After all, Hitler and the Nazis did other things besides run death camps.

Bishop Joseph McFadden of Harrisburg has attracted criticism from the Anti-Defamation League and others for comparing the monolithic nature of the public education system to the education systems of 20th-century totalitarian regimes.

“In totalitarian governments, they would love our system,” the bishop said last week as he discussed his support for voucher legislation. “This is what Hitler and Mussolini and all those tried to establish a monolith so all the children would be educated in one set of beliefs and one way of doing things.”

Bishop McFadden defended his remarks after the Anti-Defamation League’s regional director said they trivialized the suffering of victims of the Holocaust.

As Bishop McFadden points out, totalitarian regimes -- including that which ran Germany from 1933 through 1945 -- try to take control of education in order to indoctrinate young people with loyalty to their ideology, and seek to guarantee that competing educational institutions are co-opted or destroyed. Recognizing that the Nazis used this technique does not minimize the evil that was the Holocaust -- it paints a fuller picture of the malignant nature of the Hitler regime.

Here’s Gingrich on some of Romney’s investments.

Governor Romney owns share -- has an investment in Goldman Sachs, which is today foreclosing on Floridians. So maybe Governor Romney in the spirit of openness should tell us how much money he's made off of how many households that have been foreclosed by his investments? And let's be clear about that."

Let’s stop for a minute. You don’t get foreclosed on unless you aren’t paying your mortgage. Does Gingrich really believe those who don’t pay their mortgages should get to stay in their houses, while those who are owed the money don’t get paid? Sounds like he’s moved away from the Reaganite view of the “ownership society” and into the Occupier view that property should be redistributed from the 1% to the 99%. Will someone explain to me why so many conservatives are now supporting a man who is clearly a socialist?

The folks at Spirit Airlines decided to tell their customers the unvarnished truth about a new government regulation on advertising airfares – and Beastly Babs is spitting mad about it.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is sharply criticizing Spirit Airlines for its response to new price advertising rules from the Department of Transportation.

Spirit, a discount airline based in Florida, has protested DOT's requirement that advertisements for airline tickets include all taxes and fees in the prices that are listed for flights. The airline placed a pop-up ad on its website that says “new government regulations require us to HIDE taxes in your fares.”

But Boxer, writing to Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza about the new rules, which took effect this week, said that "nothing could be further from the truth."

The problem is that Spirit is exactly right. By requiring that the airlines tell only the total cost of the ticket rather than breaking out the government-imposed taxes and fees, DOT has hidden those taxes and fees from the consumer. That keeps the consumer (You and me) from knowing how big a cut that the government is getting of the ticket price.

This is akin to what is done with gas taxes. We see the price at the pump and blame the oil company or the station operator. But the reality is that if the price were broken down it would look like this:

In other words, government is getting many times more in taxes than the oil company and gas station are in profits. The DOT regulation hides taxes in the same way -- and will allow the government to engage in scuch price gouging without us ever knowing that they were the culprit!

So I would like to praise Spirit Airlines for telling us the truth – and urge them to keep doing it.

Because that describes how he has done his job for the last three years.

President Obama spoke with ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an interview on Thursday. Sawyer asked him how intense his reelection ambitions were. “How much do you want it?” “Badly,” Obama replied. “Because I think the country needs it.”

But the real question is whether or not America can afford another four years of this president who wants this job in the same way he does it -- BADLY.

Actually, this close Obama ally may be right.

Chicago Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky (Ill.) drew fire from Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) on Wednesday when she dismissed the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, suggesting the 20,000 jobs it could create were relatively insignificant in the scheme of the greater economy.

“Twenty thousand jobs is really not that many jobs, and investing in green technologies will produce that and more,” she said on Chicago’s WLS Radio Don Wade and Roma Show on Wednesday morning. “But I’ll tell you what, you know it seems to me that the Republicans would rather have an issue than a pipeline.”

Really, the 20,000 Keystone XL jobs prevented or destroyed by the Obama Administration are not that many. Not when one considers the total number of jobs prevented or destroyed by the policies of Barack Obama. Not when you consider all the folks driven from the workforce by Barack Obama's failed economic policies. Not when you consider all the money down the rathole of green energy temp jobs created with taxpayer money that is lost when the "sure thing" companies in the "green energy" sector go belly-up without paying back a dime of loans.

So Jan Schakowsky is correct -- the loss/destruction of 20,000 Keystone XL jobs (not to mention the ones THOSE jobs would have created) really aren't that many. They are just a drop in the bucket of economic destruction wrought by Obama and the Democrats.

H/T Michelle Malkin

Such incompetence is mind-boggling!

The Department of Education has acknowledged using flawed data in a study on the impact of race on student loan repayment rates, having omitted black students from its calculation.

Further comment is superfluous.

It isn’t exactly an endorsement, but it should cause conservatives to question he conventional wisdom about Mitt Romney, who was the great conservative hope in 2008.

Newt Gingrich’s decision today to bash Mitt Romney for hiring former Charlie Crist loyalists and employees doesn’t seem to be sitting well with Sen. Marco Rubio, who drove Crist out of the Republican Party before beating him at the polls in 2010.

Said Rubio: “Mitt Romney is no Charlie Crist. Romney is a conservative, and he was one of the first national Republican leaders to endorse me. He came to Florida, campaigned hard for me, and made a real difference in my race.”

So whose word are you going to take on Romney’s conservative credentials? The word of a true conservative like Marco Rubio? The word of folks who have flip-flopped on the issue like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin? Or the word of Newt Gingrich, whose record record includes repeated flip-flops on both issues and his marriage vows.

Neatly encapsulated in a bite-sized nugget by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.

RATHER A LOT, REALLY: How Many Jobs Did Romney Create At Bain? “The companies Bain Capital funded under Romney have created tens of thousands of jobs using any measure.” Of course, anything that isn’t measured in the negative millions would be an improvement over Obama’s record.

By the way – visit the link in the quote – it shows that by any measure, Bain was a job creator rather than a job destroyer. And what’s more, even the companies that encountered financial difficulty were, on balance, job creators.

I’ve never played hockey, have rarely watched it, and don’t understand the game well enough to appreciate its intricacies – in other words, I’m not a Canadian. But I do know what the Stanley Cup is, though, and that the Boston Bruins won that championship this year – and that one member of the team, Tim Thomas, created something of a fuss this week when he chose not to go to the White House with the team to meet President Obama for a photo op because of his rejection of what he sees as big government out of control.

Needless to say, some took exception to that. Perhaps the dickweediest of the dickweeds was Boston Globe hockey writer Kevin Paul Dupont, who seems to think that we are all subjects of Obama who must appear on bended knee when summoned. After first snidely dismissing the beliefs of conservatives, libertarians, and Tea Partiers as “blatherall”, Dupont really unloaded on Thomas.

Shabby. Immature. Unprofessional. Self-centered. Bush league. Need I go on? All that and more applies to what Thomas did, on a day when Cup teammates Mark Recchi (now retired), Shane Hnidy (a radio guy these days in Winnipeg), and Tomas Kaberle (a member of some Original Six team in Canada), all gladly joined the red-white-blue-black-and-gold hugfest at the White House. Thomas needed to be there in solidarity, and celebration, with his team. It was the same government yesterday, and will be today, that protected his country, his security, his family, and his right to make $5 million a year, all last season. In his absence, he stole his teammates’ spotlight. Win as a team. Lose as a team. And when asked to stand up and take a bow, then stand up there and suffer if need be, even if you don’t like the setting, the host, or any of the political trappings and tenets that come with it.

What bullshit! Indeed, I’ll take it a bit further – what UNAMERICAN bullshit. Not only did Thomas have the right to write the Facebook statement he made about not attending the event (something Dupont reluctantly and contemptuously conceded is Thomas’ right as an American), but Tim Thomas also has an absolute right under the First Amendment of the Constitution to refuse to associate with any individual or group – including government officials – who he chooses to no associate with. He also has the right to go about his business even when invited to the White House by the president. After all, this is not a monarchy, where the sovereign can require a command performance by subjects. This is America, and we have the right to tell the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania to take a long walk on a short pier if we choose. Demanding that someone submerge their political values and “take one for the team” in such an instance is a demand that someone be less than an American.

And frighteningly enough, Obama apparatchik Dupont then goes on to question Thomas’ patriotism.

If Thomas is feeling the way he is today, it could not have happened overnight. He must have felt much the same just shy of 24 months ago when he sounded so proud to wear that Team USA sweater at the 2010 Olympics, and so proudly dipped his head to accept that silver medal. Or was he doing all of that under governmental duress, the pain of knowing our leaders were acting, as he wrote yesterday, “in direct opposition of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers’ vision of the Federal government.’’ Someone so disgusted with our government ought to turn in the sweater and the medal. It must be a horrible burden, if not a pox, to have them in his house.

Dupont is wrong, of course, in his assessment. Tim Thomas loves his country. It is the government he has a problem with. Unfortunately, folks like Kevin Paul Dupont can’t separate the two, and believes that one cannot love and represent one without embracing the other, flaws and all.

Of course, Dupont isn’t the first to hold such a view. The leader of German from 1933-1945 and the leaders of the nations behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War had the same sort of mindset. Athletes were expected to mouth the right political beliefs in support of policies of the Nazi or Communist Party in order to be permitted to compete. Dupont actually hints that the Bruins should impose similar sanctions against their star goalie for his failure to follow the party line.

Now Dupont would argue that my characterization of his position is wrong, and point to this part of his column.

Thomas didn’t need to issue a written statement yesterday, not when he could have made one by showing up at the White House and quietly picking his moment to utter a few simple words of disappointment to President Obama. How easy, how far more courageous and honorable, it would have been to say, “Hi, I’m Tim Thomas, and I appreciate the fact my team was invited here today. I don’t like what’s going on in this country. I’m not the least bit impressed with your leadership. But I am proud of what we did, I’m proud to be an American, proud to be a Boston Bruin, and I’d like to see everyone in the government do a better job of adhering to the Constitution. Oh, and I’ve got a question for you about power plays … ’’

But based upon the totality of his column, I’m pretty sure how Dupont would have responded if Thomas had gone to the White House and made even the muted, emasculated political statement that Dupont claims would have been acceptable. I believe it would have looked something like the column that Dupont wrote – except the words “Shabby. Immature. Unprofessional. Self-centered. Bush league.” Would have been used to describe the act of daring to make the political statement at the White House and embarrass the president in his home on a day that was supposed to be about the team. After all, it isn’t really the medium that Thomas used that Dupont objects to, or even the venue that Thomas chose to express his beliefs. As I noted at the beginning of this post, it is the beliefs expressed by Tim Thomas and millions of other Americans that Kevin Paul Dupont really objects, and so the fact that they are being expressed at all is obviously the thing with which he has a problem.

Personally, I have only one problem with how Tim Thomas handled the situation. I don’t think he should have released the statement on Facebook. I think he should have called a press conference and read the statement in public. In front of the White House. But then again, that’s just me.

A day after Newt Gingrich's win/Mitt Romney's loss in the South Carolina primary, I find myself drawn back to where I was on December 13 of last year.

I think any of the current crop of GOP candidates will be a disaster in November of 2012 if they manage to get the nomination through the existing primary process. All will bring a disaster of intra-party division and civil war, with a some bloc or other of voters staying home.

* * *

I therefore support an outcome that has not been seen in decades – the brokered convention wherein NO CANDIDATE has sufficient delegates to take the nomination on the first ballot, and convention delegates are then free to choose the best available nominee – whether or not that individual is among the crop of candidates that ran in the primaries.

Think about it. Tim Pawlenty dropped out of the race early -- could he become a compromise candidate we could all accept? Might Jeb Bush emerge as the GOP standard-bearer, since he is acceptable to all factions? Bobby Jindal? Mitch Daniels? Eric Cantor? Paul Ryan? Or maybe, just maybe, a pair might emerge from among the current crop who could unite the various factions of the GOP together and heal the rifts so that the party can move forward and accomplish that which ought to be the singular goal of all the various interest groups within the GOP – for the good of the nation, guaranteeing that Barack Obama is a one-term president.

Having had a day to try to digest the outcome of yesterday's race, I still find myself with some of the same issues.

Mitt Romney, for all I believe he is the most electable candidate in the general election, just isn't getting traction with the most conservative wing of the base.

Newt Gingrich, despite his victory, still suffers from high negatives among independent voters that the eventual GOP ticket needs to attract in November AND among disaffected Democrats who might sit home if someone else is the nominee.

Rick Santorum may be coming across as more attractive to everyone, but does he have the organizational and fundraising wherewithal to win.

And then there is Ron Paul, whose followers are America's equivalent of the UK's Monster Raving Loony Party.

Add to that the reality that there are states where either Gingrich, Santorum, or both are not on the ballot for the GOP primary, and you can see the distinct reality that we might have no one enter the convention with sufficient delegates to win on the first ballot.

And I for one see that as a good thing.

Face it -- we need a process which leads us to coalesce around one of the remaining candidates, or we need to get someone who is not currently in the race to emerge as such a unifying figure. I don't see the former happening in the primaries, and it is just to late for the latter to happen.

Which leads us to the city of Tampa and the final week of August.

This primary process will select delegates to the 2012 Republican National Convention who are committed to the candidates currently running, as well as some committed to candidates who withdraw (Texas could, for example, still go heavily for Rick Perry) and some who are officially uncommitted. In the very likely event that no candidate commands the convention majority needed to win on the first ballot, what better group of Republicans -- activists of all stripes -- to weigh all options and choose the best ticket possible for the GOP?

Think about the candidates who did not enter the race for one reason or another, but for whom we of the grass roots have said we long. Figures of national prominence like Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, or Allen West -- and, of course, Sarah Palin. Respected GOP leaders like Jeb Bush, Eric Cantor, or Paul Ryan. Or maybe, just maybe, one of the current candidates might be able to persuade the delegates that he is, in fact, the best hope the 2012 presidential election..

But regardless of who the nominee would be, I believe that such a process would produce greater unity -- and a greater chance at victory -- than the process currently at work is likely to produce. What's more, such a brokered convention would likely produce greater consensus than currently exists among the disparate factions of the base -- and would energize us for a momentous, historic election of the likes this country has not seen in decades.

Steven Tyler before today's playoff game between the New England patriots and Baltimore Ravens.

Personally, I call it as being among the worst I've ever heard.

UPDATE: Looks like my assessment is shared by others.

The Aerosmith frontman, who also twilights as a judge on the hit show American Idol, has certainly seen better days. You have to believe that if “judge” Steven Tyler saw “singer” Steven Tyler perform this poorly he probably wouldn’t put him through to “Hollywood week.” I mean, how is this guy supposed to pass as a judge on a singing competition when he does… this?

Because despicable people with despicable beliefs are prone to do despicable things.

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum were shoved and a baby stroller was left knocked over after a group of “Occupy protesters” disrupted his election night gathering and threw glitter on him Saturday night.

I'm curious -- what sort of security does Santorum have? Has he yet qualified for Secret Service protection? And regardless, why are they letting these scum get close enough to engage in such assaults upon him?

I can't help but notice that these scumbags never tried this sort of thing with Rick Perry -- maybe because they were aware of how he deals with threatening vermin. Maybe that is how candidates and supporters need to deal with glitter bombers -- after all, how do we know they aren't throwing acid or a biological weapon?

Without further ado, here are this week’s full results:

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 2/3 votes! The Right Planet – The Talking Points Meme
• Second place with 2 2/3 votes – Joshuapundit- “I Got Bin Laden” – And Why Obama’s Big Boast Might Have Been A Huge Mistake
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes – The Political Commentator-Achtung! Antisemitismus, immer präsent doch in der Regel unter dem Radar, ist jetzt immer häufiger offene und ist in das Licht der Welt erscheinen!
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – The Razor-In the Belly of the Swan
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – The Mellow Jihadi- Move, Vets Coming Through!
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – The Noisy Room-Don’t Worry… Nuthin’ Bad’s Gonna Happen…
• Fifth Place with 1 vote – Right Truth-Handcuffed, arrested, and now faces three and a half years in jail for firearms possession – for the crime of being unaware that the Second Amendment does not apply in New York City
• Sixth place with 2/3 vote – The Glittering Eye – Citizenship Skills
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote – Bookworm Room –San Francisco Chronicle columnist warns city’s rational thinkers not to roll in the mud with one specific fringe group
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote – New Zeal – DSA Marxists Take Over the Occupy Movement: Plan “Spring Offensive,” With Widespread Occupations of State Capitols, Schools and Workplaces
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote– Simply Jews–De Nada Ilse
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote – VA Right! – Ron Paul Flying First Class on Taxpayer Dime

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 2/3 votes! – Allen West - Mr. President, please don’t play the race card in 2012… submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second place with 2 votes – Defining Ideas – The Death Of Honesty> submitted byThe Colossus of Rhodey
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes – Melanie Phillips-The West’s Useful Idiots submitted by The Political Commentator
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - Mark Steyn –Ron Paul beckons GOP to Fortress America submitted by The Noisy Room
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - Maggie’s Farm – Understanding The Wuterich Haditha Court Martial submitted by The Mellow Jihadi
• Fifth place with 1 vote - Wings Over Iraq–Let’s Review submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote -Inside Higher Ed – Price of Success submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote -IsraellyCool –There’s Something About Perry submitted by Simply Jews
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Big Government –EXCLUSIVE:Former Bush Counternarcotics Advisor: We’re Losing the Drug War Because of Government Bureaucracy submitted by Right Truth
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote -SE Cupp – Newt Gingrich, Natural Woman submitted by The Watcher
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -Rush Limbaugh –Washington, DC, Law Forces Exterminators to Capture and Relocate Rats submitted by The Right Planet
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -GodFather Politics – Urinating on the Dead: Marine Performance Art? submitted by Bookworm Room
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -Nile Gardiner – Why are Barack Obama’s critics so smart? submitted by The Razor
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -Liberty’s Spirit – The Real Story of the Lebanese Civil War submitted by The Watcher
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -Accuracy In Media – AIM Interview with Craig Shirley on Pearl Harbor, Ronald Reagan and Today’s Politics submitted by New Zeal
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -The Blaze –More ‘Embarrassing’ Ron Paul Newsletters Emerge on Race, Israel, & More submitted by Rhymes With Right

See you next week!

You know -- over the desecration of Bibles?

Occupy San Francisco’s “Day of Action” turned violent Friday night when protesters occupied an abandoned hotel and began throwing objects at police officers from the roof, police said.

“Once they gained access [to the hotel], some of them made it to the top of the roof and they then began to throw bibles down at the officers,” San Francisco Police Department spokesman Carlos Manfredi said.

Of course, we know the answer to my provocative question -- not one hair on the stinking, unwashed heads of the #Occupy terrorists will be harmed despite the desecration of Christian sacred texts.

After all, Christianity is truly a religion of peace, unlike this one.

As the results come in showing that Newt Gingrich has won the South Carolina primary, a top secret source has funneled a copy of the following telegram to me.

Well, it seems like the least they can do, given the results.

Let me be absolutely clear, I should pay more taxes. . .

You mean this?

Then lead by example.

There’s nothing stopping you.

Except for a lack of integrity and leadership skills on your part.

Turbotax Timmy even has this handy-dandy website for you to use.

UNANIMOUSLY!

The Supreme Court on Friday instructed a lower court in Texas to take a fresh look at election maps it had drawn in place of a competing set of maps from the Texas Legislature. The justices said the lower court had not paid enough deference to the Legislature’s choices and seemed to have improperly substituted its own values for those of elected officials.

The court’s unanimous decision, interpreted as a victory for Texas Republicans, extended the uncertainty surrounding this major voting-rights case, one that could play a role in determining control of the House of Representatives.

“A district court should take guidance from the state’s recently enacted plan in drafting an interim plan,” the Supreme Court’s unsigned decision said. “That plan reflects the state’s policy judgments on where to place new districts and how to shift existing ones in response to massive population growth.”

This means that even the ultra-liberal trio of Ginsberg, Kagan, and Sotomayor recognized that the San Antonio court stepped well-beyond its legitimate role.

Of course, this means that we are a week-and-a-half from the date of the re-opened filing period and have no legislative maps to work with. Unless decisions are made in a matter of days, it may be that even the delayed primary in April may not be an option. Are we looking at a later April date? May? June? And what does that do to state conventions? Could we find ourselves with a “bedsheet ballot”, with all 36 Congressional seats filled via a statewide vote? At this point, who knows.

This certainly does give me incentive to go to the “meet and greet” for one of the CD 36 candidates tonight. I imagine the discussion will be interesting.

UPDATE: Which brings us to this release from the Texas GOP:

AUSTIN - Friday afternoon, the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) was informed that the three-judge federal panel in San Antonio has issued an order for a status conference on February 1st. As the ordered status conference is the same date on which the recently extended filing deadlines are supposed to end, the RPT is concerned that delaying a status conference until this date will place the April 3rd unified Primary Election in jeopardy. This may also put in jeopardy the Democratic and Republican State Conventions which are scheduled in June. Therefore, the Republican Party of Texas has instructed its lawyers to file a motion with the panel to reconsider a status conference at such a late date and to request that the status conference be moved up so that the possibility of an April 3rd primary can be maintained.

As a note to our candidates, county chairs, precinct chairs and Republican activists - until we receive a ruling on our anticipated motion to reconsider, we suggest everybody continue with plans toward an April 3rd primary. However, everyone should now be on notice that there is a possibility that this date could be moved. We will continue to try and keep you advised as soon as developments occur.

Seems like the San Antonio panel is bound and determined to further disrupt the political process in the state of Texas.

There’s a great piece over at PoliPundit about why Newt would be a disaster as a candidate and a president.

[T]here’s a more insidious problem with Newt: if he wins the nomination, and especially if he becomes president, he could prove devastating to conservatism and the Republican party.

Newt is like crack cocaine. Crack gives you an immediate and extraordinary high. It can be surprising and effective, just like Newt was in 1994, and in flashes of brilliance during the presidential primary campaign.

But crack also brings stupefying lows. It can lay waste to your life. Newt is just one scandal or stupid statement away from imploding during the election.

And, if he were elected, Newt’s atrocious management skills would make a mess of everything, and alienate everyone around him. It’s no coincidence that so many people who served in the House with Newt are so vehemently against him.

President Newt would so rapidly alienate the electorate that Democrats might take back Congress in the mother of all mid-terms in 2014.

I think the observation is a good one, even if the analogy is jarring. But I’d argue that we would not have to wait until 2012 – I’ve already heard from many disaffected Democrats and independents who voted for Obama in 2008 that they would find themselves motivated to cast a ballot for Obama just to keep Gingrich out of the White House.

But it goes beyond that. Newt as the candidate undermines the GOP platform. He will likely give us amnesty for illegals. His anti-Bain rhetoric raises troubling issues regarding his commitment to free markets and free enterprise. And like it or not, Gingrich as our candidate permanently undermines the GOP as a pro-marriage, pro-family values party because of his sordid personal history. If he were to adopt Ron Paul’s foreign and defense platform, Newt Gingrich would be indistinguishable for Barack Obama in every way except the incidentals of age and skin color. We can and must do better.

On Obama's visit to Disney World.

Obama at Disney: "America is open for business'

Well, except for the energy sector -- what with taxpayer-funded "green energy" companies failing and oil pipelines Americans support being rejected by Obama's minions.

But I'm sure those two policies secured him the Dopey and Goofy vote.

Given the fact that the national Enquirer does a good job of tracking the marital infidelities of Democrats (which the MSM doesn't like to do), I'll post this.

The mother of JESSE JACKSON’s love child is blasting him as a deadbeat dad for falling behind on child support payments!

In official documents filed with the Los Angeles Superior Court and obtained by The ENQUIRER, Karin Stanford claims the 70-year-old famed civil rights leader owes $11,694.50 for their daughter Ashley, now 12.

Stanford was a top aide with Jackson’s Rainbow PUSHCoalition, and The ENQUIRER ex posed their long-term extramarital affair in a bombshell world exclu sive in January 2001.

After admitting paternity, the former Democratic presidential hopeful paid court-ordered support and regularly visited Ashley at Stanford’s Cali fornia home for the past decade.

But according to the court documents, Jackson – who’s remained married to wife Jackie – failed to pay support from De­cember 2010 until August 2011, including minimal monthly fees of $400.

Maybe he'll get treated like other deadbeats, and we'll get a brilliant civil rights classic -- "Letter From LA Jail".

But I do have to ask -- Jesse is only paying a little more than a grand a month, including fees? That seems sort of low, given his net worth and speaking fees, and the fact that this is his only minor child. Or is it?

I guess the economy is in such a strong recovery – and our energy supply is so secure – that we just don’t need the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Obama administration will announce this afternoon it is rejecting a Canadian firm’s application for a permit to build and operate a massive oil pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border, according to sources who have been briefed on the matter.

However the administration will allow TransCanada to reapply after it develops an alternate route through the sensitive habitat of Nebraska’s Sandhills. Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns will make the announcement, which comes in response to a congressionally-mandated deadline of Feb. 21 for action on the proposed Keystone pipeline.

Oddly enough, his own jobs council just recommended that we develop more energy sector jobs. I guess that the Kenyan’s son knows better than his own experts.

And as for that Canadian oil, expect it to end up in China instead. Guess Obama really did mean it when he said he supported higher gas prices for Americans.

Probably not – after all, Eric Holder and the Obama Department of Justice go out of their way to protect Obama’s black cronies and only disenfranchise white voters.

Because of strong demographic changes, Chicago is undergoing its decennial redistricting with a vengeance. The biggest demographic change is the drop in the percent of African Americans, an incredible 19%. Other ethnic groups have been stable with the exception of a rise in the city’s Hispanic population. So, one would expect that under the standard redistricting principle of wards being carved up into equal population units, African Americans would be a lower percentage in some wards than they have been and Hispanics would be higher. The total population of any ward, however, would remain roughly equivalent.

In an effort to keep African-American aldermen in power, Emanuel and his cronies have cut up the wards into different sizes, with white wards on the north and lakefront each having 56,000 inhabitants and black wards having closer to 51,000. Making the white wards larger and thinning out the black wards preserves the wards of African-American alderman, while disenfranchising whites. This is racial discrimination.

Oddly enough, the same folks who are screeching about Hispanics not getting the representation they deserve because of population growth are quite silent about the Chicago situation. Is it because they know that the Obama Justice Department doesn’t really have an equal protection agenda?

Maybe someone less fortunate than them needed these signs more.

Demonstrators felt an injustice was committed by the police department’s response to the removal of up to 40 signs from the encampment at Lincoln Park over the weekend.

Jen Rose, one of the demonstrators, said the signs, including some made by a university art professor and another depicting the Stars and Stripes, were removed either on the bitter-cold Saturday night while 15 to 20 demonstrators snoozed or on Sunday afternoon when demonstrators left to attend some events.

Adding to the indignity was the police response.

* * *

The officers told Rose and other demonstrators that no crime was committed because the signs had no monetary value and protesters were in the park illegally. Anything left in the park, Rose said she was told, becomes part of the “public domain.”

Clegg said the discussion centered upon the value of the signs and who owned them. She said police will file a report if an official OccupyMaine representative goes to the Portland Police Department and establishes that the signs belonged to the group.

I thought one of the tenets of Occupyism was contempt for the cops and refusal to cooperate with them when crimes were committed. Seems mighty hypocritical that they would now go to the police when they believe they have been victimized – especially when their entire movement has been built on illegal activity designed to use government authority to take the property of some Americans to give it to others. It is obvious that someone just took it upon themselves to “redistribute” the signs among the 99%.

I guess I just don’t see where this story merits coverage, much less the breathless tone of some bodice-ripping romance novel.

Underscoring the prominent, if little discussed role that Mitt Romney played as a Mormon leader, the private equity giant once run by the GOP presidential frontrunner carved his church a slice of several of its most lucrative business deals, securities records show, providing it with millions of dollars worth of stock in some of Bain Capital's most well-known holdings. Romney has always been a major donor to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which requires that members "tithe," or give 10 percent of their income to the church. His family charity, called the Tyler Foundation, has given more than $4 million to the church in the past five years, including $1.8 million in 2008 and $600,000 in 2009. But because Romney, whose fortune has been estimated at $250 million, has never released his personal tax returns, the full extent of his giving has never been public.

Newly uncovered stock contributions made during Romney's Bain days suggest there is another dimension to Romney's support for the church -- one that could involve millions more than has been previously disclosed.

Why should it be disclosed at all? Is it really the business of the American people how much money a church member gives to his church – or how donations of stocks or bonds to the church may have benefitted that church? I’d say not at all – even if the church member is running for president of the United States.

Of course, this isn’t really an article about how much Romney gives it to his church. What the article is really intended to do is stir up more concern about Romney being a Mormon, since his religion has not been much of an issue at all in his run for the Republican nomination – no matter how much the mainstream media and other liberals want it to be. After all, the elitist media doesn’t want to see anyone who actually takes faith seriously – especially members of conservative religious groups – elected to office.

Rob over at JoshuaPundit concurs.

Pretty disgusting.

A probate judge’s order to abort a mentally ill woman’s unborn baby and sterilize her — if it meant she had to be “coaxed, bribed, or even enticed ... by ruse” into the procedure — has prompted a legal tongue-lashing from an appeals court, and outrage from even abortion rights supporters. “No party requested this measure ... and the judge appears to have simply produced the requirement out of thin air,” state Appellate Court Associate Justice Andrew R. Grainger wrote, reversing newly retired Norfolk Probate and Family Court Judge Christina Harms’ Jan. 6 ruling in the case, handing the abortion decision to another judge.

Remember the name “Christina Harms”. Look up any record on her that you can find. I’ll bet that she is a big donor to and activist in “pro-choice” causes.

And remember – this all occurred at the same time that this matter is being discussed in North Carolina. Looks like Massachusetts Democrats are ready to set up just the sort of program that North Carolina Democrats ran for decades.

Oddly enough, I've missed the media outrage and all the stories linking the rhetoric of the so-called 99% and their supporters with terrorism and calling them racists for trying to bomb out Obama like the KKK did to MLK.

The White House was locked down Tuesday night because of “smoking objects” found near the North Portico as hundreds of protesters rallied outside the executive mansion, Secret Service officials said.

“We had approximately 1,000 to 1,500 protesters from Occupy D.C. on the fence line. There were no arrests but what we believe … was a smoke bomb was thrown over the fence,” said Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie.

Witnesses said the Secret Service moved people from the area as they investigated what was thrown.

If the media does not use this incident to delegitimize the entire Occupy movement, then it is evidence of their left-wing bias. After all, one undocumented spitting charge was enough to label the entire Tea party movement as racist -- why shouldn't an attack on the White House be sufficient to define a movement that has been rife with violence and criminality as a criminal movement that uses terroristic methods against their opponent -- and that engages in acts of violence against elected officials?

If a smoke bomb had been thrown at the White House by Tea party activists, you would have seen mass arrests and folks whisked off to Gitmo. I'm betting that we see this one swept under the rug.

Given the number of candidates to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison in the US Senate, I wouldn't be surprised to see a runoff, though at one point it looked like David Dewhurst was going to run away with the race. But the run for the nomination seems to be tightening up just a bit.

The BattleSwarm Blog is reporting that Dewhurst’s fundraising has dropped dramatically this quarter. Coupled with that is a new poll being released showing Cruz narrowing the margin considerably. Four months ago, Dewhurst lead Cruz 41%-12%. The margin is now 36%-18%.

For a reference point, this is exactly what we saw happen in the Marco Rubio v. Charlie Crist race in 2010. Keep an eye on this one. This is a perfect opportunity for the conservative movement to fill a United States Senate seat with a rockstar like Ted Cruz.

Frankly, I would love to see Ted Cruz get into a runoff with Dewhurst. I believe him to be a superior candidate to the Lieutenant Governor, and also the sort of candidate who represents the future of the GOP and the state of Texas. But for that to happen, he needs the help of conservatives -- because even if David Dewhurst's money from others dries up, he's got more than enough in his own checking account to self-fund his campaign to whatever extent it is necessary.

H/T Urban Grounds

A few years back, I took a pretty strong stance for student online speech in the Avery Doninger case where it occurred off campus and was related to a matter of public concern – in particular urging people to contact the district about a decision to cancel a school event. I believe I was right then, and that eventually the courts will catch up with the development of the internet.

I have to be honest – I’m finding myself concerned about this vague report coming out of Cranston, Rhode Island, where a dispute (and court case) over a prayer banner at Cranston West High School has now led to a student from another school in the district facing discipline for online comments made regarding the plaintiff in the case.

A Cranston high school student has been disciplined for online comments against a fellow student who sued the School Department to remove a prayer banner at the school, said Ray L. Votto Jr., the district's chief operating officer.

The student faced internal discipline, Votto said, typically a form of detention.

Now let’s be honest – it really isn’t clear about what this kid wrote online or where he wrote it. I’ve seen a reference to particularly vile comments made by someone online, but I am unsure whether or not any of these comments are related back to the student disciplined by the district. The discipline seems to be related to the district’s bullying policy.

Now here is where my concern kicks in. Given that the student in question has become a party to litigation and revealed her identity publicly, it is hard to argue that she is not a public figure as it relates to the issue of the disputed banner. Posts and comments related to the matter, as well as statements made to the litigious student away from school, are related to a matter of public concern. What business does the school have taking any action on this matter? It appears to me that we are looking at speech that is clearly protected by the First Amendment.

Now some may object that we are dealing with threats and harassment. To the extent that there are true threats being made and /or actual harassment as defined by relevant criminal statutes, those are still not a matter for the school to deal with when it occurs off campus. At such a point, it becomes a matter for law enforcement to deal with, and proper criminal charges should filed and adjudicated in the courts. And if there isn’t a criminal violation, it is fundamentally inappropriate to shunt such off-campus speech about a matter of public concern to the schools, which operate with a much lower burden of proof and significantly less due process. The Supreme Court noted over 40 years ago that students do not shed their speech rights at the schoolhouse gate – it is therefore axiomatic that the schools cannot be used to suppress and punish student speech away from the campus, either.

Now some might think that I’m saying this because the student in question is presumably some sort of Christian and the target of the ugly speech is an atheist. I’m not. Indeed, I actually agree with the atheist student, Jessica Ahlquist, that the banner was not appropriate for a public school, and I think that the words of many of her critics are immoral and antithetical to the spirit of Christianity. But just as I think that Jessica’s right to challenge the banner is fully protected under the First Amendment, I also believe that the students who disagree with her are generally within their rights to express their opposition to her lawsuit and the outcome of it, to criticize (even revile) her religious beliefs, and to express their own beliefs as to what the afterlife holds for those who they see as the enemies of God while they are away from school.

By the way, I’d like to acknowledge that I’m tempering this post a little bit for family reasons – indeed, the whole reason I didn’t write on the court case at an earlier was because of those connections. My mom grew up in Cranston. I have lots of family living there to this day. Many of the younger generation attend the Cranston public schools. At least one cousin teaches for the district. Another, now deceased, was a long-time teacher and coach at the school in question and a beloved figure in the community. I don’t know where various family members stand on the issue of the prayer banner, nor do I know if any of them have spoken publicly or online about the matter. But I think the broader speech issue, as opposed to the more narrow issue of the prayer banner, is one that I can write on without causing too much strife.

Here’s what one Muslim writer has to say.

I assume most Muslim-Americans will support Paul because of his foreign policy views on Iran, Afghanistan and war. But more crucially, I am attracted to his paleo-conservative tendencies, even if his radical libertarianism might give me some pause. Not guilty of Islamophobia, a non-interventionist, defending civil liberties, consistently pro-life, not willing to subsidize abortion, and uninterested in regulating sexual behavior without abandoning a traditional view of marriage, I think Paul’s nuanced message on the relation between law and morality should resonate with many Muslim-Americans.

Of course, Omar Shaukat leaves a few things out that may also be attractive.

• Ron Paul is explicitly anti-Israel.

• He supports al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists more than he does America’s national security.

• He’s the only candidate on record as saying he wouldn’t have stopped the Holocaust, something many in the Muslim world would like to finish given its compatibility with Muslim teaching.

Of course, those are just some of the things that make decent folks reject Ron Paul, so I can understand leaving them out of the original article.

H/T Houston Chronicle’s Rick Perry 2012 Blog

This exchange took place a couple of years back. Maybe someone should ask him about it.

MR. RUSSERT: I was intrigued by your comments about Abe Lincoln. “According to Paul, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of getting rid of slavery.”

REP. PAUL: Absolutely. Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war. No, he shouldn’t have gone, gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic. I mean, it was the–that iron, iron fist..

MR. RUSSERT: We’d still have slavery.

REP. PAUL: Oh, come on, Tim. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world. And the way I’m advising that it should have been done is do like the British empire did. You, you buy the slaves and release them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans and where it lingered for 100 years? I mean, the hatred and all that existed. So every other major country in the world got rid of slavery without a civil war. I mean, that doesn’t sound too radical to me. That sounds like a pretty reasonable approach.

Now Ron Paul claims to be the leading -- indeed only -- exponent of liberty in the presidential race. Yet somehow he believes that actually fighting for liberty, even within the United States itself, is not something that is acceptable. How many more decades of liberty denied to how many millions of black people does Ron Paul believe should have been accepted before fighting for their freedom -- and the preservation of the Union -- would have been acceptable?

And on a related note -- does Ron Paul believe the American Revolution was acceptable? Or should Americans have simply kept asking until the liberty which Jefferson declares to be an inalienable right was given to them? Would Uncle Crackpot have stood and boldly declared "No, Mr. Henry -- you have it all wrong! Give me liberty, or I will continue to ask for it in a passive fashion"?

It’s official: Congress ended its least-productive year in modern history after passing 80 bills — fewer than during any other session since year-end records began being kept in 1947.

Someone needs to remind these folks that "success" isn't measured by the number of new laws passed -- success really should be measured by the amount of liberty retained by and/or restored to the people after a session is over.

Of course, the problem is that the GOP-controlled House tried to make the American people more free, while the Democrats controlling the Senate wanted to ensure that we had less of our cash and less of our liberty. As a result, I consider this to be a moderately successful session, since our freedom was not substantially eroded in the way it was when Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate.

Gee -- what was the first clue?

There's a bit of gallows humor for me on this terrible tragedy that has killed at least six people -- my wife and I have been considering a cruise for some time now, and were looking at some by this cruise line -- including one on this ship. This really could have been me.

Let's make this the year that we begin judging our fellow Americans based upon the content of their character rather than the color of their skin -- and when we cease parceling out benefits and burdens based upon skin color and instead do so on the basis of merit. That was Dr. King's dream in 1963, and should be the reality in 2012.

I love the Houston Texans.

For a decade I have lived and died with their football fortunes.

Last week i was among the more than 70,000 screaming fans who watched them beat the Bengals at Reliant Stadium.

Today I'll be in front of a television, watching them play the Ravens in Baltimore.

I'll be cheering my Texans on all the way.

They can win -- continuing the remarkable season that they have had.

I believe they can win -- and that they will win.

But regardless of the winner, one of my former students will play in the AFC Championship game next week!

Here are this week’s full results:

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 1/3 votes! Joshuapundit – The Tale Of The Swine
• Second place with 2 1/3 votes – The Razor- Is The Republican Party Stupid?
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes – New Zeal- Blinded by the Left: How Marxists Wrote Ron Paul’s Defense Cuts Plan
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Right Truth- The Unintended Consequences Begin
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – The Glittering Eye- What Creates Opportunity?
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – The Mellow Jihadi- My Harvard Story
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Bookworm Room-Which agenda really serves women’s rights?
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Noisy Room – Sunlight Down The Spider Hole
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Political Commentator – A one-picture metaphor for the Obama regime plus a lot of words!
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Reckless
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Simply Jews – Richard (Dickie) Silverstein: a blogging dupe of the century?
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – VA Right! – Meet Mitt Romney: Corporate Raider and Vulture Capitalist

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 2/3 votes! – The City Journal- The New Authoritarianism submitted by Bookworm Room
• Second place with 2 1/3 votes – Liberated – Why Do Muslims Despise Jews So Much? submitted by Joshuapundit
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes – American Digest –The Gun School submitted by The Razor
• Fourth place with 1 1/3 votes - Allen West Republic –America is Good submitted by New Zeal
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote - Doug Ross – Tehran TV’s Iranian Idol: Ron Paul submitted by The Watcher
  
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote - Karen Holt/Historic American Examiner –Taking matters into his own hands submitted by Right Truth
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Sultan Knish –Ron Paul’s Soros Defense Plan submitted by The Noisy Room
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote -The Elder of Ziyon –Egyptians to block ‘Zionist’ visitors to rabbi’s tomb submitted by Simply Jews
  
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote -American Thinker – Obama: The Mask is Off submitted by The Right Planet
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Hired Intelligence –Threats and The School-as-Family submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Rand Simberg/PJ Media –The Lunar Yellow Peril submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Yid With Lid –Why is Obama’s favorite Middle East leader an anti-American Islamist? submitted by The Political Commentator
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Abu Muqawama –In Praise of John Nagl submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD

See you next week!

If you are a conservative, this is what it means to help those in need.

SUMTER, S.C. – Presidential candidates hear tales of woe all the time on the campaign trail. But rarely does one respond by pulling cash out of his back pocket to help a struggling voter pay her bills.

Mitt Romney did just that here Saturday night, according to ABC News. When a 55-year-old woman, Ruth Williams, who said she lost her job last October, approached the Republican presidential front-runner on the rope line following a campaign rally in Sumter, he gave her what an aide later said was about $50 or $60.

Mitt Romney may come across a bit stiff on the campaign trail, but here's where we see what kind of man he really is. He didn't wait for a government program to help, nor did he offer to contribute matching funds for doing what he knew was right.