February 13th, 2009 | Published in Uncategorized
PUBLIUS’ FORUM FANS
I am proud to announce we have gotten our own domain address. Please visit the new site and be sure and bookmark it as all new entries will be made at the new site:
Please come on over and let’s celebrate the future of Publius Forum at the new address.
February 12th, 2009 | Published in Uncategorized
-By Warner Todd Huston
These last 20 or so years has seen a bifurcated treatment of Abraham Lincoln. There are the enthusiasts and hagiographers that still revere him as the best that America has to offer — the proverbial great emancipator, Father Abraham. Then there is a second stream, enthusiasts of another sort, viewing the Civil War president in the opposite manner. That second group are the Lincoln haters. Those such as Thomas DiLorenzo, the sort that calls Lincoln a criminal and despot, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the sort that castigates Honest Abe as an unremitting racist, have been joined by a small group of Lincoln detractors trying to convince America that Lincoln is to be discounted, even hated by history.
So, which Lincoln is the Lincoln? Is he the Lincoln of “the great emancipator” or the Lincoln of the “great despot” and which Lincoln is the one we as Americans should know?
In truth he is all and neither of the two views in current, popular memory. He is neither the vision of the Constitution destroying, negro hating man the detractors wish to foster, nor the spotless demi-god that the hagiographers want to claim as theirs. Yes he did single things that pulled out of context to the whole of the man are both racist and despotic. He was a man, flawed and imperfect to be sure, but he was also one so singularly radical and ahead of his time that I believe we should lean towards reverence as opposed to despising the 16th president.
February 12th, 2009 | Published in Uncategorized
-By Warner Todd Huston
Back in 2007, many media outlets and their co-conspirators on the left were aghast that George W. Bush would try to place an “opposition researcher” for the GOP into the U.S. attorney general’s office in Arkansas. In high dudgeon, these folks claimed that Bush was “politicizing” the White House counsel and pinned it all on the evil Karl Rove. Bush’s appointment was scuttled to satisfy critics. But, now Obama is doing the same thing — only in a worse form — and the same media and lefty critics are oddly silent.
Barack Obama has been fond of saying that his so-called stimulus bill has “shovel ready jobs” built into it. This would be jobs ready to go, make-work style things of little lasting worth that are reminiscent of FDR’s feels-goodism of the New Deal. Regardless of what Obama really means about any association between shovels and jobs he certainly has at least one shovel-evoking job made up of whole cloth and manned by a likely suspect. I am talking here about Obama’s new job for his dirt digger in residence, the newly minted job of “White House counsel research director.”
It’s a grand title for dirt digger, but there you have it.
February 12th, 2009 | Published in Uncategorized
-By Warner Todd Huston
Union shill Ron Gettelfinger wants you to know that if you don’t support unions you are a racist. That’s right. If you don’t want the undemocratic card check bill to pass Congress you are exactly like the negro hanging, civil rights denying, Jim Crow enforcers of the 1950s.
In one of the most disgusting examples of moral equivalence I’ve seen for a long time — at least one not appearing on such low-born sites such as the DailyKos or Huffington Post — Gettelfinger committed the anti-intellectual outrage of positing that hanging black men in the 1950’s is “just like” voting against a bill that would take away the right of prospective union members to be allowed to vote their conscience in secret as all votes in a democracy are traditionally cast.
February 12th, 2009 | Published in Uncategorized
-By Dan Scott
President Obama went on the road this week to sell his supposed economic rescue bill and naturally talked up the need for the bill. What was fascinating were the Orwellian like claims he used and the stark terms of catastrophe if we don’t do as he demands. He made demonstrably false claims like there is no pork in this bill and he did so with a straight face. It seems pork is not pork if Obama says it’s not. His entire case rested on the premise, “we must do something, doing nothing is not an option.” The premise is also false since the CBO scored the bill as totally ineffective in the long run and in fact harmful to the economy as it would reduce, not increase economic output over the years of it’s implementation. President Obama would have you believe there aren’t any alternatives to the one that is on the table, a demonstrable falsehood. The GOP alternative is half the price with twice the results and even Obama’s own economic advisor admits to it.
Setting aside the reasons for President Obama’s false statements, whether that be of sheer incompetence and ignorance of economics or his willingness to say anything to sell something to which he stakes his name (ego) or if he has a hidden agenda of malice, it is the tactics in which he and his associates uses that should be at issue. Making demonstrably false claims by public officials is a violation of the public trust no matter how well intentioned (political direction) and rationalized (fear) they may be. The MSM is also complicit in supporting this never-ending stream of misstatements. Lying, misrepresenting or deceiving is not an act of Transparency.
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February 12th, 2009 | Published in Uncategorized
Memorial Project officials insist that it was the passengers and crew, not the terrorists, who broke the peace on 9/11
The official explanation for the Crescent of Embrace design is that the path of Flight 93 breaks the circle, turning it into the giant crescent. They call it the Circle of Embrace now, but the Memorial Project’s own website acknowledges that the circle is still broken:
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February 11th, 2009 | Published in Uncategorized
-By Warner Todd Huston
The winter in Alaska has been a particularly harsh one this year. The early winter piled on top of economic hard times has caused some troubles for native people and those that live in remote areas in Alaska. But this is not a new tale of woe, it IS Alaska, after all. While nothing to entirely dismiss, one wonders, why CNN suddenly found this story so compelling? Could it be that they want to portray Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as just as harsh as the winter?
Native peoples and their neighbors in Alaska have been surviving for generations in the same manner. They hunt, fish, and store foods in the summer to survive the harshness of winter, and since becoming a state, they marshall their money to buy fuel and other items brought to them by American ingenuity. Not an easy life, but a life they are used to nonetheless. It hasn’t really changed much for a long time in that remote part of the world. Yet, despite the sameness of it all, suddenly CNN finds Alaskans are “struggling to survive.”
February 11th, 2009 | Published in Uncategorized
-By Warner Todd Huston
Imagine a fast food place that makes you buy a cheeseburger when you want a chicken sandwich. Oh, they don’t mind if you buy the chicken sandwich, too, mind you, but you are forced to purchase a cheeseburger every time you walk through the doors whether you want it or not. Seems a bit like a rip off, not to mention unAmerican, to force you to buy something you don’t want, doesn’t it? Well, this is unionism. Only unions prevent you from even having a job in your chosen profession in the first place to have the cash to buy your chicken sandwich unless you follow their rules. That’s forced labor for other’s benefit.
We used to call that a form of enslavement… now it’s called union membership.
Case in point, teachers unions and teacher’s support for California’s Proposition 8 — the sanctity of marriage law now embroiling California in such turmoil.
February 11th, 2009 | Published in Uncategorized
-By Marie Jon’
For nearly a century, our public school textbooks have been more than suggesting that humans are related to specific members of the animal kingdom. In fact, Darwinism insists on such teaching.
The untruthfulness of the man-made theory of evolution is astounding. It’s bewildering that well-educated people should believe so ardently in this unproven science. This godless teaching is foisted upon our society as though it were empirically-demonstrated fact. Because of Charles Robert Darwin’s belief, secularization and atheism have gained wide acceptance throughout the world.
Darwin himself started out collecting beetles and birds, and ended up an agnostic.
February 10th, 2009 | Published in Uncategorized
Our Crossactionnews.com podcast for Tuesday, February 10, 2009.
Feel free to visit the Publius Forum TalkShoe page to see my past podcasts. New podcasts appear approximately monthly, or whenever the mood strikes me to do one.