A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.”
Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the ommittee what she had been told by a former ACORN worker who had worked in the group’s Washington, D.C. office. The former worker, Anita Moncrief, told Ms. Heidelbaugh last October, during the state committee’s litigation against ACORN, she had been a “confidential informant for several months to The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom.”
Ms. Moncrief had been providing Ms. Strom with information about ACORN’s election activities. Ms. Strom had written several stories based on information Ms. Moncrief had given her.
During her testimony, Ms. Heidelbaugh said Ms. Moncrief had told her The New York Times articles stopped when she revealed that the Obama presidential campaign had sent its maxed-out donor list to ACORN’s Washington, D.C. office.
Ms. Moncrief told Ms. Heidelbaugh the campaign had asked her and her boss to “reach out to the maxed-out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN.”
Ms. Heidelbaugh then told the congressional panel:
“Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at The New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, “it was a game changer.”‘
Ms. Moncrief made her first overture to Ms. Heidelbaugh after The New York Times allegedly spiked the story - on Oct. 21, 2008.
October 21st was exactly two weeks before the election.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday blamed the global economic crisis on “white people with blue eyes” and said it was wrong that black and indigenous people should pay for white people’s mistakes.
Speaking in Brasília at a joint press conference with Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, Mr Lula da Silva told reporters: “This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing.”
I suspect these bigoted comments will not elicit the same level of outrage that others do.
27 March 2009 @ 8:55AM >>
Jay Bergman, a professor who appears in Indoctrinate U, had a piece recently in the Hartford Courant discussing an incident at his school:
In October 2008, students in a class in the department of communication at Central [Connecticut State University] were asked to select a topic covered by the mainstream media and discuss it in class. Students were free to express their opinions on the topic they selected. At least that is what they thought they were allowed to do.
One student, John Wahlberg, who believes in the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, chose the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech. In his presentation, he expressed the opinion - for which John R. Lott Jr. and other opponents of gun control measures have provided ample empirical corroboration - that had students and faculty at Virginia Tech been allowed to carry concealed weapons on the campus, the shooter might have been shot before he could kill anyone. In fact, had the shooter been cognizant that his intended targets might be armed and able to defend themselves, he might have been deterred from attempting to carry out his plan in the first place. At the very least, the number of victims might have been fewer.
How did the adjunct professor who taught the course respond to Wahlberg’s presentation? Because she believed students were scared and made uncomfortable by Wahlberg’s opinion - for merely expressing it he somehow became a threat to their physical safety and that of the other 12,000 Central students - she called the campus police, who that evening ordered Wahlberg to report to them for the purpose of explaining why he should not be considered a potential assassin.
Unfortunately, Central Connecticut State University isn’t the first school to take action against someone who uses their First Amendment right to advocate for Second Amendment rights.
26 March 2009 @ 9:03AM >>
Thanks to everyone who came to the Indoctrinate U screening at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival on Tuesday evening! It turned out to be quite a success, and undoubtedly, the festival organizers noticed the crowded theater and enthusiastic audience.
It was nice to meet a number of folks I knew only online, and thanks to the wonders of Facebook (yes, you can find me there), there was at least one member of the audience who I haven’t seen since 6th grade at P.S. 158.
Thanks also to everyone who bought me Black-and-Tans at the Telephone Bar afterwards, although it required me to ingest a couple extra doses of coffee the next day at work.
I was pretty surprised to get selected for this film festival. We haven’t had much luck on the festival circuit; the film industry isn’t much different from academia as far as groupthink goes. But because we had such a great showing, I’m sure that people in the business took note. So thanks again for the support!
P.S. Sorry for the late start on the film—I wasn’t aware that a half-hour short film was going to be shown before Indoctrinate U.
22 March 2009 @ 7:49PM >>
Just a reminder that Indoctrinate U will be shown at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival on Tuesday, March 24th starting at 6PM. The screening will be held at the historic Village East Cinema, on 12th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan.
The festival’s reviewers called Indoctrinate U, “a wry, hard hitting documentary about the effect of the campus culture wars on individual rights, diversity of opinion, and the life of the mind in American higher education. Very professionally made. Great subject matter, we found it very interesting.”
Find out why the film is getting such high praise:
“IT’S EXTRAORDINARY! ... I CAN’T RECOMMEND IT HIGHLY ENOUGH.”
—Lou Dobbs, CNN
“RIVETING”
—Peter Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal
“ALARMING AND FUNNY”
—Kyle Smith, New York Post
“A FUN AND POWERFUL PIECE OF WORK”
—-Stanley Kurtz, National Review
Tickets for the film festival screening are available now through TicketWeb.
20 March 2009 @ 9:08AM >>
A television producer recently asked me for my reel. It had been quite a while since I updated it, so I put together a new one:
By the way, I’m looking for an agent, so if you know a good one, please let me know!
We do apologise to all those people who have suffered from the mistakes that have been made in the Stafford Hospital.—British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, After an investigation revealed that substandard care resulted in up to 1,200 deaths over a three-year period in the government-run hospital.
18 March 2009 @ 9:35PM >>
Bill Steigerwald is leaving his position as associate editor of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review after accepting a buy-out offer from the struggling newspaper. Here’s a revealing little tidbit about the news business from his farewell column:
[E]very journalist and every editor I have ever worked with was helplessly subjective in their politics and in their definition of what news and bias were and were not.
Trust me, big-city daily newspapers don’t go out of their way to achieve ideological diversity. About 90 percent of my work mates over the years were either avowed liberal Democrats or didn’t know it. Reagan Republicans were virtually nonexistent. Until I got to the Trib, I was always the staff’s lonely libertarian.
17 March 2009 @ 6:26PM >>
With President Obama railing against private health insurance companies and pushing socialized medicine, this seems odd:
The Obama administration is considering making veterans use private insurance to pay for treatment of combat and service-related injuries. The plan would be an about-face on what veterans believe is a long-standing pledge to pay for health care costs that result from their military service.
But in a White House meeting Monday, veterans groups apparently failed to persuade President Obama to take the plan off the table.
“Veterans of all generations agree that this proposal is bad for the country and bad for veterans,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “If the president and the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] want to cut costs, they can start at AIG, not the VA.”
Under current policy, veterans are responsible for health care costs that are unrelated to their military service. Exceptions in some cases can be made for veterans who do not have private insurance or are 100 percent disabled.
[...]
Veterans claim that the costs of treating expensive war injuries could raise their insurance costs, as well as those for their employers. Some worried that it also could make it more difficult for disabled veterans to find work.
The leaders of several veterans groups had written Obama last month complaining about the new plan. “There is simply no logical explanation for billing a veteran’s personal insurance for care that the VA has a responsibility to provide,” they wrote.
So apparently, U.S. military veterans are the only people whose health care Obama doesn’t want the government to pay for.
11 March 2009 @ 10:47PM >>
I was pleased to have been invited on CNN to discuss Indoctrinate U with Lou Dobbs, but I was blown away at how complimentary he was. Dobbs called the film “terrific” and said, “I can’t recommend it highly enough.” He closed by recommending that viewers “get this documentary. It’s extraordinary.”
In related news, Indoctrinate U will be shown at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival on Tuesday, March 24th at 6:00PM. The film will be shown at the Village East Cinema, on 12th Street and Second Avenue. Tickets are available online.
Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been “overwhelmed” by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.
[...]
Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with [British Prime Minister Gordon] Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president’s surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.
A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama’s inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to “even fake an interest in foreign policy”.
A British official conceded that the furore surrounding the apparent snub to Mr Brown had come as a shock to the White House. “I think it’s right to say that their focus is elsewhere, on domestic affairs. A number of our US interlocutors said they couldn’t quite understand the British concerns and didn’t get what that was all about.”
The American source said: “Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.
“That was the gamble these guys made at the front end of this presidency and I think they’re finding it a hard thing to do everything.”
Obama is finding out that it’s much easier to criticize from the campaign trail than it is to actually, you know, run a country.
For some reason, the frayed nerves at the White House are leading the Obama administration to lash out at our allies:
The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.
The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.”
It’s interesting that Obama seems more willing to make nice with Iran and North Korea than a long-term ally like Great Britain.
3 March 2009 @ 10:04PM >>
When Barack Obama and his allies in Congress say the current tax laws aren’t fair, they are right. They aren’t fair, but not in the way the Democrats contend.
The Tax Foundation put together a revealing report (PDF) comparing taxes paid to the dollar value of government services received.
As this chart shows, 40% of American households are working to support the other 60%. If you make $65,000 or more per year, you’re effectively a slave for the portion of the year that you spend earning the money that the government takes in taxes.
You may not realize you’re a slave, because you don’t see any shackles around your legs. But if you decide not to pay your taxes, unless you plan on being nominated for a position in the Obama administration in which case taxes seem to be optional, those shackles would become very real. Just ask Wesley Snipes.
What we have now is a tyranny of the majority. Because 60% of America benefits from the labors of the other 40%, it’s a winning electoral formula, one that Democrats exploit at every election cycle when they ramp up the class warfare rhetoric demanding that “the rich” pay their “fair share.”
What is a fair share? Is it fair when a 40% minority is robbed to benefit the 60% majority? Would be more fair if 30% of people were robbed to benefit a 70% majority?
Taxing a smaller share of higher earners even more in order to subsidize the rest of the country is not only economically unworkable, it’s morally repugnant. At what point do people get fed up and say they’re not going to put in that extra effort, those additional hours of work so that their slave masters can reap the benefits of their labor?
