Posts from — March 2008

Jeff Skilling — now cooling his heels in federal prison — may seem like an odd topic in a presidential election year, but his sad tale should be front and center in the minds of U.S. voters come November. Of everything the United States has to offer the world, our greatest gift may be our historical allegiance to the rule of law. The fact that Skilling ever ended up behind bars calls that allegiance into question.

Those who participated in putting Skilling in the pen — politicians, pundits, prosecutors, big pension funds and an off-the reservation federal judge — allowed Houston mobocracy and Washington politics to trump the rule of law. This year, the temptation will be overpowering to repeat the excesses of the Enron investigation and trial as payback for the subprime mortgage mess. [Read more →]

I spent a leisurely hour on Sunday afternoon watching a History Channel International program about the Doomsday Clock. For those of you who don’t know what the clock’s about, check out thebulletin.org.

It seems to have started as a group of concerned atomic scientists who wanted some way to present (or…dramatize) their highly subjective view of the immediacy of the threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanity. It seems that “midnight” means…. DOOMSDAY. And things kicked off, after World War II, with the clock just a few minutes away from that decisively scary moment. [Read more →]

In case any of our readers are in doubt, McCain said nothing about the war in Iraq possibly continuing a hundred years. For the record, what he said is: “It’s fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintained a presence in a very volatile part of the world.”

But in politics, so the adage goes, “perception is reality.” Lest we be guilty of allowing a lying Left Media to determine our realities, it will be wise during this campaign, and ever after, to look twice at any tall tales they tell. As observed by Charles Krauthammer, Lenin said, “A lie told often enough becomes truth.” There is a concerted campaign to make the lie about what McCain said a perceived truth, as Krauthammer demonstrates. [Read more →]

Close on the heels of the news about Mousa Abu Marzook, yet another problem publication from Obama’s pastor stares us in the face. With each new revelation, we may be lulled into a false sense of security, thinking we’ve heard this story before — that this is just a replay of the same information. It isn’t. These are new revelations tying Barack Obama to extremist Islam, with disturbing consistency. Like an artichoke, as layers are stripped away the heart comes into view. [Read more →]

It just doesn’t get any more obvious than this. To not see Obama’s pro-Islam slant, you have shut your eyes, really, really hard and look in the opposite direction. Here’s a must read from today’s IBD editorial section:

Last July, Trinity United Church of Christ reprinted a Hamas manifesto written by a terrorist fugitive wanted by the FBI. It was published across two pages of the “Pastor’s Page” section of the church bulletin.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s name is copyrighted at the bottom of the pages. For those who don’t know, Wright is the anti-American, anti-Israeli bigot that Obama has consorted with for the past two decades.

In his newsletter, the preacher gives Mousa Abu Marzook a platform to justify the Palestinian terrorist group’s denial of Israel’s right to exist, while defending strikes against Israeli targets. . .

Full text at IBD.  Interesting interactive Hamas social network wizard at TKB.

Why should every American care about the 2nd Amendment? Posted here in full, a message — on Heller v. District of Columbia — by David Harmer:

One week ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Heller v. District of Columbia, the case challenging the District of Columbia’s ban on guns as a violation of the Second Amendment.

Ten years ago, in my last law review article (“Securing a Free State: Why the Second Amendment Matters,” 1998 Brigham Young University Law Review 55-101), I argued that the Second Amendment secures an individual right, not a collective or quasi-collective right. My article was cited approvingly in United States v. Emerson, 46 F. Supp. 2d 598, 601, 607 (N.D. Tex. 1999), a case that many Second Amendment proponents hoped would become the vehicle through which the Supreme Court would explicitly recognize the individual right to keep and bear arms. [Read more →]

In a post just 36 hours ago, I reported on Hillary’s Black Panther defense whopper:

. . . this was 1971. During that explosive summer, Hillary was working for Robert Treuhaft, personally. But, as she writes it in her own book, she was a law clerk at the Oakland firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein. ‘I spent most of my time working for Mal Burnstein researching, writing legal motions and briefs for a child custody case,’ she said. In fact, however, the public record shows that Clinton worked for Robert Treuhaft, a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and Harvard-trained lawyer for the party. [Read more →]

In a day when politician flakes and frauds — some eerily reminiscent of Adolf Hitler — dominate the headlines, it is with a sense of relief and even moral longing that one learns of true heros like the young German boys pictured below. The film that tells their story, “Truth & Conviction,” first aired at BYU in 2003, but it’s well worth a look today as a morality tale for our own times. Here’s an excerpt from BYU Newsnet:

The documentary was written and directed by Rick McFarland and Matt Whitaker and sponsored by the college of humanities at BYU.

It tells the story of Helmuth Huebener, 16, and his two friends, Rudolph Wobbe, 15, and Karl-Heinz Schnibbe,17, who distributed anti-Nazi fliers opposing Hitler. . .

While in his youth, Huebener was a member of the Hitler Youth organization, which promised a “better life and better Germany,” but after a few years, Huebener realized the Nazis were lying. . . . [Read more →]

A reader challenges my assertion that Hillary Rodham Clinton (period pic below) was tight with the original Black Panther Party. My reference was to her working as a legal intern in Oakland, CA, on behalf of the Black Panthers. Willing to be corrected, I’ve looked further for reliable documentation knowing some is trustworthy, some is less so.

Accuracy in Media (AIM) confirms that Hillary did indeed work not only as an intern on the Black Panther case in Oakland, in 1971, but in addition helped organize the 1970 pro-Black Panther demonstrations at Yale after eight Black Panthers were put on trial for murder at New Haven. [Read more →]

Today has been a gorgeous Easter Sunday here in the Appalachian foothills. Spring is in the air. The sun is warm, the sky is clear and — with an occasional cool breeze — the setting is perfect for deep contemplation of the beauty around me.  At the moment, my mind and spirit reverberate to the heavenly strains of Johannes Brahms’ resurrection oratorio, Eine Deutsches Requiem.

My heart overflows with gratitude to a God who so loved me that he would send his Only Begotten Son to come down to Earth, atone for my sins, die on the cross and then break the bands of death so that one day I may return to live eternally with Him and my wonderful wife, children and other family members. At the same time, I thank parents and grandparents who cared enough to teach me of the Savior and to live their lives as faithful Christians to set a pattern for me, my brothers, sisters and now children. [Read more →]