Zappa to Tea Parties

by Smitty

Frank had a potty mouth, so I put it up over at effing conservatives, but it's a nice reggae groove that seems to be a prescient note about the SEIU to the Tea Parties: "We've got to stick together".

Coulter In the House!

Just ducked out of a speech by Ann Coulter here at the YAF National Conservative Student Conference, so I could report her opening line: "I'd like to thank the pharmaceutical industry for putting together this fake audience for me."

Actually, the audience is real -- and it's spectacular! Coulter also said that, thanks to the Obama administration, now every ballerina can grow up to be White House chief of staff.

Will update later . . .

UPDATE: Now it's Q&A time, where Ann has -- in the past -- caused controversy.

UPDATE II: Understand that the last-night dinner at the YAF conference is a big deal, and the young ladies get all dolled up for it. Some of them are dressed in a manner that might best be described as . . . well, Coulteresque.

OK, so a platinum blonde in a zebra-striped dress just asked Ann whether she would advise attending law school, as Coulter herself did.

"Do not go to law school," replies Ann. "Encourage liberals to go to law school. It's a complete waste of time."

Coulter said the only caveat is, it's OK to go to law school if you actually want to practice law. But if you''re just a recent college graduate who doesn't know what to do next, the "Oh, I guess I'll just go to law school" route is a waste of time, she said.

BTW, Coulter was introduced tonight by Ramapo College senior Lauren Scirocco, who was recently interviewed in Time magazine:

I really like Sarah Palin. I think as a conservative woman, I can really relate to her. . . . Conservatives feel like she's someone they can relate to and believe in. Liberals vilify her and make fun of her constantly, and I think that's because they're afraid of her and know she's going to be there in the future. She's not going away.

BTW, Miss Scirocco's dress tonight is . . . Coultersque.

UPDATE III: Just met Robert Vernon Myers III, a recent graduate of Florida International University, and had the opportunity to introduce him to Regis Giles, daughter of popular conservative commentator Doug Giles. Young Miss Giles' black dress tonight is . . . Coulteresque.

UPDATE IV: Speaking of Coulteresque . . .

At left is A.J. Dobson of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, who just had his book signed by Ann Coulter. I jokingly suggested Ann should write her personal cell number under her autograph, but that wouldn't be Coultersque. That would be . . . Cougaresque.

Speaking of bad jokes, remember Jesse Griffin? Miss Coulter told me, "You've been doing some great work lately." She said she had seen the reports that Dan Riehl and I had done about the anti-Palin blogger "Gryphen." BTW, just noticed that story's been linked by Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs, and meanwhile Dan Riehl has the latest on Jesse.

UPDATE V: To the commenter who asked: Yes, Mrs. Other McCain knows where I am. And she also knows I'll be at the private after-party at an undisclosed location. Mrs. Other McCain has been putting up with my bad jokes for 20 years.

And so, folks . . . on to the after-party!

UPDATE VI: by Smitty
Stacy reports, from an undisclosed location, that at 2300 Eastern, an Coulter ate a cheese-fry. Additionally, she is partaking of a margarita on the rocks for her beverage. This is offered in direct rebuke of the lefties who claim she's a succubus.

UPDATE VII: by Smitty
Via Town Hall, the monologue.

Lieberman, Collins, Grassley express 'serious concern' about ITC's IG

Scored a minor scoop today from Capitol Hill:

Three senators, including Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, have sent a letter to Shara L. Aranoff, chairwoman of the International Trade Commission, expressing "serious concerns" about the contractual terms under which the ITC's inspector general is hired.
The letter, signed by Lieberman, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine -- the committee's ranking Republican -- and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), complained of the ITC's unusual practice of hiring the agency's IG under a six-month contract, which the senators suggest may undermine the watchdog's independence.

Read the whole thing. What is significant is that this is the first evidence that Lieberman's committee is willing to cooperate with Grassley, who has been bulldogging IG-Gate for nearly two months.

Best Wishes, Jenny Sanford

by Smitty (h/t Alan Colmes)

Alan reports that Jenny Sanford is headed back to Charleston for the school year. God strengthen you, lady. Hopefully, "From there we will continue to work on the process of healing our family" will translate into a divorce avoided.
Sanford: resign, fix your mess.

Rahm's Grasp of Democracy

by Smitty (h/t PuffHo)

In the military, blue-on-blue is a Bad Thing. Here, not sure much.

Sources at the meeting tell me that Emanuel really teed off on the Dem-versus-Dem attacks, calling them "f–king stupid." This was a direct attack on some of the attendees in the room, who are running ads against Dems right now.

Tellingly, Rahm raised the specter of a loss on health care, sources at the meeting say — which suggests that the White House may be less certain about victory than officials allow publicly.

Which seems at odds with SEIU, whose propaganda ends with "health care deserves a democratic debate". To the extent that debate drives towards a Constitutional Amendment to state just how the 10th Amendment is over-ridden in the case of health care, one can agree with the SEIU.

'Raised the specter' raises Joe Sestak against Arlen Specter in PA. May they decimate each other, and make room for a non-Progressive of some stripe. The fact that "We the People" have allowed these accretions of power is to our detriment.

Virginia, Meet Your Future Senator

Her name is Kelsey Budd. She is a student at the College of William & Mary, where she runs track and cross-country. She is currently interning for the Claire Boothe Luce Policy Institute -- see her "Student Spotlight" here -- and today at the YAF National Conservative Student Conference, she told me her ambition is to be a senator. Well, why wait to start the campaign?

See my article: "For YAF, the Future Is Now"

The Future of the Conservative Movement

Just brought me lunch:

This is Trey Easton, Sarah T. Herman Intern Scholar for the Young America's Foundation, and a junior majoring in economics at George Mason University.

You may ask yourself, "Why is such a promising young fellow bringing Stacy McCain a cheeseburger, fries and a large sweet iced tea from Wendy's?"

As famed George Mason economist Walter Williams would explain, the secret of capitalism is how "the Invisible Hand" redirects resources to their most valuable use. In this example, the resource involved was time.

There was a line at Wendy's downstairs here at GWU's Marvin Center, site of the YAF National Conservative Student Conference. Would my time be best spent standing in that line, rather than getting my laptop set up and logged in?

So I decided to come up here and was getting set up when -- as if by magic -- the "Invisible Hand" brought me into contact with young Mr. Easton.

"An intern?" I said. "Listen, I've got a job for you . . ."

Never let it be said that I haven't done my share to train the future leaders of the conservative movement in the glories of capitalism!

UPDATE 3:42 p.m.: "Mom?" young Mr. Easton said into his cell phone just now, after I showed him this post. "Mom, go to Google. . . . OK, now type in 'The Other McCain' . . . That's right. The first link at the top of the page. . . . OK, Mom, I gotta run now. Kind of busy. Love you. Bye."

He forgot to add, "Hit the tip jar, Mom." Never let it be said that I haven't done my share to train the future leaders of the conservative movement in the glories of capitalism!

It's a small binary world after all

by Smitty (h/t Open...)

Apparently, some bloke in Georgia (not RSM's home state, but Edward Shevardnadze's) was the cause of a globally visible ruckus yesterday:

A Georgian blogger with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and Google's Blogger and YouTube was targeted in a denial of service attack that led to the site-wide outage at Twitter and problems at the other sites on Thursday, according to a Facebook executive.

Open... quotes the victim as saying:

this hackers was from Russian KGB

I had a personal, albeit orders of magnitude smaller, experience along these lines last year when I put up something on the Slashdot Firehose.
Displeased people, presumably from Russia, mod-bombed me into oblivion and wrote rather threatening replies all over the site.
Granted, it's only a website, but it does give one pause. The concept of free speech is not universally deemed a feature.

Live from YAF Conference!

I'm at the Young America's Foundation National Conservative Student Conference, where Monica Crowley speaks tonight.

Will update with photos after dessert, but first I've got to tell you some weird news: No fewer than three students here have already told me they read the blog. One of them is Patrick Cassil, whose older sister is Alisa Cassil (a Facebook friend); another is actually Joseph Farah's daughter, Alyssa; and the third is Eva Lorraine Molina, a Sarah Palin fan at Amherst College who's actually been following the Hiroshima/Nagasaki thing that Dan and I have been doing this week.

Also, Eva is a fan of Ace of Spades HG -- the next generation of Morons! Read my American Spectator article about the YAF Conference here.

Will update with photos and speech excerpts after I get my dessert and coffee.

UPDATE I: First two photos:

Monica Crowley and Jason Mattera.

Hannah Giles, Jason Mattera, Alyssa Farah. (Y'know, I think somebody's trying to make somebody jealous.)

UPDATE II: Monica Crowley speaking about Obama: "This guy is even more dangerous than Bill Clinton ever was. . . . He is a radical through and through."

Crowley on the town halls: "I love it that our Democratic elected representatives are afraid of us. . . . And they should be!"

Ah, some more photos of the attendees:

Alisa Cassil and her brother Patrick Cassil.

My tablemates and fellow Georgians, sisters Naomi and Lydia Brown.

Lydia Brown with Stephen Hodgson of the Young Briton's Foundation.

Will update with more photos and quotes . . .

UPDATE III: More photos:

Brittany Bezick, Katelyn Alfano and Elizabeth Davidson.

Kelsey Budd, on the left, actually helped me with some of the IDs of earlier photos, and at right is Eva Lorraine Molina, the AOSHQ fan.

More photos to come . . .

UPDATE IV: In the Q&A, Naomi Brown asked a question and Crowley responded by saying she'd vote to elect Brown president. Also, Crowley called cap-and-trade "tantamount to the largest tax increase in the history of the world" and said the Waxman-Markey bill, if enacted would be "the death knell of the U.S. economy."

A couple more photos:

Adam Destremps and Travis Korson.

Ruth Malhotra and YAF's Patrick Coyle.

Travis Korson, Elizabeth Davidson, Emily O'Neil, Adam Destremps.

Well, they're shutting down here. Be back tomorrow for Ann Coulter!

Known Traffic Menace Terrorizes D.C.

Now I'm on my way to Capitol Hill -- texting this post via cell phone while weaving wildly through traffic -- and I notice I'm linked by The Sarah Palin Blog:

"Gryphen" is upset that "minions" of "the Palin team" exposed him. So it was okay for him to fabricate a story about the Palins and create a rumor cancer that spread on the Internet. But, it is not okay for someone to expose him.
Gryphen, you do see the difference right? What you did is called - "lying." What Dan Riehl did is called - "good reporting." The difference being - now stay with me on this Gryphen - something called - "the truth."

Hey, where's the nuance in that? Please note once more that this post is clearly marked "humor," so I'm probably just joking if I tell you I just had to jump the curb and drive half a block down the sidewalk -- stupid tourist bus! -- so I'm not late for my next appointment.

Well, that's all for now. I might need to drive with both hands for the next maneuver. Be sure to check in at Riehl World View for more good-spirited humor.

What Stogie Said

"The most important thing about this Griffin affair is that it FINALLY fires a needed shot across the bow of the gaggle of Alaskan PDS bloggers who are obsessed with the personal destruction of Sarah Palin. Those bloggers include Jesse Griffin, Jeanne Devon, Linda Kellen Biegel and Shannyn Moore -- obnoxious liars, all."
-- Stogie at Saberpoint

BTW, some idiot tried to leave a comment about me getting clocked doing 85 mph in a 65 mph zone, alleging that this proved I was the real menace to society. Rejected.

Fast driver? Guilty, your honor. Safe driver? Completely. It's that hillbilly moonshiner NASCAR gene. Like that bumper sticker I saw on a pickup truck once: "I'm not speeding. I'm qualifying."

Of course, if that trooper had been parked somewhere else at some other time, he might have clocked me at 110 mph. (N.B.: "If" denotes a hypothetical, and "might" merely suggests a possibility, and since this is clearly marked "humor," I'm probably just joking.)

Meanwhile, my bulldog friend Dan Riehl notices that a certain fellow has some curious research interests . . . NTTAWWT. IYKWIMAITYD.

BTW, I'm blogging from the campus of George Washington University, where the Young America's Foundation is holding its 31st Annual National Conservative Leadership Conference. Just dropped in to say hi to Jason Mattera, who blogged about the massive fail by Campus Progress disrupters.

Meanwhile, the Left is accusing the Right of organizing dissent at congressional town-hall meetings. The great thing about being a Democrat is that no one can accuse you of not having standards. Two of them, in fact!

Me? I'm a one-man angry mob.

Libertarian Skinny-Dipping in Daytona: Hayekian Facts vs. 'Journalism Ethics'

To the commenter who accused me of committing a "travesty of journalistic ethics":

• Your comment was rejected. If you want to run me down, do it on your own blog. Flame wars are good for traffic, but you do not have permission to use my bandwidth to malign me.
• Ethics, shmethics. Truth may not be a journalist's only duty, but it's massively more important than whatever's second most important. If I accurately report the facts, I've done my job -- and just getting the facts right is hard enough.

I learned this as a sports writer. Simple question: If I'm covering a high-school baseball game, does accepting free food from the booster moms at the concession stand constitute a breach of "journalistic ethics"?

If so, then I kissed ethics good-bye in 1986. But I always got the final score right and you could probably count on one hand the times I committed the true "travesty" in small-town journalism: Misspelling a kid's name. (Hey, when a kid's mom calls you up to cuss you out, you remember a thing like that.)

Get the facts right, and how many free hot dogs you eat is your own business. Nobody cares about your opinion of the Calhoun High starting backfield -- if this year is like most years, they're a tad on the slow side -- but you've got to accurately report the total rushing yardage. (Which, if this year is like most years, won't be much.)

Because most journalists are Democrats, the political journalist who is not a Democrat tends to be viewed with disdain by the rest of the profession. I'm fine with that. But my political opinions -- "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Bob Barr!" -- are not a license for other people to give me lectures on "ethics."

You Can Quote Me On That

"Ethics, schmethics," as I told Bob Barr while we walked to the Fish On Fire seafood restaurant from the crappy fleabag hotel ("International Conference Center," my foot) where the Libertarian Party held its March 2007 national conference of state party chairs.

Certainly, I was no less ethical than Dave Weigel, my co-panelist in the "How to Deal With Media" discussion, which was the purpose (or pretext, if you prefer) of our expense-paid junket to Orlando.

Our publications (Dave was then at Reason magazine) got exclusive coverage without having to pay for our travel, which is a pretty cool deal. Of course, under such an arrangement, you're not going to do a rip-the-lid-off exposé -- "Fear and Loathing in Orlando: A Savage and Decadent Saga of Libertarian Depravity" -- but neither are you required to do a total puff piece.

In a universe of facts, not every fact can be reported, and what happens in Orlando stays in Orlando. That's what I tried to explain to Bob Barr, afterI excused myself from dinner with the LP brain trust, went back to my hotel and returned with a stack of towels.

"You were serious?" said the former member of the House Judiciary Committee.

"Serious as a heart attack, Bob," I answered, reiterating the plan I'd been discussing with the LP brain trust. "Look, it's almost 10 o'clock now and it's about an hour drive to Daytona Beach. We could stop by a fireworks store along the way, head to the beach, go skinny-dipping in the ocean, shoot off about $200 worth of fireworks -- have some real fun!"

Did I mention that it was March? Spring break in Daytona, skinny-dipping in the Atlantic with the first member of Congress to bring charges of "high crimes and misdemeanors" against Bill Clinton -- and that was before Lewinsky -- man, what a story!

However, as I promised Bob, the Daytona expedition would remain strictly off-the-record. If the first three rules of journalism are "Accuracy, accuracy and accuracy," then the fourth rule is: A good reporter never burns his sources.

So I can't tell you whether or not the Libertarian Party brain trust took me up on that Daytona road-trip suggestion. (Don't worry, Mrs. Barr. Bob was accompanied by a professional journalist the entire time. And I've got family values.)

However, I remind you of an important corollary to the Fourth Rule of Journalism: A good source never burns a reporter. When I call Bob Barr on his personal cell phone, he takes the call. IYKWIMAITYD.

Hayekian Journalism

This is the kind of keen journalistic insight necessary to advance from being a $4.50-an-hour staff writer for a 6,000-circulation weekly to become a top Hayekian public intellectual.

In a universe of facts, not every fact is sufficiently important to merit inclusion in a 700-word news story. Political news consumers in March 2007 were interested in the Libertarian Party's prospects for . . . well, anything, really. When the Libertarians have nerds like George Phillies, stoners like Steve Kubby and fanatical purists like Mary Ruwart seeking the presidential nomination, and when the party's 2008 convention requires six ballots to decide Barr is the better candidate, you can't be blamed for wondering if they're really serious about politics.

However remote the chance that the LP could influence the outcome of the 2008 election, serious political news consumers were interested in that stuff. Certainly, those readers had no interest in the trivial matter of whether, shortly after 11:30 p.m. on the evening of Saturday, March 17, 2007, Bob Barr and the Libertarian brain trust were cavorting nude with a half-dozen Purdue University coeds in the Atlantic surf of Daytona Beach.

That's the kind of sleazy, sensational tabloid stuff that no serious political journalist would be interested in reporting. For less than $10,000.

Neither Confirm Nor Deny, Bob

Hey, I write for money -- that's what it means to be a professional, as opposed to an amateur clown like Dennis "Bozo" Zaki, who actually lied about being a CNN stringer. In the Hayekian universe of facts, a reporter must exercise judgment about which facts are important enough to include in a news story, but I wouldn't knowingly publish a lie for any sum you could name.

Speculation about the sex lives of Republicans seems to be a full-time career for some people, but until there's actual proof -- a court document, an arrest report, a flight to Argentina -- such gossip is no more newsworthy than baseless innuendo about whether Barr and the LP brain trust took me up on that Daytona road-trip plan.

If some "source" ever tells you over beers that, shortly before dawn on Sunday, March 18, 2007, Bob Barr was passed out nude in the back seat of a rented Chevy SUV, while the other members of the LP brain trust were so hopelessly hammered that they'd taken the desperate measure of agreeing to let me drive back to Orlando -- well, in a circumstance like that, you'd be obligated to let Bob have a chance to give you an official denial before you'd even dream of reporting such potentially defamatory gossip.

("No comment," Bob. Neither confirm nor deny. This will be the most priceless "no comment" in the history of political journalism. And a good source never burns a reporter.)

Likewise with Todd and Sarah Palin. As far as I'm concerned, their love life is not news. But it gets mighty cold in Wasilla sometimes, and there's a Phantom Fireworks Superstore a block south of Silver Beach Avenue in Daytona, so if the Palins ever want to get some advice from a savvy media professional . . .

Well, should anybody feel the urge to hit the tip jar, don't fight the feeling. I'm a professional. I write for money. Photography? That's just a hobby. IYKWIMAITYD.

Nice Career You've Got There,Lefty Blogger . . .

Advice to amateur Bozos: Next time you get the urge to start making stuff up, don't mess with Dan Riehl.

THE GRYPHEN FILES: Of Moonbats and 'Minions'

"Yes I stand by every single word of it. Believe me if it had been wholly inaccurate you would NEVER have witnessed such a response by the Palin team and their minions."
-- "Gryphen," a/k/a Jesse Griffin, Aug. 5, 2009

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
-- Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003)

One of the basic problems of liberalism is that it requires a false optimism about human nature. If you believe all human problems can be solved by goodwill (and, of course, a few billion dollars of taxpayer money) you are self-evidently a fool, and I'm too old to waste time arguing with fools.

The Vision of the Anointed, as Thomas Sowell has famously called the fundamental delusion of liberalism, necessarily leads to other errors, until eventually the True Believer finds himself imprisoned by a set of false assumptions which he cannot question, lest his entire worldview fall apart. Once a reasonably intelligent person begins in earnest to critically examine the truth-claims of liberalism, he will eventually become an ex-liberal.

Habits of thought, however, can be as difficult to break as a heroin addiction, and someone who gets into the habit of thinking that every Democrat is a saint and every Republican is evil will have a hard time reconciling these beliefs with the facts.

As John Adams said, facts are stubborn things, and the fact is that Jesse Griffin's victimhood schtick looks like the predictable reaction of a narcissistic phony caught in a lie. Griffin is counting on his fellow liberals to subscribe to a syllogism:

• All liberals are good people;
• Griffin is a liberal; ergo
• Griffin is a good person.

If you think like that, you're a chump. And if you think that everyone with a nice smile is a good person, you are also a chump. Ted Bundy had a nice smile. (As does Sarah Palin, for that matter.)

Griffin wants to make this all about Palin, and invite his fellow Palin-haters to believe that Palin is the ultimate source of Griffin's woes.

Very convenient for Griffin, you see, as it seems that every dingbat in Anchorage with access to the Internet is spending all their time spreading malicious nonsense about Sarah Palin. So, by playing this Victim-of-Palin card, Griffin invites the swarm of blogospheric myrmidons to testify what a swell guy he is.

Whatever. I've spent five days working with Dan Riehl on this story, and it's time for me to move on. By the time any members of the Anchorage PDS Moonbat Brigade read this, I'll be on a train to D.C. to get back to the stories I was working on when Griffin ruined my weekend by claiming to know -- for a fact -- that Todd and Sarah Palin were getting divorced. As I wrote in my article earlier this morning:

Griffin's story was immediately promoted by Dennis Zaki's "Alaska Report" site, which claimed that "multiple sources" had confirmed the report. Jeanne Devon, an Anchorage Democratic activist who had previously blogged anonymously, also promoted Griffin's "exclusive" at the Huffington Post.
As a result of this promotion, by Saturday afternoon Zaki's headline, "Todd and Sarah Palin to divorce," was the lead item at the popular Memeorandum political news site, even though it had already been officially denied by Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton.

That's where the story stood a little after 4:30 p.m. ET Saturday when, taking a break from an article I was writing for the American Spectator, I decided to check Memeorandum and came to the erroneous conclusion that I'd been scooped by some nobody blogger in Anchorage.

This resulted in a phone call, and by 5:08 p.m., I had an authorized "completely false." By 5:38 p.m., I had a direct quote from Sarah Palin. And I then spent a little time conclusively demonstrating that Dennis Zaki is a clueless Bozo who wouldn't last a week covering the Floyd County Commission for the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune. (The city editor is Mike Colombo; Bozos need not apply.)

This is what happens when stupid amateurs play "investigative reporter," you see? And then Sunday afternoon, some anonymous Internet dude sent me an e-mail with the identity of "Gryphen." I called Dan Riehl, who was CC'd on the e-mail, asked him what he thought, poked around a bit on the Google, and decided I'd better post it before Dan did, if I wanted the scoop.

Then I spent perhaps the sweatiest four hours of my professional career waiting for Dan to nail down the ID. If Griffin thinks he's suffered hell this week, imagine if my anonymous e-mailer had ID'd the wrong "Gryphen." Some poor schmuck who doesn't even have a blog finds a lynch mob in his front yard -- no, that would not do. Thank God, Dan nailed it.

Everything that I've done since then has been motivated by two factors:

1. My love of a being in on a big story; and
2. My personal opinion, as a father of six children, that I would be extremely angry if I found out somebody like Jesse Griffin was a teaching assistant in my kid's kindergarten class.

One of my sources, somebody who was never quoted or even mentioned in our reporting, is a Ph.D. expert in such matters.

"How in the blazes did they hire this guy?" said my source, after being filled in (names excluded) on the background, including the quotes from "Gryphen" when he was still anonymous.

Maybe it's all perfectly innocent. Maybe Griffin's the sweetest guy in the world. But as my source put it, any school principal who hires a middle-aged divorced man as "an assistant teacher in a room full of five year old children" needs to have their head examined.

Simply as a statistical proposition, it's a nightmare of unnecessary risk. My own daughter is majoring in early elementary education, and it's not like there is any shortage of potential kindergarten teachers.

Well, I'll let Dan Riehl fight it out from here. But I still have questions because -- thanks to Dan's ace research skills -- I know what the Anchorage school district was paying Griffin, and it sure isn't enough to make the payments on a $330,000 house.

Griffin keeps talking about having some other job that's his main source of income, but if he's actually being paid -- by the National Enquirer, maybe? -- to do journalism, he needs to be fired from that, too.

Maybe he's not a pervert, but he sure as hell is not a reporter. Now you'll excuse me, I've got a train to catch. And don't forget to hit the tip jar -- good minions don't come cheap.

LOOK FOR UPDATES AT RIEHL WORLD VIEW.

EXIT, LYING: SCHOOL'S OUT FORANTI-PALIN BLOGGER GRIFFIN

ANCHORAGE KINDERGARTEN AIDE
RESIGNS FOLLOWING DISCLOSURE

Jesse Griffin, the Alaska blogger who Saturday claimed in an "exclusive" report that Todd and Sarah Palin were divorcing, will no longer work as an Anchorage kindergarten teaching assistant, school officials confirmed Wednesday.

Griffin's resignation followed revelations that the 49-year-old Griffin had posted (under the alias "Gryphen") sexually explicit advocacy of pornography and masturbation on his "Immoral Minority" blog. (See "Give Jesse Enough Rope" WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE.)

Because Griffin's MySpace profile page featured a link to "Immoral Minority," that material -- as well as other vulgar content, including descriptions of former Gov. Palin as "a nasty b*tch" who wore "f*** me pumps" -- could have been accessed by anyone searching online for "Jesse Griffin" in Anchorage. (See "Jesse Griffin: Disturbing Revelations," by Dan Riehl.)

Investigative blogger Dan Riehl on Wednesday spoke by phone with Anchorage school district officials who seemed to have been previously unaware of the graphic content on Griffin's "Immoral Minority" site. (See "Jesse Griffin: Latest Developments," by Dan Riehl. )

Riehl was interviewed Wednesday evening about the Griffin case on Eddie Burke's popular Anchorage KBYR radio program. Burke said on the program that school officials told him that Griffin had submitted his resignation and that the district had "no record of any inappropriate actions" by Griffin while he was employed at Trailside Elementary School in Anchorage.

"Sarah is finished with Todd and has decided to end their marriage," Griffin wrote at "Immoral Minority" Saturday morning, saying that "one of [his] best sources" had told him the Palins were divorcing. Griffin's story was immediately promoted by Dennis Zaki's "Alaska Report" site, which claimed that "multiple sources" had confirmed the report.

Jeanne Devon, an Anchorage Democratic activist who had previously blogged anonymously, also promoted Griffin's "exclusive" at the Huffington Post. As a result of this promotion, by Saturday afternoon Zaki's headline, "Todd and Sarah Palin to divorce," was the lead item at the popular Memeorandum political news site, even though it had already been officially denied by Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton.

Griffin wrote on his blog Wednesday, "I stand by every single word" of the original report, which accused Sarah Palin of attempting "to hide a broken relationship" with husband Todd.

Griffin blamed "the Palin team and their minions" for discovery of his "Gryphen" online alias, which he says resulted in death threats and harassment. During his KBYR interview, Riehl disparaged Griffin's credibility.

"Right now, the best I can tell, [Griffin] has 'bogus' written so much all over him it should be his middle name," Riehl said, adding that he had discovered "one lie after another" from Griffin.

Griffin wrote Wednesday at "Immoral Minority" that he had a "long career working with children in gymnasiums, camps, and various schools."

After revelations that Griffin had used his "Immoral Minority" site to advocate "self pleasure" and express his preference for amateur pornography, Griffin told his blog readers Wednesday: "I think what is truly frightening is how ready some people are to believe that just because you are a male who works with kids you must be a pervert. . . . The truth is that I have never even been accused of anything inappropriate with a child in my classroom, camp, or home. It has simply never happened."

Further updates are expected at RIEHL WORLD VIEW.

Baldilocks:

It’s been six months of Groundhog Day with a twist: everyday we wake up to some new piece of jaw-dropping news regarding the short-term tactics and/or long term strategies of this Administration

Dr. Barbara Oakley revisited: does this tinfoil hat make my head look fat?

by Smitty

Stacy, as an actual journalist, responded to Dr. Barbara Oakley's survey of journalistic motives here. As neither a journalist nor a psychologist, and an amateur student of history at best, allow me to opine on some of the drivers that have tipped journalism in the Democrat, or Progressive, direction.

Dr. Oakley's article begins in Soviet Russia, and is justifiably critical of academia:

Most journalists take a number of psychology, sociology, political science, and humanities courses during their early years in college. Unfortunately, these courses have long served as ideological training programs—ignoring biological sources of self-serving, corrupt, and criminal behavior for a number of reasons, including lack of scientific training; postmodern, antiscience bias; and well-intentioned, facts-be-damned desire to have their students view the world from an egalitarian perspective. Instead, these disciplines ram home the idea that troubled behavior can be fixed through expensive socialist programs that, coincidentally, provide employment opportunities for graduates of the social sciences.

For those interested in connecting the dots, you can read about the Cold War interactions of the Soviets and the US, on a political level in Blacklisted by History. Hint: it was a full-on ideological war, which those sycophants of the Soviets did everything they could to disguise. While she mentions the cretin, she appears unfamiliar with Roger Simon's expose on Walter Duranty.

Eric S. Raymond makes the discussion of Soviet ideological war waged against the US quite explicit in Gramscian Damage:

Americans have never really understood ideological warfare. Our gut-level assumption is that everybody in the world really wants the same comfortable material success we have. We use "extremist" as a negative epithet. Even the few fanatics and revolutionary idealists we have, whatever their political flavor, expect everybody else to behave like a bourgeois.

We don't expect ideas to matter — or, when they do, we expect them to matter only because people have been flipped into a vulnerable mode by repression or poverty. Thus all our divagation about the "root causes" of Islamic terrorism, as if the terrorists' very clear and very ideological account of their own theory and motivations is somehow not to be believed.

Further on:

In a previous post on Suicidalism, I identified some of the most important of the Soviet Union’s memetic weapons. Here is that list again:

• There is no truth, only competing agendas.
• All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.
• There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
• The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
• Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
• The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
• For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
• When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

Ask Lt. Gen. Pacepa about the related effort to discredit the POTUS. The point is that the Cold War was, indeed, a war. If that point eludes you, refer to ESR: "Americans have never really understood ideological warfare".

Thus, in addition to the growing native affinity for Progressive thought, as explored by Goldberg, there was significant external effort to destabilize the country, possibly roping in current members of Congress.

Of course academia was a target of all this, and the decay produced results explored by Alan Bloom, and wonderfully rendered as a talk at Heritage by Evan Sayet.

Coming full circle to Dr. Oakley's piece, I think she bears witness to some horrible intellectual damage that has been done to the country's academic system. However, addressing the scope and historical roots of the problem with any degree of honesty would trigger a hemorrhage. It just will not happen. A community is just a little lest honest than the worst cretin within. It's tempting to call the current crop of journalists a bunch of Sophists, except that the ancient Sophists probably knew more and thought more effectively.

However, let's not go wasting our hate on these weenies. A proper capitalistic answer, like PJTV to the networks, is to locate and support conservative universities. Learn facts. Understand reasoned arguments. Make liberal heads 'splode. Let's finish on the hyper-cynical note of Don Henley on Dirty Laundry:

'Former Palin Staffer Shopping Book'!?

"Diva moments, when Palin actually first heard from John McCain (not when she claimed), and how Palin believes she's 'the chosen one.' We'll post what we can when we get it."
-- Dennis Zaki, AlaskaReport.com, 8/1

"AlaskaReport has learned that Todd Palin and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are to divorce. Multiple sources in Wasilla and Anchorage (including a former Palin staffer) have confirmed the split."
-- Dennis Zaki, AlaskaReport.com, 8/5

Wow, if Sarah Palin's lawyer Thomas Van Flein is the omnipotent Rove-like svengali that Jeanne Devon says he is, then it shouldn't be too hard to deduce the identity of that source.

Really: How many Palin-hating former Palin staffers would have a bozo like Dennis Zaki on speed-dial? So add that one to your deposition list, Mr. Van Flein.

Note to the Immoral Minority

One of "The Best Friends in the World" says:

The pro-Palin crowd have got to be the most ignorant, hypocrtical, un-Christian people you will find anywhere in America.
Venom and hate just drip from their bloody jaws.
What would Jesus do? He'd tell them to STFU!

Three relevant points:

1. Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Bob Barr!
2. Did Jesse Get Fired Tuesday?
3. "Gryphen"/Griffin In His Own Words

Because I'm not a divorced gym-buff kindergarten assistant, and given that I'm so ignorant, maybe you can help with this thing I found in my two-volume 1967 World Book (Thorndike-Barnhart) Dictionary:

minority . . . 3. the condition or time of being under the legal age of responsibility.

Based on the general crudeness of Griffin's prose, it would seem to me quite far-fetched to think him clever enough to have crafted such a fiendishly brilliant double-entendre, signifying "immoral youth" while also playing on the name of the defunct Falwell coalition. Still, given some of the things he's written on the blog and . . .

Well, "Griffin"/Griffin was fairly clever -- alternate spelling of a mythical beast and all that. So, as one of the "Best Friends in the World," maybe you could say whether Jesse Griffin is smart enough to dream up "Immoral Minority" as a sort of inside joke of more than coincidental meaning? Surely his friends don't think Jesse's stupid?

The only reason I ask is that I was taught, "If Your Mother Says She Loves You, Check It Out," So I wouldn't want to rule out stupidity as possible evidence of innocence. Which is kind of problematic, considering that Griffin is so insightful as to be an amateur obstetrician who has "absolutely no doubt" that Trig Palin is not Sarah Palin's son.

Is it smart or stupid to have "absolutely no doubt"? Alas, I'm too "ignorant" to answer that question!

Have a nice day! :D

THE GRYPHEN FILES: Real Facts, Riehl Theory

Did Jesse Griffin get fired or suspended from his Anchorage kindergarten job Tuesday? The school itself can not comment on personnel matters. It's quite unusual for Dan Riehl to publish speculation or theory:

Does he have a personality so weak he can't afford to lose face under any circumstances, going to any length to try to prevent it?

On the other hand, because "Gryphen"/Griffin published an "exclusive" from "one of [his] best sourcces," yet he was just making stuff up . . . well, Dan says:

This is all speculation, of course. But then, so are Jesse Griffin's alleged news reports on Sarah Palin. No harm in experimenting with his form of journalism for a change, right? It isn't like he has any grounds to complain.

Read the whole thing. And keep checking back at Riehl World View, on the outside chance that "Gryphen"/Griffin decides to give straight answers some of the questions Dan e-mailed him.

PREVIOUSLY:

• 8/2: 'Mommy, Why Does My Kindergarten Teacher Lie About Sarah Palin?'
• 8/4: Jesse Griffin: Troubling Revelations
• 8/5: Jesse Griffin's Been Lying To His Friends, Too?
• 8/5: Give Jesse Enough Rope
• 8/5: When You Catch A Liar Lying

THE GRYPHEN FILES: When You Catch A Liar Lying

Sunday, an anonymous source e-mailed the identity of "Gryphen" to Dan Riehl and I. In ensuing days, the same source has also sent along quotes (with screen-capture JPEGs) from Jesse Griffin's Immoral Minority blog.

Griffin is not only a liar, but an extremely stupid liar, who arrogantly believed that no one else could ever possibly be smart enough to discover his "Gryphen" deception. For three days now, Griffin piled up lie upon lie in an effort to explain that deception. And all the time, there were those quotes the source had sent:

GIVE JESSE ENOUGH ROPE
STRONG LANGUAGE WARNING: Please note that the juxtaposition of quotes at that post is intended to highlight the vast difference between (a) what he wrote when he thought his anonymity was secure, and (b) what he wrote once his deception was exposed, and it was learned he was "an assistant teacher in a room full of five year old children."

An interesting development discovered while compiling that post: At some point since Monday, Jesse Griffin changed the banner motto at Immoral Minority from this:

"What is morality? Who decides? Are we in charge of our own destiny? What is right? And what is wrong? Are these questions which can be answered? You betcha."

To this:

"Morality is not determined by the church you attend nor the faith you embrace. It is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey."

Question: Why the change? Why now?
Answer: The first quote was a blunt statement of moral relativism, in which each individual decides, without reference to any enduring and acknowledged standard, what is right or wrong.

Or, as the serpent said: "Ye shall be as gods!"

Remember that mysterious delay Monday? Last night someone found the answer to a question I'd been asking since Sunday night. Which is why I took some poetic advice Angela McGlowan's father taught her: I burned the midnight oil.

Previously, "Gryphen" had declared himself an atheist. He is, in fact, his own god. Let him save himself from the consequences of his own freely chosen actions. The banner motto at this blog, meanwhile, remains unchanged:

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up."
-- Arthur Koestler

Hmmm. Didn't some commenter tell me to "STFU"?

As bloggers say, READ THE WHOLE THING and look for further updates at RIEHL WORLD VIEW.

Once more all readers are warned not to threaten anyone. LEAVE JESSE GRIFFIN ALONE!

Midnight Oil:A Renewable Energy Source

The heights by great men reached and kept,
Were not obtained by sudden flight.
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

THE GRYPHEN FILES: GIVE JESSE ENOUGH ROPE

WARNING: This post contains content from the Immoral Minority blog, written by "Gryphen," a/k/a Jesse Griffin, who has been a kindergarten teaching assistant in Anchorage.

"[T]he school has done extensive background checks on me and I am squeaky clean."
-- "Gryphen," A/K/A, Jesse Griffin, Aug. 4, 2009

"You know the reason that many people enjoy adult movies is that it is sexy to watch people making love. . . . I think that this trend toward real people having real sex is definitely the way to go. I always had a little guilt watching an adult movie and wondering if the female performer was a drug addict, or victim of molestation, just prostituting herself to make a buck. I am not Jewish, so guilt and sex don't really go together for me. But when you see a video of an amateur couple having sex you can tell that they are simply doing it for the sheer excitement of sharing their passion with a bunch of middle aged pervs who are going to wank off to their sexual exploits. Well great here comes that guilt again."
-- "Gryphen," a/k/a Jesse Griffin, June 3, 2007

"Yes I DO work in a Kindergarten class during the school year. My main job affords me some time during the day and I have chosen to use it teaching children to read, and helping them to become more independent."
-- "Gryphen," a/k/a Jesse Griffin, Aug. 2, 2009

"Having somebody reveal your "secret identity" can be a little unsettling . . ."
-- "Gryphen," A/K/A, Jesse Griffin, Aug. 4, 2009

"What is morality? Who decides? Are we in charge of our own destiny? What is right? And what is wrong? Are these questions which can be answered? You betcha."
-- banner sllogan at Immoral Minority blog (changed after Aug. 2, 2009)

"All of the fun of sex is drained by making all of these rules and labels. If sex is not naughty then it is almost not worth doing. I love kids, but in my opinion they are just a side effect of a healthy sex life."
-- Gryphen," a/k/a Jesse Griffin, June 14, 2007

"But just where did Trig Palin come from? As of today, as of this minute, and after over a month of searching I cannot tell you. I simply do not know for certain. I do know however where he did not come from. He did not issue forth from Sarah Palin. . . . He was not conceived in her uterus. On that one fact I have absolutely no doubt."
-- "Gryphen," a/k/a Jesse Griffin, June 6, 2009

"And your penis will respond more readily if you take it out and put it through its paces more often. Duh! So the next time your girlfriend/wife/mother bust you for watching porn on your computer, simply tell her that you are exercising and you would appreciate some privacy."
-- "Gryphen," a/k/a Jesse Griffin, July 7, 2008

"That's right I am promoting self pleasure. Does that really surprise anybody?" -- Gryphen," a/k/a Jesse Griffin, Oct. 17, 2007

"I do it because it brings me joy to work with these children and I believe, and have been told, that I am very good at it . . .
"[Y]ou now know my dirty little secret. I am an assistant teacher in a room full of five year old children. . . ."
-- Gryphen," a/k/a Jesse Griffin, Aug. 2, 2009

"I am teaching my boys to wear dresses and swish when they walk because being ignorant or drug addicted is no longer a guarantee of being passed over. If your not willing to suck cock then pack up your going to Iraq."
-- "Gryphen," a/k/a Jesse Griffin, June 10, 2005

"[A]s of right now I have every confidence that I will be vindicated."
-- Gryphen," a/k/a Jesse Griffin, Aug. 2, 2009

RELATED ARTICLES BY DAN RIEHL

• 8/4: Jesse Griffin: Troubling Revelations
• 8/5: Jesse Griffin's Been Lying To His Friends, Too?

MORE TO COME AT RIEHL WORLD VIEW

VIDEO: Censorship on Capitol Hill?

Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) says -- surprise! -- the Democrats are trying to shut down opposing viewpoints:

(Via Washington News Observer.)

Dr. Barbara Oakley: 'Why MostJournalists Are Democrats'

OK, I spent 22 years in the newspaper business, the first nine as a Democrat, but I'll set aside my know-it-all attitude and listen to this:

Unsurprisingly, self-selection plays an important role in choosing a job. People choosing to do work related to prisons, for example, commonly show quite different characteristics than those who volunteer for work in helping disadvantaged youths. Academicians have very different characteristics than CEOs—or politicians, for that matter.
Harry Stein, former ethics editor of Esquire, once said: "Journalism, like social work, tends to attract individuals with a keen interest in bettering the world.” In other words, journalists self-select based on a desire to help others. Socialism, with its “spread the wealth” mentality intended to help society’s underdogs, sounds ideal.
Most journalists take a number of psychology, sociology, political science, and humanities courses during their early years in college. Unfortunately, these courses have long served as ideological training programs . . .

Read the whole thing. To young people, I would say, if you have a "keen interest in bettering the world," and are looking for a job with low pay and little prospect for career advancement, how about you join the freakin' Peace Corps and stop messing up the news business?

Dr. Oakley's observations about self-selection are right on target. So what explains me? Why am I not "bettering the world"? My original career plan was to become a multimillionaire rock star, but my Dad insisted I go to college, just in case I needed "something to fall back on."

After college, I was a nightclub DJ for about six months, then got fired from a job -- honestly, how was I to know that blonde dancer was the bouncer's girlfriend? -- and signed up with a temp agency, doing warehouse work on Fulton Industrial Boulevard in Atlanta. That led to a full-time job for nearly 18 months as a forklift driver, paying the bills and saving up money for a P.A. system.

Falling Back
In college, I'd been entertainment editor and rock-music columnist ("Flock of Seagulls: Threat Or Menace?") for the student paper. The faculty advisor urged me my senior year to do other assignments -- sports, news, features -- so I'd have a more "balanced" portfolio of clippings. But I hadn't been able to land a newspaper job right out of school, and didn't really look for one after that. Before the Internet, you see, the business of looking for a job was much more time-consuming, and the rock-star thing was my real passion anyway.

One day, a buddy of mine, an amateur photographer, was out at Sweetwater Creek State Park and it just happened there was a radio-controlled model sailboat club having a regatta. He got some pictures and thought it was pretty cool, and said he talked to the club members and they'd asked him to send the pictures to them for the club newsletter. He was pretty excited about this.
Well, it happened that, driving through the nearby town of Austell the past few weeks, I'd noticed a new sign on a building downtown: "Cobb News Chronicle." That Austell could be a two-newspaper town was explained by the fact that a local businessman had gotten mad at the publisher of the town's original weekly tabloid (The Sweetwater Enterprise) over ad rates and decided he'd start his own paper.

Seeing this sign while driving through Austell en route to see my girlfriend (who lived in Marietta), I'd been thinking maybe I should see about getting a job there. Compared to forklift driving, being a newspaper writer might be more useful to my rock-star ambitions. And here was my buddy with these model sailboat photos, excited about having them published in a club newsletter.

"Hey, cool, but I tell you what. There's a brand-new newspaper that just opened up in Austell. If you've got these photos, I could do a freelance article to go with it, and maybe we could get paid."
Well, I wasn't going to write for "spec," see? I was first going to find out if they would pay me before I would bother writing the article.

Two Big Things I Never Forgot
So the next day, I put on the blue pin-stripe three-piece suit my grandmother had bought me for my mother's funeral in 1977 -- hey, bell-bottoms were cool! -- took my portfolio and the photos, and drove down to the Chronicle office. Walked in the front door, with my blue suit and rock-star hair, and the green-eyed girl at the front desk had a spectacular rack. (Forgot her name long ago, but I never forget a great rack.)

So I tell the green-eyed girl with the spectacular rack I'd like to speak to the editor. She goes back and gets Chris Barker, the news editor. He walked me back to his cubicle, where I showed him my photos and the clips and pitched the idea of doing a freelance photo feature. What would they pay for that?

Well, he wasn't so interested in this feature idea, but my clips looked pretty good . . .

"Tell you what," he said. "There's a city council meeting tonight. You want to go cover that for us?"

"What does that pay?" I asked.

"If it's any good, $4.50 an hour."

That was in April of 1986. The story needed a good bit of editing -- Chris Barker was both a great editor and a great teacher -- but I got $4.50 an hour for four hours' work. When we were through with the story, Chris offered a full-time job at the same rate. A couple weeks later, they'd hired my buddy as a photographer, too.

Rock On, With Boy Howdy!
So the point of that story is this: My career in journalism had nothing to do with any "keen interest in bettering the world." I was just looking to make some money until the rock-star career took off. Bounced around a bit, then met my wife in the fall of 1987, had our first kid in 1989 and . . well, if the rest isn't history yet, it's only because I'm not finished yet.

I never wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein. Maybe I admired the late, great rock critic Lester Bangs (does anyone remember the old Creem magazine?) and I'd been a Hunter S. Thompson junkie since I was 19, but it never occurred to me, in 1986, that I'd end up as an award-winning political journalist in Washington. (Hey, Jesse, how'd you like that pony?) Far less did I expect to become a top Hayekian public intellectual.

Here's the thing: When I was starting out, nobody offered to pay me to write political opinions, and I didn't have any interest in doing that egghead pundit crap anyway. Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet yet, so we hadn't reached the glories of the Information Age, when every random loser with a laptop can tell the world their opinions of stuff they know nothing about. I didn't go to Harvard, so it wasn't like National Review would ever offer me an internship to go skinny-dipping with Bill Buckley.

So I made my living by skill, not opinion. And because of that, I realized the only way to get ahead was to work hard every day to improve my skills.

I like the blogosphere, especially when regular people do real journalism (Look, Jesse, Santa brought you a pony!) and as a means for regular people to talk back to the media. But merely having an opinion wasn't worth $4.50 an hour even in 1986. You can't succeed merely by having an opinion -- much less by trying to "better the world" -- whether it's in blogs or newspapers or anything else.

Well, that's my story. Dr. Barbara Oakley's article is also excellent. Read the whole thing.

Gutzman's GOP criticism is nearly on target

by Smitty

Via Political Class Dismissed, Kevin R. C. Gutzman takes the GOP to task for Phony Originalism at Taki's Magazine.

Since the days of Ronald Reagan and Edmund Meese, the Republican Party’s position has been that judges should be bound by the people’s understanding of a particular constitutional provision at the time they ratified it. This notion goes under the name "originalism." Recent events, including the Republican response to President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, reveal that the party is a highly unreliable vehicle for this principle.

Examples cited in the article include Kelo v. City of New London, enforcing the Second Amendment at the state level, abortion, and affirmative action.
Here is an interesting point, emphasis mine:

The Bill of Rights as an obstacle to federal infringement on state authority was only one element of the underlying principle of the U.S. Constitution. This is “federalism,” the notion that the states (meaning the sovereign people of each state) had delegated only particular powers to the Federal Government. In the Reagan era, with Edmund Meese as attorney general and Charles Cooper as assistant attorney general, this principle received an emphasis it had not since 1937.

Gutzman concludes:

In short, then, Republicans generally do not stand for principled adherence to originalism, which once was called "the Constitution." Across a range of questions, they mirror their Democratic opponents in advocating judicial legislation of their preferred legislative outcomes.

While no lawyer, I have read the Constitution and Amar's book avidly. Oh, and Goldberg. What seems missing in Gutzman's analysis is any acknowledgement of the importance of Progressivism in digging the current political/economic pit. Progressives of both stripes, Democrats by commission and Republicans by omission, have supported excessive centralization in DC since the Wilson administration (I'd be interested in knowing why Gutzman picked 1937 as a turning point for federalism).

In discussions with an older, conservative colleague at work, I hear a common, bogus apology: "Social Security was OK as originally conceived, it only went wrong after the fact."

I try to explain that there is no Constitutional argument in favor of Social Security: anything like a sober reading seems to argue against it. And that's neglecting the moral argument that the Amish make so well. Pssst, Baptists: you're asleep at the switch. Finally, there is the crushing economic argument:

Ponzi schemes are OK as long as you've another generation of victims. Possibly acquisition of another round of victims explains the Democratic non-command of border security.

Social Security was never more than an interesting experiment underscoring the wisdom of the 10th Amendment. That one can find examples of people who were helped by it (as my colleague does) only serves to underscore the fundamental evil of government dependency. Having perverting liberty, people are reduced to a form of slavery:

Exodus 14:10-12

10. And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they were sore afraid: and the children of Israel cried out unto the LORD.
11. And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt?
12. Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.

(Note that I'm not arguing against Progressive policies per se. They should certainly be allowed to succeed/fail at the state level, to whatever degree the residents of the state desire.)

Thus, while Gutzman seems to be arguing against the GOP from a snarky leftist "see, they're just like us, only hitting different notes" standpoint, I'd hit the GOP from a "screw you pack of Progressive squishes, and all the jackasses in tacit alliance with you".

Excessive, concentrated power, and the resulting tyranny is precisely what the Constitution was written to preclude, and exactly what the Progressive legislative re-write has given us these last 80-ish years.

If there is a lesson drawn from Obama the Joker and Chicago-on-the-Potomac, it is that "We the People" had better be about continuing the project begun by Ronald Reagan, placing these entitlements on valid economic and Constitutional footing, and protecting our liberty from the Vision of the Anointed. The eyes of that vision seem to be of the Overworld.

THE GRYPHEN FILES:Dan Riehl Is Not 'Making Stuff Up'

Remember when Jesse Griffin was predicting he'd be "vindicated"?

Remember when Jesse Griffin tried to threaten Dan Riehl?

Remember when Santa Claus didn't bring you that pony, Griffin?

WOW! JESSE GRIFFIN WAS RIGHT!

I can't believe this! After she denied it in a direct quote! But Jesse had it right the whole time! Sarah Palin really is getting divorced after having an affair with . . .

BIGFOOT?

Hey, "multiple sources," right? And compared to Dennis "Bozo" Zaki (who is actually not a stringer for CNN, as he had previously claimed) the Weekly World News is a paragon of . . . what's that word? Ah, yes: "Integrity"!

Well, obviously, I don't know anything about that stuff. My speciality is history, and if Hiroshima wasn't enough, guess we'll have to . . . well, just keep reading here and at Dan Riehl's blog.

THE GRYPHEN FILES: E-MAIL TO JESSE GRIFFIN

Just sent this e-mail:

To start with Griffin, don't lecture me about libel. Screw you, you miserable little pissant. I didn't work my way up -- starting with a $4.50-an-hour staff writer job at a 6,000-circulation weekly in 1986 -- so some random loser could lecture me about libel law.
I spent more than two decades with a copy of the AP Stylebook And Libel Manual within arm's reach, and I know the difference between facts and bulls***, a distinction you seem to have trouble making. And you want to lecture Dan Riehl about "integrity"? When he told me that, I was half tempted to risk Dan's wrath by just going off on my own, but there are more important things to consider and I wouldn't want to make Dan angry, so I waited.
You made a serious mistake when you published that Palin divorce rumor, Griffin, and your idiot friend Zaki made another serious mistake by pretending to have confirmed it with "multiple sources." What you did, to borrow a term from military science, was to surrender the initiative to your enemy.
Even if Todd and Sarah had been ready to call it quits Saturday morning (and since my sources apparently aren't as good as yours, I have no way of knowing), you handed them a perfect weapon of revenge, which they can now use at their discretion. All they have to do is not file for divorce, and they make you a liar. And if they decide to sue your a**, I'm thinking you don't want a jury trial, so the folks in the jury box can see them every day, sitting in the front row holding hands all lovey-dovey.
Idiot. The other day I was telling my wife I'd have loved to have seen you try to file that "story" at The Washington Times some night when Geoff Etnyre was the M.E. in charge. You and Zaki would have been fired on the spot.
Working at a real news organization, as opposed to the idiot crap you and Zaki do, requires responsibility to others -- colleagues, bosses, advertisers, owners and, above all, the readers. As much as I love playing the Internet joker since quitting the Times in January 2008, I try to make it clear to readers the difference between when I'm being serious and when I'm just clowning around. After all, I've got a serious career as a freelance journalist, with a wife and six kids to worry about, and even if most blog readers "get it" when I'm just joking, misunderstandings can sometimes cause trouble.
Let's talk a little bit about "sources," Griffin. Until I came to Washington in 1997, I'd never worked for a newspaper that allowed what we call "blind sourcing," the anonymous "senior administration official" and so forth. Well, Washington is a different game (and I've got the knives in my back to prove it), so I had to learn how to deal with this "sources said" stuff.
One of the basic rules, insisted on by our Old School editor-in-chief Wes Pruden, was that you couldn't hang a story entirely on blind sources. You had to have something else -- some kind of document, or an official who was willing to go on the record and "put his name on it" -- or else it looked like you were just peddling gossip.
It didn't matter if the reporter knew that the story was right. Without something concrete to anchor the story, the reader might get the impression you were, to quote a highly-placed Republican source, "making stuff up." You owed it to your readers, and to the reputation of the paper, to get something or someone into that story that would let them know for sure they were getting the real deal. Otherwise, you couldn't publish it. And woe unto the poor schmuck on the national desk (alas, it was sometimes me) who signed off on a story where the reporter failed to "back up his lede."
It was for many years my honor to edit the work of such fine reporters as Jerry Seper, Audrey Hudson, Stephen Dinan and Ralph Z. Hallow. Ask any of those guys how much arguing was sometimes required to get a story just right, so that when we printed 110,000 copies, nobody at the White House, Congress or the FBI could dispute our credibility. Ask those guys, and maybe they'll tell you Stacy McCain is a clueless dilbert who doesn't know good journalism from a hole in the ground, but that's their right. It was their bylines on those stories, and if I screwed up the story by an editing error (the reporter's worst nightmare) then my stupidity could damage their credibility.
Speaking of credibility, Griffin, you don't have any. Given how wrong you were about the Palin divorce, you've blown whatever chance you ever had of being someone that people should take seriously. And given all the things you've written about Palin over the past several months, I'd guess the "malice" part of a libel action against you would be a lead-pipe cinch. But I'm not a lawyer, so that's just a guess.
Mala fides, as the lawyers say, is a dangerous thing. There have been times when I've been assigned to do a story -- and I wore two hats, doing both reporting and editing at The Times -- involving persons or organizations I considered evil. And when you get a story like that, the trick is to do it Joe Friday style: "Just the facts, ma'am." Like one of my first editors told me, "As long as you've got your facts right" -- i.e., as long as the story is accurate -- "they can't touch you." So if you're doing a story about somebody you can't stand, you tend to err on the side of caution. That's another Old School editor's maxim: "When in doubt, leave it out."
But you don't know that stuff, Griffin, because you're a phony -- and I state that as an objective fact. Sue me. You are trying to seem like you're reporting news without actually doing the work. That's as dangerous as mala fides, and when you combine the two . . .
Your bulls*** about "my best source" had some serious unintended consequences, Griffin. Among other things, you ruined my weekend. Frankly, I didn't give a damn about what was going on in Wasilla. I was planning to spend the weekend chilling out so I could spend this week up on Capitol Hill talking to my sources on the IG investigations. Byron York beat me last week, which was my own fault, and now I've got to play catch-up.
Instead, I ended up spending all Saturday knocking down the bogus story from you and Zaki -- the Woodward and Bernstein of Anchorage -- which left me entirely frazzled. And then I got a call Sunday morning from Dan Riehl, and my weekend descended into the seventh circle of Hell.
Your "best source"? Let me make something clear, Griffin: If I ever quote an unnamed source, it's with the understanding that, should any legal action result, my source will be willing to go on the record and testify on my behalf. There is a basic newspaper rule: If you publish something, and get a complaint from somebody who claims libel and starts talking about lawyers and lawsuits, the conversation is over. Have their lawyer talk to your lawyer, and if the lawyer says retract, retract.
A good reporter never burns his sources, but a good source never burns a reporter. If one of my sources doesn't call me first with the big scoop, I feel insulted. But that's probably just the notoriously touchy pride of a Southerner. ("Sir, you have impugned my honor!") However, if one of my sources feeds me bogus stuff so that I end up putting my name on a story that's wrong, you'd better believe I'm going to make him regret it. ("Pistols at dawn, you lying scalawag!")
So when Sarah Palin gave me that quote denying the divorce rumor, she might not have known what she was getting herself into. As I wrote: "That worldwide exclusive quote from Sarah Palin? You can take that to the bank, baby. . . . After I'd filed that, however, I sent an e-mail containing the admonishment that now, no matter what happens, the Palins can never get divorced, as this would undermine my credibility." I'm told she thought that was funny. Except, I wasn't joking.
Right now, I'm about 60-40 between Palin '12 and Romney '12, but I'd prefer Palin, just because I might have a better shot at the "sources said" angle on that campaign. But if there's any problem between the governor and the "First Dude" (and like I said, my sources aren't good enough to give me the play-by-play, "if you get my drift") they'd better not get divorced, or it's time to kiss the White House good-bye. However scandalous an affair might be (headline: SARAH SHOOTS 'TWO-TIMING WEASEL') a divorce would make me look like a chump. Woe unto the source who makes me look like a chump.
By the way, Griffin, there's one point you and I agree on: Republicans are too uptight about sex. I've been happily married for 20 years and, as the father of six kids, I always laugh when liberals suggest that being a conservative means I'm sexually repressed. More like irrepressible. Sometimes I joke around with my single friends, urging them to get married, lest they fall prey to the temptation of fornication. A joke, but serious, too. When God gives a guy as ugly as me a wife as good-looking as mine, it's the kind of blessing I'd be a fool to reject. ("MRS. McCAIN SHOOTS TWO-TIMING WEASEL")
One of my journalistic heroes is Benjamin Franklin, who wrote in his autobiography that, as a child, he was often admonished by his father with a Bible verse, Proverbs 22:29: "Seest thou a man diligent in his work? He shall stand before kings, and his place shall not be among ordinary men." Like they say, claim the promise. Because I'm lazy by nature, God has relentlessly chastised me for that sin. Nothing good ever happens to me unless I sweat for it, like I've had to sweat since Saturday.
So far, I've stood before congressmen, senators, governors, attorneys general, first ladies and Cabinet secretaries, but never yet a president nor a king. Given that I'll be 50 in October, I'm starting to get a little impatient. But live or die, I'm sure one day I'll stand before a king. So I just keep working and praying.
Speaking of prayer, Griffin, on your blog you say you're an atheist. Maybe you should pray to Nothing and see if that helps.

Good luck,
Robert Stacy McCain
Co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of
DONKEY CONS: Sex, Crime &
Corruption in the Democratic Party

P.S.: I CC this to my co-blogger Smitty, and will also publish it in its entirety on my blog, just so you can't play cut-and-paste games on your own blog, Griffin.
P.P.S.: Is the name of your blog a play on words? One thing I could never resist is a double-entendre, but I'll wait.

Wait, and keep watching Dan Riehl's site. I spoke to Dan about an hour ago, and we agreed that when he goes with what he's got, I'll take a look at it and then decide what I need to go with. So Dan's got the lead on this story now, and he's the man to watch.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl goes live:

School-aged children who were PC literate apparently could have had access to information posted on his blog . . .
Because of this apparent portal between his MySpace real identiity and his "Gryphen" alter-ego, the allegedly anonymous Gryphen appears to have been out all along. . . .
The blog appears to have routinely displayed content such as describing then Governor and VP candidate Sarah Palin as wearing "f*ck me pumps" or debating the acceptability of such concepts as referring to former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as a "c*nt" . . .

Read the whole thing. Hey, how's that "praying to Nothing" workin' out for you, Griffin? What was it the Moe Lane said? Me, I can put anything on my blog. I'm a private citizen, a mere entrepreneurial journalist, First Amendment and all that. But a public-school kindergarten teaching assistant . . .? Not so much.

Oh, and good luck trying to flush it down the Memory Hole. We've got plenty of screen-capture JPGs.

Have a nice day! :D