In case you didn’t catch it, Senator John McCain was on the view the other day, and in a discussion of Supreme Court justices and the import of appointing strict constitutionalist judges Whoopi took the opportunity to make a wise crack about having to worry about being a slave again. Not like there’s been slavery here since 1865, but more on that in a minute. She put on quite a show of being flustered by that thought, and John McCain graciously ceded the point.
What else can you do without seeming boorish in the face of such blazing ignorance? (or such carefully crafted theater…)
Whoopi seems to think it was the Supreme Court that stopped slavery, however it was not. It was Republicans, and some War Democrats who put the future of the country ahead of party, you know Whoopi, war Democrats like Joe Lieberman. Together with President Lincoln they ended slavery in the United States.
The first step was issuing the two part Emancipation Proclamation — it was one of those dreaded Executive Orders that the extreme left and right always condemn nowadays; if Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul were around back then they probably both would have been calling for impeachment of President Lincoln.
The second part of ending slavery since executive orders are sometimes impermanent was ammending the Constitution of the United States of America, adding the thirteenth ammendment. Doing that ended slavery for all time here. It was followed by the fourteenth ammendment that secured the rights of the ex-slaves, and the fifteenth ammendment that ensured their right to vote. Now since all of the ammendments are part of the constitution, what part of strict constitutionalism is Whoopi in fear of?
I mean doesn’t she want judges who interpret these ammendments strictly? If there weren’t a long history of judges doing just that we could still have shades of slavery today in some states, I guess strict is a good way to interpret the constitution when it comes to individual rights.
What part of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth ammendment doesn’t Whoopi get? Is this really naivete, or is this calculated political posturing and hysterical theater? I guess Whoopi’s the only one who can tell us which it is: just ignorance or just theater.
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.Section 3. No one shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
On the left they are trying to paint Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as a warmongering end-of-days rabid Christian dominionist, and one of their sallies is to say that she tried to ban books. I happen to know who and where the Christian dominionists and rabid Christian Identity movement people are since we’ve been actively fighting them over their attempts to get creationism into public schools. (See here.) I can tell you that Governor Sarah Palin is not one of them.
If you look at the records of asks to ban books (and the Wasilla Public library records them all,) there aren’t any from Sarah. Here’s the table of requests, and the actions the library took from their records:
If this is the best the left can come up with, they better get ready to weep November 3rd.
Resources: PDF file Link in Wasilla
It’s aggravating that Charlie Gibson would not only ask mind numbingly stupid questions that only the tin foil hat brigrade is interested in during the ABC interview of Sarah Palin, but it’s even more aggravating that ABC would edit so viciously to take so much of the pith and wisdom out of Sarah Palin’s replies.
Charlie’s tortuous pimping of five year old talking points and gotchas ranged from terminal BDS misinterpretation of the “Bush Doctrine” to idiotic smears about book banning and global warming apostasy. In that environment it’s tough to have an intelligent conversation about matters essential to America, but Sarah still managed until they they edited out the pith that is.
Gibson was truly on a hunt for the damning sound bite, and not an objective interview. You can see this clearly in the transcript of sections of the interview edited out posted at Mark Levine’s. You see she’s much more knowledgeable about the nature of our relationship with Russia, and the strategy of the moment than Charlie is. You see she is definitely against Islamic terrorism, but that was left on the cutting room floor, and finally you see that she firmly supports Israel, but the part about working with Allies to throttle Iran’s quest for the bomb also didn’t make it to prime time.
With this interview Charlie Gibson has left the ranks of journalism and has become just another hack smear artist, aligned clearly with those on the left. We have those hacks on the right as well, but this is an important election as all presidental elections are. This is clear journalistic malfeasance, and Charlie needs to start wearing his tinfoil hat to interviews so America knows where he is coming from.
It appears that others are taking note of this.
……….
Kasey killed another ball, you can see some of the green fuzz on her tongue if you click on the photo and zoom in
Robert Bidinotto has been doing the best job of detailing the media and blogosphere agitprop against Sarah Palin, this morning I recommend that you read his two part series on the ABC interview:
Sarah vs. ABC, Round 1 (UPDATE on MSM “spin”)
Sarah vs. ABC, Round 2: A case study in media bias
One other thing: the question on “Bush Doctrine” was obvious setup to declare McCain / Palin as four more years of Bush, which is the main campaign point that Barack’s campaign would have you believe. ABC’s collusion in trying to perpetuate that is ridiculously transparent in the snips I’ve seen. While the left will tell us that Charlie gave Sarah pause on the question, in reality it’s like asking her to futher the talking points of the left. I would have paused at that question too, since the Bush Doctrine means many different things to many different people, and the left boiling it down to “pre-emptive strikes” is foolishness. It really was more than pre emptive strikes, and it has changed over the years since 9/11.
My reply would have been “Which Bush Doctrine Charlie?” By making him specify what he was getting at she helped make the ploy transparent. The only thing she might have done better would be to say that the McCain Doctrine is what saved the Bush Doctrine from defeat in Iraq.
I don’t think the left’s BDS has as much traction or heft as they think it does, as President Bush’s poll numbers continue to rise while Congress’ numbers lie in the sewer. This post is the last in which I will compare Bush and McCain, the differences are many, and that’s direction the left wants the conversation to go. I’d rather look at the future, as the candidates should be.
The conversation needs to turn to energy, the economy, and victory in Iraq, not the crap we’ve been re-hashing for five years as that’s gotten rather circular.
Update: Charles over at Little Green Footballs has the interview up, it’s a must see.
A communist* makes an admission after all these years. From the New York Times:
But on Thursday, Mr. Sobell, 91, dramatically reversed himself, shedding new light on a case that still fans smoldering political passions. In an interview, he admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy.
And he implicated his fellow defendant Julius Rosenberg, in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets classified military and industrial information and what the American government described as the secret to the atomic bomb.
What will all the moonbats and Democrat politicians who have defended the Rosenburgs all these years since say now?
* Nowadays they are called “Greens” and “Progressives” — everytime the American people figure out what these groups are really about they reform and change their names. Currently their vanguard groups are ANSWER, World Can’t Wait, and Code Pink.
Earlier today I posted Gone in remembrance of 9/11, but as terrible, as desperate, and as sad as that day and the ones following were it was not something fatal or even terrifying to the overall spirit of America.
America’s courage and steady strengths are indefatigable, unstoppable, persistent – and nothing, nothing can stop that for long. So on 9/11 Islamic terrorists gave us pause but not the lasting blow they really hoped for.
These people don’t appear terrified to me and they sure seem to be enjoying life in the Big Apple, and that’s good for them and great for America because the city that never stops hasn’t stopped.
NEI has an update on what happens when you build wind turbines — you end up using gas. I’m an “all of the above” guy, it’s blue sky for all forms of energy for the next two decades, I don’t know why the pundits aren’t seeing that. 50-70 Petawatt hours of electricity will be needed worldwide by 2050, and who fills that need will be the leading economy of the future. So the T. Boone Pickens plan is ok as long as they aren’t opposing nuclear, which both the wind and natural gas lobbies tend to do.
The energy and environmental lobbies need to all put the knives away and work together to meet that growing demand as robustly and cleanly as possible, this isn’t simple and there’s not one solution. That’s why a great deal more nuclear energy capacity needs to brought online pronto.
From the study NEI cites:
Wind power is clearly not reducing the dependence on imported fuel, contrary to the frequent claims of its proponents. In fact the experience from Germany and Spain shows that it is increasing the dependence of imported natural gas. And that’s not energy security.
