Tag: freedom

On Wednesday Israel launched its tenth satellite, spy satellite Ofek 10.

8:55 am

On Wednesday Israel launched its tenth satellite, spy satellite Ofek 10.

This story is only noteworthy in that the launch shows Israel’s very capable abilities to independently launch its own rockets and satellites into orbit. The country however really isn’t competing with the rest of the world in the race to conquer the universe. Their focus is solely surveillance and reconnaissance for security reasons, plus having the missile capability to deliver payloads long distances.

Culturally, the bulk of Israel’s population is in Israel because that’s where they want to be. Going to the stars is not their priority.

Update: Nor does it matter that there is an Israeli team competing in the Google X Prize contest to land an unmanned private rover on the Moon. While there might be individual Israelis who want to settle Mars, the culture’s focus is still going to be on strengthening Israel itself.

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Liberal mob rule.

8:59 am

From a Democrat! Liberal mob rule.

Even for those of us who support same-sex marriage, the virtual manhunt of Mozilla chief Brendan Eich was scary to watch. His heresy was a private donation in support of an anti-gay marriage initiative six years ago. Mob rule enforcing groupthink is as illiberal as it gets, and yet it was liberals demanding uniformity of thought — or else.

Another incident of muzzling those without the proper worldview received less attention. Kickstarter, the nation’s biggest crowd-funding site,refused to accept a film about convicted abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell unless descriptions of his crimes were removed.

Read it all. It is refreshing to see a liberal Democrat recognize and condemn the modern oppression of the left.

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A government investigation has found evidence of numerous IRS employees of performing illegal political activity in support of President Obama and fellow Democrats.

8:41 am

Working for the Democratic Party: A government investigation has found evidence of numerous IRS employees of performing illegal political activity, while working, in support of President Obama and fellow Democrats.

These activities were independent of the IRS’s management effort to harass conservatives, and provide further evidence that the tax agency was aggressively using its power during the 2012 election to get Democrats elected.

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Brandeis University withdraws planned honorary degree for Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali

12:10 am

Brandeis University withdraws planned honorary degree for Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

More than 85 of about 350 faculty members at Brandeis signed a letter asking for Ali to be booted off the list of honorary degree recipients. And an online petition created Monday by students at the school of 5,800 had gathered thousands of signatures from inside and outside the university as of Tuesday afternoon.

Our modern academic community: Willing partners to violent terrorists and to the oppressors of the innocent and weak.

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An update on the story of the BLM’s attempt to confiscate a man’s cattle in Nevada while outlawing free speech in vast parts of the land the agency administers.

10:02 pm

An update on the story of the BLM’s attempt to confiscate a man’s cattle in Nevada while outlawing free speech in vast parts of the land the agency administers.

From the details in this story, it sounds as if the BLM might have some justification to take the man’s cattle. Voiding the Constitution while they do so, however, is unacceptable.

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A black activist Chicago preacher has come out endorsing the Republican candidate for Illinois governor.

9:18 am

Pigs fly! A black activist Chicago preacher has endorsed the Republican candidate for Illinois governor.

This is a very significant story. Prior to the 2012 election there had been hints in Chicago of a revolt by blacks against the Democratic Party, but on election day it didn’t happen. It now appears that the undercurrent of justified dissatisfaction is finally reaching the surface. And should it be true, that the blacks are beginning to consider voting for someone other than Democrat, then it will become impossible for Democrats in Illinois to win any elections. In fact, all that needs to happen is for them to lose about 20 to 30 percent of the black vote and they are toast as their support in most other demographics is so poor.

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A new study has found that there is zero correlation between increased spending and improvements in education.

9:03 am

A new study has found that there is zero correlation between increased spending and improvements in education.

While spending has just about tripled in inflation-adjusted dollars and the number of school employees has almost doubled since 1970, reading, math and science scores for students have remained stagnant.

“That is remarkably unusual,” Coulson wrote in his study. “In virtually every other field, productivity has risen over this period thanks to the adoption of countless technological advances — advances that, in many cases, would seem ideally suited to facilitating learning. And yet, surrounded by this torrent of progress, education has remained anchored to the riverbed, watching the rest of the world rush past it.”

Click on the link just to see the main graph. While math, reading, and science scores have remained unchanged for literally decades, spending has skyrocketed. To put it bluntly, we aren’t getting our money’s worth.

Note this quote also:

But if spending has no affect, then why do students at private schools, which charge tuition, perform better than students in public schools? “Actually, the average per-pupil spending in private schools is substantially below the average per-pupil spending in government schools,” Coulson said. He pointed to a study he conducted in New Mexico’s neighboring state of Arizona in which Coulson said average per-pupil spending at private schools was about 66 percent of the cost of public schools.

I wonder if the phrase “public sector unions” comes to anyone’s mind as an explanation for this sad situation,

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Uninstall Firefox.

8:39 am

Uninstall Firefox.

As Princeton Professor of Jurisprudence Robert George warned on my radio show, today the left fires employees for opposition to same-sex marriage. Tomorrow it will fire employees who are pro-life (“anti-woman”). And next it will be employees who support Israel (an “apartheid state”).

The reason to boycott Firefox is not that it is run by leftists. Nor is the reason to support the man-woman definition of marriage. It is solely in order to preserve liberty in the land of liberty. If Firefox doesn’t recant and rehire Eich as CEO, McCarthyism will have returned far more pervasively and perniciously than in its first incarnation. The message the gay left (such as the Orwellian-named Human Rights Campaign) and the left in general wish to send is that Americans who are in positions of power at any company should be forced to resign if they hold a position that the left strongly opposes.

And switching to Google’s Chrome might not be a good political option either.

I use Seamonkey, which though based on the same Mozilla code is now a separate and independent organization.

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On Sunday the Bureau of Land Management arrested a man, after deploying snipers against him, for taking photographs of agents rounding up his family’s cattle.

9:10 pm

On Sunday the Bureau of Land Management arrested a man, after deploying snipers against him, for taking photographs of agents rounding up his family’s cattle.

On Sunday, the Logandale, Nev.-based Moapa Valley Progress reported that Dave Bundy, son of rancher Cliven Bundy, was arrested while taking photographs of his family’s cattle that are being rounded up by federal agents. According to the report, Bundy was violating an arbitrary “First Amendment” zone that had been established by federal agents. Worse yet, federal agents also deployed snipers against the man.

Since when does a federal agency have the right to declare the first amendment void in certain places?

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The Connecticut college that threatened a student with expulsion for daring to ask the governor questions about his gun control position took down its Facebook page rather than answer questions for critics posting there.

6:44 pm

The Connecticut college that threatened a student with expulsion for daring to ask the governor questions about his gun control position took down its own Facebook page rather than answer questions of critics posting there.

After a trial in which Saucier’s acquitting evidence — the video itself — was kept out of light, administrators told Saucier that any further disturbance could result in his expulsion. After the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education drew attention to Saucier’s plight, sympathetic people began posting questions on ACC’s Facebook page. ACC first chose simply to delete critical posts. Eventually, it took down its Facebook page entirely. FIRE captured screenshots of the page, however.

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