Diana West's Legal Process Fail Topic: WorldNetDaily
Diana West apparently doesn't udnerstand how the legal process works. Otherwise, she wouldn't have gotten so much wrong in her June 9 WorldNetDaily column-slash-birther rant.
West writes:
New Jersey citizens, represented by attorney Mario Apuzzo, made two claims: that Barack Obama has not proved he meets the conditions for presidential eligibility (namely, that he is a “natural born citizen”), and that the proof Obama released attesting to his bona fides (an Internet image of his long-form birth certificate) is fraudulent.
In fact, Apuzzo was not representing "New Jersey citizens"; he was representing two specific New Jersey citizens, Nicholas E. Purpura and Theodore T. Moran. And Obama has proven his "presidential eligibility"; West simply refuses to accept it by insisting on a definition of "natural born citizen" that does not exist in American law and ignoring the fact that the state of Hawaii has vouched for the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate.
West goes on to complain that an administrative judge ruled that "A presidential candidate has no obligation under New Jersey state law to prove his eligibility, period." Which, of course, is the correct ruling. Still West whines about it by demanding that judges go beyond their legal authority:
The following questions, asked last week by the three judges who heard the New Jersey case on appeal, typify the official attitude:
“Why is it incumbent on New Jersey to resolve this issue?”
Subtext: Voters, schmoters.
“What statute of New Jersey says he (Obama) has to prove his eligibility?”
Subtext: Please make it someone else’s problem.
“Why won’t Congress and (the Electoral College) protect the integrity of the election?”
Subtext: It’s not our problem.
“Why don’t we accept at face value that they made that determination (after the 2008 election)?”
Subtext: It’s no one’s problem anymore. Can we go home yet?
“Do you agree that we need not reach the issue of natural born citizen?”
Subtext: We don’t want to walk that scary plank, whatever we do.
Surprise, surprise, the appeals court upheld President Obama’s eligibility. The judges, along with Obama’s counsel, agreed that any eligibility questions should be kicked upstairs to Congress and the Electoral College – and after the November 2012 election.
Again, the appeals court made the correct ruling. Apuzzo never established that New Jersey has any legal obligation to vet the eligibility of presidential candidates, so the judges are correct in not enforcing one.
But West is not done whining. After asking "What’s up with that funky online ID of his? No junior high school would hire a P.E. teacher on the strength of that" -- again, ignoring that the state of Hawaii has vouched for its authenticity -- she complains that "some media outlets that subscribe to this column have informed me they won’t run anything I write on the eligibility subject."
If West would recognize reality instead of regurgitating discredited birther conspiracies, that might change.
CNS' Week of Anti-Gay Freakouts Topic: CNSNews.com
Given the Media Research Center's anti-gay agenda, assume that any reference to gays are meant to be either disparaging or to provide an opportunity for disparagement. Case in point: CNS resorting to anti-gay hate group leaders to bash a proposed law banning reparative therapy for gays.
This past weekend, though, CNS has piled up a bunch of gay-related freakouts mostly related to June being Gay Pride Month:
In a June 5 article, Penny Starr was appalled that the State Department is celebrating Pride Month by featuring LGBT employees, including "an Obama political appointee whom the department describes as a transsexual who has been 'an international development practitioner, academic, and ethicist.'"
A June 6 article by Starr complains that "Middle and high school students in Minnesota who were bullied because 'they dared to be out' and a Department of Justice attorney who is a transgender activist were honored by Attorney General Eric Holder and other DOJ officials on Wednesday."
A June 6 article by Pete Winn reports that "An Army chaplain has performed the first same-sex nuptial ceremony on a military base--one involving two lesbian soldiers."
In a June 7 article, Amanda Swysgood is not thrilled that President Obama made a Pride Month video message in which he "praises lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans, describing them as 'unsung heroes' who have 'bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice.'"
Ellis Washington Whines That He Can't Get A Decent Teaching Job -- Then Demonstrates Why Topic: WorldNetDaily
There are lots of reasons no respectable institution of learning should hire Ellis Washington as an instructor -- his propensity for exaggerating his resume and getting things flamboyantly wrong being just two of them (not to mention merely being a columnist for WorldNetDaily).
Still, Washington is upset by this -- so much so that he took to his personal blog a couple months back to issue a manifesto on the subject. Of course, he doesn't blame his own shortcomings for this but, rather, discrimination against conservatives.
Washington begins by outlining what he believes are his qualifications:
Dear Law School or University Dean X:
This unsolicited letter expresses my enduring and strong desire to apply for any open faculty positions at your law school, college, or university within my areas of expertise, scholarly pursuits, and teaching experience which include—Natural Law, Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence, Legal History, First Amendment, International Law, Legal Ethics, Law & Education Policy, Critical Legal Studies, Family Law, Juvenile Law, Critical Race Theory, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Contracts, Business Law, Administrative Law, Law & Politics, Law & Humanities, and Law & Literature.
Due to my numerous and unsuccessful efforts for almost 20 years in obtaining neither a real, fair, or good faith interview for a law faculty or college position, this year I have elected to pursue a new, novel, and proactive strategy which I am convinced will cause a paradigm shift inside the Academy… and beyond. I will write an original Manifesto which outlines some of my scholarly accomplishments while addressing what I consider to be the endemic, racist, discriminatory, and frankly irrelevant criteria most American law schools and universities use to pick essentially the same vanilla, ideological-minded Leftists for all of their faculty appointments while others like myself of an “other” ideology; a different but equally relevant experience and scholarly achievement has for 20 years been ignored and shamefully treated as, to coin a phrase from that 1970s literary/movie classic, The Spook Who Sat by the Door.
~ E. Washington
In the manifesto proper, Washington recalls his childhood, asserts that "I always knew it was my destiny to be a law professor and to thrive as a university professor," complains about "a Fabian Progressive hegemony inside the Academy dominated by Leftists," repeatedly demands that the law school or university dean at whatever place he wants a job "tell me I’m ideologically unfit to join your law school faculty" when he is such a brilliant guy, and insists that his new "opus" of a book "will revolutionize how America, Europe, and the world will understand and view the Progressive movement and the destructive effects of the Progressive Weltanschauung (worldview) which I describe as omnipresent, Machiavellian manipulation of every aspect of society controlled by a Nazis tactic called Gleichschaltung (coordination, synchronization)."
You know, perhaps smearing your ideological opposites as Nazis -- a base and juvenile tactic -- is not the way to impress a prospective employer. Neither is rejecting the foundational basis of American case law.
In his March 30 column, Washington attacked Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 Supreme Court decision that established the time-honored practice of judicial review in the American legal system. But Washington thinks that the decision turned the Supreme Court into an overly powerful body that rules essentially by fiat:
Fast forward to 1803, about 15 years after the establishment of the U.S. Constitution, and the first pivotal case by a young U.S. Supreme Court called Marbury v. Madison – a landmark case in United States law and in the history of law worldwide. It formed the foundation for the exercise of judicial review in the United States under Article III of the Constitution. This was the first time in Western history a court invalidated a law by declaring it “unconstitutional” without a demonstration that a particular statue conflicted with the language of state constitutions or federal law.
In Marbury v. Madison we witnesses the greatest power grab in the history of our republic, above even FDR’s “New Deal” and LBJ’s “Great Society,” where the majority opinion written by America’s second chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, forever expanded the court’s power beyond the bounds of the Constitution by infusing it with godlike power and authority of “judicial review.” In other words, from that point forward in our American constitutional history, a majority of five or more members of this formerly weakest branch of government could invalidate any law passed by Congress and by the state legislatures in any or all of the 50 states it decided was unconstitutional simply because a majority of members on the court didn’t like said law – We the People be damned! From that moment onward, the separation-of-powers doctrine became perverted as the court repeatedly usurped unbounded constitutional powers not accorded by the constitutional framers.
Lord Acton answered such unbridled power in a famous aphorism, “Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
The headline on Washington's column reads, "John Marshall's fascist jurisprudence." Such name-calling is also hardly becoming of a would-be college professor.
Any prospective employer of Washington doesn't even have to broach the question of his ideology to reject him. All they must do is look at his slipshod scholarship and dishonest resume puffery.
And the manifesto doesn't exactly help either, except perhaps to give Washington license to portray himself as a victim in the future. Still, Washington does use it to make the narm-ish declaration: "I AM A MAN ~ I AM A SCHOLAR ~ I AM A MAN!"
Again, not the mark of a someone who should seriously expect to find employment of the kind he claims to desire.
Meanwhile ... Topic: NewsBusters
John Bates uses a June 6 NewsBusters post to complain that the media is ignoring that a book signing by first lady Michelle Obama requires a photo ID, while they compare "comparing voter ID laws to the Jim Crow Laws." Media Matters makes the obvious point, to which Bates is apparently oblivious, that voting is not the same thing as a book signing by the first lady.
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Jack Cashill Edition Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a recent column, I posited that Barack Obama did not in any meaningful way write the love letter Washington Post reporter David Maraniss unearthed for his new book, “Barack Obama: The Story.”
The wannabe author who wrote the spectacularly awful “Breaking the War Mentality” for the Columbia University Sundial under his own name could not have written this esoteric, exquisitely punctuated letter unaided during the same time period.
[...]
There are several classic Obama problems on display here. For one, Obama has no feel for the use of participles.
MRC's Graham Invents A Beauty Pageant Conspiracy Topic: NewsBusters
Yes, Tim Graham really suggests in a June 4 NewsBusters post that the only reason Olivia Culpo won the Miss USA title is because she endorsed transsexual beauty pagent contestants:
On NBC Sunday night, the new Miss USA, Olivia Culpo from Rhode Island, carefully toed the “LGBT” line endorsing the idea of transgender beauty queens to win the crown. She learned from Carrie Prejean, who lost the Miss USA crown in 2009 after refusing to endorse judge Perez Hilton's demand for an endorsement of gay marriage. Hilton, and then the rest of the media, denounced Prejean for weeks afterward.
[...]
Donald Trump told Fox News that he vetted all of the questions, including the one about transgendered contestants. "Whoever gets that one ... that's a tough one," he said he thought after okaying the question. "She gave a great answer."
She gave the Politically Correct Answer. So Trump is pressured into surrendering on the transgender contestants, and then he then turned around and pressured the contestants to endorse his surrender on camera. What a goose-stepping parade this is.
Graham has not expressed any criticism that we know of regarding Trump's rampant birtherism, yet not hating transgendered people is "goose-stepping"? Really, Tim?
Who Said Ed Klein Was A Liberal? Topic: WorldNetDaily
Barry Farber spends his June 5 WorldNetDaily column chortling that discredited author Ed Klein's poorly written, anonymous-source-laden smear job on President Obama got past the "mainstream-media-mafia" to top the New York Times bestseller list. Farber then claims: "To make the feast even tastier, Ed Klein is described as a 'liberal.' He was an editor of Newsweek and the New York Times Sunday Magazine."
Who is describing Klein as a "liberal"? Nobody we know. He last worked for the Times Magazine in 1987. Anyone who has done any cursory research on Klein will discover his hatchet job on Hillary Clinton and his embarrassing self-published novel treating every crazy Obama conspiracy as fact, co-authored with crazy person John LeBoutillier.
Farber, meanwhile, isn't even claiming Klein's book is accurate:
It’s past time for cool, chin-stroking deep-thinking analysis. This president’s a failure. We made a national mistake. Get him the hell out! Ed Klein has taken out the machine-gun nests and cleared the way.
All Klein's book sales prove is that there's a market for Obama-bashing books, no matter their accuracy.
AIM Dismisses WND, Alex Jones As 'Russian Dupes' For Bilderberg Obsession Topic: Accuracy in Media
Earlier this week, we detailed how WorldNetDaily had essentially teamed up with conspiracy-monger Alex Jones to lead and promote protests outside the Washington-area hotel where the Bilderberg Group was meeting last weekend. Now Jones and WND are being denounced for their Bilderberger obsession by an unlikely source -- another conspiracy-monger.
In a June 4 Accuracy in Media column headlined "Russian Dupes Behind Bilderberger Protests," Cliff Kincaid dismissed Jones for his regular appearances on "Moscow-funded Russia Today (RT) television"and complaining that "The major news organizations have been driven by the Drudge Report and WorldNetDaily" to cover the protests. Kincaid quotes right-wing radio host Ben Barrack asking whether Jones is a "dupe" or "actively working toward" an Islamist-led New World Order: "Islamists love Alex Jones. He runs interference for them by pushing 9/11 Conspiracy theories while publicly seeing them as a threat not worth dealing with because the NWO is actually using them for its own agenda."
Kincaid also repeated his own previous claim that "Russia Today is eager to publicize Alex Jones and his claims about 9/11, the Bilderbergers, bankers, and various other villains and culprits because they divert attention from the increasingly totalitarian nature of the Russian regime and the military threat that Russia still poses to American interests."
Kincaid, meanwhile, is no stranger to nutty conspiracy theories -- he thinks Frank Marshall Davis is Barack Obamas's father, posits that a U.S. soldier accused of committing a massacre in Afghanistan was "programmed" by the Taliban, and tried to falsely smear Leon Panetta as a Marxist.
Don't you love a good intra-conspiracy-monger fight?
WorldNetDaily has published yet another misleading article whining about how Les Kinsolving is being ignored in the White House briefing room.
The headline of the June 4 article reads, "White House mum on Civil War hero," but it provides no evidence that the White House refused to answer a question on the subject. Instead, it's just more whining about how White House press secretary Jay Carney wouldn't call on Kinsolving.
Despite the fact that Kinsolving has not earned the respect he demands from an administration he clearly despises, Kinsolving and WND regularly whine that his inane questions are being ignored.
The question Kinsolving would have asked involved the possibility of Civil War hero Alonzo Cushing being awarded the Medal of Honor -- an odd cause for Kinsolving to champion, since he's a Confederate sympathizer.
Gainor's Double Standard on Billionaire Philanthropy Topic: Media Research Center
We've detailed how the Media Research Center's Dan Gainor has obsessed about George Soros spends his billions on -- ironic, since Gainor hold the title of "T. Boone Pickens Fellow."
Well, Gainor is at it again with a new MRC "special report" ominously titled "George Soros: Godfather of the Left." A sample of Gainor's vitriol:
Left-wing donor George Soros spent more than $400 million world-wide to indoctrinate students and teach them to promote liberal, and in some cases extremist, causes. He has even funded his own university that promotes his own unique philosophy of open society. His reach and influence far surpasses that of the Koch brothers, who have been vilified by the left and the media for their grants to universities.
While the left shrivels at the thought of the Koch brother’s donations to universities, their beloved Soros gave more than 50 times as much. Central European University and Bard College received the most from Soros. One professor at CEU praised the Occupy movement combining environmentalism, feminism, the labor movement, and social justice. Grants to Bard College for “community service and social action” included a Palestinian youth group and an initiative to educate prisoners across the country. To top it off, all of the Ivy League universities, along with a variety of state schools, private institutions, and even religiously-affiliated institutions, were also funded by Soros.
Soros funded programs and classes at universities around the world promote his radical ideology. Soros’s Open Society Foundations granted $407,790,344 in gifts and commitments to higher education since the year 2000.
Needless to say, Gainor ignores the higher education philanthropy conducted by the man who funds his MRC salary. Pickens has matched Soros' donations to colleges, except Pickens gave all of that money to a single school: more than $500 million to Oklahoma State University.
We've previously noted that Pickens has given at least $1.5 million to the MRC, part of which funds Gainor's position.
So Gainor is using his position funded by one billionaire's largesse to complain about another billionaire's largesse. How hypocritical.
Jerome Corsi discredits himself and his employer, WorldNetDaily, every time he dives into the cesspool of the sleaziest smears of Barack Obama and treats them with reverence -- but his hatred of Obama is so obsessive that he does so with glee. He dives in once more by again championing the cause of discredited felon Larry Sinclair.
If you'll recall, in 2008 WND enthusiastically embraced Sinclair's tale that he once did drugs and had sex with Obama, despite the facts that no corroborating evidence was presented to back up his claims and WND itself made no effort whatsoever to check him out. WND quietly backed away from Sinclair after he failed lie-detector tests, he turned out to be a convicted criminal, and he held a press conference one observer called "the single most stupefying event on any single day, what with the diversity of inanity on display from coast to coast in an election year," complete with a kilt-wearing attorney who justified his wardrobe decision by discussing the size of his "male genitalia."
Earlier this year, Corsi began promoting Sinclair's never-proven claims, ignoring the complete lack of credibility he has displayed. Corsi is back on the case by claiming in a June 5 WND article that "Two recent developments have bolstered a campaign by Larry Sinclair to advance the sensational claim in his 2009 book 'Barack Obama & Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies & Murder' that he and Barack Obama twice engaged in homosexual acts accompanied by cocaine use."
Neither of these "recent developments," however, does anything of the sort. The first is that the man who conducted the lie-detector test that Sinclair failed -- and whom Sinclair is now accusing of having been paid $750,000 by Obama adviser David Axelrod to rig the test -- "was indicted in an unrelated matter by federal authorities and charged with conspiring to conceal campaign donations." The fact that even Corsi admits this case is "an unrelated matter" to Sinclair proves its speciousness. Corsi also makes no mention of what evidence, if any, Sinclair cites as proof that the lie-detector test was rigged.
The other "development" Corsi claims is significant is a brief by Amazon.com in a lawsuit over Sinclair's book claiming that the book has not been proven defamatory. That doesn't mean it isn't, of course, or that it has been documented to be factual. As Corsi reported, Amazon is simply invoking the case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which established modern libel law by setting a higher bar of libel against public figures and setting the standard that a publisher of a defamatory statement know that the statement is false or acted in reckless disregard as a condition of conviction.
It's pretty standard procedure for a publisher or distributor of a potentially libelous or defamatory statement to invoke Sullivan in defense. Heck, Esquire probably did that in response to sue-happy defamer Larry Klayman's defamation lawsuit on behalf of WorldNetDaily, which was uncerimoniously tossed out of court earlier this week. The fact that Amazon does so here proves nothing about the veracity of Sinclair's book.
CNS Desperately Proclaims Catholic Film "Tops 'The Hunger Games'" Topic: CNSNews.com
Craig Bannister writes in a June 4 CNSNews.com blog post:
The movie Hollywood wouldn’t make, a historical drama about the struggle for religious freedom, opened in theaters last Friday (June 1) and debuted in the top 10 in its opening weekend, beating out “The Hunger Games.”
“For Greater Glory,” a movie about Mexican freedom fighters rebelling against a president who sought to crush the Catholic Church by outlawing mass and murdering and expelling priests, cracked the top 10 grossing movies.
Bannister leaves quite a bit of context out of his comparison.
"The Hunger Games" has been in theaters for 11 weeks and it has earned more than $398 million so far. In its opening weekend, "The Hunger Games" earned $152 million, the third-highest debut ever.
Bannister also touts how "For Greater Glory" ranked fifth in per-screen revenue, "with an average take of $2,378 for the weekend." He doesn't mention that, by comparison, the opening weekend for "The Hunger Games" generated a whopping $45,911 average per screen.
"For Greater Glory" had what one might call a respectable showing for an independent film. The return may be a little on the deficient side, though, given how much money was spent to advertise the film in right-wing outlets like Fox News -- not to mention the enthusiastic shilling of the film by CNS and its Media Research Center parent.
(As it just so happens, the film shares a PR agency with the MRC: the conservative-oriented CRC Public Relations. Funny that the MRC didn't mention that connection in its own promotion of the film.)
But Bannister is the one making the ludicrous comparison to a mega-blockbuster like "The Hunger Games."
Mychal Massie has wasted yet another WorldNetDaily column on how much he virulently and viciously hates Barack Obama. This time, Massie is frothing at the mouth because Obama gave a speech:
Barack Obama has said and done many condemnable anti-American and anti-military things, even since he has been in the White House. But, short of his advocating the wholesale slaughter of unborn children, nothing comes remotely close to what he did to the veterans of Vietnam on Memorial Day at The Wall – the Vietnam Memorial.
For reasons we can only suspect, he, with forethought and malicious intent, closed the Memorial to veterans, families and friends on Memorial Day. Some of those shut out of the Memorial had traveled at great personal expense for the opportunity to pay their annual respects to family members, friends, neighbors and fellow servicemen whose names are inscribed on The Wall.
I have friends who served in Vietnam, who, along with many other veterans, traveled great distances to pay their respects to those they served with and their fellow countrymen who gave their lives. Many of those who traveled to The Wall on Memorial Day bear the living scars of their service in that horrific war. They gave the very best they had to keep Southeast Asia from becoming the very thing Obama is doing his best to turn America into – a Marxist-Leninist state.
[...]
Our Vietnam veterans are the most unjustly maligned and disrespected of all veterans. They have been falsely accused, purposefully insulted and spit upon simply because they served their country. And in the wake of that, this wretched human being has spit on them again.
Massie conveniently omits the subject of Obama's speech at the memorial or anything he actually said. Obama was taking part in a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War. Contrary to Massie's rantings, Obama also expressed appreciation for those who served in that war:
And one of the most painful chapters in our history was Vietnam -- most particularly, how we treated our troops who served there. You were often blamed for a war you didn’t start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor. You were sometimes blamed for misdeeds of a few, when the honorable service of the many should have been praised. You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened. And that's why here today we resolve that it will not happen again.
And so a central part of this 50th anniversary will be to tell your story as it should have been told all along. It’s another chance to set the record straight. That's one more way we keep perfecting our Union -- setting the record straight. And it starts today. Because history will honor your service, and your names will join a story of service that stretches back two centuries.
Let us tell the story of a generation of servicemembers -- every color, every creed, rich, poor, officer and enlisted -- who served with just as much patriotism and honor as any before you. Let’s never forget that most of those who served in Vietnam did so by choice. So many of you volunteered. Your country was at war, and you said, "send me." That includes our women in Vietnam -- every one of you a volunteer. Those who were drafted, they, too, went and carried their burden -- you served; you did your duty.
You persevered though some of the most brutal conditions ever faced by Americans in war. The suffocating heat. The drenching monsoon rains. An enemy that could come out of nowhere and vanish just as quickly. Some of the most intense urban combat in history, and battles for a single hill that could rage for weeks. Let it be said -- in those hellholes like Briarpatch, and the Zoo and the Hanoi Hilton -- our Vietnam POWs didn’t simply endure; you wrote one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of military history.
As a nation, we've long celebrated the courage of our forces at Normandy and Iwo Jima, the Pusan Perimeter and Heartbreak Ridge. So let us also speak of your courage -- at Hue and Khe Sanh, at Tan Son Nhut and Saigon, from Hamburger Hill to Rolling Thunder. All too often it's forgotten that you, our troops in Vietnam, won every major battle you fought in.
But Massie doesn't care about context or factual accuracy. All he cares about is his obsessive hatred for Obama and spewing his hatred any chance he gets.
And WND will publish Massie's Obama derangement because they hate Obama as much as he does.
Newsmax's Ruddy Still Defending Bernard Kerik Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax has long been a defender of disgraced former New York City police chief Bernard Kerik, attempting to rehabilitate his reputation before his guilty plea and sentencing on corruption charges, even publishing a hagiographic article about Kerik that hid the true nature of the charges against him.
Despite the fact that Kerik is in prison, Newsmax is still defending him. In a June 1 column, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy cites the John Edwards trial on the issue of "selective, and often political, prosecutions," then quickly moves to Kerik:
At Newsmax we have talked about selective, and often political, prosecutions. Personally I don't like them when they are targeted against Democrats like Edwards or Republicans like former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.
Kerik, if you recall, was thrown in prison for four years, despite an exemplary career of military and police service, because he failed to note an apartment renovation matter on his federal application for Homeland Security secretary, and failed to pay taxes on his domestic servant, the first time any official was charged for such an action. It was such a judicial over-reach, I believe it will deter many qualified candidates who might apply for high federal office. Who would want to take the risk of four years in jail for a tax oversight relating to domestic help?
In fact, the tax fraud charges towhich Kerik pleaded guilty stemmed in part from Mr. Kerik’s acceptance of $250,000 in renovations to his Bronx apartment, provided by a company accused of having ties to organized crime. Unpaid taxes for "domestic help" was merely the stated reason Kerik withdrew his nomination for homeland security secretary. Kerik was also accused of confidential information to the media.
One can also argue that the police chief of America's largest city should be held to a higher standard on such offenses, an idea that seems to elude Ruddy.
After further complaining about the alleged injustice faced by another conservative in the criminal justice system, Conrad Black, Ruddy ultimately comes off sounding rather un-conservative in complaining about "for-profit private prisons" that don't rehabilitate prisoners and supporting programs designed to cut recidivism:
Louisiana imprisons more of its people, per capita, than any other state. Prisons have become big business for both government and private firms across the country. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world: 730 prisoners per 100,000 of its population, according to the International Center for Prison Studies. In China, the figure is 122 per 100,000; in Canada, 117; and in India, 30.
The sentencing system in the United States has created a prison industry and with it a permanent underclass — felons can’t get jobs, and many ex-cons wind up back in prison. And statistics show that incarceration rates unfairly strike African-Americans and other minorities.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has offered a sensible proposal for dealing with the problem, especially for nonviolent offenders. Last year he signed prisoner re-entry legislation designed to cut down on recidivism.
[...]
We need such outside-the-box thinking at both the state and federal level, from Republicans and Democrats, to not only improve the concept of “justice for all,” but also to help make our society stronger.
NEW ARTICLE: The WorldNetDaily Super PAC Topic: WorldNetDaily
Not only is WND begging its reader for cash to fuel its birther agenda, Jerome Corsi has created a company that will launder anonymous donations to Joe Arpaio's birther posse. Read more >>
