It is Darker Than You Think

The Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Obama’s ties to Ayers.
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Congressional Democrats sought to reimpose the "fairness doctrine" on broadcasters, which until it was repealed in the 1980s required equal time for different points of view. The motive was plain: to shut down the one conservative-leaning communications medium, talk radio. Liberal talk-show hosts have mostly failed to draw audiences, and many liberals can’t abide having citizens hear contrary views.
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Corporate liberals have done their share in shutting down anti-liberal speech, too. "Saturday Night Live" ran a spoof of the financial crisis that skewered Democrats like House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank and liberal contributors Herbert and Marion Sandler, who sold toxic-waste-filled Golden West to Wachovia Bank for $24 billion. Kind of surprising, but not for long. The tape of the broadcast disappeared from NBC’s Website and was replaced with another that omitted the references to Frank and the Sandlers. Evidently NBC and its parent, General Electric, don’t want people to hear speech that attacks liberals.
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Then there’s the Democrats’ "card check" legislation, which would abolish secret ballot elections in determining whether employees are represented by unions.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/obama_vs_free_speech.html

On Monday, Obama demanded that the Justice Department stop TV stations from airing a documented, accurate independent ad spotlighting Obama’s longtime working relationship with unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Obama summoned his followers to bombard stations, many of them owned by conservative-leaning Sinclair Communications, with 93,000 e-mails to squelch the commercial.

On Tuesday, the Obama campaign sent another letter to the Justice Department demanding investigation and prosecution of American Issues Project, the group that produced the Ayers ad, as well as Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, who funded it.

And on Wednesday, Obama exhorted his followers to sabotage the WGN radio show of veteran Chicago host and University of Chicago Professor Milt Rosenberg. Why? Because he invited National Review writer Stanley Kurtz to discuss his investigative findings about Obama’s ties to Ayers and the underwhelming results of their collaboration on a left-wing educational project sponsored by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

On Wednesday the 1st of October I received a call on my cell while in the car with my husband. It was a woman who identified herself as calling from the Obama Campaign. The phone # she called from lists as "Obama Volunteers of Texarkana" ( Texas ).

She asked if I was an Obama supporter to which I replied: "No, I don’t support him, your guy is a socialist who voted four times in the State Senate to let little babies die in hospital closets; I think you should find something better to do with your time." I hung up.

Thursday, October 2, I answered the front door to find the Secret Service. Immediately I thought of the call and was furious that apparently you are not allowed to call Obama a Socialist without the Secret Service coming to investigate. Instead, they asked me about the following comment, relayed by the Obama Volunteer of Texarkana who called me, unsolicited on my cell phone:

"I will never support Obama and he will wind up dead on a hospital floor."

My husband laughed and told them "No, she called him a socialist but she never said a word about him dying." I gave them my actual quote. The woman asked insolently "Oh? Well why would she make that up?"

I replied that I supposed she wasn’t happy about what I said about her candidate and the Agent said "That’s right, you were rude!" The last time I checked being rude wasn’t a crime in America .

Luckily the big file they had gathered on me didn’t indicate mental instability or a past life of stalking/crime, however they did want to know how I felt about Obama. That was my limit. I told the Agent in no uncertain terms that my thoughts were not pertinent to their investigation, that this was America and the last time I checked I was allowed to think whatever I wanted without being questioned by the Secret Service. In fact, even if I had said what she claimed, that isn’t a threat. I told them (again) and my husband verified that the statement reported by Obama’s volunteer was a lie. I asked them if there was a tape of the call and they said no. I said, "So on the word of a ticked off Obama supporter you are on my porch with no other evidence and you want to question me about my THOUGHTS!?"

"State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about "Joe the Plumber."

On Oct. 17, BMV information on Wurzelbacher was obtained through an account used by the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency in Cleveland, records show.

Mary Denihan, spokeswoman for the county agency, said the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services contacted the agency today and requested an investigation of the access to Wurzelbacher’s information. Cuyahoga County court records do not show any child-support cases involving Wurzelbacher.

The State Highway Patrol, which administers the Law Enforcement Automated Data System in Ohio, asked Toledo police to explain why it pulled BMV information on Wurzelbacher within 48 hours of the debate, Hunter said.

In response to an add by the NRA, Obama’s team had general counsel Robert F. Bauer send stations a letter arguing that "Failure to prevent the airing of ‘false and misleading advertising may be ‘probative of an underlying abdication of licensee responsibility.’" And, more directly: "For the sake of both FCC licensing requirements and the public interest, your station should refuse to continue to air this advertisement."

St. Louis and Missouri Democrat sheriffs and top prosecutors are planning to go after anyone who makes false statements against Obama during his campaign. This is so one sided I can’t even begin to describe how wrong this agenda is. It’s one thing if they want to keep the campaign fair for both sides, but they clearly only want to enforce the issue for the Obama Camp. St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch are threatening to bring libel charges against those who speak out falsely against Barack Obama.

Boromir, you’ll recall, is the Judas of the Fellowship of the Ring. Sworn to protect Frodo the Ring-bearer with his life if need be, Boromir betrays his trust and tries to take the Ring by force, thereby sundering the Fellowship. Tellingly, all of this is done for the best of motives in Boromir’s eyes. He means to accomplish nothing but good with the Ring, to save his beloved kingdom of Minas Tirith from Sauron’s conquering armies.

In one of their own satires on power, The Giant Rat of Sumatra, the audio comedy troupe the Firesign Theatre speaks of “a power so great, it can only be used for good or evil.” This is Boromir’s tragically mistaken view of the One Ring. Though masking an unchecked power, the Ring is, for Boromir, only a tool–something no better or worse than the person who uses it. He seems almost unaware of the Ring’s dark side. Insofar as he is aware, he dismisses it out of hand, swearing, “True-hearted Men, they will not be corrupted.” Like any politician lobbying for his favorite cause–himself–he supplies a noble motive: “We do not desire the power of wizard-lords, only strength to defend ourselves, strength in a just cause.” He also supplies a noble champion. Guess who? He muses, “What could not a warrior do in this hour, a great leader?” Nor should Frodo have any fear that Boromir will succumb to the Ring’s blandishments because, as he vows, “I give you my word that I do not desire to keep it.”

Yet keeping or not keeping such power is not the main issue. Merely to desire it is to show oneself unworthy of it even for a moment. It is no accident that the Ring comes to a humble bearer who in no way has sought it and who wants no part of it. In the end it proves too much even for Frodo.

Was Frodo less resistant to the temptations of power than America’s greatest president? No, not Reagan, or FDR, or Lincoln, or even Jefferson. Washington: the only President who was ever offered a lifelong throne and turned it down for a temporary desk in a bureaucrat’s office. Almost to a man, his successors have been offered that same desk and have mistaken it for a throne.
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Whatever it does achieve comes at a terrible cost. If you include all forms of taxation, government confiscates about 40 to 50 percent of our income every year. What we receive for this robbery in goods and services is a pretty poor trade by any measure. Our schools turn out ill-mannered ignoramuses by the millions, many of them not fit for anything but Congress. Our health care system is a shell game where Peter is robbed and Paul doesn’t even get paid. Our social security system is a transparent Ponzi scheme that, if perpetrated by an individual, would earn him life in prison. The U.S. Treasury is the world’s greatest counterfeiter, inflicting on us an invisible form of taxation called inflation

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1207