FamilyFoundationBlog.com

Annotations & Elucidations 

Close Of Business, October 2009

Another month, another campaign draws toward conclusion. Where does the time go? Where does life go? A sign of the times: Campaign news is light today. Everyone is expecting an anti-climatic GOP blowout. But will it be? What about New Jersey and the special Congressional election in upstate New York? If the Dems pull those out will that blunt any GOP resurgence nationally otherwise gained from a Virginia sweep? If the numbers hold, how many Republican delegates will win? Retirements alone guarantee a large freshman class in January.

About today’s headlines: The Richmond Times-Dispatch gets up close and personal with the LG candidates and the Washington Times already is analyzing where Creigh Deeds went wrong. Why is it always where Creigh Deeds went wrong? Bob McDonnell, Bill Bolling and Ken Cuccinelli have done a lot right. Meanwhile, political soothsayer Dr. Larry Sabato offers his predictions on the election.

Nationally: It’s unfortunate that several pastors in Washington, D.C., are supporting homosexual “marriage” there; the AP reports that, indeed, abortion funding is in the health care “reform” bill; and sociologist Brad Wilcox of U.Va., and The Family Foundation Marriage Commission, caught the AP’s attention with his research that faith helps marriages!

In Commentary, Dr. Thomas Sowell offers part two of his “Dismantling of America” exposition, the first part of which we posted earlier this week, and which drew considerable praise from Rush Limbaugh, among others. Also, a skin care company is using fetal cells in its product; Tim Kaine’s DNC has selected as a finalist in a contest promoting the health care bill a video that desecrates the American flag; and a high ranking Obama administration official reveals her “ultimate expression of self-righteous victimhood.” This is the weekend we move our clocks back and it gets dark earlier. How appropriate.

News:

Candidates for lieutenant governor come with different backgrounds (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Republicans rally supporters in Lynchburg as Election Day nears (Lynchburg News & Advance)

Money, missteps cost Deeds in polls for gubernatorial race (Washington Times)

Deeds makes stop in Roanoke (Roanoke Times)

National News: 

Health care businesses at risk in House overhaul (AP/OneNewsNow.com)

Believe it or not . . . abortion funding is in health care bill (OneNewsNow.com) 

Sociologist: Faith benefits marriage and family life (AP/OneNewsNow.com)

Pastors unite to support same-sex marriage in D.C. (Washington Post)

Analysis:

So who’s going to win? (Dr. Larry Sabato/Center For Politics)

Commentary:

Dismantling America, Part II(Thomas Sowell/OneNewsNow.com)

Desecrated Flag Video Is Finalist In DNC Contest(Tasha Easterling/Rightly Concerned Blog)

Got Waste? No Surprises There (Jeremy Wiggins/Rightly Concerned Blog)

Skin Care Company Using Fetal Cells In Anti-Wrinkle Cream (Jeremy Wiggins/Rightly Concerned Blog)

Obama Advisor: We’re Just Speaking Truth To Power (Tasha Easterling/Rightly Concerned Blog)

Give U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.) some credit. He is a flaming liberal, but he speaks what he truly believes. At least now that he and his like-minded left-wing ideologue colleagues have complete power in Washington.

Today at the National Press Club, he actually said this (see rushlimbaugh.com):

I’ve had people come to us and complain, “Well, if you do that, I can’t make any money.” The answer is that’s not my job. We’re not here to help you make money. We are here to help have a system in which you will make money as an incident of your providing funds to those who will use it productively.

Combine that with President Obama’s remark at his news conference last week that insurance companies are “too profitable,” and one wonders by what right these people have to get inflamed when they and their policies are called socialist.

Cartoonist and columnist (is it fair to be that talented?) William Warren of Americans for Limited Government (see Robert Romano here), was a few days early with this one, as it was published Friday. But prescient as ever given President Barack Obama’s unprecedented takeover of General Motors and forcing out its CEO, native Richmonder Rick Wagoner (see Business Week). (That’s change, all right, though a little short on hope.) As Rush said, it’s no longer General Motors. It’s Government Motors. What company or industry will the feds takeover next and what will shots will it call? By the way, why didn’t the president fire the UAW union boss Ron Gettelfinger (see Detroit Free Press)? But really, shouldn’t the president try running just the government? Isn’t running industry, too, a bit much?

Seriously, growing up, did you ever think you’d see the day? Did you ever even contemplate it because it was so ludicrous a notion?

None other than Terry McAuliffe was in the GAB yesterday. I saw this familiar face standing by himself by the elevator on the 4th floor, I think. After that second or two of recognition focus it takes to remember who this person is you’ve seen before, but not in this context, it hit me. So I went up to him. Our conversation went something like this:

admin: Mr. McAuliffe, my name is Steve (last name witheld for security reasons), it’s nice to meet you in person after seeing you all these years on “Hannity and Colmes.”

T-Mac: Nice, to see you again. (We’ve never met.)

admin: So, you’re making the rounds, huh?

T-Mac: Yes. So what do you Steve?

admin: I lobby for The Family Foundation.

T-Mac: Great! (Then, with concern in his voice) How are you guys doing? Are you getting cut, too?

At that point, I realized, he really needs to bone up on his Virginia politics. He thinks we are a charity group getting our state grants cut. I wanted to put him on and say, “You know, we are. Can you ask some of the Democrat senators you meet with today if they could cut The Family Foundation a break?”

But if I did, it would cost him the nomination. Instead, we talked about “Hannity and Colmes,” Alan Colmes’ upcoming new show, and the big new contracts signed by Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

But can you imagine T-Mac asking Dick Saslaw if he could help restore some funding to The Family Foundation?

Yesterday, I heard Rush Limbaugh complain that PBS will broadcast a documentary made under the premise that the 20th century was one of constant war with a few periods of relative calm — an admission that U.N. diplomacy doesn’t exactly work? —contrary to the historical record that we fought two great wars at the interuption of a remarkable century of progress, peace and prosperity, what is commonly called The American Century.

The film will record America as the bad guy, dropping the big ones on Japan — not admitting that action saved millions of lives by foregoing an invasion — but especially for allying ourselves with the Soviet Union’s Stalin who, the film will say, was as bad or worse than Hitler. Rush got indginant, saying The Greatest Generation did not sacrafice what they did for taxpayer funded leftist propaganda directed at them.

I say Rush should be happy. All this means is that the left has finally acknowledged Stalin was as bad as Hitler. By any measure, that’s progress.

While we have our own battles with this region’s federal circuit court, especially with a three-judge panel recently ruling against Virginia’s partial birth abortion ban, it’s nothing compared to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco. You know, the one that declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, among many other such ridiculously blatant misinterpretations of the constitution; the court so out of touch Rush Limbaugh stuck it with the nickname, “The Ninth Circus.”

The “Ninth Circus” now has a new controversy broke by the usually sympathetic Los Angeles Times: Specifically, its chief judge, Alex Kozinski, had to recuse himself from an obscenity trial of a Hollywood producer last week when the Times disclosed he has pornography posted on his personal Web site (click here for an article). At first he resisted the prosecutor’s petition, even placing the blame on his son, but he eventually agreed to declare a mistrial and recuse himself. The federal district’s chief judge will select a new trial judge. 

But there’s more. Much more. The tech magazine Wired reports that Judge Kozinski

. . . was the target of a complaint in 2005 for posting a different kind of material on the site — a document related to a case that was before the 9th Circuit Appeals Court.

As well as this:

It’s also come to light that included amid the sexual material posted on the judge’s site more recently were MP3 files of copyrighted songs by Weird Al Yankovic, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.

According to the source who found the MP3 files on Judge Kozinski’s site, at least one of the MP3 files was being traded through a file sharing site that linked to Kozinski’s subdomain where the song was stored, raising questions about whether the judge was in violation of copyright laws if anyone downloaded the music from his site. Three 9th Circuit Court judges ruled last year that just making copyrighted works available may be a violation of copyright laws. (Our emphasis. Click here for the entire article.)

If any of these allegations prove true about Judge Kozinski, he should be impeached, removed from the bench and disbarred. Such a flagrant abuse of the law and ethical conduct is one thing, but the audacity to violate a law on which his very own court ruled raises the level of hypocricy and elitism. If the ninth circuit is a judicial circus, this chief judge surely is its ringmaster.

Then there is this footnote to another sad chapter from the legal profession affecting our culture and values: Former Virginia ACLU President Charles Rust-Tierney was disbarred by the Virginia State Bar in April, though the Bar did not make the announcement until last Wednesday. In September, Rust-Tierney was sentenced to seven years in prison for downloading child pornography.