The major reason I haven’t posted anything about the Abramoff debacle is that I don’t view it as a political issue. Pure and simple, it is a criminal justice affair — the man is a crook, he’s going down for it and that’s the way of things.

It is no surprise to me, given their desperation to discredit Bush, that the Angry Left has been doing their best to spin this into a Bush-bashing event.

What connections there are to any politicians on either side of the aisle(Harry reid’s name has, it seems, been mentioned briefly in connection with an Abramoff associate) will be unlikely to have any significant impact upon their respective political careers or incur any criminal charges, though Representative Robert W. Ney(R, Ohio) would seem to have been a smidgeon more receptive than most of his colleagues to Abramoff’s largesse, and may or may not encounter the roosting of his proverbial chickens as a result.

That said, Jack Abramoff is a criminal, a lobbyist gone bad(at least, gone bad and been caught at it), not a politician. His actions are just that: His actions, and can only be laid at the feet of the administration by political opposition for political purposes, without any honorable or even remotely respectable foundation for any accusations levelled. In short, only leftist hacks need apply.

In fact, a well thought out column appeared in Review & Outlook in yesterday’s WSJ Opinion Journal with which I tend to agree, and that, friends, is the last I have to say about the reprehensible Mr. Abramoff and his well publicized legal problems.

As for Bush Administration involvement?

…it’s worth pointing out that Mr. Abramoff and his coterie aren’t getting off easy. His plea deal includes a likely 10-year sentence, which is the same as the one handed to Enron’s Andy Fastow. Co-conspirator Michael Scanlon has also copped to a felony, and others are expected to follow. No one can accuse the Bush Justice Department of giving these GOP scoundrels a pass, in contrast to the way Janet Reno’s Department went soft on Harold Ickes and others after the 1996 campaign-finance shenanigans.

Note: Emphasis mine.

It’s also notable how few Members of Congress so far have truly been implicated, beyond accepting entirely legal campaign contributions. The most culpable is Ohio’s Bob Ney, who has been cited in a “criminal information” for receiving trips and other favors in return for statements entered into the Congressional Record. Mr. Ney says that he too was duped, but there’s no question he was willing to tap dance on cue for Mr. Scanlon, and that alone is sleaze-by-willing-association. If the House Ethics Committee serves any useful purpose, sanctioning Mr. Ney ought to be it.

Here is the entire column.

In a column today in Jewish World Review, Paul Greenberg gets down!

Dana Priest of The Washington Post sounds shocked — shocked! — to discover that George W. Bush ordered a complete remobilization and reinvigoration of the CIA immediately after September 11th:

“The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al-Qaida has grown into the largest CIA covert-action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over clandestine tactics . . . .”

This is news? Isn’t this just what W. told the country he would do in the aftermath of September 11th?

Read the entire column here!

As I’ve opined in several posts in the past, being a journalist carries with it certain responsibilities, such as fair, unbiased, accurate reporting, of which, along with any vestige of personal honor among journalists, there is a paucity in today’s mainstream media. They are, after all, the people from whom the public expects to receive an accurate picture of current events, not the left-biased, incomplete accounts provided in order to make President Bush and his administration appear incompetent, evil tools of Haliburton and the rest of “Corporate America.”

But such is life, the only ethics followed by liberals are those that help them achieve whatever “ends” they want to achieve. What Clinton was able to do with impunity is a heinous crime if Bush does anything like it.

Another responsibility of an American journalist, and indeed of his or her entire organization, is to use common sense when deciding upon whether to print or broadcast a news item whose impartation to the public might engender a threat to the security of the nation and the very lives of its citizens.

The New York Times’ decision to inform the world of Bush and the NSAs’ monitoring of telephone calls between known or suspected al-Qaida contacts in the U.S. and people outside the country was the result of just such a decision. As the President told the Times a year ago, such action would do significant damage to the fabric of our homeland security structure.

Yet, in the interests of starting a politically partisan fueled brouhaha aimed at Bush, they went ahead and published the story.

I don’t care how they spin their “the people have a right to know” BS{that sentiment doesn’t seem to appear in the Constitution anyplace, only in the minds of the media), the bottom line is that, along with their as yet undiscovered inside informants, they have committed treason. They are traitors.

The New York Times reporters who broke the Bush “Spygate” story, as well as the paper’s top executives who approved its publication, face the very real prospect of criminal indictment by the Bush Justice Department - a lawyer involved in the 1971 Pentagon Papers battle is warning.

With a full-blown Justice Department investigation now underway, Harvey Silvergate tells the Boston Phoenix: “A variety of federal statutes, from the Espionage Act on down, give Bush ample means to prosecute the Times reporters who got the scoop, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau.”

Only time will tell if this really comes to pass, but I’d be behind it one hundred percent if it did, as it’s time some lessons were learned and some memories refreshed about the value of patriotism and the importance of preserving the republic over that of scoring cheap internel political victories.

In her current column at the Washington Times, Suzanne Fields alludes rightly(no pun intended, although…) that there has been a visible resurgence of conservative thought among today’s university students, much to the chagrin of the more left wing faculty members.

Tenured professors are hysterical (a good “gendering” word) over the rise of the right on the campus, of students who aren’t buying into lesbian literature, identity politics, deconstructionism, feminism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, Marxism, gay culturalism and all the other -isms that have dominated the curriculum for the generation since the ’60s. Assumptions are under siege.

This is extremely refreshing, as it demonstrates that four decades of unchecked leftist idiocy is finally beginning to be counterbalanced by more sane, alternative thinking — read that as a return, in some quarters, to conservative idealogies which, on the whole, are exponentionally more constructive in terms of the preservation of the United States and our Constitutional background by the next generations of Americans in the marketplace and at the polls than most of their predecessors over the last forty years.

It was therefore a great pleasure to learn that Tufts University’s campus newspapers include a conservative publication called The Primary Source, a sample of which, online, is here.

Excerpt:

If there ever was an issue in the current political climate that has been polluted by the pessimism of the mainstream media, it is the economy. The mainstream media employs public opinion polls to vindicate its perception of the national debate. Unfortunately, the facts—most importantly those about the economy—are too often discounted. A November USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll found that approximately 37 percent of Americans approve of President Bush’s handling of the economy, which equals their approval of his overall job performance. The information that really affects Americans day by day is about dollars and cents, and as it stands, they do not get the positive news about the economy they deserve to hear.

Thank you people so much for helping to bring right thinking back to the campus.

In the next few days I will be slightly restructuring the listing format in my blogroll, and The Primary Source will have a permanent link therein.

This seems to be the week for boneheads-in-training for The World’s Dumbest Criminals. On Tuesday, there was this guy, and now we have a real winner who apparently aspired to be a jewel thief.

FARGO, N.D. - Diamond earrings stolen from a college fundraiser were recovered when a Minnesota man tried to have them appraised at the jewelry store that donated them, authorities said.

Police said the man was arrested after he brought the $4,600 earrings to Wimmer’s Jewelry at the West Acres mall. Store owner Brad Wimmer said the man had the original box along with the description of the jewelry.

“It was all very goofy,” Wimmer said. “The value of the earrings was right on the description.”

Goofy, right.

The value of the earrings automatically makes the theft a felony, so hasta la bye bye, bonehead.

Next week, the Alito confirmation hearings will begin. It’s important that all right thinkers do our part to help get Sam Alito confirmed as an associate justice on the Supreme Court in whatever ways we can.

To that end, RightMarch, led by patriotic American Bill Greene, will be right on the front lines as always.

ALERT: Can you come to Washington, D.C. next week to take a stand for confirming Judge Alito to the Supreme Court?

If not — can you help send activists there to counter the HUGE numbers that the far left is busing in?

Groups like NOW, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, People for the American Way, Alliance for Justice, and others are shipping in HUNDREDS of liberal activists to be in the streets and in the hallways of the Senate next week, grabbing media attention and demanding that President Bush’s conservative nominee be blocked.

They’ll be phone banking, holding press conferences, waving signs, holding demonstrations… generally making a huge nuisance of themselves. BUT — if there’s no one there to COUNTER their antics with strong support of Judge Alito, many of the Senators, along with reporters and countless American television viewers, will assume that there’s a groundswell of opposition to Alito — which is the exact OPPOSITE of the truth!

Remember: our legislators usually “see the light” only when they “feel the heat” — so we need to make sure they’re “feeling the heat” from the RIGHT side!

WE MUST BE THERE to stand up for a FAIR hearing and a FAIR vote for Judge Alito!

There’s two ways you can help us do that: you can come JOIN us in D.C. as a volunteer during hearings week — or you can help us SEND volunteers there!

TAKE ACTION: Look, we understand that not everyone can just take off to D.C. on short notice. That’s the difference between liberals (who take to the streets for protests at the drop of a hat) and conservatives (who have families and lives and work for a living). So we’re working with a number of other conservative organizations to make sure that the massive amount of media covering the event aren’t just giving the LEFT’s side of this issue.

If you’re not able to make it into town for these historic and important hearings, can you help us send volunteers to take your place?

We’re raising money to help “TeenPact” send SIXTY young people to D.C. for the entire week of the hearings. “TeenPact” is a grassroots conservative youth organization whose mission is to train young people to be leaders who will impact the nation and the world, and they’re committed to sending 60 youth to D.C. to do whatever needs to be done.

Think of that: SIXTY young people, standing strong with dozens of others in our nation’s capital for conservative values, conservative beliefs and, of course, conservative judicial nominees!

CAN YOU HELP? We want to help TeenPact raise over $8,000 to cover all of the expenses for these 60 youth volunteers. That’s CHEAP for D.C.! Your contribution TODAY would go a LONG way:

$1,330 would pay for ten youth for the week
$665 would cover five youth for a week
$190 would cover ten youth for a day
$133 would pay for one young person for the week
$95 would cover five youth for a day
$19 would cover one young person for the day
PLEASE, whatever amount you can contribute — $1,330, $665, $190, $133, $95, $19 or another amount — time is SHORT, so make your best donation NOW:
https://secure.responseenterprises.com/rightmarch/?a=7

If you CAN come to D.C., we’d LOVE to see you! We need supporters (in t-shirts & waving signs we provide) at press conferences and in hearing room hallways, as well as volunteers helping with food preparation/distribution, t-shirt distribution, sign assembling & distribution, technology, logistics, runners, prayer warriors/walkers, and more.

If you’d like to volunteer to come to D.C. next week for one to five days, just download the Volunteer Form below, fill it out and fax it to 202-393-2134 right away:

http://www.rightmarch.com/docs/AlitoVolForm.doc

We hope to see you there — but if you can’t come, please help send folks there to TAKE A STAND for JUSTICE!

NOTE: Another member of our coalition, Concerned Women for America, is also helping to organize local events back in key targeted states during the hearings. One or two women are needed in each of the targeted states to lead the efforts to carry out “meet and greets” with reporters outside of the Senators’ local offices. If you can participate in these state activities during hearing week, or if you know someone who you can get to participate in these events (men are more than welcome!), call CWA at 202-488-7000.

And don’t forget to send a FREE message to both of your Senators at http://capwiz.com/sicminc/issues/alert/?alertid=8197216&type=CO in support of Judge Alito!

Be sure to forward this Alert to EVERYONE you know who wants to help get a FAIR hearing and a FAIR vote in the Senate for the President’s conservative pick, Judge Alito. Thank you!

Sincerely,

William Greene, President
RightMarch.com

Concrete wall? A foot thick? No problem!

Troops conducting urban operations soon will have the capabilities of superheroes, being able to sense through 12 inches of concrete to determine if someone is inside a building.
The new “Radar Scope” will give warfighters searching a building the ability to tell within seconds if someone is in the next room, Edward Baranoski from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Special Projects Office, told the American Forces Press Service.

By simply holding the portable, handheld device up to a wall, users will be able to detect movements as small as breathing, he said.

The Radar Scope, developed by DARPA, is expected to be fielded to troops in Iraq as soon as this spring, Baranoski said. The device is likely to be fielded to the squad level, for use by troops going door to door in search of terrorists.

Read the rest. It’s fascinating.

The folks up on The Hill have finally come up with some legislation to protect consumers, to some degree, against identity theft.

A bipartisan coalition of Senate Commerce Committee leaders today introduced comprehensive legislation (The Identity Theft Protection Act, S. 1408) that protects consumers from identity theft. The bill sets national standards for notifying consumers of data breaches, requires businesses to improve their safeguards for sensitive consumer information, gives consumers the right to freeze their credit reports to thwart identity theft, and limits the solicitation of Social Security numbers.

Speaking for myself, I always understood that Social Security numbers were intended to exist only as proprietary information shared by those issued the numbers, employers(to confirm work eligibility and report employee earnings to the Government), and the Government itself as a tax identification number or for law enforcement I.D. purposes.

Yet it seems that everybody and their brother require your SSN to run credit checks and open non-financial accounts of various kinds, and we all know they keep them on file. There’s a sort of information gluttony afoot in this age of the Internet — all manner of companies want to compile and retain every last scrap of personal information on everyone they become involved with for one reason or another.

We also know that many of these concerns, for reasons of the cheaps “cost efficiency”, don’t believe in investing in expensive security measures to adequately protect all this personal data they accumulate.

Hence, we occasionally read about some company’s computer files being raped by hackers, the thefts as often as not going undiscovered until a few days after the fact, giving the thieves time to use the information they’ve gleaned before anybody closes the proverbial barn door.

For example, a law was passed not long ago that after a company uses the 3 or 4 digit confirmation code from the back of your credit or debit card, they are required to delete it from your file. I see this as a requirement whose compliance would be something rather difficult to enforce unless the Government hacked into the computers of every company in the United States that accepts purchases on-line or over the telephone, and you can just imagine the hullabaloo that would cause in a country rife with leftist organizations who don’t even believe the Government should be permitted to listen in on the telephone conversations of terrorists who are plotting to murder large quantities of American citizens.

So how can such laws be enforced? The only method that would work with any measure of success would be an aggressive random spot checking system with severe penalties for discovered noncompliance.

This new bill is a tripartison — that’s right, tripartisan effort{3 Democrats, 2 Republicans and John McCain, whom I see as falling under the heading of Name-Only Republican}.

Misgivings about effective implementation aside, I believe the bill is a good one and would like to see it pass. If every company and organization that requires storage of people’s personal information acknowledged their responsibility to secure it at any cost, even if it meant upping their prices for goods and services a little bit, such measures would not be necessary, but this is not the case and many of these concerns provide, without any local alternatives, products that are requisite to basic survival, such as gas and electric.

Why in the hell should a gas company have to have my social security number on file, right?

Over at Stop The ACLU, Gribbit provides some background on founders of the ACLU that should be of interest to those who still believe that organization to be acting in, or ever having acted in, America’s best interests.

The ACLU - The Founding Fathers of Degeneracy & American Communism
by Gribbit on 01-05-06 @ 1:02 am Filed under ACLU, News

We at the Stop The ACLU blog and BlogBurst have been founded with the goal of bringing public awareness of the Anti-American activities of the American Civil Liberties Union. The fact is, the only thing about the ACLU that is American is the first word in the title of their organization. And this has been true since their founding.

We have been focused on the two prominent co-founders Roger Baldwin and Crystal Eastman; but the truth is that there were 7 others. People like Upton Sinclair and Clarence Darrow just to name a couple. But the most notorious of the founding “fathers” of the American Civil Liberals Union (no I didn’t spell that wrong) was Elizabeth “Gurley” Flynn.

Ms. Flynn was the co-founder who ended up being the National Chairman of the Communist Party in the US. A devout Communist who made several trips to the Soviet Union after the denunciation of Communism by Roger Baldwin in 1940. A move which had motives other than those publicized.

The public appearance of the denunciation was to give the illusion of distancing active members of the Communist party from the ACLU. When in fact it was a statement meant to be felt by Josef Stalin. Stalin enjoyed the support of people like Baldwin in the United States before the outbreak of war in Europe. Baldwin and Eastman being the strict pacifists that they were, had a total opposition to the Soviet Union entering the war. But they also saw the Soviet-German non-aggression treaty as a crime against the good Soviet people. So Flynn expulsion from the Executive Committee was a farce.

Flynn was indoctrinated into the Socialist mindset by her parents. At the age of 16 she gave her first speech on socialism entitled “What Socialism Will Do For Women.” A speech which subsequently got her expelled from high school.

At the age of 17 Flynn became an organizer for the International Workers of the World (IWW) and her career as a full time Socialist began. In 1920 she joined forces with Roger Baldwin, Crystal Eastman, Upton Sinclair, Clarence Darrow, Norman Thomas, Jane Addams, and John Dewey to form what we now know as the American Civil Liberties Union.

In 1936, Flynn joined the Communist Party in the United States. She wrote a feminist column for the Communist propaganda sheet the Daily Worker. Two years later, she was elected to the National Committee.

During World War II, Flynn worked tirelessly to get equal pay for women and establish day care centers for working mothers. Efforts which we here at Stop The ACLU applaud. Because contrary to the popular leftist belief, we here have strong feelings about the true equality of men and women of all races, creeds, and religions.

In 1942, she ran for Congress At-Large in New York and received only 50,000 votes.

After the war in 1948, 12 members of the Communist Party were arrested for plotting to overthrow the government by use of violence. Flynn attempted to gain their release but in 1951 she was arrested in a “second wave” of arrests and charged with violation of the Alien Registration Act and sentenced to 5 years at Alderson Women’s Penitentiary.

During her sentence she wrote a book entitled The Alderson Story: My Life as a Political Prisoner (1955).

Soon after her release from prison in 1961, Flynn was elected National Chairman of the Communist Party in the USA. She made several trips to the Soviet Union where in 1964 during a visit she died. She was given a State Funeral in Red Square then returned to be buried with her subversive friends Eugene Dennis, Bill Haywood and the Haymarket Martyrs.

These are they types of people that we are dealing with. This is the type of beginning that the ACLU was given. This is why they have been focused on ending American traditions and changing the structure of our government as founded in 1789.

If you have to miss an Ann Coulter column, don’t miss this one.