Free Speech for We, but not for Thee

Good news at last!  To a guy like me who was black-balled by every fraternity and student association on campus in my college days, including the Red Cross and Soup Kitchen Services student groups (it's a long story), the Supreme Court's latest is heartening.

It seems that Ms. Justice Ginsburg is full-throated in her desire to protect college student's free speech rights.  So, in a Supreme Court ruling handed down on Monday, she is unequivocal about the free speech rights of a campus Christian organization at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, which advocated against homosexuality. Her only problem with the whole thing was that the group also limited its membership to heterosexuals and .... get this .... Christians.  This, she opines, is not free speech at all, but just rank discrimination, and certainly the University could refuse to charter the group as a student organization.  She states: "[The University] may reasonably draw a line in the sand permitting all organizations to express what they wish but no group to discriminate in membership."

This is nothing short of brilliant.  She is able to reach down into her boundless intellect and discern a heretofore undiscovered distinction between a group and the members of that group.  A campus group is an entity which has opinions and has the constitutional right to freely express itself without hindrance by the University.  The membership of the group, however, can be dictated by the University, presumably because there is no necessary connection between the opinions of any member of the group and the group itself.  Thus, the Neo-Nazi Party might be composed of racist neanderthals, or it might be a rare alliance between the Amish and Quakers.  How can we know?

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Goodbye

I have just paid the final installment on my personal robot ping-pong player.  It was a teaser ad which lead me to this site.  It said "Play Ping-Pong by Yourself!."  I realized immediately that this was the last element I needed to totally isolate myself from each and every one of you.  So, this is goodbye.  Please don't call; Robby and I are dedicated to The Game and will not condescend to use Old World technologies like tele- or cell-phones.  And don't come by.  I cannot be responsible for any robot rage which might ensue.

Job Creation Obama Style

Despite my deep dislike of all-things Obama, I have to disagree with my compatriots on the Right in sounding the alarms over Sestak-Gate, which is now spiraling down into the fetid political pond of Romanoff-Gate.  Patronage is as old as civilization, and an indispensable factor in political governance.  If a political party cannot stock its administration with its own, then it cannot govern.  In fact, the Congressional intervention of the last decades into Executive branch administration of its agencies by prohibiting President's from firing "career" personnel for political reasons is primarily responsible for the entrenchment of Washington bureaucracies into bunkered power centers.  As a result, we now have a fourth branch of government, the third, fourth, and fifth level bureaucrats with life tenure, who calcify worn out policies into the body politic and continuously oppose new Presidents and new agendas. Gridlock results.  What is needed is political patronage, which would tow away all the 1950's and 1960's junk heaps and jalopies, clearing the streets for newer models which will navigate the city in accordance with new rules of the road as determined by democratic consensus.  That the political appointees and the political party that appoints them reap personal benefits from the arrangement is only a by-product of having any kind of government at all.  If you don't like it, downsize and eliminate all these government jobs.  You would have my hearty support. What is most revealing about this whole affair, however, is the absolute tin-ear of the Obami. Continue....

The 8 pound Flotilla in the Room

The Flotilla Incident in the Mediterranean occurred, and the verdict is in. Israel made a decision in " ... advance, premeditated and with determination to kill and to create a confrontation with these people, and to take them all to ports in Israel. Israel always ignores all international norms, all international laws, all humanitarian laws. [Israel] doesn’t care about anything." The evidence, of course, will be reviewed at some later time, assuming anyone is still interested.

Even conservative supporters of Israel's right to regulate its borders and defend itself seem curiously flummoxed by the whole affair. Max Boot of Commentary tosses around words like "incompetent" and "fiasco" in sizing up the Israeli Defense Forces handling of the matter, seriously undercutting his stated aim of "constructive criticism." The best analysis by far in my opinion is Noah Pollack, who correctly identifies Israeli (and by extension, US supporters of Israel) error in resorting to a defensive strategy in the face of world denunciation. By any international standards of the sovereign rights of the State to protect its people from aggression, Israel was in the right in its actions. But, although certainly germane to the issue, a mere defense against the charges is a weak and ineffective response in the face of the rabid echo chamber Israel finds itself in. Mr. Pollack goes on to detail numerous offensive strategies Israel could have adopted, all of which I agree with.

But the central point in this whole affair is this:  the Flotilla Incident is a tempest in a tea pot, an 8 pound baby flotilla in the room which deserves not a moment of reflection.

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