Rehab happens.

I know -- I've seen it too many times with students at my school.

Maybe it started with a little drinking or a bit of weed, but it became a full-blown substance abuse problem needing intervention and treatment.

But where do you turn? After all, unless you are Britney Spears or Robert Downey, Jr., you probably don't have the card for a celebrity rehab facility in your wallet -- nor do you have the Betty Ford Clinic on speed-dial.

That is why you need somewhere to turn to find that drug rehab program for yourself or a loved one -- and 1800NoDrugs.com can be accessed on the web or by dialing 1-800-No-Drugs to help get you connected with the right treatment option and support services.

Nobody wants to need rehab, or to have a loved one need to it, but it is good to have someplace to turn.

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One of my blogging heroes is dying on the West Coast.

Prayers for Cathy Seipp and her family at this sad time.

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The recent passage of the Employee Free Choice Act was heralded as a victor for workers (if one considers eliminating their right to a secret-ballot vote on union representation to be a victory for free choice. Well, here's what unionists do if a worker exercises a free choice they don't like.

Labor problems at The Toledo Blade in Ohio hit a new level with a replacement worker relating that his car was intentionally torched last night while he was on the job about 10:30 behind the Toledo Newsprint Trucking Company. "It's going a little further than they need to go," Pete Thayer told a local TV station.

You see, what has happened here is that the paper has decided that it doesn't want to pay what the union demands, and so it has offered a wage it sees as reasonable and allowed workers the free choice to accept it or not -- something that Pete Thayer did. In response, a union thug vandalized and torched his car.

And if you want some evidence that acts of violence and intimidation are acceptable to union thugs, you simply need to take a look at the response of the spokesthug for one of the unions.

Larry Vellequette, a spokesman for the Toledo Council of Newspaper Unions, denied that any of his members played a role in the incident. "I'm pretty sure it wasn't us," he told E&P. "I know that we have been seven months without a single incident and why they would start now makes no sense." He added that, "the real crime here is the Blade lockout."

"Pretty sure" that the act of violence and intimidation against a worker making a free choice wasn't the union's work -- that speaks volumes. he can't deny that such acts are part of the unionist's bag of dirty tricks -- or that such acts are not from time to time sanctioned by the union. Indeed, he doesn't even see this as particularly being a criminal act -- he views the unwillingness of the Toledo Blade to knuckle under to union demands and Thayer's willingness to take a job at the wage offered by an employer as being the "real crime". Talk about your inverted value system!

Its time for us to implement an amendment to the Employee Free Choice Act to go along with the recent removal of the right to a secret ballot on union recognition. Employers should have every circulate "non-union"cards among their employees, and when a majority of workers have signed them, derecognition of the union should be automatic -- just like recognition is when a majority signs union cards. After all, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, isn't it?

H/T GM's Corner

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Better dead than bottle-fed!

Tiny, fluffy and adorable, Knut the baby polar bear became an animal superstar after he was abandoned by his mother.

He rapidly became the symbol of Berlin Zoo, whose staff bottle-fed him and handed out cuddles in between.

At three months old, however, the playful 19lb bundle of fur is at the centre of an impassioned debate over whether he should live or die.

Animal rights activists argue that he should be given a lethal injection rather than brought up suffering the humiliation of being treated as a domestic pet.

"The zoo must kill the bear," said spokesman Frank Albrecht. "Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross violation of animal protection laws."

When Knut was born in December, his mother ignored him and his brother, who died. Zoo officials intervened, choosing to raise the cub themselves.

But Albrecht and other activists fret that it is inappropriate for a predator, known for its fierceness and ability to fend for itself in the wild, to be snuggled, bottle-fed and made into a commodity by zookeepers.

After all, we wouldn't want one more breeding member of an endangered species to be allowed to live, would we?

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When we moved into the house, the patio had a ceiling fan with light. Well, as time has gone on, it has gotten a little bit weather-beaten -- heck it looked pretty bad after Hurricane Rita, and has just gotten worse. So we are in the market for new lighting out back -- and we are going to look at wall sconces and other sorts of lighting to spruce the place up. We may even get a security light for out back as well -- just so we can see the dog when she makes one of those infamous "midnight runs" that she needs to make every now and then.

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Neat stuff -- from an organization controlled by America's foreign enemies and dedicated to the destruction of American liberty.

The songwriter, labor organizer and folk hero Joe Hill has been the subject of poems, songs, an opera, books and movies. His will, written in verse the night before a Utah firing squad executed him in 1915 and later put to music, became part of the labor movementÂ’s soundtrack. Now the original copy of that penciled will is among the unexpected historical gems unearthed from a vast collection of papers and photographs never before seen publicly that the Communist Party USA has donated to New York University.

The cache contains decades of party history including founding documents, secret code words, stacks of personal letters, smuggled directives from Moscow, Lenin buttons, photographs and stern commands about how good party members should behave (no charity work, for instance, to distract them from their revolutionary duties).

By offering such an inside view, the archives have the potential to revise assumptions on both the left and the right about one of the most contentious subjects in American history, in addition to filling out the story of progressive politics, the labor movement and the civil rights struggles.

“It is one of the most exciting collecting opportunities that has ever presented itself here,” said Michael Nash, the director of New York University’s Tamiment Library, which will announce the donation on Friday.

It should provide some great insights into the enemy within -- and may just expose which current pols are fellow-travelers with the CPUSA.

One day, no doubt, we will get a look at the archives of the party of America's domestic enemies -- the DemocrtICK Party.

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Everybody needs help finding dates sometimes -- even Christians. I know that at my church, for example, meeting a Christian single would be difficult -- we pretty well break down into older retired couples who have been at the church forever and young couples with kids, mostly new to the neighborhood. We just don't have many single twenty-somethings or thirty-somethings. That's why a Christian Dating site is a good thing -- not every congregation (especially small ones) is a great place to meet a mate, even if you are getting your spiritual needs met.

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And also a typical tactic of the American Left, which finds violence in support of its cause to be perfectly acceptable.

Congressman Mike Rogers' home is under police guard after his Lansing office was severely vandalized last night.

The case is being handled by the FBI and the US Capitol Police, who have requested that the Lansing Police investigate the matter.

According to the Congressman's spokesperson, the office was extensively damaged.

Two security cameras were destroyed and the building was spray painted.

The tapes from the cameras are being reviewed to see if they recorded anything before they were destroyed.

The vandals also spread red paint all over the 8th congressional district sign in front of the building, as well as on a sign that says "We Support Our Troops."

They also put a sign on one of the buildings windows that says Congressman Rogers has "blood on his hands."

Rogers is, of course, a Republican -- hence the show of support for the troops that the criminals defaced. I'll bet we have a deafening silence from the national media and the DemocratICK Party -- which would be screaming loudly if such an assault were to occur on a Democrat.

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Could you ever imagine the right-wing counterparts of these teachers being permitted to teach in such a manner in a public school setting?

Among those scheduled to speak at the conference is Eric Gutstein, a mathematics education professor at the University of Illinois and a former Chicago public school math teacher. Gutstein’s book, Reading and Writing the World with Mathematics: Toward a Pedagogy for Social Justice, combines Marxist teaching methods with examples of math lessons for seventh-graders. One of these lessons is “The Cost of the B-2 Bomber—Where Do Our Tax Dollars Go?” Its purpose, Gutstein writes, “was to use U.S. Department of Defense data and find the cost for one B-2 bomber, then compare it to a four-year, full scholarship to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a prestigious out-of-state university. The students had to answer whether the whole graduating class of the neighborhood high school (about 250 students) could receive the full, four-year scholarships for the whole graduating class for (assuming constant size and costs) the next 79 years!”

Gutstein also recounts how, on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, he was able to convince his seventh-grade math class that the U.S. was wrong to go to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. “I told students that none of the hijackers were thought to be Afghan,” Gutstein writes. He also told them that he would not “fight against Iraq or Afghanistan . . . because I did not believe in going to war for oil, power, and control.”

On the other hand, if I were to try to teach a class pointing out how privatization of Social Security or Individual Medical Savings Accounts would be better for the American people, how long would it be until I was removed from my classroom? Or how about convincing my students of the need to carpet bomb Iran as a means to ensuring world security?

Another of the math conference’s “experts“ is Cathy Wilkerson, an adjunct professor at the Bank Street College of Education. Wilkerson’s only other credential of note (as listed by the conference’s organizers) is that she was a “member of the Weather Underground of the 60s.” Some credential. On March 6, 1970, Wilkerson was in a Manhattan townhouse, helping to construct a powerful bomb to detonate at a dance attended by civilians on the Fort Dix, New Jersey army base. The bomb exploded prematurely, destroying the townhouse and instantly killing three of the bomb makers. Wilkerson escaped unharmed. After resurfacing years later and serving a brief prison term, she became a high school math teacher and, presumably, developed expertise on how to bring the revolution into the classroom.

I wonder -- will any known associates of Eric Rudolph, the abortion clinic bomber, be permitted to teach in mainstream academia, preparing the teachers of the future?

The meeting’s chairs were Edwin Mayorga, a twentysomething fourth-grade teacher at the highly acclaimed P.S. 87 on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and NYU education professor Bree Pickower. Mayorga urged his fellow teachers to “be political inside the classroom, just as we are outside the classroom. The issues we are up against as we teach for social justice are the mandates of [Mayor] Bloomberg, Klein, and No Child Left Behind.”

Pickower then reminded attendees of the group’s “Katrina curriculum,” which teachers could use to convince elementary school students that the hurricane was, not a natural disaster, but an example of endemic American racism. And Mayorga, describing how he had piloted the Katrina curriculum with his fourth-graders, pronounced it a big success. The curriculum leaves nothing to chance, providing teachers with classroom prompts designed to illustrate the evils of American capitalism and imperialism. One section, called “Two Gulf Wars,” suggests posing such questions as: “Was the government unable to respond quickly to the crisis on the Gulf Coast because the money and personnel were all being used in Iraq?”

I'll say nothing here while I recover from the cerebral hemorrhage that occurred even considering this sort of political abuse of students in a public school classroom.

Frankly, it is time for those of us in education -- and taxpayers in general, to stand up and denounce this sort of inappropriate, unprofessional activity whenever we find it going on in the classrooms of our schools. It is time to take back our educational establishments for EDUCATION, not indoctrination.

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Dick Cheney owns no Halliburton stock, but is accused regularly of making money off the company's business dealings related to the Iraq war.

But guess who IS making money off of Halliburton as an investor in their stock (AKA an owner of the company) -- left-wing Bush/Cheney critic and Democrat money-man George Soros.

So far this March, Keith Olbermann has been spent more time defending George Soros than addressing the incongruity of this far-left patron making a $62 million investment in Halliburton, a company KO has routinely condemned on Countdown.

Unremarked upon by Olbermann was that Soros, the world's most famous war profiteer and leading patron of far-left activist groups, celebrated his first million dollars in capital gains when Halliburton cracked through the $32.00 a share level.

Soros began making purchases of Halliburton last October when the stock was trading near its 52 week low (26.33). His purchase prices were between $27.62 and $33.53, with an estimated average price of $31.3. As of 12/31/06, Soros owned 1,999,450 shares, more than 2% of his total portfolio, making it one of the largest investments by Soros Fund Management over the past year.

Halliburton closed the week at $32.06 giving Soros a profit of $2,019,367 based on his holdings at the end of the 2006-4Q.

The Soros-funded Center for American Progress which has published dozens of scathing articles on Hallburton since its founding in 2003 by Soros has gone silent on Soros' investment in Halliburton. In fact, all criticism of Halliburton by CAP ceased in 2006 shortly before Soros began buying up Halliburton stock. Likewise, other Soros-backed groups such as MoveOn.org and Media Matters for America have been silent as have been the big blue blogs.

So -- when will Dems begin denouncing Soros and stop taking their money? When will MoveOn.Org and Cindy Sheehan speak out against their major financial patron? Enquiring minds want to know!

H/T Jawa Report

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For one, in Memphis they won't get their electricity turned off, no matter how often they neglect to pay their bill.

Everybody has to pay the light bill, an unpleasant maxim lately made even more so here, knowing the powerful do not always observe it.

Month after month, Memphis Light, Gas and Water allowed City Councilman Edmund Ford to forgo paying thousands of dollars in overdue bills without having his power cut. Meanwhile, other prominent politicians — council members, a judge, a state representative — were on a protected list, supervised by a senior utility official, intended to prevent them from having their power cut off in case of nonpayment.

Even the mayor, Willie W. Herenton, was on the list, though Mr. Herenton says he did not know about it and never got any favors. It is not clear that anyone but Mr. Ford was allowed to pile up unpaid bills. Still, the whiff and practice of favoritism — detailed for the last several weeks in the local news media — is upsetting many in a city where nearly a quarter of the people are poor, and the local utility is publicly owned.

Hmmm. . . another corrupt Memphis politician named Ford. Yep, that is another member of the family of former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. I wonder how long it will be until some scandal or another ensnares him, given the culture of entitlement in which he seems to have been raised.

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Big Brother 8 is coming up, and looking for contestants.

Here are some of the rules:

•You cannot be a candidate for office, which automatically disqualifies the hundreds of people seeking the presidency.

•All participants will undergo physical and mental examinations, so be prepared to come face to face with assorted instruments of the sharp and Sharpie variety.

•An application must be accompanied by a videotape of the applicant no more than two minutes long. CBS isn't kidding about the two-minute rule; 2:01 and it gets tossed. This rule should eliminate hundreds more applicants, since Big Brother egos are difficult to confine to 120 seconds.

•If you're selected to be in the semifinals, you must pay your way to a regional interview. For Houston, the outlay isn't so bad since Austin is our regional site.

•If you make it to the finals, you must travel to Los Angeles for the final selection process. Major expenses are paid by the producers.

•Of course, you must commit to living as many as 100 days in the Big Brother house, cohabiting with 12 strangers, without privacy and with cameras and microphones running 24/7.

•The good news: A stipend is provided to each participant for each week he or she remains in the Big Brother house.

•The best news: One of the 12, the one who lasts the longest, pockets $500,000.
Applications must be turned in by April 13. To download your own, go to cbs.com.

I wonder what my principal and superintendent would have to say if I got selected? And would I be able to continue this blog while in the house?

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Not only did he bet on baseball, but he also bet on the Reds while he was their manager.

Pete Rose bet on the Cincinnati Reds "every night" when he managed them and, despite his lifetime ban because of gambling, would like another chance in a major league dugout.

"I bet on my team every night. I didn't bet on my team four nights a week," Rose said Wednesday on "The Dan Patrick Show" on ESPN Radio.

"I bet on my team to win every night because I love my team, I believe in my team," he said. "I did everything in my power every night to win that game."

Given his previous denials about betting, I'm not sure that I believe his claims that he always bet on the Reds to win. The ban therefore stay in place.

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Fine -- let 'em glow.

The leader of Germany's governing Social Democrats criticized U.S. plans to locate a missile defense system in eastern Europe, insisting in an interview published Monday that ''we need no new missiles in Europe.''

The U.S. plan to place a radar base in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland as part of its proposed missile defense shield has infuriated Russia and prompted some unease elsewhere in Europe.

''We need no new missiles in Europe,'' Kurt Beck, the chairman of the center-left Social Democrats, was quoted as saying in an interview with the mass-circulation Bild daily. The Social Democrats make up half of conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition.

Beck said his party ''does not want a new arms race between the USA and Russia on European soil.''

''Europe must speak with one voice here,'' he added, according to the report. ''There are enough problems worldwide that we need to master; I would name poverty, climate change and terrorism -- new missiles and weapons systems won't help here.''

If the Germans -- and other Europeans -- are not interested in being protected from iranian nukes, then I feel no need to offer them such protection against their will.

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Let's say you are thinking of buying a new television, and you want to get the best there is. Do you want an LCD TV or a Plasma TV? How do you know? Visit TestFreaks.com to find out, because they offer a bountiful supply of information about available televisions and reviews of different models, so that you get the best one for your needs. And as TestFreaks.com expands, you'll be able to learn more about many different types of electronics and other products. Take a look -- you won't be disappointed.

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News from the Watcher himself.

As a result of a coming shift in blogging focus, Jimmie Bise of The Sundries Shack has chosen to vacate his seat on the Watcher's Council.  It's been great having Jimmie on board for all this time and I wish him the best of luck with his new blog, but now that he has decided to step down, there is one open seat and I need to find a blog worthy enough to fill it.  Anyone that has a blog, please read the up-to-date version of the rules here and contact me if you are interested in applying for membership.  I plan on choosing a replacement in time for that person to participate in the March 27th nominations process and that week's vote.  (Quentin Tarantino's 44th birthday...  w00t!)

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There are just too many laws and regulations that require the security of private data -- especially in emails. These include the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) and many others -- not to mention common sense and best practices. But how do you achieve full Email compliance? Well, that involves specialized software, like this Email compliance package from Borderware.

Speaking as someone in education who has access to a lot of confidential data that is shared over the district email (grades, discipline records, information about special education students), I can only hope that the school and district have a package like this Email compliance software on our server. After all, not only is it legally mandated to protect such information, it is also simply common sense.

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Not only are some ideas so goofy as to be beyond belief, it is even more unbelievable that the "mainstream press" would even consider publishing them.

AS EVERY CARBON-BASED life form on this planet surely knows, Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, is running for president. Since making his announcement, there has been no end of commentary about him in all quarters — musing over his charisma and the prospect he offers of being the first African American to be elected to the White House.

But it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."

Can you imagine the uprorar if a conservative wrote this crap? It would -- rightly -- be denounced as racist. Why isn't it when it comes from a liberal?

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Well, to be honest, in the last two months I have earned over a thousand dollars just by taking on the sponsored post opportunities available through the PayPerPost.Com blog marketing program. That sure beats the heck out of other ads on my site, which have yet to bring me $200. And what's more, I get to pick the content of my PPP posts, which is not an option with the other programs. If this keeps up, I may just have to drop all those other ads and go strictly with PPP as my sole source of sponsorship revenue!

Now what am I going to do with this extra cash? Well, to be honest, this money is going towards medical bills. My darling wife had two serious illnesses last year, and both of which put her in the Intensive Care Unit for several days as her life literally hung in the balance. At one point I was even told that had we arrived at the hospital even an hour later, I would have lost her. Well, good medical care that brings one back from the edge of death is expensive, even with the benefit of good insurance.

Once that debt is paid (a while from now), I'll put the income from PPP towards our season tickets for the Houston Tickets and Rodeo Houston -- both of which were activities I thought we would have to give up after that second stay in the hospital.

Trust me -- I can find good places for the cash to go.

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This is an undeniable tragedy. Will we now start taking sex between female educators and male students as seriously as we take sex between male educators and their students of either sex?

In a tragic twist to a familiar story, a teenager who had sex with his married 30-year-old teacher was fatally shot outside the woman's home, and authorities have charged the woman's husband.

"You see all this stuff with teachers involved with their students. It just comes up time after time on the national news," said Norman McLean, father of suspect Eric McLean. But this time, he said, someone "actually died over it."

McLean's wife, Erin, had completed half of a one-year teaching internship at West High School, where she met the 18-year-old Sean Powell last fall.

Powell's mother, who gave him up for adoption a dozen years ago but re-established contact in 2005, said her son acknowledged having an affair with a teacher.

"He wouldn't let me answer my cell phone," Debra Flynn recalled. "I said, 'Why?' He said, 'Well, Mom, I'm going out with this girl.' I said, 'So what?' He said, 'She is a counselor at school.' I said, 'Oh, my God, Sean.'"

Flynn, whose son sometimes stayed at her home in Nashville, said she later found text messages on her phone. "Come home. Baby, I love you. You are beautiful," they said. She believes Erin McLean preyed on her son.

"These teachers are feasting on our children in school and something has to be done," Flynn said.

Maybe this tragedy will open up the eyes of some people who think that male students "getting some" from a female teacher are somehow receiving a great benefit. Good God, one talk radio host in town thinks the teachers shouldn't even be charged, because the kid has "bragging rights for life". But stuff like this is serious -- deadly serious -- and needs to be dealt with as such.

But I'm curious about one thing -- why didn't "mama" her call the cops when she found out?

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All too often, college professors expect that they will be able to make the most outrageous comments in class free from any criticism or penalty. Indeed, because of their position of power, they presume that their students will sit back and shut up as they are indoctrinated in the left-wing views of a professor -- even if the class is not about politics.

It hasn't worked out that way for one professor in Idaho.

A woman is asking North Idaho College to refund the money she paid for an English class, saying her instructor spent more time bashing Republicans than teaching English composition.

Linda Cook, a former aide to the late Idaho Congressman Helen Chenoweth and a longtime GOP supporter, withdrew last week from an entry-level English class taught by part-time instructor Jessica Bryan. Cook sent a letter to NIC Vice President Barbara Hanson Monday asking that the college refund her $379 course fee.

On Monday, Bryan said Cook is "making a mountain out of a molehill" and that she's "surprised and disappointed" that Cook didn't tell her about her concerns before making a formal complaint.

Notice, Bryan isn't denying the comments -- she is blaming the offended student for complaining. What were the comments made? Oh, nothing much.

The letter claims Bryan said on the first day of class that "George Bush was elected president because people in this country can't read" and said Feb. 12 that "I believe in the death penalty Â… . First we line up everyone who can't think and right behind them, anyone who's ever voted Republican."

Bryan doesn't deny saying those things but said Cook missed her point entirely, which was to encourage debate and critical thinking among her students.

"Most (comments) were said facetiously in an attempt to get my students to think," she said. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that anyone would take it seriously Â… . They were always said with a smile."

Excuse me, Ms. Bryan -- I have a hard time imagining those comments were appropriate in an English class, even when "said with a smile." Would you have considered it appropriate to replace "anyone who's ever voted Republican" with "anyone with Jewish blood"? Or how about "anyone who is an illegal immigrant"? I don't think so -- instead you encourage the death penalty for over half the population of the United States because they have defied your political will. Frankly, I'm concerned that only one of your students offered an objection. But then again, you began the course by branding anyone who disagrees with you politically as ignorant and illiterate and then kept up the drumbeat of political partisanship every class, so I can understand that students who wanted a grade based upon the quality of their work would keep silent.

It seems that Ms. Bryan's employer agreed with the complaining student -- she got her refund.

But Bryan got more than she bargained for.

Coeur d'Alene Police are investigating death threats against a part-time North Idaho College English instructor who made disparaging remarks against Republicans, including a facetious suggestion that Republicans be put to death.

* * *

Bryan told police she began receiving threatening phone calls and harassing e-mails shortly after the column was published. Police began investigating Tuesday and released copies of 10 of the messages Friday. An account of the complaint also was posted earlier this week on a popular conservative news Web site under the headline "Execute Republicans,' says college prof."

The account in World Net Daily also linked to Bryan's e-mail address.

In the messages that were subsequently sent to Bryan, she was threatened numerous times with death and variously derided as a communist, a traitor, a parasite and a Leninist radical.

A writer from California referenced past South American dictators who executed liberal intellectuals: "Pray that there's never a right-wing coup d'etat in this beautiful nation you'll be one of the first ones floating in a river like your cronies did in Argentina and Chile."

NIC spokesman Kent Probst said Bryan's e-mail address and phone number have since been changed, and campus security has been placed on a higher level of alert. "It's a situation we take very seriously," Probst said. "The well-being of the instructor and the students in those classrooms is of paramount importance."

I guess it is acceptable at NIC to support the execution of political opponents while teaching a class, but to threaten a professor with death write nasty emails to a professor who urges the execution of political opponents during class is quite beyond the pale. Interestingly enough, there is no indication that Bryan considered these threats harsh emails to be an invitation to dialogue, a spur to critical thinking, or the possibility that they were written by smiling individuals who were merely being facetious. No, rather than tell the writers of her concerns, Bryan contacted the police. Seems somewhat hypocritical to me, as does the act of changing her phone number and email address. After all, how can debate and dialogue happen if you close down the avenues of communication in this manner?

Of course, I don't advocate death threats against political opponents, -- not even ones who have already called for my death. Indeed, I condemn the threats that have been made against Jessica Bryan, because they are immoral and counterproductive. But I refuse to consider Bryan to be a victim in this case, merely someone who has received back what she dished out -- in spades. Perhaps this affair will cause her to think before she issues death threats in her classroom in the future -- and, being a "good liberal" be more "sensitive" to boot.

UPDATE: WorldNetDaily covered this story, and included four of the "threatening" emails. By my lights, none of them actually qualifies as a threat -- unless, of course, Bryan's comments in class are to be labeled as equally threatening.

Among the offensive emails released by authorities are these:

"You contemptuous excuse for an instructor. If you are trying to start another civil war and it comes about, I hope your family will be targeted first. As a Republican, I take umbrage at your suggestion that I should be shot. You'll find that Republicans can shoot back."

"Screw you, communist (expletive deleted). Even though you are entitled to your opinion we all have freedom to vote anyway we please. You would do well teaching in Iran hating Jews. Bottom line I feel the same way about liberal (expletive deleted) such as you."

"I hope you lose your position and cease poisoning the flower of our future who enroll in your class with your leftist indoctrination."

"Pray that there's never a right-wing coup d'etat in this beautiful nation [because] you'll be one of the first ones floating in a river like your cronies did in Argentina and Chile."

There no actual threats there, only some hateful sentiments expressed to her. But tell me -- are they really any more hateful than the comments made by Jessica Bryan in her class? And can anyone argue that if her words in class are somehow protected by the First Amendment, these emails are entitled to any less protection?

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Posted by: Greg at 06:46 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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That is, of course, what Cliff Schecter proposes, sending the man to prison just because he is. After all, he identifies not one crime in his entire rant -- other than succeeding against DemocratICK candidates. I mean, look at this absurdity.

Karl Rove must go to the jail, the pokey, the big house, if you will. No not country-club Republican, I-ripped-off-your-grandma-with-junk-bonds prison where he can join the Dartmouth or Princeton rowing squad and walk by a state-of-the-art outdoor weight-lifting facility his two-seats-on-Southwest ass would never even think about using.

I mean real prison. Like the kind you go to if you're caught in Kuala Lumpur with Rush's medicine bag.

Or maybe Patrick Kennedy's. Personally, I don't think Rove should do any more time or pay any more penalty than Teddy Kennedy did for leaving a girl to drown and then trying to obstruct justice by urging his cousin to take the rap for him. Or than Bill Clinton did for the crimes he confessed to on his last day in office.

Once again, I just can't abide by these Johnny-come-way-too-latelys who now realize George W. Bush is challenged by My Pet Goat and "The Google," Dick Cheney's an evil right-wing assclown and Karl Rove is, to quote a not so bright man, "a grotesquely corpulent, politically sociopathic parasite who destroys all government he touches."

He most closely resembles a locust, devouring his surroundings, only to move on to a new destination after all is destroyed (see the Texas political system).

I'm curious -- what would Schecter and other HuffPo writers do about such language directed at Paul Begala or James Carville?

A spate of books came out on this amoral anthropoid before he became a household name in 2000, and all you had to do was observe his past patterns to know this would happen. A candidate he was working for in 1986 who was running for Governor of Texas magically found a "listening device" in his office the day before a big debate.

Right before the first Bush/Gore debate in 2000, a tape of Bush's "performance" arrives at Gore HQ in the mail, so that's all the press was talking about while George W. Bush was mixing up pronouns and screwing up multisyllabic foreign leaders' names.

Surely, coincidence.

Could be -- and do you have any evidence to prove differently, Mr. Schecter? You know, evidence that would allow a jury to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. Or do you simply want Rove imprisoned on your say-so? I mean based upon your standard, both Clintons should be preparing for lethal injections on death row -- after all, all those convenient deaths surely can't be a coincidence, can they?

If you read Boy Genius for example, you will find that the way Rove beat Democrats in Texas was by politicizing the FBI (Sid Blumenthal has more on this in a new column), and using those partial to his candidates and his blow...I mean politics, to start high-profile investigations of Democratic officeholders right before elections.

So why would it be a shock that his fingerprints are all over the Justice Department politicization/obstructing investigations into serially corrupt members of the GOP, scandal, which occurred, of course, right before the 2006 election. And, of course, the buildup to Iraq, right before the 2002 cycle, was completely out of character for Rove. As was outing an undercover agent.

Absolutely none of which is criminal -- though the behavior of those Democrats you mention often was. But then again, you don't want Democrats who are actually corrupt going to jail, do you, Mr. Schecter, just your political opponents who have the audacity to kick the collective asses of the candidates you support. Oh, and about politicizing the FBI -- 900 FBI files. Does than number ring a bell to you?

And since US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States, firing any or all of them (or urging that it be done) is not a crime -- it is an Executive Branch prerogative. You know, separation of powers and all that.

This man is an adult diaper worn by an astronaut for a nine-hour, homicidal road trip. Kaiser Sose on a KFC drip.

Semen on a blue dress. A cigar in an orgasmic humidor. Missing Rose law Firm files in the White House residence.

He has corrupted American Democracy at every level, and has never paid the price.

He must go to prison, for the integrity of our system, if not just because it is the most natural place for him to reside outside of Hades. For once in his pathetic self-hating life, fully investigate this piece of garbage--please.

Oh, now I see -- he has to go to prison because he has been successful -- and after complaining about alleged politicization of the FBI and the Justice Department, you want the FBI and Justice Department to conduct a political investigation designed to find evidence of political crimes committed by your political enemies. I believe, Mr. Schecter, that is called hypocirisy -- but then again, that is standard operating procedure on the part of you Leftists, especially over at HuffPo.

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Posted by: Greg at 02:31 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Speaking of the NCAA Tournament, did you know you still have time to do your brackets and make picks before the Sweet Sixteen begin to play those all-important games? Doc's Sports has a great set of March Madness Brackets, updated after each round, for those who are really interested in doing their best in making the picks. So if you are in it to win it, drop by and look at Doc's March Madness Brackets.

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Posted by: Greg at 06:35 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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The story of the awful hotel accommodations received by Southern Illinois University during the 2002 NCAA tourney are legendary -- one assistant coach became seriously ill, and the team refused to eat on the premises. Seeded number 4 this year, their hotel is certainly better -- and the NCAA has worked hard to try to equalize accommodations somewhat.

At about 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Southern Illinois University assistant basketball coach Brad Korn walked into the upper echelon of college basketball. Three doormen greeted his team at its swank hotel, The Columbus, before the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. Plush white couches sat on mahogany paneled wood in the lobby. Limestone columns framed the front desk.

In his previous five trips to the tournament, Korn rarely enjoyed such luxuries. For the most part, he had arrived as a player or coach with lowly regarded Southern Illinois teams and stayed at lowly regarded hotels. In 2002, the NCAA assigned Korn's 11th-seeded Salukis to a hotel in Syracuse, N.Y., with moldy showers, unkempt beds and filthy curtains. The property was sold in a bankruptcy auction several months later.

This year, Southern Illinois was seeded fourth -- and the lodging arrangements matched the team's elevated status.

In the NCAA tournament, where you stand determines where you sleep at night: to the best teams go the best hotels. About three months ago, NCAA officials visited the eight cities hosting the first two rounds of the tournament, toured hotels and, with input from local host committees, ranked the facilities based on quality and location. The NCAA then assigned the best-seeded teams to the most prestigious hotels. In general, elite teams ended up at downtown Marriotts; small-conference underdogs sometimes settled for small historic hotels or airport area chains.

Go Salukis!

Posted by: Greg at 06:33 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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If you are getting to be my age, around forty-something, you are probably noticing that you don't see quite the way you used to. Those old eyes of yours are getting weaker, and you may just need to resort to reading glasses in order to get the job done. You need to visit ACLens.coms to get yourself the glasses you need.

Among the more interesting things I encountered on their site were reading sun glasses. You know, I hadn't though about it, but those are something I could certainly use. Living here in Texas, four blocks from Galveston Bay, I like to sit in the yard or down by the shore with a book in hand reading, or even (ugh!) grading papers. Glasses like these would be perfect for me, since they adapt to the outside light for comfort while reading.

Now the nice thing about this site is that it is well-arranged, allowing you to order different types of lenses by category. Whether you need contacts, bifocals, sunglasses, folding glasses, or about any other type of lens for your eyes, ACLens.coms seems to have a category for it. You can even get swimming goggles – something I wish I’d had in my younger days when I still swam competitively. And what is even better, the prices are good, so you won’t go broke ordering your glasses or contacts online.

Paid Endorsement.

Posted by: Greg at 06:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Frankly, I wish he would just crawl back under his rock -- the one in Virginia that he slithered under after betraying the GOP base here in CD22.

Tom DeLay, the fiery former House majority leader, knows why his party lost control of Congress last year. And he is not to blame.

In his new book, Mr. DeLay, a polarizing figure whom Democrats sought to make a symbol of Republican corruption, attributes the Republican defeat in November to frustration with President Bush, the war and “a general perception of Republican incompetence and lack of principles.”

“I would suggest that Republicans lost because they did not communicate their message and their victories with enough strength to overcome short-term, media-fed issues that arose right before the election,” Mr. DeLay writes in the book, “No Retreat, No Surrender” (Sentinel), referring in part to the Congressional page scandal.

Maybe, Tom, you would care to address the way in which you sought the congressional nomination for an election which you never intended to contest, and then bailed out after getting an "attaboy" from the majority of the voters of this district. Your self-centered, selfish decision cost us one congressional seat for sure -- yours, because we had to run a write-in candidate in your place -- and emboldened Democrats around the country when they were able to claim they had your scalp.

And Tom, while I still believe you are not guilty of the offenses charged by Ronnie Earle, I believe you are guilty of one thing -- the selling out of your own party for your personal aggrandizement.

Posted by: Greg at 06:10 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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You know, virtually all scientific research on the subject shows that breast milk is better for babies than formula. That is why breast pumps are an important item for new mothers to have in order to ensure a healthier child.

As a high school teacher, I have a number of students each year who become mothers. Indeed, a couple of years ago a pair of twins in my classes both became pregnant at about the same time. Neither was living at home -- they each had moved in with the family of their baby's father. This led to an interesting "side-by-side" comparison of the benefits of breast milk vs. formula.

Margarita had her baby first, and switched her little girl to formula when she returned to school about six weeks after giving birth. Maria had her baby two weeks later, and decided to breast feed her son. When it was time to return to school, her son's grandmother gave her an Electric Breast Pump so that she could continue to give him breast milk while attending school.

What happened? Well, Margarita's baby was colicky and became sick several times over the course of that semester. Maria's son was healthier, and she missed only three days of school during the same time period. I can't help but believe that the breast milk was at least a part of the difference, as it was one of the few differences in the upbringing of the two babies. After all, that breast milk is what nature intends for healthy babies to have during the first year or so of life.

One other thing I noticed about these sisters was the difference in their attitudes towards their children. Maria, who was continuing to feed her baby breast milk, had a much more positive attitude towards her son than Margarita did towards her daughter. Indeed, it is generally recognized that breast feeding promotes a stronger bond between mother and child.

Now what sort of breast pump is right for you? You can go here to find more information about different brands, including breast pumps from Avent and Ameda.

Paid Endorsement.

Posted by: Greg at 06:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This article makes it really clear why I work on the high school level, and why I'd prefer to go back to working with elementary school kids if high school were ever to stop being an option. Teaching middle school is just too much!

Faced with increasingly well-documented slumps in learning at a critical age, educators in New York and across the nation are struggling to rethink middle school, particularly in cities, where the challenges of adolescent volatility, spiking violence and lagging academic performance are more acute.

As they do so, they are running up against a key problem: a teaching corps marked by high turnover, and often lacking expertise in both subject matter and the topography of the adolescent mind.

The demands of teaching middle school show up in teacher retention rates. In New York City, the nationÂ’s largest school system, middle school teachers account for 22 percent of the 41,291 teachers who have left the school system since 1999 even though they make up only 17 percent of the overall teaching force, according to the United Federation of Teachers.

Frankly, I prefer working with the older kids because they tend to think and act in a more mature, adult fashion. I also prefer high school because I know all my colleagues will be trained in our subject matter, something you can't count on at the middle school level. Many teachers on th middle school level are just displaced elementary teachers -- generalists who took a content specific job when it became available. After all, my certificate runs grades 6-12 and is content are specific, but an elementary certificate runs from kindergarten to grade 8 or 9 in most states and carries with it no subject area limitations. That means a middle school history teacher might have no more than the minimum number of social science classes required to graduate from college -- generally meaning two. Thhey therefore often do a poor job of teaching the content because they don't know it.

Posted by: Greg at 01:12 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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The Washington Post, of course, views matters differently, as their headline indicates.

White House Opposes D.C. Vote

Of course, that isn't the case at all.

The White House declared its opposition yesterday to a bill that would give the District its first full seat in the House of Representatives, saying it is unconstitutional, and a key Senate supporter said such concerns could kill the measure.

"The Constitution specifies that only 'the people of the several states' elect representatives to the House," said White House spokesman Alex Conant. "And D.C. is not a state."

But then again, when has a little thing like the Constitution ever gotten in the way of liberals pursuing a goal that is illegitimate under the clear language of the document that defines our government and its powers?

Posted by: Greg at 04:41 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Proving that she and her husband are well-matched, given the conclusion reached that he lied in his testimony before the Intelligence Committee. After all, she clearly lied in her testimony yesterday.

Valerie Plame, the former CIA officer at the heart of a four-year political furor over the Bush administration's leak of her identity, lashed out at the White House yesterday, testifying in Congress that the president's aides destroyed a career she loved and slipped her name to reporters for "purely political motives."

Plame, breaking her public silence about the case, contended that her name and job "were carelessly and recklessly abused" by the government. Although she and her colleagues knew that "we might be exposed and threatened by foreign enemies," she said, "it was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover."

Plame calmly but firmly knocked down longstanding claims by administration allies that the disclosure was not criminal because she had not worked in a covert capacity.

"I am here to say I was a covert officer of the Central Intelligence Agency," Plame told House members, a horde of journalists and a few antiwar activists. Her work, she said, "was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit."

So, the Post now takes as "proof" the fact that she makes the claim she was covert -- and that there was a plot by the Administration. Since when does the Washington Post take anyone's words, especially when contradicted by the evidence, as proof. After all, we know who leaked Valerie Plame's identity -- and that he and Plame and her perjuring husband were all opposed to the Iraq war. It was Richard Armitage. And we know there was no violation of the law in letting her identity out, because otherwise Patrick Fitzgerald would have charged Armitage with a crime instead of conducting a rogue investigation that turned faulty memory into perjury.

Interestingly enough, the MSM doesn't want to deal with the "minor" question of the law and whether or not Plame was actually a covert agent, nor do the Democrats. If they did, they would have also reported the testimony of Veronica Toensing, who wrote the statute on disclosing the identity of covert agents, including the definition what constitutes being covert. Indeed, only Rush Limbaugh did so, insofar as I can tell, actually playing the testimony that shows the committee chairman refusing to permit actual testimony on that matter. So what we had yesterday were not hearings designed to get at the truth, and not news coverage designed to disseminate the truth, but a political show-trial and witch-hunt -- featuring lies by a major Democrat contributor. And while she claims that the Administration was motivated by "purely political motives" (discrediting her husband's lies), it is clear that Plame and her suppoters are motivated by impure political motives -- the destruction of the Bush Presidency and the undermining of the War in Iraq.

Posted by: Greg at 04:33 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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And this one proves that New Orleans Buffoon Mayor Ray Nagin is out of contact with reality.

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has suggested that the slow recovery and rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina -- which has prevented many black former residents from returning -- is part of a plan to change the racial makeup and political leadership of his and other cities.

"Ladies and gentlemen, what happened in New Orleans could happen anywhere," Nagin said at a dinner sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a trade group for newspapers that target black readers. "They are studying this model of natural disasters, dispersing the community and changing the electoral process in that community."

Excuse me, Mayor Nagin, but you are clearly unaware how the parasites from your city are viewed in their new communities. Here in Houston, we're ready to put them all back on buses and send them home to you whether or not "Chocolate City" has been rebuilt or not -- they have had an overwhelmingly detrimental impact upon our schools, our neighborhoods, and our way of life. Not only that, but we know that they are double-registered for voting -- meaning they impact not just your city elections (remember coming to Houston to campaign), but also our elections here in Houston, where they provide additional votes for the Democrats. We want them gone as much as you want them back.

Posted by: Greg at 04:12 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Go Salukis!

It was supposed to be the seniors that led the Southern Illinois University men's basketball team to a tournament run. It was supposed to be Jamaal Tatum and Tony Young pacing the way.

Instead, it was one of the Salukis' sophomores who carried the team into the Round of 32 -and it's only because of an injury to one of SIU's starters that he even had the chance.

With Matt Shaw sidelined for the entire second half with a sprained left ankle, Tony Boyle came to the rescue for SIU. Boyle responded with a career-best game, lifting the Salukis to a 61-51 win over Holy Cross during the first round of the NCAA tournament Friday. The Salukis, seeded No. 4 in the West region, will face No. 5 Virginia Tech Sunday at 1:40 p.m.

Boyle scored a career-high 14 points and grabbed a career-best five rebounds - all in the second half. He also played the entire second half until being subbed out with 36 seconds remaining.

America loves a hero coming in from the bench -- let's hear it for Tony Boyle!

And for the record, my love of SIU is based upon the fact that I, like most members of my family who have attended college, spent at least some time taking classes in Carbondale. Oh, yeah -- and the fact that my father and aunt are both retired SIU professors.

Posted by: Greg at 04:01 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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Spring is here at last, and with it comes new products for around the home and garden. OnlineDiscountMart.com is rolling out its spring wares, including Squirrel Proof Bird Feeders, table-top fountains, and other neat items to decorate your patio and garden for spring and on into summer. And the prices are great! So drop by OnlineDiscountMart.com and save on all those springtime needs.

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Posted by: Greg at 06:15 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The winning entries in the Watcher's Council vote for this week are Serving While Republican by Eternity Road, and Tenured Deceit by Sigmund, Carl and Alfred.  Here is a link to the full results of the vote.

Here are the full tallies of all votes cast:

Posted by: Greg at 06:07 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Is there a 'secret" to getting rich? I'm not sure. But if there is, there certainly exist many folks out there who claim to know it and to be willing to pass it on to you. One such program is contained in "The Secret", a movie that sold 500,000 units within the first 6 months after its release in March, 2006. Well now, according to the Official Site: The Secret Science of Getting Rich, the makers of the movie are preparing to launch a new venture following up on this "transformational movie" -- seminars presented by some of the successful individuals featured in the movie.

So who are we talking about being a part of this effort, based upon the 1910 book “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace D. Wattles? Well, among others, “Chicken Soup for the Soul” author, Jack Canfield; Positive Thinking expert, Bob Proctor and spiritual leader, Michael Beckwith, as well as the movie’s producer, Rhonda Byrne. The new seminar program itself will be delivered to your door on DVD, featuring a how-to approach to becoming rich, including a focus on what is referred to as the central tenet of the program, "The Law of Attraction". So for more information on the program, visit the Official Site: The Secret Science of Getting Rich. It could be the thing that transforms your life.

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Posted by: Greg at 06:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This is enough to make one wish to vomit.

Al-Aqsa TV, a station run by Hamas, aired an interview with the two young children of female Palestinian suicide bomber Rim al-Riyashi last week. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translated the interview and posted it on its website.

During the TV segment, the interviewer gently asked the children to count the number of Jews murdered by their mother and asked them to recite "Mama Rim," most likely a poem written in honor of the woman's "martyrdom."

The interviewer began, "Let's talk with the two children of the jihad-fighting martyrdom-seeker Rim Al-Riyashi -- Dhoha and Muhammad. Dhoha, you love mama, right? Where did mama go?" he asked.

"To paradise," the little girl answered.

"What did mama do?" the interviewer asked her. "She committed martyrdom," the child replied.

"She killed Jews, right? How many Jews did mama kill?" the interviewer asked.

"This many," replied the suicide bomber's son, Muhammad, holding up his hand with five fingers outstretched.

Rim Al-Riyashi blew herself up in January 2004 at the Karni border crossing between Gaza and Israel, killing four Israelis. She was 22 at the time and the first female suicide bomber recruited by Hamas.

This is Exhibit A in the case that these people not only do not deserve a state, but that the Israelis have shown admirable restraint in not inflicting larger casualties on these barbarians.

Posted by: Greg at 09:33 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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Michelle Cottle tries to argue that Vice President Cheney has been left insane by his cardiac disease in her article in the new New Republic. She fails to make her case – and her argument has been demolished by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, who has the advantage of being a trained psychiatrist with excellent credentials in the field. His response is priceless, and well-worth the read.

(a) Using a four-letter word in an exchange with Sen. Patrick Leahy. Good God, by that standard, I should long ago have been committed and the entire borough of Brooklyn quarantined.

(b) "Shoot a man in the face and not bother to call your boss 'til the next day?" Another way of putting that is this: After a hunting accident, Cheney tried to get things in order before going public. Not the best decision, as I wrote at the time, but perfectly understandable. And if that is deranged, what do you say about a young Teddy Kennedy being far less forthcoming about something far more serious -- how he came to leave a dead woman at the bottom of a pond? I am passing no judgment. I am simply pointing out how surpassingly stupid it is to attribute such behavior to mental illness.

(c) Longtime associate Brent Scowcroft quoted as saying, "Dick Cheney I don't know anymore." Well. After Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney adopted a view about fighting jihadism, America's new existential enemy, that differed radically from the "realist" foreign policy approach that he had shared a decade earlier with Scowcroft. That's a psychiatric symptom? By that standard, Saul of Tarsus, Arthur Vandenberg, Irving Kristol, Ronald Reagan -- to pick at random from a thousand such cases of men undergoing a profound change of worldview -- are psychiatric cases. Indeed, by that standard, Andrew Sullivan is stark raving mad. (Okay, perhaps not the best of counterexamples.)

Krauthammer then goes back and points to other attempts by American liberals to smear conservatives as insane – when their real “pathology” was deviation from liberalism. And Krauthammer, based upon his actual professional training, is able to identify in Cottle a mental illness that seems all too common on the Left – Bush Derangement Syndrome, a condition marked by a pathological hatred of President Bush and members of his administration, coupled with a desire to destroy the elected government of the United States by any means necessary.

Posted by: Greg at 09:24 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Michelle Cottle tries to argue that Vice President Cheney has been left insane by his cardiac disease in her article in the new New Republic. She fails to make her case – and her argument has been demolished by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, who has the advantage of being a trained psychiatrist with excellent credentials in the field. His response is priceless, and well-worth the read.

(a) Using a four-letter word in an exchange with Sen. Patrick Leahy. Good God, by that standard, I should long ago have been committed and the entire borough of Brooklyn quarantined.

(b) "Shoot a man in the face and not bother to call your boss 'til the next day?" Another way of putting that is this: After a hunting accident, Cheney tried to get things in order before going public. Not the best decision, as I wrote at the time, but perfectly understandable. And if that is deranged, what do you say about a young Teddy Kennedy being far less forthcoming about something far more serious -- how he came to leave a dead woman at the bottom of a pond? I am passing no judgment. I am simply pointing out how surpassingly stupid it is to attribute such behavior to mental illness.

(c) Longtime associate Brent Scowcroft quoted as saying, "Dick Cheney I don't know anymore." Well. After Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney adopted a view about fighting jihadism, America's new existential enemy, that differed radically from the "realist" foreign policy approach that he had shared a decade earlier with Scowcroft. That's a psychiatric symptom? By that standard, Saul of Tarsus, Arthur Vandenberg, Irving Kristol, Ronald Reagan -- to pick at random from a thousand such cases of men undergoing a profound change of worldview -- are psychiatric cases. Indeed, by that standard, Andrew Sullivan is stark raving mad. (Okay, perhaps not the best of counterexamples.)

Krauthammer then goes back and points to other attempts by American liberals to smear conservatives as insane – when their real “pathology” was deviation from liberalism. And Krauthammer, based upon his actual professional training, is able to identify in Cottle a mental illness that seems all too common on the Left – Bush Derangement Syndrome, a condition marked by a pathological hatred of President Bush and members of his administration, coupled with a desire to destroy the elected government of the United States by any means necessary.

Posted by: Greg at 09:24 AM | Comments (153) | Add Comment
Post contains 421 words, total size 3 kb.

1

You must be forgetting the myriad campaigns waged by right-wing commentators to discredit and humiliate individuals by labeling them insane, crazy, etc.  You surely must recall the concerted, organized talking point barrage directed at Al Gore a couple years back after some speeches he gave.

And when the right does it, Greg, it's not just some random person nobody gives a darn about.  Who the heck knows or cares who Michelle Cotter is, let alone reads her work?  When the Gore assault was launched, it was on radio, television, and in print -- folks like Rush, Hannity, and Coulter who reach millions upon millions of readers, listeners, and viewers daily.

Posted by: dan at Sat Mar 17 09:30:06 2007 (aPL79)

2

I can't find the hilarious-but-sad Daily Show montage of all the right-wingers calling Gore mentally ill, but there are a couple of examples here--- John Podhoretz and David Frum were among the many columnists who wrote seriously about Gore's insanity:

http://www.spinsanity.org/post.html?2004_05_30_archive.html

Posted by: dan at Sat Mar 17 09:34:51 2007 (aPL79)

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Hide Comments | Add Comment

Could be -- because at least one facility is unable to protect inmates from other inmates.

A South Texas juvenile corrections facility run by the Texas Youth Commission is so "chaotic and dangerous" that it violates the constitutional rights of the youth incarcerated there, the U.S. Justice Department told state officials Thursday.

Youth-on-youth assaults at the Evins Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburg are five times the national average, the report said, and in one instance last year a corrections officer tried to subdue an unruly youth by pushing his eyes "back into his face."

A 14-page letter from Justice officials to Gov. Rick Perry detailed repeated patterns of violence that injured both youths and corrections officers at Evins. The report said the facility is poorly designed, insufficiently staffed and has corrections officers who are poorly trained.

The letter said if the problems are not fixed within 49 days, the department's Civil Rights Division may file suit against Texas to bring the facility into compliance.

Sounds like a good thing to me -- the Perry Administration has let the TYC system run out of control. If it takes federal involvement to fix, so be it.

Posted by: Greg at 02:51 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 204 words, total size 1 kb.

The only thing worse than the current presidential nomination system would be a change like this one being led by California.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) signed legislation yesterday moving the state's presidential primary to Feb. 5, 2008, a change that could lead to the earliest and biggest single-day test of candidate strength ever.

Half a dozen other large states, including New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey, are also considering moving their primaries to the first Tuesday in February, with the possibility that nearly two dozen contests will be held that day. Together, those states could account for more than half of the total number of delegates at stake.

In theory, this could mean that the nominations of both parties are determined six-months before the national conventions -- and that a huge percentage of Americans -- in a majority of states, will have virtually no voice in selecting the nominees.

Some years ago, someone suggested a national primary system in which primary dates rotated every cycle between four groups of states, with the election dates set a month apart. That way, only about a quarter of delegates ould be at stake at any given time. Such a process would require nationalizing th primary elections, which I find objectionable -- but would that be worse than this?

I will say this, though -- the potential fallout from this change could prove the wisdom of the Electoral College, which at least makes small states relevant in electing a President.

Posted by: Greg at 02:48 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 259 words, total size 2 kb.