When Facebook comes around to bite you in the ass

The Republican National Committee learns a harsh lesson: if you're going to have a Facebook page, for the love of mud, monitor it so that racist crap doesn't get posted to it that reflects badly on you. Read More......

ACORN, ACORN, ACORN

Hey, I like talking about ACORN, O.K.? If it bores you, just keep scrolling on down…

Today I thought I would just post a real quick round-up of some ACORN-related news to H&B. A big h/t to for all of these links to Binks at Free Canuckistan.

First off, by Michael McCray, from Big Government: Fraud, Embezzlement, and Cover-Ups: A Brief History of ACORN:

In the wake of a series of embarrassing hidden-camera exposes and mounting congressional pressure to cut off its federal funding, Bertha Lewis, CEO of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now announced that ACORN will seek independent review. However, the ACORN review which followed the million dollar Rathke embezzlement was merely a smokescreen; eight former ACORN board members previously sought a complete forensic examination of ACORN and its related entities followed by an independent audit from a Big Four accounting firm.

Lewis noted that ACORN’s advisory council would assist her in choosing an outside auditor, former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger. The ACORN advisory council includes John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank; Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union; and former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

“As a result of the indefensible action of a handful of our employees,” Lewis said in a statement, “I am, in consultation with ACORN’s Executive Committee, immediately ordering a halt to any new intakes into ACORN’s service programs until completion of an independent review.” Mind you, these are the same senior staff and executive committee members who concealed and covered up a million dollar embezzlement, but who themselves were never terminated.

Read the rest here. Also from Big Government: Is ACORN’s Bertha Lewis Even Capable Of Telling The Truth?; and ACORN is About Power; Pittsburgh Trib-Review Nails it.

Second, there’s another video. Sigh… From Big Government:

ACORN Philadelphia Prostitution Investigation Part I

More at Ace of Spades.

There, that was relatively painless, wasn’t it?

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So un-racist it’s racist

Ken at Popehat tries to make sense of the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s logical loop-de-loops in reply to Kingston, North Carolina’s attempt to hold non-partisan municipal elections:

This is honestly one of the most confusing and (if one believes that there are actual limits to federal power) unconstitutional government actions I’ve read of in some time.

The Justice Department has overruled a small North Carolina city’s attempt to end the use of party affiliation in local elections, according to a report in The Washington Times.

According to the article, the Justice Department ruled that party affiliations are needed in part to protect equal rights for black voters. The department determined that white voters in Kinston, N.C., would only cast their ballots for black candidates if they run as Democrats.

The Justice Department recognizes (as I do, having visited the town many times) that everyone in Kinston North Carolina is a Democrat.  Black, white, yellow, brown, or blue, the odds are that if you run for office, or vote, in Kinston, you’re voting for a Democrat, and you’re a Democrat yourself.

Of course the Justice Department, under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has a mandate to monitor elections in counties that were once subject to racial voter discrimination.  But given that everyone in Kinston is a Democrat, and everyone who wins elective office in Kinston is a Democrat, why does it matter that candidates for elective office suddenly become … nothing?  Names, in fact.  People who stand for election based on issues rather than party labels?

Go read the rest here. It’s a head scratcher, to be sure.

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Polygamy does not abuse make

Canada’s Justice Minister speaks out about Canadian values and polygamy. Via CTV.ca: Polygamy has 'no place in Canada': justice minister:

The federal justice minister says polygamy has "no place in Canada," after calls for clarity on the issue from the British Columbia attorney general.

"The prohibition on polygamy is certainly consistent with Canadian values," Justice Minister Rob Nicholson told reporters Friday at a news conference

He said the federal government is prepared to defend the law, which prevents people from being married to more than one person at one time.

His comment comes the day after B.C.'s attorney general said Canadians and the justice system need clarity on whether or not polygamy is a crime.

On Thursday, the B.C. government said it decided to seek an opinion rather than appeal a court ruling that quashed polygamy charges against Winston Blackmore and James Oler. Both are leaders of breakaway sects of the Mormon Church in Bountiful, B.C. The mainstream church banned polygamy more than 100 years ago.

Blackmore was accused of having 19 wives and Oler three.

The charges were dropped because B.C.'s attorney general did not have the jurisdiction to appoint a second special prosecutor to consider charges against the men

On Thursday, Joe Arvay, the lawyer for Blackmore said his client wants to participate in the hearing, to make sure the court hears his side of the story. Lawyers for Blackmore and Oler argue the law is a violation of their charter rights to religious freedom.

At the news conference, Nicholson said the law is constitutional and complies with both the charter and the Canadian bill of rights.

"The prohibition on polygamy is consistent with Canadian values and I am confident it'll pass constitutional muster," Nicholson said.

He would not elaborate on what argument the federal government will be presenting in court to defend the law.

One constitutional law professor says that even if polygamous marriages do end up allowed, they may still pose legal problems.

"It would mean that those religious sects that use polygamy as their marriage form could go ahead and do it religiously but it would not make the marriage legal," Beverley Baines, a law professor at Queen's University told Canada AM.

The province will specifically ask the B.C. Supreme Court if the law barring polygamy is consistent with the charter and will also ask what role the law has in governing relationships between consenting adults and relationships with youth.

There have been allegations in Bountiful that teenage girls have been married to middle-aged men, and that some have been sent to the United States to marry older men in sister sects there.

"It's very crucial that the women involved in polygamous relationships...are given an opportunity to testify," said Baines.

The RCMP have launched numerous investigations into Bountiful since 1990, but prosecutors have repeatedly shied away from laying charges.

Read the rest here.

Now, I realize that I may be in the minority here, but I’m Canadian, and I’m not against polygamy. Not that I don’t realize that polygamy has its problems in common practice: the degradation or devaluing of women; a sort of hyper-chauvinism; the marrying off of young girls to older men, sometimes relatives; the gaming of government payment systems. And all of this is generally tied in to some sort of extreme religious practice, such as the Bountiful creeps, or the occasional Mohammadan in Ontario.

But here’s the thing. All of these, frankly, horrible, unsettling things are not one and the same with polygamy. To condone polygamy does not mean to condone woman and child abuse. That was the main problem ( for me ) with the Bountiful attempted prosecutions, because they were focusing on the polygamy, not on the child abuse, or the shipping of women over the border from colony to colony. Polygamy was just the thing that the authorities could try to nail Bountiful with, and so they gave it a shot, it didn’t work, and now polygamy has, even further, become the issue instead of the real evil of groups like Bountiful.

It’s not about polygamy. It’s about abuse. And we need to make that distinction or else we’re just wasting our time.

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Ah, the furthering of little minds

Before I go any further, a caveat. I'm not a pro-lifer in the standard sense of the term. Although I am opposed to the act of abortion, it's for a variety of reasons that I'm not sure the core of the Pro-life movement necessarily focuses upon. That being said, I have a great amount of sympathy for the Pro-life side of things ( although I think you could select certain Pro-choice arguments that I would find merit in ), and disregarding my personal opinions, the following story is rather horrifying, by any standard.

From LifeSiteNews: Pro-Life Student Forced into Isolation on Day of Silent Witness by School Principal:

By Patrick B. Craine

WIARTON, Ontario, October 21, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - 16-year-old high school student Jennifer Rankin fully intended to unite her voicelessness with that of the unborn as part of the annual Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity when she arrived at school yesterday, reports Bill Henry of Sun Media.
She was impeded, however, by her school principal, who stated that the right to free speech does not apply on school property and who forced Rankin to remain in isolation for the entire day as long as she participated in the event.

During the annual Day of Silent Solidarity international campaign, which is organized by Stand True Ministries, students don red bands on their arms and red duct tape on their mouths, remaining silent while passing out fliers about the atrocity of abortion.
Rankin, 16, arrived at Peninsula Shores District School in Wiarton, Ontario yesterday morning, with the red tape over her mouth and with the simple word 'life' written upon it. She and her mother were stopped at the door, however, by school principal Patricia Cavan, while police cruisers stood nearby. Cavan initially told Rankin that she could not enter school property, but then consented to allowing her in the building, separated from other students.
"I was taken directly into a small room that was opposite the vice-principal's office and I was in there all day," Rankin told Sun Media. "I wasn't allowed to speak with or see any other students and students were not allowed to come and see me and I was isolated in that room for the entire day."
While Cavan had informed students in advance that their pro-life witness would not be allowed, Rankin insists that her Charter right to free expression was infringed. "I felt very discriminated by it," she said. "I don't think it was right at all what happened."

That's the set-up, bad as it is. Here's the kicker:

Cavan, who did not return a message left by LifeSiteNews.com, told Sun Media that the right to free speech does not apply on school property. "School property is not a public place," she said. "So while absolutely we support the right to free speech in a public space, that's not school property." She said that school policy prohibits the dissemination of one-sided information on religious, political, or other issues that are controversial.
Pastor Holley pointed out that the school does an annual 'Gay Pride' day "where everybody wears pink shirts," and that the school allows nude pictures on the wall to stand as 'art'. "My students have to go to school and deal with that," he said, "and as soon as they try to stand up for anything, it's like, well, just be quiet, go home. I don't think that's right."

Read it all here. H/t to Freedom Through Truth.

So let me get this strait: a public high school student shows up at a public high school paid for by public dollars, and yet she can't speak because those public school grounds aren't a public space?

Ms. Cavan, permitting you the benefit of the doubt, were you actually being serious when you said that?

At any rate, this is really the inverse of healthy activity. The idea behind, you know, intellectual rigour is to have competing ideas, a sort of free market of intellectual activity. A little while ago, I wrote in my local paper about the usual X-Mas-time brouhaha that crops up in regard to the display of religious 'symbols' like Christmas trees and Menorahs and the like in public areas. Unfortunately, I can't find the article right now, but my thoughts on the matter were basically that if one segment of the population feels under-represented, the proper course of action is not to restrain the elements of the population which are already properly or perhaps overly-represented. The proper course of action is for those elements of the population that feel under-represented to simply speak up louder, and push harder, and thrust themselves into the public sphere ( if they wish to ). This increases the free market of ideas as a whole, and benefits the culture as a whole ( it is hoped ).

I can't help but feel the same way here. What harm would it have done to the other students, really, to have this girl go around as she had planned? Surely nothing that could not be mitigated by encouraging all of the students to engage in that debate, by using that instance as an opportunity to actually get the students involved in something exciting, and interesting, and something which stirs up strong opinions.

Instead, Ms. Cavan chose the - admittedly easier - route of bland mediocrity, and nobody won.

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So who, exactly, is Benjamin Gifford?

Well, it's a long story, really. And not on that I shall attempt to explain to you. I'll leave that up to Patrick, at Popehat:

We’ve written previously about the game Evony, for which we received a number of spam comments last July. We’ve also written about Bruce Everiss, the UK blogger who runs the site Bruce On Games, and the threat by Evony, LLC, a Delaware corporation which claims to be the maker or owner of the game, to sue Bruce for libel. That threat has now come to pass.
Despite indications that, at the time Bruce began posting about Evony, stung by the same spam comments that hit us, Evony was owned by a Chinese gold-farming company known as UMGE, the suit against Mister Everiss is being pressed in New South Wales, Australia of all places. When we wrote about the situation earlier, we speculated as to whether Australian libel or defamation laws are even more lax than those prevailing in the United Kingdom, which is notorious for its plaintiff friendliness.
We have short attention spans, and let the matter go. But today Bruce Everiss returned to our humble site, posting a link asking for help against Evony, LLC. (Whether you wish to help him or not is up to you.) But Evony, LLC’s press release about the suit raises a few concerns. Who actually owns Evony, the game, and who on earth is Benjamin Gifford?

[...]

Now, I’m no cynic, and only a cynic would suggest this, and so I’m not suggesting it: But a cynic might assume that the real owners of Evony, the game that according to Bruce Everiss advertises itself through tasteless breast shots and spam, chose to sue Bruce Everiss in Australia on the advice of Benjamin Gifford, a consultant employed to help the company develop its tasteless marketing and to quash criticism from journalists and bloggers like Bruce Everiss. Of course, I don’t suggest that. And I don’t suggest that Evony, LLC, which formed twelve days after Everiss’s alleged defamation, has nothing to do with Delaware, or Australia, and that the sole purpose of this suit is to bankrupt Everiss by requiring him to fly around the world in order to defend himself from baseless allegations of libel and defamation by Evony’s real owners, who pardon me, may not speak English so well, wherever they may be.
I don’t suggest that at all.

Read it all here. T'would seem that libel tourism isn't going away any time soon. More's the pity. Read More......

The Ministry of Student Loans

Hey, to each their own, I guess. But I'm not the only one who's a little bit surprised to hear about this:

The Obama administration plans to make the government the sole provider of federal student loans, ending the participation of private lenders in the program. Under a plan unveiled in the administration's budget, subsidies to private lenders would be eliminated, and the government would use the savings estimated at $47.5 billion over the next decade to help bolster the Pell grant program for low-income students. If approved by Congress, the plan would effectively end government-guaranteed loans to students by banks and other private lenders—lending that has totaled $56.7 billion in the current school year, and has been the primary source of college financial aid since the program was launched in the 1960s.

Look, I'm not one of those 'Obamunist' types, but, eh...that sounds rather remarkly socialist-leaning for a Centrist, pragmatic president, if you ask me.

[ UPDATE: Byron speaks:

Eh. I think you know my politics pretty well Walker (e.g., i'm not a loony left socialist), and I think this is actually a really smart policy.First of all, just because the government is kicking private lenders out of the federal loan business doesn't mean that students can't get private loans. You can still go down to your local bank and get a private student loan that has nothing to do with the government of the United States. That right still remains. This only deals with Stafford and Plus loans that are taxpayer-funded, but administered by a private company.Previous, if you were to get a federal loan, the federal government wouldn't just lend you the money. It would give it to a third-party private company for the administration, upkeep, and collection of the loan. That's just inefficient. It adds a third party to a transaction that should really only involve two parties. By adding that third party, it drives up the cost of administering the loan, by adding a whole other layer of bureaucracy to it.It's stupid to have primary companies administer these government loans just to have it look privately-run.

And now that he points that out, I see something that I should have caught before, and must have skimmed over previously, Whoopsie. ] Read More......

The tyranny of the majority of stupid

Via the Devil’s Kitchen, I came across this article from Behind Blue Eyes:

Several weeks back I was honoured to receive an email from one of the top people on the list on the right. “Fancy a pint this week”, it [approximately] read, “at the usual place?”. The “usual place” being a brightly-lit loudly-musicked characterless vermin-infested modern pit, of the kind described so aptly by Betjeman, chosen for its cheap beer and mutual convenience in London’s Zone Two.

At one point the beam of conversation settled briefly on the subject of the dystopian novel. I remarked on how contemporary Britain looks much more like Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four. Authoritarian government is much easier when the populace is materially rich, I opined. Hardly an original comment, but one that I felt had been ignored in the libertarian blogosphere’s discussion of New Labour’s legacy.

The author goes on to note the seeming trend toward ignorance in society – particularly British society – which leads to a less user-friendly form of government, and he’s got some ideas that you definitely check out.

But what I had wanted to focus on was that statement about the rich. While I tend to be in a general state of agreement with the sentiment that – particularly in politics – the Tyranny of the Majority tends to also be remarkably obtuse about things they shouldn’t be obtuse about, it strikes me as odd that the author would point toward the materially rich as the tier of the societal hierarchy which is friendliest to Statism. Why, you might ask?

Well, I’m not a history major, and I’m not a history buff. I am by no means an expert in the history of liberalism. But from what little I do recall, the driving force behind most of the revolutionary movements that first fostered liberalism, in Europe at least, were the middle-class bourgeois. In fact, I believe that it was this bourgeois-driven liberal democracy that a good amount of the resentment that fueled the rise of socialism found its origin in, and the interaction of the richer bourgeois and the poorer socialists, I think, has led to a lot of the development and evolution of Social Democracy and the Welfare State.

I’m not saying that the rich are not necessarily friendly to the idea of Statism. Indeed, if one views the corporate culture side of the rich class, it’s more than happy to buddy up to the state in order to get all manner of perks, and to make things more difficult for their smaller-class brethren by cheerleading invasive legislation. But that does not mean that the rich as a whole are inherently for Statism. In fact, I would think that some would be decidedly anti-Statist, considering that in many cases, the government can act as a hindrance and a nuisance for the pursuit and enjoyment of material gain.

This is all supposing that I may be entirely wrong. But the question arose in my mind. What do you, the dear, beloved reader think?

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And who needs the bother of democracy, really?

Ghost of a Flea has the story:

Islam4UK,a British Muslim vanguardist organization with apparent links to the banned al-Muhajiroun, is to hold an "incendiary rally" in central London on October 31.

“The group declared: “We hereby request all Muslims in the United Kingdom, in Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, Glasgow and all other places to join us and collectively declare that as submitters to Almighty Allah, we have had enough of democracy and man-made law and the depravity of the British culture.
“On this day we will call for a complete upheaval of the British ruling system its members and legislature, and demand the full implementation of Shari’ah in Britain.””

H/t to Jay Currie. One wonders if these illiberal religionists ( god bless their little hearts ) grasp the irony of protesting democracy and the rule of common law and liberalism ( in theory, at least ) in a country which only allows them to protest such things because of the elements of that society which these particular Islamists want to see removed.

But then, if intelligence and reason were their forte, they wouldn’t be in the Shari’ah business to begin with, now would they?

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Psst! Wanna know what's wrong with New York?

I'll give you a hint: Bloomberg and ACORN. Read here to find out the rest.

Meanwhile, Jon Stewart smacks down like only Jon Stewart can. Read More......

Nuthouse for sale, sold!

Really, I swear that I'll get off of the ACORN coverage very soon. At the least I promise that I won't do any more ACORN round-ups. How about that? Is that a happy medium?

At any rate, I thought I would share this bit of news with you. Via Kyle Olsen at Big Government: Infamous New Orleans ACORN HQ SOLD!:

Anyone in the market for a creepy former funeral home whose major claim to fame is miraculously housing over 200 organizations? Word is, you’re out of luck.
Apparently an offer has been accepted for ACORN’s long-time headquarters on Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans, on the edge of the 9th Ward. SEIU 100, which Rathke founded, was also headquartered in that building.

I visited that location in late July to see it for myself, as a colleague and I were in town to attend a Wade Rathke book signing that evening. Because of our straight-forward questions and unedited answers, Wade Rathke called us “Infiltrators.”
Upon seeing the building for sale (which he had seen in b-roll video footage before), we check out the listing on the website of French Quarter Realty. Other information can be found at Realtor.com, which basically a massive nation-wide Multiple Listing Service.
ACORNcracked.com obtained this information packet for the property, including interior photos.
When we checked in late July, the property was listed for $885,000. It was $835,000 when an offer was made and accepted. We won’t know the selling price until the deal actually closes.

Read it all here. Read More......

See, this is what a campus speech code is supposed to look like

Earlier I commented on James Madison U's confusing-at-best, illiberal-at-worst bout of speechophobia. Now it's time to give a nod to a University which actually respects the speech of its students.

From the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education ( or FIRE ): Victory for Free Speech as College of William & Mary Dumps Speech Codes, Earns ‘Green Light’ Rating:

WILLIAMSBURG, Va., October 12, 2009—The College of William & Mary has fully reformed its campus speech policies to ensure that students and faculty may freely exercise their right to freedom of expression at our nation's second-oldest university. Honoring these commendable reforms, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is pleased to announce the school's "green light" rating, given only to those institutions whose policies fully protect free speech. This rating in Spotlight: The Campus Freedom Resource—FIRE's comprehensive database of speech restrictions at our nation's colleges and universities—makes William & Mary one of just eleven schools to receive a "green light" out of about 400 surveyed.
"By making the changes necessary to guarantee the First Amendment rights of faculty and students at William & Mary, President Taylor Reveley has stood up for free expression in a way that far too few of his counterparts have done," FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. "William & Mary students, faculty, and alumni should be proud of their school today for recognizing that speech codes have no place on college campuses. We hope that more schools will follow William & Mary's example."

Read the rest here. My my, what a depressing statistic. Eleven out of four hundred? Read More......

This is my signal, and nobody else's!

Don't you just hate those complete and utter bastards walking around, pirating WiFi signals? Don't you wish you had a way to do something about it?

Well, now you do! Ani-Wi-Fi paint, it's called. From Christopher Null:

The idea is simple: Use a special paint on walls where you don't want wireless to pass through (say the exterior of your house). The secret is mixing aluminum-iron oxide particles in with the paint. The metal particles resonate at the same frequency as Wi-Fi and other radio waves, so signals can't pass through the thin layer of pigment. Outsiders would simply be unable to access your wireless network, just as you, inside the house, won't be able to interlope on anything beamed on the outside.
Developed by the University of Tokyo, the paint is said to be the first that can block radio frequency in higher spectra where Wi-Fi and other higher-bandwidth communications occur rather than just low-frequency wireless like FM radio. Most Wi-Fi technologies operate at 2.4GHz; the Tokyo paint can reportedly block frequencies all the way up to 100GHz, with a 200GHz-blocking paint now in the works

The paint isn't just of interest to those concerned about wireless leaking out of the building. Movie theaters have long been interested in finding a legal way to keep cell phones silent during screenings. Electronic jammers that actively block wireless signals are illegal, but passive materials that prevent wireless signals from getting through are not. Since the wireless-blocking paint can also block the lower-frequency signals that cell phones use, addled mobile junkies would have no outlet for reaching the outside world.

Now, speaking as one of those pirating bastards ( hey, a guy's got to check his email sometimes ), I have to say that this idea is still pretty cool. Particularly as I don't really like to give what I get: if I had a wireless network, I don't know that I'd want to share it with the world to download the type of pornography ( or whatnot ) that gets traced back to people by the authorities.

That being said, one has to wonder if the possibility that your neighbor might be some hacking, pirating porn-freak is high enough to warrant such measures. I guess it depends on the situation, but unless your neighbor looks suspiciously pale and has an early-in-life case of carpel-tunnel syndrome, I wouldn't worry about it. Read More......

Rachel Ehrenfeld: libel tourism bad

My apologies to the Heartless and Brainless readership. This article by Rachel Ehrenfeld on libel tourism in the USA is coming to you more than a tad late. I've been a bit behind in my blogging - indeed, all of my writing - over the past couple of days.

But the article is coming to you nonetheless. In the New York Daily News: Rescue writers from scourge of libel tourism:

Paul Williams has lived in Pennsylvania all his life. Yet with pretrial proceedings that begin today, Canadian libel laws now threaten to ruin him financially.
Williams is a National Book Award-winning writer whose 2006 éxposé, "The Dunces of Doomsday," revealed potential terrorist threats to the United States emanating from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. Although the book was published only in the U.S., he's being sued for libel in Canada by the university, which is demanding an apology and $2 million in damages.

[...]

The same is true in Brazil, where Joseph Sharkey, a New Jersey-based freelance business columnist, is being sued for reporting about the aftermath of a plane crash he survived over the Amazon. The plaintiff is a woman who maintains Sharkey offended the "dignity" of Brazil by criticizing its incompetent air-traffic control. She is demanding $500,000 and a series of international apologies. Sharkey is likely to be convicted.
In 2005, Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz sued me for libel in London; in a heavily researched book, I had alleged that he funded Al Qaeda. Mahfouz was a one-man wrecking crew of Americans' free speech rights, who after 9/11 sued or threatened to sue dozens of American writers in plaintiff-friendly English courts. When Mahfouz came after me, I refused to acknowledge the British court, asserting my rights as a U.S. citizen. Nevertheless I was rendered a judgment by default and ordered to pay Mahfouz more than $250,000 and destroy the book.

[...]

Fortunately for Williams, Pennsylvania is represented by U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, who wrote and introduced the Free Speech Protection Act of 2009. The bill would protect American writers and publishers from foreign libel judgments rendered in countries lacking America's free speech protections.
New York was the first state to pass an anti-libel tourism law, with similar laws following in Florida and Illinois. But these patchwork protections don't do nearly enough. Congress needs to intervene.

( Again, you can read the whole article here. ) Now, this is just a humble movement from a humble blogger, but let me add a whole-hearted second to Rachel's cry for Congressional intervention. I'm not an American, but it seems to me that, instead of the current ideological morass currently gumming up the works in Congress, a mere matter of defending the right to freedom of speech of American citizens from foreign interests might seem like a walk in the park. Certainly it's not outside of the realm of reason: I'm not even sure how such a thing could be opposed without diving into the realm of censorious stupidity.

By the way, the threat of libel tourism should be nothing new to this blog's readers. My counterpart Byron Tau, sadly missing from the H&B roster these days, has written a little something on the issue before.

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"[n]o student shall engage in lewd, indecent or obscene conduct or expression, regardless of proximity to campus."

You’re probably wondering what it is that I’m quoting there. Well, stop wondering! It’s the speech code of the James Madison University, which happens to have reached the coveted spot of FIRE’s Speech Code of the Month.

Cue fanfare:

JMU's policy on "Obscene Conduct" provides that "[n]o student shall engage in lewd, indecent or obscene conduct or expression, regardless of proximity to campus." (Emphasis added.) Torch readers may already be familiar with this policy, because we blogged about it several weeks ago. Our post caught the attention of student reporters at JMU, who have published several articles in the student paper The Breeze since our post first appeared. The first article, on Sept. 24, expressed FIRE's concern that this broadly worded policy could be used to punish a great deal of student expression, including expression taking place online in e-mails or on sites like Facebook. Because "lewd" and "indecent" have no defined legal meaning, they could be interpreted to include almost any crude or vulgar language that someone found offensive, most of which would nonetheless be constitutionally protected. The policy allows for punishment of lewd and indecent expression on or off campus, so virtually everything that students say or write is fair game—and I would venture to guess that college students use plenty of crude and vulgar language on Facebook and elsewhere.
In the same article, JMU Director of Judicial Affairs Josh Bacon sought to allay concerns that this policy would be applied to expression. He said that a recent change to the policy's language, extending its reach to off-campus activities, was a response to "an off-campus incident last semester that left the judicial council unable to charge the student offender. The student in question was reportedly as peeping into off-campus students' windows and masturbating in front of them."

Yeah, O.K. Fair enough. But what exactly does peeking into dormitories and masturbating have to do with expression? Unless, of course, I’m way out of the artistic loop.

Again, the key question here is this: if all the university wants to do is regulate conduct, why does the policy apply to both conduct and expression? The most stunning answer to this question comes from the now-familiar Josh Bacon of JMU's Judicial Affairs office. Today, Bacon told the Breeze that "It's an interpretation of how you say expression; is it physical expression? Again, to me, it says obscene conduct, not obscene expression." But of course, as anyone who can read the policy knows, what it says is "obscene conduct or expression." It is impossible to know why the JMU administration is digging in its heels and standing behind this language if its only true interest is in prohibiting already illegal conduct such as public masturbation and urination.

( Once again, you can read it all here ). Ah, well there you have it in a nutshell. Unless Mr. Bacon has gone the way of the American congress and has decided to not really bother with reading the policies that he’s charged with over-seeing, one has two questions to ask themselves:

• Is the Judicial Affairs office of James Madison University so obtuse as to think that the word ‘expression’ could stand in place of the words ‘physical expression’? And, if not,
• What possible motivation could James Madison University have to exert control over the speech of their students?

Censors are just horrible at covering up their motivations. Perhaps that’s why they get into the censorship biz in the first place.

Read More......

ACORN in the news

That’s right, it’s time for another ACORN round-up. Humor me, dear readers(r), it’s a hobby of mine.

First off, From Ace of Spades:

We've long known one of the brothers who founded ACORN embezzled a million from the organization. They covered that up, and the other brother (secretly) promised to pay it back out of his own pocket. Which he, um, didn't.

Or at least we thought we knew that.

Turns out it might have been $5 million. So the secret embezzlement was a double-secret embezzlement.

Bertha Lewis calls the charge "completely false," and I'm sure that puts your minds at rest.

She also says you're a racist for even asking whether or not 1 or 5 million dollars was embezzled from a charitable organization, and that crime then covered up, and no authorities (like the IRS) informed.

Read it here. Also noted at Big Government ( Milbank: The Forest, the Trees and ACORN ), and at David Horowitz’s NewsReal blog ( Was ACORN Embezzlement Really $5 Million Instead of $1 Million? ), where Matthew Vadum also notes:

A small sample of the untruths that issued from her mouth:

CLAIM: After news of the embezzlement broke, ACORN “immediately hired outside professionals, no organizers. We may be brilliant organizers, but we needed real financial professionals, real legal professionals, to come in.”

FACT: If ACORN actually hired such people, it has kept evidence of those hirings under wraps. I don’t believe her.

CLAIM: Lewis says ACORN “began the decoupling of over a hundred corporations and organizations under my watch. We took apart that network with transparency and stability.”

FACT: I am not aware of any evidence supporting Lewis’s claim. Prove it, ACORN. Talk is cheap.

CLAIM: “And for nearly 40 years, ACORN has had the privilege to stand with our 500,000 member families fighting for those who typically don’t have a voice.”

FACT: ACORN’s own website says it has “over 400,000 member families,” whatever that means. Yes, 500,000 is more than 400,000, but you can’t just round up from an indefinite figure like “over 400,000.”

Those are just a few of Lewis’ lies from yesterday.

Nor did Lewis say much about her own role in covering up the embezzlement perpetrated by founder Wade Rathke’s brother. After news of the theft broke, Lewis drove out honest ACORN national board members who dared to ask questions.

Lewis, who has high-level contacts within the Marxist governments of Venezuela and Bolivia, also brought out the good ole stand-by smear yesterday, i.e. that everyone who criticizes ACORN is racist. Fortunately, now that the undercover sting videos last month showed Americans the true face of ACORN, the smear, which used to send Republicans and other ACORN critics running, isn’t working too well.

Of course the New York Times highlighted the only part of Lewis’s talk that appealed to it, namely her assertion that ACORN is somehow a victim of a new kind of McCarthyism. 

Read the whole thing here.

Second, the voter fraud story continues, as Pamela Gellar writes in Breitbart’s Big Government: ACORN Throws Out Republican Voter Registrations:

Here is a first-hand account of how it happens. In February 2008, Fathiyyah Muhammad of Jacksonville, Florida, heard that ACORN was paying people three dollars for each voter they could register. ACORN paid her three dollars for each voter she registered, but Fatiyyah Muhammad says that the group threw out her votes and fired her when she brought them registrations of Republican voters.

[…]

“This is my first experience” with ACORN, Muhammad said. “This was before Obama got the nomination, long before then….I heard about this group that was paying $3.00 per person, to go out and to get people to sign up to vote. So I went over, I thought that well this is a good way to make some money because I know everybody, you know. I went over there and this guy signed me up and everything, and gave me my little pad, all this stuff.”

Muhammad went to the ACORN office in Jacksonville. There she encountered a young man speaking to a room of about twenty people. “He was telling us, you know, about his experience, he was from Brooklyn, he wasn’t from this area. He was just here recruiting people to register people to vote. They had a big office here, and I would say maybe about ten or twelve people at there.”

She went to work: “Well, I went out and got a lot of people, homeless people, but of course I signed everybody up as a Republican, and I would have put people had they been Democrats.” She was not forcing people to sign up as Republicans: “You could put down anything you wanted.” But when she got back to ACORN, a group leader was not pleased: “So I showed what I had, and he said, “No, no, you a fraud, there can’t be any black Republicans,’ and oh, he just kind of hung me out to dry…. But of course their main aim was to register only Democrats. They’re not interested in registering Republicans.”

She saw ACORN officials in Jacksonville throw out the Republican registrations she made. “They just discarded those, they weren’t valid. All of the registrations… they just threw those out.” Yet she says that she is sure that the people she registered were actually going to vote: “Yes, they all were going to vote, I just didn’t want to get anybody just to get the three dollars, I wasn’t desperate for three dollars.”

Read the rest here.

Third, Jon Stewart does that thing that he does, and skewers the rather…underwhelming amount of work that has been devoted to this story by the ‘mainstream’ press. You can watch the video here. H/t to Brain Terminal.

Finally, Andrew Breitbart responds to his critics, and don’t forget to lend a hand to ACORN-exposing journalist extraordinaire Hannah Giles, who is, I might add, kinda hot ( has anybody else noticed this? ).

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Parallels

Large-scale operation, it seems, rules all - if for different reasons.

From Diana West:

Last year, more than 100,000 Swiss citizens signed a petition sponsored by the Swiss People's Party (SVP) approving a national referendum on the question, yes or no, of whether the contruction of more minarets, the towering symbol of political Islam, should be banned in Switzerland. And yes, they should be banned. Minarets, indeed, mosques, are not seen by the movers and shakers of Islam as belltowers and churches are seen within Christianity. As Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said of mosque construction in Europe, "The minarest are our lances, the mosques our helmets, and the believers our army."
The Swiss People's Party wants the Swiss people to vote on this aspect of Islamization. That extremely important vote, yes or no on the ban, will finally take place on November 29.
Today, however, the Swiss federal commission against racism condemned the SVP's political poster (above), saying it could threaten public peace. (How does a drawing threaten public peace, and where have I heard this all before?) Meanwhile, the cities of Lausanne and Basel have banned the poster altogether.

Ah, but that is because of Muslim sensibilities, isn't it? Must be. However, I think one could find an interesting parrallel here in Canada, in the jaded paradise of Olympics-ready BC:

The city passed the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games bylaw in June to restrict the distribution and exhibition of unapproved advertising material and signs in any Olympic area during the Games.
It includes an exception for celebratory signs, which are defined as those that celebrate the 2010 Winter Games and create or enhance a festive environment and atmosphere.

And:

Criticizing the Olympic Games could come with a hefty price tag and even six months' jail time.
A new B.C. law is on the table that would allow police to enter homes and private properties with only 24 hours' notice to remove anti-Olympic material, and could land offenders with a maximum fine of $10,000 a day and up to six months in jail, according to the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

The reasoning may be different, but the result is largely the same, and it's a disturbing similarity. Indeed, BC's difficulty handling the roughness of *shudder* actual freedom seems to be based in a rather callous sense of advertising and business, while the Swiss' problems actually seem to stem from a sense of religious sensibilities. Ridiculous and preposterous all the same, but I suppose it raises the question: would you rather lose your freedom over minarets or ski-jumping? The former, at least, is somewhat more glamorous.

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Sweet, tolerant Iran

From the International Free Press Society:

New York Times: H/T GAR
TORONTO — Iran’s judiciary has shut down three pro-reform newspapers, opposition Web sites reported Tuesday, in what appears to be a new effort to prevent protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The closures came several days after the appointment of two hard-line military veterans to security-related positions. Together, analysts said, the moves reflected the government’s continued determination to suppress the dissent that has risen in the wake of the disputed June 12 presidential election.

There's not really much a person can say to this, is there? The State of Iran is simply out of control. Read More......

The survival of art

For a while now, I've felt that government funding for the arts is not necessarily a good thing. It creates an unhealthy dependency upon the State on the part of the arts community, which, as the provider of a valuable de-stabilizing political force and critical tool, needs to keep its distance. Furthermore, it means that government is doing the job that society should be doing, which itself is unhealthy.

Now, of course, this makes me sound rather cold, and for that I apologise. I guess I'm the Heartless part of this blog's equation for today. And I suppose that the argument could be made that the survival of art is all that matters, that the method of that survival is irrelevant, and that since the government has access to the largest amount of resources, it should be providing the largest amount of arts funding. I disagree with this argument, as I don't think that mere survival is worth the price that art pays. But, nonetheless, the survival argument, and its variants, lead to stories like this one, from The Hook:

In a move sure to startle the British Columbia book and magazine industries, the Campbell government has slashed their support.
As reported on Thursday by CBC News and the Globe and Mail, the Arts and Culture Branch of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts has cut funding from the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia, the B.C. Association of Magazine Publishers, and BC BookWorld, a monthly newspaper about books published here.
According to the Globe and Mail, the ministry phoned the organizations on Tuesday:

“It's devastating,” says Margaret Reynolds, executive director of the ABPBC. Her organization has lost $45,000 in funding – out of a yearly $290,000 budget.
“It's a massive amount,” she says. “It's also demoralizing. You think you're in a sophisticated society and you find out that this is not actually the case, so it's very distressing.”

The ministry's own website on Thursday night had no mention of this, or any other event more recent than September 21.

Read it here. What's telling to me is Margeret Reynolds' reaction to the news; her assumption that it is a mark of a society's sophistication that such funding exists.

I would suggest that it's a mark of a society's lack of sophistication when such funding is deemed necessary.

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Calling all McGill U alumni

Since most of this blog's original authors, editors, and behind-the-scenes wizards have come from McGill University, I thought this story might be of particular interest.

By the way, I'm not writing this because I'm a Pro-Life shill, although I am against abortion ( for my own reasons ), but because I think McGill U should be ashamed for the conduct of its students in this matter.

Let the discussion ensue...

[ UPDATE: Hey look: it's Tim Mak. ] Read More......

Final rites

Blogger Scaramouche ponders a very interesting question: does freedom of speech include the right to air snuff footage on TV?

What an odd question, you're probably saying. Well, yes, it is. But it's not just we mere bloggers who are deliberating upon it. It's the US Supreme Court, as well. Scaramouche points out this article from the LA Times, which I will quote at length:

By David G. Savage

Reporting from Washington - Could the government outlaw a future "Human Sacrifice Channel" on cable TV? That question became the focus of a Supreme Court argument today on the reach of the 1st Amendment and whether Congress can outlaw videos showing dogs fighting or other small animals being tortured and killed. Last year, a federal appeals court, citing freedom of speech, struck down a law against selling videos with scenes of animal cruelty. Today, most of the justices sounded unwilling to revive that law, fearing it may be used against depictions of bullfighting or illegal hunting. Justice Antonin Scalia, an avid hunter, insisted the 1st Amendment did not allow the government to limit speech and expression, unless it involved sex or obscenity."It's not up to the government to tell us what are our worst instincts," said Scalia. He repeatedly cited German dictator Adolf Hitler and his policies of extermination. Scalia asked, "Can you keep him off the screen" just because his deeds were vile? But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. garnered the attention of his colleagues with a series of questions on whether videos portraying humans being killed would be protected as free speech. Alito said there may well be a "pay-per-view" market for programs made outside the United States, so there would be no criminal jurisdiction here, that showed real people being killed. He called it the "Human Sacrifice Channel" and wondered aloud whether Congress could outlaw the showing of such programs in this country. What about "snuff films," asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The lawyer defending a Virginia man convicted of selling dog-fighting videos struggled to answer the question. She said the 1st Amendment usually protects speech and expression, even if the underlying conduct is ugly or illegal. She said the government should work to stop the illegal acts, rather than make it illegal to show the acts. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sounded surprised. "You think it is unconstitutional for Congress to forbid the 'Human Sacrifice Channel'?" he said. But for much of the hour, the government's lawyer, Neal Katyal, struggled to persuade the justices that the law targeted only "crush videos," or dog-fighting videos. Congress passed the law 10 years ago with the intention of drying up the underground market for videos that showed tiny animals being crushed by women in high heels. More recently, the law has been used to prosecute people who sell dog-fighting videos. Robert Stevens, the Virginia man, was convicted for selling three videos that contained scenes of pit bulls fighting in Japan, where this is legal. By the argument's end, the justices seemed to be weighing two possibilities. One was to narrow the reach of the law to focus only on the "crush videos." The other was to strike down the law entirely because it infringed too much on the 1st Amendment.

Again, you can read the article here. Now, two things pop into my mind, which do not necessarily have to do with the main topic of this post:

• 1) The ones asking the 'human sacrifice channel' question were relying on some very under-handed tactics, putting forward a massive straw-man argument, and making the issue about an abstract worst-case scenario ( hard to get any worse than death ), instead of about animal cruelty vids. The defense should have known better than to get roped in - admittedly, as easy as that would be to do ( I'd probably do the same thing ).
  
• 2)There's a big difference between killing animals and killing people - just don't tell PETA that.


• 3) This whole thing reminds of me of a routine that George Carlin did back in his day, about reality television.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. Scaramouche raises a very interesting point:

A "human sacrifice channel"? Egad! I'm no Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but surely "human sacrifice" falls under the heading of murder, and is therefore criminal, and must therefore be prosecuted as such. Maybe I'm dense, but I can't really see how "free speech" comes into it at all.

I beg to differ. The act of human sacrifice, is, of course, indefensible, and criminal and loathsome, and should be punished. That's obvious. But to show a human sacrifice should not be against the law.

Perhaps I should explain.

Over the course of my time thinking about freedom of speech, I've arrived at the conclusion that no speech, no matter how vile, should be prosecuted by the State. Copyright infringement and fraud don't count, because what you're prosecuting is not the speech, but the act - in this case theft - that they represent. Libel and defamation also don't count, because it's not criminal to be offensive or to libel somebody's character - it is however, an act that can be subject to some severe recriminations in a personal lawsuit, which is merely another form of response on the libeled's party.

In another extreme case: hate speech. Hate speech should not be prosecuted by the State for a variety of reasons: it tends to show preference for certain groups in society over others, which is not equality under the law; it can easily backfire, and stir up resentment toward any protected groups; it's a process that's easily misused and abused, etc. But two main reasons to reject hate speech laws are that

• 1), Hatred is not a 'representative' crime. It does not represent theft, or murder, or anything other than a feeling: namely, hatred. Outside of the bounds of harassment, where somebody is actively hounding somebody personally ( which is a 'representative' crime ), hate represents nothing but itself. The State should not be in the business of prosecuting a feeling, particularly one that everybody has felt at some point in their lives, because at that point, it turns ordinary citizens into criminals.


• 2) The definition of 'hatred' and the expression of hatred is so loose and so open to interpretation and personal, partisan, or politically-driven bias, that it almost begs for abuse of process, and corruption in its administration.

So hate speech is off the table. Speech laws which criminalize things like denying the Holocaust are, too - first of all, because they're very closely related in theory and practice to hate speech laws, and second of all because the State should not be in the business of using the law to enforce history.

That leaves us with death threats. Now, I'm very torn on death threats, but I think I've come up with a suitable answer: the act of threatening someone with death should be punishable by law, for harassment if for nothing else. But the speech itself should not be considered criminal, because in another context, it would be meaningless: "I'm going to kill you," can be used in different ways. Again, it's a sort of 'representative' crime, which needs a distinction between the speech and the act, with the act punishable but the speech being innocent. The same applies to incitements to riot or violence: if any harm is actually caused because of these incitements, then punish away, but the speech itself should be held blameless.

But what does this have to do with filming snuff vids and having them protected under the 1st Amendment? Well I'm getting to that! Geez, let a man speak.

I think that all of my talk and bluster on representative-speech crimes can be tied in with this issue. It should be illegal to actually perform the acts being portrayed. But to portray them alone does not condone the act, does not perpetrate the act, and does not necessarily make the act more likely to happen. And any risk that it might is worth the risk, because otherwise

• 1) I believe we, first of all, run the risk of infringing, even if just a little bit, on a very precious freedom.


• 2) The application of such a law against these sorts of films could also be misused, or mis-applied. For instance: what would happen if a documentary film-maker created a movie about snuff for the sake of informing the public, or even of denouncing the act? Would that also be illegal? You can scoff, but look at all of the laws that we have in Western society, and how humorlessly and ridiculously some of them have been applied in instance after instance. Do we want to run that risk yet again?


• 3) Furthermore, if such a law making the portrayal of snuff illegal were to be passed, would it also include illustrations depicting the act? Writing describing the act? At what point does the line get crossed? Such laws tend to have a habit of getting away from us if we are not very, very careful. Who is to say that this would not be another instance of a run-away law that takes more freedom than it's worth?


• 4) What would be the benefit of such a law anyway? Is there such a high demand for snuff footage that it has to be outlawed like the Prohibition? Let the perverts have their fun, monitor the situation, and swoop in if they actually do more than fantasize. Otherwise, leave the situation alone.

Anyway. Those are my thoughts. Punish the crime, not the portrayal of the crime. As with many things, I think it's a very, very fine distinction, but it's one that ought to be made, or else the debates will be held by people who don't necessarily have our best interests - or at least, our freedom's best interests - in mind.

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A good ol' ACORN round-up

You know - I haven't talked about ACORN in a while. So, today, I think I'm going to fix that. I've already talked a little bit about ACORN's friend, the NEA, but here's a bit of a news round-up of some of theACORN-related tidbits that have popped up in the last few days. Here we go:

First off, the Philadelphia Enquirer's Karen Heller offers up a defense of ACORN's activities. For instance:

Who are these evil, awful ACORN people conservatives keep attacking? Grandmothers and great-grandmothers like Junette Marcano and Miriam McKnight, organizers of the West Oak Lane branch.

Yeah, Karen. The 'conservatives' of the world hate grandmothers, which is why we're attacking certain members of ACORN for offering to help someone get away with tax evasion and child prostitution. Needless to say, her defense falls flat.

Second, the corruption bug seems to be spreading, as the Presbyterian Church seems to have been willing to use some underhanded methods to keep up with their donations. From The Enterprise Blog: Is ACORN a Faith-Based Organization?

I’m pretty sure it’s not. Nevertheless, the Presbyterian Church (USA) apparently has been giving grants to scandal-ridden ACORN for years. And it’s been engaging in some unsavory accounting practices to keep the funds flowing. Parker Williamson reports on the subject in The Presbyterian Layman, a publication of a renewal organization in this mainline Presbyterian denomination. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the PCUSA for many years.)

Heh. Leave it up to the Anglicans. Anyway, as The Bovina Bloviator notes, Catholics shouldn't lord it over their Protestant heathen brethren just yet, because they're supplying funding too:

There is no cause for smugness however among Catholics: Holy Church has also been a sponsor of the thugs at ACORN in a big way. The only difference is there are enough Catholics outraged by such appalling misuse of Church funds chances are reasonably good it will be stopped...eventually.

Third, Doug Heye writes for USNews.com: ACORN Story Shows How Internet Reporting Is Beating the New York Times:

In a meeting of New York conservative activists earlier this month, Andrew Breitbart received a raucous standing ovation for doing something many conservatives never dreamed possible. He beat The New York Times.

Indeed he did. Just tell them that. H/t to Transfigurations.

Fourth, Doug Giles notes the strange silence of child advocates when it comes to the ACORN sting. For Townhall.com:

You know what’s weird? It’s weird that child advocacy groups (secular and religious) haven’t raised more hell regarding ACORN who, on tape, in multiple locations, and on our dime, were perfectly peachy with the potential sex trafficking of little 13-year-old El Salvadoran girls. That’s what’s weird.
Did anyone else notice that when Giles and O’Keefe’s characters said they wanted to bring underage sex slaves from El Salvador into the United States that none of those acornites so much as blinked? None of them—as in zero, zilch, zippo—said, “Get the hell outta here! I’m calling the cops!” I know some acorners said the workers protested the pimp and prostitute’s requests but . . . uh . . . the unedited tapes slam dance that fairy tale.

Well to be fair, this is about grandmothers, not children. Right Karen?

Fifth, more on ACORN's voter fraud. A lot more. By Jim Hoft, from Gateway Pundit/Big Government:

Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller, a democrat, told Eric Shawn on FOX News that ACORN was hiring convicts still in prison -CONVICTED OF IDENTITY THEFT- for canvassing voters. Ross said that by executing a search warrant at ACORN headquarters in Nevada the authorities were able to substantiate charges and have a very solid case against ACORN. They believe they can prove that it's not just a few bad apples it went much higher up in the organization. Ross believes that ACORN and the regional director should be held accountable for the criminal activity that took place in the state.

Also noted by Weasel Zippers. More than a few bad apples. Well. Duh.

Sixth, from Matthew Vadum of the AmSpec Blog/Big Government:

A credible source claims the embattled left-wing advocacy group ACORN is poised to announce massive staff layoffs but an ACORN spokesman denies this is the case.
A credible source close to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now revealed that the activist network intends to lay off all staff members operating out of its New Orleans headquarters. All information provided by the source to this reporter in the past has turned out to be correct.

[...]

My source said that one of the employees to be cashiered in the Crescent City is the daughter of disgraced ACORN founder Wade Rathke. Rathke’s wife, Beth Butler, also works for ACORN but it is unclear at this point if she too will be laid off. Rathke’s son also reportedly is employed by ACORN.
ACORN also plans to lay off two-thirds of its Washington, D.C., staffers as soon as Wednesday of next week, according to the source. Layoffs will also extend to ACORN’s affiliate the ACORN Institute.
The source also revealed that all or most of ACORN’s development staff in the group’s New York City office will soon be laid off if they haven’ been laid off already.

Read the rest here.

Seventh, a double-header from the AmSpec Blog: ACORNs not far from White House tree, and Bertha's Bolsheviks:

Why is ACORN's chief organizer friendly with the Marxist anti-American governments of two South American countries?
Within ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis's storied rogues gallery of a rolodex may be found contact information for then-Bolivian ambassador Gustavo Guzman and for Sabine Kienzl, a professional propagandist employed by the Venezuelan embassy. The listing for Guzman contains what appears to have been a direct office telephone number.
An ACORN insider I spoke with confirmed the authenticity of the rolodex which I have seen. Erick Erickson of the website RedState recently did an excellent job unveiling the rolodex.

Eighth, ACORN shows its non-partisan bona fides. From the Oklahoman:

A Republican state legislator released documents Tuesday which he says show the community-organizing group ACORN focused on helping Democrats in three legislative races in the November 2008 election and had developed a game plan to "take power” in Oklahoma within five years.

The documents, which include legislative district maps and various forms, were recovered from computers abandoned by ACORN workers in Oklahoma City, said Rep. Mike Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City. Also found was a script apparently used in Houston to go door-to-door to encourage voters to vote for Barack Obama in November 2008.

Those are pretty sh*tty bona fides. Also noted by Verum Serum.

Ninth and finally ( I can feel your relief; stop feeling relief ), Kevin Kane writes for Big Government: Lousiana Attorney General Serves ACORN With 2nd Subpoena: Full Text:

"The brother of ACORN’s founder embezzled $5 million from the organization, nearly five times more than the figure previously acknowledged by the New Orleans activist group’s officials, according to a subpoena served Monday by the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office.
“The exact amount of the embezzlement was unknown until it was recently acknowledged in a board of directors meeting on October 17, 2008 by (ACORN Chief Executive Officer) Bertha Lewis and (ACORN board member) Liz Wolf that an internal review had determined that the amount embezzled was $5,000,000,” reads the court document. “It is still unclear if some of the monies embezzled are from state, federal of private funds.” "

Read it all here.

And with that, I'm out. Hope you enjoyed the ride, folks.

[UPDATE: Whoops, missed one. Just ran across this today:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday announced it would halt its $1 million fire prevention grant to ACORN — a decision Republican lawmakers have since praised. ]

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A new White House program: ACORN for the arts

Uh-oh. It seems that the NEA and ACORN have gotten deeper into a corruption scandal. Imagine that.

Ben Shapiro writes, for Big Government: White House Creates ACORN for the Arts:

Over the last week, Big Hollywood and Big Government have been extensively covering the August 10 conference call between the National Endowment for the Arts and a group of artists – a call on which the artists were encouraged to support President Obama’s agenda, with the tacit promise that they would be handsomely rewarded with government grants. The NEA representative on the call was then-Communications Director of the NEA Yosi Sergant.

[...]

According to a briefing report from Arlene Goldbard, the Pratt Center for Community Development, State Voices, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation, on May 12, 2009, “more than 60 artists and creative organizers engaged in civic participation, community development, education, social justice activism, and philanthropy came together for a White House briefing on Art, Community, Social Justice, National Recovery.” Each of the sponsors of the meeting was contacted by – yes, you guessed it – Yosi Sergant, who had just been promoted from the Office of Public Engagement to serve at the NEA.
According to the briefing report, the meeting had three segments: “(1) a meeting at the Kaiser Family Foundation to prepare for the briefing, (2) the two-hour White House briefing at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and (3) a post-briefing meeting at Bus Boys & Poets to interpret and respond to what we had learned …”
Mike Strautmanis, Chief of Staff for the Office of Public Liaison, spoke at the White House meeting. He introduced Sergant, and stated that Sergant represented the “commitment to bring in people not traditionally part of the political process to share their talents and skills.” More ominously, he stated that “With Yosi and Anita Decker (Director of Government Affairs at the NEA) in place… people very close to the President are involved in the effort.”

[...]

Perhaps the most problematic aspect of the meeting, however, was that it wasn’t just the White House and artists at this meeting – it was the White House, artists, and community organizers: specifically, far-left community organizers in the ACORN mold. The NEA has a commitment to be nonpartisan, but by inviting community organizers and unions to a meeting with artists, it breaks that commitment.
This meeting was designed to concretize the synergistic relationship between far-left community organizers, the White House, the NEA, and artists. Last week, I said that the White House was trying to set up an ACORN for the Arts. I was speaking figuratively. This meeting, however, makes that accusation literal.
At the after-meeting, Michael Nolan of Communications, Contacts & Concepts headed up a group that discussed artists actually writing legislation – in particular, “finding places in the Stimulus Bill where Community Arts organizations can insert themselves.” That’s right – artists, with the tacit promise of NEA funding, attempting to rewrite Congressional legislation.

[...]

The White House’s total unconcern with using the NEA to promise funding, then bringing in a combination of radical left community organizers to help brainstorm with artists is troubling in the extreme. Again, if all of what has been reported in this briefing report is true, laws were broken. By law, the NEA must remain apolitical. By law, the White House must not funnel federal funds to its friends, or use the NEA to do so. By law, neither the White House nor the NEA may use their governmental status to push outside entities to shape legislation, or provide administrative support for lobbying activities of private organizations.

Read the whole thing here.

So, umm...yeah. I don't really have anything to say right now. Stay tuned for a very Heartless and Brainless ACORN round-up. Read More......

A fond farewell to Vox Rationis

Back when I started contributing to Heartless and Brainless ( it seems so long ago, but it wasn't really ), I was among several other bloggers to come flocking to the site. Many of those contributors seem to have disappeared ( hence my sitting on this site like a mother hen keeping it warm ), but before that happened, I was lucky enough to join in with a couple of them in yet another project.

The couple of bloggers were contributors John and Russ, and they'd been working on this joint blogging project before Heartless and Brainless came into existence. This previous blogging project was called Vox Rationis. A few months ago, I also became a contributor to Vox Rationis.

I have to say, it was fun. It wasn't a frequently-updated site, but the updates were good when they were made, and I tried to do my part to contribute to that good discussion. I'm afraid that I didn't do too much of late - but that had more to do with my not wishing to over-whelm the blog with my own opinions than anything else.

I suppose the whole issue's moot by now, as Vox Rationis will soon be no more. Russ is moving on to greener pastures:

Not that this blog had much of a following, but I'm sorry to say that I need to shut it down. I recently took up an internship with an Oregon State House Representative and I wouldn't want anything I've written in the past to be affiliated with his office in any way. This blog will be down as of 12:00 AM October 3rd. Thanks for reading, it's been fun.

One of the vagaries of political blogging is that some political bloggers go on...into politics. It's a fair trade-off. Some of us go, some of us stay behind.

As one of those who's stayed behind, I'd just like to offer a fond farewell. I hope we get to work on a future project together sometime, Russ. It's been fun.

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Olympic fever

Alright, so some people aren't too happy about Obama's failed bid to host the next bout of Olympic glory in Chicago. Fair enough.

But before you get really angry, consider this chunk of news from BC, which is hosting the 2010 Winter games:

The 2010 Winter Olympics may be all about going for the gold but those running the provincial government's Olympic Games secretariat seem to be having trouble just reaching the finishing line. According to employee surveys obtained exclusively by Public Eye via a freedom of information request, the secretariat has the worst-rated executives in government. Those surveys asked employees if their top bosses:
* communicate decisions in a timely manner;* clearly communicate strategic changes and/or changes in priorities; and* provide clear direction for the future
At the secretariat, which oversees the province's financial commitment to the Games, just, 31 percent of respondents agreed with the first question, 33 percent with the second and 44 percent with the third.
That meant its executives got the lowest marks in government - even beating out those at the troubled ministry of children and family development, who came in second to last.

So see? It could be worse. Just imagine this scenario writ Chicago, with its penchant for corruption and political wheel-dealing. It'd be a bloodbath! Way too much of a headache to concern yourselves over.

Olympics? Fuggedaboutit.

[ UPDATE: Andrew Stuttaford says similar things over at The Corner:

I may have criticized Chicago’s Olympics bid, and, by implication, Obama’s support for it, but given that he did support it, I don’t (in a sense) blame him for doing his best to foist this scourge on his home town. As it happens, of course, Chicago’s ‘failure’ is in fact a success. As London is now discovering, winning the Olympics is (with very rare exceptions, such as Los Angeles in 1984), a curse, not a blessing. That’s why I opposed both New York and London’s bids for 2012. ]

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That's an interesting vote to pander to

The horny voter:

Edmonton-based blogger Dave Cournoyer pointed out on his blog Thursday night that the website stephenharper.com is actually a link to a portal for adult personals, replete with images of women clad in black lingerie and stiletto heels. According to whois.org, the site is registered to someone based in Shanghai, China.

OK, that's just awesome. Read More......

A little ACORN update

The New York Times explains its slow reaction time:

"Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was 'slow off the mark,' and blamed 'insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.' She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media."

It's a sad day when, you know, fact is interpretated as opinion. Read More......

A very Lori Drew update

[ UPDATE: Ah! There's Byron in the comments, obliging as ever:

Alright Walker, since you goaded me here's another Lori Drew update. Today in Roll Call, Rep Linda Sanchez wrote an op-ed calling for renewed attention to be paid to her Megan Meier Cyberbulling Prevention Act, meaning that she's trying to up the ante on getting it passed the House.If it comes to the floor, it might be time for people to ballistic.

Unfortunately, the op-ed is locked behind a subscription firewall, so here it is, but unless you're subscribed to Roll Call, you're on your own. Sorry folks, I'm not going that far for you. The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act itself looks to have roughly the same intentions as Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which should scare the living bejeezus out of any self-respecting free-speech advocate who sees it. ]

I haven't followed this story with rapt attention, I will admit. But blog-leader Byron - oh, how I miss him... - picked up on the story for H&B

a while back, and so I've kind of felt a bit compelled to keep up with it all for our readers, for old-times' sake if for nothing else.

You can follow the time-line of posts ( dropping down in quality as soon as I started to touch on the story, I might add ), here, here, and here.

At first, we thought the story was over - the case was dropped, and all was well in the land for us Speechies. But now, predictably enough I suppose, the case has been appealed. Cue debate again.

From Wired's Threat Levels blog:

By Kim Zetter

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have filed a notice of appeal in response to the ruling in the Lori Drew cyberbullying case, where a judge threw out the government’s case against Drew for allegedly using a fake MySpace account to drive a teenage girl to suicide.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krause conditionally overturned the jury convictions, which had found Drew guilty of three counts of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for breaking MySpace’s terms of service agreement.
Wu’s ruling, however, did not become official until he filed his written judgment on Aug. 31, at which point the clock for filing a notice to appeal began ticking.
The Court of Appeals will now have to set a schedule for filing the opening brief in the appeal. Mrozek said given the court’s current schedule, it could be four months or longer before the government’s brief is due.
Drew was initially charged with three felony counts of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and one count of felony conspiracy to violate the statute. Last November, a jury convicted her instead of lesser misdemeanor charges on the first three counts and deadlocked on the conspiracy charge. Prosecutors said at the time they weren’t sure whether they’d attempt to retry Drew on the fourth charge.
Eight months later, Wu overturned the convictions on grounds that the statute was unconstitutionally vague.
Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department prosecutor who now teaches law at George Washington University, plans to work on Drew’s defense if the government pursues an appeal.

You can read the whole thing here. It will be interesting to see how this develops. It would be especially interesting if our one-time blog-master Byron were to drop by to add his own commentary ( *hint, hope you feel guilty now, Byron, *hint ). But until then, I'll try my laziest to keep up with what developments I can... Read More......