Mediaboss Marketing

Because the California National Guard couldnt be mobilized in time, Ann Coulter had to withdraw from giving a speech at Berkeley.

If you take it seriously, thats the import of UC Berkeleys decision to do everything it could to keep the conservative provocateur from speaking on campus over safety concerns.

If somebody brings weapons, theres no way to block off the site, or to screen them, the chancellor of the university said of Coulters plan to go ahead and speak at an open-air forum after the school canceled a scheduled talk.

The administrator made it sound as if Coulter would have been about as safe at Berkeley as she would have been addressing a meeting of MS-13 and he might have been right.

We have entered a new, much less metaphorical phase of the campus-speech wars. Were beyond hissing, or disinviting. Were no longer talking about the hecklers veto, but the masked-thugs-who-will-burn-trash-cans-and-assault-you-and-your-entourage veto.

Coulter is a rhetorical bomb thrower, which is an entirely different thing than being a real bomb thrower. Coulter has never tried to shout down a speaker she doesnt like. She hasnt thrown rocks at cops. She isnt an arsonist. She offers up provocations that she gamely defends in almost any setting with arguments that people are free to accept, or reject, or attempt to correct.

In other words, in the Berkeley context, shes the liberal. She believes in the efficacy of reason and in the free exchangeof ideas. Her enemies do not.

Indeed, the budding fascism that progressives feared in the Trump years is upon us, although not in the form they expected. It is represented by the black-clad shock troops of the antifa movement who are violent and intolerant, and easily could be mistaken for the street fighters of the extreme Right in 1930s Europe. That they call themselves anti-fascist speaks to a colossal lack of self-awareness.

It is incumbent on all responsible progressives to reject this movement, and just as important the broader effort to suppress controversial speech. This is why former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Deans comments about hate speech not being protected by the First Amendment were so alarming. In Deans defense, he had no idea what he was talking about, but he was effectively making himself the respectable voice of the rock throwers.

Deans view was that Berkeley is within its rights to make the decision that it puts their campus in danger if they have her there. This justification, advanced by the school itself, is profoundly wrongheaded.

It is an inherently discriminatory standard, since the Berkeley College Republicans arent given to smashing windows and throwing things when an extreme lefty shows up on campus, which is a near-daily occurrence.

It would deny Coulter something she has a right to do (speak her mind on the campus of a public university) in reaction to agitators doing things they dont have a right to do (destroy property, among other acts of mayhem).

It would suppress an intellectual threat, i.e., a dissenting viewpoint, and reward a physical threat. This is perverse.

For now there is a consensus in favor of free speech in the country that is especially entrenched in the judiciary. The anti-fa and other agitators arent going to change that anytime soon. But they could effectively make it too burdensome for certain speakers to show up on campus, and over time more Democrats like Dean could rationalize this fact by arguing that so-called hate speech doesnt deserve First Amendment protection.

So, it isnt enough for schools like UC Berkeley to say that they value free speech, yet do nothing to punish disrupters and throw up their hands at the task of providing security for controversial speakers. If everyone else gets safe space at UC Berkeley, Coulter deserves one. If the anti-fa are willing to attack free speech through illegal force, the authorities should be willing to defend it by lawful force.

Heck, if necessary, call out the National Guard.

Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: [emailprotected]. 2017 King Features Syndicate

READ MORE:

See original here:
Ann Coulter the Liberal - National Review

BOSTON -- House and Senate progressives, eager to seize whatever momentum there might be for comprehensive criminal justice reform this session, implored their colleagues Tuesday not to let the chance slip by to overhaul all aspects of the justice system.

The lawmakers, many of whom are black and Latino, said they sense an opportunity over the next year and half to capitalize on the completion of an independent review of the Massachusetts criminal justice system.

At a press conference in the midst of the second day of debate in the House on the state's annual budget, the lawmakers said reforms must include changes to sentencing laws as well as bail reform, parole reform and improvements to mental health and substance abuse treatment for inmates.

They used the occasion of the House budget debate to draw attention to the issues as lawmakers, lobbyists and reporters buzzed around the capitol and the House chamber.

"We believe that the discussion and the publicity around the release of the (Council of State Governments) report in February has moved many of our colleagues to look at accomplishing criminal justice reforms at every stage of the justice system. We believe we are ready this session to address the whole spectrum of criminal justice processes," said Assistant House Majority Leader Byron Rushing.

Following the release of the CSG report, Gov. Charlie Baker filed legislation with the support of House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Stanley Rosenberg that took a rather narrow approach to reform.

The bill focused on allowing prisoners to reduce their time of incarceration by participating in jail and prison programs aimed at reducing recidivism and making the transition back into the community easier for offenders.

House Speaker Robert DeLeo earlier on Tuesday called the governor's bill a "great start," and suggested his focus might be on passing the governor's bill first and allowing other ideas to percolate.

"I fully expect there are going to be other pieces of legislation that we're going to be dealing with to supplement what we will be doing," DeLeo said.

Rushing said he did not have a problem with the speaker's comment. "We're not insisting on a process. We're insisting on an end," the South End Democrat said.

The rally outside the House chamber with criminal justice reform advocates was organized by the Legislature's Progressive Caucus, the Black and Latino Caucus, the Harm Reduction Caucus and the Caucus of Women Legislators' Task Force on Justice Involved Women.

Rep. Mary Keefe, a Worcester Democrat, said bail reform must be part of any overhaul, citing statistics from an unnamed county in Massachusetts where bail amounts are four times higher for blacks than whites and black arrestees account for 25 percent of pretrial detainees despite representing just 2.4 percent of the county population.

"We know that our present practices disproportionately impact the poor and people of color," Keefe said.

Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, who has filed a more comprehensive reform bill, said black and Latino residents make up less than one-fifth of the state's population, but account for half of the incarcerated population and 75 percent of the population serving mandatory minimum sentences.

"Justice, we can all agree, should be color blind, but today there is no denying the complexion of incarceration in our state," Chang-Diaz said.

The Jamaica Plain Democrat said reforming sentencing laws would save money that she said could be reinvested into mental health and substance abuse treatment. "When we incarcerate fewer non-violent offenders, focusing our resources instead on drug treatment and poverty alleviation, we are saving taxpayer dollars," she said.

Rep. Paul Heroux, an Attleboro Democrat who once worked for the Department of Correction, said any reforms must be accompanied by more complete data collection to measure whether policies are achieving their goals.

Rep. Christine Barber, of Somerville, said women who make up a growing portion of the state's inmate population also have twice as many cases of mental illness and "longer histories" of substance abuse. Female inmates, she said, are often mothers with sole custody of their children at the time of their arrest.

"We need to make sure 100 percent of people who need care are getting it," Barber said, arguing lawmakers could help "break the cycle of orphaned children."

Read the rest here:
House progressives are making criminal justice reform a priority - Sentinel & Enterprise

The presidential victory of Donald Trump in November of 2016 has been under systematic assault by Democrats, their institutional and media organs, and their followers in an effort to delegitimize him. Why? Progressives thought they had won the battle and would be in power in perpetuity. The election of President Trump demonstrated otherwise. Consequently, Progressives responded with protests, marches, riots, and sustained rage in an effort to undermine his effectiveness in order to restore Progressive governance, now and forever.

Their purpose is to delegitimize not just President Trump but all Republicans and Independents that oppose a Progressive agenda and its stranglehold of policies that undermine American democracy, free speech, and constitutional liberties. Just consider how easy it is to boycott and ban conservative speakers on university campuses these days under the guise of concerns about safety. The result is the loss of divergent opinions that lie at the very heart of liberty.

Progressive outrage is directed against President Trump and is unrelenting. Nearly all television, Internet, and newspaper coveragesave for Fox News and conservative outletshas become a series of hit pieces that make no pretense of impartiality or fact-driven analysis.

Why the vitriol? Progressives believed their revolution had succeeded under President Obama and that Hillary Clinton would ipso facto secure the mandate. What would that encompass? It would include national health care, a European-style socialism, an emphasis on open borders, and a focus on global initiatives at the expense of national issues that responded to the needs of ordinary Americans and their desire for better jobs with the potential of higher incomes. Why was the Progressive agenda rejected by so many voters? It failed to address the anguish of many Americans whose incomes in 2015 remained the sameas measured in real dollarsas 1999.

Progressives never understood the significance of that indicator or the pain that ordinary Americans felt. Consequently, President Trump won and his victory signified the dismantling of the Progressive dream of socialist revolution and replaced it with the hope of reinvigorated capitalism.

Despite the onslaught of attacks against Present Trumps administration, its important to understand that these are but a proxy war for the real villain, the Republican Party and its supporters. The objective in demonizing President Trump is to turn the American tide so decisively away from conservative values that no Republican-leaning leader will ever win again. To this end Americans must never hear, read, or understand the opposing perspective. Social media, television, news, and the Internet must be saturated with a sustained and unrelenting war against conservative beliefs unanchored by pesky facts or true evidence. The outcome, if Democrats had their way, would be nothing less than a perfectly executed coup dtat resulting in 1,000 years of Progressive rule.

What would Progressives advocate? Above all, a foreign policy in which our national goals are sacrificed in favor of interests characteristic of a post-American world. To that end, Progressives would promote measures aimed at ameliorating the conditions of the underprivileged everywhere. However, these improvements typically come not from social directives, but through sustained and systematic changes in the infrastructure that alter the nature of labor, the products produced, and their inherent value. Thus, global socialism, even if it were commendable, would not measurably enhance peoples lives overall. Meanwhile, America, saddled with this global mission, would no longer pursue objectives that would benefit our citizenry and improve their social and economic circumstances.

How would Progressive values be manifest here at home? Socialized health care would replace best practices with palliative care, thereby jettisoning medical advances and excellence. Governmental programs would encourage individual and familial dependence on the state at the expense of empowering Americans to achieve their own economic success. Our educational system would focus on multiculturalism, instead of universal national values committed to excellence. America would be rendered economically and militarily powerless due to its inability to create wealth, enforce borders, and support mandates that champion democratic freedoms both here and around the world.

The case for what was is at stake in the 2016 election was pervasively argued by Michael Anton, a senior staffer at the National Security Council, under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus in his essay The Flight 93 Election. It was published in September of 2016 on the website of The Claremont Review of Books, a conservative journal associated with the Claremont Institute.

Antons premisecharge the cockpit or you diewas bold and to the point. Failure of the Republican Party to align behind Trump in the 2016 election, he argued, was analogous to doing nothing as terrorists hijacked a plane. Failure to act, he implied, would result in death for everyone onboard and, if the metaphor was extended nationally, imperil our country. Sadly, many Republicans and Independents have yet to heed Antons message.

Why werent Americans outraged of the recent evidence of wiretapping and the unmasking of Trump and several of his advisors during the campaign and the transition to the presidency? Why werent Americans distressed by the illegal public disclosure of national security documents leaked by governmental officials with associations to the former Obama administration that targeted President Trump and some of his team?

These were actions that breached our national security and suggest illegal practices that dwarf the Nixon administrations 1972 illegal break-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Washington, D.C. Watergate complex. What will it take to unite the Republicans, Independents, and fair-minded Democrats against a Progressive agenda intent on a dictatorship-style coup dtat through the illegal use of national security information to bolster a failed regime and its misguided agenda?

Dr. Diana E. Sheets is a Research Scholar at the University of Illinois. She writes literary criticism, political commentary, and fiction. Much of it can be read on her website, http://www.LiteraryGulag.com. Her latest book, The Doubling: Those Influential Writers That Shape Our Contemporary Perceptions of Identity and Consciousness in the New Millennium, is published by Nova Science Publishers.

Continued here:
The Progressive Coup d'tat That Wasn't Quite - Huffington Post

The progressive vision for America to make life better for all families, not just the privileged elite at the top has suffered setbacks. After the 2016 election, Republicans control the White House, both chambers of Congress and more than half of state governments.

Liberal hopes for free college, universal health care, equal opportunity, female rights, higher minimum wage, less militarism, less imprisonment and other left-wing goals seem doomed, at least for now. All that reform-minded folks can do is try to prevent losses of past social progress.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is trying to rally progressives into stronger unified resistance against the conservative Trump era. Her new book, This Fight is Our Fight: The Battle to Save Americas Middle Class, is a blunt weapon.

From the New Deal to the 1980s, she points out, America built the greatest middle class the world has ever known. She continues:

We built it ourselves, using our own hard work and the tools of government to open up more opportunities for millions of people. We used it all tax policy, investments in public education, new infrastructure, support for research, rules that protected consumers and investors, antitrust laws to promote and expand our middle class ... . Income growth was widespread, and the people who did most of the work the 90 percent of America also got most of the gains.

However, trickle-down economics under President Ronald Reagan turned the tables, giving ever-bigger favors to the rich, who used snowballing technology and their amassed wealth to corral more power.

Warren, a former Harvard professor, writes that she spent years researching the great and terrible story of middle-class decline. Today, college debt hobbles many families. Job insecurity grows as electronic breakthroughs wipe out more jobs. Wealth keeps amassing in the hands of the 1 percent who control corporations and investments and who stash their money in overseas shelters.

People are angry because trade deals seem to be building jobs and opportunities for workers in other parts of the world, while leaving abandoned factories here at home, Warren continues. Today, this country works great for those at the top. It works great for every corporation rich enough to hire an army of lobbyists and lawyers. It works great for every billionaire who pays taxes at lower rates than the hired help. It works great for everyone with the money to buy favors in Washington.

She calls President Donald Trump a man always on the hunt for his next big con. She urges progressives to follow the pattern of the million-member Womens March on Washington, to mobilize resistance against conservative attempts to slash the public safety net and human rights.

Another form of resistance is citizen lawsuits to prevent new law changes from scuttling past public gains locked into statutes.

With Republicans controlling most government power, will it be possible for progressives to resist effectively? Maybe maybe not. But at least conscientious Americans shouldnt just surrender.

James A. Haught is editor emeritus of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, haught@wvgazettemail.com.

Fareed Zakaria: The education of Donald Trump -- and us (Gazette)

Previous Story

Froma Harrop: Can we think our way past robots?

Next Story

Go here to read the rest:
James A. Haught: Mobilizing progressive resistance (Gazette) - Charleston Gazette-Mail (subscription)

posted at 7:21 pm on April 27, 2017 by John Sexton

The Trump administration launched a new initiative Wednesday called Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE). The office is intended to provide support for Americans who have been victimized by illegal immigrants. Trump mentioned it during his first address to a joint session of Congress.

Progressives offended by the existence of the office noticed that the launch also corresponded with Alien day, a day where fans celebrate the Alien film series. So some progressives decided it would be a good idea to flood the hotline that responds to reports of criminal aliens with calls about UFOs. Buzzfeed highlighted some of these yesterday:

McCoy told Buzzfeed he did call and told the hotline hed been abducted by a UFO, at which point they hung up on him. Lots of other people jumped on the bandwagon:

Thousands of people tweeted or retweeted the idea and dozens (more?) seem to have actually called the number. But its not clear what impact if any this had. Fusion contacted the office and received a statement about the prank:

The VOICE line remains in operation. As yesterday was its first day I cant give you any sense of whether this group had any impact at all on wait times or call volume because theres no prior data to compare

Openly obstructing and mocking victims crosses the line of legitimate public discourse. VOICE is a line for victims to obtain information. This groups stunt is designed to harm victims. That is shameful.

I imagine theyll get bored with this after a few days and move on to the next outrage. Still, its noteworthy that weve finally identified a government program the left would like to cut.

Go here to read the rest:
Progressives flood hotline for victims of crime by 'criminal aliens' with UFO sightings - Hot Air