Pointed out by J. Christian Adams:

Since my testimony before the Civil Rights Commission under oath on July 6 about various corrupt policies relating to enforcement of election law at the Department of Justice, the left-wing soldiers on the internet have marched into action. They have made personal attacks and made multiple factual errors in defending the dismissal. This is unfortunate, because they are harming a cause they profess to support — the right to vote. In their reflexive personal attacks and amateurish legal arguments, they fail to see they are undermining their own long-term goals, namely vigorous enforcement of voter intimidation and civil rights laws. Perhaps it is not too late for the more reasonable among them to understand their approach to the New Black Panther dismissal is suicidal…

Suicidal, indeed. The left’s defense of NBPP and attacks on Adams is un-American. To defend the NBPP is to defend criminality; to defend fascism; to defend racism. I realize that the left has a knee-jerk mentality about these things – but if you let this thing go on then there will be no defense of voter rights, at all.

The problem with left wing tactics is that they are turning elections from contests of parties and ideas in to contests of who can cheat the most. This undermines democracy and once that is completed, we will fall to tyranny – if the electoral process is muddied to the point where the people don’t accept the results as legitimate, then the government has no authority to rule. Period.

You on the left really need to think about this – and join the right in demanding that the NBPP be prosecuted.

Picked out by Michael Ledeen over at Pajamas Media:

Note to Secretary Gates, General Petraeus, and Admiral Mullen:

Our refusal to see the big war that we are actually fighting is making your commanders in the field very nervous. In another one of those little stories that appear just once and then vanish into the pit of Newspeak, General Odierno pointed out that the Iranians are still after our guys in Iraq, and we are making things easier for them.

The U.S. military is beefing up security around its bases in Iraq in anticipation of Iranian-backed militants looking to score propaganda points by attacking American soldiers leaving the country, the U.S. commander said Tuesday.

Gen. Ray Odierno said the Iranian threat to U.S. forces has increased as Tehran looks to boost its political and economic influence in Iraq in the face of a decreasing U.S. military presence…

So much for engagement.

Iran is governed by a wicked regime lead by evil men. They desire power and wealth for themselves and are absolutely ruthless in their pursuit of same. This is not some new, never-seen-before thing – it is what some men have chosen to do ever since a man found out that he could kill, wound and oppress his way to being on top. It will continue to be the way some men behave until the Last Day, when all will be set right and we won’t have to deal with such men again for all eternity. Until that time, we have to look at the world through realistic eyes.

In other words, not through the eyes of liberal ideologues who don’t think that evil even exists, let alone that there are men who delight in doing evil.

The leaders of Iran are determined to take advantage of our flabby response to their nuclear program as well as our clear desire to cut out of the middle east militarily. They have taken the measure of the man, Obama, and realize that killing Americans is a low-risk activity, while doing so can increase their political leverage in Iraq and throughout the middle east. A couple dozen dead Americans on the way out of Iraq can and would be spun in the Islamist world as Iran kicking us out of Iraq.

The biggest mistake President Bush made was to not take military action against Iran when he not only had the chance, but had the justification for it. It was known fairly early on in the Iraq anti-insurgency campaign that Iran was a primary sponsor of the Iraqi terrorists. Once again, American arms were pitting against a cruel foe who had a safe haven. On a smaller scale, it was Vietnam and Korea all over again – once again, American leaders were adverse to applying America’s full power against armed enemies. Obama is just worse in that not only is he unwilling to apply full force, but he seems all too willing to give up even the minimal force we have been applying.

A serious policy regarding Iran must include the prospect of war with Iran. And I’m not talking merely bombing attacks – if pressed to it we must be willing to declare war on Iran, invade the country, conquer it and impose unconditional surrender upon the Iranian leaders. This is not to say that it must come out that way, but it is to say that we must be willing to do – and let everyone know that we are willing to do it, with deeds and not just words.

Obama’s policies are now storing up blood to be spilled in the future. An emboldened Iran will increase its efforts to strike at us – one day, we’ll have to get serious about Iran, and I hope its not after they have nuclear weapons and the ability to strike us here at home.

They don’t like dissent and don’t want us watching what they do. This is the left – they’ve always been like this, and they’ll never change. The difference, now, is that cameras are everywhere…unlike the time when our Matt was roughed up by leftist thugs.

The truth is coming out about the left, and that is the key to our complete victory.

You might recall me saying last year that there was zero chance for the Republican party to win a Senate majority in 2010. It just wasn’t in the cards. There weren’t enough competitive Democrat seats, while there were several competitive GOP seats which opened up opportunities for Democrats to counter GOP victories over Democrats.

Now? Now, it has shifted from impossible, to possible – from the Wall Street Journal:

…Republicans would have to win virtually every competitive race to retake the Senate, without losing any seats of their own—clearly an uphill climb. The trouble for Democrats is that many trends are against them. Surveys show that Republicans are more motivated than Democrats to go to the polls, and that voters are looking for new leadership in Congress.

“I think there is definitely a chance” of losing the Senate, said Democratic strategist Gary Nordlinger, a Washington-based media consultant. “I wouldn’t call it a probability, but there is certainly a chance.”

“Republicans still have to [win] all the competitive races in order to get to a majority, but at least there are enough seats on the table to pull it off,” said Nathan Gonzales, political editor of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report…

It would be, without a doubt, very difficult for Republicans to win the ten seats necessary for a majority (9 wouldn’t do it, as that would put the Senate at 50/50 with VP Biden breaking the tie). But the thing is, there are a total of 11 Democrat seats the GOP has a reasonable prospect of winning – there are two GOP seats which are rated as a bit vulnerable, but not nearly as vulnerable as most of the Democrats’ are. It would take rolling sixes several times in a row, but it could happen.

The really bad news for the Democrats: the GOP is likely to really clean up in 2012 and 2014 as all those first term Senate Democrats from 2006 and 2008 have their first re-election bids, often in GOP-leaning States. A bit of hard work, a bit of luck, and we could wind up with the power to force through whatever reforms we desire.

Sorry, boys and girls, just couldn’t get anything together for the AM. Have at it.

Jonah Goldberg over at NRO wonders:

…For nearly a century now, the rules have said that tough economic times make big government more popular. For more than 40 years it has been a rule that environmental disasters — and scares over alleged ones — help environmentalists push tighter regulations. According to the rules, Americans never want to let go of an entitlement once they have it. According to the rules, populism is a force for getting the government to do more, not less. According to the rules, Americans don’t care about the deficit during a recession…

Mr. Goldberg should know better than that – this is easy. No, the rules haven’t changed. They are just as they were, oh, 100 years ago. The only thing has changed is the ability of a tiny elite to steam roller their agenda through. What has changed is how information is disseminated in public.

Did you know that there were demonstrations in favor of victory in Vietnam? No, seriously, there were. Some quite large, and they were organized at the grass roots level. Sort of like the TEA Party, ya know? Most people have never heard of this – because back during the war, when it was a choice of which demonstration to cover, the MSM covered the anti-war demonstrators (even, from what I understanding, coaching the demonstrators on how to make the best effect on television). The pro-war people weren’t covered and there was no way for them to get their message out – conservative media outlets were restricted to a few low-circulation magazines such as National Review, and just a handful of mid-sized newspapers which had conservative editors.

Until the rise of the New Media – and Rush was the start of this, back in 1988 – there was simply no way for large numbers of conservative/centrist people to find out that they weren’t an isolated minority. The election of Ronald Reagan was actually out of place, in a certain sense – and it really only happened because both the Democrats and the MSM were so convinced that they were correct that they figured the best way to beat Reagan was to get him on the air…to debate him openly. Once the people found out about him – and were coached in how to believe via the MSM – it was a sure thing Reagan would lose.

That didn’t work out – and once Reagan was in, the MSM tried to repair the error. Most people don’t realize where the response to the State of the Union Comes from. After all, the State of the Union is a Constitutionally recognized requirement of the Presidency…but the response is no where mentioned. But there it is. Why? Because the MSM wanted to give the Democrats a chance to steal Reagan’s thunder whenever he got up on the bully pulpit and spoke directly to the American people (it was also amusing in those days to watch the MSM and see them try to immediately spin what the President said – trying, as it were, to tell us all what we were supposed to think about the speech).

Reagan wasn’t going to come again, as far as the establishment was concerned. They would carefully control the debate and immediately pre-demonize anyone who showed up with an inclination to oppose the status quo. Robert Bork was a victim of this – but, also, one of the last. That was in 1986; two years later, Rush was on the air, and things started to change.

But it wasn’t until the internet really took hold that the power of the elite to script the debate was ended. Blogs, especially, spelled the doom of the old ways. When anyone could post any opinion they liked without let or hindrance and anyone could read that opinion for free, the fat was in the fire. When some of these bloggers turned themselves in to investigative reports, the elite’s goose was cooked.

So, no, the rules have not changed – it is just that the rule-breakers no longer can control the debate. The rise of the TEA Party and the revolutionary ferment among the citizenry is the result of the broad majority not only knowing that things are bad, but knowing that they are, indeed, the broad majority. It makes all the difference in the world – just getting the truth out there. And that is what has changed, not the rules.

It can be accessed over at Arizona Public Media tonight at 7PM Pacific time. It is probably worth a listen.

McCain has been an Establishment conservative but he’s had to toe the TEA Party line (as it were) in order to save his Senate seat. It’ll be interesting to see both how this primary comes out and whether or not McCain has really changed, or is just saying what is necessary to save his seat.

Its all part of the process – pressure is applied via primary, establishment candidate shifts towards us to win…then we have to keep a sharp eye out and always be ready for another primary challenge, if the politician gets off the ranch.

Angelo M. Codevilla over at the American Spectator has a fascinating article about just how our current ruling class arose, what it’s goals are and the perils for any group which would try to overthrow it and re-establish Constitutional government. Some of it is things I have already discussed and there are a few points of disagreement between myself and the author (most notably and the notion of bringing democracy to foreign lands on the point of a bayonet – I think we can and should, Codevilla feels otherwise…of course, I would do it differently from the way we’ve done it). It is, in my view, a must read article.

The pragmatic facts of life here are that we do have a ruling class. It comprises the overwhelming majority of elected Democrats as well as a substantial minority (and perhaps, at times, a plurality) – Ed. Note: this had said “majority”, but that was a typo, sorry for the confusion – of the Republican party. It absolutely dominates the permanent bureaucracy, especially on the federal level. It controls the unions, almost all institutions of higher education (especially in the prestige universities) and the MSM. It is culturally dominant in television and motion pictures.

It is very badly educated (especially in history and military affairs, while it wouldn’t know theology or philosophy if it fell on them) and yet claims for itself the mantle of an educated elite (this on the mere fact of having degrees, especially dumbed-down degrees from prestige universities). It is anti-Christian, anti-Jewish religion (to distinguish from those non-observant Jews who are members of the ruling class), anti-American and utterly contemptuous of the American people. It believes that it must rule because the American people, as such, are too narrow minded, ignorant, racist and stupid to govern themselves.

And it has to go – we must get rid of it before it destroys America and thus opens the path to war, conquest and a new Dark Age.

The changes we must advocate and carry out are, indeed, revolutionary. That we will be doing nothing other, in the end, than restoring our Founder’s government doesn’t make it any less revolutionary. We must think and act like revolutionaries – uncompromising in our demands and fierce in our denunciations of a usurping ruling class.

We must press our enemies and never let up. But we also must be wary of ever falling in to their methods. Codevilla points out how wrong it would be if, given a Congressional majority, we were to enact a Bill of Attainder against, say, Pelosi, Reid and Obama and then, per the Constitution, refuse authority to the Courts to review such action – we would be running rough shod over our own views and thus destroy ourselves.

But we must not shrink from the prospect of eventually putting all of them in jail for their violations of the law. Not that we will, but we must be prepared to do so – we must have an intensity of force which will leave no doubt that we are not going to be thwarted. They, on their side, have spent decades slowly transforming America in to a political freak show – we’ll want to switch it back to a constitutional republic in a matter of a few years, because any coalition of revolutionaries in favor of the Founder’s system will not be able to cooperate over even a ten year period, let alone the 80 or 90 years our ruling class has spent wrecking America.

Our advantage is in numbers and genuine enthusiasm for what we’re doing. Their advantage is in having control while also being a tightly disciplined minority. Victory will go to the side which keeps the goal most clearly in mind and which doesn’t lose faith even when things look darkest – fortunately, we are also the side with faith, so I do see our victory as certain, if we but show the will to try.

From NRO’s The Corner:

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R., W. Va.) tells National Review Online that she will decide on whether to run for the U.S. Senate by early next week…

…Over the weekend, Moore Capito, a five-term incumbent, says she will “look at everything” and will continue to have conversations with GOP leaders in Washington. Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, tells C-SPAN that he has reached out to the Mountain State congresswoman. “I think we’ll have a competitive candidate,” he says. “Governor Manchin would have voted for the stimulus. He supported the health care bill. Those are unpopular policies in a state like West Virginia that has about a 35 percent approval rating for the president.”

The “stakes are big,” Moore Capito tells us, with the Obama administration “out of line” with West Virginian values…

That is all very true, but Democrat Governor Manchin is a very conservative Democrat (he’s even pro-life while Moore-Capito is reportedly pro-choice) and he’s tremendously popular with West Virginia voters. Beating him won’t be easy.

On the other hand, he can be beaten. Moore-Capito has shown herself to be a savvy campaigner and is also popular in her corner of West Virginia. West Virgnia, itself, is trending increasingly Republican on the national level and Obama is very unpopular in that State (it went for McCain in 2008).

It would be one of the most hotly contested races of 2010 – I would prefer a more pro-life GOP candidate, but I’ll also have to look further in to Moore-Capito’s position on that…there’s pro-choice and then there’s pro-choice, ya know? Meaning there are those who are just wary of banning abortion and then there are those who are pro-abortion. I’ll have to see where she falls on the scale.

The news:

Washington’s Senate race looks increasingly like a referendum on incumbent Democrat Patty Murray with two Republican candidates edging past her this month.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Washington State finds Republican hopefuls Dino Rossi and Clint Didier both earning 48% support in match-ups with Murray. She, in turn, picks up 45% of the vote against the two GOP challengers…

Taking down Murray would be quite a feather in the GOP cap come November – she was, it should be recalled, one of the safe Democrat seats for 2010. As in so many other Democrat seats, even a win at this point is going to be disappointing because they’ll have to do it the hard way – large expenditures of money and effort which thus cannot be used to challenge GOP seats.

The lay of the political land has decisively turned against the Democrats. The November result cannot be known at this point, but the bottom line is that Democrats will need to catch a lot of breaks just to hold on this fall.