A Symposium On Blogger Ethics & The Future Of Blogging
January 31, 2005
Interesting discussion on the ethics of reporting and blogging.
Here at Right Wing News
Sphere: Related Contentcomparevideo: The Iraqi Elections
January 31, 2005
Excellent! Picture clips of the Iraqi elections with Aaron Copeland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” covering the presentation.
Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.
Sphere: Related ContentDemocratic Middle East
January 31, 2005
Mark A. Kilmer has got it right:
Going into this, President Bush envisaged a Democratic Middle East with which the United States could deal individually and as a group. Democracy, if it takes hold in Iraq and is nurtured by other democratic nations, could spread. The question then would be: Do we allow France, Russia, Germany, the Kingdom of Belgium, or Nelson Mandela to participate in sustaining the new democracies? It would be an abomination. Only four countries saw the necessity of risking their by far most valuable commodity for the future.Sphere: Related Content“Going into this, President Bush envisaged a Democratic Middle East…” It’s a wide image, not the narrowly focused WMD about which today’s anti-Bush crowd feebly harps. This entire operation was too grand for their imaginations.
Amnesty Insanity
January 31, 2005
Michelle Malkin reports on Rush Limbaugh’s criticism of President Bush’s amnesty program for illegal Mexcan aliens. John Fund piked up on it too and emphasized the point that many in the Republican Party are disturbed by the Bush Administration’s tone-deafness on the immigration issue:
Rush has 20 million listeners a week, so if he decides to attack President Bush’s plan to regularize immigration flows through a guest-worker program, he could help kill the idea. The president told reporters last week that he plans to make a guest worker plan a “priority,” so last Friday he was peppered with questions about it at a private retreat for GOP congressmen at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. “Family values do not end at the Rio Grande river,” Mr. Bush told the lawmakers, while assuring them his plan was not a backdoor amnesty program. He promised them more details in his State of the Union address on Wednesday.
From this vantage point, it seems clear that the President has a mis-perception of the extent of his political capital. Frankly, he probably does not see this as an issue of capital expenditure but rather an advantage of beginning a lame-duck term.
This President has performed much better than his father when it comes to working the politics of issues in which he believes strongly. That is to his credit. But 20 million Rush listeners, and Republicans in general, are independent thinking enough to stand on principle themselves.
When it comes to getting things done in this country, ultimately the true power belongs to the people, not the best politician. The independent nature of the American people is the heritage we bring to freedom around the world. It is likely to be exercised with flawless precision in regards to immigration reform to the chagrin of those who believe we owe a debt to “Mexican family-values.”
Sphere: Related ContentThe Evil Side of the Iraq Elections
January 31, 2005
Just as we suspected, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have conspired to undermine the Iraqi people.
Hat-tip: IowaHawk
UPDATE: IowaHawk has Ted Kennedy’s comments on the situation in Iraq. What an amazing scoop.
Sphere: Related ContentJanuary 31, 2005
“Religion is the only solid Base of morals and that Morals are the only possible Support of free governments.”
–Gouverneur Morris
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Sphere: Related ContentEmerging Adulthood
January 30, 2005
Social Scientists are pointing to a disturbing trend in post-adolescent years. Young people are living for longer periods at home and are marrying later. In the United States, the average male marries at 28 years old compared to about 21 years only 10 or 15 years ago. The result: it’s taking longer for young people to obtain a college degree; they’re opting out of making a commitment to a career switching jobs up to a dozen times on average and moving back at home. They are not abstaining from sex either. They typically have several sexual encounters. They are refusing to allow the shock of adult responsibility to hit them.
Crosswalk.com - The Generation That Won’t Grow Up: “Social scientists debate the significance of this new phenomenon. Some see this trend towards delayed adulthood as a good thing. Advocates for the trend suggest that these young Americans are simply enjoying the benefits won by advocates of social liberation. Furthermore, they have grown up in a culture of affluence that has afforded them unprecedented options, creature comforts, and security. They simply do not want to enter the more insecure world of adult responsibility.Jeffrey Arnett, who sees what he calls ‘emerging adulthood’ as a positive trend, teaches developmental psychology at the University of Maryland. These unsettled young Americans are simply taking their time to focus on adult responsibility. ‘This is the one time of their lives when they’re not responsible for anyone else or to anyone else,’ he argues. ‘So they have this wonderful freedom to really focus on their own lives and work on becoming the kind of person they want to be.’
In other words, Arnett sees delayed adulthood as a new social phenomenon that allows self-centered Americans even more time to focus on themselves while ‘not responsible for anyone else or to anyone else.’ Of course, what Arnett celebrates, others see as the very heart of the problem.”
This trend is not merely a result of the choices of young people in the emerging generation. It’s also the result of parenting practices which emerged out of the false teaching of Dr. Spock. This trend will only change with a revival of parenthood. It can only lead if it continues to the downfall of American society.
Sphere: Related ContentWhitman Bashes Conservatives
January 28, 2005
Patrick Ruffini analyzes Christine Todd Whitman’s claim that the Republican Party is loosing support because of its “social fundamentalist” wing.
Reading the transcript of Lou Dobbs’ interview with her last night, one leaves with a sense that the MSM wants Whitman to succeed in diffusing the influence of Christian conservatives in the party.
Ok, no surprise here. But the logic behind her arguments is amazingly bereft of historical perspective.
DOBBS: . . . there was once a liberal and conservative and moderate wing in the GOP party, the Republican party, the fact is today one scratches their heads wondering what happened to fiscal discipline. Republicans were styled as much in their rejection of imprudent fiscal management, trade deficits at record heights. Where is the Republican party in your judgment headed? Where should it be going?WHITMAN: I think it’s headed frankly in the wrong direction, which is why I wrote the book to [. . .] remind people of what the Republican party stood for and how it moved forward from the days of Eisenhower forward when I first became sort of cognizant of what was going on, and to try to get it back on that track, to understand that it’s our party, it has room for a lot of different opinions, but there are certain basic beliefs that distinguish the Republicans from the Democrats, and we need to get back to those.
Let me clear this up first: fiscal discipline has gone out the window in the last four years under the Bush administration. No conservative can argue against that. Conservatives bit their lips on the issue during the election last year knowing that by comparison, Democrats are much less fiscally responsible.
That having been said, there are two significant numbers she should remember: 40 and 63 million; years the Republicans were out of power and number of people who voted for a social fundamentalist influenced administration.
If Christine Todd Whitman wishes to see the Republican Party revert back to having three wings–as Dobbs suggests–she clearly doesn’t understand how that fractured approach destroyed any hopes of electoral success in the 60’s and 70’s. And what in the world did the Republican Party do right in the 50’s under Eisenhower’s leadership other than elect a President? If she truly believes these are the ideal circumstances under which the Party should operate, someone needs to ask her if she inhaled.
But she doesn’t believe this, and thus we come to the true reason for her concern. It’s the same pretention under which Democrats operate: self-aggrandizement. It’s a desire to consolidate power within a small inner circle of the initiated. No organization can have success under such pretentious leadership. To be precise, Christine Todd Whitman truly seeks to re-establish the prominence of the Rockefeller Wing of the Party while George Bush (largely) is solidifying the Reagan.
I’ll take the latter, thank you.
Sphere: Related ContentAnd Now There’s A Third
January 28, 2005
Michelle Malkin notes a Salon article which notes that now a third conservative columnist, Michael McManus, was hired by the Bush administration and did not make full disclosure in his columns. Salon is right: “three makes a trend.”
It’s frankly unacceptable for even the appearance of impropriety in any administration. And, sadly, President Bush, and HHS Secretary Dr. Wade Horn for that matter, must be held to account for their poor judgment. Now the reproach must come.
Here’s Michelle Malkin’s take:
“I wonder if McManus will say he ‘forgot’ about the $10,000 payment, too. That line seems to be working pretty well now among some of my fellow conservatives. [. . . L]et me just say that if I accepted $10,000 or $20,000 or $40,000 in taxpayer funds for my writing, I wouldn’t forget it in one year or 5 years or 10 years. And I’d make damn sure I disclosed it in relevant columns, books, or media appearances, even if it invited condescension from the ‘don’t be such a holier-than-thou-goody-two-shoes-must-you-disclose-everything?’ crowd.”
Absolutely.
It was not wrong for the Bush administration to hire these columnists. It was not wrong for these columnists to work with the government either. The problem was that neither the administration nor the columnists took the time to evaluate the ethical implications of doing so. This amounts to a costly affront to public confidence in this administration.
If we conservatives neglect to point out the impropriety of these financial arrangements and subsequent lack of ethical disclosure, we will encourage this problem to fester into something much worse.
LaShawn Barber has more.
January 28, 2005
Sphere: Related Content“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
–Thomas Paine
