You won’t believe what teachers plan to tell kids about Trayvon Martin
In the wake of the verdict in the Trayvon Martin shooting, several teachers said they would invoke mob justice, vigilantism and the idea that Florida law allows people to hunt and kill black kids when discussing the case with their students.The Hairpin, a prominent liberal women’s blog, asked several teachers, counselors and professors to explain how they would talk about the case — which reached its conclusion last week after George Zimmerman was found innocent of Martin’s murder — in their classrooms.
An anonymous English teacher in Alabama said that she would be hesitant to formally “teach” the subject, but nonetheless thought it could be brought up in relation to vigilantism in literature such as “To Kill A Mockingbird” and the works of William Faulkner.
“The thing is, I see Trayvon Martins everyday,” wrote the teacher. “I worry about young black men and their prospects in a world where a man is able to kill one without being convicted of something. Even if it isn’t as simple as that, kids will see it that way. Rednecks are holding their heads a little higher and tapping the guns on their holsters eager for a stand your ground moment.”
Some have alleged that Zimmerman killed Martin in an act of vigilante-style execution, though the jury ultimately acquitted him based on his self-defense claim. Zimmerman suffered bruises and cuts during the altercation, and said that Martin was on top of him and he feared for his life when he fired his gun.
Nevertheless, another teacher cited the verdict as evidence of the “fact that Florida law allows people to hunt and kill black youth,” and said that it was important to talk about it with students.
“Ultimately, this is such an important and indicative decision that it needs to be addressed,” wrote Abe Cohen, a high school teacher in the Bronx.
Dr. Imani Perry, a Princeton professor who said her two black children cried when they heard Zimmerman had been acquitted — and feared that he was coming to kill them — expressed the view that kids need to be educated about racial inequity in the context of the verdict.
“I believe that if children are guided honestly through the reality of the world in which they live, it will help them build resilience,” wrote Perry.
An anonymous high school counselor in California said he thought teachers should talk to students about Florida law, helping them reach the conclusion that the laws are unjust and need to be changed.
“I think it’d be interesting for students to look at the laws in Florida and see WHY the jury made this decision,” he wrote. “It may be unjust, but WHY was it made? And maybe it’s the law that’s the problem in this case? And what can we do to change that?”
Other teachers did express the view that any in-class discussions of the Martin case should be neutral.
“I’d welcome discussing Trayvon, and I’d do my best to facilitate in a neutral way,” wrote Lindsey Hunter Lopez, a high school English teacher.
Will Ferrell's Funny or Die Preps Propaganda Videos to Promote ObamaCare
Will Ferrell's Funny or Die web site veers between laugh-free
satire, obvious swipes at conservatives and material that avoids mocking
the current president at all costs.
Now, Ferrell's liberal content portal is aligning with President Barack Obama's push to promote his signature health care legislation. The site will create propaganda videos meant to boost the unpopular law with young voters, or rather, citizens.
Also on board for the propaganda push--fading media mogul Oprah Winfrey, the talk show host who pushed Obama's presidency on her viewers during the waning days of her syndicated chat-fest.
Other celebrities teaming with Obama to promote his existing health care law include Kal Penn, Amy Poehler, Jennifer Hudson and Michael Cera.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2013/07/22/funny-die-propaganda-obamacare
Obamacare’s Branch of the NSA
The Department of Health and Human Services is about to hire an army of “patient navigators” to inform Americans about the subsidized insurance promised by Obamacare and assist them in enrolling. These organizers will be guided by the new Federal Data Hub, which will give them access to reams of personal information compiled by federal agencies ranging from the IRS to the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration. “The federal government is planning to quietly enact what could be the largest consolidation of personal data in the history of the republic,” Paul Howard of the Manhattan Institute and Stephen T. Parente, a University of Minnesota finance professor, wrote in USA Today. No wonder that there are concerns about everything from identity theft to the ability of navigators to use the system to register Obamacare participants to vote.
HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius wasn’t satisfied with the $54 million in public funds allocated for navigators this year, so she tried to raise money from health-industry executives for Enroll America, the liberal nonprofit group leading the PR push for Obamacare. She had to retreat under withering criticism that she was shaking down companies that were dependent on government, a clear conflict of interest.
Because 34 states have declined to set up their own insurance “exchanges,” the job of guiding exchange enrollees in those states has been left to Washington. The identity of the groups who will get the Sebelius grants isn’t yet known, but Politico reports they are likely to include Planned Parenthood, senior-citizen advocacy organizations, and churches.
So far everything we’ve learned indicates the navigators will be flying blind, or could well be “unsafe at any speed.” In June, the Government Accountability Office reported that HHS is considering allowing navigators to assist with outreach and enrollment tasks even before completing their formal training. The reason? Like so much of Obamacare, the navigators program is behind schedule and drowning in its own complexity.
This spring, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lawyers were also told by HHS that, despite the fact that navigators will have access to sensitive data such as Social Security numbers and tax returns, there will be no criminal background checks required for them. Indeed, they won’t even have to have high-school diplomas. Both U.S. Census Bureau and IRS employees must meet those minimum standards, if only because no one wants someone who has been convicted of identity theft getting near Americans’ personal records. But HHS is unconcerned. It points out that navigators will have to take a 20–30 hour online course about how the 1,200-page law works, which, given its demonstrated complexity, is like giving someone a first-aid course and then making him a med-school professor. “I want to assure you and all Americans that, when they fill out their [health-insurance] marketplace applications, they can trust the information they’re providing is protected,” said Marilyn Tavenner, head of HHS’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, at a congressional hearing last week. In the age of Wikileaks and IRS abuses, somehow that isn’t very comforting.
“The standards proposed by your department could result in a convicted felon receiving federal dollars and gaining access to confidential taxpayer information,” a group of nine Republican senators led by Utah’s Orrin Hatch wrote to Secretary Sebelius last month. “The same standards allow any individual who has registered with the exchange and completed two days of training to facilitate enrollment, as if the decision to purchase health insurance is similar to the decision of registering to vote.”
Indeed, voter registration is among the goals of the folks hawking Obamacare. The People’s World newspaper reports: “California’s Secretary of State Debra Bowen is designating the state’s new Health Benefit Exchange, Covered California, as a voter registration agency under the National Voter Registration Act. That means Covered California will be incorporating voter registration into every transaction — online, in-person and by phone — it has with consumers.” It seems as if some Obama supporters have found a new way to fill the void left by the bankruptcy of ACORN, the notorious left-wing voter-registration group that saw dozens of its employees in multiple states convicted of fraud.
At least the pay will be better. ACORN was infamous for stiffing its employees and even once sued the state of California to ask for an exemption from its minimum-wage law. But early reports are that the federal government will be offering navigators between $20 and $48 an hour. In many states, that’s far more than many private-sector workers with corresponding responsibilities earn.
If there is a silver lining in all of this, it is that the potential failure of the navigators program could further convince voters that Obamacare is simply unworkable. “The Obama administration wants something the federal government has never done: a computer system that connects HHS, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, Homeland Security and perhaps other departments,” John Goodman, a health-care expert with the National Center for Policy Analysis, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in May. “For perspective, consider that the Veterans Administration converted to electronic medical records in 1998 and the VA and the Defense Department tried without success to share records until February [2013] when then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that the plan would be abandoned.”
But the consensus is that, if Obamacare isn’t repealed, the government can, with enough effort and money, get the Data Hub up and running. That concerns many members of Congress.
“Giving community organizers access to the Federal Data Hub is bad policy and potentially a danger to civil liberties,” House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan told me recently. “But it’s one of the most underreported stories I’ve seen. If people only knew about this Data Hub program, it would touch off a huge public outcry.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/354031/obamacares-branch-nsa-john-fund
Oversight Probe: House Dems Pressured SEC to Scrutinize 501(c) Donations
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today said that House Democratic leadership was pressuring the Securities and Exchange Commission to cast a wary eye on donations made to tax-exempt groups.
In a letter accompanying a memo to SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White, Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and member Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) cited documents obtained through the committee’s investigation that show special-interest groups and House Dems convincing the SEC to go against staff recommendations and probe donations by the same types of groups that fell under extra IRS scrutiny.
“Documents produced to the Committee indicate that the SEC has been under immense pressure from elected officials and special interest groups as part of a government-wide effort to stifle political speech,” the trio wrote. “This effort to politicize the agency appears to have been successful in overcoming the objections of the SEC’s professional staff, and moving the Commission closer to using its authority to regulate public securities markets as a backdoor way to limit the political speech of the same types of groups targeted by the IRS.”
Among the evidence cited in the memo is a Jan. 15 draft document “prepared via a senior staff member’s personal, non-official email account [that] detailed new attention and emphasis on groups organized under Section 501 and 527 of the Internal Revenue Code.”
A rulemaking petition was submitted to the SEC in August 2011 to require that public companies disclose corporate activities for political purposes to shareholders. Staff protested that such regulation was under the purview of the FEC and Congress, not the SEC.
“Notwithstanding this advice from the SEC professional staff, three SEC Commissioners acted to place a political disclosure rulemaking on the agency’s official agenda,” the memo states. “The decision to do so implicates a process wherein the professional, objective advice of the SEC staff was overridden by the three votes of political appointees.”
“Documents provided to the Committee demonstrate that this action followed intense lobbying by elected officials and special interest groups.”
The Oversight Committee gave the SEC one week to turn over all documents and communications involving certain officials and mentions of “tea party” or 501(c) groups. Issa’s panel also wants any such documents involving communication between the SEC and President Obama’s office, and the SEC and IRS.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/07/22/oversight-probe-house-dems-pressured-sec-to-scrutinize-501c-donations/
End the White House Press Briefing! It's an unholy charade
It is an accepted fact in Washington that the Obama administration and the press corps that covers it—once considered essentially two units of the same team—are now bitter enemies. After four years of smoldering disenchantment, reporters have seized on the government’s rapacious subpoenas of media records and L’Affaire Snowden as the excuse they needed to break into open rebellion. A primary arena for the skirmishing is the daily White House press briefing, where the ritual evasions by the administration’s mouthpiece, long a staple of the undertaking, are now received by his questioners with a contempt rivaling that of the Bush years. National Journal’s Ron Fournier, a D.C. eminence and former Associated Press (AP) chief White House correspondent, recently proposed a kind of retaliatory collective action: “If WH journos boycotted briefings for week,” he tweeted, “would 1) readers / viewers miss news? 2) the WH get the message?” As someone who spent two years in the White House press office helping the press secretary prepare for these exercises in silliness, I humbly submit that a boycott would fall short of what’s needed. The daily briefing has become a worthless chore for reporters, an embarrassing nuisance to administration staff, and a source of added friction between the two camps. It’s time to do the humane, obvious thing and get rid of it altogether.
Would there be a great deal of wailing about this? Yes, there would be. The daily briefing is seen as one of the last toeholds from which the press corps can try to keep the White House accountable, so eliminating it would be seen as Nixonian, even Stalinist, depending on one’s bogeyman of choice. But reporters who’ve actually endured the sessions day in and day out, if not quite ready to endorse abolition, concede that the institution has wildly outlived its utility. “Everybody thinks it’s so great, because it’s a chance to grill people and put them on the spot,” Jennifer Loven, another former chief White House correspondent for the AP, told me. “And that’s all great in theory, except that it doesn’t happen that way. Nobody really gets put on the spot. What you get in the briefing is a reply, not an answer.” Adds Peter Baker of The New York Times: “The White House decided a long time ago that it’s not about candor; it’s about deflection and survival. The press decided it’s about preening.” When I called up Fournier, he needed little prompting to expound on the problems. “It really has become useless,” he said. “We are now pawns in a reality show. I’d rather spend that hour and a half taking someone to coffee or calling or e-mailing someone to get a better sense of something important—you know, doing my job as a reporter.”
I can say from experience that it doesn’t feel like the best use of time on the other side, either. During the first two years of the Obama administration, I was in charge of marshaling one-pagers of talking points for the binder that then–Press Secretary Robert Gibbs would carry to the podium. Most mornings, I would sit in his office as other aides paraded through to offer their “guidance” on whatever was in the news, which usually meant how to skate away without giving up much information. After finishing our lunches and untucking our ties from our shirts, we’d trundle down the hallway and through the sliding door into the Briefing Room, where I’d watch the exchanges play out from the fold-down staff seats along the southern wall. Gibbs and current Press Secretary Jay Carney differ in style—Gibbs often made me cringe by ignoring the talking points; Carney makes me cringe by using them—but the effect is the same, which is to say, ridiculous.
A
case in point: the briefing from Monday, July 8, the first since the
ouster of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi over the Fourth of July break
and therefore theoretically a big news day. Carney—for whom I worked
briefly and whom I like and respect—arrives at the podium 30 minutes
after the 1 p.m. call time. “It is, as always, an honor and a privilege
to be before you today,” he says. (He’s kidding.) “For that reason, I
had a little catching up to do, and I apologize for being tardy.” As
will soon become clear, the extra cramming has served no clear purpose,
since he parries every query with a noncommittal reply. By tradition,
the AP gets the first question. Its correspondent, Nedra Pickler, starts
in with the day’s hot topic—whether the administration is prepared to
deem the overthrow a coup, which would trigger a cut-off of all aid to
Egypt. After reciting some filler from the pages in his binder and twice
claiming that he will “be blunt,” Carney arrives at the following: “I
would say that we are going to take the time necessary to review what
has taken place and to monitor efforts by Egyptian authorities to forge
an inclusive and democratic way forward.” Steve Holland of Reuters,
displaying an actual bluntness that draws titters from the room, tries
to pin Carney down: “Are you trying to find a way not to cut off aid?”
Carney’s reply: “I think I would say on the question of aid, the
relationship between the United States and Egypt goes beyond a provision
of assistance, and it is based on decades of partnership and our
commitment, this country’s commitment, to the Egyptian people.” It was
for such pro-level dodges that Carney was honored in a minor
masterpiece, “The Top 9,486 Ways Jay Carney Won’t Answer Your Questions,” put together by Yahoo! News.
At the same time, it’s worth asking what the press hopes to accomplish here. Carney’s refusal to give straight answers tends to obscure the fact that the questions are pretty pointless, too. A big decision such as whether to stop aid to a major partner in the Middle East will be made slowly and iteratively. Any shift in policy would begin as an official recommendation from the gorgon-headed collective of national security chieftains known as “the Interagency,” which would then need to be approved by something called “the Principals Committee,” and finally by the president himself. It is not going to be hashed out during a televised exchange between the press secretary and a reporter from Reuters. The reporter from Reuters knows this, of course, but he has to ask about the day’s big story anyway. As does the colleague next to him, and the colleague next to her, each getting in a swing.
Meanwhile, even as the briefing dawdles on to less weighty matters (“About the congressional picnic that has been postponed, what was behind that?”), the press secretary remains duty-bound not to say anything specific or interesting. If there were a Hippocratic Oath for the position, it might begin: “First, make no news.” The goal is to make it through without inciting an international crisis or stepping on the president’s cheery message of the day, and then to return to the office and get down to actual business, including figuring out which of the administration’s three favored outlets—The New York Times, AP, and Mike Allen’s “Playbook”—will get advance word of the Egypt decision when it finally gets made. Generally, this is a better way to do things: The article that results tends to be more thorough and nuanced, which is good for both the White House and the writer. And while it annoys less fortunate outlets, eventually everyone does get a turn.
Once upon a time, the daily briefing was just the press secretary walking out into what was then called the Press Lobby—it had beige leather sofas and coffee tables and a card table with wooden captain’s chairs—making a few announcements about what the president was up to and taking a handful of questions. The idea, veterans say, was to provide a regular forum for the White House and the press to talk to each other, not to provide actual news content. During the early 1980s, President Reagan’s press shop installed the theater seating and the more formal vibe. Then Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry let the whole thing be on-camera; he’d worked in the State Department, where briefings were already televised, and (he told me sheepishly) didn’t see the harm. “It was just a complete zoo in there,” he said of the ensuing Lewinsky-era brawls, and it has been ever since.
Many of the reporters I spoke with expressed an affinity for the “gaggle” format, wherein journalists gather in the press secretary’s office for a more informal, untelevised exchange. Restoring something like the old Press Lobby setup would effectively establish the gaggle as the new norm and cut down on the circus tricks; it would also leave the network people with less b-roll for their segments, but they’d live. Some White House journalists also suggest a second fix, at once simple and highly improbable: having the president himself spar directly with the press more frequently. Adviser-types get squeamish about it, but presidents really do tend to be their own best spokesmen, as President Obama showed at a late-June press conference in Senegal. Asked about America’s pursuit of Edward Snowden, the commander-in-chief responded with the kind of color, brevity, and authority almost never matched during a daily briefing: “I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a twenty-nine-year-old hacker,” he said. Question answered.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113949/end-white-house-press-briefing#
So far this year, murders are down 29% from the 50-year low achieved in 2012, and we've seen the fewest shootings in two decades.
To critics, none of this seems to much matter. Sidestepping the fact that these policies work, they continue to allege that massive numbers of minorities are stopped and questioned by police for no reason other than their race.
Never mind that in each of the city's 76 police precincts, the race of those stopped highly correlates to descriptions provided by victims or witnesses to crimes. Or that in a city of 8.5 million people, protected by 19,600 officers on patrol (out of a total uniformed staff of 35,000), the average number of stops we conduct is less than one per officer per week.
Racial profiling is a disingenuous charge at best and an incendiary one at worst, particularly in the wake of the tragic death of Trayvon Martin. The effect is to obscure the rock-solid legal and constitutional foundation underpinning the police department's tactics and the painstaking analysis that determines how we employ them.
In 2003, when the NYPD recognized that 96% of the individuals who were shot and 90% of those murdered were black and Hispanic, we concentrated our officers in those minority neighborhoods that had experienced spikes in crime. This program is called Operation Impact.
From the
beginning, we've combined this strategy with a proactive policy of
engagement. We stop and question individuals about whom we have
reasonable suspicion. This is a widely utilized and lawful police
tactic, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1968 decision, Terry v. Ohio,
and authorized by New York State Criminal Procedure Law and the New
York state constitution. Every state in the country has a variant of
this statute, as does federal law; it is fundamental to policing.
It's understandable that someone who has done nothing wrong will be angry if he is stopped. Last year, the NYPD announced a series of steps to strengthen the oversight and training involved in this tactic. The number of civilian complaints in 2012 was the lowest in the past five years. That's progress—and we always strive to do better.
In a similar vein, our detractors contend that the NYPD engages in widespread, unwarranted spying on Muslim New Yorkers. Again, this is a sensational charge belied by the facts.
Since 1985, the police department has been subject to a set of rules known as the Handschu Guidelines, which were developed to protect people engaged in political protest. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, we were concerned that elements of the guidelines could interfere with our ability to investigate terrorism. In 2002, we proposed to the federal court that monitors the agreement that it be modified. The court agreed.
Handschu entitles police officers to attend any event that is open to the public, to view online activity that is publicly accessible and to prepare reports and assessments to help us understand the nature of the threat.
As a matter of department policy, undercover officers and confidential informants do not enter a mosque unless they are following up on a lead vetted under Handschu. Similarly, when we have attended a private event organized by a student group, we've done so on the basis of a lead or investigation reviewed and authorized in writing at the highest levels of the department, in keeping with Handschu protocol.
Anyone who implies that it is unlawful for the police department to search online, visit public places or map neighborhoods has either not read, misunderstood or intentionally obfuscated the meaning of the Handschu Guidelines.
The NYPD has too urgent a mission and too few officers for us to waste time and resources on broad, unfocused surveillance. We have a responsibility to protect New Yorkers from violent crime or another terrorist attack—and we uphold the law in doing so.
As a city, we have to face the reality that New York's minority communities experience a disproportionate share of violent crime. To ignore that fact, as our critics would have us do, would be a form of discrimination in itself.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324448104578616333588719320.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
The attorney general of the United States lied recently to Congress. He said he knew of no citizen’s communications that his department had monitored. Lie!
In fact, Holder knew that his subordinates were targeting reporters. He also did not tell the truth about the New Black Panthers case. He had sworn that there was no political decision to drop the case. Not true; the decision came from the top. He again lied about the time frame in which he first learned of the Fast and Furious case.
The director of national intelligence also lied, likewise while under oath to Congress. At first James Clapper confessed that he had given the “least untruthful” account.
Nixon’s Washington used to call that sort of neat lie “a modified limited hangout.” Later, Clapper admitted that he had just flat-out lied to Congress. Was he disgraced? Fired? Further confirmation of his “largely secular” lie?
Nope. Nothing followed.
Elizabeth Warren simply invented an entire pedigree. That blatant lie helped to earn her a Harvard tenured professorship and a U.S. Senate seat. Ward Churchill was doing well until he dared the country to call out his lies. Who is to say that Warren or Churchill cannot be Native Americans by professing to be Native Americans?
Barack Obama, as is the wont of politicians, has lied a lot — and from the very beginning of his national career. He knew Bill Ayers well, Tony Rezko too. He lied about his decision not to seek the presidency as a newly elected senator, and lied about his willingness to take public campaign financing funds in 2008. He misled about what he would shortly do about most of the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols. Obama lied about much of his own biography.
When the president uses emphatics like “make no mistake about it,” “let me be perfectly clear,” and “in point of fact,” we know what follows will be untrue. He did not cut the deficit in half in his first four years. He had no intention of ever doing so. He lies about the circumstances of America’s gas and oil production surge — occurring despite, not because of, him. He lied about his involvement in the radical ACORN community action group, and fabricated about his father’s and grandfather’s World War II involvement.
Tally up what Barack Obama said about his health care initiative, the border fence, and his fiscal policy. Almost all of the major assurances proved lies.
Ministers of Lies
But why pick on the president?
The media routinely peddles “noble” untruths. ABC manipulated a video to show George Zimmerman without much injury to his head. NBC edited a tape to suggest that he was a racist. The New York Times invented a new journalistic category, “white Hispanic,” to suggest George Zimmerman was not Latino in a way that the paper would never suggest that Barack Obama is not African-American or Bill Richardson was a “white Hispanic.”
Much of the prosecutorial testimony in the George Zimmerman case could not be true — unless someone gets grass stains on his back and contusions on the back of the head from pounding on someone atop him. Prosecution star witness Rachel Jeantel made up much of her racist testimony, and boldly confessed as much in her paid-for after-trial interviews.
It’s Not Really the Cover-up
Our current scandals are predicated on lies. No one believed the official White House version that the IRS miscreants were rogue agents from a Cincinnati field office.
No one believes much of the official version of the Benghazi killings — least of all that the violence was prompted by a single video maker in the fashion that Susan Rice assured the nation.
The attorney general of the United States lied about the AP/James Rosen monitoring while under oath before Congress.
James Clapper lied about the NSA scandal. All four travesties are still being sorted out. For now the one commonality is that our officials lied about all of them.
Harry Reid knew nothing about Mitt Romney’s tax returns. But lied about them all the same. It is hard to know whether Joe Biden lies, or simply believes his fantasies. He assured us that President Roosevelt addressed the nation on television after the panic of 1929. Remember in 1987 when he lifted much of his campaign stump speech from British Laborite Neil Kinnock?
Our most treasured icons in the media and literature lie. They tell untruth sometimes in the most serious fashion of claiming the work of others as if it were their own — or simply inventing things out of thin air. Fareed Zakaria plagiarized. So did Maureen Dowd.
Nearly all of Stephen Ambrose’s work, book by book, was characterized by both plagiarism and false statements about archives and interviews. Michael Bellesiles was given the Bancroft Award for a mytho-history. If historians could not initially spot the lie, who else could? Or did they try all that much, given the enticing but mythic thesis that today’s gun nuts, not our hallowed forefathers, dreamed up a nation in arms?
Is There Anyone Left Who Doesn’t Lie?
Why do they lie? Because they can. Or to paraphrase Dirty Harry, they like it. We are a celebrity-and wealth-obsessed society, in which ends, not means, count. Barack Obama got to be president — who now cares how?
That Joe Biden habitually makes things up is the stuff of “that’s just old’ Joe,” not a career-ending felony. Hillary Clinton lied a lot when she was first lady about documents under subpoena. She lied as a candidate about being under fire in the Balkans. And she lied as secretary of State about the train of events in Benghazi.
And? Those lies were either forgiven or forgotten, or contributed to the “complex” persona that now is among the most widely admired in the U.S.
Lying, of course, is a symptom of hubris. The once leftist and long-haired radical Stephen Ambrose finally assumed that he was Lord or Master Stephen Ambrose, voice of an entire generation, accustomed to instant TV access, huge advances, and minute-by-minute adulation on the street.
Lying won him all that, and he knew it. I remember him over three decades ago flat out lying about most of the details he offered on World War II while on The World At War. So to be sure, I watched the young Ambrose lie again last night on that documentary. But no matter: he seemed cool with long hair, a sweater, and an attitude, far more hip than the old plodding Brit historians who were meticulous in their honest recollections.
When caught, a dying Ambrose was unapologetic. He must have reckoned, why say “I’m sorry” to a society that did not care how he had become famous, only that he was? Had Martin Luther King, Jr. told the truth that he stole sizable work from other scholars to write his doctoral thesis, he would never have become Dr. King. Omitting that detail paid dividends.
We claim that no one fools history, especially in the age of the Internet. I grant few do, at least in the long run. Yet in the 21st century, the rub is not getting caught for plagiarism, but doing a cost-benefit-analysis of the downside of now and again agilely lying and plagiarizing, versus the upside of short-cutting to fame and riches.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is a plagiarist. But after a brief sojourn in the Washington doghouse, she is back again on television. Bringing up her untruth would be bad manners.
In Ambrose’s case, it seemed a simple decision. It was “take another multimillion-dollar advance and spend 3,000 hours out of the limelight” — or “take the money and simply cut and paste the work of others over a few hundred hours.” Did he fear that his widely read publishers and editors worried about sales, or the integrity of their branded text?
Bernie Madoff was a liar par excellence, but for most of his life his investors did not question his miraculous luck, given their miraculous returns that came in the mail each month.
It was not entirely money that drove columnists or reporters like Mike Barnicle, Patricia Smith, or Jayson Blair to lie, but the desire for attention, prestige, and being something more than an honest reporter in our empty metrosexual elite urban culture.
The Cover-up Pays
We repeat the nauseous canard that “it is not the crime, but the cover-up” that gets you in trouble in Washington. But that too is often a lie, at least most of the time. Had Eric Holder told the truth about Fast and Furious, the New Black Panther case, or the AP/James Rosen case, he would not be attorney general now.
If Susan Rice had gone on television and confessed the details about the status and recent history of the security measures in Libya, or the true nature of the post-”lead from behind” misadventure, or the spread of post-bin Laden al-Qaeda franchisers in 2012, she might have been out of a job — either by dismissal or by the failure of her president to win reelection. Lying worked. Obama is president. She is national security advisor.
Had Jay Carney confessed that the talking points about Benghazi were doctored from the outset, it might have mattered in the 2012 election. Lying then and now worked.
Why Do Our Best and Brightest Lie?
There are both age-old and more recent catalysts for lying.
One, lying and plagiarism are forms of narcissism. I know fabrications are born out of feelings of inferiority that makes an otherwise fine historian like a Joseph Ellis or a good actor like Brian Dennehy make up an entire war career, replete with tales of personal gallantry. But they persisted in such seemingly destructive behavior because they assumed that they had reached a level of fame and stature that made them immune from the normal accounting laws of the universe. There is no servant running along our triumphant masters when they star on television, muttering to them “Respice te, hominem te memento,” or at least “memento mori.”
Sic transit gloria? We would counter with vero possumus!
Two, lying more often than not pays. Take an ethical shortcut and the odds are small that one gets caught. Yes, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Fareed Zakaria were found out. But after brief anguished penance, they reinvented themselves and returned to the level of their prior stature. Perhaps some young journalist one day will do an Ambrose on them, and review all their previous work. But for what purpose? We know they have been dishonest once, and suspect the modus operandi was not a one-time occurrence. But we also know that the purified water in which they swim is not too toxic for liars and the dishonest.
Liars are good at what they do. Eric Holder certainly is. Again, like a shoplifter, why stop when you have mastered the craft? Does anyone think Patrick Fitzgerald is going to come out of retirement to indict Holder the way he did Scooter Libby for a crime that did not exist, and had it existed was committed by Richard Armitage — and known thusly to both Colin Powell and Fitzgerald himself at the outset?
Three, more recently postmodernism has blurred the divide from reality and truth. Tsarnaev is not quite a mass murderer, given his looks and youth. Major Hasan is guilty of work-place violence. For thirty years, the acolytes of fakers like Michel Foucault have taught our elites that truth is socially constructed — a relative thing, a power narrative fabricated by those of the right race, gender, and class to perpetuate their privilege. Howard Zinn could publish fantasies because who was to say that they were entirely wrong, and who would dare suggest that his myths were not put to a good cause?
Note that Maureen Dowd, Fareed Zakaria, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Mike Barnicle, and Eric Holder shoot their sometimes false arrows at the right targets. Does it then matter that their missiles were occasionally plastic rather than of authentic Native American wood?
Much of what Barack Obama has weaved about his past girlfriend, his parents’ meeting, his father’s/grandfather’s war service, or his upbringing in Hawaii at one point or another is false. But why would I mention that if not for illiberal political reasons? And what a 59-year-old, rural white guy from the Central Valley calls “truth” may not be so for a young multiracial child coming of age in Hawaii, anguished at having door locks clicked by “typical white” people as he crosses the street.
So Why Not Lie?
I end with three reasons to tell the truth. The majority has to tell the truth — to the IRS, to the police, to the DA, to the census — if a consensual society is to work. You readers tell the truth so that the society can survive an Eric Holder or Mike Barnicle. Average people must speak honestly or our elites’ lies will overwhelm, even destroy us. If 100 million tell the IRS lies during audits or take the 5th Amendment, our voluntary tax system collapses. We can take only so many Lois Lerners.
Two, this often sordid, sometimes beautiful world is not the end. There is transcendence. Lies damage our soul. Selling out in the here and now has consequences later on. If you are religious, your immortal soul is lost. If you are not, at least consider that your legacy, heritage, and remembrance are forever ruined. Ask the ghost of Stephen Ambrose. What good was all that money, all those interviews if based on a lie? All the insight and delight that he brought millions of readers was tarnished. And for what, exactly?
Third, we must strive to be tragic heroes, perhaps not as dramatic as Ajax, not as cool as Shane. Would you rather have been Ethan Edwards or Will Cane or have run Lehman Brothers in 2008? Sometimes, in less dramatic fashion, the choices are that Manichean.
We must try to tell the truth, not to doctor films, edit tapes, erase talking points, or lie before Congress, fabricate heroic war records, or invent false sources. Again, why? Because we seek to do the right thing with the full resignation that in the here and now we will often still lose and will lose often and gladly telling the truth.
“We always lose,” says Chris at the end of the The Magnificent Seven after he did the right thing. Or to paraphrase the cinematic T.E. Lawrence about Auda Abu Tayi, we will not lie, as do our elites, because it is simply “our pleasure” not to.
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/lying-in-the-age-of-obama/?singlepage=true
At this point in time, the United Kingdom appears to be experiencing a fragmenting, with devolution handing power back to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Island, and massive immigration by Muslims desiring sharia. Perhaps at this moment, a renewed vigor for the monarchy is a good thing, a unifying force, something that could reinforce the traditional identity that is being lost.
Also, William and Kate seem to be doing a good job role modeling positive values that could serve to inspire others. William has served in the armed forces, as has his brother Harry, and Kate comports herself with dignity while apparently (I am not a royal-watcher) being accessible.
Face it: monarchy has been the norm of human politics. Republican governance was an invention that came later and is more evanescent. So deeply is monarchy imprinted on our consciousness that in its absence we create faux rulers and aristocrats in the form of celebrities to gawk at, admire, and emulate (or criticize, as the case may be). I'd rather people focus on the likes of William and Kate than Kardashians.
The British Monarchy performs a valuable symbolic role in the United Kingdom. It costs a lot less to maintain the entire royal family than it does to care for President and Mrs. Obama.
I wish my many British and Commonwealth friends who care about the monarchy congratulatiosn, as well as to the happy couple and their families. There is now a directly-descended heir for the next generation.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/07/duke_and_duchess_did_their_duty.html#ixzz2ZswbNRDL
Now, Ferrell's liberal content portal is aligning with President Barack Obama's push to promote his signature health care legislation. The site will create propaganda videos meant to boost the unpopular law with young voters, or rather, citizens.
Also on board for the propaganda push--fading media mogul Oprah Winfrey, the talk show host who pushed Obama's presidency on her viewers during the waning days of her syndicated chat-fest.
The two video sites will, according to the White House official, be teaming up “on production for several web videos featuring well-known comedic celebrities and actors.” Funny or Die’s Mike Farah and YouTube’s Daniel Kellison attended Monday’s meeting and could be a potent force: Funny or Die currently boasts 19 million unique visitors each month and advocated for the health law during the Congressional debate.
Other celebrities teaming with Obama to promote his existing health care law include Kal Penn, Amy Poehler, Jennifer Hudson and Michael Cera.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2013/07/22/funny-die-propaganda-obamacare
Obamacare’s Branch of the NSA
Community organizers will use a Federal Data Hub to sign up people for subsidies — and even ballots.
President Obama has had a poor record of job creation, but at least one small economic sector is doing well: community organizing.The Department of Health and Human Services is about to hire an army of “patient navigators” to inform Americans about the subsidized insurance promised by Obamacare and assist them in enrolling. These organizers will be guided by the new Federal Data Hub, which will give them access to reams of personal information compiled by federal agencies ranging from the IRS to the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration. “The federal government is planning to quietly enact what could be the largest consolidation of personal data in the history of the republic,” Paul Howard of the Manhattan Institute and Stephen T. Parente, a University of Minnesota finance professor, wrote in USA Today. No wonder that there are concerns about everything from identity theft to the ability of navigators to use the system to register Obamacare participants to vote.
HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius wasn’t satisfied with the $54 million in public funds allocated for navigators this year, so she tried to raise money from health-industry executives for Enroll America, the liberal nonprofit group leading the PR push for Obamacare. She had to retreat under withering criticism that she was shaking down companies that were dependent on government, a clear conflict of interest.
Because 34 states have declined to set up their own insurance “exchanges,” the job of guiding exchange enrollees in those states has been left to Washington. The identity of the groups who will get the Sebelius grants isn’t yet known, but Politico reports they are likely to include Planned Parenthood, senior-citizen advocacy organizations, and churches.
So far everything we’ve learned indicates the navigators will be flying blind, or could well be “unsafe at any speed.” In June, the Government Accountability Office reported that HHS is considering allowing navigators to assist with outreach and enrollment tasks even before completing their formal training. The reason? Like so much of Obamacare, the navigators program is behind schedule and drowning in its own complexity.
This spring, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lawyers were also told by HHS that, despite the fact that navigators will have access to sensitive data such as Social Security numbers and tax returns, there will be no criminal background checks required for them. Indeed, they won’t even have to have high-school diplomas. Both U.S. Census Bureau and IRS employees must meet those minimum standards, if only because no one wants someone who has been convicted of identity theft getting near Americans’ personal records. But HHS is unconcerned. It points out that navigators will have to take a 20–30 hour online course about how the 1,200-page law works, which, given its demonstrated complexity, is like giving someone a first-aid course and then making him a med-school professor. “I want to assure you and all Americans that, when they fill out their [health-insurance] marketplace applications, they can trust the information they’re providing is protected,” said Marilyn Tavenner, head of HHS’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, at a congressional hearing last week. In the age of Wikileaks and IRS abuses, somehow that isn’t very comforting.
“The standards proposed by your department could result in a convicted felon receiving federal dollars and gaining access to confidential taxpayer information,” a group of nine Republican senators led by Utah’s Orrin Hatch wrote to Secretary Sebelius last month. “The same standards allow any individual who has registered with the exchange and completed two days of training to facilitate enrollment, as if the decision to purchase health insurance is similar to the decision of registering to vote.”
Indeed, voter registration is among the goals of the folks hawking Obamacare. The People’s World newspaper reports: “California’s Secretary of State Debra Bowen is designating the state’s new Health Benefit Exchange, Covered California, as a voter registration agency under the National Voter Registration Act. That means Covered California will be incorporating voter registration into every transaction — online, in-person and by phone — it has with consumers.” It seems as if some Obama supporters have found a new way to fill the void left by the bankruptcy of ACORN, the notorious left-wing voter-registration group that saw dozens of its employees in multiple states convicted of fraud.
At least the pay will be better. ACORN was infamous for stiffing its employees and even once sued the state of California to ask for an exemption from its minimum-wage law. But early reports are that the federal government will be offering navigators between $20 and $48 an hour. In many states, that’s far more than many private-sector workers with corresponding responsibilities earn.
If there is a silver lining in all of this, it is that the potential failure of the navigators program could further convince voters that Obamacare is simply unworkable. “The Obama administration wants something the federal government has never done: a computer system that connects HHS, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, Homeland Security and perhaps other departments,” John Goodman, a health-care expert with the National Center for Policy Analysis, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in May. “For perspective, consider that the Veterans Administration converted to electronic medical records in 1998 and the VA and the Defense Department tried without success to share records until February [2013] when then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that the plan would be abandoned.”
But the consensus is that, if Obamacare isn’t repealed, the government can, with enough effort and money, get the Data Hub up and running. That concerns many members of Congress.
“Giving community organizers access to the Federal Data Hub is bad policy and potentially a danger to civil liberties,” House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan told me recently. “But it’s one of the most underreported stories I’ve seen. If people only knew about this Data Hub program, it would touch off a huge public outcry.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/354031/obamacares-branch-nsa-john-fund
Oversight Probe: House Dems Pressured SEC to Scrutinize 501(c) Donations
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today said that House Democratic leadership was pressuring the Securities and Exchange Commission to cast a wary eye on donations made to tax-exempt groups.
In a letter accompanying a memo to SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White, Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and member Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) cited documents obtained through the committee’s investigation that show special-interest groups and House Dems convincing the SEC to go against staff recommendations and probe donations by the same types of groups that fell under extra IRS scrutiny.
“Documents produced to the Committee indicate that the SEC has been under immense pressure from elected officials and special interest groups as part of a government-wide effort to stifle political speech,” the trio wrote. “This effort to politicize the agency appears to have been successful in overcoming the objections of the SEC’s professional staff, and moving the Commission closer to using its authority to regulate public securities markets as a backdoor way to limit the political speech of the same types of groups targeted by the IRS.”
Among the evidence cited in the memo is a Jan. 15 draft document “prepared via a senior staff member’s personal, non-official email account [that] detailed new attention and emphasis on groups organized under Section 501 and 527 of the Internal Revenue Code.”
A rulemaking petition was submitted to the SEC in August 2011 to require that public companies disclose corporate activities for political purposes to shareholders. Staff protested that such regulation was under the purview of the FEC and Congress, not the SEC.
“Notwithstanding this advice from the SEC professional staff, three SEC Commissioners acted to place a political disclosure rulemaking on the agency’s official agenda,” the memo states. “The decision to do so implicates a process wherein the professional, objective advice of the SEC staff was overridden by the three votes of political appointees.”
“Documents provided to the Committee demonstrate that this action followed intense lobbying by elected officials and special interest groups.”
The Oversight Committee gave the SEC one week to turn over all documents and communications involving certain officials and mentions of “tea party” or 501(c) groups. Issa’s panel also wants any such documents involving communication between the SEC and President Obama’s office, and the SEC and IRS.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/07/22/oversight-probe-house-dems-pressured-sec-to-scrutinize-501c-donations/
End the White House Press Briefing! It's an unholy charade
It is an accepted fact in Washington that the Obama administration and the press corps that covers it—once considered essentially two units of the same team—are now bitter enemies. After four years of smoldering disenchantment, reporters have seized on the government’s rapacious subpoenas of media records and L’Affaire Snowden as the excuse they needed to break into open rebellion. A primary arena for the skirmishing is the daily White House press briefing, where the ritual evasions by the administration’s mouthpiece, long a staple of the undertaking, are now received by his questioners with a contempt rivaling that of the Bush years. National Journal’s Ron Fournier, a D.C. eminence and former Associated Press (AP) chief White House correspondent, recently proposed a kind of retaliatory collective action: “If WH journos boycotted briefings for week,” he tweeted, “would 1) readers / viewers miss news? 2) the WH get the message?” As someone who spent two years in the White House press office helping the press secretary prepare for these exercises in silliness, I humbly submit that a boycott would fall short of what’s needed. The daily briefing has become a worthless chore for reporters, an embarrassing nuisance to administration staff, and a source of added friction between the two camps. It’s time to do the humane, obvious thing and get rid of it altogether.
Would there be a great deal of wailing about this? Yes, there would be. The daily briefing is seen as one of the last toeholds from which the press corps can try to keep the White House accountable, so eliminating it would be seen as Nixonian, even Stalinist, depending on one’s bogeyman of choice. But reporters who’ve actually endured the sessions day in and day out, if not quite ready to endorse abolition, concede that the institution has wildly outlived its utility. “Everybody thinks it’s so great, because it’s a chance to grill people and put them on the spot,” Jennifer Loven, another former chief White House correspondent for the AP, told me. “And that’s all great in theory, except that it doesn’t happen that way. Nobody really gets put on the spot. What you get in the briefing is a reply, not an answer.” Adds Peter Baker of The New York Times: “The White House decided a long time ago that it’s not about candor; it’s about deflection and survival. The press decided it’s about preening.” When I called up Fournier, he needed little prompting to expound on the problems. “It really has become useless,” he said. “We are now pawns in a reality show. I’d rather spend that hour and a half taking someone to coffee or calling or e-mailing someone to get a better sense of something important—you know, doing my job as a reporter.”
I can say from experience that it doesn’t feel like the best use of time on the other side, either. During the first two years of the Obama administration, I was in charge of marshaling one-pagers of talking points for the binder that then–Press Secretary Robert Gibbs would carry to the podium. Most mornings, I would sit in his office as other aides paraded through to offer their “guidance” on whatever was in the news, which usually meant how to skate away without giving up much information. After finishing our lunches and untucking our ties from our shirts, we’d trundle down the hallway and through the sliding door into the Briefing Room, where I’d watch the exchanges play out from the fold-down staff seats along the southern wall. Gibbs and current Press Secretary Jay Carney differ in style—Gibbs often made me cringe by ignoring the talking points; Carney makes me cringe by using them—but the effect is the same, which is to say, ridiculous.
At the same time, it’s worth asking what the press hopes to accomplish here. Carney’s refusal to give straight answers tends to obscure the fact that the questions are pretty pointless, too. A big decision such as whether to stop aid to a major partner in the Middle East will be made slowly and iteratively. Any shift in policy would begin as an official recommendation from the gorgon-headed collective of national security chieftains known as “the Interagency,” which would then need to be approved by something called “the Principals Committee,” and finally by the president himself. It is not going to be hashed out during a televised exchange between the press secretary and a reporter from Reuters. The reporter from Reuters knows this, of course, but he has to ask about the day’s big story anyway. As does the colleague next to him, and the colleague next to her, each getting in a swing.
Meanwhile, even as the briefing dawdles on to less weighty matters (“About the congressional picnic that has been postponed, what was behind that?”), the press secretary remains duty-bound not to say anything specific or interesting. If there were a Hippocratic Oath for the position, it might begin: “First, make no news.” The goal is to make it through without inciting an international crisis or stepping on the president’s cheery message of the day, and then to return to the office and get down to actual business, including figuring out which of the administration’s three favored outlets—The New York Times, AP, and Mike Allen’s “Playbook”—will get advance word of the Egypt decision when it finally gets made. Generally, this is a better way to do things: The article that results tends to be more thorough and nuanced, which is good for both the White House and the writer. And while it annoys less fortunate outlets, eventually everyone does get a turn.
Once upon a time, the daily briefing was just the press secretary walking out into what was then called the Press Lobby—it had beige leather sofas and coffee tables and a card table with wooden captain’s chairs—making a few announcements about what the president was up to and taking a handful of questions. The idea, veterans say, was to provide a regular forum for the White House and the press to talk to each other, not to provide actual news content. During the early 1980s, President Reagan’s press shop installed the theater seating and the more formal vibe. Then Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry let the whole thing be on-camera; he’d worked in the State Department, where briefings were already televised, and (he told me sheepishly) didn’t see the harm. “It was just a complete zoo in there,” he said of the ensuing Lewinsky-era brawls, and it has been ever since.
Many of the reporters I spoke with expressed an affinity for the “gaggle” format, wherein journalists gather in the press secretary’s office for a more informal, untelevised exchange. Restoring something like the old Press Lobby setup would effectively establish the gaggle as the new norm and cut down on the circus tricks; it would also leave the network people with less b-roll for their segments, but they’d live. Some White House journalists also suggest a second fix, at once simple and highly improbable: having the president himself spar directly with the press more frequently. Adviser-types get squeamish about it, but presidents really do tend to be their own best spokesmen, as President Obama showed at a late-June press conference in Senegal. Asked about America’s pursuit of Edward Snowden, the commander-in-chief responded with the kind of color, brevity, and authority almost never matched during a daily briefing: “I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a twenty-nine-year-old hacker,” he said. Question answered.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113949/end-white-house-press-briefing#
The NYPD: Guilty of Saving 7,383 Lives
Accusations of racial profiling ignore the fact that violent crime overwhelmingly occurs in minority neighborhoods.
Since 2002, the New York Police Department has taken tens of thousands of weapons off the street through proactive policing strategies. The effect this has had on the murder rate is staggering. In the 11 years before Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office, there were 13,212 murders in New York City. During the 11 years of his administration, there have been 5,849. That's 7,383 lives saved—and if history is a guide, they are largely the lives of young men of color.So far this year, murders are down 29% from the 50-year low achieved in 2012, and we've seen the fewest shootings in two decades.
To critics, none of this seems to much matter. Sidestepping the fact that these policies work, they continue to allege that massive numbers of minorities are stopped and questioned by police for no reason other than their race.
Never mind that in each of the city's 76 police precincts, the race of those stopped highly correlates to descriptions provided by victims or witnesses to crimes. Or that in a city of 8.5 million people, protected by 19,600 officers on patrol (out of a total uniformed staff of 35,000), the average number of stops we conduct is less than one per officer per week.
Racial profiling is a disingenuous charge at best and an incendiary one at worst, particularly in the wake of the tragic death of Trayvon Martin. The effect is to obscure the rock-solid legal and constitutional foundation underpinning the police department's tactics and the painstaking analysis that determines how we employ them.
In 2003, when the NYPD recognized that 96% of the individuals who were shot and 90% of those murdered were black and Hispanic, we concentrated our officers in those minority neighborhoods that had experienced spikes in crime. This program is called Operation Impact.
The NYPD and their undercover operations continue to pursue illegal gun trafficking in New York City in 2012.
It's understandable that someone who has done nothing wrong will be angry if he is stopped. Last year, the NYPD announced a series of steps to strengthen the oversight and training involved in this tactic. The number of civilian complaints in 2012 was the lowest in the past five years. That's progress—and we always strive to do better.
In a similar vein, our detractors contend that the NYPD engages in widespread, unwarranted spying on Muslim New Yorkers. Again, this is a sensational charge belied by the facts.
Since 1985, the police department has been subject to a set of rules known as the Handschu Guidelines, which were developed to protect people engaged in political protest. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, we were concerned that elements of the guidelines could interfere with our ability to investigate terrorism. In 2002, we proposed to the federal court that monitors the agreement that it be modified. The court agreed.
Handschu entitles police officers to attend any event that is open to the public, to view online activity that is publicly accessible and to prepare reports and assessments to help us understand the nature of the threat.
As a matter of department policy, undercover officers and confidential informants do not enter a mosque unless they are following up on a lead vetted under Handschu. Similarly, when we have attended a private event organized by a student group, we've done so on the basis of a lead or investigation reviewed and authorized in writing at the highest levels of the department, in keeping with Handschu protocol.
Anyone who implies that it is unlawful for the police department to search online, visit public places or map neighborhoods has either not read, misunderstood or intentionally obfuscated the meaning of the Handschu Guidelines.
The NYPD has too urgent a mission and too few officers for us to waste time and resources on broad, unfocused surveillance. We have a responsibility to protect New Yorkers from violent crime or another terrorist attack—and we uphold the law in doing so.
As a city, we have to face the reality that New York's minority communities experience a disproportionate share of violent crime. To ignore that fact, as our critics would have us do, would be a form of discrimination in itself.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324448104578616333588719320.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Lying in the Age of Obama
The attorney general of the United States lied recently to Congress. He said he knew of no citizen’s communications that his department had monitored. Lie!
In fact, Holder knew that his subordinates were targeting reporters. He also did not tell the truth about the New Black Panthers case. He had sworn that there was no political decision to drop the case. Not true; the decision came from the top. He again lied about the time frame in which he first learned of the Fast and Furious case.
The director of national intelligence also lied, likewise while under oath to Congress. At first James Clapper confessed that he had given the “least untruthful” account.
Nixon’s Washington used to call that sort of neat lie “a modified limited hangout.” Later, Clapper admitted that he had just flat-out lied to Congress. Was he disgraced? Fired? Further confirmation of his “largely secular” lie?
Nope. Nothing followed.
Elizabeth Warren simply invented an entire pedigree. That blatant lie helped to earn her a Harvard tenured professorship and a U.S. Senate seat. Ward Churchill was doing well until he dared the country to call out his lies. Who is to say that Warren or Churchill cannot be Native Americans by professing to be Native Americans?
Barack Obama, as is the wont of politicians, has lied a lot — and from the very beginning of his national career. He knew Bill Ayers well, Tony Rezko too. He lied about his decision not to seek the presidency as a newly elected senator, and lied about his willingness to take public campaign financing funds in 2008. He misled about what he would shortly do about most of the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols. Obama lied about much of his own biography.
When the president uses emphatics like “make no mistake about it,” “let me be perfectly clear,” and “in point of fact,” we know what follows will be untrue. He did not cut the deficit in half in his first four years. He had no intention of ever doing so. He lies about the circumstances of America’s gas and oil production surge — occurring despite, not because of, him. He lied about his involvement in the radical ACORN community action group, and fabricated about his father’s and grandfather’s World War II involvement.
Tally up what Barack Obama said about his health care initiative, the border fence, and his fiscal policy. Almost all of the major assurances proved lies.
Ministers of Lies
But why pick on the president?
The media routinely peddles “noble” untruths. ABC manipulated a video to show George Zimmerman without much injury to his head. NBC edited a tape to suggest that he was a racist. The New York Times invented a new journalistic category, “white Hispanic,” to suggest George Zimmerman was not Latino in a way that the paper would never suggest that Barack Obama is not African-American or Bill Richardson was a “white Hispanic.”
Much of the prosecutorial testimony in the George Zimmerman case could not be true — unless someone gets grass stains on his back and contusions on the back of the head from pounding on someone atop him. Prosecution star witness Rachel Jeantel made up much of her racist testimony, and boldly confessed as much in her paid-for after-trial interviews.
It’s Not Really the Cover-up
Our current scandals are predicated on lies. No one believed the official White House version that the IRS miscreants were rogue agents from a Cincinnati field office.
No one believes much of the official version of the Benghazi killings — least of all that the violence was prompted by a single video maker in the fashion that Susan Rice assured the nation.
The attorney general of the United States lied about the AP/James Rosen monitoring while under oath before Congress.
James Clapper lied about the NSA scandal. All four travesties are still being sorted out. For now the one commonality is that our officials lied about all of them.
Harry Reid knew nothing about Mitt Romney’s tax returns. But lied about them all the same. It is hard to know whether Joe Biden lies, or simply believes his fantasies. He assured us that President Roosevelt addressed the nation on television after the panic of 1929. Remember in 1987 when he lifted much of his campaign stump speech from British Laborite Neil Kinnock?
Our most treasured icons in the media and literature lie. They tell untruth sometimes in the most serious fashion of claiming the work of others as if it were their own — or simply inventing things out of thin air. Fareed Zakaria plagiarized. So did Maureen Dowd.
Nearly all of Stephen Ambrose’s work, book by book, was characterized by both plagiarism and false statements about archives and interviews. Michael Bellesiles was given the Bancroft Award for a mytho-history. If historians could not initially spot the lie, who else could? Or did they try all that much, given the enticing but mythic thesis that today’s gun nuts, not our hallowed forefathers, dreamed up a nation in arms?
Is There Anyone Left Who Doesn’t Lie?
Why do they lie? Because they can. Or to paraphrase Dirty Harry, they like it. We are a celebrity-and wealth-obsessed society, in which ends, not means, count. Barack Obama got to be president — who now cares how?
That Joe Biden habitually makes things up is the stuff of “that’s just old’ Joe,” not a career-ending felony. Hillary Clinton lied a lot when she was first lady about documents under subpoena. She lied as a candidate about being under fire in the Balkans. And she lied as secretary of State about the train of events in Benghazi.
And? Those lies were either forgiven or forgotten, or contributed to the “complex” persona that now is among the most widely admired in the U.S.
Lying, of course, is a symptom of hubris. The once leftist and long-haired radical Stephen Ambrose finally assumed that he was Lord or Master Stephen Ambrose, voice of an entire generation, accustomed to instant TV access, huge advances, and minute-by-minute adulation on the street.
Lying won him all that, and he knew it. I remember him over three decades ago flat out lying about most of the details he offered on World War II while on The World At War. So to be sure, I watched the young Ambrose lie again last night on that documentary. But no matter: he seemed cool with long hair, a sweater, and an attitude, far more hip than the old plodding Brit historians who were meticulous in their honest recollections.
When caught, a dying Ambrose was unapologetic. He must have reckoned, why say “I’m sorry” to a society that did not care how he had become famous, only that he was? Had Martin Luther King, Jr. told the truth that he stole sizable work from other scholars to write his doctoral thesis, he would never have become Dr. King. Omitting that detail paid dividends.
We claim that no one fools history, especially in the age of the Internet. I grant few do, at least in the long run. Yet in the 21st century, the rub is not getting caught for plagiarism, but doing a cost-benefit-analysis of the downside of now and again agilely lying and plagiarizing, versus the upside of short-cutting to fame and riches.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is a plagiarist. But after a brief sojourn in the Washington doghouse, she is back again on television. Bringing up her untruth would be bad manners.
In Ambrose’s case, it seemed a simple decision. It was “take another multimillion-dollar advance and spend 3,000 hours out of the limelight” — or “take the money and simply cut and paste the work of others over a few hundred hours.” Did he fear that his widely read publishers and editors worried about sales, or the integrity of their branded text?
Bernie Madoff was a liar par excellence, but for most of his life his investors did not question his miraculous luck, given their miraculous returns that came in the mail each month.
It was not entirely money that drove columnists or reporters like Mike Barnicle, Patricia Smith, or Jayson Blair to lie, but the desire for attention, prestige, and being something more than an honest reporter in our empty metrosexual elite urban culture.
The Cover-up Pays
We repeat the nauseous canard that “it is not the crime, but the cover-up” that gets you in trouble in Washington. But that too is often a lie, at least most of the time. Had Eric Holder told the truth about Fast and Furious, the New Black Panther case, or the AP/James Rosen case, he would not be attorney general now.
If Susan Rice had gone on television and confessed the details about the status and recent history of the security measures in Libya, or the true nature of the post-”lead from behind” misadventure, or the spread of post-bin Laden al-Qaeda franchisers in 2012, she might have been out of a job — either by dismissal or by the failure of her president to win reelection. Lying worked. Obama is president. She is national security advisor.
Had Jay Carney confessed that the talking points about Benghazi were doctored from the outset, it might have mattered in the 2012 election. Lying then and now worked.
Why Do Our Best and Brightest Lie?
There are both age-old and more recent catalysts for lying.
One, lying and plagiarism are forms of narcissism. I know fabrications are born out of feelings of inferiority that makes an otherwise fine historian like a Joseph Ellis or a good actor like Brian Dennehy make up an entire war career, replete with tales of personal gallantry. But they persisted in such seemingly destructive behavior because they assumed that they had reached a level of fame and stature that made them immune from the normal accounting laws of the universe. There is no servant running along our triumphant masters when they star on television, muttering to them “Respice te, hominem te memento,” or at least “memento mori.”
Sic transit gloria? We would counter with vero possumus!
Two, lying more often than not pays. Take an ethical shortcut and the odds are small that one gets caught. Yes, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Fareed Zakaria were found out. But after brief anguished penance, they reinvented themselves and returned to the level of their prior stature. Perhaps some young journalist one day will do an Ambrose on them, and review all their previous work. But for what purpose? We know they have been dishonest once, and suspect the modus operandi was not a one-time occurrence. But we also know that the purified water in which they swim is not too toxic for liars and the dishonest.
Liars are good at what they do. Eric Holder certainly is. Again, like a shoplifter, why stop when you have mastered the craft? Does anyone think Patrick Fitzgerald is going to come out of retirement to indict Holder the way he did Scooter Libby for a crime that did not exist, and had it existed was committed by Richard Armitage — and known thusly to both Colin Powell and Fitzgerald himself at the outset?
Three, more recently postmodernism has blurred the divide from reality and truth. Tsarnaev is not quite a mass murderer, given his looks and youth. Major Hasan is guilty of work-place violence. For thirty years, the acolytes of fakers like Michel Foucault have taught our elites that truth is socially constructed — a relative thing, a power narrative fabricated by those of the right race, gender, and class to perpetuate their privilege. Howard Zinn could publish fantasies because who was to say that they were entirely wrong, and who would dare suggest that his myths were not put to a good cause?
Note that Maureen Dowd, Fareed Zakaria, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Mike Barnicle, and Eric Holder shoot their sometimes false arrows at the right targets. Does it then matter that their missiles were occasionally plastic rather than of authentic Native American wood?
Much of what Barack Obama has weaved about his past girlfriend, his parents’ meeting, his father’s/grandfather’s war service, or his upbringing in Hawaii at one point or another is false. But why would I mention that if not for illiberal political reasons? And what a 59-year-old, rural white guy from the Central Valley calls “truth” may not be so for a young multiracial child coming of age in Hawaii, anguished at having door locks clicked by “typical white” people as he crosses the street.
So Why Not Lie?
I end with three reasons to tell the truth. The majority has to tell the truth — to the IRS, to the police, to the DA, to the census — if a consensual society is to work. You readers tell the truth so that the society can survive an Eric Holder or Mike Barnicle. Average people must speak honestly or our elites’ lies will overwhelm, even destroy us. If 100 million tell the IRS lies during audits or take the 5th Amendment, our voluntary tax system collapses. We can take only so many Lois Lerners.
Two, this often sordid, sometimes beautiful world is not the end. There is transcendence. Lies damage our soul. Selling out in the here and now has consequences later on. If you are religious, your immortal soul is lost. If you are not, at least consider that your legacy, heritage, and remembrance are forever ruined. Ask the ghost of Stephen Ambrose. What good was all that money, all those interviews if based on a lie? All the insight and delight that he brought millions of readers was tarnished. And for what, exactly?
Third, we must strive to be tragic heroes, perhaps not as dramatic as Ajax, not as cool as Shane. Would you rather have been Ethan Edwards or Will Cane or have run Lehman Brothers in 2008? Sometimes, in less dramatic fashion, the choices are that Manichean.
We must try to tell the truth, not to doctor films, edit tapes, erase talking points, or lie before Congress, fabricate heroic war records, or invent false sources. Again, why? Because we seek to do the right thing with the full resignation that in the here and now we will often still lose and will lose often and gladly telling the truth.
“We always lose,” says Chris at the end of the The Magnificent Seven after he did the right thing. Or to paraphrase the cinematic T.E. Lawrence about Auda Abu Tayi, we will not lie, as do our elites, because it is simply “our pleasure” not to.
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/lying-in-the-age-of-obama/?singlepage=true
Duke and Duchess Did their Duty
I find myself in the odd role of defending the British Monarchy. My colleague Rick Moran has published a deeply critical blog marking the birth of an heir to the British Throne, as is his prerogative. I beg to differ. I do so a bit reluctantly, as I am a devoted small-r republican, and glory in the fact that all Americans are created and born equal. But that said, Britain has its own history, institutions, and society, and it behooves conservatives to look closely at the function of a monarchy as part of our general reluctance to impose change without understanding the consequences.At this point in time, the United Kingdom appears to be experiencing a fragmenting, with devolution handing power back to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Island, and massive immigration by Muslims desiring sharia. Perhaps at this moment, a renewed vigor for the monarchy is a good thing, a unifying force, something that could reinforce the traditional identity that is being lost.
Also, William and Kate seem to be doing a good job role modeling positive values that could serve to inspire others. William has served in the armed forces, as has his brother Harry, and Kate comports herself with dignity while apparently (I am not a royal-watcher) being accessible.
Face it: monarchy has been the norm of human politics. Republican governance was an invention that came later and is more evanescent. So deeply is monarchy imprinted on our consciousness that in its absence we create faux rulers and aristocrats in the form of celebrities to gawk at, admire, and emulate (or criticize, as the case may be). I'd rather people focus on the likes of William and Kate than Kardashians.
The British Monarchy performs a valuable symbolic role in the United Kingdom. It costs a lot less to maintain the entire royal family than it does to care for President and Mrs. Obama.
I wish my many British and Commonwealth friends who care about the monarchy congratulatiosn, as well as to the happy couple and their families. There is now a directly-descended heir for the next generation.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/07/duke_and_duchess_did_their_duty.html#ixzz2ZswbNRDL
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