n early meetings with the inaugural committee, officials privately indicated to reporters that the Jan. 20 event could be closed to reporters and cameras, with an official photograph supplied to press by White House photographer Pete Souza, sources familiar with the meeting told POLITICO.
Fears of such a scenario were reignited this week when the Presidential Inauguration Committee sent out a press release, referring to a “private” inauguration.
Both the White House and the committee note that “private” simply means the event is not open to the public and that press arrangements have not been formalized.
The White House press corps acknowledges that nothing is set in stone. But even the possibility of a closed-press inauguration has stirred up immense frustration among the White House press corps, who note that past Sunday inaugurations were open to press.
“Call me shell-shocked. I’m stunned that this is even an issue; it boggles the mind,” NBC News White House correspondent Chuck Todd told POLITICO. “This is not their oath, this is the constitutional oath. It’s not for them. It’s for the public, the citizens of the United Sates. It just boggles the mind. How is this even a debate?”
Minutes from this week’s WHCA meeting noted “strong sentiment that the entire press pool must witness the moment.”
“We are urging the White House to reconsider any preliminary plans they have at the moment to keep this as a closed event,” C-SPAN political Editor Steve Scully told POLITICO. “This is a historic event and it should be chronicled by news organizations. At a minimum, it should be a pooled event.”
I'm sure that the possibility of closing the ceremony has nothing to do with Obama wanting to take the Oath of Office on the Koran...
Interesting also how on Obama's recent trip to the Middle East, he stood and gave a speech in front of an image of Palestinian terrorist leader Arafat.
So... Obama is more comfortable with images of terrorists than symbols of Christianity.
It says quite a bit about Obama's actions toward Christians and religious freedom. And his comfort with anti-American radical islam, that he advances over U.S. national interests and allies.
The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.
Organizations were singled out because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.
In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.
"That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review," Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association....
"Today's acknowledgement by the Obama administration that the IRS did in fact target conservative groups in the heat of last year's national election is not enough," McConnell said. "I call on the White House to conduct a transparent, government-wide review aimed at assuring the American people that these thuggish practices are not under way at the IRS or elsewhere in the administration against anyone, regardless of their political views."
And scary at the same time. Hannity and Limbaugh have both openly said they were audited during the Clinton years, and now the IRS is being used as a weapon to harass conservatives under Obama.
Interesting pattern, from a DNC that axalts themselves as the defenders of free speech, and demonizes their conservative opposition as the repressive nazis who want to take away others' rights.
Obama just had a press conference in the Rose Garden outside the White House, with the Turkey prime minister, and answered questions from reporters about the IRS scandal.
It's a combination of laughable and infuriating, that Obama can front "Ohh gee, this is awful that the IRS was biaseedly used to attack conservatives, we can't permit that." EVERYTHING this president and his administration has done since taking office has been along this same trajectory, of abusing federal authority to attack Obama's and the Democrats' political enemies.
Obama tried to deny Fox News interviews and access to the White House, before (incredibly) the liberal media came to Fox's defense, and Obama backed down.
The homeland security memo to investigate military veterans and Tea Party members as a "potential terrorist threat".
Plus many other examples.
The clusterfuck of new scandals, intimidating Benghazi witnesses, Holder's Justice Dept taking AP phone logs to unveil AP's sources in and around the Obama administration, and the IRS that has unquestionably harassed and denied service to conservative Tea Party groups, as well as harassing pro-Israel groups and harassing other political opposition, just follows the consistent path of Chicago-style bullying and intimidation of political opponents.
I'm amazed that Obama can deny this with a straight face.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
we need to use major authoritarian measures against wingnuts and theocrats to save this country. That in particular includes deprogramming institutions and a Gitmo like camp to deal with the worst wingnuts. These people should be removed from general society and need to be shut up.
I have believed this for years, but the behavior of the wingnuts at the McCain and Palin rallies further underscores the need to take harsh action against these people. Lincoln and FDR had to bend the Constitution at times, and I hope Obama has the guts to do so too to deal with these third rate creatures.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
How would you feel if aides to the president of the United States singled you out by name for attack, and if you were featured prominently in the president's re-election campaign as an enemy of the people?
What would you do if the White House engaged in derogatory speculative innuendo about the integrity of your tax returns? Suppose also that the president's surrogates and allies in the media regularly attacked you, sullied your reputation and questioned your integrity. On top of all of that, what if a leading member of the president's party in Congress demanded your appearance before a congressional committee this week so that you could be interrogated about the Keystone XL oil pipeline project in which you have repeatedly—and accurately—stated that you have no involvement?
Consider that all this is happening because you have been selected as an attractive political punching bag by the president's re-election team. This is precisely what has happened to Charles and David Koch, even though they are private citizens, and neither is a candidate for the president's or anyone else's office.
What Messrs. Koch do, in fact, is manage businesses that provide employment to more than 50,000 people in North America in legitimate, productive industries. They also give millions of dollars to medical researchers, hospitals and cultural institutions. Their biggest offense, apparently, is that they also contribute generously to nonprofit organizations that promote personal liberty and free enterprise, and some of those organizations oppose policies advocated by the president.
Richard Nixon maintained an"enemies list" that singled out private citizens for investigation and abuse by agencies of government, including the Internal Revenue Service. When that was revealed, the press and public were outraged. That conduct will forever remain one of the indelible stains on Nixon's presidency and legacy.
When Joseph McCarthy engaged in comparable bullying, oppression and slander from his powerful position in the Senate, he was censured by his colleagues and died in disgrace."McCarthyism," defined by Webster's as the "use of unfair investigative and accusatory methods to suppress opposition," will forever be synonymous with un-Americanism. Army counsel Joseph Welch's "Have you no sense of decency?" are words that evoke the McCarthy era and diminish the reputations of his colleagues who did nothing to stand up to him.
In this country, we regard the use of official power to oppress or intimidate private citizens as a despicable abuse of authority and entirely alien to our system of a government of laws. The architects of our Constitution meticulously erected a system of separated powers, and checks and balances, precisely in order to inhibit the exercise of tyrannical power by governmental officials.
Our Constitution even explicitly prohibits bills of attainder so that Congress may not single out individual citizens or groups for disfavored treatment or unequal application of the force of government. Prosecutorial power is rigidly constrained and judicially supervised so that government may not accuse private citizens of crimes or investigate them without good cause.
Whoever may be the victim of such abuse of governmental authority, the press and public almost invariably unify with indignation against it. If a journalist, labor-union leader or community organizer on the left can be targeted today, an academic or business person on the right can be the target tomorrow. If we fail to stand up against oppression from one direction, we abdicate the moral authority to challenge it when it comes from another.
This is why it is exceedingly important for all Americans to respond with outrage to what the president and his allies are doing to demonize and stigmatize David and Charles Koch. They have been the targets of the multiyear, carefully orchestrated campaign of vituperation and assault described above—and much more. It has been choreographed from the very top. When the president personally takes leadership, his political surrogates and army of allies in the press and Congress quickly and surely follow the direction and tone he sets.
The misuse of government power to damage or demean one's political enemies is abhorrent and the very antithesis of a free society and a government of laws, not men. It is time for the public to ask those engaged in these practices, "Have you no sense of decency?"
____________________________________
Mr. Olson, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and a former solicitor general of the United States, represents Koch Industries.
A very prominent attorney, warning of IRS abuse, from the most prominent conservative paper in the United States, 16 months ago.
In addition to the vocal cries and legal action by Tea Party, pro-Israel and othr groups, protesting similar discriminatory treatment by the IRS since at least 2010.
There were warning flares all over the place, but the Obama administration did nothing to stop IRS abuses until the story exploded into the national media. Even then, the Obama administration only discussed it as damage control, to spin the IRS abuses in a slightly less damning light, a few days ahead of an investigative report to be released on the IRS abuses.
Because it it not an abberation that happened on Obama's watch, but a consistent Obama tactic, abusing government power to crush his enemies.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Mitt Romney presents one enormous problem for Barack Obama's campaign: No divorce records. That's why the media are so hot to get their hands on Romney's tax records for the past 25 years. They need something to "pick through, distort and lie about" -- as the Republican candidate says.
Obama's usual campaign method, used in 100 percent of his races, has been to pry into the private records of his opponents.
Democrats aren't going to find any personal dirt on the clean-cut Mormon, so they need complicated tax filings going back decades in order to create the illusion of scandal out of boring financial records.
Romney has already released his 2010 tax return and is about to release his 2011 return. After all the huffing and puffing by the media demanding those returns, the follow-up story vanished remarkably quickly when the only thing the return showed was that Romney pays millions of dollars in taxes and gives a lot of money to charity.
Let's take a romp down memory lane and review the typical Obama campaign strategy. Obama became a U.S. senator only by virtue of David Axelrod's former employer, the Chicago Tribune, ripping open the sealed divorce records of Obama's two principal opponents.
One month before the 2004 Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, Obama was down in the polls, about to lose to Blair Hull, a multimillionaire securities trader. But then the Chicago Tribune leaked the claim that Hull's second ex-wife, Brenda Sexton, had sought an order of protection against him during their 1998 divorce proceedings.
Those records were under seal, but as The New York Times noted: "The Tribune reporter who wrote the original piece later acknowledged in print that the Obama camp had 'worked aggressively behind the scenes' to push the story." Many people said Axelrod had "an even more significant role -- that he leaked the initial story."
Both Hull and his ex-wife opposed releasing their sealed divorce records, but they finally relented in response to the media's hysteria -- 18 days before the primary. Hull was forced to spend four minutes of a debate detailing the abuse allegation in his divorce papers, explaining that his ex-wife "kicked me in the leg and I hit her shin to try to get her to not continue to kick me."
After having held a substantial lead just a month before the primary, Hull's campaign collapsed with the chatter about his divorce. Obama sailed to the front of the pack and won the primary. Hull finished third with 10 percent of the vote.
As luck would have it, Obama's opponent in the general election had also been divorced! Jack Ryan was tall, handsome, Catholic -- and shared a name with one of Harrison Ford's most popular onscreen characters! He went to Dartmouth, Harvard Law and Harvard Business School, made hundreds of millions of dollars as a partner at Goldman Sachs, and then, in his early 40s, left investment banking to teach at an inner city school on the South Side of Chicago.
Ryan would have walloped Obama in the Senate race. But at the request of -- again -- the Chicago Tribune, California Judge Robert Schnider unsealed the custody papers in Ryan's divorce five years earlier from Hollywood starlet Jeri Lynn Ryan, the bombshell Borg on "Star Trek: Voyager."
Jack Ryan had released his tax records. He had released his divorce records. But both he and his ex-wife sought to keep the custody records under seal to protect their son.
Amid the 400 pages of filings from the custody case, Jack Ryan claimed that his wife had had an affair, and she counterclaimed with the allegation that he had taken her to "sex clubs" in Paris, New York and New Orleans, which drove her to fall in love with another man.
(Republicans: If you plan a career in public office, please avoid marrying a wacko.)
Ryan had vehemently denied her allegations at the time, but it didn't matter. The sex club allegations aired on "Entertainment Tonight," "NBC Nightly News," ABC's "Good Morning America," "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," and NBC's "Today" show. CNN covered the story like it was the first moon landing.
(Interestingly, international papers also were ablaze with the story -- the same newspapers that were supposed to be so bored with American sexual mores during Bill Clinton's sex scandal.)
Four days after Judge Schnider unsealed the custody records, Ryan dropped out of the race for the horror of (allegedly) propositioning his own wife and then taking "no" for an answer.
Alan Keyes stepped in as a last-minute Republican candidate.
And that's how Obama became a U.S. senator. He destroyed both his Democratic primary opponent and his Republican general election opponent with salacious allegations about their personal lives taken from "sealed" court records.
Obama's team delved into Sarah Palin's marriage and spread rumors of John McCain's alleged affair in 2008 and they smeared Herman Cain in 2011 with hazy sexual harassment allegations all emanating from David Axelrod's pals in Chicago.
It's almost like a serial killer's signature. Unsealed personal records have been released to the press. Obama must be running for office!
So you can see what a pickle the Obama campaign is in having to run against a Dudley Do-Right, non-drinking, non-smoking, God-fearing, happily married Mormon.
They've got to get their hands on thousands of pages of Romney's tax filings so that the media can -- as Romney says -- lie about them. It will be interesting to see if Obama can pick the lock of the famously guarded IRS.
The steady pattern of abuse by Obama and his staff...
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
First they came for Fox News, and they did not speak out—because they were not Fox News. Then they came for government whistleblowers, and they did not speak out—because they were not government whistleblowers. Then they came for the maker of a YouTube video, and—okay, we know how this story ends. But how did we get here?
Turns out it’s a fairly swift sojourn from a president pushing to “delegitimize” a news organization to threatening criminal prosecution for journalistic activity by a Fox News reporter, James Rosen, to spying on Associated Press reporters. In between, the Obama administration found time to relentlessly persecute government whistleblowers and publicly harass and condemn a private American citizen for expressing his constitutionally protected speech in the form of an anti-Islam YouTube video.
Where were the media when all this began happening? With a few exceptions, they were acting as quiet enablers.
It’s instructive to go back to the dawn of Hope and Change. It was 2009, and the new administration decided it was appropriate to use the prestige of the White House to viciously attack a news organization -—Fox News—- and the journalists who work there.
Remember, President Obama had barely been in office and had enjoyed the most laudatory press of any new president in modern history. Yet even one outlet that allowed dissent or criticism of the president was one too many. This should have been a red flag to everyone, regardless of what they thought of Fox News. The math was simple: if the administration would abuse its power to try and intimidate one media outlet, what made anyone think they weren’t next?
President Obama went after Fox News in this 2009 interview with CNBC.
These series of “warnings” to the Fourth Estate were what you might expect to hear from some third-rate dictator, not from the senior staff of Hope and Change, Inc.
"What I think is fair to say about Fox … is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party," said Anita Dunn, White House communications director, on CNN. “[L]et's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is."
On ABC’s “This Week” White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Fox is "not really a news station."
It wasn’t just that Fox News was “not a news organization,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel told CNN’s John King, but, “more [important], is [to] not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox, as if what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization …”
These series of “warnings” to the Fourth Estate were what you might expect to hear from some third-rate dictator, not from the senior staff of Hope and Change, Inc.
Yet only one mainstream media reporter—Jake Tapper, then of ABC News—ever raised a serious objection to the White House’s egregious and chilling behavior. Tapper asked future MSNBC commentator and then White House press secretary Robert Gibbs: “[W]hy is [it] appropriate for the White House to say” that “thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a ‘news organization’?” The spokesman for the president of the United States was unrepentant, saying: “That's our opinion.”
Trashing reporters comes easy in Obama-land. Behind the scenes, Obama-centric Democratic operatives brand any reporter who questions the administration as a closet conservative, because what other explanation could there be for a reporter critically reporting on the government?
Now, the Democratic advocacy group Media Matters -—which is always mysteriously in sync with the administration despite ostensibly operating independently—- has launched a smear campaign against ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl for his reporting on Benghazi. It’s the kind of character assassination that would make Joseph McCarthy blush. The main page of the Media Matters website has six stories attacking Karl for a single mistake in an otherwise correct report about the State Department's myriad changes to talking points they previously claimed to have barely touched. See, the problem isn’t the repeated obfuscating from the administration about the Benghazi attack; the problem is Jonathan Karl. Hence, the now-familiar campaign of de-legitimization. This gross media intimidation is courtesy of tax-deductable donations from the Democratic Party’s liberal donor base, which provides a whopping $20 million a year for Media Matters to harass reporters who won’t fall in line.
In what is surely just a huge coincidence, the liberal media monitoring organization Fairness and Accuracy in the Media (FAIR) is also on a quest to delegitimize Karl. It dug through his past and discovered that in college he allegedly -—horrors!—- associated with conservatives. Because of this, FAIR declared Karl “a right wing mole at ABC News.” Setting aside the veracity of FAIR’s crazy claim, isn’t the fact that it was made in the first place vindication for those who assert a liberal media bias in the mainstream media? If the existence of a person who allegedly associates with conservatives is a “mole,” then what does that tell us about the rest of the media?
What all of us in the media need to remember -—whatever our politics-— is that we need to hold government actions to the same standard, whether they’re aimed at friends or foes. If not, there’s no one but ourselves to blame when the administration takes aim at us.
_______________________________
Kirsten Powers is a columnist for The Daily Beast. She is also a contributor to USA Today and a Fox News political analyst. She served in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1998 and has worked in New York state and city politics. Her writing has been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, The New York Observer, Salon.com, Elle magazine, and American Prospect online.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
I figure we'll need a separate thread to discuss all the efforts of Glorious Leader Obama to prosecute and silence his critics in the coming years...at least until this site gets shut down.
The Obama administration’s free-speech scandals of today were repeatedly and accurately predicted by conservative pundits during the 2008 election. Obama’s first presidential campaign launched a series of novel and troubling assaults on its critics, leading many conservatives to warn that both the press and political speech would come under attack should Obama be elected president. Some of the predictions about Obama made by conservative writers in 2008 seem uncannily on-the-mark today.
The first incident to spur warnings was the Obama campaign’s move in late August of 2008 to prevent the American Issues Project from airing an ad exploring Obama’s ties to former terrorist Bill Ayers. Rather than simply answering the ad, the Obama campaign threatened economic boycotts, federal investigations of the group’s officers and anonymous donors, and criminal prosecutions. Although the ad ran locally, Fox News and CNN were apparently discouraged by these threats from accepting the ad. Kimberley Strassel wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week about the precedent this controversy set for today’s scandals. Yet the dust-up over the Ayers ad was merely the first of several such incidents.
I know, because I was incident number two. On August 28, just days after the controversy over the Ayers ad, the Obama campaign pressured WGN Radio in Chicago to bar my scheduled appearance on the Milt Rosenberg show to discuss my research into Obama’s ties to Ayers. When the station refused to cancel my appearance, it was deluged with calls from Obama supporters acting on instructions from his campaign. They demanded that I be kept off the air.
A few weeks later, on September 15, a flood of callers, again egged on by the Obama campaign, demanded that David Freddoso, then my colleague at NATIONAL REVIEW, be barred from discussing his just-published biography of Obama on the Rosenberg show.
In late September, a team of prosecutors and sheriffs in Missouri (perhaps not coincidentally, the home state of the group that produced the Ayers ad) was formed to act as an “Obama Truth Squad.” The Truth Squad, said a report, would “target anyone who lies or runs a misleading television ad during the presidential campaign.” The group was to respond “immediately to any ads and statements that might violate Missouri ethics laws.” This apparent threat to prosecute critics of Obama set off a firestorm of outrage, which the local press and the Obama campaign later claimed was all based on a misunderstanding.
Also in late September of 2008, the Obama camp attempted to force yet another negative ad off the air, this one the National Rifle Association’s take on Obama’s gun policy. A letter to television stations effectively threatened to have their broadcast licences yanked should they air what the Obama camp claimed was a knowingly false and misleading ad.
Again and again, conservatives cited these incidents as evidence that something new and dangerous was at work: disregard of the fundamental principles of free expression, a willingness to resort to intimidation tactics, and abuse of the law to stifle criticism. The national press on the other hand, either ignored these incidents, or treated them as evidence of the Obama campaign’s effectiveness, and its sophisticated use of social media....
By refusing to complain, or even report on, what conservatives were up in arms about in 2008, the national media bears some share of responsibility for the troubles it faces today.
...something new and dangerous was at work: disregard of the fundamental principles of free expression, a willingness to resort to intimidation tactics, and abuse of the law to stifle criticism.
This is pure textbook Saul Alinsky, from RULES FOR RADICALS.
And Obama from the earliest years of his career, euphemistically labelled as a "community organizer", was trained in these tactics, and taught them to classrooms full of others.
And before they were Alinsky's tactics, they were the tactics of the Bolsheviks:
Quote:
Members and front organizations must continually embarass, discredit and degrade out critics. When obstructionists become too irritating, label them as fascist, or Nazi or anti-Semitic... The association will, after enough repetition, become "fact in the public mind. --Moscow Central Committee, 1943
The first precursors of these all-out assaults on free speech by Obama should have been the open endorsement of Mao and other strong-arm dictators by many appointed in Obama's White House (Anita Dunn, Van Jones, Ron Bloom, Mark Lloyd...)
The allegations concern the Environmental Protection Agency, which is being accused of trying to charge conservative groups fees while largely exempting liberal groups.
That's the core of it right there.
Gibson Guitars is an example that's been out there for almost 2 years. Despite that other guitar makers use the exact same wood, they were not given the same harassment by the EPA. Because only Gibson was a Republican campaign donor.
It both enrages and terrifies me that the highest ranking Democrats can rationalize and excuse this rampant abuse of federal power by Democrats in the IRS and other federal agencies.
And that grassroots Democrats also apparently accept and endorse this. Obama has taken a slight decline in popularity from 49% down to 45%. But that's still 45%. What the hell are these people thinking?
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
CIA Employees in Benghazi Pressured to Stay Quiet: at least five CIA employees were forced to sign additional nondisclosure agreements this past spring in the wake of the Benghazi attack. These employees had already signed such agreements before the attack but were made to sign new agreements aimed at discouraging survivors from leaking their stories to the media or anyone else.
Fox News' 6PM report tonight showed that while it was such an outrage to mock and attack the president in effigy, and the rodeo clown wearing the Obama mask was banned "for life" from future rodeos, and all the other rodeo clowns who were at the show have to attend "sensitivity training" classes...
...The exact same thing happened at a rodeo when George W. Bush was president, where a bull completely destroyed an effigy of him, and threw the mask across the stadium and trampled it to shreds. No firings. No outrage. No sensitivity classes.
Double-standard, anyone? Free speech?
This is the most ridiculous thing since CNN factchecked a Saturday Night Live skit that parodied Obama.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
This goes under the category of liberal/progressives emboldened by authoritarianism at the national level, to bring that same abuse of power to the local level.
This guy was a parent with concerns about school policy where his child is schooled. The board had a Moscow Central Committee approach, where all questions had to be submitted in advance in writing to the board members (meaning they could simply not answer and leave unvoiced any questions that were inconvenient to them). So this guy stood up and asked his question, and the audience clearly welcomed the question. But the "security" thug (an off-duty prick cop) went way over the line and shoved the dad around, then cuffed and arrested him for no reason. Which the audience clearly objected to.
Man... this is worse than I first thought. The Superintendents were not only selectively omitting questions, of very legitimate concerns about data-mining their kids and who their personal information would be given to...
I hope someone finds out the name of that guard and puts him through the same legal system that they're using as a weapon against Small.
I swear to God, if I were in that room and had seen him put his hands on that man to shut him up, I would have put him in the rear naked choke before restraining him with his own cuffs.
A guy gets arrested at a School meeting, just for asking a question. That seems really disproportionate. Even if they'd just kicked him out of the meeting (which I still think would have been an abuse of power), that at least would have been unfair but arguably within reason.
But this guy might go to jail for up to 10 years, on the bogus charge of assaulting a police officer. Anyone who watches this video can see that the security guard (off-duty cop, who actually should be held accountable to his police department, because he used his badge as if he was on-duty to commit assaault on this guy) is the one doing all the assaulting!
I couldn't agree more. That was an unbelievable display. Or I should say, it wouldn't have been easy to believe, if someone didn't have the good sense to video-record it.
I still can't get over that not only was he thrown out of the meeting, while the Politburo running the meeting voiced no objection to the belligerent manner that Mr. Small was tossed around by the thug cop, but that he was further hit with an "assaulting a police officer" charge, with a potential 10-year sentence. That they even tried to pull that off is deeply infuriating. And, no doubt, intend it as a deterrant to any others who might voice similar dissent in the future.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Why reporters fear Team Obama: Relying on the 1917 Espionage Act, which was rarely invoked before President Obama took office, this administration has secretly used the phone and e-mail records of government officials and reporters to identify and prosecute government sources for national-security stories.
Basically, if you speak out, if you are quoted, you’re going to get a call from the White House, pressure to be quiet...insurance executives are being told to keep quiet...they feel defenseless against the White House PR team…
“The White House is exerting massive pressure on the industry, including the trade associations, to keep quiet.” Sources telling us they fear White House retribution.
Seriously, how can even Democrats support these authoritarian thug tactics?
I saw a poll today that Obama is at "an all-time low" of 42% support. Who the fuck are these 42% ?!? No doubt they would be comfortable living in Stalinist Russia or Hitler's Germany, for them to continue to support this obscene abuse of power.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Conservative filmmaker behind anti-Obama documentary indicted for violating election law: Dinesh D'Souza, whose “2016: Obama’s America” is the second-highest grossing political documentary of all-time, will appear in the U.S. District Court in New York Friday. D’Souza’s co-producer in “2016” Gerald Molen told FoxNews.com he believes the charges are politically motivated and D’Souza is being singled out by federal authorities for a “selective prosecution.”
Sheesh, so even when a republican is guilty it's still put as somehow not fair. This wasn't a mistake he made by accident but an intentional breaking of the law multiple times.
Was there any evidence to back up the targeting allegations? From what I've read he's not denying what he did btw so I think it's fair to say he's guilty as in he did do it and admits it. Guilt can be a non-legal determination too.
Why reporters fear Team Obama: Relying on the 1917 Espionage Act, which was rarely invoked before President Obama took office, this administration has secretly used the phone and e-mail records of government officials and reporters to identify and prosecute government sources for national-security stories.
This is almost exactly what communist China did by other means. Hacking into e-mail accounts of New York Times reporters, and tracking who they were in communication with.
And yet... they still partisanly assisted Obama's campaign through his Nov 2012 re-election, despite they no doubt observed this unprecedentedly closed and media-hostile administration for the four years prior to the election.
And are gearing up to do the same for Hitlery --uh, HILLARY, in 2016. RAH RAH!
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
