A New York Times bestselling author unafraid of the truth
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Pollsters say Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN) is on the ropes. Some polls even predict Lugar will be knocked out in his primary bout with State Treasurer Richard Mourdock this Tuesday (May 8th). That’s a dramatic change in political fortunes.
Incredibly, this is Lugar’s first primary challenge since winning his seat in 1976. In his last election (2006) a Democrat didn’t even run against him. So how did Lugar become this vulnerable? Was there a scandal? Nope. This is a foe with more stamina than even a mistress or slush fund. This is about—no wonder the mainstream media is baffled—steadfast principles.
To find out what’s changing politics in the GOP see my column in Forbes.
 The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) sure thinks so. He has distributed a staff briefing paper and draft of the contempt of Congress resolution against Attorney General Eric Holder to Members of the Oversight Committee.
Frederick R. Hill, director of communications for the Oversight & Government Reform Committee put out this information. (For the complete paper click here.)
From Page 6: “When [firearms trafficking syndicate ringleader] Celis-Acosta informed ATF of the names of the two cartel contacts for whom he had been working, agents quickly came to learn that these two U.S.-based cartel contacts were already known to the Department of Justice … In exchange for one associate’s guilty plea to a minor charge of “Alien in Possession of a Firearm,” both of these cartel associates became FBI informants and were considered essentially unindictable….”
From Page 9: “When the Committee issued a subpoena to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on October 12, 2011, for Justice Department documents, the Committee specified 22 categories of documents it required the Department to produce. Department representatives specifically confirmed their understanding of each category. To date, the Department has not produced any responsive documents for 12 of the 22 categories…. For over a year, the Department has issued false denials, given answers intended to misdirect investigators, sought to intimidate witnesses, unlawfully withheld subpoenaed documents, and waited to be confronted with indisputable evidence before acknowledging uncomfortable facts.”
From Page 13: “Agent Alt notified his superiors about his impending testimony. The next day, ATF Internal Affairs notified Alt that they wanted to talk with him about another matter. On May 5, 2011, Agent Alt met with ATF internal affairs investigators about allegations that Alt downloaded two prohibited applications to his government-issued phone. The total cost of these applications was eight dollars…. Alt was prevented from transferring offices and his eligibility for promotions and pay raises barred during the pendency of the investigation – all supposedly over eight dollars in phone applications.”
From Page 17: “Perhaps the most damning assessments of the Department’s handling of the fallout from Operation Fast and Furious have come from two Justice Department officials. Kenneth Melson, the former Acting AFT Director during the pendency of Fast and Furious, told Congress that, “it appears thoroughly to us that the department is really trying to figure out a way to push the information away from their political appointees at the department.”
 A study by Aaron Sell from Griffith University in Australia and his colleagues found that “macho men” are more likely to vote conservative. They postulate that fighting ability—which they largely define as upper-body strength—guides the minds of modern men. Their study explores the idea that human males are designed for fighting, and shows how this fighting ability drives attitudes with regards to a range issues, including politics. After looking at the politics of Hollywood actors—particularly action stars, who often break the Hollywood stereotype by more often voting for Republicans—they came to the conclusion that muscles replace brain matter. The study has been published in the journal Human Nature. It determines that physically strong men are more likely to hold conservative political views because they believe in aggression and self-preservation. They point out that Hollywood action heroes, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone, are all big, aggressive men who tend Republican. The British newspaper The Telegraph says “it may all stem from the hunter-gatherer instincts of macho men, which are a hangover of out cavemen origins when the strongest ruled the roost.”
The British paper went on to say such men “build up their upper body strength and become subconsciously obsessed with their fighting ability.”
The premise of this study is skewed. While surely men or women who have had to struggle to persevere without silver spoons in their mouths have learned that a hardworking, conservative approach to life increases your odds of success, this doesn’t mean their muscles think for them. This study actually predetermines its own conclusion. The study never looks at the question from the opposite point of view: Could it possibly be that because such men struggled to achieve success they then became macho men?
Lead researcher Aaron Sell said men were “designed for fighting” and the tougher they are the more this influences their behavior, even at the voting booth. Uh-huh, but could they have become tougher because their behavior toward life? Could the fact they had to make it in the world by the power of their own gumption have something to do with this? Schwarzenegger, Norris and Stallone are, after all, all self-made men. Not one of them grew up rich. They all made their own fortunes.
Instead of being honest about how these men became who they are, these pseudo-scientists pre-determined their own conclusion. The British papers and other Liberal outlets applauded them for it. After they’re done clapping with one hand, perhaps they should go back and do some honest research.
 The true story behind Donald Trump Jr.’s safari, the dead elephant, and the media circus that erupted when a photo of him holding the elephant’s severed tail needs to be heard. It says something profound about men, about contemporary media bias and about what it really means to be an honest environmentalist today.
For the inside story I interviewed Donald Jr. He was raring to talk. The media slammed him, but then didn’t care about getting the true story.
First, the media fallout: Somehow TMZ, a celebrity scandalmonger website, obtained photos (even the Trumps don’t know how they got them) of Donald Trump Sr.’s two sons, 34-year-old Donald and 28-year-old Eric, on an African safari posing with that dead elephant as well as a leopard, crocodile, Cape buffalo and more.
TMZ ran the photos with a quote calling the Trump boys “pitiful bloodthirsty morons.”
For the whole true story check out my column in Forbes.
President Barack Obama took 57 percent of the women’s vote in the 2008 presidential election (men split their vote 50–50 between Obama and John McCain). But can Obama win the women’s vote again? For clues to how women are likely to vote in the 2012 presidential election — and why some candidates are resonating more than others — we turned to a new technique now being used by some marketing companies.
First, we should put the polls in context. Obama’s campaign team knows he needs a clear majority among women again in 2012 to win, but Gallup reported that as of March 19–25 Obama’s approval rating among women was just 49 percent. He’ll need a much higher percentage than that to win; after all, according to Gallup’s statistics, in the 2004 presidential election 52 percent of women voted for John Kerry, and in the 2000 election 53 percent of women voted for Al Gore, but both lost to their Republican rival, George W. Bush.
So, if we use the last three presidential contests as indicators, Obama would seem to need over 53 percent of the women’s vote to win. True, he might win with less, depending on voter turnout. According to Census Bureau figures, in the 2010 midterm elections 42.7 percent of eligible women voters cast ballots, whereas just 40.9 percent of eligible men voted. Also, historically, a higher percentage of unmarried women vote for Democrats than of married women, and the number of unmarried women has now surpassed the number of married women — as of August 2011, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 51.1 percent of women 18 years of age and older were not married. Democrats like this shift in demographics.
According to the Voter Participation Center (VPC), a Democratic-leaning nonprofit, 61 percent of unmarried women who voted in 2010 cast ballots for Democrats. And a lot of unmarried women haven’t been voting, says the VPC. For example, although unmarried women made up 25.2 percent of the overall population eligible to vote in the 2010 midterm elections, they made up only 23.6 percent of actual voters that year.
So winning the women’s vote is essential; however, understanding how to win it is difficult for campaign staffers, who often seem to shrug their shoulders just as Sigmund Freud, the man who invented psychoanalysis, did when he opined, “The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’”
A method of analysis that Freud would have appreciated, called “laddering,” gave us some surprising answers as to why women are moving toward one GOP candidate or another.
For more, check out my article at National Review.
An editorial in The New York Times on March 27th showcases how the Liberal elite is becoming an anti-democratic movement. The editorial argues that the mandate in “Obamacare” requiring nearly every American to buy health insurance or be punished is permissible because the Constitution, to them, is irrelevant. The Times opined: “If the Supreme Court hews to established law, the only question it must answer in this case is modest: Did Congress have a rational basis for concluding that the economic effects of a broken health care system warranted a national solution? The answer is incontrovertibly yes.”
A “rational basis,” not whether the mandate is constitutional, is the Times only test! The U.S. Constitution—and with it all the amendments, including the Bill of Rights—was passed, ratified and amended according to the will of the people. This document sets limitations on the federal government. This was the will of the people—as passed through their elected representatives in the U.S. Congress and ratified by state governments. If the people wish to amend the Constitution they can do so. Amendments gave women the right to vote and even once banned alcoholic beverages. However, by instead letting the government do whatever it thinks is “rational” there wouldn’t be any constraints left on the federal government—the will of a free people would be expunged. If that was what the Founders wanted, then why did they wrangle over the Constitution in the first place? If the “rational-person test” was all they wanted, then they would have just let the Federal government start doing whatever it thought rational. Such a ruling would usurp the will of the people and do away with our constitutional democracy.
Meanwhile, a Washington Post editorial on March 28th argued, “Three days of Supreme Court arguments over the health-care law demonstrated for all to see that conservative justices are prepared to act as an alternative legislature, diving deeply into policy details as if they were members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.” Yes, when ruling on the peoples’ will (via the U.S. Constitution and laws passed by Congress) the justices actually have to dive in and read the legislation to see if it is constitutional.
On Sunday Rick Santorum told a New York Times reporter, “Quit distorting my words…. It’s bull—-. Come on man.” Santorum had just said in a speech that Mitt Romney is “the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama.” Reporters wanted clarification. Some seemed to be taking Santorum’s statement out of the context of health care, playing a game of spin. This made Santorum lash back.
Attacking the media when they distort the facts can certainly fire-up supporters. This tactic has worked for Newt Gingrich. But can a statesman ever be profane and remain presidential?
Santorum, of course, is hardly the first politician to be caught cursing. After introducing President Barack Obama at the signing ceremony for healthcare-reform legislation, Vice President Joe Biden said to President Barack Obama, just loud enough for a microphone to record him: “This is a big f—ing deal.”
Former Vice President Dick Cheney was also taped cursing when he told Senator Patrick Leahy to “f— yourself” as they passed by each other in the U.S. Senate back in 2004. And, during the 2000 election campaign, George W. Bush was recorded saying that New York Times reporter Adam Clymer is a “major-league a—hole.”
And this isn’t a new phenomenon. The most graphic vice-presidential use of four-letter invective belongs to John Nance Garner (he was vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt). Garner once said, “The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.”
All of these uses of profanity made headlines. Plenty of pundits condemned each for the loose language; however, all of these indiscretions blew over quickly. So then, can a politician stay presidential if they drop an f-bomb? To see the surprising answer, check out my column in Forbes.
 In Britain in the 1930s Winston Churchill kept warning the public about Germany’s military build up. He was warning about a coming catastrophe. People didn’t want to hear his message. They made fun of him and marginalized him. When the war with Germany came they turned to Churchill and asked him to lead. I’m hoping our debt crisis doesn’t have to follow the same path. Rep. Paul Ryan has been arguing we’re headed for a financial cliff. He has presented plans to change course before the U.S. experiences a crisis similar to Greece’s current fiscal mess. Last year, when he presented his budget, he was ridiculed and a commercial was done showing Ryan pushing granny off the cliff.
Now Ryan is back with another bold budget plan to avert the coming disaster. He says, “America is facing a defining moment. The threat posed by our monumental debt will damage our country in profound ways, unless we act..,, The president’s recent budget proposal would accelerate America’s descent into a debt crisis. It doubles debt held by the public by the end of his first term and triples it by 2021. It imposes $1.5 trillion in new taxes and permanently enlarges the size of government. It offers no reforms to save government health and retirement programs, and no leadership.”
Meanwhile, Ryan’s budget, which he calls “The Path to Prosperity,” cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the president’s budget over the next 10 years and, he says, “reduces the debt as a percentage of the economy, and puts the nation on a path to actually pay off our national debt.”
Whether or not his plan is perfect, Ryan is manning up to the problem. Let’s hope the American people force enough other legislators to man-up to the problem and thereby avert the crisis.
Rick Santorum has backed (and, when in the U.S. Senate, sponsoring) bills animal-rights groups are advocating, but that agricultural groups and sportsmen’s organizations oppose.
In one example, in 2001 then Sen. Santorum (R-PA) introduced S. 1478, the Puppy Protection Act of 2001, with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). This act intended to improve conditions for dogs at “puppy mills” by addressing socialization and breeding issues, and by creating a “three strikes and you’re out” system for violators of the Animal Welfare Act.
Santorum did more than back animal-rights legislation; he even held a press conference in 1995 in which he was pictured alongside Wayne Pacelle, an animal-rights activist who now heads the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). For those of you who don’t know HSUS, its positions are similar to PETA’s and no, they don’t run your local pet shelter; in fact, HSUS doesn’t run a single pet shelter in the U.S. and only gives about one percent of its money to pet shelters. What HSUS does is spend its money on anti-farming and anti-hunting campaigns.
For more, see my column at Forbes.
 So Robin Morgan, a former child actor turned American radical feminist who helped found W.I.T.C.H., joined up with Jane Fonda, aka “Hanoi Jane,” and Gloria Steinem, a political activist who became nationally recognized as the media spokesman for the women’s liberation movement, got together to demand that the FCC drive Rush Limbaugh off the air in an op-ed—so much for free speech. These radical feminists don’t believe people they don’t agree with should be able to voice their opinions … and they don’t think this is contradicts all of their stated values for equality? They think Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s famous declaration—“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”—is only suitable for their opinions. The op-ed is titled “FCC should clear Limbaugh from airwaves.”
These three divas say, “[Limbaugh’s] longtime favorite term for women, ‘femi-Nazi,’ doesn’t even raise eyebrows anymore, an example of how rhetoric spreads when unchallenged by coarsened cultural norms.” Wow, that’s honest. These feminists want “coarsened cultural norms” to regulate your speech and they want the FCC to be the enforcers (in other words, they want to empower politically correct police). They then call Limbaugh’s opinions “hate speech.” There is a legal definition for hate speech: The Second Restatement of Torts (1965) defines IIED as conduct “so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.” They think Limbaugh goes beyond all “possible bounds of decency.” Oh boy. They then ask the FCC if “the stations carrying Limbaugh’s show” are using “their licenses ‘in the public interest?’” They say the radio “spectrum is a scarce government resource” and therefore Rush doesn’t deserve the space. Millions of Americans, of course, disagree. This op-ed is worth reading simply because it shows the gross intolerance now found on the Left. If we want to keep our First Amendment from completely fading away, we have to understand people like Steinem, Morgan and Fonda.
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