A Silence Louder Than Words

Does This Strike AG Eric Holder As At Least Slightly Illegal?

Are you feeling economically disadvantaged? Want to make $10,000 really fast? We have just the deal for you. You too can take up a career in vigilante justice. All you have to do is burn your conscience in a bonfire and head over to newblackpanther.com for all the fascinating details.

You see, The New Black Panthers have expressed profound dissatisfaction with the fact that nobody has arrested George Zimmerman yet in connection with his having shot Trayvon Martin. This has caused them to demand that action be taken and demonstrated a willingness on their part to blatantly flaunt existing laws in the pursuit of what they call justice.

Standing next to sign that read “Stop The Killing,” New Black Panther leader, Mikhail Muhammad apparently failed to see the irony in his demands for an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. He did this while calling for the mobilization of 10,000 black men to capture George Zimmerman dead or alive. “Stop The Killing” indeed.

Of course any private entity setting up a posse and putting out $10,000 bounties on people who have not been charged with a crime violates numerous laws in any part of the country. In Florida, according to J. Christian Adams, it violates the following statutes.

Florida Code 787.01: Kidnapping; kidnapping of child under age 13, aggravating circumstances The term “kidnapping” means forcibly, secretly, or by threat confining, abducting, or imprisoning another person against her or his will and without lawful authority, with intent to: 1.?Hold for ransom or reward or as a shield or hostage.

Other statutes the $10,000 wated poster violate include 777.04-Attempts, solicitation and Conspiracy, 876.34 Combination to usurp government, (There’s a nice 2nd degree felony charge) and several others. A diligent State or Federal Attorney General would get cracking on this one right away.

Our US Attorney General, Eric Holder, has a well-documented history of not investigating The New Black Panther Party. When a voter intimidation case came to fruition against the NBPP, he summarily dismissed the charges. This was after the defendants had refused to answer to the charges and the DOJ had won on default. Michelle Malkin offers details below.

Two weeks ago, in a highly unusual move, Holder dismissed default judgments his department had won against two of three defendants charged with violating the Voting Rights Act. On November 4, 2008, a billy club-wielding militant in military-style boots and beret stood outside a Philly polling location with a similarly-dressed partner. Citizen journalists from the Pennsylvania-based blog Election Journal captured the menacing duo on video. One of the watchdogs observed: “I think it might be a little intimidating that you have a stick in your hand.”

So Eric Holder sees no legal problem with an outfit that has been labeled a hate group by the entire American political spectrum putting up wanted posters and offering a $10,000 bounty. (Even the radically left-wing SPLC denounces these malefactors!) The SPLC describes the following quotes directly attributed to New Black Panther Leadership*.

“Kill every goddamn Zionist in Israel! Goddamn little babies, goddamn old ladies! Blow up Zionist supermarkets!”

—Malik Zulu Shabazz, the party’s national chairman, protesting at B’nai B’rith International headquarters in Washington, D.C., April 20, 2002

And just to show it wasn’t a Jewish thing in particular, another leader of the NBPP offered up the following rhetorical gem in 2009.

“I hate white people. All of them. Every last iota of a cracker, I hate it. We didn’t come out here to play today. There’s too much serious business going on in the black community to be out here sliding through South Street with white, dirty, cracker whore bitches on our arms, and we call ourselves black men. … What the hell is wrong with you black man? You at a doomsday with a white girl on your damn arm. We keep begging white people for freedom! No wonder we not free! Your enemy cannot make you free, fool! You want freedom? You going to have to kill some crackers! You going to have to kill some of their babies!”

— King Samir Shabazz, head of the party’s Philadelphia chapter, in a National Geographic documentary, January 2009

What Eric Holder, and by extension, his boss President Barack Obama, aren’t seeing here is an opportunity. Do they ever get tired of being called Communist Revolutionaries and radical bums? Do they ever grow weary of having to denounce accusations that they deliberately play to the street mob to intimidate their political opponents? If President Obama and Attorney General Holder ever wanted to silence such accusations once and for all, they have the opportunity for their best day in office since the SF Soldiers got Bin Ladin.

A Federal Indictment, involving the RICO statute, could be filed against the NBPP for this $10,000 Wanted Poster. They could go on TV with a press conference where they announced how the Obama Administration has “Saved America From Hate!” We could all go back to being post-racial again. Barack Obama would then be an odds-on favorite for reelection by at least 5%.

Maybe this is something the President should get on the telephone and point out to his renegade Attorney General. Unless, of course, AG Holder is too busy living vicariously through the people posting the Wanted Posters and putting a $10,000 price on George Zimmerman’s head.

*-All of which are far more disgusting than what I properly condemned John Derbyshire for yesterday.

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Morning Briefing for April 10, 2012

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April 10, 2012Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

Mike Wallace is dead.

Growing up, I’d spend the summer away from Dubai at my grandparents’ home in Louisiana. Sunday nights were back to back Murder She Wrote and 60 Minutes.

Many conservatives would accuse Mike Wallace and 60 Minutes of a liberal view point and shading stories to match their world view. Growing up, 60 Minutes was, to me, journalism done right. They asked questions and got answers and highlighted problems and, though sometimes falling short of the goal, tried not to put themselves in the story.

I’d like to think that if Mike Wallace were able in his latter days, he’d be kicking the asses of most of the journalists who have dared weigh in on the Trayvon Martin killing for destroying the integrity of a tragic story in the name of agenda journalism.

Just about every single network and journalist who has touched on the Trayvon Martin matter should be deeply and terribly ashamed of themselves. I am disgusted by just how badly the media has botched the handling of a very real tragedy.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

As today’s government-union bosses push higher taxes, establish dues schemes to fund their bloated salaries and union-bought politicians, the evidence has become pretty clear: Government unions have become political, parasitic entities injuring taxpayers and the communities they control (see Central Falls and Providence, RI; Detroit, MI; and the once-great State of California for examples).

In the private sector, however, where taxpayers’ pockets are not in endless supply, the parasitic model of today’s unions, far too often, allows unions drain companies and ends up killing their hosts.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

You have to wonder whether the Online Left finds equivocators like Rep. Jason Altmire (D, PA-04) as insulting as we do (not that progressives have the courage to call their own hypocrites out, of course). Let me set the background: in 2010 Altmire did his level best to look like a mighty pro-life champion, largely because he was running for re-election in a R+6 district (which he ended up winning with only 51% of the vote). Back then it was all about how Altmire absolutely hated taxpayer funding of abortion, and how he’d never support such a thing, and the rest of the spiel that then-Speaker Pelosi graciously allowed him to repeat in order to keep his seat.

But that was 2010. Since then the seats have been redrawn, and now Altmire is facing Murtha crony/replacement Mark Critz in a race for the redrawn PA-12 district that has been called ‘spirited‘ (read: ‘vicious’). So, now that the pandering has to be to Democratic primary voters, how is Altmire pandering?

Please click here for the rest of the post.

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Tech at Night: Illegal Amazon Taxes fail, DeMint modernizing cable, thorny copyright issues

Monday night, as promised, we still have some catch up work to do. So let’s start with those Amazon Taxes, those Internet sales taxes of dubious Constitutionality. Colorado’s got tossed in federal court and Illinois’s didn’t raise any money. Obeying the Constitution counts, folks. Pass a true interstate compact through the Congress first.

Also as promised, there’s the matter of the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act. This is the one where ACU has come out against Jim DeMint, and that caught my attention. I have to side with the bill DeMint is sponsoring. I think ACU simply misunderstood what’s at stake here and had good intentions, but the excessive complexity of the regulations defeated them here.

The bill does not let cable providers become free riders, retransmitting others’ streams for free. It just stops the law from trying to dictate the parameters of the negotiations on retransmissions. I see no harm in that, and potentially much good.

Here we go again. Apparently we’re supposed to be unhappy with the CISPA information sharing bill by Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger because it potentially could be used against copyright infringement. And SOPA is invoked against that. SOPA wasn’t defeated because everyone hates copyright. It was a power grab. Take your anti-copyright anarchy battles home, Reddit kiddies. You and your Anontard buddies.

More cybersecurity still: We cannot and must not have DHS start regulating the Internet. Government can’t even secure itself yet and so has no standing to dictate to others. Information sharing in the private sector, without government gatekeepers, is far more useful for protecting our country’s Internet resources. Further, with the irrationality and secrecy of TSA and its regulations, how can we trust them at all?

Going back to SOPA, Comcast was apparently for it, which doesn’t surprise me. Comcast is an ISP particular vulnerable to Bittorrent users flooding the network with high volume copyright infringement dragging down service for everyone.

Is a problem with tech patents, including software patents, that the system isn’t scaling well? Size, not just speed?

Apparently all the fuss over FCC reform, using white spaces as an excuse to oppose all FCC reform out of the Congress, was resolved with white space use marching on. This could be interesting. We’ll have to watch and see how it works, or whether we just get a tragedy of the commons.

An interesting development in the Do Not Track saga: Radicals and businesses are interpreting them differently, but frankly, the interpretation of the radicals is stupid. There already is a way to not be tracked at all, and not just exclude third parties: Disable cookies, dummies. The radical agenda apparently to be promoted by the FTC is out of touch with the actual technologies involved.

Apparently the FTC folks don’t understand that if you don’t want tracked by, say, Amazon’s recommendations, then you simply shouldn’t log into Amazon all the time.

LightSquared may be on the verge of bankruptcy, but Chuck Grassley is still fighting tenaciously for FCC transparency with respect to LightSquared, and is going to maintain his holds on the new FCC appointees. Go Chuck Go!

Here’s a potentially huge deal in the tech/copyright nexus that I hadn’t heard about at all Google is under concerted attack by a number of copyright holders in a move that potentially risks undermining the whole DMCA safe harbor system. Google has taken many steps to curb copyright infringement on YouTube, but they’re being dogpiled upon anyway by firms going after those deep pockets. If being a rich and popular website that gets taken advantage of by copyright infringers is enough to knock down the Safe Harbor, then it seems to me that the entire Safe Harbor system of the DMCA is at risk. That’s not good, as that was a careful balancing of interests in that bill. We cannot let the scales get tilted one way.

If the Youtube case goes too far, new legislation may be needed, and that’s going to be a big old mess. Especially when the MPAA and RIAA interests will inevitably be comingled with legitimate international concerns of Chinese and other foreign firms ignoring US copyrights

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Augusta National

I am not a member of Augusta National and I’m pretty terrible at golf, though getting better. I have a net in the back and relaxation involves beer and hitting golf balls.

Nonetheless, the left is absurdly irate that I or anyone else would dare say I have no problem with Augusta National being an exclusively male golf club. They’re also laughing that I said “the Masters” on the radio, though I certainly meant the Club, not the tournament.

In any event, who cares?

There are all female colleges and there are all female gyms. The Junior League does not admit men either. Why should Augusta National be forced to admit women?

The left will surely drag Augusta National into its “War on Women” mythology. I hope, however, that yet again Augusta National keeps its head up.

There is nothing wrong with either men or women choosing to have their own clubs. But there is a sad, pathetic need by the left to turn every single thing in America — from a Happy Meal to the Masters and Augusta National — into a political issue.

Look! Caterpillars!

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A Self-Inflicted Hubris Shot to the Head

Mike Wallace is dead.

Growing up, I’d spend the summer away from Dubai at my grandparents’ home in Louisiana. Sunday nights were back to back Murder She Wrote and 60 Minutes.

Many conservatives would accuse Mike Wallace and 60 Minutes of a liberal view point and shading stories to match their world view. Growing up, 60 Minutes was, to me, journalism done right. They asked questions and got answers and highlighted problems and, though sometimes falling short of the goal, tried not to put themselves in the story.

I’d like to think that if Mike Wallace were able in his latter days, he’d be kicking the asses of most of the journalists who have dared weigh in on the Trayvon Martin killing for destroying the integrity of a tragic story in the name of agenda journalism.

Just about every single network and journalist who has touched on the Trayvon Martin matter should be deeply and terribly ashamed of themselves. I am disgusted by just how badly the media has botched the handling of a very real tragedy.

What we know is that Trayvon Martin was killed.

We know that the 911 operator told George Zimmernan not to follow Trayvon Martin, but he did anyway.

We know, from Trayvon Martin’s girlfriend, that Trayvon was being following and a scuffle happened.

We know from an eyewitness that Trayvon Martin was on top of George Zimmerman beating up George Zimmerman.

We know from that same eyewitness that George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin.

We know that for a month, until outrage built, the police did nothing and treated this case as a matter of self-defense under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” statute.

This whole sordid story is a tragedy in and of itself.

But then there is the other tragedy.

We know that journalists spent a good bit of time trying to decide if George Zimmerman said “punks” or a racial slur on a 911 tape.

We know that journalists tried to prove that George Zimmerman had no lacerations on the back of his neck and certainly did not look like he’d been beaten up contrary to the eye witness and others there that night.

We know that journalists edited the tape of George Zimmerman’s 911 call to make it sound like Zimmerman was concerned because Trayvon Martin was black.

We know journalists have repeated used old photographs of Trayvon Martin that give him a more youthful, innocent appearance while using George Zimmerman’s mugshot.

We know that journalists first ran out the door with “white on black crime” as a headline only to have to walk it back when the white guy appeared a bit too hispanic to keep up that pretense.

We know that an NBC personality went on CNN with a CNN personality and had the audacity to attack the CNN personality for daring to suggest there might be more than one side to the story.

Each of these acts is troubling.

Instead of the facts, journalists decided to do what they do in pretty much every story these days — make it a victim vs. victimizer story. They sensationalized parts of the story, dramatized parts of the story, and fictionalized parts of the story. Instead of letting the facts decide the winner and loser, the journalists decided who would win and who would lose the story.

In one clear attempt when a journalist, Piers Morgan of CNN, tried to actually suggest there might be a larger story, an NBC personality of the network that edited a 911 tape to make it look even more damning, was offended at the very thought of there being a bigger story.

Journalists believe that even though we have our nation’s first black President we still have all sorts of racial problems in this country. And with the Trayvon Martin story, instead of trying to be a force for good in honestly resolving those issues, the journalistic community has poured salt on the wounds.

Trayvon Martin died a tragic death. There are many questions that should be answered. But in trying to help answer those questions, the media has allowed itself to become part of the story. The journalists involved should all be ashamed of their conduct.

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Mike Lee Wants to End the ‘Monetary Morphine’ at the Fed

What’s worse than Congress picking winners and losers and distorting the free-market with bailouts, stimulus, and tendentious interventions on behalf of specific industries?  Unelected members of the Federal Reserve doing the same through monetary policy.

It is amazing to watch how many Republicans will speak with such conviction against Keynesian fiscal stimulus policies, yet they will fervently promote monetary stimulus policies by the unaccountable Federal Reserve.  Their support for near-zero interest rates, quantitative easing, bailouts, and intervention in the housing sector has muddled our message against Obama’s anti-free-market policies.  Moreover, in this time of record commodity prices, pro-(monetary) stimulus Republicans preclude us from showing how government intervention on behalf of special interests distorts the markets, depletes savings, and devalues the currency – a winning political argument if there ever was one.

Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed and frequent dissenter on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), recently said that he is “personally perplexed by the continued preoccupation, bordering upon fetish, that Wall Street exhibits regarding the potential for further monetary accommodation—the so-called QE3, or third round of quantitative easing.”  He explained that Wall Street has become hooked on “monetary morphine” based on the previous expectation that the Fed will always come through with stimulus measures.  We need to break this addiction.

Undoubtedly, our complex economy would be restricted by a pure gold standard, but it’s not too much to ask that we reform the Federal Reserve to end its interventions in the economy and promote a strong dollar.  Advocating some reform to our 30-year old mandates on the Fed it not tantamount to advocating for ending the Fed.  Senator Mike Lee is introducing a bill, the Federal Reserve Modernization Act (S.2247), to do just that.  Here are the major provisions of the bill:

It will repeal the Fed’s current dual mandate (Humphrey-Hawkins) to achieve maximum sustainable employment and keep prices stable.  The Fed would be forced to focus solely on price stability.  This would take “the game” out of the Fed.  If they have no ability to create stimulus and provide monetary morphine, Wall Street can’t anticipate it.It would require the Fed to clearly articulate its function as the lender-of-last-resort.  When the government was picking winners and losers in 2008, the Fed bailed out Bear Sterns but not Lehman Brothers.  This bill would force them to communicate a clear policy so financial entities will not erroneously rely on the Fed’s support.It would make the 12 regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents permanent members of the Federal Open Market Committee, the branch of the Fed that sets interest rate policy.  At present, only the president of the New York Fed is on the committee, along with a rotating membership of just 4 of the remaining 11 branch presidents.  The regional presidents tend to be more conservative (like Fisher) than the 7 bureaucrats that are appointed to the governing board by Congress.  It would also weaken the power of the Fed chairman.It would ban the Fed from buying up other securities and bonds, such as mortgage-backed securities from Freddie and Fannie.  We must stop distorting the markets by encouraging investments on the basis of how much capital is available instead of real growth in a specific industry.It would require that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the Dodd-Frank law, be subjected to congressional appropriations.  Under current law, the CFPB is housed in the Fed and shielded from congressional oversight.

The House version, HR 4180, is sponsored by Kevin Brady (R-TX) and already has 31 cosponsors.

Cross-posted from The Madison Project

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Jason Altmire (D, PA-04): pro-life? Pro-choice? Try ‘pro-keeping his seat.’

You have to wonder whether the Online Left finds equivocators like Rep. Jason Altmire (D, PA-04) as insulting as we do (not that progressives have the courage to call their own hypocrites out, of course). Let me set the background: in 2010 Altmire did his level best to look like a mighty pro-life champion, largely because he was running for re-election in a R+6 district (which he ended up winning with only 51% of the vote). Back then it was all about how Altmire absolutely hated taxpayer funding of abortion, and how he’d never support such a thing, and the rest of the spiel that then-Speaker Pelosi graciously allowed him to repeat in order to keep his seat.

But that was 2010. Since then the seats have been redrawn, and now Altmire is facing Murtha crony/replacement Mark Critz in a race for the redrawn PA-12 district that has been called ‘spirited‘ (read: ‘vicious’). So, now that the pandering has to be to Democratic primary voters, how is Altmire pandering?

Did you really need me to tell you? Altmire’s all about keeping Planned Parenthood nice and funded, now. Of course, as CatholicVote.org helpfully notes, Altmire has always supported PP; but now he’s ratcheted up the rhetoric. Apparently you’re an ‘extremist’ now (according to Altmire) if you support defunding it – and whether or not you believe that is immaterial; the real question is whether Republican voters (who, if these numbers* are right, went 54/45 McCain/Obama in 2008) agree with Altmire. Spoiler warning: they don’t.

The moral of this story is, of course, that there’s really no such thing as a conservative Democrat: Jason Altmire was supposedly a reliable pro-life vote, but the very second that his principles clashed with the primary he changed his tune with nary a lost note. Not that Mark Critz is any better, of course – but Critz has union support, so Altmire has to make up the lost ground somehow. In a lot of ways, of course, this is academic, given that PA-12 was redrawn extensively to look a lot less like a mutant amoeba and a whole more like a normal Congressional District; the eventual Republican candidate is in a good place to beat whichever crab crawls to the top of the Democratic barrel after the primary this month. But it never hurts to remind people that supposedly conservative Democratic politicians lie when it suits them…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I know, I know. Give me a better source.

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