Patterico's Pontifications

11/22/2009

Is Obama Carteresque?

Filed under: Obama — DRJ @ 10:42 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

It’s a valid question but you won’t believe who’s talking about it:

H/T Newsbusters.

— DRJ

Patterico on KFI With Breitbart

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:00 pm



It might happen, this hour (9-10 p.m. Pacific). Listen live on the Internet. Go here and click on the “Listen” link — then “Listen Live NOW.”

It may not happen; the plan to have me on seemed tentative. We’ll see.

UPDATE: Just talked to him. Looks like it’s happening at 9:30. He’s breaking some news about ACORN documents, though, so tune in now.

UPDATE x2: Only got in a line or two but it was fun.

Now Andrew’s telling us ACORN people went undercover themselves back in the early 2000s! Will the irony never cease?

An ACORN Correction

Filed under: Dog Trainer — Patterico @ 8:49 pm



In a recent series of posts on a pro-ACORN op-ed by Peter Dreier, I noted a series of errors and omissions and called on the Los Angeles Times to correct them. I obtained one correction — to the silly assertion that only two ACORN offices provided advice to Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe for a purported underage prostitution ring. I noted some other errors and omissions as well. In the course of discussing these with a correspondent, I learned that the American Spectator had gotten a fact wrong as well — and I had repeated it. Namely, the assertion that Darnell Nash was convicted of vote fraud. He was not. He was charged with vote fraud and convicted of vote registration fraud.

I can’t seem to get the American Spectator to correct the record, but I’m correcting it here. I have placed the following UPDATE AND CORRECTION to this post:

UPDATE AND CORRECTION: Since this post was originally published, I have had a chance to look at the actual docket for Darnell Nash’s conviction, and it appears clear that, while he was charged with vote fraud, he was not convicted of vote fraud. Instead, he pled guilty to three counts of false registration. Here are the relevant screenshots:

Darnell Nash Charges 1

Darnell Nash Charges 2
Click to embiggen.

I have sent an e-mail to the author of the American Spectator article that erroneously reported that Nash was convicted of voter fraud, seeking a correction. I have received no response.

The interest of full accuracy demands that I publish this correction. It is nevertheless still quite clear to me that Nash voted illegally, whether he was convicted or not. Also, Dreier should have revealed his ACORN connections in the article, and botched facts familiar to every knowledgeable conservative I know.

I have also included links to this correction in this post and this post.

This does not mean that Dreier got it right. His statement — that “not a single person who signed a phony name on a registration form ever actually voted” — is still false and should have been corrected. I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the numerous sources I provided, quoting election officials and prosecutors as saying Nash voted after registering illegally.

Also, as I note in the correction above, the paper’s continuing failure to address Dreier’s consulting work for ACORN and his position on the ACORN Advisory Committee is, in my view, a continuing black eye for the paper’s reputation (such as it is) for full transparency and disclosure.

However, the American Spectator got it wrong as well, and I quoted them, so I also got it wrong. Also, the author of the American Spectator article in question is ignoring my request for a correction — which I find every bit as irritating as when Los Angeles Times editors ignore me (which they still do from time to time!). All I can do is correct the record on my blog and undertake efforts to correct it elsewhere.

Parenting Advice

Filed under: General — DRJ @ 7:34 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Some people believe we should raise children with permissive parenting to promote creativity and avoid conflict.

Other people believe we should raise children with structure and calm assertive energy as modeled by the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan, with animals.

And one guy really did raise his child by only speaking Star Trek’s Klingon for the first 3 years of his life:

“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers told the Minnesota Daily. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”

And get this, Speers says he isn’t really a huge Star Trek fan.”

If there’s one constant in parenting, it’s that kids are resilient. Now it’s time for a poll:

— DRJ

Coming Soon: The 9/11 Five and “Why We Did It”

Filed under: Law,Obama,Terrorism — DRJ @ 4:39 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

The five Guantanamo detainees the Obama Administration plans to try in a New York federal court will plead not guilty so they can air their grievances in a public forum:

“The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but “would explain what happened and why they did it.”

Not surprisingly, Ali – a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – and the other defendants have a negative view of American foreign policy.

— DRJ

Jeff Jacoby: Support In-State Tuition for Illegal Immigrants or Be Labeled “Unprincipled”

Filed under: Immigration — Patterico @ 11:26 am



Jeff Jacoby:

YOU’RE A sensible, principled conservative. You want America to be a land of boundless opportunity and freedom, where people are treated as individuals and judged on their merits. . . . But let someone mention “illegal immigrants,’’ and your principles fly out the window.

So when Governor Deval Patrick recommends allowing young illegal immigrants – residents of Massachusetts who have graduated from high school – to attend a public college and pay in-state tuition, you flip out. This is outrageous, you protest. It rewards people who broke the rules. It’s unfair to the taxpayers who subsidize public higher education. Why should an illegal immigrant get a valuable tuition break that Massachusetts wouldn’t give to a kid from Maine or New Hampshire?

If you think that, Jacoby says you’re unprincipled.

Feel free to “flip out” in the comments.


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