Patterico's Pontifications

3/7/2012

L.A. Weekly Profiles Breitbart

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:06 pm



A nice piece:

Dozens of the fallen provocateur’s media friends gathered for a monthly party at an elegant home in Santa Monica Canyon last Friday. Contrary to posthumous attacks by adversaries who proclaimed him “a douche” and “a piece of scum,” they talked of a loving husband, an inspirational father to his four young children and an L.A. spirit who fought for the sheer fun of it.

I was there at the elegant home, and indeed, people spoke all night about the sharp contrast between the fun-loving guy who made us all laugh and the portrait painted by the left of an angry man who hated the left. I talked to leftists who said he had argued politics with them, passionately, and then would hug them afterwards.

And it wasn’t just friends. I talked to someone last night who said that he would work with people who talked about how they hated Breitbart. When this person told Andrew about these people, he would say: “Invite them to dinner!” And Andrew would go out and eat with the haters. And the haters would inevitably say, afterwards: “I wanted to hate him. I came prepared to hate him. But he’s a heck of a charming, funny guy.”

Yup.

One iconic image of Breitbart was taken for Time in 2010 It showed him balancing his laptop above his bubble bath, SoCal sunlight streaming into his upstairs bathroom. Journalist Steve Oney wrote in the accompanying story of holding tight to Breitbart’s passenger seat as the rising star raced home “via the sort of shortcuts only native Angelenos know.” In that moment, Breitbart said to him, “I feel very alive.”

Looking back, Oney now says, “It was phenomenal to be with him as he drove in his Range Rover, zipping along, with the 405 in complete gridlock. It seems a metaphor for the way he lived. There was an improbable speed to Andrew’s rise, and to Andrew’s untimely death.”

I attended the funeral yesterday — and the reception, and a get-together afterwards (I didn’t get home until after 1 a.m.) — and I think I understood Andrew more fully, seeing the amazing group of people he surrounded himself with. I had met many of these people before, but met many of them for the first time: people like Adam Baldwin, Greg Gutfeld, Dana Loesch, Mike Flynn . . . the list goes on and on.

One of the people speaking at the reception talked about the way Andrew would often end a phone call. He would be talking on and on, and when it was time to go, he would say, suddenly: “Okay, bye!” Boom. And he’d be gone.

And whoever it was who pointed that out (I can’t remember who it was), they made the point that he died the same way.

Okay, bye!

And he was gone.

Selectively Edited Video of Obama’s Radical Law School Days Released; UPDATE: Breitbart Team Releases The Unedited Version, as Reported on Hannity

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 12:59 pm



The selectively edited video was released by Andrew Breitbart Ben Smith of Buzzfeed.

By contrast, the full video with the proper context will be released by your hardworking friends in Big Media Breitbart.com.

Tonight.

UPDATE: Title corrected. The footage is from his law school days, not his college days.

UPDATE x2: Here is the Hannity segment:

Open up your hearts and your minds to the words of Derrick Bell! And gimme a hug.

Check out especially Charles Ogletree at 3:50, a top advisor to Obama in 2008, admitting they hid this video during the last election.

Good stuff.

Lefty Wisconsin Judge Rejects Voter ID Law in Scott Walker Recall Election

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:21 am



But that’s not the craziest part. The craziest part is that he made this ruling despite the fact that he signed a petition to recall Scott Walker:

Nearly four months before he signed off on the poorly edited order granting a temporary injunction against Wisconsin’s new voter identification law, Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan scribbled his name on another important legal document:

A petition urging the recall of Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Walker signed the voter ID legislation last year and is a defendant in the current case.

“The very fact that Dane County Judge David Flanagan signed a petition to recall Governor Walker calls (Tuesday’s) court proceedings regarding Wisconsin’s voter ID law into question,” said Republican Party spokesman Ben Sparks in a statement.

The petition to recall Walker that the good judge signed was being circulated by his wife.

So, I’m a judge in your lawsuit, and I have signed a document trying to have you recalled from office. And I rule that the law passed to protect against voter fraud in your election cannot be enforced.

How do you feel I am acting in that situation? Pretty fair, right?

But, but, it’s not like the judge is just a partisan hack, right? I mean, his ruling is still quality legal scholarship, isn’t it? Replete with careful citations to the applicable laws and sound arguments?

Eh, not so much:

Statehouse staffers spent Tuesday afternoon counting the mistakes in Flanagan’s 11-page order on voter ID.

The most notable is Flanagan’s reference to “Justice William Scalia.” That would be U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Several sentences in the decision are garbled.

Flanagan refers to the wrong section of the state Constitution when he says it “sets forth explicitly the requirement for eligibility to vote, Art. I, Sect. 2 (4).”

The article and section cited by Flanagan deals, instead, with the prohibition of slavery. He meant to refer to Article III.

Cullen Werwie, spokesman for the governor, took note of the discrepancies: “Our legal team is still trying to locate Justice William Scalia.”

A person more cynical than I am might say that this is absolute hackery. That it’s abuse of a position to win by any means possible.

And that person would be right.

Why, even William Scalia would agree.

Remedial Constitutional education for Markos Moulitsas

Filed under: General — Karl @ 6:30 am



[Posted by Karl]

As many of you still shun Twitter, I must share with you the wit and insight of nutroots commissar Markos “Kos” Moultisas on Rick Santorum’s Super Tuesday speech:

Following widespread mockery from the right, Kos did what he always does… dig himself a deeper hole:

Apparently, Kos was never taught that the Founders of our nation believed in natural rights, although this is obvious from the opening of the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

(Emphases added for easier nutroots comprehension.)  Of course, the Declaration is not the Constitution, even though many of the same people were involved in both projects.  However, as Kos cites the Preamble to the Constitution, it is worth noting as the Supreme Court has, that “[a]lthough that preamble indicates the general purposes for which the people ordained and established the Constitution, it has never been regarded as the source of any substantive power conferred on the government of the United States, or on any of its departments.”  That “We the People” formed a government simply does not mean the people or the government are necessarily the source of rights mentioned in the Constitution.

Kos obviously is unaware of the debate over whether the Constitution should be amended to include what is now known as the Bill of Rights, let alone the role of natural rights in that debate:

The Federalists contended that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary because in their view the federal government possessed only limited powers that were expressly delegated to it by the Constitution. They believed that all powers not constitutionally delegated to the federal government were inherently reserved to the people and the states. Nowhere in the Constitution, the Federalists pointed out, is the federal government given the power to trample on individual liberties. The Federalists feared that if the Constitution were to include a Bill of Rights that protected certain liberties from government encroachment, an inference would be drawn that the federal government could exercise an implied power to regulate such liberties.

Alexander Hamilton, one of the leading Federalists, articulated this concern in The Federalist No. 84. Why should a Bill of Rights, Hamilton asked, “declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?” For instance, Hamilton said it was unnecessary for a Bill of Rights to protect the Freedom of the Press when the federal government is not granted the power to regulate the press. A provision “against restraining the liberty of the press,” Hamilton said, “afford[s] the clear implication that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government.”

The Federalists were also concerned that any constitutional enumeration of liberties might imply that other rights, not enumerated by the Constitution, would be surrendered to the government. A Bill of Rights, they feared, would quickly become the exclusive means by which the American people could secure their freedom and stave off tyranny. Federalist James Madison argued that any attempt to enumerate fundamental liberties would be incomplete and might imperil other freedoms not listed. A “positive declaration of some essential rights could not be obtained in the requisite latitude,” Madison said. “If an enumeration be made of all our rights,” he queried, “will it not be implied that everything omitted is given to the general government?”

Madison ultimately became an advocate for a Bill of Rights.  Kos should read Madison’s arguments, as Madison noted that not all of the rights mentioned in the Constitution are natural rights.  For example:

Trial by jury cannot be considered as a natural right, but a right resulting from a social compact which regulates the action of the community, but is as essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of the pre-existent rights of nature.

Madison won the day in part by proposing what became the Ninth Amendment, which provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”  This amendment in particular was to remind future generations of statists like Kos that our rights predate government.  The Bill of Rights was largely intended to secure pre-existing rights against the new government.  For example, this is why the First Amendment does not state that it creates a right to freedom of speech, but declares Congress shall make no law abridging our freedom of speech.  That Kos seems so ignorant of these concepts is ironic in light of the role they played in the Supreme Court’s decision of… Griswold v. Connecticut, a case which Kos no doubt supports as much as Rick Santorum does not.

–Karl


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