Most everyone not living in a cave is aware of the brouhaha at Columbia University last week when College Republicans had speakers from The Minute Man Project. Liberal student groups orchestrated a protest inside the event and prevented the speakers from speaking. Columbia University officials promised an investigation.
On Wednesday evening Columbia University College Republicans had another event, this time with a former Islamic terrorist and a former member of Hitler’s Nazi Youth. Columbia promised to keep the event in order and somewhere around one thousand students registered to attend. This time Columbia decided that, in order to maintain order, they had to limit the number of people allowed into the event. So, while the event was peaceful and without interruptions, it also had only a handful of people in attendance.
The bottom line is this. Liberal student groups continue to effectively censor conservative speakers on the campus of Columbia University. The administration of Columbia University is either complicit in the censorship or they are horribly incompetent. That the administration of any university cannot control the actions of their student body is disgraceful.
Columbia is a very high profile university. Tuition at Columbia is not inexpensive. On top of that, Columbia’s School of Journalism is purported to be one of the best in the country. So, students at Columbia University, particularly in the School of Journalism, are absolutely prevented from hearing any view on campus that is in opposition to the liberal position. I imagine that is very good for diversity and and balance in education.
I can tell you this. Were I the parent of a student at Columbia University, I would be up in arms over these events. Columbia would either punish these thugs and errant student organizations and prevent further abuses or my child would be out of that school and I’d go to court if necessary to get every cent of tuition refunded. Parents of college students, particularly parents who are footing the bill, absolutely must stand up to these outrages. While many universities today have an extreme liberal bias that is evident everywhere on campus, they all still depend on the almighty dollar. Student tuition is the name of the game and parents have more power than they imagine. If students simply stop going to the worst offending institutions, those institutions would have no choice but to shape up or close their doors.
That won’t happen, of course. Most parents are sadly unaware of and uninformed about what is going on in many colleges and universities today. Just like most people who go to the polls next month and vote will not know who many of the candidates are, what the issues are or where each candidate stands on those issues. To many of us don’t take the time to become informed. Until that changes we can expect our colleges and universities along with our elected officials to get worse and worse.
Michelle Malkin writes about having one of her videos banned on YouTube without explanation. Se her open video letter to YouTube below.
The Democrats have made much hay over the last day or so over leaks from the NIE (national intelligence estimate). The claim is that the NIE shows that the US presence in Iraq has contributed to al Qaeda recruitment with the result that we are less secure than we were before 9/11.
President Bush has fired back today, saying he will declassify parts of the NIE and make it available at www.dni.gov (look for it possibly as early as Tuesday afternoon) so that everyone can read what it says and decide for themselves. Bush claims the leaked portions of the report have been taken out of context and that it does not support what Democrats claim it supports.
The timing of the leak, considering the report came out in April, is suspicious on its face. That we are so close to the mid-term election lend credence to the notion that this is a purely political move. Additionally, the assertion that we were somehow safer when al Qaeda was attacking us on 9/11 is counter intuitive at best. There has been a constant drumbeat that our presence in Iraq is a recruiting tool for al Qaeda. While there may be an element of truth to this claim, it is also true that pretty much our very existence is also an effective recruiting tool. The implication that we should just bring everyone home and mind our own business is naive at best. Such thinking is the epitome of Chamberlain appeasement and it has been shown historically to be disastrous.
What has been interesting in this latest leak is the defense Democrats have offered for it. Repeatedly the claim is made that since the report conflicts with what Bush has been saying, we should see it, implying that leaking it was okay. At least that’s the way their defense is coming off.
This raises an interesting question. Do the Democrats believe that all classified information that does not support the president’s position should be public? If they believe that, do they believe that applies when a Democrat is in the White House?
We seem to have developed an environment in the Democrat party that says leaks are always okay if they undermine the President’s position. Their justification is that the President has been lying to us and we should know that. The evidence, of course, does not support the claim that the President has lied. It may support the assertion that he has been wrong on this or that question but that is not the same as lying.
A further question is, how can a President, any President, conduct a war, foreign policy, or any other function of the executive branch if he does not have the ability to keep classified information secret? I doubt very much whether any President has ever been in a position where all the intelligence at his disposal fully supported his choice of action in a war. How can a President be expected to carry out operations in a war when every piece of intelligence is leaked to the press?
I wrote a piece back in June with the title Some Call it Treason where I made the case that the New York Times should be charged with treason. But the media isn’t the only culpable entity here. Some in the administration are leaking important classified information that is harmful to our military efforts for political reasons and somehow that has to be stopped! The notion that each individual in government is free to make his or her own decisions about what should be public and what should not, based on their own personal opinions about politics is simply dangerous and is not supported in law or the Constitution. It is, in my view, treasonous for individuals in the government to intentionally undermine the military effort in a time of war, particularly for political reasons.
Our US intelligence community and state department are in dire need of a thorough house cleaning. The traitors need to be found, prosecuted and cleared out. We cannot hope to win this war with Islamic fascism, regardless of who the President is, so long as classified information continues to flow freely to the press.
UPDATE:
Hugh Hewitt has an excellent treatment of this subject here. He quotes Jack Kelly saying:
Attacking our enemies does tend to make them angrier. But they were angry enough to start with, and failing to respond to their attacks can have worse consequences than defeating them in battle.
Anyway, all we know about the NIE is what the leaker and the New York Times want us to know. That’s not enough.
There is, of course, much more. Hewitt’s column is well worth reading.
It seems Dems never miss a chance for political gain by mis-characterizing what a Republican said. In the latest case the Republican was Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss. What he’s being castigated for was a remark he made in a closed door session of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the topic was intelligence in the war on terror.
There is dispute over what the Senator said. Dems claim he said “We need better intelligence. If we had better intelligence in the Civil War we’d be quoting Jefferson Davis, not Lincoln.” The Senator’s office say he said “If Gen. Jeb Stuart had had better intelligence, we’d all be meeting in Richmond right now.” Whatever! The general sentiment is the same, that the outcome of the Civil War would have been different if the south had better intelligence. Whether that is a true statement is debatable but the sentiment is a sound one, namely, that intelligence can make or break a war.
Rather than observe the obvious point, that Chambliss was lobbying for better intelligence in this war, Dems chose the obtuse route. They prefer to accuse Chambliss of political insensitivity, as if he’d said he wished the south had won. What nonsense! The same statement could be made about most every entity that has ever lost a war. You could say that if the Nazis had better intelligence we’d all be speaking German today. Would that be politically insensitive? How about if the Soviets had better intelligence we’d be meeting in Leningrad?
It is tempting to call this political correctness run amok but this is more insidious than that. This is pure demagoguery, nothing less. Dems know exactly what Chambliss was saying and what he meant. There was no secret desire to return to slavery or hidden wish that the south had won the Civil War. The statement, which ever statement you choose, means exactly what it says, that is, that we could lose the war without good intelligence.
Dems have taken this route before. When Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina retired, then Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott attempted to complement him. In doing so he said, “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either,” Admittedly Lott could have chosen his words better. Still, everyone knew that Lott was simply trying be gracious to a retiring member of the Senate from his own party. But Dems saw an opportunity to attack and it didn’t matter whether the charge was substantive or not.
The Democrats have demonstrated a pattern of spurious attacks purely for partisan gain rather than principled opposition. The Dems again demonstrate that power is what matters, not principle.
Back in 2004 I wrote a piece on campaign finance reform that rightly pointed out the unconstitutionality and hypocrisy of that legislation. It is a well documented piece and worth reading again.
Now that we are approaching another election season, the problems and conflicts that legislation creates are before us once again. Well blogger Kim du Toit has a great idea that I intend to follow (H/T Dean’s World). Here is Kim’s plan:
Here’s my promise: If a conservative organization wants to run a political ad criticizing any Congressman up for re-election during that 60-day window, I’ll let them run one on this website, for free, right up until Election Day.
And if Congress or for that matter law enforcement think that I’m going to refrain from criticizing an elected or wannabe-elected official, ever, they’re sadly mistaken.
As a supporter of the Constitution I make the same promise Kim made. Any conservative organization may run ads on my site critical of any politician right up until election day. Along with Kim, I don’t care what the FEC or the FCC or anyone else has to say about it. My governing authority is the Constitution which says:
Amendment I.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. (emphasis added)
Kim and all those who oppose the assault on the Constitution, I am with you!
