Category Archives: Journalism

The Passion of The Parrots

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Human Accomplishment, Journalism, Morality

“We love them for being like us. … But then we find ourselves unprepared for the challenges.” So wrote Chuck Bergman on the plight and paradox of parrots. The article quoted is “No-Fly Zone: Denied Their Natural Habits, Millions of Pet Parrots Lead Bleak, Lonely Lives.” It appeared in All Animals magazine, published by the Humane Society of the United States.

An academic, writer, photographer and conservationist, Chuck’s pieces about parrots are, well, achingly beautiful. (Next, read “The World’s Smartest Birds, Set Free,” at Slate.com.)

Here is hoping that Chuck puts that epistolary passion for parrots to work in the cause of Bob and Carol Dawson’s parrot paradise: “Macaw Rescue and Sanctuary.” I’ve written a short blog post about the sanctuary that Bob and Carol Dawson built. A feature about this haven—where it is well and truly about the birds—would be wonderful.

UPDATED: When Cretins ‘Confront’ Creep-In-Chief

Barack Obama, Christianity, Constitution, Founding Fathers, IMMIGRATION, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Regulation

In the age of illiteracy and ignorance, newspaper transcripts are obsolete. So rely on memory I must in relaying what one can take away from Obama’s “presser at the conclusion of the Africa Summit.” And it is, chiefly, that the media, whose duty it is to keep the president on his toes, is really really dim.

Again, Obama called Congress a do-nothing Congress (if only this were true), when the Founding Fathers put in place a constitutional scheme that was intended to gridlock, so as to prevent usurpation of power belonging to the people. That the system failed to preserve freedom is beside the point. Obama still gets away with disgorging misleading dross about the constitutional system’s workings.

Just the other day, the creep-in-chief declared that there was no money to protect the border from tidal waves of central-American juveniles. (That too was the fault of a “do-nothing Congress.”) Today, this interloper found plenty taxpayer money to give to “Africa” so that it could unleash the potential of its women, press, medical men (or witchdoctors, as they are called on that continent), civil institutions, on and on. I’d say this was tantamount to throwing good money after bad, if there was any real money to throw about.

The American media, like the army, is internationalist. They like to present themselves as humanitarians, whose sympathies lie with the world’s poor (unless they personally have to step up, whereupon these left-liberals metamorphose into NIMBYs).

Why, one feeble-minded female demanded, was an Ebola drug, developed in the US and still not approved for use due to Food and Drug Administration regs—yes, regulation can indirectly kill—why was it not being provided to “Africa”? (I don’t think American journos understand that “Africa,” like Europe before the European Union, is made up of many countries.) And was it ethical to test the compound on the infected Christian missionaries—Americans all—who contracted the disease when ministering to the sick and afflicted on the continent.

If they could, the journos would take the ZMapp drug away from these saints who deserve a cure. The selfless saints serving the Lord in Africa would probably agree.

UPDATED (8/7): Partial transcript courtesy of CNN.

Endless Ayers: Megyn Kelly Discombobulates

Journalism, Media

Vanity creates professional blind spots.

The headlines are hot with real news: The crush of illegals, some carrying serious diseases, is moving from the US border to the interior. This might be taking place with government imprimatur, but residents into whose communities the hordes are being moved are having none of it. Consequently, some courageous Americans have turned them away from the Murrieta Border Patrol facility. Israelis and Palestinians are certainly rioting, to say nothing of the ladies of the American left and their male lap dogs. All are having grand-Mal seizures because a few christian employers won’t be forced to pay for their IUDs and morning-after pills. Things are indeed heating up.

But what has occupied Fox News sensation Megyn Kelly for the last 4 days (and counting), to the almost complete exclusion of all else? That old has-been Bill Ayers. This was a story in 2008, if I am not mistaken, Miss Kelly. But I don’t care enough to … even check how dated this nonsense is.

“A world exclusive” Kelly calls her endless Ayers interviews; “a special report about Professor Bill Ayers,” who “admits to terrorizing this country, bombing buildings and committing other crimes during the 1970s. And he got away scot-free. Because this is America, he wound up as a college professor, who even helped a president launch his political career.”

There is nothing here that wasn’t reported back in 2008. More importantly: it doesn’t matter.

Lawless Lynching Of Mississippi Tea Partier

Democrats, Elections, Ethics, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media

From her position as a lowly reporter at CNN, dumbo Dana Bash—whose love for Barack Obama is second only to Jessica Yellin’s, another of CNN’s pack animals—often allows herself to editorialize. Today Dana was doing Jackson, Mississippi, where she campaigned (oops, reported) for establishment Republican Thad Cochran, urging Democrats, via her “suggestive reporting” and selective interviews, that, “African-Americans … do have a stake in this runoff election.” In other words, vote against anti-establishment Republican Chris McDaniel if you don’t want to witness a reinstatement of Jim Crow laws.

Dana assures her readers and viewers that, “Mississippi law allows anyone to vote in the runoff, meaning Democrats can go to the polls so long as they didn’t vote in the Democratic primary and they don’t plan to support their party candidate in the general election.”

Not everyone agrees with Dana, who is no more than an Obama devotee, parading as a journalist. J. Christian Adams, “an election lawyer who served in the Voting Rights Section at the U.S. Department of Justice,” has this to say:

Mississippi law has a prohibition against voting in the Republican primary if you do not intend to support the nominee in November. The law is still on the books. A case which undermined the statute was thrown out and vacated by a federal appeals court. The closest thing there is questioning the law is an old attorney general’s opinion questioning the enforceability of the law.
The attorney general’s opinion, issued by a Democrat in 2003, doesn’t do what the left is claiming it does. For starters, it is simply an attorney general’s opinion. When I went to law school, we learned that such opinions are not binding authority. These days it seems that they are binding authority, as long as the left agrees with the outcome.
But the AG opinion cites eight reasons a voter may be challenged. Number 8 says “(g) That he is otherwise disqualified by law.” “Otherwise disqualified by law” certainly might mean they aren’t supposed to vote in the primary because they don’t qualify under Mississippi Code 23-15-575.
When I went to law school, we also learned about the canon of statutory interpretation that “courts must not construe statutes so as to nullify, void or render meaningless or superfluous.”
The chairs of the Democrat Party and Republican Party recognize what the academics apparently do not. Both are calling for Democrats not to raid the Republican runoff Tuesday. … MORE.