Circling the wagons 'round the Weiner.

Yes, it has been a while since I've vented my spleen about some outrage or another. It's not that there haven't been any, I just find myself too busy to spare what precious time I have to point out the obvious. As any of you who have read any of my rants in the past will agree, the common underlying theme throughout most of them has been the media's penchant for liberal bias and extreme hypocrisy. Never has that been more prevalent than with the recent revelations of Democrat Rep. Anthony Weiner's twitter scandal. I'll not rehash the salacious details but suffice to say there's been more than enough salaciousness to go around. I'd always hoped having a Congressman named Weiner would pay off in comedy gold and he certainly hasn't disappointed me. Lord knows I've had my fair share of punchlines at his expense but when a public figure tweets pictures of his junk AND his name just happens to be Weiner, the jokes just write themselves. I'll try my best not to take any more cheap shots at the Congressman. Not for lack of material mind you, but it's just a little too easy to be frank. Did I just say frank? Sorry. Let me once again stiffen my resolve. Oops, did it again.

See what I mean?

Sure, it's puerile and smacks of third grade humor but if you can't find humor in this you either have no sense of humor or...you're a Democrat. Which brings me neatly to my impending point. Not in recent memory have I seen the media rush to cleanse or at least, diminish, the news surrounding Rep. Weiner. In the past two weeks, the media has spent more time attempting to downplay the severity of the scandal. Make no mistake, it is indeed a scandal due in large part to the way in which he handled it at the outset. His immediate reaction was to lie about it then perpetuate it day after day, using the media as a willing accomplice until it was no longer manageable. When the truth eventually did rear it's incredibly ugly head, he finally decided to make a heartfelt plea for forgiveness from his constituents, his wife and the media he had used to his advantage. One may never know if his wife or his constituents accepted his apology. Losing his congressional seat or his marriage remains to be seen. The media, however, appears to have taken his apology to heart and have since rushed to defend the man in ways both comical and horrific. Chris Matthews laid partial blame at his wife's feet and later said "people in the rural areas of this country who are Christian conservative culturally - you can say backward if you want...don't like this kind of stuff."

Howard Kurtz laid the blame on his position of authority stating that men with powerful personalities could not be expected to remain faithful. Ultimately, these men who are conquerers, should be allowed to philander at will...as long as they're Democrats. Daily Beast contributor Lee Siegel postsed a piece recently entitled, "C'Mon, America, Nobody's Perfect". Really? NPR's Nina Totenberg asked the musical question, "If his name weren’t Weiner, would we still be talking about this?"

Surely you jest. You mean the scandal and it's resulting ferocity of attention are based solely on his name? Lawrence O'Donnell, host of "The Last Word," ridicules the idea that lying should be grounds for resignation, Rachel Maddow, host of "The Rachel Maddow Show," describes the situation as "more gossip than news," and Cenk Uygur, MSNBC political commentator, says that "he lied, so what."

A scant five years ago the networks piled on 152 stories about Rep. Mark Foley in the story's first 12 days in the fall of 2006, but they weren’t the only ones with a vast left-wing disparity. Time and Newsweek each devoted cover stories and multiple pages to the Foley scandal. Time put an elephant’s rear end on the cover with the words “What a Mess...Why a tawdry Washington sex scandal may spell the end of the Republican revolution”. Newsweek had a huge picture of Foley (with a small President Bush in front of his face) with the huge headline “Off Message” and the subhead “Foley’s Secret Life: How a Predator’s E-mail Sex Scandal Could Cost Bush Congress.”

A Republican sex scandal brought down the entire party in the 2008 midterm election but we're just supposed to let the Weiner story fade to irrelevance according to the aforementioned lions of truth in the media.

In simple terms, Weiner sullied the reputation of the country in the wider world, he defiled his marriage to the woman he promised to love, honor and cherish til death they do part...or a hot coed comes along. He lied to his constituents, the media and the entire country multiple times and we're expected to just ignore it and forgive him. He can't help it, after all. He's just a man with flaws and imperfections that we all possess. Trouble is, he's not like us. He's a lawmaker and he's supposed to be a role model for the rest of us. He's one of the many stewards that this country elects and we hold them to a higher standard for a reason. If Mark Foley, Arnold Scwarzenegger, Mark Sanford and Chris Lee are to be held to a higher standard, then Weiner should be as well. Lee, in fact, resigned even before the shirtless pic he sent through Craig'sList even went public. Not Weiner. He's a bulldog who refuses to give up the power he has and his apologists in the media will do everything in their power to see to it that he remains in Congress.

Never mind that he's a walking cautionary tale about the abuses of power of what happens when you're thought process starts and ends below the waist. They'll defend him at all costs regardless of how it looks. And truth be told, it looks pretty bad from where I'm sitting. The media has no soul or objectivity and it's impending demise can no longer be ignored. I say good riddance. I won't shed a tear for them just as I feel no sense of remorse for Rep. Weiner. You did this to yourself. You've no one to blame but yourself.

The Totalitarian State Of The Union

“We are a country of laws, not of men.” - George Washington

Those immortal words still manage to provide an insight into what Washington saw as the lasting legacy of the revolution he had just helped to bring about. That men were subservient to law. All men. None were above it, not even himself.

Those laws seem a little less clear these days with the recent glut of horror stories coming out of almost every airport in America. The line between freedom and safety has been blurred so much as to leave the country in stunned shock at what many see as state sponsored sexual assault. In fact, there are several lawsuits being filed currently alleging just that.

With the newly implemented backscatter x-ray machines that literally see through clothing to the less than gentle and certainly invasive pat downs being done by TSA screeners all across the country, freedom has been degraded to the point of making the simple act of flying anywhere a Bataan grope march of humiliation.


Let's hearken back to that outdated and obscure document we call the bill of rights and read what it says about one of our most basic rights:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

That's pretty clear don't you think? The phrase "...shall not be violated..." has no gray area. It doesn't say or imply that the government can usurp that right when it deems it necessary or in times of crisis. It says simply, No warrant...no search. End of story. I would guess that most of the people who have already been through the naked scanner or the "pat down" would deem that an "unreasonable search" considering the areas that are checked. Men's groins are groped as well as women's breasts.

One irate air traveler declared flatly, "You touch my junk and I'll have you arrested." He finally declined the naked scanner and the pat down and chose to leave the airport to avoid what he felt was a humiliating and completely pointless search of his person. The government is currently charging him with failure to obey a lawful TSA request and his punishment could include a fine of over ten thousand dollars and/or imprisonment. Bear in mind that he left the airport to avoid the search and decided to travel in another way. The TSA asserts that this is still a violation and he will be prosecuted. Now, if you choose not to fly you still have to have the search performed. In Khrushchev's wildest dreams he could never have imagined the police state that we have denigrated to.

There is also a video on YouTube that has gone viral of a 3 year old girl screaming, "Stop touching me!" as a TSA agent pats her down. The video was taken by her father who just happens to be a reporter. These are not isolated incidents either. Each new day of air travel brings more accounts very similar to the previous examples. Let's examine a statement by the Deputy Director of the TSA,

" No one wants to have their 4th amendment rights violated when they board an airplane but that's what we're gonna have to do."

In that one line he acknowledges that the new security measures violate a basic civil right but we as air travelers have no other option. . It's for safety, right? The words of Benjamin Franklin come to mind in this instance, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. "

Surely if there was another way that didn't violate the constitution they would have implemented it by now. Well, in actual point of fact there is another way. Ask Israel's El Al Air how many times they've had to deal with a hijacking on one of their planes and they'll tell you just once in their entire history. They've not had an incident on a plane for more than 30 years and they don't subject passengers to unreasonable search unless they have a credible reason to do so. They rely solely on human intelligence to keep their planes safe. What most on the left would term "profiling" or what most law enforcement officers would call simple police work. It's more commonly referred to as "gut instinct" and it's helped law enforcement officers do their job for hundreds of years.

A fine example of gut instinct being the key factor in keeping the public safe is the case of the millennium bomber. In December of 1999, upon arriving on a ferry from Canada, al-Qaida operative Ahmed Ressam was arrested with a trunk full of explosives. His plan: to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. He was in possession of a legal Canadian passport, acquired with false information. NBC's Lisa Myers interviewed the alert agent responsible for foiling the plot and reports,

' “His story didn’t make sense to me,” said customs inspector Diana Dean. Now retired, Dean was working the border that night. On a hunch something wasn’t quite right, she questioned Ressam and asked him to pop his trunk. Inside were big bags of white powder that were first thought to be drugs.

But that night, drug tests came back negative. When investigators looked further, they found timers and realized the powder was explosives.

Dean said, “My heart dropped right into my toes when I realized what it was.”

She says no one had told her anything about being on alert for terrorists.

“I don’t recall any specific threats," she added. "I don’t recall anybody saying watch for terrorists.”

Customs officials confirm that no alert had gone out to the field."

Despite White House and 9/11 commission officials claiming that enhanced information and more focus on terrorism saved LAX from a horrific catastrophe it is the work of one very smart Border agent and one very nervous terrorist that averted this crisis.

Perhaps the most telling example of the need for human intelligence being the basic tenet of security is the story of Jose Melendez-Perez, a Puerto-Rican born United States Customs and Border Protection Inspector at Orlando International Airport who became a key figure for the 9/11 Commission when he refused entry to an alleged terrorist prior to the 20th hijacker. Thus there were only four hijackers onboard Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania, and possibly because of the shorthanded muscle on that team, the passengers were able to overcome the terrorists.

A Saudi national, Mohammed al Qahtani, landed in Orlando on a Virgin Atlantic flight. Since the Qahtani's forms were not properly filled out, he was moved to a secondary interview, conducted by Perez. The Saudi did not have a return ticket or a hotel. He had $2,800 in cash and no credit cards. Questions to where he would stay and where he would go were evasive. Besides being quite hostile, Qahtani also made contradictory statements regarding his plans.

Perez advised his superiors to have him sent back. As, according to his testimony, he sent Qahtani back out of the United States, the man allegedly turned around to him and said "something to the effect of 'I'll be back.'"

Both of the examples cited here were successful due solely to the training and innate intelligence of the agents involved. Both used their training and instincts to determine that something wasn't quite right and denied entrance to men who wanted to visit tragedy on American citizens. Neither relied on x-rays or pat downs to come to their conclusions. It is often argued that Melendez-Perez may have in fact saved the White House or the Capital building from devastation as it was determined that one of those two would be the final target for that horrible day. The people who owe their very lives to Melendez-Perez now ignore and dismiss his training as "profiling" and decide instead to subject every American to treatment that might seem common in a communist country but goes against the grain of every lesson learned from the American Revolution.

With the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday fast approaching, the airlines will soon be faced with the usual staggering numbers of travelers they accommodate every year and airports across the country will become the scene of what's being called "Opt Out Day". In an exercise of civil disobedience, thousands of passengers will simply decline the x-ray scanner and force the TSA agents to do endless pat-downs. I say, more power to them.

I'm reminded of another quote from Ben Franklin,

"Disobedience to a tyrant is obedience to God."

The good old days...

Since I'm stuck at home sick with a respiratory infection, I thought I'd spend a little time writing. I was going to write a note about the media coverage of last week's election but after reading my notes I realized that it's not any different from the other dozen notes I've written about media bias. The only real difference was the overtly confrontational nature from the panel at MSNBC towards Michele Bachmann and their obvious lack of objectivity as the night wore on. As the returns came in, the panel seemed less like journalists and more like the character Glum from the "Gulliver's Travels" cartoon. Remember him? Always the sad sack who would pronounce, "We're doomed. We'll never make it." One wonders if the impending sale of NBC to Comcast will shake up the blatant partisanship of MSNBC.

One interesting point during MSNBC's coverage of the election was something that didn't happen all night. Not once during the entire coverage did anyone on the panel utter the word "Teabaggers" to describe the movement that played such a pivotal role in the Republican rout. I asked myself why that would be since both Olbermann and Maddow, and to a lesser degree Chris Mathews, made it a habit of using that word freely during their regular broadcasts. Was it a directive from on high? Was it a pact between the three? Was it the knowledge that their future bosses at Comcast might be watching? Who knows. Either way, it was a grim joy to see the defeat of the Democrats played out on the faces of the unholy trinity. Revenge may be a dish best served cold but it's even better when it's being filmed.

That is old news now and not nearly as surprising nor newsworthy as I first thought it would be. The media is biased. That's been clear for years and I find it hard to add anything more to it. What I really wanted to write about was related to our present situation but on more of a historical tangent. Oh hell, why not just say it.

I miss Bill Clinton.

There, I said it. Moreover, I'm not ashamed of it either. I did vote for him twice after all. Some of you already know that I was once a Democrat although I held some moderately conservative beliefs. I was raised a Kennedy Democrat. John F., not Teddy. Most of my immediate family are still Democrats to this day. I try not to get into too many political discussions during family get-togethers but it's a well known fact I lean to the right. I grew up believing that Democrats were the party of the little guy and I thought that was an admirable thing. I never questioned those beliefs and apart from voting for Reagan in his second term, I voted Democrat regularly. Hell, I even voted for Michael Dukakis. That was more of a protest vote than anything else. The senior Bush was head of the CIA at one time and that just had a creepy feeling in my mind. I voted for Reagan for two reasons; first, I was in the army at the time and he was wagging his finger at the Russians nearly every day on TV and second, I liked having someone who was the Commander of the military who wasn't afraid to flex his military muscle when it was needed. I still like to say that at one time, many years ago, Ronald Reagan was my boss.

On to the real meat of this note though. I miss Bill Clinton. A lot. Despite his failings as a man he was one hell of a good leader for this country. He represented a new style that matched the attitude of the nation. We were quickly approaching the new millennium and he was well suited to the task of leading us into it. He was given an economy that was just beginning to roar back into life, job growth was good, people were making money and his ability to connect with the common man was uncanny. Who can forget, "I feel your pain."?

While his moral compass may have been stuck pointing south, to his crotch, his leadership was spot on. When he lost the house in '94 he realized quickly that things would have to change in order to govern effectively. He rose to the challenge and made quick work of forming new partnerships in the Congress. While he is still credited for signing welfare reform into law, it's hardly mentioned that it passed his desk 3 times before he actually signed it. It was a sweeping reform and wildly successful and it showed his willingness to reach across the proverbial aisle. He was a keen political animal, the likes of which we weren't quite used to. He was smart, likable and always on the lookout for his next moment of glory. He also represented a new era in politics. He was the first politician that we stopped putting on a pedestal. We recognized him as a man. Flawed and imperfect but with a good heart. He loved his country and it showed.

He took what appeared to be a crushing defeat and turned it into a chance to showcase his astounding adaptability and his expert political gamesmanship. His ability to triangulate became the stuff of legend. He was able to bring all sides to the table and forge an outcome that left most feeling like they won the day.

So why the wistful remembrance about a man I find so reprehensible today? Quite honestly I wish I saw the same traits in our current President. What I've seen so far from Obama is more of the same rhetoric that led him to the defeat he just suffered. His post election statements and his subsequent interview on 60 minutes were both filled with laments about how he didn't get his message out clearly enough. How he should have done a better job at convincing his opposition that his way was the best way. His arrogance will simply not let him believe that the American people might not agree with him. Bill Clinton wanted approval more than anything else. Maybe his childhood played a role in his need to be liked but whatever the case, it served him well in the aftermath of the 94 midterm. He played it beautifully, masterfully and with such ease you hardly noticed that he had just had his political head handed to him.

If Obama has any political instincts at all, he will learn an important lesson that Bill Clinton already knows. You either listen and learn or you become a weak footnote in history.

Can you say Jimmy Carter?