but still untenured scientist with his livelihood to protect, even a tenured academic worried about his reputation and the future careers of his own grad students.

This is how Darwinists maintain the fiction that the scientific community has reached a freely determined “consensus” in favor of Darwinian evolution and against intelligent design. The consensus is maintained by intimidation, by bullying.

It’s a farce, but for vulnerable people in academic life, a scary farce.

David Klinghoffer is Senior Fellow and Editor, Evolution News & Views, Center for Science and Culture

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Daily Links – May 11, 2012

Today is May 11th. On this date in 1858, Minnesota became the 32nd state. Hey, that rhymed! I knew I should have become a rap person!! Also on this date, in 1949, the nation of Siam changed it’s name to Thailand. (Its ex was a stalker.) On May 11th, 1997, IBM chess computer “Deep Blue” beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov in the final match of a six-game set. After the win, IBM dismantled the computer. Its final words were “I can’t let you do that, Dave.” And finally, artist Salvador Dali was born on this date in 1904. He was a surrealist, best known for his painting “The Persistence of Memory.” When asked what the work really meant to him, he replied “I can’t recall” and then melted the recorder. And enjoy Twilight Zone Day everybody! OR ELSE YOU’LL END UP IN THE CORNFIELD! Consider this an Open Thread.

Washington Post’s Romney Hit Piece Implodes | Big Journalism
“So the Washington Post did what no reputable newspaper should ever do when caught falsifying testimony: it made a stealth correction to its own article.”

The Real Dan Savage: The Bully Against Bullying | Newsbusters
“Dan Savage is a bully. How ironic, since he heads the most high-profile anti-bullying campaign the United States. But for Savage, it only gets better if you support a rabidly liberal, ‘anything goes’ lifestyle.”

Our Composite President | Free Beacon
“As funny as the ‘Julia’ parodies and imaginary girlfriend jokes may have been, however, they skirted a larger issue: President Obama is a composite, too, and his carefully crafted political identity is coming apart.”

Strassel: Trolling for Dirt on the President’s List | WSJ
“Three weeks ago, an Obama campaign website, “Keeping GOP Honest,” took the extraordinary step of publicly naming and assailing eight private citizens backing Mr. Romney.”

Today’s Word of the Day comes via Dictionary.com.
jocoserious: adjective Mingling mirth and seriousness.

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