University of Iowa's intolerant liberal law faculty

"Athens of the Midwest" is how many deep thinking liberals in America's heartland describe Iowa City. If they mean the Athens that forced Socrates to drink hemlock because of his unorthodox ideas, they may have a point.

  

By David Paulin 

"Athens of the Midwest" is how many deep thinking liberals in America's heartland describe Iowa City -- the artsy and liberal college town that's home to the University of Iowa. But as many conservatives might have guessed, some of Iowa City's most self-important elites -- the powers that be in the University of Iowa's law school -- have much in common with those intolerant ancient Athenians who tried and executed Socrates because they didn't like his politics.

As Exhibit One, consider a recent court case that's been drawing belated attention over the weekend in some corners of the Internet. The issues were summed up in an editorial last month in the Des Moines Register, appropriately titled: "U of I needs to respect diversity of thought, too." Here's an excerpt: 

The University of Iowa College of Law dodged a potential employment discrimination verdict in a case tried in Davenport last week. But the case could still come back to haunt the university.

 Regardless of the outcome, this case raises questions about the hiring policies at the University of Iowa College of Law, and perhaps in the university as a whole. The U of I respects the goal of diversity for race, religion and gender, but it should show the same respect for diversity of political thought.

 This case involves a lawsuit filed by Teresa Wagner against the law school after she was turned down for a faculty position in the legal analysis, writing and research program. Wagner is a Republican who has worked for anti-abortion organizations. She alleged that she was passed over the position not because she lacked the qualifications but because she was blackballed by liberal members of the law school faculty.

The law school denied politics were involved in the decision not to hire her. The university claimed Wagner was turned down because she had performed poorly in an interview.

 After a weeklong trial, the jury ruled in favor of the school on the allegation that Wagner's political beliefs were a "motivating factor" in her rejection. But the jury of 12 deadlocked on a separate question whether Wagner was treated differently than other job applicants because of her political beliefs. If the school did that, that would violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
  
It's possible these questions will be rehashed in court as Wagner has asked for a new trial. U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt will rule on that later.

Well, let's be clear about one thing: such intolerance is not confined only to the legal windbags at Iowa's law faculty. As evidence, consider Exhibit Two: the experience that historian Mark Moyar, a Harvard and Cambridge grad, had during his unsuccessful application five years ago for a professorship at the University of Iowa's history department. Moyar at the time was the Kim T. Adamson Chair at the U.S. Marine Corps University and had authored respected revisionist histories of the Vietnam War. In an article in National Review, "Diversity is for Democrats" Moyar observed that Iowa's history faculty wasn't much interested in listening to ideas that contradicted their own - ideas that presumably were all the more rankling (one can assume) because they came from a conservative middle-aged white guy.

The University of Iowa College of Law

To create greater diversity of ideas, Moyar offered this advice:

Students, parents, alumni, taxpayers, and politicians should pressure the University of Iowa's administration to enforce the university's non-discrimination policies, and to create new faculty positions for conservatives beyond the reach of other professors' tentacles, as other schools have started doing. They should demand that the university use its lecture series to bring in conservative speakers, not just liberals and radicals. In the meantime, students must realize that the university is not a free market of ideas, but a one-party state that strives to convert the impressionable and unwary by hiding half of the political spectrum.

Regarding Iowa Law: In one respect, it's ironic that its faculty members are overwhelmingly liberal and, by inference, Obama fans. Because in the miserable economy that Obama owns, less-than-top-tier law schools like Iowa's don't cut it anymore. To be sure, I know one grad of Iowa Law, a former next-door neighbor and occasional boyhood chum, who became a successful corporate lawyer and partner in a prestigious firm. Today he's a judge in Iowa. And a high school classmate from Illinois who graduated from Iowa Law is now a partner in a top Chicago firm. Lucky for them, they graduated from Iowa Law in the 1980s - during the go-go economy of President Ronald Reagan.

Unfortunately, the days are gone when nearly all top and grads of Iowa Law reached such stellar heights. And disgruntled recent grads are, increasingly, finding that out the hard way. That's reflected in a blog called "third tier reality." It warns potential Iowa Law students to stay away - unless somebody else pays for their exorbitant tuition and, most importantly, that they have a job lined up through the help of friends or family connections. Or maybe, I might add, if they know Obama.

Ironic, isn't it? Iowa's law faculty and the political and economic ideology they embrace (and political leaders they support) may be the cause of their own irrelevance.

Full disclosure: Back in my younger and more vulnerable college days, when I was a Democratic, I took a class in "international law" at the University of Iowa College of Law. Despite my political immaturity and open-mindedness, I was nevertheless troubled by my professor's high-minded talk about how a U.N.-like body would ensure world peace and social justice - even though thug states would, in the professor's vision, have as much say as Western democracies in that body. Raising my concerns, the white-haired prof, Burns H. Weston, seemed peeved and snapped: "So what? What's your point?" And then there were Prof. Weston's idiotic discussions about terrorism, the implication being that one man's terrorist was another man's freedom fighter; that if we were a victim of terrorism, it must be because of something that we did to them.

Nor did I ever quite understand that lecture about the "sources" of international law. According to him, they included the scholarly writings of law professors, including himself. "Can I make international law?" he asked with a big smile and twinkling eyes - and of course the answer was supposed to be "yes."

Not long ago, I learned that this left-wing blowhard -- the son of an official in FDR's administration -- was a 9/11 "truther" whose members believe that the Bush administration had some complicity in 9/11 and its "cover-up." It was all a pretext to go to war.

Well, I'm really not surprised given the ideological indoctrination that took place that class, which included no diversity of ideas that might have been taught by allowing a visiting speaker into the class -- one like, say, John Bolton, the former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. under George W. Bush.

Hey, Iowa Law, can I get my tuition back for that course?"

 Hat tip: TaxProf Blog and Memeorandum

Originally published at American Thinker blog, albeit with some minor additions due to a few other things that came to mind.

Mitt's unwitting campaigner in Florida: Hugo Chávez

By David Paulin


Yes, the Romney campaign has enlisted the help of Venezuela's leftist president in the pivotal swing state of Florida. Hugo Chávez figures prominently in a 30-second Spanish-language television ad being run by the Romney campaign. It starts with a narrator asking: "Who supports Barack Obama?" 

Next comes the answer: a television clip of Venezuela's anti-American president. "If I were American, I'd vote for Obama," he says.

Later in the ad, Chávez says: "If Obama were from Barlovento, he'd vote for Chávez." (Barlovento is a Venezuelan town whose population is overwhelmingly black.)

Chávez, who has made anti-Americanism a cornerstone of his foreign policy, endorsed Obama last September in an interview on Venezuelan television.  

In the same ad, the narrator points out that Fidel Castro's daughter Mariela Castro also supports Obama. "I would vote for President Obama," she says.  
Finally, the narrator points out that the "Environmental Protection Agency sent out e-mails for Hispanic Heritage month with a photo of Che Guevara." It's all true, of course, and the Obama campaign is furious, and an article in the Miami Herald - a paper that just endorsed Obama - called it an example of unseemly negative campaigning.

But it's sure to energize Cuban-Americans to get to the polls. They comprise a third of Florida's Hispanics, vote overwhelmingly Republican, and they're no fans of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, nor Che Guevara. The ads comes as a new poll, whose results were published on Saturday by the Miami Herald, gives Romney a 51 to 45 percent lead over Obama. 

Citing a survey from Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, the Herald said Governor Romney's strengths include "independent voters and more crossover support from Democrats relative to the Republicans who back Obama."Other polls, to be sure, are predicting a tighter race, the Herald noted - a fact that must be a relief to the Herald's editorial board and the paper's left-leaning reporters and columnists.  

Oh, and don't forget to take a look at that television ad in which Hugo Chávez has been transformed into a Republican campaign stooge. Even if you don't understand Spanish, you'll catch the drift of things - and smile.

Originally published at The American Thinker blog

Obama and the 'Repo Games' Voters

By David Paulin

Originally published at The American Thinker

Here's a brain teaser for you: what weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?  If you're still thinking, you've got something in common with more than a few of the contestants on a reality-television show called Repo Games.  In case you've missed it, the Spike TV series follows veteran "repo men" Tom DeTone and Josh Lewis, who double as engaging game show hosts.  Showing up to repossess a vehicle, they offer the debtor a way out as cameras roll: answer three out of five trivia questions correctly, and the vehicle loan will be paid off.  Otherwise, the vehicle will be towed away.

"F--k you!  You're not taking my car" is how more than a few contestants respond, before being coaxed into playing "Repo Games."  Others initially threaten violence -- flailing arms, screaming profanities, and even producing kitchen knives and pots to ward off the repo man.  One hot-tempered man with a pickup menacingly pointed an assault rifle at DeTone.

"I'm a crazy mother-----r.  Somebody will get hurt!" he warned.  Later, DeTone recalled seeing his life flash before his eyes.

Interestingly, some contestants who you'd assume would be winners are utter losers, as was reflected in a segment in which a fourth-grade teacher was asked: "What South American country has over 2,700 miles of coast but is only 150 miles wide?"

"Cuba?" she replied , tentatively.  She flubbed the other two questions, too.
Repo Games isn't all about laughing at dumb and ill-mannered people, however.  It also lets viewers root for contestants who seem nice and perhaps have had some bad luck (and there are of course lots of those types of folks in the miserable economy).  Some of the more sympathetic contestants are single moms.  You also can't help but feel sorry for the contestant who loses a Corvette or BMW parked in the driveway of his nice-looking home.

As for that silly question: what weighs more -- a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?  Yes, it was asked of a "Repo Games" contestant.  He said he didn't know.

Ultimately, it's the numerous stupid and vulgar contestants who are the most memorable -- and in the segments featuring them, Repo Games inadvertently veers from goofy entertainment into trenchant social commentary.  Indeed, in the low-income neighborhoods seen in many Repo Games segments, the residents are what socialist writer Michael Harrington sympathetically called inhabitants of the "other America" -- poor America.  This is where food stamps and welfare have hit record levels over the past four years, reflecting stubbornly high unemployment rates and the Obama administration's efforts (including through radio ads) to get as many people on the dole as possible.  Yet, as Repo Games reveals, these folks are definitely not poor in the conventional meaning of the word.  Their neighborhoods in fact seem rather nice -- suggesting they don't, as liberals would suggest, suffer from a deficit of social justice.

And besides living in decent houses and apartments, they own late-model cars -- albeit on which they're not making regular payments.

The poverty in which these folks exist needs to be viewed from a certain perspective -- something a Heritage Foundation report did not long ago when observing that "most of the persons whom the government defines as 'in poverty' are not poor in any ordinary sense of the term. The overwhelming majority of the poor have air conditioning, cable TV, and a host of other modern amenities. They are well housed, have an adequate and reasonably steady supply of food, and have met their other basic needs, including medical care."

From another perspective, the real problem many of these folks have is not poverty, but a deficit of middle-class values and social skills.

Consider, for instance, the volatile reactions many contestants display after being told their car is being repossessed.  Flailing arms, vulgarities, and threats of violence -- it's the same manic behavior found in high-crime areas where mundane disputes quickly escalate into physical violence.  This is related to a lack of interpersonal skills and self-control -- an inability to negotiate a nonviolent solution after (in their minds) being "disrespected."  This behavior is constantly on display on Repo Games.

Intriguingly, once the repo man calms down these contestants, they seem like perfectly nice people, albeit without the social skills and manners that exist among the middle class -- a term that in this sense describes certain cultural values and manners rather than a particular income bracket.
In Las Vegas, the Repo Games crew may have thought they were in a decent neighborhood, but it's where they had their most dangerous encounter: a middle-school special-education teacher started firing a handgun in their direction.  He was reportedly upset that a Repo Games vehicle had parked on the street outside his house.  Police charged him with attempted murder.

Bad behavior aside, there's that interesting sense of entitlement that more than a few contestants reveal with their initial remarks: "F--k you, you're not taking my car!"
Presumably, most of the contestants on Repo Games are Democrats and ardent Obama supporters, though one shouldn't presume they bother to vote -- and why should they?  Entitlements are now written in stone, and they're unlikely to change much with a Democrat or Republican in the White House.

It's hardly a coincidence that Repo Games, now going strong in its second season, also comes amid a terrible economy in which the mortgage crisis has festered -- as the Obama administration has bent over backwards to enable people to remain in houses they never should have purchased.
All in all, the Obama years have been profitable for the car repossession business -- and for Repo Games.
 

VENEZUELA'S LOSS IS AMERICAN'S GAIN: Venezuelan exodus to Florida expected to increase after Chávez's election victory

 
By David Paulin

Hugo Chávez's reelection victory and subsequent pledge to deepen "21st Century" socialism in Venezuela has produced a predictable result -- yet another exodus of Venezuelans is expected to head to Florida. Like early waves of Cubans who fled Fidel Castro’s communism, these Venezuelans are members of their country’s business, professional, and entrepreneurial class. They could, to be sure, have been part of the solution to Venezuela’s poverty and dysfunction. But Chávez saw them as part of the problem as he created class divisions; nationalized large swaths of the economy; and implemented currency exchange and price controls that strangled the economy and even produced food shortages.

  

The ongoing exodus of Venezuela’s best and brightest – and the increase that's expected after Chávez’s reelection -- is the subject of an article in the Miami Herald describing how South Florida immigration lawyers and real estate agents are gearing up for visits from Venezuelans who have decided it’s time to get out. They're looking to buy real estate and start businesses in South Florida, with the hope of gaining residency and starting new lives. After suffering 14 years of Hugo Chávez – and facing six more to come – they decided to join the estimated 200,000 or more Venezuelans already in the U.S. – 57 percent of whom live in South Florida. 

 “Nothing surpasses fear as a cause for capital flight,” Enrique García, a Key Biscayne council member and real estate agent, told The Herald. Citing immigration statistics from the Department of Homeland Security, The Herald noted that the “total number of Venezuelans who have received permanent residence has been growing year after year — from a little more than 5,000 in 2002 to more than 9,000 in 2011.” 

 During the era of soaring oil prices in the 1970s, oil-rich Venezuela earned a nickname: “Saudi Venezuela.” But easy petro-dollars not only contributed to corruption, they fostered a culture of populism and paternalism -- what Venezuela’s poor majority expects today, and what Chavez has promised to deliver.

On the other hand, the Venezuelans settling in the U.S. are educated and can make their own way. They need no lessons in democracy, as underscored by the thousands of Venezuelans who on election day rode in bus caravans to New Orleans, where they stood in long lines at Venezuela’s consulate to vote for opposition challenger Henrique Capriles.

They couldn't vote in Miami because Chavez had closed the consulate there earlier this year, following a spate with Washington over the State Department's expulsion of Venezuela’s consul general in Miami, Livia Acosta Noguera. It concerned recordings of her allegedly discussing an Iranian plot to carry out a cyber-attack against the U.S.        

That created a problem for 20,000 Venezuelan voters in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina who'd registered to vote at the Miami consulate. Accordingly, 8,500 of them cast their ballots at Venezuela’s consulate in New Orleans -- virtually taking over the city as they waited in long lines to vote, and passing the time by singing their country's lovely national anthem.

 

This YouTube clip provides a look at some of the Venezuelans whom Chavez has demonized and intimidated in his quest for “social justice” and “21st Century” socialism.

Originally published at The American Thinker blog

Why did Hugo Chavez endorse President Obama for a second term?

 
By David Paulin

The answer to that is easy -- anti-Americanism. Hugo Chavez, after all, has made anti-Americanism a cornerstone of his leftist policies. And this can’t be ignored when explaining why Chavez endorsed President Obama for a second term.

"I hope this doesn't harm Obama, but if I was from the United States, I'd vote for Obama," Venezuela's socialist and firebrand president declared during a television interview. Calling Obama “a good guy,” Chavez also opined that if Obama were a Venezuelan, he would vote for him too.

All in all, it was a remarkable endorsement given that soon after Chavez took office 14 years ago – during Bill Clinton’s second term – he started to rail against Yankee imperialism; cozied up to Cuba's Fidel Castro and various Middle Eastern strongmen; and praised Venezuelan-born terrorist Carlos the Jackal as a "worthy heir of the greatest [leftist] struggles."

So how come Chavez considers himself a kindred spirit with Obama? It no doubt has much to do with the similar world views both share. Chavez, for example, believes that America is responsible for all the world’s ills – and so in his mind this justifies his efforts to build anti-American and anti-Western alliances. It would not be enough for him to merely concentrate on Venezuela’s soaring poverty, crime and endemic corruption – for all these things are for him related to the poisonous world order for which America is the No. 1 villain. One of Chavez’s favorite books is the paranoid anti-American and anti-European screed “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent” – a book he presented to Obama at a Summit of Americas conference in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.

Obama, for his part, has tacitly embraced significant aspects of Chavez’s anti-American world view – reflected in his deep bows to foreign leaders; his demonization of Wall Street and financially successful Americans (the “1 percenters”); and in his Middle East apology tour. Above all, Obama seems to believe America is a declining power and must maintain a lower-profile in the world; this for him is the best way to avoid international conflicts and create a peaceful world.

When Obama was elected, Chavez briefly toned down his anti-American broadsides and insults, saying: “I am ready to negotiate with the black man in the White House.” (It sounds a lot funnier when said in Spanish.) Since then, however, Chavez has tossed occasional barbs at Obama -- though he  hasn’t demonized him to the extent he did Bush.

Ultimately, though, it would be a mistake to take Chavez at his word when he sings Obama’s praises. He may believe what he’s saying on a certain level. But ultimately, Chavez and his leftist soul-mates hate the United States for what it is – not for what it does.

But don't expect Obama to understand that. He'll see Chavez's endorsement as evidence that he's doing something right -- rather than reflecting an embarrassing truism: "Show me your friends, and I'll tell you who you are." 

Originally published at The American Thinker blog

Cuba's new travel law a cynical ‘survival tactic’

By David Paulin

 

Cuba’s new travel law, announced on Tuesday in Cuba’s official newspaper Granma, is being spun by the Associated Press and others as a historic first by the communist regime – a long-overdue reform giving Cubans the freedom to travel abroad for the first time in more than 50 years.

 

In reality, the new law is a survival tactic by the Castro regime.

 

It's part of the same cynicism that was behind the Mariel boatlift in 1980 when 125,000 Cubans sailed to South Florida aboard private boats -- including criminals and mental patients whom Fidel Castro had set loose. It's part of the same cynicism that Castro demonstrated during the summer of 1984 -- when he looked the other way as tens of thousands of Cubans built rafts to escape their tropical prison.

 

So says a clear-eyed analysis of the new travel law by Fabiola Santiago in today’s Miami Herald, “New travel law just another survival tactic for Castro.”

 

As Santiago writes:

 

And now comes Raúl Castro, re-inventing his brother’s sure-footed strategy to send the enemy into exile — and relieve the pressure on the government to undertake meaningful reforms — by making it easier for the disenchanted masses to leave while retaining control of who travels.

 

While this may seem a blessing to a people without hope, when Cuba talks “immigration reform” and “new travel measures,” only one thing is certain: There will be major — and unfavorable — implications for the United States, particularly for South Florida.

 

Clues to Cuba’s intentions are in the details of the new rules.

 

They exempt medical professionals, scientists, and other desirable skilled would-be emigrants, and the military. They sweeten the offer to the Revolution-bred masses by assuring them that they would be welcomed back to Cuba and could retain their resident benefits as long as they return every two years.

 

In other words, travel to the mythical Miami, city with streets paved in exile gold; become a resident after a year under the Cuban Adjustment Act and be eligible for U.S. benefits; send thousands of dollars and goods to Cuba; come vacation in Varadero — and even collect a few pesos (those $20-a-month Cuban pensions), rent or sell your home and keep your old Lada.

 

“This is a way to get rid of Cuba’s population because they cannot meet the economic needs of the people,” says Andy S. Gomez, senior fellow at the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. “They do it with bad intentions. They know that the young people of Cuba are looking for any opportunity to leave the country…. As a young woman told me in Santiago de Cuba, ‘Anywhere but here.’”

 

It’s also no accident that the new travel rules are timed to go into effect on Jan. 13, days from the U.S. presidential inauguration.

 

No matter who wins the election, Cuban officials will be able to peddle their brand of truth to the Cuban people — particularly the disenchanted youth — that it’s not their government prohibiting travel, but the imperialist monster to the North. Another ploy to force their way into the American agenda.

 

And so, then, forget about the positive spin being put forth about the new travel rules. The devil is in the details. 

 

Originally published at The American Thinker

Hugo Chavez: 'I am not a socialist!'

By David Paulin

Yes, Hugo Chavez really said it: "I am not a socialist!" Not recently, to be sure, but 14 years ago when Chavez - as a cashiered Army paratrooper who'd led a failed military coup in February 1992 -- was making a run for Venezuela's presidency.

"I am not a socialist!" he said during a television interview, wearing a suit and speaking in reasonable tones. This was when he was trying hard to convince voters - especially middle-class and well-off Venezuelans who were leery of him -- that he'd definitely cast aside the bullet for the ballot. Chavez, at the time, claimed he was an idealistic moderate who would pursue a "Third Way" between capitalism and socialism. He pledged to reverse wide-spread poverty, clean up endemic corruption, and restore the oil-rich but impoverished South American nation's national pride - a nation that, during the era of high oil prices, was a beacon of democracy in the region and, many Venezuelans believed, was poised to attain first-world status. Back then, the country was dubbed "Saudi Venezuela."

"I am not a socialist!" Chavez's words now figure prominently into a powerful YouTube video - "Yo no soy socialista" - that juxtaposes Chavez's original campaign pledges against his leftist rhetoric that started soon after he took office in 1999. The video comes as Chavez, 58, is in a close election race against 40-year-old state governor Henrique Capriles.

You don't need to understand Spanish to understand the video in which El Presidente -- who now speaks of creating a paradise of "21st Century Socialism" -- extols the virtues of "fatherland, socialism, or death" ("patria, socialismo o muerte) to an audience. At another point, he declares: "I am a true revolutionary!"



 In the mainstream media's Venezuela coverage, an important piece of context is often omitted regarding Chavez's rise to power - it's erroneously suggested that only Venezuela's poor voted for Chavez, who won the second-largest popular vote ever, 58.4%, in 1998. In fact, many middle-class and well-off Venezuelans voted for Chavez. They didn't see him as a messiah as did Venezuela's poor, to be sure. But they did regard him as a sincere reformer -- a political outsider not associated with Venezuela's traditional parties, a man who would be an antidote for Venezuela's decline.

But as the YouTube video dramatically shows, Chavez carried out a monstrous bait-and-switch after becoming president. Declaring himself a revolutionary socialist and adopting an anti-American foreign policy, despite Venezuela's historically close ties with the U.S., Chavez consolidated his power by rewriting the constitution and packing the Supreme Court and other institutions with his supporters. He demonized anybody who disagreed with him. It happened because of Venezuela's weak checks and balances and the popular wave of support on which Chavez was riding.

As a Caracas-based journalist at the time, I was impressed at the way some prescient Venezuelans, a minority to be sure, avoided group think. They saw Chavez as a wolf-in-sheep's clothing from the start. Even before Chavez's landslide election victory, for instance, many upper-level executives in state oil company PDVSA were resigning -- making plans for early retirement abroad, with Miami being a popular spot to weather the storm. Many were among Venezuela's best and brightest. They had wanted to be part of the solution to Venezuela's problems. But Chavez, a class warrior instead of a uniter, saw them as part of Venezuela's problems.

Ultimately, Chavez took three bad ideas from Venezuela's past - statism, authoritarianism, and bread-and-circus populism - and took them to new heights. He stoked anti-Americanism like never before, traveling frequently abroad as he made alliances with Cuba's Fidel Castro and Middle Eastern strongmen. He even praised Venezuelan-born terrorist Carlos the Jackal as a "worthy heir of the greatest [leftist] struggles."

As for PDVSA, it used to be one of the world's most respected state oil companies, a vital source of income. Under Chavez, it has become rife with political cronyism. Oil production has declined significantly, according to many observers. It's thought the Chavez administration's mismanagement was responsible for a huge refinery explosion last month - whose flames, as shown in the "I-am-not-a-socialist" video, look like scenes from hell. It's an apt metaphor for what "21st Century socialism" has brought to Venezuela.

In his reelection campaign, Chavez has had a clear advantage. He controls the levers of power and has no qualms about using state resources to aid his campaign, as was underscored on Tuesday with a report from television news channel Globovision: It showed PDVSA vehicles driving around with Chavez campaign stickers.
  
Capriles is good looking compared to the puffy-faced Chavez who claims to be in remission from cancer; and in Venezuela -- home to many beauty queens -- looks matter. Capriles has connected with audiences by hammering away at Venezuela's epic levels of corruption, mismanagement, and Chavez's willingness to use Venezuela's oil to support leftist political goals abroad -- all while Venezuela has suffered regular electricity outages, food shortages, and one of the world's highest murder rates.

What will happen when Venezuelans go to the polls this Sunday? It may be ugly. Chavez, after all, sees himself as being on a divine mission, a veritable reincarnation of Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar, his hero. He believes the ends justify the means. Most ominously, Chavez and his senior advisers have asserted that Venezuela will suffer violence and political instability if he's not reelected. All of which raises fears that the country is poised for a social explosion, with Chavez's most fanatical supporters and government forces taking to the streets. This would be in response to a Capriles victory - or perhaps in response to a Chavez victory that's regarded by enraged Capriles' supporters as being rigged.

"A number of multinational companies with operations in Venezuela (including oil companies) are updating contingency plans to pull their expatriate staff out of the country quickly if there's a sudden eruption of social and political conflict," writes blogger Caracas Gringo, a prescient American expat who writes anonymously from Venezuela.
-
Whoever wins, Venezuela's sad decline will not be reversed anytime soon. 

Originally published at The American Thinker blog and FrontPage Magazine

Liberal appeals court judge removed from hearing Tom DeLay's case


Originally published at the American Thinker blog


David Paulin

Tom DeLay has been on a legal odyssey for one-and-one-half years -- a seemingly Quixotic effort to get a fair hearing before the 3rd Court of Appeals in Texas. On Friday, however, the former U.S. House Republican Majority leader won a critical legal skirmish -- the removal of Democratic Justice Diane Henson from hearing his appeal for financial and election-law crimes.

Who is Henson? Certainly no paragon of judicial impartiality. In the past, she has publicly vilified the state's Republican judges as "zealots." More ominously, she indicated a desire to hear DeLay's appeal to ensure justice was done.

All of which gives credence to Republicans who have long suspected that DeLay was the victim of a Democratic witch hunt in the liberal bastion of Travis County, where he was tried and convicted by a Democratic prosecutor

A recap of recent history regarding the DeLay case is in order. In January 2011, DeLay was convicted in an Austin courtroom of money laundering: specifically, of illegally funneling $190,000 of corporate money into campaign donations during the 2002 election. From the start, though, the charges against DeLay seemed to push the legal envelope of what constitutes money laundering -- a crime more commonly associated with drug kingpins and thugs. To the delight of many in Travis County, DeLay was nevertheless sentenced to three years in prison. He has been free during his appeal.

Which brings us back to DeLay's wanna-be Grand Inquisitor, Judge Henson. In demanding her removal, DeLay's lawyer Brian Wice of Houston raised alarm bells over a Republican-bashing speech that Henson delivered in 2006 at the state's Democratic Party convention. Henson at the time was a candidate for the Austin-based appellate court -- and she knew how to get the attention of fellow Democrats. In her very first sentence after introducing herself, Henson called attention to an interesting fact about the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals. "It is the court of appeals that would hear the appeal of Tom DeLay if by chance he was convicted," she declared.

Henson also lambasted President George Bush's criticism of activist liberal judges, telling the audience "the only activist judges we have in Texas are those conservative right-wing zealots that control our courts today, and they are Republicans." What's more, she said, the GOP has "filled the courts, our appellate courts, with extremists, with people that are controlled by special interests, big insurance companies and big corporations."

Her remarks drew shouts of approval and applause. Her performance may be seen in the YouTube clip, below:



The Austin American-Statesman broke the story of Henson removal, with reporter Laylan Copelin noting in a Sunday article that the 3rd Court of Appeals had announced Henson's removal, without explanation, on its website on Friday. In the past, Henson had not commented on Wice's motion to remove her. She also "had refused to recuse herself from the case," the Statesman noted.

Obviously delighted with Henson's removal, Wice told the Statesman: "All we ever asked for was a level playing field. That wasn't going to happen as long as Justice Henson's DNA was on the case."

To date, DeLay's quest for an impartial panel of appellate judges has been a tortuous one, but not merely because of Judge Henson. As the Statesman explained:

(DeLay's) appeal was delayed when three of the four Republican justices on the 3rd Court recused themselves from hearing the case. They gave no reason for stepping aside. That left DeLay's fate in the hands of two Democrats and a Republican.

When Wice challenged Henson, the 3rd Court was down to Chief Justice Woodie Jones, a Democrat, and Justice Melissa Goodwin, a Republican, to decide whether Henson could hear the DeLay case.

Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson added a third, temporary justice to hear the motion against Henson. He appointed San Antonio District Judge David Berchelmann Jr., a Republican and a former criminal appellate justice.

With Henson now off the case, Wice said Saturday he expects Jefferson will appoint a justice to hear oral arguments with Jones and Goodwin.

Arguments in the politically charged case are expected to go forward this fall.

All in all, Henson must be fuming over her removal in light of her apparent eagerness to sit in judgment of DeLay. Previously, one of her biggest claims to fame was having written an opinion for the 3rd Court of Appeals that upheld the right of two lesbians who'd gotten married in Massachusetts to get divorced in Texas - even though Texas prohibits same-sex marriage.

Editor's note: Also see an earlier American Thinker article, "Tom DeLay and moral equivalence in Travis County, Texas."

'Blobfest' in Phoenixville, PA, honors 1958 horror film seen as metaphor for 'creeping communism'

Originally published at American Thinker blog on July 13


By David Paulin

This evening around 7:30 p.m., things will be hopping in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. In the normally sedate hamlet, hundreds of people will be screaming and running about -- women, children, and men. Many will be dressed in clean-cut 1950s-era garb.

But, no, this has nothing to do with guns and religion: what inside-the-Beltway liberal sophisticates believe obsesses hayseeds in places like Phoenixville (pop. 16,440) -- situated 28 miles northwest of Philadelphia at the junction of French Creek and Schuylkill River.

This evening, Phoenixville kicks off one of small-town America's wackiest summer festivals: Blobfest. It's been going on for 12 years now, and is inspired by the 1958 science fiction/horror film "The Blob," which was widely seen in cold-war America as a metaphor for creeping communism (in spite of the filmmaker's assertion that it was really a biblical parable). Filmed in and around Phoenixville, "The Blob" starred a yucky and murderous alien glob and a young Steve McQueen, in his debut movie role, playing a clean-cut teenager.

Given "The Blob's" fanciful plot, it's no wonder the low-budget film was seen, in 1958, as a warning against creeping communism -- or perhaps creeping socialism today?

Here's the plot: As Steve McQueen's character and his gal make out in the front seat of a hot-rod in lover's lane, a meteor-like object lands nearby. The couple investigates -- and soon discovers that an alien has dropped from the sky. The Blob creeps menacingly through town -- greedily consuming its hapless victims, incorporating them into its malevolent presence. In the process, it grows bigger and redder and more powerful. Sound familiar?

One of the movie's most memorable scenes takes place at Phoenixville's storied Colonial movie theater. That's where the Blob creeps into the projection room, consumes the projectionist, and then oozes into the theater -- sending hundreds of terrified patrons screaming out the front door.

This evening, residents will recreate the famous run-out scene, part of a stage show at the Colonial. In recent years, the theater has been getting an ongoing restoration led by civic-minded residents who are determined to reinvent Phoenixville, settled in 1732, once an important industrial center and now an increasingly popular bedroom community. The town -- or borough to be precise -- took its name from the Phoenix Iron Co..

After this evening's run-out reenactment, there will be a "retro party" with music from the 1950s. Screaming contests, sci-fi movies, and hot-rod car shows -- all have been among the staples of the 3-day festival over the years. For a full schedule, click here.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French political writer, traveled through Pennsylvania in the early 1800s when researching his remarkable two-volume work, "Democracy in America." No doubt, he would feel right at home in Phoenixville or at a screening of "The Blob" -- for he'd encounter plentiful examples of upbeat Americans, imbued with the sorts of civic-engagement values that so impressed him in the new nation he admired.

How, incidentally, was the Blob finally defeated? Actually, it wasn't defeated -- just put to sleep. After Phoenixville's citizens and police mobilize, the Blob is frozen with blasts from hand-held CO2-loaded fire extinguishers. It's a remarkable example of civil defense, with air-raid sirens wailing. Even a kid with a cap gun takes some shots at the alien. Then, the Air Force transports the Blob to the North Pole.

The movie concludes with the words "The End" - which slowly turns in a question mark. To view the movie's introduction with theme music, click here.

Sorry, but readers who'd like to participate in this evening's run-out scene and retro ball will have to make reservation next year. Tickets are sold out. However, you can view last year's run-out scene below, set to "The Blob's" tongue-in-cheek music by Ralph Carmichael Burt Bacharach. Enjoy the fun.

Texas Republicans savor ouster of DA involved in wrongful conviction

By David Paulin

If you want to understand Texas Republicans, forget about the GOP primary race pitting Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst against Tea Party-backed former state Solicitor General Ted Cruz -- the contest spotlighted by the national media.

The most fascinating race in last week's primary was in fact the contest for district attorney in staunchly conservative Williamson County (pop. 422,679), part of the Austin-Round Rock metropolitan area in Central Texas. It pitted long-serving incumbent John Bradley -- a smooth and patrician lawyer endorsed by Gov. Rick Perry -- against Jana Duty, a young county prosecutor whose experience included prosecuting juveniles and dealing with family violence cases.

But unlike the race pitting Cruz against Dewhurst for the seat of retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, this contest was pervaded with the sorts of intriguing subplots found in a John Grisham thriller: two brutal murders, a wrongful conviction, and what many voters regarded as the lame excuses given by Bradley -- a former prosecutor of the year -- for keeping an innocent man behind bars.

In short, the race revolved around the case of Michael Morton -- an innocent man wrongly convicted in Williamson County of murdering his wife, Christine, in 1986. Last year, Morton was exonerated by DNA evidence after spending nearly 25 years in prison. Even more shocking, the results of that DNA test enabled police to quickly arrest and charge another man with Christine Morton's murder as well as the subsequent murder in 1988 of another young Austin mother, Debra Baker. Both were beaten to death in their bedrooms.

The case of Michael Morton electrified Central Texas, highlighted the problems of wrongful convictions in Texas (sometimes by overzealous prosecutors), and cast a long shadow over Williamson County's district attorney's race.

Williamson County prides itself on being tough on crime -- an attitude once personified by Bradley, a tough-on-crime prosecutor whom Gov. Rick Perry appointed in 2001. To be sure, Bradley had nothing to do with Morton's conviction; Morton's lawyers blame that on previous district attorney Ken Anderson whom Gov. Perry appointed to be a district judge in 2002. Anderson is now being investigated by a state "court of inquiry" for allegedly withholding evidence, including an investigator's report that Morton's 3-year-old son, Eric, witnessed a strange man kill his mom after his dad went to work.

Bradley, however, spent six years vigorously fighting efforts by Morton's lawyers to do DNA testing on a blood-stained bandana found near the crime scene. Bradley insisted it was "irrelevant" to the case, but an appeals appeals-court judge finally ordered the testing. The results lead police to Mark Norwood, a dishwasher in nearby Bastrop who had lived in Austin in the mid-1980s. He was charged in the murders of Christine Morton and Debra Baker.

In Williamson County, residents were sickened that an innocent man had spent 25 years in prison -- and angered for Bradley's role in keeping him there. Duty, for her part, said Morton's wrongful conviction on circumstantial evidence convinced her to run for office -- and she built her campaign around the case.

"I was so ashamed that I was from Williamson County because of the shame that case brought on the county," she told the Texas Tribune in a video interview.

Duty faced a formidable opponent. Bradley remained popular despite his missteps in the Morton case. After Gov. Perry appointed him, he had run a contested race for office in 2002. He was re-elected in uncontested races in 2004 and 2008.

"What I was told, repeatedly, was we don't run against incumbents in this county. And I just thought that was kinda crazy because, you know, coming from San Antonio when I moved to Williamson County, I felt like I'd stepped back in time about 50 years with the attitudes here. And so, nobody else would do it, and true to my nature, I said, 'Well, if nobody else will do it, I will.'"

Pledging to return "honesty and integrity" to the district attorney's office, Duty contended that the district attorney's office still suffered from the same flawed procedures and policies that led to Morton's conviction, despite Bradley's regrets over what happened. "The goal seems to be more about your reputation and your statistics (in winning cases) than in seeking justice," she said.

Bradley's critics also faulted his chairmanship of the state Forensic Science Commission, saying he pushed members to find no misconduct in a controversial arson investigation that led to the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham. He was convicted of murdering his three children, and he maintained his innocence until his death.

In debates between Bradley and Duty, the name "Michael Morton" repeatedly came up -- along with Bradley's lame excuses and apologies for blocking DNA testing. He hadn't wanted testing, he explained, because the bandana was found outside the immediate crime-scene area and, moreover, it might have been contaminated because of improper handling, even if it was connected to the crime.

To the chagrin of many observers, Bradley found his campaign signs sabotaged by somebody dubbed the "Bandana Bandit" -- a trickster who tied red bandanas to signs throughout Williamson County. Duty called her campaign a "grassroots effort which relied on individuals to spread the word to their friends and neighbors that, together, we could make a change."

Since winning his freedom, Michael Morton has largely eschewed the limelight. He remained silent about the district attorney's race -- even as his shadow hung over it. Duty, once the underdog, ended up getting myriad endorsements from civic groups and law-enforcement associations. A prominent Tea Party activist, Peggy Venable, observed that Duty as county attorney had kept Williamson County's "good-old boy" system accountable and would do the same as district attorney.

Residents personally affected by Morton's wrongful convictions also offered endorsements. One came from the jury foreman in Morton's trial, Mark Landrumand. Another was from Caitlin Baker, daughter of the young mother whom Mark Norwood is alleged to have murdered while Morton proclaimed his innocence from prison.

Last Tuesday, Duty won 55 percent of the vote to Bradley's 45 percent. She will face Democrat Ken Crain in November.

The Cruz vs. Dewhurst race is headed for a run-off on July 31. But long after that race is over, Texans will be talking about what just happened in Williamson County.


Originally published at The American Thinker

Why the Left Loves the Titanic Disaster

Originally published at The American Thinker and FrontPage Magazine

By David Paulin

The Titanic sank exactly 100 years ago today – a disaster exploited over the years by Hollywood and the ideological left. Their narrative bears little resemblance to what in fact happened in the early-morning darkness of April 15, 1912.

The Titanic storyline embraced by left-leaning filmmakers, writers, and university professors is instead right out of “Das Kapital.” To them, the disaster happened because heartless capitalists put profits ahead of human lives. They falsely claim that this is why the Titanic had too few lifeboats. Above all, leftist ideologues vilify the Titanic's rich first-class passengers. They falsely claim they got first crack at lifeboats -- and as a consequence, passengers in second class and steerage died in large numbers. In this interpretation, the Titanic's legacy was not about women-and-children first. It was about first-class passengers going first.

This false narrative was embraced by filmmaker James Cameron in his 1997 epic “Titanic” -- a view that many impressionable movie goers now take as fact.

The truth was quite the opposite; and in other cases the truth continues to be elusive, the facts ambiguous.

The Hollywood narrative makes for good entertainment. But it ignores the fact that many of the Titanic's first-class passengers -- the “1 percenters” of their day -- voluntarily went down abroad the ship so that women and children could get aboard lifeboats.

Consider first-class passenger Benjamin Guggenheim, 46, the scion of the Guggenheim fortune. After the Titanic hit an iceberg and ice-cold water flooded through a gash in its hull, he was overhead to say that he and other social elites had “dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen."

He passed along a message to a survivor, stating: "Tell my wife, if it should happen that my secretary and I both go down, tell her I played the game out straight to the end. No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward."

Among other rich and famous passengers who died: American John Jacob Astor IV; Irish businessman Thomas Andrews (who oversaw the ship's construction); and American owner of the Macy's department store, Isidor Straus, and his wife Ida.

Of the Titanic's approximately 2,223 passengers and crew, about 1,517 perished – and 706 survived. The ship's 20 lifeboats could only carry one third of the people on board.

For Titanic aficionados with a leftist agenda, the numbers and percentages of passengers who got to the lifeboats -- their sexes and social classes -- can be crunched to prove just about whatever one wants.

"The reality of class, selfishness, and altruism in the disaster is more ambiguous," observes Edward Tenner in his article "Titanic and the 1%" published by the American Enterprise Institute. "As Titanic scholars acknowledge, the survival rate of passengers depended in part on proximity to the boat deck. So it is no wonder that nearly all the women and children in first class were saved. Conversely, complex passageways and language barriers further delayed evacuation of third-class passengers. In all classes, as the literary scholar Stephen Cox has underscored in an essay and an excellent book, moral choices cut across social lines.

"Individual responses aside, there are surprises in the statistics. For example, women in third class were significantly more likely to survive than first-class men: 46 versus 33 percent."

He adds: “The most surprising and least known statistic is that nearly twice as many third-class as second-class men survived – 16 percent versus 8 percent – despite the greater distance of the former from the boats. Were the second-class men the most dutiful and chivalrous of all, the true unsung heroes of the tragedy? Were the third-class men simply younger and more vigorous? Or were the second-class men the middle managers of the era, either fatally deferential to the upper crust or disfavored, consciously or not, by snobbish stewards? In any case, a larger proportion of the dogs on the Titanic survived, 4 out of 13, than second-class men.”

How come the chivalry of Titanic's richest passengers failed to get proper attention in the “Titanic” movie? Because today no one would believe the truth; so says Cuban-born author and historian Luis E. Aguilar in his essay “The Titanic and The Decline of Western Ethnic.”

He explains: “The modern public; immersed in the moral relativism that justifies all conducts, bombarded by attacks on the hypocrisy of Western culture, will grasp base behavior more readily than self-sacrifice, all the faster if it denigrates the rich and the powerful. As in every Mexican TV soap opera, Titanic’s rich behave like pigs. So much so that when Chinese president Jiang Zemin watched the movie, he smiled, “Gentlemen, behold the enemy.” For him and many Americans, the movie’s cloying, cowardly first class passengers represent that capitalistic ethic.”

Were the elites of the Titanic different from the elites today? It's a question Fareed Zakaria tackled in his book “The Future of Freedom – Illiberal Democracy at Home & Abroad.” In 1912, he contends, elites were more likely to exercise power with responsibility.

The Titanic's crew, to be sure, also were well-trained and thus facilitated the ship's evacuation as best they could. In contrast, there's the alleged misconduct of the captain and some crew members aboard Italian cruise ship Concordia, a name synonymous with cowardice and incompetence. But was that ship's entire evacuation a disgrace? There's another side to the Concordia story: Hundreds of passengers, for instance, are shown in photos waiting in an orderly manner in the ship's corridors; and there were reports the ship's staff and passengers rising to the occasion to help with the evacuation.

Consider as well the conduct of passengers aboard the “Miracle on the Hudson” flight, the US Airways jet that ditched in New York's Hudson River. Even as water flooded into the jet, the jet's evacuation was orderly -- a fact that played a significant role in all passengers and crew members surviving. Many of the jet's passengers were upper-middle-class business travelers. In a sense, it was a triumph of a well-trained crew and the shared middle-class values of the jet's passengers.

It took the Titanic two and one-half hours to sink. Order prevailed in contrast to what happened abroad the Lusitania during the 20 minutes it took to sink after being torpedoed.

"If you've got an event that lasts two-and-a half hours, social order will take over and everybody will behave in a social manner. If you're going down in under 17 minutes, basically it's instinctual," says David Savage, an economist and Queensland University in Australia, who has studied witness testimony from the Titanic.

And what about those lifeboats? In James Cameron's film, the ship was not fitted with an adequate number of lifeboats due to a concern for aesthetics: it was thought the deck would look cluttered with too many lifeboats.

In fact, the Titanic complied with existing maritime rules. And as a recent Op-Ed article by Chris Berg in the Wall Street Journal observed: It was thought at the time that lifeboats, rather than accommodating every passenger abroad the ship, would instead by used to transport passengers to ships coming to the rescue. "Had Titanic sunk more slowly, it would have been surrounded by the Frankfurt, the Mount Temple, the Birma, the Virginian, the Olympic, the Baltic and the first on the scene, the Carpathia," according to Berg's article "The Real Reason for the Tragedy of the Titanic." "The North Atlantic was a busy stretch of sea. Or, had the Californian (within visual range of the unfolding tragedy) responded to distress calls, the lifeboats would have been adequate for the purpose they were intended—to ferry passengers to safety."

Hollywood and leftist ideologues make lousy historians. Their retelling of the Titanic disaster offers abundant proof of that – and in a way their tall tales are part of the poisonous effect of leftist ideology in the postmodern world.