Please, Sean Hannity, Less Noise

Ann Coulter, Conservatism, IMMIGRATION, Media

Please Sean Hannity, it is not often that you entertain a guest who knows her subject. But when you do, please let the odd, knowledgeable guest get a word in edgeways. Even the most retarded of your viewers is, by now, familiar with your own quick-fix program for America, repeated ad nauseam on radio and TV. So there is no point in shouting these bullet points again and again, over each guest who makes a feeble attempt at speaking on the Hannity Show.

Seriously, you don’t understand the nuances of centrally planned, mass immigration. When she is allowed on Fox New, let Ann Coulter explain to you that even if good people flow across the border with no end insight, Other, Unseen, Better people must work to support the first horde of uneducated, welfare-dependent cuties. Please Sean Hannity, stop talking, for once! You used to be humbler about your lackluster knowledge.

There is nothing worse than straining to glean important information drowned in the din you make about your plan for America: the one penny plan, school vouchers (as opposed to free-market education), medical savings accounts (as opposed to free-market health care), conquests abroad, yada, yada, yada.

Today, Sean Hannity, your lineup (Trump and Coulter) was far and away better than Megyn Kelly’s. She is fast succumbing to the vulgar female instinct to show-off, bare too much, flirt, wink, talk, too, over her guests, and kvetch excessively. Make a point of not emulating Kelly or Bill O’Reilly.

The Tyranny Taking Shape In America Is Of The Left

America, Fascism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

Paul Gottfried is a real rock star on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine. His latest piece, “The Intellectual Roots of the American Left’s Emerging Totalitarianism”—read it!— mentions an upcoming book, Fascism: The Career of a Concept. Nerds have something to look forward to.

I own all Paul’s books except for Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America, published by Cambridge University Press (Paul had Advance Praise for my first book).

In “The Intellectual Roots of the American Left’s Emerging Totalitarianism,” Gottfried points out, essentially, that the fascist program was tame compared to the Stalinist one:

… the Nazis, aggressive thugs as they were, had no interest in the worldwide indoctrination program dreamed of by the universalist, conversionary and egalitarian zealots of the true Left.

In contrast to the Nazis, the Left has regularly used every means at its disposal to reconstruct the human personality in accordance with its world vision. Perhaps even more significantly, for the last seventy years the Left has imagined itself as a brave force of resistance against a supposedly implacable but entirely fictitious and shape-shifting enemy— the great evil of “fascism.” As I document in my forthcoming book, Fascism: Career of a Concept, the Left’s eternal enemy of “fascism” is variously depicted as racism, Christian fanaticism, European nationalism, or even opposition to Israeli foreign policy.

Read the rest.

UPDATED: Disparate-Impact Doctrine: Doing Away With Due Process (Obama’s Race Database)

Constitution, Justice, Law, Private Property, The Courts

Is there any doubt the US Supreme Court is engaged in shameless social engineering, and now regularly exceeds its constitutional appellate jurisdiction? A scandalous example of this is Justice Anthony Kennedy’s swing vote in affirming the disparate-impact doctrine, thus doing away with due process (property rights have long since been sundered).

The Doctrine holds “that the law allows not only claims for intentional discrimination but also, claims that cover practices that have a discriminatory effect, even if they were not motivated by an intent to discriminate.” (CNN)

An example that comes to mind: A property owner (in name only) doesn’t want to sell a residential property in a quaint little town to a developer who’ll erect an apartment block on the small space, currently surrounded by family homes. The government decides that this would impede the ability of poorer minorities to move into this cute little hamlet, and sues the seller.

The SCOTUS Blog:

On June 25, 2015, the Supreme Court, by a five-to-four margin, upheld the application of disparate impact under the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. While upholding the theory, the Court imposed significant limitations on its application in practice. [Yeah, right!]

In a disparate-impact claim, a plaintiff may establish liability, without proof of intentional discrimination, if an identified business practice has a disproportionate effect on certain groups of individuals and if the practice is not grounded in sound business considerations. The Court, however, imposed important limitations on the application of the theory “to protect potential defendants against abusive disparate-impact claims.”

Is there any wonder Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch was so jubilant? She “released the following statement … after the Supreme Court ruling in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project Inc.:

“I am pleased that the Supreme Court has affirmed that the Fair Housing Act encompasses disparate impact claims, which are an essential tool for realizing the Act’s promise of fair and open access to housing opportunities for all Americans. While our nation has made tremendous progress since the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968, disparate impact claims remain an all-too-necessary mechanism for rooting out discrimination in housing and lending. By recognizing that laws, policies and practices with unjustified discriminatory effects are inconsistent with the Fair Housing Act, today’s decision lends support to hardworking Americans who are attempting to find good housing opportunities for themselves and their families. Bolstered by this important ruling, the Department of Justice will continue to vigorously enforce the Fair Housing Act with every tool at its disposal – including challenges based on unfair and unacceptable discriminatory effects.”

UPDATE (7/25): The link between the affirmation of the disparate-impact doctrine and Obama’s race database is obvious. Have race data will travel.

Paul Sperry:

… Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites.

This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases, which Obama already is using to make “disparate impact” cases against: banks that don’t make enough prime loans to minorities; schools that suspend too many blacks; cities that don’t offer enough Section 8 and other low-income housing for minorities; and employers who turn down African-Americans for jobs due to criminal backgrounds.

Big Brother Barack wants the databases operational before he leaves office, and much of the data in them will be posted online.

So civil-rights attorneys and urban activist groups will be able to exploit them to show patterns of “racial disparities” and “segregation,” even if no other evidence of discrimination exists.

MORE.

Does McCain Owe A Mea Culpa To POWS & MIAS?

Criminal Injustice, Foreign Policy, John McCain, Media, War

“Does McCain Owe Mea Culpa To POWS & MIAS?” is the current column, now on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine. An excerpt:

“It’s the beginning of the end for Donald Trump.” “It disqualifies him as a presidential candidate.” “This is the end of his run.” So crowed the political operatives looking to take down Mr. Trump, and by so doing, protect the political status quo and ease themselves into positions of greater power. The egos in the anchor’s chair and the pundits opposite chimed in: “He’ll make the more serious candidates look more serious,” predicted the next Michael Oakeshott and favorite imbecile, S. E. Cupp.

The Donald is in the dock for desecrating one of the political establishment’s most sacred cows: Sen. John McCain. Speaking at a forum in Iowa, the popular presidential hopeful said these sagacious things about the Republican from Arizona:

“[McCain’s] not a war hero. He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, okay?” (On the same occasion, Trump ventured that he was not particularly for the Vietnam War, a position that should endear him to principled libertarians.)

Not only does Donald Trump not owe Sen. McCain an apology; McCain likely owes mea culpa to Trump—and to the very many Vietnam veterans and their families whom he is alleged to have betrayed.

Yes, the heroic prisoner-of-war pedigree upon which McCain has established his career and credibility is probably a myth.

For our purposes, the story begins with Sydney Schanberg, back in the days before American journalism became a circle jerk of power brokers.

Mr. Schanberg is one of “America’s most eminent journalists.” “For his accounts of the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in 1975,” Schanberg “was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting ‘at great risk.’ He is also the recipient of many other awards–including two George Polk awards, two Overseas Press Club awards and the Sigma Delta Chi prize for distinguished journalism.” Schanberg’s byline at The Nation magazine further reveals that:

The 1984 movie, The Killing Fields [watch it!], which won several Academy Awards, was based on his book ‘The Death and Life of Dith Pran’–a memoir of his experiences covering the war in Cambodia for the New York Times and of his relationship with his Cambodian colleague, Dith Pran.

Schanberg is also the author of a “remarkable 8,000-word exposé”: “McCain and the POW Cover-Up.” Here follow the opening paragraphs. They provide a précis of the forensic evidence collected by Schanberg against McCain as ally of Vietnam War POWs and men missing inaction …

Read on. “Does McCain Owe A Mea Culpa To POWS & MIAS?” is now on The Unz Review.