NY Times: Fraught Nexus of Lies, Stupidity, and Bigotry
By Ann Coulter

Perhaps instead of taking potshots at me in its Book Review section, The New York Times could consider reviewing one of my books. With only one review — not in the Book Review — after eight New York Times best-sellers, the editors can rest assured that I know they don’t like me.

Reviewing a book about the 1989 rape of the Central Park jogger last week, the reviewer sniped that “coarser pundits like Ann Coulter continue to exploit the case whenever possible.”

My chapter on the Central Park rape in my recently released, smash New York Times best-seller, “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America,” evidently “exploits” the case by citing facts. Based on those facts, I argue that the real trials reached more believable verdicts than the show trial held by the Left 13 years later.

On April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old investment banker went for a run through Central Park, whereupon she was attacked by a violent mob, savagely beaten, raped and left for dead. By the time the police found her at 1:30 a.m. that night, she was beaten so badly, she had lost three-fourths of her blood and the police couldn’t tell if she was male or female. The homicide unit of the Manhattan D.A.’s office initially took the case because not one of her doctors believed she would be alive in the morning.

Confessions were obtained in accordance with the law, with the defendants’ parents present at all police interrogations. All but one of the confessions was videotaped. After a six-week hearing solely on the admissibility of the confessions, a judge ruled them lawful.

At the trials, evidence was ruled on by the judge and tested in court. Witnesses were presented for both sides and subjected to cross-examination.

One witness, for example, an acquaintance of one of the defendants, testified that when she talked to him in jail after the arrests, he told her that he hadn’t raped the jogger, he “only held her legs down while (another defendant) f–ked her.” (That’s enough for a rape conviction.)

In the opposite of a “rush to judgment,” two multi-ethnic juries deliberated for 10 days and 11 days, respectively, before unanimously finding the defendants guilty of most crimes charged — though innocent of others. The convictions were later upheld on appeal.

The only way liberals could get those convictions overturned was to change venues from a courtroom to a newsroom. So that’s what they did.

The convictions were vacated based not on a new trial or on new evidence, but solely on the “confession” of Matias Reyes.

Coincidentally, this serial rapist and murderer had nothing to lose by confessing to the rape — and much to gain by claiming that he had acted alone, including a highly desirable prison transfer.

As with the tribunals during the French Revolution, the show trials were based on a lie, to wit, that Reyes’ confession constituted “new evidence” that might have led to a different verdict at trial.

In fact, Reyes’ admission that he had raped the jogger changed nothing about the evidence presented in the actual trials. It was always known that others had participated in the attack on the jogger. It was always known that none of the defendants’ DNA — a primitive science back in 1989 — was found on the jogger.

This is why prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer said in her summation to the jury: “Others who were not caught raped her and got away.”

The only new information Reyes provided was that he was one of those who “got away.”

But 13 years later, the show trial was re-litigated in the backrooms of law offices and newsrooms by a remarkably undiverse group of Irish and Jewish, college-educated New Yorkers. They lied about the evidence in order to vindicate a mob and destroy trust in the judicial system.

Liberals despise the rule of law because it interferes with their ability to rule by mob. They love to portray themselves as the weak taking on the powerful. But it is the least powerful who suffer the most once the rule of law is gone. (Dominique Strauss-Kahn is about to discover that the most defenseless, penniless immigrant has the same legal rights as he, in an American court.)

Liberals’ relentless attack on the judicial system is yet another example of their Jacobin lunacy in opposition to calm order. You will note that they never ask: Who did what in this case? All they want to know is which class of people are on trial. Social justice is the only justice that interests the Left because it’s the only justice that can be delivered by the political agitation of a mob.

Thus, the book about the Central Park rape warmly reviewed in the Times was described as raising the “fraught nexus of race, class and gender.” It was said to take a “tour through America’s violently racist past and present.”

What on earth does any of that have to do with the evidence in this particular case?

Another way of determining the guilt or innocence of the convicted rapists would be to look at the facts of the case — the confessions, the corroborating evidence, the state of DNA testing in 1989, the jury verdicts and Reyes’ advantageously timed confession 13 years later.

But looking at actual facts in a criminal trial, as I did, apparently constitutes a coarse exploitation of the case.

I suppose writers who recount truthful facts about the Holocaust coarsely “exploit” that crime, too. Rather than reciting gruesome facts about the Holocaust, I gather the Times would prefer a book that examines the general characteristics of Jews and Germans from 1850 to 1933 — a study of the “fraught nexus” of race, religion and nationality — before deciding whether the Jews deserved it.

Obama’s Budget: More Waste, Fraud, and Self-Abuse
by Ann Coulter

In a priceless formulation in his budget speech two weeks ago, Obama said that Americans look at the poor and say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” And so, in the president’s words, “we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security.”

Except we don’t “contribute.” We are compelled under threat of imprisonment to take out a joint checking account with the government. Ask Wesley Snipes what happens when you fail to “contribute” sufficient alms to Uncle Sam. It’s easy to find him: He’s sitting in the McKean Federal Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania.

The downside of Obama’s exponentially expanding government — to the detriment of the private sector — is that it is now impossible for young people to find work.

But there’s also good news! Now there are plenty of government social workers to counsel the unemployed through their depression over not being able to find a job and to process their unemployment checks.

The unholy alliance between unionized government workers and elected Democrats has led to an explosion in taxpayer-funded government employees, who, incidentally, can never be fired.

In the 1980 award-winning PBS series “Free to Choose,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman described the steps required to fire a civil servant:

“In January 1975, a typist in the Environmental Protection Agency was so consistently late for work that her supervisors demanded she be fired. It took 19 months to do it, and this incredible 21-foot-long chart lists the steps that had to be gone through to satisfy all the rules and all the management and union agreements.

“The process involved the girl’s supervisor, his deputy director, his director, his director of personnel operations, the agency’s branch chief, an employee relations specialist, a second employee relations specialist, a special office of investigations and the director of the office of investigations. This veritable telephone directory, need I add, was paid with taxpayers’ money. Who could invent a better protected job than this one — before it came to its end?”

Thirty years later, a civil servant whose poor job performance consisted of only being chronically late would qualify as “Civil Servant of the Year.”

Taking only one performance problem in a single government office — surfing Internet pornography at the Securities and Exchange Commission: In 2010, 31 employees were found to have spent their workdays downloading Internet porn in the 2 1/2 years during and preceding the financial crash that led to the greatest depression in nearly a century. One of their favorite online porn sites was “Fannie Mae Hill,” while those who prefer big girls were at “Too Big to Fail.”

If only Bernie Madoff had posted naked videos of himself on the Internet, the SEC might have noticed him. Seventeen of the porn-surfers were being paid government salaries of $99,356 to $222,418.

One senior lawyer at SEC headquarters in Washington, D.C., admitted to spending eight hours a day looking at Internet pornography. Sometimes he even worked through his lunch hour. He had downloaded so much pornography that his computer was full — at which point he began burning the pornography onto CDs and DVDs, which he stored in boxes in his office.

In another classic example of the left hand not wanting to know what the right hand was doing, an employee with the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance admitted watching up to five hours a day of pornography in his office. His favorite pornographic websites were bookmarked on his government computer, and he had both downloaded and uploaded pornographic videos to the numerous websites he had joined.

Even after admitting to surfing porn all day on the taxpayers’ dime, not one of the lonely SEC employees was fired, nor were their names released by the government, even in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. (Although most of them were referred for membership in D.C. sex clubs.)

These are the true beneficiaries of big government — or our “commitments,” as Obama calls them — not the poor, the elderly, the disadvantaged, and those about whom we say “There but for the grace of God, go I.”

Democrats don’t resent “the rich” on behalf of the poor. They resent the rich on behalf of the government.

Investigate This!
by Ann Coulter

The Republicans are back in charge in the House of Representatives this week, and not a moment too soon!

Forget “stimulus” bills and “shovel-ready” bailouts (for public school teachers, who need shovels for what they’re teaching), the current financial crisis, which is the second Great Depression, was created slowly and methodically by Democrat hacks running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the past 18 years.

As even Obama’s treasury secretary admitted in congressional hearings, “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system.” And if it’s something Tim Geithner noticed, it’s probably something that’s fairly obvious.

Goo-goo liberals with federal titles pressured banks into making absurd loans to high-risk borrowers — demanding, for example, that the banks accept unemployment benefits as collateral. Then Fannie repackaged the bad loans as “prime mortgages” and sold them to banks, thus poisoning the entire financial market with hidden bad loans.

Believe it or not, the loans went belly up, banks went under, and the Democrats used taxpayer money to bail out their friends on Wall Street.

So far, Fannie and Freddie’s default on loans that should never have been made has cost the taxpayer tens of billions of dollars. Some estimates say the final cost to the taxpayer will be more than $1 trillion. To put that number in perspective, for a trillion dollars, President Obama could pass another stupid, useless stimulus package that doesn’t create a single real job.

Obama’s own Federal Housing Finance Agency reported recently that by 2014, Freddie and Fannie will cost taxpayers between $221 billion to $363 billion.

Over and over again, Republicans tried to rein in the politically correct policies being foisted on mortgage lenders by Fannie Mae, only to be met by a Praetorian Guard of Democrats howling that Republicans hated the poor.

In 2003, Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee wrote a bill to tighten the lending regulation of Fannie and Freddie. Every single Democrat on the committee voted against it.

In the House, Barney Frank angrily proclaimed that Fannie Mae was “just fine.”

Rep. William Clay, D-Mo., accused Republicans of going on a “witch hunt” against Fannie Mae and attempting a “political lynching of Franklin Raines” (which, in a game of “bad metaphor Scrabble” would have been a double word score).

Fannie was pressuring banks to write mortgages with no money down and no proof of income. What could go wrong?

In 2004, Bush’s White House Chief Economist Gregory Mankiw warned that Fannie was creating “systemic risk for our financial system.” In response, Barney Frank went to a champagne brunch with his partner “just because.”

Democrats saw nothing of concern in the Fannie debacle. Bad mortgages don’t contain sodium, do they? They don’t engage in “hate speech.” And they don’t emit carbon dioxide. There was nothing to catch a Democrat’s eye.

In 2005, when the housing bubble burst, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced a bill allowing Fannie Mae to buy up even more schlock mortgages, apparently reasoning that if owning some toxic mortgages is bad, owning lots of them must be better!

He accused Republican opponents of his suicidal bill of being against affordable housing. (And that is a specific example of how liberals love the poor so much, they promoted policies to create millions more of them.)

As late as 2008, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who had received more than $133,000 in political contributions from Fannie Mae, called Fannie “fundamentally strong” and “in good shape” — which is the kind of thing the Politburo used to say about Yuri Andropov right after he died.

(Amazingly, Dodd was only the second most embarrassing Democrat to run for president in 2008, but only because John Edwards was also running that year.)

As the titanic losses were racking up, Fannie Mae’s operators, Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick, disguised the catastrophe by orchestrating a $5 billion accounting fraud — all the while continuing to pressure banks to make absurd, politically correct loans and denouncing Republicans as enemies of the poor.

In Gorelick’s defense, at least when she was wrecking the economy, she wasn’t able to wreck national security by building any more walls between the FBI and the CIA.

Have you ever noticed that whenever there’s a major calamity in this country, the name “Jamie Gorelick” always pops up? I think I’ll pull some articles about the Great Chicago Fire from Nexis to see if there was a “Gorelick” living on Catherine O’Leary’s block.

As Peter Schweizer points out in his magnificent book “Architects of Ruin,” which everyone should read, Enron’s accounting fraud was a paltry $567 million — and it didn’t bring down the entire financial system. Those involved in the Enron manipulations went to prison. Raines and Gorelick not only didn’t go to jail, they walked away with multimillion-dollar payouts, courtesy of the taxpayer.

(Here’s more fascinating Jamie Gorelick trivia: That giant wall she built between the FBI and the CIA, making 9/11 possible? It was financed with a risky loan from Fannie Mae.)

Under the Democrats’ 2010 “Financial Reform” bill (written by Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and Goldman Sachs), Raines keeps his $90 million, Jamie Gorelick keeps her $26.4 million, and Goldman keeps its $12 billion from the AIG bailout.

Let’s get it back. Twelve billion, one hundred and sixteen point four million dollars might not sound like a lot to you, but it starts to add up.

Liberals Give ‘Til It Hurts (You)
By Ann Coulter

Liberals never tire of discussing their own generosity, particularly when demanding that the government take your money by force to fund shiftless government employees overseeing counterproductive government programs.

They seem to have replaced “God” with “Government” in scriptural phrases such as “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37)

This week, we’ll take a peek at the charitable giving of these champions of the poor.

In 2009, the Obamas gave 5.9 percent of their income to charity, about the same as they gave in 2006 and 2007. In the eight years before he became president, Obama gave an average of 3.5 percent of his income to charity, upping that to 6.5 percent in 2008.

The Obamas’ charitable giving is equally divided between “hope” and “change.”

George W. Bush gave away more than 10 percent of his income each year he was president, as he did before becoming president.

Thus, in 2005, Obama gave about the same dollar amount to charity as President George Bush did, on an income of $1.7 million — more than twice as much as President Bush’s $735,180. Again in 2006, Bush gave more to charity than Obama on an income one-third smaller than Obama’s.

In the decade before Joe Biden became vice president, the Bidens gave a total — all 10 years combined — of $3,690 to charity, or 0.2 percent of their income. They gave in a decade what most Americans in their tax bracket give in an average year, or about one row of hair plugs.

Of course, even in Biden’s stingiest years, he gave more to charity than Sen. John Kerry did in 1995, which was a big fat goose egg. Kerry did, however, spend half a million dollars on a 17th-century Dutch seascape painting that year, as Peter Schweizer reports in his 2008 book, “Makers and Takers.”

To be fair, 1995 was an off-year for Kerry’s charitable giving. The year before, he gave $2,039 to charity, and the year before that a staggering $175.

He also dropped a $5 bill in the Salvation Army pail and almost didn’t ask for change.

In 1998, Al Gore gave $353 to charity — about a day’s take for a lemonade stand in his neighborhood. That was 10 percent of the national average for charitable giving by people in the $100,000-$200,000 income bracket. Gore was at the very top of that bracket, with an income of $197,729.

When Sen. Ted Kennedy released his tax returns to run for president in the ’70s, they showed that Kennedy gave a bare 1 percent of his income to charity — or, as Schweizer says, “about as much as Kennedy claimed as a write-off on his 50-foot sailing sloop Curragh.” (Cash tips to bartenders and cocktail waitresses are not considered charitable donations.)

The Democratic base gives to charity as their betters do. At the same income, a single mother on welfare is seven times less likely to give to charity than a working poor family that attends religious services.

In 2006 and 2007, John McCain, who files separately from his rich wife, gave 27.3 percent and 28.6 percent of his income to charity.

In 2005, Vice President Cheney gave 77 percent of his income to charity. He also shot a lawyer in the face, which I think should count for something.

In a single year, Schweizer reports, Rush Limbaugh “gave $109,716 to ‘various individuals in need of assistance mainly due to family illnesses,’ $52,898 to ‘children’s case management organizations,’ including ‘various programs to benefit families in need,’ $35,100 for ‘Alzheimer’s community care — day care for families in need,’ and $40,951 for air conditioning units and heaters delivered to troops in Iraq.”

(Rush also once gave $50 to Maxine Waters after mistaking her for a homeless person.)

The only way to pry a liberal from his money is to hold tickertape parades for him, allowing him to boast about his charity in magazines and on TV.

Isn’t that what Jesus instructed in the Sermon on the Mount?

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do … But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:2-4)

In my Bible, that passage is illustrated with a photo of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

At least the hypocrites in the Bible, Redmond, Wash., and Omaha, Neb., who incessantly brag about their charity actually do pony up the money.

Elected Democrats crow about how much they love the poor by demanding overburdened taxpayers fund government redistribution schemes, but can never seem to open their own wallets.

The only evidence we have that Democrats love the poor is that they consistently back policies that will create more of them.

Obama’s Poll Numbers Down, Imaginary Racism Up
by Ann Coulter

The Democrats are depressed about their collapsing poll numbers, so it’s time to start calling conservatives “racist.”

As we now know from the Journolist list-serv, where hundreds of liberal journalists chat with one another, and which was leaked to Daily Caller this week, journalists cry “racism” whenever they need to distract from bad news for Obama. (Ironically, this story did not make headlines.)

When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal broke during the 2008 campaign, the first response of Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent was to demand that they start randomly picking conservatives — “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Ackerman, frequent guest on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” continued on Journolist:

“What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.”

This is what “racism” has come to in America. Democrats are in trouble, so they say “let’s call conservatives racists.” We always knew it, but the Journolist postings gave us the smoking gun.

This explains why we’ve heard so much about Tea Partiers being “racists” lately.

But despite a frantic search, the media have been unable to produce any actual evidence of racism at the Tea Parties. Even the trace elements are either frauds or utterly trivial.

For example, there was blind terror last week over a Tea Party billboard in northern Iowa that showed a picture of Adolf Hitler, Obama and Vladimir Lenin under the headings: “National Socialism,” “Democratic Socialism” and “Marxist Socialism.”

Overheated? Perhaps. Racist? No. Unless liberals are about to break the news that Lenin and Hitler were black, what we have here, gentlemen, is not racism.

I’m not even sure why liberals are so testy: As an aficionado of liberal talk radio, I’ve heard both Ed Schultz and Randi Rhodes repeatedly say socialism is terrific. (Given their ratings, this is understandable.)

Most sickeningly, the mainstream media continue to spread the despicable lie that someone called civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis the “N-word” 15 times during the anti-ObamaCare rally in Washington. Fifteen times!

That turned out to be another lie. About a week after the protest, Andrew Breitbart offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who could produce a video of Lewis being called the N-word even once — forget 15 times. (That’s the most we can afford. Hey, who do we look like over here, George Soros?)

Plus, the winner might have his video appear on the new hit TV show, “America’s Most Racist Home Videos.”

With hundreds of news cameras, cell phone cameras and camcorders capturing every nook and cranny of the Capitol Hill protest — and news media hungry for an ugly, racist act — it defies possibility that someone called Lewis the N-word once, much less 15 times, without one single camera capturing the incident. And yet, to this day the reward remains unclaimed.

Democrats did their best to provoke an ugly confrontation by marching a (shockingly undiverse) group of black Democrats right through the middle of the anti-ObamaCare protest. But they didn’t get one, so the media just lied and asserted Lewis was called the N-word. (If they wanted to hear the N-word so badly, they should have sent the congressional delegation to a Jay-Z concert.)

Indeed, news anchor after news anchor has indignantly claimed to have footage of the incident, teasing viewers by saying, “We’ll get that right up” or claiming personally to have seen the video -– and then you watch the whole program without ever seeing footage of anyone calling Lewis the N-word.

Dateline: April 18, 2010, CNN’s Don Lemon: “We have the tape here at CNN. I saw it on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’” And yet, Lemon never got around to showing viewers that tape. IF YOU HAVE THE TAPE, DON, CLAIM YOUR $100,000 REWARD!

And now this week, with the NAACP accusing the Tea Partiers of harboring racists, and conservatives demanding proof, the George Soros-backed Center for American Progress ran a 45-second video allegedly showing racism at the Tea Parties.

One of the videos shows an obvious liberal plant announcing, “I’m a proud racist!” Apparently this was their best shot, because they had to work this video into the montage twice, amid utterly innocuous posters, for example, saying, “God bless Glenn Beck.” So I guess they didn’t have anything better.

Here’s the part Soros’ people didn’t show you: In the fuller video shown on the Glenn Beck show, the Tea Partiers surrounded the (liberal plant) racist, jeering at him, telling him he’s not one of them and to go home. In a spectacularly evil fraud, all that was edited out.

Just hours later on MSNBC, Chris Matthews was loudly proclaiming that he would believe the Tea Partiers weren’t racist when he sees “just one of those Tea Party people pull down one of those racist signs at the next Tea Party rally. I’m going to just wait. Reach over, grab the sign and tear it out of the guy’s hands. Then I will believe you.”

Well, here it was. The (liberal plant) racist was driven from the Tea Party by the Tea Partiers. But you won’t see that. Like USDA official Shirley Sherrod’s apparently racist comments excerpted this week from what was, in fact, a commendable speech about racial reconciliation, the alleged Tea Party racism was, literally, “taken out of context.”

New Black Panthers, You’re Free to Go — Not So Fast, Arizona
by Ann Coulter

So I guess all that hysteria about the Arizona immigration law was much ado about nothing. After months of telling us that the Nazis had seized Arizona, when the Obama administration finally got around to suing, its only objection was that the law was “pre-empted” by federal immigration law.

With the vast majority of Americans supporting Arizona’s inoffensive little law, the fact that Obama is suing at all suggests that he consulted exclusively with the craziest people in America before filing this complaint. (Which is to say, Eric Holder’s Justice Department.)

But apparently even they could find nothing discriminatory about Arizona’s law. It’s reassuring to know that, contrary to earlier indications, government lawyers can at least read English.

Instead, the administration argues, federal laws on immigration pre-empt Arizona’s law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

State laws are pre-empted by federal law in two circumstances: When there is a conflict — such as “sanctuary cities” for illegals or California’s medical marijuana law — or when Congress has so thoroughly regulated a field that there is no room for even congruent state laws.

If Obama thinks there’s a conflict, I believe he’s made a damning admission. There’s a conflict only if the official policy of the federal government is to ignore its own immigration laws.

Only slightly less preposterous is the argument that although Arizona’s law agrees with federal law, Congress has engaged in “field pre-emption” by occupying the entire field of immigration, thus prohibiting even harmonious state laws.

Field pre-emption may arise, for example, in the case of federal health and safety laws, so that manufacturers of cars, medical devices and drugs aren’t forced to comply with the laws of 50 different states to sell their products nationally.

And yet, just over a year ago, the Supreme Court held that there was no “field pre-emption” even in the case of an FDA-approved anti-nausea drug because Congress had not explicitly stated that state regulation was pre-empted.

The drug, Phenergan, came with the warning that, if administered improperly (so that it enters an artery), catastrophe could ensue.

In April 2000, Phenergan was administered improperly to Diana Levine — by a clinician ignoring six separate warnings on Phenergan’s label. Catastrophe ensued; Levine developed gangrene and had to have her lower arm amputated.

Levine sued the health center and clinician for malpractice, and won.

But then she also sued the drug manufacturer, Wyeth Laboratories, on the grounds that it should have included more glaring warnings about proper administration of the drug — like, I don’t know, maybe a flashing neon sign on each vial.

Wyeth argued that since the Food and Drug Administration (after 54 years of study) had expressly approved the warnings as provided, state tort law was pre-empted by the federal drug regime.

But the Supreme Court held that Congress had to make pre-emption explicit, which it had not, so Levine was awarded $6.7 million from Wyeth.

If ever there were a case for “implicit pre-emption,” this was it. Without federal supremacy for the FDA’s comprehensive regulation of drugs, pharmaceutical companies are forever at the mercy of state and local laws — and trial lawyers — in all 50 states.

As much as I would like pharmaceutical companies to rot in hell for their support of ObamaCare, I might need their drugs someday. Now, drug prices will not only have to incorporate R&D costs, but also the cost of paying for trial lawyers’ Ferraris. (Perhaps that should be listed as a side effect: “Caution! Improper use may cause nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath, and six new houses for John Edwards.”)

But the point is: According to the Supreme Court’s most recent pre-emption ruling, Arizona’s law is not pre-empted because Congress did not expressly prohibit state regulation of illegal aliens.

In fact, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the pre-emption argument against state laws on immigrants — including laws somewhat at odds with federal law, which the Arizona law is not.

In the seminal case, De Canas v. Bica (1976), the court held 8-0 that a California law prohibiting employers from hiring illegal immigrants was not pre-empted by federal law.

The court -– per Justice William Brennan — said that the federal government’s supremacy over immigration is strictly limited to: (1) a “determination of who should or should not be admitted into the country,” and (2) “the conditions under which a legal entrant may remain.”

So a state can’t start issuing or revoking visas, but that’s about all it can’t do.

Manifestly, a state law about illegal immigrants has nothing to do with immigrants who enter legally or the condition of their staying here. Illegal aliens have neither been “admitted into the country” nor are they “legal entrants.”

Indeed, as Brennan noted in the De Canas case, there’s even “a line of cases that upheld certain discriminatory state treatment of aliens lawfully within the United States.” (You might want to jot some of this down, Mr. Holder.)

So there’s no “field pre-emption” of state laws dealing with aliens, nor is there an explicit statement from Congress pre-empting state regulation of aliens.

On top of that, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld state laws on immigrants in the face of pre-emption challenges. Arizona’s law is no more pre-empted than the rest of them.

Unless, of course, Obama is right and it’s a violation of federal law to enforce federal immigration laws, which is the essence of the Department of Justice’s lawsuit.

Bill Kristol Must Resign
by Ann Coulter

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele was absolutely right. Afghanistan is Obama’s war and, judging by other recent Democratic ventures in military affairs, isn’t likely to turn out well.

It has been idiotically claimed that Steele’s statement about Afghanistan being Obama’s war is “inaccurate” — as if Steele is unaware Bush invaded Afghanistan soon after 9/11. (No one can forget that — even liberals pretended to support that war for three whole weeks.)

Yes, Bush invaded Afghanistan soon after 9/11. Within the first few months we had toppled the Taliban, killed or captured hundreds of al-Qaida fighters and arranged for democratic elections, resulting in an American-friendly government.

Then Bush declared success and turned his attention to Iraq, leaving minimal troops behind in Afghanistan to prevent Osama bin Laden from regrouping, swat down al-Qaida fighters and gather intelligence.

Having some vague concept of America’s national interest — unlike liberals — the Bush administration could see that a country of illiterate peasants living in caves ruled by “warlords” was not a primo target for “nation-building.”

By contrast, Iraq had a young, educated, pro-Western populace that was ideal for regime change.

If Saddam Hussein had been a peach, it would still be a major victory in the war on terrorism to have a Muslim Israel in that part of the globe, and it sure wasn’t going to be Afghanistan (literacy rate, 19 percent; life expectancy, 44 years; working toilets, 7).

But Iraq also was a state sponsor of terrorism; was attempting to build nuclear weapons (according to endless bipartisan investigations in this country and in Britain — thanks, liberals!); nurtured and gave refuge to Islamic terrorists — including the 1993 World Trade Center bombers; was led by a mass murderer who had used weapons of mass destruction; paid bonuses to the families of suicide bombers; had vast oil reserves; and is situated at the heart of a critical region.

Having absolutely no interest in America’s national security, the entire Democratic Party (save Joe Lieberman) wailed about the war in Iraq for five years, pretending they really wanted to go great-guns in Afghanistan. What the heck: They had already voted for the war in Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 when they would have been hanged as traitors had they objected.

The obsession with Afghanistan was pure rhetoric. Democrats have no interest in fighting any war that would serve America’s interests. (They’re too jammed with their wars against Evangelicals, Wal-Mart, the Pledge of Allegiance, SUVs and the middle class.) Absent Iraq, they’d have been bad-mouthing Afghanistan, too.

So for the entire course of the magnificently successful war in Iraq, all we heard from these useless Democrats was that Iraq was a “war of choice,” while Afghanistan — the good war! — was a “war of necessity.” “Bush took his eye off the ball in Afghanistan!” “He got distracted by war in Iraq!” “WHERE’S OSAMA?” and — my favorite — “Iraq didn’t attack us on 9/11!”

Of course, neither did Afghanistan. But Democrats were in a lather and couldn’t be bothered with the facts.

The above complaints about Iraq come — nearly verbatim — from speeches and press conferences by Obama, Joe Biden, and Obama’s national security advisers Susan Rice and Richard Clarke. Also, the entire gutless Democratic Party. Some liberals began including them in their wedding vows.

(By the way, Democrats: WHERE’S OSAMA?)

Obama hasn’t ramped up the war in Afghanistan based on a careful calculation of America’s strategic objectives. He did it because he was trapped by his own rhetorical game of bashing the Iraq war while pretending to be a hawk on Afghanistan.

At this point, Afghanistan is every bit as much Obama’s war as Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson’s war. True, President Kennedy was the first to send troops to Vietnam. We had 16,000 troops in Vietnam when JFK was assassinated. Within four years, LBJ had sent 400,000 troops there.

In the entire seven-year course of the Afghanistan war under Bush, from October 2001 to January 2009, 625 American soldiers were killed. In 18 short months, Obama has nearly doubled that number to 1,124 Americans killed.

Republicans used to think seriously about deploying the military. President Eisenhower sent aid to South Vietnam, but said he could not “conceive of a greater tragedy” for America than getting heavily involved there.

As Michael Steele correctly noted, every great power that’s tried to stage an all-out war in Afghanistan has gotten its ass handed to it. Everyone knows it’s not worth the trouble and resources to take a nation of rocks and brigands.

Based on Obama’s rules of engagement for our troops in Afghanistan, we’re apparently not even fighting a war. The greatest fighting force in the world is building vocational schools and distributing cheese crackers to children.

There’s even talk of giving soldiers medals for NOT shooting people, which I gather will be awarded posthumously. Naomi Campbell is rougher with her assistants than our troops are allowed to be with Taliban fighters.

But now I hear it is the official policy of the Republican Party to be for all wars, irrespective of our national interest.

What if Obama decides to invade England because he’s still ticked off about that Churchill bust? Can Michael Steele and I object to that? Or would that demoralize the troops?

Our troops are the most magnificent in the world, but they’re not the ones setting military policy. The president is — and he’s basing his war strategy on the chants of Moveon.org cretins.

Nonetheless, Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney have demanded that Steele resign as head of the RNC for saying Afghanistan is now Obama’s war — and a badly thought-out one at that. (Didn’t liberals warn us that neoconservatives want permanent war?)

I thought the irreducible requirements of Republicanism were being for life, small government and a strong national defense, but I guess permanent war is on the platter now, too.

Of course, if Kristol is writing the rules for being a Republican, we’re all going to have to get on board for amnesty and a “National Greatness Project,” too – other Kristol ideas for the Republican Party. Also, John McCain. Kristol was an early backer of McCain for president — and look how great that turned out!

Inasmuch as demanding resignations is another new Republican position, here’s mine: Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney must resign immediately.

Supreme Court to Face Mecca
by Ann Coulter

Americans can thank the Supreme Court for the attempted car bombing of Times Square, as well as any future terrorist attacks that might be less “amateurish” and which our commander in chief will be unable to thwart unless the bomb fizzles.

Over blistering dissents by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, five Supreme Court justices have repeatedly voted to treat jihadists like turnstile jumpers. (Thanks, Justice Kennedy!)

That’s worked so well that Obama’s own attorney general is now talking about making massive exceptions to the Miranda warnings — exceptions that will apply to all criminal suspects, by the way — in order to deal with terrorists having to be read their rights as a bomb is about to go off.

Let’s be clear: When Eric Holder thinks we’re being too easy on terrorists, we are being too easy on terrorists.

Either the five liberal justices demanding constitutional rights for terrorists are out of their minds, or the religious worship of President Franklin D. Roosevelt has got to stop. According to liberal logic in the war on terrorism, FDR was a bloodthirsty war criminal.

When six Germans and two Americans were suspected of plotting an attack on U.S. munitions plants during World War II, FDR immediately ordered them arrested and tried in a secret military tribunal held behind closed doors at the Department of Justice.

Within weeks, all were found guilty. Six of the eight, including one U.S. citizen, were given the electric chair. One German was sentenced to life in prison and the other American citizen — who had turned himself in and revealed the plot to the FBI — got 30 years.

The Supreme Court upheld the secret trial, but didn’t get around to producing an opinion until after Old Sparky had rendered its own verdict.

Consider that the eight saboteurs never actually did anything other than enter the country illegally, which I gather is considered a constitutional right these days (except in my future home state of Arizona).

Still, FDR had them executed or imprisoned after trial in a secret military tribunal.

How many future car bombers would be discouraged if Faisal Shahzad were tried by military tribunal and executed by, say, the end of the month? What if Army doctor Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had already gotten the chair?

But we can’t do that because, according to five Supreme Court justices who aren’t “progressive” enough for American liberals, terrorists waging war on U.S. soil get full constitutional protections.

So, instead, we’re left arguing about whether an exception should be made to Miranda rights in the case of a terrorist who plotted with foreign agents to plant a car bomb in Times Square. (“You have the right to remain violent …”)

We are at war. The Supreme Court has no right to stick its fat, unelected nose into the commander in chief’s constitutional war powers, particularly in a war against savages whose only reason for not nuking us yet is that they don’t have the technology. (The New York Times hasn’t gotten around to printing it.)

The reason Democrats are obsessed with controlling the courts is that unelected judges issuing final edicts is the only way liberals can attain their insane policy agenda. No group of Americans outside of Nancy Pelosi’s district would vote for politicians who enacted laws similar to the phony “constitutional rights” liberal justices proclaim from the Supreme Court.

President Obama would rather surrender his authority as commander in chief to the Supreme Court than get blamed for deciding to treat terrorists as if they’re Paris Hilton facing a drunk driving charge. Let the court do it.

(Recall that Obama’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attack, in a civilian court in New York was even less popular with the American people than Jay Leno at 10 p.m.)

Meanwhile, elected Democrats in Congress are also happy to yield their law-making authority to the court, so they don’t have to be the ones voting for laws mandating late-term abortions; hard-core pornography on the Internet; government-sanctioned race discrimination; forced cross-district busing; confiscatory property tax hikes to fund socially engineered school desegregation plans; bans on the public observation of religious traditions shared by most Americans; free education, health care and welfare benefits for illegal immigrants; and a redefinition of the 2,000-year-old institution of marriage against the express wishes of voters in every state to vote on it.

(Note: This is only a partial list.)

The Supreme Court has become a Blue Ribbon Commission for Lunatics, issuing binding edicts in 5-4 votes that Americans would never in a million years vote for. Distinguishing between Elena Kagan and any other Democratic nominee is like distinguishing between Hannibal Lecter and Vlad the Impaler.

That Old Obama Magic is Back
by Ann Coulter

Once again, the people have spoken, and this time they quoted what Dick Cheney said to Pat Leahy.

Less than two weeks ago, The New York Times said that so much as a “tighter-than-expected” victory for Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley would incite “soul-searching among Democrats nationally,” which sent Times readers scurrying to their dictionaries to look up this strange new word, “soul.”

A close win for Coakley, the Times said, would constitute “the first real barometer of whether problems facing the party” will affect the 2010 elections.

But when Coakley actually lost the election by an astounding 5 points, the Chicago boys in the White House decided it was the chick’s fault.

Democratic candidate Martha Coakley may be a moral monster, but it’s ridiculous to blame her for losing the election. She lost because of the Democrats’ obsession with forcing national health care down the nation’s throat.

Coakley campaigned exactly the way she should have.

As a Democrat running in a special election for a seat that had been held by a Democratic icon (and another moral monster) for the past 46 years in a state with only 12 percent registered Republicans, Coakley’s objective was to have voters reading the paper on Friday, saying: “Hey, honey, did you know there was a special election four days ago? Yeah, apparently Coakley won, though it was a pretty low turnout.”

Ideally, no one except members of government unions and Coakley’s immediate family would have even been aware of the election.

And until Matt Drudge began covering it like a presidential election a week ago, it might have turned out that way.

Coakley had already won two statewide elections, while her Republican opponent, Scott Brown, had only won elections in his district. She had endorsements from the Kennedy family and the current appointed Democratic senator, Paul Kirk — as well as endless glowing profiles in The Boston Globe.

And by the way, as of Jan. 1, Brown had spent $642,000 on the race, while Coakley had spent $2 million.

On Jan. 8, just 11 days before the election, The New York Times reported: “A Brown win remains improbable, given that Democrats outnumber Republicans by 3 to 1 in the state and that Ms. Coakley, the state’s attorney general, has far more name recognition, money and organizational support.”

It was in that article that the Times said a narrow Coakley win would be an augury for the entire Democratic Party. But now she’s being hung out to dry so that Democrats don’t have to face the possibility that Obama’s left-wing policies are to blame.

Alternatively, Democrats are trying to write off Brown’s colossal victory as the standard seesawing of public sentiment that hits both Republicans and Democrats from time to time. As MSNBC’s Chris Matthews explained, it was just the voters saying “no” generally, but not to anything in particular.

Except when Republicans win political power, they hold onto it long enough to govern. The Democrats keep being smacked down by the voters immediately after being elected and revealing their heinous agenda.

As a result, for the past four decades, American politics has consisted of Republicans controlling Washington for eight to 14 years — either from the White House or Capitol Hill — thus allowing Americans to forget what it was they didn’t like about Democrats, whom they then carelessly vote back in. The Democrats immediately remind Americans what they didn’t like about Democrats, and their power is revoked at the voters’ first possible opportunity.

Obama has cut the remembering-what-we-don’t-like-about-Democrats stage of this process down from two to four years to about 10 months. Folks, I’m convinced that if we all work really hard, we can get it down to three months.

Four years of Jimmy Carter gave us two titanic Reagan landslides, peace and prosperity for eight blessed years — and even a third term for his feckless vice president, George H.W. Bush.

Two years of Bill Clinton gave us a historic Republican sweep of Congress, which killed the entire Clinton agenda (with the exception of partial-birth abortion and felony obstruction of justice) — and also gave us two terms for George W. Bush.

And now, merely one year of Obama and a Democratic Congress has given us the first Republican senator from Massachusetts in 31 years.

In other recent news, last November, New Jersey voters, who haven’t voted for a Republican for president since 1988, threw out their incumbent Democratic governor, Jon Corzine. In Virginia, which Obama carried by 6 points a year earlier, a religious-right Republican won the governor’s office by 17 points.

Sen. Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, won his last election in 2006 by 28 points — the largest margin for a Democratic Senate candidate in that state in a quarter-century.

Since voting for the Senate health care bill last Christmas, the once-bulletproof Sen. Nelson not only gets booed out of Omaha pizzerias, but he has also seen his job approval rating fall to 42 percent and his disapproval rating soar to 48 percent. (Meanwhile, the junior senator from Nebraska, Mike Johanns, who voted against the bill, has a job approval rating of 63 percent.)

The Democrats have no natural majority because they have no fundamental principles — at least none that they are willing to state out loud. They are like a drunken vagrant who emerges from the alley to cause havoc every few years. They are the perpetual toothache of American politics.

To be sure, the fact that 52 percent of Massachusetts voters are racist, sexist tea-baggers — i.e., voted for a Republican — means only that the Democrats just went from having the largest congressional majority in a generation to the second largest. But this was “Teddy Kennedy’s seat.” And it was in Massachusetts.

Now, no Democrat is safe.

But the country just got a lot safer.

Harry Reid’s Negro Problem
by Ann Coulter

The recently released book Game Change reports that Sen. Harry Reid said America would vote for Barack Obama because he was a “light-skinned” African-American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

The book also says Bill Clinton called Sen. Ted Kennedy to ask for his endorsement of Hillary over Obama, saying of Obama: “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.”

And we already knew that Obama’s own vice president, Joe Biden, called Obama “articulate” and “clean” during the campaign. (So you can see why Biden got the vice presidential nod over Reid.)

Democrats regularly say things that would end the career of any conservative who said them. And still, blacks give 90 percent of their votes to the Democrats.

Reid apologized to President Obama, and Obama accepted the apology using his “white voice.” So now all is forgiven.

Clinton also called Obama to apologize, but ended up asking him to bring everybody some coffee.

Now the only people waiting for an apology are the American people who want an apology from Nevada for giving us Harry Reid.

Reid will be the guest of honor at a luncheon in Las Vegas this week hosted by a group called “African-Americans for Harry Reid.” That’s if you can call two people a “group.”

They used to be called “African-Americans for David Duke,” but that was mostly a social thing. Now they’re doing real political organizing.

If this gets off the ground, “African-Americans for Harry Reid” will be a political juggernaut that cannot be denied. Their motto: “We Will Be Heard — As Soon As I Get This Gentleman’s Coffee.”

Reid has also picked up an endorsement from the United Light-Skinned Negro College Fund. And Tiger Woods is considering endorsing him. He is the one light-skinned half-black guy right now who’s thrilled with Reid’s comments.

Reid’s defenders don’t have much to work with. Their best idea so far is that at least he said “Negro” and not “Nigra.”

Liberals are saying that since Reid was pointing out Obama’s pale hue in support of his run for the presidency, it was OK to praise his skin color and non-Negro dialect. (Reid is denying reports that in 2007 he said to Obama: “You should run. You people are good at that.”)

In fact, Reid didn’t endorse Obama until after Hillary dropped out of the race. It turns out, he also admired Hillary for her light skin and the fact that she only uses a Negro dialect when she wants to.

In the alternative, liberals are defending Reid by claiming he said nothing that wasn’t true, though he may have used “an unusual set” of words — as light-skinned Reid-defender Harold Ford Jr. put it.

As long as we’re mulling the real meaning of Reid’s words and not just gasping in awe at the sorts of things Democrats get away with saying, I think Reid owes America an apology for accusing the entire country of racism. A country, let us note, that just elected a manifestly unqualified, at least partially black man president.

On the other hand, Reid couldn’t have been expecting Republicans to vote for a Democrat, so I gather Reid was accusing only Democratic voters of being racists.

I don’t disagree with that, but I’d like to get it in writing.

I think the Democratic platform should include a statement that the Democrats will not vote for dark-skinned blacks with a Negro dialect. Check with Harry Reid on the precise wording, but something along the lines of “no one darker than Deepak Chopra.”

The “whereas” clauses can include the Democrats’ history of supporting slavery, segregation, racial preferences, George Wallace and Bull Connor — and also a precis of their treatment of dark-skinned Clarence Thomas.

BREAKING NEWS: Hoping to curry favor with the African-American community, Sen. Reid was arrested late this afternoon after breaking into his own home.

Democrats couldn’t win an election without the black vote, but the Democratic Party keeps treating blacks like stage props, wheeling them out for photo-ops and marches now and then but almost never putting them in charge of anything important.

President Bush appointed the first black secretary of state and then the first black female secretary of state. Meanwhile, the closest black woman to Bill Clinton was his secretary, Betty Currie.

The one sitting black Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, was appointed by a Republican.

The head of the Republican National Committee is black — medium-skinned, but liberals treated Michael Steele like a dark-skinned black when they threw Oreo cookies at him during the Maryland gubernatorial campaign in 2002.

After the 2000 election, Democrats had a chance to make one of the rare smart Democrats, Donna Brazile, head of the Democratic National Committee. Brazile had just run a perfectly respectable campaign on behalf of that bumbling buffoon Al Gore.

She also happens to be black. Again, blacks give 90 percent of their votes to the Democrats.

But the Democrats skipped over Brazile and handed the DNC chairmanship to the goofy white guy in lime green pants, Howard Dean.

UPDATE: Harry Reid has just apologized to the light-skinned people of Haiti for the 7.0 earthquake that hit them Tuesday afternoon.

The single most insulting remark made about blacks in my lifetime was Bill Clinton’s announcement — after being caught in the most humiliating sex scandal in world history — that he was “the first black president.”

He did not call himself “the first black president” when liberals were dancing and singing to Fleetwood Mac at his inauguration. He did not call himself “the first black president” when he was feeling our pain and being lionized by the media. He did not call himself “the first black president” when he was trying to socialize health care or passing welfare reform.

Not until he became a national embarrassment did Clinton recognize that he was “the first black president.”

At least he could finally get his own coffee.

Ivana Trump Escorted Off Plane: Napolitano Declares ‘The System Worked’
by Ann Coulter

In response to a Nigerian Muslim trying to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, the government will now prohibit international travelers from going to the bathroom in the last hour before the plane lands.

Terrorists who plan to bomb planes during the first seven hours of the eight-hour flight, however, should face no difficulties, provided they wait until after the complimentary beverage service has been concluded.

How do they know Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab didn’t wait until the end of the flight to try to detonate explosives because he heard the stewardess announce that the food service was over and seats would have to be placed in their upright position? I can’t finish my snack? This plane is going down!

Also prohibited in the last hour of international flights will be: blankets, pillows, computers and in-flight entertainment. Another triumph in Janet Napolitano’s “Let’s stay one step behind the terrorists” policy!

For the past eight years, approximately 2 million Americans a day have been subjected to humiliating searches at airport security checkpoints, forced to remove their shoes and jackets, to open their computers, and to remove all liquids from their carry-on bags, except minuscule amounts in marked 3-ounce containers placed in Ziploc plastic bags — folding sandwich bags are verboten — among other indignities.

This, allegedly, was the price we had to pay for safe airplanes. The one security precaution the government refused to consider was to require extra screening for passengers who looked like the last three-dozen terrorists to attack airplanes.

Since Muslims took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, every attack on a commercial airliner has been committed by foreign-born Muslim men with the same hair color, eye color and skin color. Half of them have been named Mohammed.

An alien from the planet “Not Politically Correct” would have surveyed the situation after 9/11 and said: “You are at war with an enemy without uniforms, without morals, without a country and without a leader — but the one advantage you have is they all look alike. … What? … What did I say?”

The only advantage we have in a war with stateless terrorists was ruled out of order ab initio by political correctness.

And so, despite 5 trillion Americans opening laptops, surrendering lip gloss and drinking breast milk in airports day after day for the past eight years, the government still couldn’t stop a Nigerian Muslim from nearly blowing up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day.

The “warning signs” exhibited by this particular passenger included the following:

His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

He’s Nigerian.

He’s a Muslim.

His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

He boarded a plane in Lagos, Nigeria.

He paid nearly $3,000 in cash for his ticket.

He had no luggage.

His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Two months ago, his father warned the U.S. that he was a radical Muslim and possibly dangerous.

If our security procedures can’t stop this guy, can’t we just dispense with those procedures altogether? What’s the point exactly?

(To be fair, the father’s warning might have been taken more seriously if he had not simultaneously asked for the U.S. Embassy’s Social Security number and bank routing number in order to convey a $28 million inheritance that was trapped in a Nigerian bank account.)

The warning from Abdulmutallab’s father put his son on some list, but not the “no fly” list. Apparently, it’s tougher to get on the “no fly” list than it was to get into Studio 54 in the ’70s. Currently, the only people on the “no fly” list” are the Blind Sheik and Sean Penn.

The government is like the drunk looking for his keys under a lamppost. Someone stops to help, and asks, “Is this where you lost them?” No, the drunk answers, but the light’s better here.

The government refuses to perform the only possibly effective security check — search Muslims — so instead it harasses infinitely compliant Americans. Will that help avert a terrorist attack? No, but the Americans don’t complain.

The only reason Abdulmutallab didn’t succeed in bringing down an airplane with 278 passengers was that: (1) A brave Dutchman leapt from his seat and extinguished the smoldering Nigerian; and (2) the Nigerian apparently didn’t have enough detonating fluid to cause a powerful explosion.

In addition to the no blanket, no computer, no bathroom rule, perhaps the airlines could add this to their preflight announcement about seat belts and emergency exits: “Should a passenger sitting near you attempt to detonate an explosive device, you may be called upon to render emergency assistance. Would you be willing to do so under those circumstances? If not we will assign you another seat …”

Less Health Care for More Money
by Ann Coulter

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a column about John Brodniak of Oregon, who developed a cavernous hemangioma, causing him great pain as blood leaks into his brain.

According to Kristof, Brodniak can’t get medical help because we don’t have universal health care. Senators who vote against ObamaCare, Kristof said, are morally equivalent to someone who would walk past a man “writhing in pain on the sidewalk.”

In another article in the Times, William Yardley wrote about Melvin Tsosies — also of Oregon — who ended up with $200,000 in medical bills after having a heart attack.

As of March 2008, Yardley reported, Tsosies was waiting to find out if he would win the Oregon lottery for health insurance. But with 600,000 uninsured state residents and a “universal” health care program with only enough money to pay for about 24,000 of them, Tsosies is more likely to win a Powerball lottery.

How can this be happening? Oregon already has “universal health care”! (Probably just a coincidence, but isn’t Oregon also the only state with physician-assisted suicide?)

Once again forgetting about the existence of the Internet, the Times neglects to mention its own erstwhile enthusiasm for Oregon’s universal health care plan, introduced back in 1990.

Back then, the Times published an editorial titled “Oregon’s Brave Medical Experiment,” hailing this technocratic monstrosity as an example of “hardheaded compassion” designed to make “health coverage available to many more families.”

Ron Wyden — then a congressman from Oregon, now a U.S. senator at the forefront of pushing “universal health care” onto the nation — said: “This is a strong dramatic step toward universal access of health care.” He predicted, “[T]his is going to be copied everywhere.”

No wonder Wyden is such an ardent proponent of national health care — it will force states that didn’t adopt these idiotic universal health care schemes to bail out the ones that did.

Liberals cite medical horror stories from the very states they once cheered for enacting universal health care in order to argue for a national health care plan that will wreck the entire nation’s medical care the same way liberal states already wrecked their own medical care.

Only Democrats could propose fixing one Bernie Madoff-style scam with an even bigger Bernie Madoff-style scam.

Maybe when national universal health care fails, we’ll be able to go international. Then interplanetary — then interstellar! Why should I pay for my gall bladder surgery when some Venusian could?

Eighty-five percent of Americans are happy with their health care, but Democrats have a plan to make it worse for more money. As a bonus, national health care will add trillions of dollars to the national debt, and your insurance rates will skyrocket.

Democrats are being utterly disingenuous to say that you won’t have to leave your current plan under national health care. Maybe, but it won’t be your choice: Your employer will be making that decision for you.

Recall that one of the big selling points of national health care is that it is supposed to reduce costs for American businesses. The only way national health care will make American companies “more competitive” is if they dump their employees into the public health care system.

It’s so weird! We expected X number of people to show up for health care and instead 75X showed up! Yeah, just like every other government program in the history of the world.

Ten years from now, we’ll be talking about cost overruns of $6 trillion — but by then, national health care will be an untouchable “third rail” of politics, just as Medicare is now. (Ironically, injuries sustained from actually touching the third rail won’t be covered under ObamaCare.)

As with Medicare, voters will be terrified to go back to even the wisp of a free market system we have now, afraid that they’ll never be able to get health insurance without the government providing it. Having been dragged unwillingly into the government plan, how will a 58-year-old be able to leave the public system and get insurance on the free market?

Speaking of which, how many of you are planning to retire on your Social Security benefits? Just you there, with the shopping cart full of cans?

The only solution will be for the government to keep running up gigantic deficits and raising taxes on “the rich,” which, in turn, will stifle job creation and economic growth in a phenomenon known to economists as “the Carter years.”

In addition to forcing Americans into dealing with surly government workers in order to obtain medical care, sooner or later, there’s no free lunch. (And if government X-rays are anything like the photos the DMV takes for your license, count me out. I don’t want my lungs looking like they had a bad hair day.)

Even if national health care puts the screws to doctors and pharmaceutical companies by reimbursing them below cost — so all future doctors will soon resemble DMV employees and no new drugs will ever be invented — the government is still going to have to cut services and pay for the system with massive tax hikes.

Which is exactly what happened with Oregon’s “Brave Medical Experiment.”

Do Smoking Guns Cause Global Warming, Too?
by Ann Coulter

As we now know (and by “we” I mean “everyone with access to the Internet”), the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has just been caught ferociously manipulating the data about the Earth’s temperature.

Recently leaked e-mails from the “scientists” at CRU show that, when talking among themselves, they forthrightly admit to using a “trick” to “hide the decline” in the Earth’s temperature since 1960 — as one e-mail says. Still another describes their manipulation of the data thus: “[W]e can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!”

Am I just crazy from the heat or were they trying to deceive us?

Global warming cheerleaders in the media were quick to defend the scandalous e-mails, explaining that, among scientists, the words “trick,” “hide the decline” and “garbage” do not mean “trick,” “hide the decline” and “garbage.” These words actually mean “onion soup,” “sexual submissive” and “Gary, Ind.”

(Boy, it must be great to be able to redefine words right in the middle of a debate.)

Also, of course, the defenders said that the words needed to be placed “in context” — the words’ check was in the mail, and they’d like to spend more time with their families.

I have placed the words in context and it turns out what they mean is: gigantic academic fraud.

The leaked e-mail exchanges also show the vaunted “scientists” engaging in a possibly criminal effort to delete their own smoking-gun e-mails in response to a Freedom of Information request. Next, the fanatics will be telling us that “among scientists,” this behavior does not indicate knowledge of guilt.

If I recall correctly, their next move should be to fire the special prosecutor late Saturday night.

These e-mails aren’t a tempest in a teapot. They are evidence of pervasive fraud by a massively influential institution that has dominated news coverage of global warming.

CRU was regularly cited as the leading authority on “global climate analysis” — including by the very news outlets that are burying the current scandal, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. The CRU alone received more than $23 million in taxpayer funds for its work on global warming.

Having claimed to have collected the most complete data on the Earth’s temperature for the last half century, the CRU’s summary of that data was used by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for its 2007 report demanding that we adopt a few modest lifestyle changes, such as abolishing modern technology, reverting to hunter/gatherer status and taxing ourselves into servitude.

But then last weekend — in the middle of the “Let’s Cook the Books!” e-mail scandal — the CRU said that all its data on the Earth’s temperature since 1960 had been irretrievably “lost.” (Although I suspect “overcooked” might be a more apt term.)

The way this episode is unfolding, the environmentalists may be forced to drop their phantom threat of global warming and go back to the phantom threat of global cooling.

Most disturbingly, the CRU-affiliated “scientists” were caught red-handed conspiring to kill the careers and reputations of scientists who dissented from the religion of global warming. Indignant that scientific journals were publishing papers skeptical of global warming, the cult members plotted to get editors ousted and the publications discredited.

This sabotage of global warming dissenters may be more galling than their manipulation of the data. Until now, the global warming cult’s sole argument has been to demand that everyone shut up in response to the “scientific consensus” that human activity was causing global warming.

That’s their idea of a free and open debate.

It’s always the same thing with primitive people — voodoo practitioners, rain dancers and liberals. In lieu of facts, debate and a weighing of the evidence, religious fanatics respond to all counterarguments by invoking a higher authority: the witch doctor, a “scientific consensus,” “the Constitution” or “historians are agreed.”

Liberals won’t tell us why Congress passed a law outlawing incandescent lightbulbs by 2014 — a bill solemnly delivered to the president in a Prius hybrid (making it the slowest-moving bill in U.S. history). Instead, they tell us there’s a “scientific consensus” that we have to use fluorescent lightbulbs or we’ll all die.

They won’t tell us why Ten Commandments monuments must be stripped from every public space in America. Instead, they tell us “the Constitution” says so (according to the high priests who interpret it to mean things the document doesn’t remotely say).

They won’t tell us what Sen. Joe McCarthy lied about. They say: Historians are agreed that McCarthy was a liar. (These are the same historians who also stated as fact that “few American Communists were spies” — until decrypted Soviet cables proved that the Communist Party was awash with Soviet spies.)

This is precisely what liberals accuse Christians of doing, but which Christians never do. We don’t cite the Bible as authority — and then refuse to let anyone read it. We certainly don’t claim to have “lost” it, so you can’t check for yourself. But that’s exactly what the CRU has done with its secret data allegedly showing a warming Earth.

Also, biblical data on the great flood and Noah’s ark have held up remarkably well.

Even if the Earth were warming — which apparently it is not — the idea that humans using energy-efficient lightbulbs would alter the temperature of the globe is approximately as plausible as the Aztecs’ belief that they were required to wrench the beating heart out of living, breathing humans in order to keep the sun on its path.

Sadly, the “human sacrifice deniers” lost the argument to Aztec CRU scientists, who explained that there was a “scientific consensus” on the benefits of ritual murder.

But at least the Aztecs only slaughtered tens of thousands of humans in the name of “climate change.” The global warming cultists want us all dead.

MSNBC Exclusive: Fort Hood Never Happened!
by Ann Coulter

It’s been weeks since eyewitnesses reported that Maj. Nidal Hasan shouted “Allahu akbar” before spraying Fort Hood with gunfire, killing 13 people.

Since then we also learned that Hasan gave a medical lecture on beheading infidels and pouring burning oil down their throats (unfortunately not covered under the Senate health care bill). Some wondered if perhaps a pattern was beginning to emerge but were promptly dismissed as racist cranks.

We also found out Hasan had business cards printed up with the jihadist abbreviation “SOA” for “Soldier of Allah.” Was that enough to conclude that the shooting was an act of terrorism — or does somebody around here need to take another cultural sensitivity class?

And we know that Hasan had contacted several jihadist Web sites and that he had been exchanging e-mails with a radical Islamic cleric in Yemen. The FBI learned that last December, but the rest of us only found out about it a week ago.

Is it still too soon to come to the conclusion that the Fort Hood shooting was an act of terrorism?

Alas, it is still too early to tell at MSNBC. For Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews — at least two of whom would be severely punished under Shariah law — the shooting of George Tiller was an act of terrorism, no question. The death of a census taker in Kentucky was also an act of terrorism. (We learned this week that it was a suicide/insurance scam.) But as to Maj. Hasan, the jury is still out — and will be out for many, many years.

Actually, according to Keith, the Fort Hood massacre may not have happened at all. He has argued persuasively, on several occasions, that it is impossible, literally impossible, to commit mass murder at a military base.

Like many on the left, Keith loved to sneer at all terrorist plots allegedly foiled by the Bush administration. He was particularly contemptuous of the purported plan of six aspiring jihadists to sneak onto the Fort Dix army base and kill as many soldiers as they could.

On Nov. 11, 2008, he explained why the Fort Dix terrorist plot was a laughable fraud, saying the “morons” apparently didn’t realize that “all the soldiers have these big guns.”

Keith, the moron, apparently doesn’t realize that on military bases on U.S. soil only MPs have guns. (Special authorization is required for soldiers to carry a firearm, which can be granted only in the case of a specific and credible threat against military personnel in that region. Thank you, Bill Clinton.)

Again on May 21 this year, Olbermann ridiculed the Fort Dix terror plot, pointing out that the six alleged terrorists seemed to be “forgetting that every man there was armed.”(Curiously, even though ROTC was offered at the ag school Keith attended, he appears not to have investigated it.)

But it was not until Aug. 21 of this year that Olbermann hit upon the true reason for the Bush administration’s hyping of this implausible terror plot. According to Keith — and I’m not kidding — it was to distract from Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ announcement that her state had been unable to respond adequately to a tornado because Bush had diverted the National Guard to his crazy war in Iraq!

The Bush administration, you see, had revealed the arrest of the Fort Dix conspirators the day after Sebelius’ world-reverberating bombshell about Kansas’ decimated National Guard! Eureka!

This little theory of Keith’s, adorable though it is, has problems apart from his insistence that it would be impossible to kill army personnel on “a closed compound full of trained soldiers with weapons.” The other problem is Gov. Sebelius was full of crap.

First, Sebelius wasn’t in much of a position to know how well Kansas responded to the tornado, inasmuch as she had been partying at New Orleans’ Jazzfest the day after the tornado hit — while Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts and both local congressmen were on the scene, helping the rescue efforts.

Second, the manager of the actual rescue team soon contradicted Sebelius, saying: “We have all the staff that we need and can manage at this time. If we had more people right now, it would just start being a cluster.”

The Kansas National Guard had 352 Humvees, 72 dump trucks and more than 320 other trucks, which would seem to be sufficient for the town hit by the tornado, Greensburg, Kan., population 1,574. That’s almost one National Guard truck for every two people. (This is the same tornado that Obama claimed had killed 10,000 people. He was off by 9,988.)

Third, it turned out that Gov. Sebelius had rejected offers of additional help from neighboring National Guard units.

Consequently, the day after her dramatic cri de coeur for more National Guard resources, Sebelius’ office completely reversed course, telling The Associated Press that the rescue efforts were going “just fine.”

What the governor had meant, her office explained, was that Kansas’ National Guard might be stretched thin if, hypothetically, another natural disaster were to strike immediately after the tornado.

Keith, unfortunately, was unaware of Sebelius’ humiliating about-face, as it was not carried on Daily Kos.

Last December, five of the Fort Dix plotters were found guilty by a federal jury of conspiring to kill American soldiers. The sixth had already pleaded guilty.

Still, compare the macho posturing of the Bush administration over thwarting the Fort Dix terror plot to the masterful handling of domestic terrorist plots since the angel Obama has taken the helm. Why, the Obama administration managed to capture and arrest Maj. Hasan without violating a single American’s civil liberties!

Muslim Suffers Bruised Ego in Fort Hood Tragedy
by Ann Coulter

The massacre at Fort Hood last week is the perfect apotheosis of the liberal victimology described in my book “Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America.”

According to witnesses, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan entered a medical facility at Fort Hood, prayed briefly, then shouted “Allahu akbar” before he began gunning down American troops. Now I don’t know which to be more afraid of: Muslims or government-run health care systems.

President Obama honored the victims by immediately warning Americans not to “jump to conclusions” — namely, the obvious conclusion that the attack was an act of Islamic terrorism. As conclusions go, it wasn’t much of a jump.

But the mainstream media waited for no information — indeed actively avoided learning any information — before leaping to the far less obvious conclusion that the suspect’s mass murder was set off by “stress.”

The day after the slaughter, The New York Times ran one editorial and two of three op-eds asserting as much — which was at least one more than the Times usually runs about psycho-killer soldiers going on rampages.

Two days after the mass shooting, the Times’ laughably predictable headlines about the Fort Hood bloodbath were:

• “Preliminary Inquiry Finds No Link to Terror Plot”
• “Painful Stories Take a Toll on Military Therapists”
• “When Soldiers’ Minds Snap”

The Los Angeles Times jumped to the exact same conclusion, running an article on the massacre titled: “Fort Hood Tragedy Rocks Military as It Grapples With Mental Health Issues.” Time magazine followed suit, posting an article titled: “Stresses at Fort Hood Were Likely Intense for Hasan.”

Inasmuch as Maj. Hasan had never been deployed overseas, much less seen combat, liberals seem to have discovered the first recorded case of “pre-traumatic stress syndrome.”

Their point was: The real victim of Fort Hood was Maj. Hasan. Indeed, all Muslims were the victims that day.

The media quickly set to work assembling lachrymose accounts of taunts Hasan had been subjected to in the military for being a Muslim, the most harrowing of which seems to have been his car being keyed at his off-base apartment complex.

I suppose we should be relieved that liberals weren’t claiming Hasan snapped because of the dimming prospects for a health care bill by the end of the year.

The evidence for the manifestly obvious conclusion we were supposed to avoid jumping to is rather more extensive.

According to numerous eyewitness accounts, Hasan denounced the “war on terror” as a war against Islam, said Muslims should attack Americans in retaliation for the war in Iraq, defended suicide bombers and said he was “happy” when a Muslim murdered a soldier at a military recruiting center in Arkansas earlier this year.

Stranger still, he wasn’t auditioning for his own show on MSNBC when he made these statements.

Hasan shared a “spiritual adviser” with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, whose unseemly enthusiasm for jihad got him banned from speaking in Britain, even by video link.

A few years ago, Hasan delivered an hour-long PowerPoint lecture to an audience of doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, arguing that non-Muslims should be beheaded and have burning oil poured down their throats.

He had tried to contact al-Qaida, and at least one U.S. intelligence official says the Army knew it.

Despite being well aware of Hasan’s disturbing views and conduct, the Army did nothing.

Far less offensive speech has been grounds for discipline or even removal from duties in the military. In the aftermath of the Tailhook scandal, for example, two Navy officers were reprimanded and reassigned after putting up a sign with the words of a nursery rhyme altered to include a vulgar sexual reference to liberal congresswoman Patricia Schroeder.

But a Muslim Army doctor can go around a military installation somberly advocating the beheading of infidels, and the girls running the military treat him like he’s Nicole Kidman and they’re press junket reporters.

The Army’s top brass, Gen. George Casey, responded to the military’s shocking decision to keep a terrorist-sympathizing Muslim in the Army by announcing: “Our diversity … is a strength.” And I thought gays couldn’t openly serve in the military.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims moved to the top of liberals’ victim pantheon on the basis of having slaughtered 3,000 Americans. Muslims were “victims” of Americans’ displeasure with them for the biggest terrorist attack in world history. The only American deserving of more coddling than a Muslim is the first African-American president.

So, now any dyspeptic expression toward a Muslim is grounds for calling in a diversity coordinator. And when the “victim” attacks, as at Fort Hood, the rest of us are supposed to feel guilty because Hasan’s car got keyed once. As with all liberal “victims,” it is the victim who is massively guilty.

Election 2009: Change I Can Believe In!
by Ann Coulter

MSNBC, Aug. 31, 2009, Keith Olbermann on Robert F. McDonnell, Republican candidate for governor of Virginia:

“In (McDonnell’s master’s thesis), he described women having jobs as detrimental to the family, called legalized use of contraception illogical, pushed to make divorce more difficult, and insisted government should favor married couples over, quote, ‘cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.’ Wow. When did he write this? 1875? No, 1989. Wow, 1989.

“Goodbye, Mr. McDonnell.”

MSNBC, Sept. 22, 2009, Rachel Maddow also on McDonnell:

“And here’s where the conservative movement and the Republican establishment smash into each other like bumper cars without bumpers. Here’s where Republican electoral chances stop being separate from the wild-eyed excesses of the conservative movement.

“Part of watching Republicans try to return to power is watching … the conservative movement eat the Republican Party, eat their electoral chances over and over and over again.”

On election night, conservatives-eating-Republicans resulted in an 18-point landslide for McDonnell, who beat his Democratic opponent 59 percent to 41 percent — winning two-thirds of all independent voters and ending the Democrats’ eight-year reign in the Virginia governor’s office.

Republicans swept all statewide offices for the first time in 12 years, winning the races for lieutenant governor and attorney general, as well as assembly seats, garbage inspector, dog catcher and anything else Virginians could vote for.

To paraphrase a pompous blowhard: Goodbye, Mr. Democrat.

And that’s not the most exciting news from election night! Astoundingly, Jon Corzine, the incumbent governor of heavily Democratic New Jersey — a state that Barack Obama won by 16 points just a year ago — lost by 5 points.

At 49 percent for Republican Chris Christie versus 44 percent for Corzine, the election wasn’t even close enough to be stolen by ACORN. (Although Corzine did extremely well among underaged Salvadoran prostitutes living in government housing.)

The biggest winner election night was pollster Scott Rasmussen, who — once again — produced the most accurate poll results. New York Times poll: Corzine 40, Christie 37; Quinnipiac poll: Corzine 43, Christie 38; Rasmussen poll: Christie 46, Corzine 43.

The biggest loser was President Obama, who campaigned tirelessly for Corzine, even giving up golf on several occasions and skipping a quarter-million-dollar “date night” with Michelle to stump for the Democrat.

Just two days before the election, Obama was at a rally in New Jersey assuring voters that Corzine was “one of the best partners I have in the White House. We work together. … Jon Corzine helped get this done.”

Except the problem is that voting for Obama a year ago was a fashion statement, much like it was once a fad to buy Beanie Babies, pet rocks and Cabbage Patch Kids. But instead of ending up with a ridiculous dust-collector at the bottom of your closet, the Obama fad leaves you with higher taxes, a reduced retirement fund, no job and a one-year wait for an MRI.

That is why Corzine’s defeat sounded the death knell for national health care.

The good news: Next time Corzine is in a major car accident after speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike, he’ll be able to see a doctor right away.

The media will try to rescue health care by talking about nothing but the 23rd district of New York, where the Democrat won Tuesday night. Congratulations, Democrats — you won a congressional seat in New York! Next up: A Catholic elected pope!

Far from an upset, the Democrats’ winning the 23rd district was a long-term plan of the Obama White House. That’s why Obama made John McHugh, the moderate Republican congressman representing the 23rd district, his Secretary of the Army earlier this year. The Democrats thought McHugh’s seat would be easy pickings.

Only in the last week has everyone acted as if a Democratic victory in the 23rd district would be a shocking surprise — an upset victory caused by puritanical Republicans staging inquisitions against “mainstream” Republican candidates like Dede Scozzafava, the designated “Republican” candidate in the special election.

This is preposterous — there was absolutely nothing Republican about Scozzafava. As a supporter of partial-birth abortion, card-check union schemes and massive government spending programs, she was less Republican than John McCain.

Even Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos called Scozzafava the most liberal candidate in the race — which may explain why she was the choice of George Soros’ Working Families Party and why she promptly endorsed the Democrat after withdrawing from the race last weekend.

Conservative opposition to Scozzafava hardly suggests that they plan to impose litmus tests on every Republican candidate in the 2010 elections.

Speaking of litmus tests, on MSNBC recently, liberal blogger Jane Hamsher said of the possibility that a blue dog Democrat would oppose national health care: “I dare Blanche Lincoln — I dare Blanche Lincoln to join a filibuster. She’ll draw primary opponents so fast it would make your head spin.”

While I’m sure an out-of-touch liberal blogger from Hollywood knows more about Arkansas than an elected senator from that state, Hamsher’s threat sounds more like an intra-party civil war than conservatives opposing a George Soros-supported Republican candidate in a New York congressional race.

Not only do conservatives not pick insane fights — such as staging a 2006 primary fight against a recent vice presidential candidate because he supported the war in Iraq — but conservatives are more popular than Republicans.

By contrast, liberals are less popular than Democrats. When conservatives take control of the Republican Party, Republicans win. When liberals take control of the Democratic Party, Democrats end up out of power for eight to 12 years.

The Grating Communicator
by Ann Coulter

The Obama administration has attacked Fox News in order to prevent government corruption stories broken on Fox from bleeding into the other media, which are all-consumed with daily updates on Levi Johnston’s Playgirl spread and Carrie Prejean’s breast implants.

That’s understandable. But I think the administration should have picked someone other than David Axelrod to deliver the claim that Fox News is “not really news,” inasmuch as Axelrod was behind the leak of scurrilous allegations in Jack Ryan’s sealed divorce papers when he was running for a Senate seat against Obama. Talk about vicious personal gossip.

Now that Fox has been branded an untouchable, the teacher’s-pet media are jubilant.

In Newsweek, Jacob Weisberg wrote a column saying liberals should refuse to appear on Fox News, pointedly concluding, “And no, I don’t want to come on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ to discuss it.” Considering that Weisberg is a 107-pound weasel with a speech impediment, this is on the order of Weisberg’s announcing that he’s not interested in appearing in the next “Ocean’s Eleven” movie with George Clooney.

The strangest thing about all the invective against Fox is that it is happening in a world that contains MSNBC. At least Fox News primetime hosts, and many of their guests, know something about politics. MSNBC’s primetime lineup presents an array of people who sound like earnest college kids who just walked up to a Common Cause table, and the sum-total of what they know about politics is what they read in the brochures.

In the past week, both Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann have rolled out the Willie Horton ad, claiming that it marked the beginning of vicious personal attacks in politics, as opposed to what it was: The most devastatingly relevant campaign commercial in all of American history.

You can always astonish college kids by telling them the true story of Willie Horton. Among the jaw-dropping facts are:

In the ’80s, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that a prison furlough policy had to be extended to convicted murderers, who were ineligible for parole.

Even the Massachusetts Legislature, which contained about three Republicans, realized this was insane, and quickly passed a bill excluding first-degree murderers from the weekend furlough program. But in a desperate bid for the ACLU’s Brain-Dead Liberal of the Year Award, Gov. Michael Dukakis vetoed the bill.

Horton, who was later released under this program, was in prison for carving up a teenager at a gas station and then stuffing his body into a garbage can. (He had already been convicted of attempted murder in South Carolina — through no fault of his own, the victim survived.)

Even after Horton used his Dukakis-granted furlough to rape and torture a Maryland couple in their home for 12 straight hours, the Greek homunculus issued a statement reaffirming his strong support for furloughing murderers.

The Bush campaign commercial about Dukakis’ furlough program never showed a picture of Horton. In fact, the actors playing “criminals” passing through a revolving door in the ad were all white.

Voters considered it relevant that a candidate for president was so beholden to the ACLU that he backed an idiotic furlough program that released first-degree murderers.

Every informed student of the 1988 campaign knows that the Bush ad didn’t show Horton’s picture. And yet in Keith’s discussion of Bush’s allegedly vile, racist use of Willie Horton, he used a phony version of the ad, doctored to include a photo of Horton.

I don’t blame Keith personally for this blatant distortion: He gets all his research material from Markos Moulitsas and other left-wing bloggers, so he can’t be held responsible for the content of his show. Keith’s principle contribution to the program is his nightly display of self-congratulation and pompous douche-baggery.

Remember, Keith, like his MSNBC colleague Contessa Brewer, majored in “communications” in college, not a research-related field, such as political science. In his coursework, he learned such skills as: Dramatically Turning to Camera, Hysterical Self-Righteousness, Pausing Portentously and Gravely Demanding Apologies/Resignations From Various Public Figures.

Given this background, it’s understandable that Keith will make errors. As viewers witnessed recently, he can’t even pronounce the name of prominent American economist and philosopher, Thomas Sowell. (Although he did spend three weeks at a Berlitz course in Arabic honing his pronunciation of “Abu Ghraib” to razor-sharp prissiness.)

The bloggers and Keith bring different skill sets to the game. They provide the tendentious half-truths, phony opinion polls and spurious social science, while Keith provides his booming baritone, gigantic “Guys and Dolls” suits and gift for ridiculous, fustian grandiloquence. Keith is far better equipped than, say, the pint-sized, girly-voiced, Frito Bandito-accented Markos Moulitsas to deliver the party line.

But here’s the fly in the ointment: Keith has once again been victimized by left-wing blogs into thinking that the 1988 Bush ad showed Willie Horton’s picture, when in fact, Horton’s race was deliberately scrubbed from the ad.

Again, in fairness to Keith, he’s never been a “content guy.” He was a communications major. (The agriculture school Keith attended offered a degree in this field.) He lifts the material for his show from liberal blogs, overwrites it, and throws in his trademark smirking and snorts. But that’s all he does because, again, he was a communications major.

Take Two Aspirin and Call Me When Your Cancer is At Stage Four
by Ann Coulter

All the problems with the American health care system come from government intervention, so naturally the Democrats’ idea for fixing it is more government intervention. This is like trying to sober up by having another drink.

The reason seeing a doctor is already more like going to the DMV, and less like going to the Apple “Genius Bar,” is that the government decided health care was too important to be left to the free market. Yes — the same free market that has produced such a cornucopia of inexpensive goods and services that, today, even poor people have cell phones and flat-screen TVs.

As a result, it’s easier to get your computer fixed than your health. Thanks, government!

We already have near-universal health coverage in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ hospitals, emergency rooms and tax-deductible employer-provided health care — all government creations.

So now, everyone expects doctors to be free. People who pay $200 for a haircut are indignant if it costs more than a $20 co-pay to see a doctor.

The government also “helped” us by mandating that insurance companies cover all sorts of medical services, both ordinary — which you ought to pay for yourself — and exotic, such as shrinks, in vitro fertilization and child-development assessments — which no normal person would voluntarily pay to insure against.

This would be like requiring all car insurance to cover the cost of gasoline, oil and tire changes — as well as professional car detailing, iPod docks, and leather seats and those neon chaser lights I have all along the underbody of my chopped, lowrider ‘57 Chevy.

But politicians are more interested in pleasing lobbyists for acupuncturists, midwives and marriage counselors than they are in pleasing recent college graduates who only want to insure against the possibility that they’ll be hit by a truck. So politicians at both the state and federal level keep passing boatloads of insurance mandates requiring that all insurance plans cover a raft of non-emergency conditions that are expensive to treat — but whose practitioners have high-priced lobbyists.

As a result, a young, healthy person has a choice of buying artificially expensive health insurance that, by law, covers a smorgasbord of medical services of no interest to him … or going uninsured. People who aren’t planning on giving birth to a slew of children with restless leg syndrome in the near future forgo insurance — and then politicians tell us we have a national emergency because some people don’t have health insurance.

The whole idea of insurance is to insure against catastrophes: You buy insurance in case your house burns down — not so you can force other people in your plan to pay for your maid. You buy car insurance in case you’re in a major accident, not so everyone in the plan shares the cost of gas.

Just as people use vastly different amounts of gasoline, they also use vastly different amounts of medical care — especially when an appointment with a highly trained physician costs less than a manicure.

Insurance plans that force everyone in the plan to pay for everyone else’s Viagra and anti-anxiety pills are already completely unfair to people who rarely go to the doctor. It’s like being forced to share gas bills with a long-haul trucker or a restaurant bill with Michael Moore. On the other hand, it’s a great deal for any lonely hypochondriacs in the plan.

Now the Democrats want to force us all into one gigantic national health insurance plan that will cover every real and mythical ailment that has a powerful lobby. But if you have a rare medical condition without a lobbying arm, you’ll be out of luck.

Even two decades after the collapse of liberals’ beloved Soviet Union, they can’t grasp that it’s easier and cheaper to obtain any service provided by capitalism than any service provided under socialism.

You don’t have to conjure up fantastic visions of how health care would be delivered in this country if we bought it ourselves. Just go to a grocery store or get a manicure. Or think back to when you bought your last muffler, personal trainer, computer and every other product and service available in inexpensive abundance in this capitalist paradise.

Third-party payer schemes are always a disaster — less service for twice the price! If you want good service at a good price, be sure to be the one holding the credit card. Under “universal health care,” no one but government bureaucrats will be allowed to hold the credit card.

Isn’t food important? Why not “universal food coverage”? If politicians and employers had guaranteed us “free” food 50 years ago, today Democrats would be wailing about the “food crisis” in America, and you’d be on the phone with your food care provider arguing about whether or not a Reuben sandwich with fries was covered under your plan.

Instead of making health care more like the DMV, how about we make it more like grocery stores? Give the poor and tough cases health stamps and let the rest of us buy health care — and health insurance — on the free market.

Forgetting Sarah Palin
by Ann Coulter

Sarah Palin has deeply disappointed her enemies. People who hate her guts feel she’s really let them down by resigning.

She’s like the ex-girlfriend they’re SO over, never want to see again, have already forgotten about — really, it’s O-ver — but they just can’t stop talking about her.

Liberal: Ha, ha … Sarah who? She’s over, she’s toast, a future Trivial Pursuit answer, nothing more.

Normal person: Whatever. How about the North Korean missiles?

Liberal: Can you believe she just resigned the governorship like that? What a quitter!

Normal person: Speaking of quitting, how’s work?

Liberal: Did you hear she might get a TV show? There’s no way Sarah Palin’s getting a TV show! No way! I can’t believe stupid Sarah Palin could get her own stupid TV show now. Well, I’m sure not gonna watch it — that’s for sure!

Normal person: Have you seen all the Michael Jackson coverage on TV?

Liberal: How does she think she can run for president in 2012 if she can’t finish her term as governor of a Podunk state? She’s finished.

Normal person: OK, then! You won’t have to vote for her.

Liberal: I was never going to vote for her! But now I’m not going to vote for her twice. And I will never watch her TV show. I am so over her.

Reporters had already written their stories on Palin’s press conference — “rambling!” “incoherent!” — before she even stepped to the podium.

Whatever you think of Palin, her argument for resigning was the opposite of “rambling” and “incoherent.”

Palin’s basketball analogy couldn’t have been clearer, even to prissy liberal pundits who get uncomfortable when the subject turns to sports: She decided to destroy the other team’s game plan, which has been to obsessively focus on her, by resigning.

This is particularly apt here — she’s passing the ball to a fantastic right-wing lieutenant governor, who shares her principles but doesn’t set off the left’s neuroses.

This is better for him, better for the state, better for the conservative program and better for Palin personally, whose family is sick of all the crap. Now she can make a lot of money and promote conservatism on a national stage.

It certainly won’t be held against Palin by people who don’t already loathe her. (On the other hand, her approval ratings among people who think she’s worse than Hitler are down to 48 percent.)

With the left frenetically filing ethics complaint after ethics complaint against Palin, costing her state millions of dollars and her personally half a million dollars, citizens of Alaska must be asking, “Can we please have our state back?”

But to read the news reports — which actually were rambling and incoherent — you would think Palin was speaking in tongues.

The truth is liberals are furious they won’t have Sarah Palin to kick around anymore — at least not with Palin’s hands tied behind her back by her public office.

Something tells me Keith Olbermann isn’t going to be pulling any big numbers this summer attacking Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann. I don’t anticipate any sudden outbreaks of “Mitch McConnell Derangement Syndrome.”

Soon we’ll only hear about Keith when his creepy e-mails using his mother’s death to hit on chicks start making the rounds again. (Tip to Keith: When a girl refuses to give you her phone number, her assistant’s phone number or her personal e-mail address, and only gives you her assistant’s e-mail address, you’re not halfway in the sack.)

Bonus: If Olbermann gets canceled as a result of Palin’s resignation, that will put her in a really good position for 2012.

But instead of being honest and saying, “Oh well, it was a good ride while it lasted,” liberal chatterers indignantly demand: “Is this not the greatest betrayal a public servant ever committed against the people?”

On one hand, liberals are enraged at the heinousness of Mark Sanford — whom they didn’t vote for — for not resigning and, on the other, they’re enraged at Palin — whom they also didn’t vote for — for resigning.

The peculiarly venomous hatred of Palin is driven by women of the left and their whipped consorts. All that needs to happen is for a feminist to overhear two Nation readers saying, “I hate to admit it, but Palin is kind of hot” and …

WHAT??????????? YOU CALL THAT HOT? I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW WE’VE GOT A MEGA-SUPER HOTTIE IN DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. AND NEED I REMIND YOU AGAIN OF THE RAW SEX APPEAL OF RACHEL MADDOW?

Democrats are a party of women, and nothing drives them off their gourds like a beautiful Christian conservative. (How much money has that other beautiful born-again, Carrie Prejean, been forced to spend on lawyers to respond to liberal hysteria?)

So the motives are clear, but the money is not. Who is paying the rent for the losers filing all these frivolous complaints against Palin?

At least when Richard Mellon Scaife was funding investigations of Bill Clinton, we knew who Scaife was, he was an American citizen, and his money was accessible to U.S. tax authorities and not stashed in offshore accounts like a certain Hungarian Nazi-collaborator I can name.

How about some modern-day Scaife investigate the investigators?

So Much for Wise Latinas
by Ann Coulter

With the Supreme Court’s decision in Ricci v. DeStefano this week, we can now report that Sonia Sotomayor is even crazier than Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

To recap the famous Ricci case, in 2003, the city of New Haven threw out the results of a firefighters’ test — which had been expressly designed to be race-neutral — because only whites and Hispanics scored high enough to receive immediate promotions, whereas blacks who took the test did well enough only to be eligible for promotions down the line.

Inasmuch as the high-scoring white and Hispanic firemen were denied promotions solely because of their race, they sued the city for race discrimination.

Obama’s Justice-designate Sotomayor threw out their lawsuit in a sneaky, unsigned opinion — the judicial equivalent of “talk to the hand.” She upheld the city’s race discrimination against white and Hispanic firemen on the grounds that the test had a “disparate impact” on blacks, meaning that it failed to promote some magical percentage of blacks.

This strict quota regime was dressed up by the city — and by Sotomayor’s opinion — as a reasonable reaction to the threat of lawsuits by blacks who were not promoted.

That’s a complicated way of saying: Racial quotas are peachy.

According to Sotomayor, any test that gets the numbers wrong — whatever “wrong” means in any given context of professions, populations, applicants, workers, etc. — is grounds for a lawsuit, which in turn, is grounds for an employer to engage in race discrimination against disfavored racial groups, such as white men.

Consequently, the only legal avenue available to employers under Sotomayor’s ruling is always to impose strict racial quotas in making hiring and promotion decisions.

Say, if the threat of a lawsuit permits the government to ignore the Constitution, can pro-lifers get New Haven to shut down all abortion clinics by threatening to sue them? There’s no question but that abortion clinics have a “disparate impact” on black babies.

This week, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 for the white and Hispanic firefighters, overturning Sotomayor’s endorsement of racial quotas.

But all nine justices rejected Sotomayor’s holding that different test results alone give the government a green light to engage in race discrimination. Even Justice Ginsburg’s opinion for the dissent clearly stated that “an employer could not cast aside a selection method based on a statistical disparity alone.”

Indeed, the dissenters argued that the case should be returned to the lower courts to look for some hidden racial bias in the test. For Sotomayor, the results alone proved racial bias.

The one advantage Sotomayor’s talk-to-the-hand opinion has over Justice Ginsburg’s prolix dissent is that brevity prevented Sotomayor from having to explain why quotas aren’t quotas.

That was left to Ginsburg.

Liberals desperately want race quotas — as long as quotas never come to their offices.

But they can’t say that, so instead they talk in circles for 10 hours straight, until everyone else is exhausted, and then, when no one is paying attention, they announce: So we’re all agreed — we will have racial quotas.

Based on her lifetime of experience working as a firefighter, Ginsburg said: “Relying heavily on written tests to select fire officers is a questionable practice, to say the least.” Liberals prefer a more objective test, such as race.

Isn’t excelling on written tests how Ruth Bader Ginsburg got where she is? It’s curious how people whose entire careers are based on doing well on tests find them so irrelevant to other people’s jobs.

In the middle of a fire, it can either be a great idea or the worst possible idea to open a door. An excellent method for finding out if your next fire chief knows the correct answer is a written test.

Unleashing the canard of all race-obsessed liberals, Ginsburg observed that courts have found that a fire officer’s job “involves complex behaviors, good interpersonal skills, the ability to make decisions under tremendous pressure, and a host of other abilities — none of which is easily measured by a written, multiple choice test.”

So does a lawyer’s job. And yet attorneys with absolutely no “interpersonal skills” get cushy jobs and extravagant salaries on the basis of their commendable performance on all manner of written tests, from multiple choice LSATs and bar exams to written law school exams.

I note that Ginsburg has not shown any particular interest in rectifying the “disparate impact” of legal exams: She never hired a single black law clerk out of the dozens she employed in more than a decade as an appeals court judge. (Her hiring practices on the Supreme Court are a state secret, but I can state with supreme certainty that her clerks do not reflect the racial mix of Washington, D.C.)

But liberals think other people’s jobs are a joke, so the testing must also be a joke. That is — other than their preferred test: “Is the applicant black, female or otherwise handicapped?”

There is no test that can prove all things about an employee and so there is no test that can’t be derided by the race-mongers. Which is exactly the point. Get rid of all tests — except for lawyers who graduated at the top of their law school classes at Columbia, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Then liberals are free to impose racial quotas on other people’s jobs without limit.

As crazy as this is, even Ginsburg and the other dissenters made a big point of pretending there was some flaw in this particular test. None adopted Sotomayor’s position that unequal test results alone prove discrimination.

This suggests that a wise Jewess, due to the richness of her life experiences, might come to a better judgment than a Latina judge would.