General News & Opinion
pieces:
U.S. Investigates Voting Machines’ Venezuela Ties
By TIM
GOLDEN, Published: October 29, 2006 in the New York Times
The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of
a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a
small software company that has been linked to the leftist
Venezuelan government of President
Hugo Chávez.
The inquiry is focusing on the
Venezuelan owners of the software company, the Smartmatic
Corporation, and is trying to determine whether the government in
Caracas has any control or influence over the firm’s operations,
government officials and others familiar with the investigation
said.
Click Here for the More on the Story...
Teachers brace for strike
Union taps leader of 1989 walkout to aid
fight for wage hike, reform
BY NAUSH BOGHOSSIAN, Staff Writer,
DailyNews.com
Under mounting
pressure for major reforms at Los Angeles schools, the
teachers union has brought in its tough former leader to
help mobilize members for a strike if its demands
are not met.
United Teachers Los Angeles is hiring a
former UTLA president, Wayne Johnson, who organized a
successful nine-day strike in 1989 and wrangled a 24
percent pay raise over three years. Johnson later served
as the hard-nosed president of the California Teachers
Association and is now a consultant.
Click Here for
More on the Story...
Jerry Brown May Not
Meet Legal Qualifications to be Attorney General
Republicans file lawsuit seeking to
disqualify Brown as candidate Filing says he's not active
member of bar -- mayor's spokesman calls action 'dirty
trick'
(10-20) 04:00 PDT Sacramento Bureau of San Francisco
Chronical -- A lawsuit filed Thursday by two GOP party activists
claims Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown's failure to maintain an
active membership in the state bar for two of the past
five years disqualifies him from holding the office of
attorney general.
State law says candidates for attorney general must have
been admitted to practice before the California Supreme
Court for "at least five years immediately preceding"
election.
Brown's status with the State Bar was "inactive" from 1997
to 2003, which prevented him not only from practicing law
in California but from reaching the five-year minimum, the
lawsuit says.
"It would be as serious miscarriage of justice for us to
elect an attorney general who isn't eligible," said Tom
Del Beccaro, the lead plaintiff and chair of the Contra
Costa County Republican Party at a press conference
outside Sacramento Superior Court, where the issue will be
decided. "When you go inactive, you are no longer able to
practice. That makes him ineligible."
Complete hooey, Brown's campaign counters. A sentiment the
State Bar appears to echo.
The lawsuit, which also names as defendants the registrars
of five populous counties, seeks a preliminary injunction
to block votes for Brown from being counted in the
November election on the grounds he is an ineligible
candidate.
Through a spokesman, Brown -- polling well ahead of GOP
opponent state Sen. Chuck Poochigian -- dismissed the
lawsuit as "frivolous," "desperate" and a "political dirty
trick," among other criticisms.
"They're going to end up laughed out of that courtroom,"
said Ace Smith, a Brown campaign consultant. "It's
absolute nonsense and they know it."
Frivolous or not, the lawsuit forces Brown's campaign,
rather than focusing on its game plan, to address the
charges. Poochigian, in turn, portrays any rebuttal by
Brown as an attempt by Brown to evade the law.
Del Beccaro's lawsuit is premised on a section of the
Government Code that says only someone "admitted to
practice before the Supreme Court of the state for a
period of at least five years immediately preceding his
election" can be attorney general.
The lawsuit interprets that phrase to mean "uninterrupted
active membership in the State Bar for the five
consecutive years" preceding the election. Something Brown
lacks.
Brown contends he was admitted to practice before the
California Supreme Court in 1965 after graduating from
Yale Law School and passing the bar exam. Active or
inactive status doesn't change that.
"Jerry Brown has been eligible to practice law in
California under the laws of the state of California and
the rules of the State Bar since 1966. Anyone reading the
statutes would understand this," said Zach Wasserman, a
lawyer supporting Brown's candidacy.
Del Beccaro countered that inactive status enjoins an
attorney from practicing as a lawyer anywhere in the
state, from the Supreme Court down.
Brown, Del Beccaro noted, has been an active member of the
State Bar for only five of the last 14 years.
The State Bar appears to back Brown and Wasserman's
interpretation of the law.
Regardless of whether active or inactive, a lawyer is
still a lawyer, said Robert Hawley, deputy executive
director of the bar.
"When you are sworn in as a lawyer, you are sworn in by
all the courts of California. Once you accept that oath,
you continue to be a lawyer until you die or are disbarred
or resign," Hawley said.
Del Beccaro said Poochigian's campaign did not pay for the
lawsuit. Chuck Bell, the lawyer representing Del Beccaro
and the other plaintiffs said attorney-client privilege
prohibited him from revealing the name.
Poochigian, whose slogan is "Tough to pronounce, tougher
on crime," said the lawsuit raised questions about Brown
failing to meet the legal requirements for the job he is
running for.
Ken Khachigian, Poochigian's campaign consultant was less
circumspect.
"As mayor he's been mostly unavailable. And we've always
known him to be unfit to be 'Top Cop.' Add to that
unavailable and unfit: Unqualified," Khachigian said in a
statement.
Perata urges action against
violent crime [trying to clean up Jerry Brown's mess]
OAKLAND: State Senate leader helps create plan targeting
youths in Oakland, Richmond in effort to reduce homicides
By Chris Metinko
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
[NOTE: Oakland Democrat, Mayor Jerry
Brown, is now running for Attorney General -- He couldn't
fight crime in Oakland and now he wants to take this
ineptitude statewide - how does that make any sense?]
The state Senate leader on
Monday called for street corner intervention to help curb
the rapidly mounting murders in Oakland and Richmond.
"We better start seeing some progress, or I'm going to be
very disappointed," Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, told the
media at the Youth Uprising center in Oakland.
Perata's plan -- developed
last week with civic and community leaders as well as
police -- centers on direct contact and communication with
young people to keep them off the street and out of
trouble. "The thing that should ribbon through
everything here is there should be a certain amount of
communication and candor with everyone," said Perata, the
Senate president pro tem, who represents Oakland and
Richmond. The plan includes putting outreach workers
on 20 "hot" corners to diffuse conflicts, creating more
recreation programs, starting a gun buyback program and
creating greater flexibility in using state money to
reduce crime. Perata said that though the state
could look at redirecting some money to help, he could not
just shovel money to Oakland and Richmond in an effort to
cut down on violent crime. "With few exceptions, the
problems I heard had nothing to do with money," Perata
said.
No matter how it is
solved, community leaders agree there is a problem. So far
this year, more than 70 people have been killed in Oakland
and 19 in Richmond. "This year, we feel like there
has been a significant shift" in the violent crime, said
Olis Simmons, executive director of Youth Uprising. "They
have been more relationship based, not necessarily some
kind of drug war." Relationship-based violent crimes
are even more difficult to stop, he said, because it is
harder to gauge where the next one may occur.
Richmond Mayor Irma
Anderson said she also has noticed a difference in the
violent crimes in her community -- along with an increase
in other crime, such as robberies. That is one of the
reasons she is proposing to the City Council a plan to
increase the number of police officers and create more
after-school and other diversion programs. She said she
hopes the plan will cut the city's homicide rate in half.
[Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown wasn't available to comment
or help solve the problem he created in his city because
he is too busy traveling the state telling everyone what a
great crime fighter he wants to be.]
"We've been in a crisis
mentality," said Richmond Police Chief Chris Magnus.
"We've got to get beyond that and look at things that have
been working in other communities." Perata said he
hopes the group -- made up of elected officials, law
enforcement, community activists and probation and public
health officials from Oakland, Richmond and Alameda and
Contra Costa counties -- will look at ways to implement
the ideas and report back to his office. He said he
does not imagine his office will be directly involved, but
will help try to break down any roadblocks the group hits.
Why Did Terrorists Bomb India?
The recent bombing of trains in
India killing 200 or more people was another tragic example of the
worldwide war that the Islamo-fascists are waging against free
people. For those that blame America, Israel, Christians, or
any of the other usual suspects for the "oppression" of Muslims as
the cause of their anger, let's review some inconvenient facts...
India did NOT send any troops to
Iraq. India just voted for a U.N. Human Rights Council
resolution to condemn Israel at every meeting. The Students
Islamic Movement of India and Lashkar-e-Taiba (those responsible for
these bombings) aimed to kill Hindus and cripple India's financial
center. The goal of Lashkar-e-Taiba (which is allied with Al
Qaeda from which it receives financial support) is to establish an
Islamic state in India and subjugate the Hindus.
Lashkar-e-Taiba sent a French convert to Islam to Australia to
target military bases in Sydney. Support for Lashkar-e-Taiba
is widespread in Pakistan. Clearly, this is an organization
with global reach and sophistication.
Many may not like the facts, but a
worldwide network of very committed and very deadly people have
declared war on all free people, all people who do not conform to
their strict interpretation of Islam.
The time of choosing is upon us.
Do we fight or do we sit by complacently and watch free people in
America and beyond be sacked as the Romans were.
Today's
anti-American leftists betray their own radical heritage
By Michael
Medved
Tuesday, July 4, 2006
Today's militant leftists
not only spread lies about America's present but generate even
more damaging distortions about the nation's past and in so doing
differentiate themselves from the radical idealists of yesteryear.
...This negativity about the past directly threatens the nation's
future: spreading the idea among the younger generation that the
entire American project isn't worth sustaining or defending. Of
course, the idea of conscious "genocide" again Native Americans is
absurd despite Cindy Sheehan's claims of "virtual extinction of
our native population" there are more self-identified Indians
alive today than a hundred or even two hundred years ago.
Moreover, the assimilation and massive intermarriage with white
people (even Bill Clinton claimed to be "part Cherokee") erased
far more self-identified Indians than the relatively rare (but
undeniably loathsome) massacres by whites. Concerning slavery,
Americans never invented it or instituted it we inherited it, and
with such great discomfort that anti-slavery activists were far
better represented among the founding fathers (Franklin, Adams,
Hamilton) than those who made an active case for slavery. David
Brion Davis, the Yale professor who?s written magisterially about
the history of the peculiar institution, makes clear the positive
role of the American Revolution and its ideals in giving life
(after many millennia of slavery) to the abolitionist movement
around the world that ultimately put an end to this savage
oppression. The United States, in other words, played a unique,
prominent role in ending the institution, but played no role in
establishing it.
"The Inconvenient Truth" is
indeed inconvenient to alarmists
By Tom Harris
Monday, June 12, 2006
"Scientists have an independent
obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it," Al
Gore sensibly asserts in his film "An Inconvenient Truth." With that outlook
in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the
science of his movie?
Professor Bob Carter of the
Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in
Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising
assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they
are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are
commanding public attention."
But surely Carter is merely
part of what most people regard as a tiny cadre of "climate change
skeptics" who disagree with the "vast majority of scientists" Gore
cites?
No; Carter is one of hundreds
of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby
group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human
emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global
climate change. "Climate experts" is the operative term here. Why?
Because what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial
when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the
climate field.
Click here for the rest of
the story
Why Terrorists Planned to Strike Canada?
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20060611-094354-8871r.htm>
By Joel Mowbray
Published June 12,
2006
In the predictable stories reporting the “astonishment” of friends and
neighbors about the Canadian terror suspects arrested last week, one
tidbit serves as a cautionary tale for the threat of homegrown terrorism
in the U.S.
One
of the 17 arrested, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, was an imam at a small
storefront mosque in suburban Toronto. Those who listened to his
sermons have told reporters that they didn’t promote violent jihad or
advocate killing non-Muslims. In a post-9/11 environment less
hospitable to such rhetoric, these denials actually could be true.
But
the arrested imam didn’t need to preach violence in order to prime the
terror pump.
Click here for the rest of
the story
A New Kind Of McCarthyism
FROM Investors Business Daily Editorial Page
Posted 4/24/2006
Leaks: The media have a curious double standard when it
comes to national security. They lambaste those they dislike for
"leaks" and "lapses," but ignore their own.
Mary McCarthy, a high-level official in the CIA's office of the
inspector general, was fired last week after failing a polygraph
test and, as The Washington Post reported, for "discussing
operational intelligence matters with journalists."
Among the journalists McCarthy leaked to was the Post's own Dana
Priest, who two weeks ago won a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on,
as the Post put it, the "secret, CIA-run prisons for suspected
terrorists in eastern Europe and elsewhere."
Some in the mainstream media, along with key Democrats, came to
McCarthy's defense.... McCarthy, it seems, was a Democratic
Party operative — a mole. There's evidence for this. McCarthy
has given thousands over the years to Democratic candidates,
including Kerry. She also had deep ties to the Clinton
administration, serving as an aide to disgraced National Security
Adviser Sandy Berger.
That's why it's no surprise she leaked to the Post's Priest. As
dozens of Internet bloggers have noted, Priest herself has sterling
left-wing credentials. Her husband is William Goodfellow, executive
director of the Center for International Policy, a far-left policy
think tank that has basically staked its existence on opposing any
and all Bush administration policies in Iraq and elsewhere. McCarthy
told her tales not to some disinterested, objective reporter, but to
someone she knew would use it to hurt President Bush.
Revealing secrets during wartime is against the
law, especially for spies who sign ironclad secrecy agreements. As
such, McCarthy's admission that she leaked to Priest and possibly
others makes her a criminal. A strong case can be made that Priest
is, too.
By Larry Elder
From the Daily Breeze
The "funeral" of Coretta Scott King turned into an
ugly, disrespectful political rally....
Listening to speaker after speaker complain about the
poor conditions under which minorities live, one wonders whether
Martin Luther King Jr. accomplished anything.
There stood Oprah Winfrey, the most powerful woman in
television, with her net worth estimated by Forbes magazine at $1.3
billion. And she recently signed a $55 million deal with XM
Satellite Radio. There stood poet Maya Angelou, who, in one recent
year, grossed $3.3 million according to Forbes, and lives in a
mansion while employing several people full time....
Most blacks are middle class and do not live in the
inner city. If black America were a separate country, its GDP would
place it at No. 16 in the world. Corporations like Time Warner,
American Express and Merrill Lynch all have black CEOs.
America, while not perfect, certainly has come a
long, long way since the day King led the Montgomery bus boycott.
But the funeral speakers confuse equal rights with equal results --
two very different things. UCLA public policy professor emeritus
James Q. Wilson once said, "You need only do three things to avoid
poverty in this country: finish high school, marry before having a
child, and produce the child after the age of 20. Only 8 percent of
families who do this are poor; 79 percent of those who fail to do
this are poor." Yet today's "black leaders" demand reparations,
set-asides, race-based preferences, and still more welfare.
In 1911, Booker T. Washington seemed to address some
of those who spoke at the funeral when he said, "There is (a) class
of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the
wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having
learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles,
they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs
-- partly because they want sympathy, and partly because it pays.
Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances,
because they do not want to lose their jobs. ... There is a certain
class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get
well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an
easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which
to make themselves prominent before the public."
Larry Elder is an attorney, syndicated columnist
and national radio talk-show host. He can be heard from 3 to 6 p.m.
Monday through Friday on KABC-AM 790. His e-mail address is
sage@larryelder.com.
Click Here for the Complete Story
Net firms caught between
Chinese rules, U.S. demands for free speech
BEIJING (AP) - Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and other
U.S. Internet companies under fire for assisting in China's censorship
efforts are insisting they must obey Beijing or risk limiting access
to their most promising market.
As the companies face congressional hearings in
Washington on Wednesday about their role in aiding the communist
regime, they are appealing to the U.S. government for help, saying no
private business can resist China on its own.
Yet analysts say that even if Washington stepped in to
enforce free-speech standards, perhaps by forcing U.S. companies to
withdraw their Internet services or equipment from China, the impact
would likely be blunted as entrepreneurs from China and other
countries move in to fill the void in the rapidly growing market.
Click Here for the Rest of the Story
Staffer altered online entries on
Feinstein, Blum
From SFGate.com - Washington -- Sen. Dianne
Feinstein's office acknowledged Thursday that a former staff member had
removed references to the California Democrat's net worth on the Internet
encyclopedia Wikipedia and had altered entries about her husband Richard
Blum's Chinese investments in 1997.
The Feinstein staff member eliminated a reference to the
senator's membership on the Trilateral Commission. Although the
senator currently is not a member, she served on the commission
during the 1980s while mayor of San Francisco.
The Wikinews investigation described the Blum changes as "more
problematic" than the changes to Feinstein's biography. These
include removing references to a 1992 fine for failing to
disclose that Blum had guaranteed Feinstein's campaign loans.
Also removed, according to the Wikinews account, was "a
paragraph regarding a conflict of interest debate from 1997 when
Mr. Blum had invested millions of dollars in Chinese businesses
when Ms. Feinstein was campaigning in the Senate to lift trade
sanctions against the country. Mr. Blum later announced he would
donate all profits from his Chinese investments to charity."
Click Here for Complete Article
BCRC Member Front & Center in D.C. Rally
against guest worker amnesty
About 100 supporters of the Minuteman
Project rallied on the West Lawn of the Capitol yesterday morning, imploring
the government to tighten the nation's borders and reject guest-worker
legislation. The House last year passed a border-enforcement bill
that calls for, among other things, the construction of 700 miles of fence
along the U.S.-Mexico border and makes it a felony to cross illegally. The
Senate will debate its own version of the bill in coming weeks. Beach
Cities Republican Club member and Minuteman supporter, Deborah Courtney is
pictured on the right making her case to one of a few counter protesters.
Local Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher from Huntington Beach joined
Rep. Tom Tancredo (R- Colo.) at the rally to speak in favor of tighter
immigration laws and border enforcement and against amnesty in the form of
guest worker programs.
Courtney and others including Gilchrist made the case that
they are not against immigrants, just illegal immigration. Counter
protestors reused a common canard of name-calling calling the group racists.
However, the point was made that it is more racist to subject these people
to substandard work conditions than it is to develop a sound immigration
policy that allows people a legal means of working here without rewarding
past illegal behavior. Congressman Rohrabacher pointed out that
"Americans [and legal immigrants] will do any job as long as they are paid a
fair and decent wage."
Gilchrist,
who has spoke to at the Beach Cities Republican Club November 2005
meeting, paid no more attention to the counter-demonstrators,
turning his attention to the 100 U.S. senators whom he had invited
to the rally. "Dear senators of the United States of America," he
said, "I am putting you on notice that at 12:14 p.m. on February 8
in the 2006th year of our Lord, that if we cannot change you with
our letters, I can assure you that we can move you with our
rhetoric. And we will most assuredly move you out of office with
our votes."
Pastor JOe Wright Opens Kansas Senate with
Prayer Heard 'round the world
Expecting a standard general prayer, some
law makers left the chamber when they heard this from Rev. Wright:
"Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your
forgiveness and to seek your direction and
guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but
that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium
and reversed our values.
We have exploited the poor and called it the
lottery.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn and called it choice.
We have shot abortionists and called it
justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and
called it building self esteem.
! We have abused power and called it politics.
We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and
called it ambition.
We have polluted the air with profanity and
pornography and called it freedom of __expression.
We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our
forefathers and called it enlightenment.
Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today;
cleanse us from
Every sin and set us free. Amen!"
Reverend's church was inundated with 5,000 calls afterwards,
47 were negative.
Stupid in America: Why your kids are probably dumber
than Belgians by John Stossel (ABC 20/20 Correspondent)
...We gave identical tests to high school students in New
Jersey and in Belgium. The Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks.
The Belgian kids called the American students "stupid." The American
boy who got the highest score told me: "I'm shocked, 'cause it just shows
how advanced they are compared to us."
The Belgians did better because their schools are better. At
age ten, American students take an international test and score well above
the international average. But by age fifteen, when students from forty
countries are tested, the Americans place twenty-fifth. The longer kids stay
in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do
worse than kids from countries that spend much less money on education.
Click Here for More...
Tribute
in honor of Tibor Rubin, America's Newest Medal of Honor Recipient
Mr. Tibor Rubin, 76 of Garden Grove, will be
honored on December 15, 2005 at the California State Military Museum in
Sacramento. On September 23, 2005, Korean War veteran Corporal Tibor Rubin
was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award, by
President Bush in the East Room of the White House. Click For More
General Abizaid's Speech to
the Naval War College
Nov 2005
General Abizaid spoke to the Naval War College
last
week.
The audience was made up
primarily of War College students who are mid-grade/senior military
officers. The majority of these officers have served in the conflicts in
Iraq and Afghanistan, so there was a real understanding of dynamics of the
region. BS would not sell to this audience. Here is a short summary of
General Abizaid's comments.
Click For More
Economics: France's Fuel
stoking Riot Fires - And what we should learn
11/15/2005
Commentary by Thomas Sowell -- Senior Fellow at the
Rose and Milton
Friedman Foundation
Many
people are blaming the riots in France on the high unemployment rate among
young Muslim men living in the ghettoes around Paris and elsewhere. Some are
blaming both the unemployment and the ghettoization on discrimination by the
French. Plausible as these explanations may sound, they ignore
economics, among other things.
Click For More
The Cost of "Gouging" and
other terms used by the demagogs
11/16/2005
Commentary by Thomas Sowell -- Senior Fellow at the
Rose and Milton
Friedman Foundation
A newspaper headline -- "Lawmakers Struggle to
Define Gasoline Price 'Gouging'" -- shows how phony the current
Congressional jihad against the oil companies is. "Price gouging" is one of
those phrases that evoke strong emotions but have no definition.
Click for
More
LEADERSHIP FIDDLES AS FRANCE BURNS
After 11
Days of national riots, Chirac finally speaks up and offers conciliatory
remarks to rioters. Any bets on whether that is going to work?
Let's hope so, but don't hold your breath.
Click here for more
Congressman Tom
Tancredo (R-CO) Real Guest Act (2005) Bill
In July of this year, Rep. Tancredo introduced the
Real Guest Act of 2005 (HR 3333) that would make it a felony to enter the
U.S. illegally and would require the Department of Homeland Security to
secure the border before a single worker could legally enter the country.
Click here for more
Finger
Pointing & Recriminations in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina
Instead
of working together, finger pointing is the order of the day. Well,
let's just set the record straight, then.
by
Joel Strom 9/5/05
Click here for more
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