Gingrich And Free Speech

Captain Ed….

Newt Gingrich has tried to position himself as the premiere conservative candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, a mission made easier by the list of front-runners already in the race. However, he may have taken a stumble yesterday when he posited that freedom of speech may have to be curtailed in order to win the war on terrorism:

A former House speaker, Newt Gingrich, is causing a stir by proposing that free speech may have to be curtailed in order to fight terrorism.
“We need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until we actually literally lose a city, which I think could literally happen in the next decade if we’re unfortunate,” Mr. Gingrich said Monday night during a speech in New Hampshire. “We now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren’t for the scale of the threat.”

Speaking at an award dinner billed as a tribute to crusaders for the First Amendment, Mr. Gingrich, who is considering a run for the White House in 2008, painted an ominous picture of the dangers facing America.

“This is a serious, long-term war,” the former speaker said, according an audio excerpt of his remarks made available yesterday by his office. “Either before we lose a city or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people.”

Gingrich has an odd sense of place for his new campaign crusade. At a dinner that honored people who took risks to maintain our First Amendment freedoms, he basically told them that their work was in vain. To add even more confusion, Gingrich also took the opportunity to bash John McCain for his own attack on political speech with the BCRA — and rightfully so.

Gingrich left the specifics out of the proposal, which makes this somewhat vague. Does Newt propose limiting political speech that supports radical Islamists? Does he want to restrict the exercise of religion by Muslims in radical mosques? Could he be proposing both? Until we get more specific about the restrictions, specific criticism will be difficult to stage, and perhaps that’s his intent.

However, it isn’t difficult to defend the First Amendment in principle, and we need to do that now. The First Amendment has always had an exception for speech that incites a movement to violently overthrow the government of the United States, and I’m all for enforcing that. However, if Gingrich believes that we can win the war by silencing American citizens, then he is fighting the wrong war on behalf of the wrong principles. All he is doing is replacing one bogeyman (political corruption) for another (terrorism); in essence, he’s no different from McCain.

I guess I’m not as alarmed as Ed, though I am a bit curious about what Ed calls the lack of specifics.  I’m willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt until those specifics come out.

One of the specifics that seems to get right by Ed, is the issue of this kind of thing affecting American citizens, specifically.  Is Gingrich, in fact, talking about American Citizens, or is he talking about Non-citizens, to whom the left has been trying to attribute constitutionally guaranteed rights, which until recently have only BEEN guarenteed to citizens? There’s a big difference, and it seems to me the latter wherein lies the majority of the kind of thing Gingrich is talking about, or so it seems to me.

Gingrich is correct that there is a serious threat, and he’s right to concern himself with it. He is, as few others are, famous for an active mind and a willingness to ‘blue sky’ about issues, as he has here.  If we assume Gingrich is talking about non-citizens, here, the general thoughts tend to run parallel to my post of the other day, as regards the Patriot act.

I’ll be interested to see what else he has to say on the topic, before I make a more cut and dried comment.

I should note that one of the reasons I’m willing to give this guy a little slack on quotes, is that I wonder about the context.  Consider that we’ve heard little form the man for years. Now suddenly that he’s become a background player, he gets all this press attention? Sorry, but I can’t help but wonder if the overly eager press is an indication that his words were being taken out of context.  It’s always a consideration when story like this pops up, particularly when a Republican is considering a Presidential run.

As I say, I will be interested to see what the next couple of weeks brings regarding all of this.  I will withhold judgment on the matter until then. 

Not sure where I got this one from, but it struck me as funny, this morning.

Look, let’s stipulate up front that Glenn Greenwald’s connections to the real world are tenuous at best. But this morning comes one of the finer demonstrations of such:

It really is astonishing to observe as the media fabricates some storyline out of whole cloth — “Hastings v. Harman!” — and then it just becomes ossified as an immovable and unexamined premise, especially among the most superficial, partisan and mindless pundits, even though it is based on nothing, or next to nothing.

It shouldn’t come as a shock, Glenn… We on the right’ve been watching it going on for decades, while you on the left and categorically denying it’s been happening.  Of course, back then, such fabrications benefited your team. So, you ignored them… at least publicly.

WASHINGTON — Fox- American paper money represents an unfair impediment to the blind, and the Treasury Department must come up with new U.S. currency to help the visually impaired use cash, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson said keeping all U.S. currency the same size and texture violates the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in government programs.

“Of the more than 180 countries that issue paper currency, only the United States prints bills that are identical in size and color in all their denominations,” Robertson wrote in his ruling. “More than 100 of the other issuers vary their bills in size according to denomination, and every other issuer includes at least some features that help the visually impaired.”

Day Al-Mohamed, director of advocacy and government affairs at the American Council of the Blind, said that most of the world’s currency is distinguished by color, size, perforations or tactile symbols. The Euro, for instance, can be determined by the length of the bill — the higher the denomination the longer the bill.

I am somewhat sympathetic here, for reasons that long time readers and friends will know… but as a practical matter, I don’t think what the judge is asking for is attainable. 

And would I be wrong and noting the surname of the individual who is the director of advocacy at the ACB? Let’s see, what can we do to throw the state of American currency into confusion?  Hmmm. Arrange an order to remake all of it, on some pretext? And who would want to create such chaos?

And by the way, not all advocates for the blind are so-minded:

John Paré, director of public relations for the National Federation of the Blind, the nation’s largest organization representing blind people, said identifying the money is hardly the most difficult obstacle for the blind to overcome.

“The focus for improving the lives of blind Americans needs to be put on earning money not figuring out how to identify money,” he said. “Over 70 percent of blind Americans are under-employed or unemployed and this is what needs to be addressed.

“It really is distracting to have this lawsuit,” he said, since assistance should concentrate on people “who don’t have the money in the first place.”

There’s a statement I can vouch for. 

Update: (Bit)

A Little More to the Right notes the same story and says:

It doesn’t have to stop with the blind. Judges can begin ruling against Apple for making Ipods, since deaf people are left out. Or what about American Idol for excluding dumb people? And think of how unfair it is that obese people can’t shop for their sizes at Deb or Victoria’s Secret?

Well, the money functionality issue is a bit more of an imperative than these, but still, I take Jeff’s point.

Playing with the layout of the blog tonight. I’m having a little difficulty with the right side bar, attempting to fit the elements from the old blog into the new one.  The turns out that the bit more of a problem than I thought it might be.  So, no I have ever move the associations from its blog; I still consider myself a member of the Republican Attack Squad, Blogs For Bush, and of course the 101st. it’s just that I’m trying to figure out how to fit them in.  Call it growing pains. 

One other problem I’ve noticed, is that I’m not too pleased with how the photographs we put up are being wrapped around by the text.  It’s the one major flaw that I found in this template, so far.  Just the thing to while away a foggy Tuesday night. 

And oh boy, is ever foggy outside.  I can just about make out the Christmas decorations on the house across the street, which normally is lit up like something you’d find at a municipal airport, this time of year. Just as glad I’m not on call tonight. With my luck, I’d end up having to drive in this nonsense.  I’ve done my share of that, thank you.

Actually, I probably should have taken advantage of the evening and gone over to where I usually shoot pictures of Christmas decorations.  If I got lucky the fog might actually give a little light for the Christmas decorations to play off of. might make for an interesting effect. 

I see Billy’s back on line. Good.
To be honest, I generally don’t read Billy’s site directly, usually taking my feeds through Bloglines, instead. So it was that I didn’t know he was down, until I tried to hit the site from work this afternoon about three.  He actually went down, he says at about Midnight. Makes sense, I guess; if they’re automated that’d be the time they’d throw the switch.

One thing I finally got around to doing tonight, other then piddling with the site, was to read Jonah’s ” Tradition Matters”, which I commend to YOUR reading. I’m going to be thinking about this for the next few days… there’s a lot of things to cover there, and I think the thing is good to use as a springboard.

Another thing I’m toying with is the Firefox update, which includes a spell checker that gets used in input fields. Slicker than PTFE, that.

In the MP3 player is a real find.. a 1985 release of Max Leake’s “Buns in the Sun”. Max is a jazz Pianist, out of the Pittsburgh area, I think. A heck of a nice album, a nice smooth feel trough the whole thing. It was a favorite of mine when I was doing morning drive for Jazz radio back then.  It always annoyed me that this disk didn’t go large for Leake… he deserved it. The disk was that good. No joke… despite the fact that it was never released on anything but a very small label… and then only on an LP. I’d forgotten how much I liked this one. (Yes, I ripped it to MP3 a few years ago). I gather he’s got a new one out… the first since 85… was recorded in July of 2004. I’ll have to check that one out.

Enough rambling. I’m off to bed.

Mrs. Pelosi has, apparently, come to her senses. Michele Malkin reports that Representative Alcee Hastings is out of consideration for the chair of the House Intellgence Committee.  I commend Mrs. Pelosi for the move.  The nation will be better served but alas Rush LImbaugh will have to work harder Not to worry there are still John Conyers. Charlie Rangel and Henry Waxman for comic relief.

Update: (Bit)

Might have been this post from Michelle Malkin that did him in. Then again, it might not.

Apparently, the new hosting site isn’t much better.
No word, either.

Update: (Billy)

Bloody domain registration.  There were confusements, I didn’t get a reminder, and here we are.  I think I just got it squared away, so it should be too long before it’s back up.  Hours at most.

Good to hear.

(H/T Photo:  University Wisconson – Law School

It never fails to amuse my vocabulary challenged male brain these purported scientific studies that show that men and women are different. Gee, I always thought the purpose of Science was to reveal what we do not know.

Well the Daily Mail(UK) weighs with the lastest shocking developement, “Women talk three times as much as men, says study:”

It is something one half of the population has long suspected – and the other half always vocally denied. Women really do talk more than men.

In fact, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day – 13,000 more than the average man.

As if your wife didn’t already have enough excuse to nag you, already.  This supports my long held belief that men invented speech, ugh.   It was women who invented articulate speech.  Ugh may be just fine for hunting, but it just doesn’t get the job down when it comes to nagging.

(H/T story:  Ann Althouse )

I’ve held my peace about this Atlanta case, because there was something about it that simply did not add up.  Some information at some point was going to start leaping out at us… information that most critics would ignore.  And I think I’ve stumbled across it:

Whereas the majority of critics in the ‘sphere have been using this as an example to remove drug laws from the books, (sounding, in the process, like Andrew Sullivan attaching everything, every problem in the world, to the homosexual lifestyle, and the culture’s lack of support of it…) I think the ire at the death while justified, is mis-focused. 

I would suggest to you that the kind of violence that has occurred here can occur while enforcing any law.  One need look no further to prove that the New York City incident where the groom was recently shot hours before his wedding.  Unless you’re going to suggest to me that that death had something to do with drug laws, the issue is obviously deeper than some people’s pet peeve. 

Discuss the validity of removing the drug laws if you will.  However; If you’re looking for a lever to remove the drug laws, this case isn’t it.  I submit to you, that the central issue in this case is not drug laws, not even ‘no knock’ warrants, but corruption. And frankly, I think we’ll find that there’s a little more in the way of corruption going on here, then simply bypassing established procedure. 

Just a hunch. 

Update: (Bit)

In conversation with David, I’ve come up with a line that I think describes my concern very well:

The problem isn’t that drug laws are being enforced… the problem is that other laws are being broken, by those sworn to uphold them.

Dr. Thomas Sowell examines the myths about caring. 

One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring. It is liberals who advocate “forgiveness” of loans to Third World countries, a “living wage” for the poor and a “safety net” for all.

But these are all government policies — not individual acts of compassion — and the actual empirical consequences of such policies are of remarkably little interest to those who advocate them. Depending on what those consequences are, there may be good reasons to oppose them, so being for or against these policies may tell us nothing about who is compassionate or caring and who is not.blockquote>

Note that liberals tend to mistake government policy for compassion.   Conservatives define compassion as giving.   Liberals consider taking something from one to give to another as if it were compassion.

So, I wander over to enemy territory, (know your enemy, and all that) and am faced with:

I have no use for Jim Wallis and I begin to wonder if he really has the interests of Democrats and progressives at heart:

“When the Democrats became just the party of rights, they lost something, a moral appeal,” Wallis contends. The Democratic patchwork frayed as some of its largest constituencies, particularly working-class whites, began to feel culturally estranged from the party. The breaking point was in 1972, when Republican Richard M. Nixon argued that a vote for Democrat George McGovern was a vote for “acid, amnesty and abortion.” To many voters, McGovern embodied an emerging perception that liberals were outside the American mainstream.

Anyone who does not see the moral value in civil rights and liberties is not moral in my book. If Wallis does not share our Democratic values, if he prefers the imposition of his personal religious values on the country, instead of finding common ground with those who do not share his views, then he should be looking for a new party

But what would the Democrats know of individual rights? Or are rights only passed out to Democratic party approved groups?

Or, what would they know of morals, for that matter?

If for example,you’re going to talk about “imposing my morals on you” let’s talk also, about your imposing your morals on me, by forcing me to pay taxes to pay for your idea of what constitutes moral social programs, shall we?

How is THAT moral? How is that ‘finding common ground?  How is that even logical?

And, mind you, I think Wallis is a horses ass in most things…. his redistributionist nonsense at the head of the all too long parade of contemptible politics. But in the end, Wallis is, in what he points out in the quote, RIGHT.  Unarguably so. That’s where the Democrats got themselves into trouble… and where they will do so again.

That was no far leftie mandate, this most recent election. THe only place where the Democrats picked up seats were where the candidate projected himself not as a far leftist, but a centrist. The far left would do well to keep that in mind…. though I don’t suppose they have the brain capacity to do so.

Once again, all I need is a paragraph or two of fodder from the usual crazies, like TalkLeft, and I recall why I’m not a Democrat.

Glenn’s right, here.

Hastings is a particularly bad choice.  Indeed, he’s one of the reasons why I was never too worried about who the republicans chose for their leaders; you just knew the democrats were going to do something worse.  Though, I must say, they’ve outdone themselves this time. 

From today’s USA Today print edition, I have selected a few telling quotes from an article on 7A, ‘Returning rookies reflect on lessons learned’.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)

Stock up on toilet paper, because you’re not going to have time to go get it.

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL)

Be patient.  Make friends across the aisle.

It’s warm around these parts.  Unusually so. 

Usually, by this time of the year, I’ve already gone through the ritual of shoveling the driveway twice.  Sometimes, three times if I’m being obsessive about it.  This year… nary a snow throw. My back is wondering why it’s still in one peice.

My second computer, “Gopher”, tells me that we’re dealing with something on the order of 59° outside.  At 9:00 in the evening. (Sheesh)

To make it even stranger, the Christmas decorations have gone up. Somehow, they just don’t look the same to me without the usual blanket of white to reflect off of. Yes, I know that much of the country never sees a winter to speak of at all, much less snow stacked so tall that they, like Buffalo, just to my west here, are forced to tote the snow out by the train load, to be dumped somewhere in the south to melt. Last time I saw them doing that, it was in a November snowstorm. But still, to someone used to the snow…and as much as I complain about it I still…. No, I can’t say it.

Now, it should be said that early in November the Buffalo area had 2 feet of snow… and for about a week, there, a lot of folks out that way were without power. Where I am was just on the western edge of that storm… and the total effect was I busted an ice scraper getting the truck ready for it’s appointed rounds that morning, while listening to WBEN doing their full storm coverage number.

They spent the whole week proving the value of dedicated radio people, and a fully active newsroom.  A high five to Tom Bauerle and his people. I wonder if the Entercom ownership understands the value of the people they have there.  (I never got this confirmed, but On top of all the hardships WBEN put up with, that week, I’ve always suspected that given the power outs on Grand Island, where the transmitter building is, they were on generator power for much of that week. )

Speaking of Radio stations, I see at least one local station, WLGZ/990 has gone all Christmas. LGZ is a weird echo of WNYR, which was on 990 years ago, and 680 before that. Weird, because I used to work there back when Marv Maltz owned the place.

That kind of stunt usually means the station’s considering some kind of formatics move following the holiday. Of course local FM’s WRMM and WVOR are doing it too, and I’m seeing no news on them doing a change of programming anytime soon… but think of it… three stations in one market, plus the bleed overs form Canada and Buffalo AND Syracuse… all playing nothing but Christmas music…. And, there again, it seems strange to listen to them all doing that, with no snow on the ground. 

And to boot, we did our Christmas shopping early this year. Usually, we end up waiting until the last minute.

All of this “no snow” business is supposed to come to a halt come Saturday, when the daily high’ll be up around 35.  That’s far more seasonable than what we have right now. 

I’m actually a little annoyed at how things timed out with all of this.  Let’s face it; the last one week and before the big chill, and instead of going out and spending it enjoying what’s left of the sunshine I spent it here in my basement office pounding out CSS files. Figures.

I guess I’m not too angry about it though.  The new site looks fine, and is starting to get some serious traffic almost a week after having pulled the plug on the old one.  So, I guess it’s time well spent. 

It looks like I’ll have a place to put the Christmas decoration pictures I’ve been running the last few years, at least. And maybe we’ll have some snow by then.

You watch. I’ll be up to my beltloops in the stuff, come the week after Christmas.

Did you happen to see the full page ad in the New York Times bought by Yoko Ono? It ran the Sunday edition. She’s urging readers to accept responsibility for all of the violence and the suffering that’s going on around the world. It’s all OUR fault, of course, because, she says, we failed intervene on behalf of all the victims around the world.

Ummmmm Yoko, Honey?

If you look real closely you may notice that to we’re involved in just such an operation right now, in Iraq. And were you not just raising hell that we were doing that?

I am reminded of an old National Lampoon bit off of a classic album called “Radio Dinner”. It’s hard to find these days. It’s been out a press for a couple of decades that I’m aware of. I’m not even sure it was ever released on CD. Anyway one of the bits was sung…(In a fair imitation of Paul McCartney’s voice)

Give Ireland are back to the Irish
Give Lapland back to the Laps
Give China back to the Chinese
And Yoko back to the Japs

I mean, I’d hate like hell to stick them with her, but I think we’ve had her around long enough, now, thank you.

Appendum:  (DavidL)    I am an old guy.  “Imagine World Peace” is an old expression.   Trite too.   The problem with imagination is that imagination can not alter reality.   The Yoko Ono treatment has no ability to deal with the real world.

Imagine this.  It is four in the moring and you hear a loud crashing sould where  your front door used to be.   You awake to a perp taking dead aim at with a Model 1911. A.C.P..   Now close your eyes for a momenta and imagine the perp and the 1911 are no longer in your bedroom.  Now open your eyes again.   The perp and the 1911 are still there.  The Yoko Ono method of problem solving has failed you.   It fails every time.