From a John Hawkins interview of the good professor at Right Wing News (bolds are mine):

Hawkins: Can you give a basic explanation of why we had this housing crisis?

Williams: Well, first of all, it’s surely not the free market.

….. The (1977) Community Reinvestment Act required banks to make high risk loans that they otherwise would not have made and if they did not, the bank examiners would examine their portfolios when they came around to open another branch or a merger and if they were not making these high risk loans — some people call them “No Doc loans,” or “Liar Loans,” — they would not get permission.

In the free market, these bankers would not have given these Subprime mortgages. But, with the coercion by government and also the implicit guarantees of these loans by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government sponsored enterprises, they would not have done so.

So, the Subprime crisis lies at the feet of Congress and what I find remarkable about my fellow Americans is that Congress caused the problem and they’re looking for Congress to get us out of the problem. That’s very much like seeing a building on fire and asking the arsonist who set it on fire to come help you put it out. ….

Hawkins: Do stimulus packages work? Why or why not?

Williams: (Laughs) I think one of great episodes of their failure was the Great Depression of the 1930s. Both Hoover and Roosevelt, they saw the economic downturn, …they tried to fix it, and they created a 10 year affair out of what would have probably been a 2 year downturn.

In fact, in 1937, President Roosevelt’s treasurer, Morgenthau, he said, “We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” Well, they just did not call the New Deal, “stimulus packages.” The same thing is going to happen with this one. ….

Hawkins: What do you say to people who claim that they have a RIGHT to health care or a RIGHT to a “living wage?”

Williams: Well, there’s no such thing as those kind of rights. As a matter of fact, I think they should call them wishes. If they said, “I wish everybody had health care” or “I wish everybody had a living wage,” I would agree because I, too, wish that they had more.

But, when a person says that he has a right to something that he did not produce, that means that some other person does not have a right to what he did produce because there is no Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.

Read the whole thing.

So where did the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Sabrina Eaton go for opinions on what Michelle Malkin earlier today called “the massive mortgage entitlement campaign launched by President Obama”?

Why, they went to “housing experts,” of course.

But the people she quoted aren’t builders, realtors, mortgage lenders, mortgage brokers, or economists. Nor, based on the area’s results, are they experts in helping individuals and families make smart housing decisions, or in helping communities build property values.

No-no-no. The people Eaton consulted as “housing experts” were an “organizing project executive director,” the head of the “Columbus-based Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio,” and a county treasurer. Not surprisingly, these alleged “experts” liked Obama’s plan, but conditioned their praise with the requisite “there should be more” caveats  — both in terms of money and coercion.

Here is some of Eaton’s Wednesday report (bolds are mine, and reinforce points above):

President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce mortgage foreclosures and help some homewners obtain lower payments through refinancing was greeted enthusiastically by Ohio housing experts who said it would ease local foreclosure problems.

While they applauded financial incentives to encourage lenders to refinance loans and reduce homeowners’ monthly payments, they felt the plan relies too much on lenders’ voluntary cooperation, and doesn’t do enough to aid homeowners with loans that exceed the value of their property.

“Frankly, this is more than I thought we’d get,” said East Side Organizing Project executive director Mark Seifert.

….. “I don’t think the four-page summary I’ve seen will fix the foreclosure crisis because the devil is in the details, but on its face it looks very good,” said Seifert, whose non-profit group helps Cleveland-area homeowners fight foreclosures.

Bill Faith, who heads the Columbus-based Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio observed that 420,000 Ohio homeowners have loans that exceed the value of their homes, and said more should be done to encourage lenders and servicers to “write off part of the principal that’s owed to keep people in their homes.” He said the bill doesn’t contain bankruptcy reform measures that would let judges stave off foreclosures by modifying loans.

“This is probably the best federal response to the foreclosure crisis to date, but it still will only have impact for some homeowners,” said Faith. “There are many homeowners who will not be assisted by this effort.”

Cuyahoga County Treasurer Jim Rokakis likes the initiative’s provision that would aid homeowners who are still current in their loan payments, but will face problems when their interest rates rise.

“This will help, but as we all know, this program comes too late for Cuyahoga County,” Rokakis said. “Witness the 100,000 people who have left the county in the past nine years.”

With all due respect to Mr. Rokakis, the reasons behind why 100,000 people have left Cuyahoga County this decade represent a culmination of what has plagued the county, and especially the City of Cleveland, since the 1960s: crime, high taxes, and lousy schools. Though there have surely been problems with subprime mortgage lending –  both with those who lent the money and those who ignorantly took ill-advised deals — people have been voting with their feet and leaving the area for the ex-urbs or other states for a long, long time.

Cleveland may be the “perfect” case study demonstrating the perverse results of the Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-driven mandate to increase home ownership among the poor and minorities, ultimately traceable to the Community Reinvestment Act of the 1970s. To get to “desirable” ownership percentages in an already poor city and metro area, banks did deals they shouldn’t have done, lending money to people who couldn’t be relied upon to repay the amounts they borrowed. The predictable result has been one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation.

Yet somehow, according to the “community organizers” of the world, this is the fault of greedy lenders and the free market. Give me a break.

Sabrina Eaton is based in Washington. That ideally positions her to do an investigative report called “How Uncle Sam and His Government-Sponsored Enterprises Clobbered Cleveland and Cuyahoga County with Good Intentions.” It would be very revealing reading. Instead the Plain Dealer gave precious space to the same “it’s never enough” blather from people who more than likely couldn’t run the companies they so fiercely criticize if their lives depended on it.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Alan Greenspan, from the Financial Times:

“It may be necessary to temporarily nationalise some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring,” he said. “I understand that once in a hundred years this is what you do.”

That’s too close to this for comfort.

….. of foreclosures — with our money.

______________________________________________________

UPDATE: House Republicans have a few reasonable questions for Mr. Obama (HT Michelle Malkin) –

1. What will your plan do for the over 90% of homeowners who are playing and paying by the rules?

2. Does your plan compensate banks for bad mortgages they should have never made in the first place?

3. Will individuals who misrepresented their income or assets on their original mortgage application be eligible to get the taxpayer funded assistance under your plan?

4. Similarly, will you require mortgage servicers to verify income and other eligibility standards before modifying mortgages?

5. What will you do to prevent the same mortgages that receive assistance and are modified from going into default three, six, or eight months later?

6. How do you intend to move forward in the drafting of the legislation?

Nancy Pelosi had an audience with the Pope earlier today at the Vatican.

Life Site News (HT Gateway Pundit via Michelle Malkin) covered what the Vatican had to say about that meeting:

Pope Rebukes Pelosi, Tells Her Catholic Legislators Obligated to Protect Life

The Vatican Press Office released a note this morning detailing part of the conversation which Pope Benedict XVI had with Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives.  Vatican insiders inform LifeSiteNews.com that such releases are always phrased in diplomatic language and thus the correction of the Speaker who fancies herself a faithful Catholic despite her abortion advocacy can be taken as a rebuke.

The text of the note reads: “His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.”

Those interested in learning how the press will minimize the Pope’s rebuke have an early example to peruse at Agence France-Presse (AFP). It contains the expected watering-down of the rebuke, and more (AFP link is dynamic; its report as it appeared when this post was drafted is here):

Pope meets Pelosi, speaks of Church teachings on life

Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday told visiting US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Roman Catholic, that all Catholics should uphold the Church’s teachings on life.

Benedict “took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death,” the Vatican said in a statement.

These “enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists as well as those responsible for the common good of society to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development,” the statement said.

Pelosi, the highest-ranking US official to see the pope since President Barack Obama took office last month, describes herself as an “ardent” Catholic while advocating reproductive rights.

Of course, “advocating reproductive rights” is media code for “ardently” pro-abortion.

If AFP were honest, it would have noted that Pelosi’s claim, according to Catholic doctrine, is heresy.

Here’s what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.

Politicians cannot credibly claim to be practicing Catholics and also support direct abortion. Thus, Pelosi is not a practicing Catholic, let alone an “ardent” one.

Last year, Pelosi tried to claim that Church teaching is ambivalent on when life begins:

I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition. And Senator–St. Augustine said at three months. We don’t know. The point is, is that it shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s right to choose.

Apparently not even at nine months, according to theologian Pelosi, the partial birth abortion-supporting politician. She voted against banning the procedure several times over roughly a decade. At her Speaker’s web site, she criticized the April 2007 Supreme Court decision upholding the partial-birth abortion ban passed during the Bush adminstration as “wrong,” and “a significant step backwards.”

Her statement excerpted above is self-evident heresy.

AFP’s coverage went on to incompletely characterize the state of the two major areas of stem-cell research, and in the process cast the Church’s position in a bad light:

The Vatican has also criticised the approval of US authorities for the first human trials using embryonic stemcells of a therapy to help paralysed patients regain movement.

….. Such research may yield cures for Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, Type 1 diabetes, cancer, cardiac degeneration and many other disorders.

AFP makes it seem as if embryonic stem-cell research is the only stem cell-related hope for paralysis, “Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, Type 1 diabetes, cancer, cardiac degeneration and many other disorders,” and that only the Church’s teaching stand in the way of cures.

That is, of course, a load of rubbish.

The left frame at the web site of Don Margolis (who, to fully disclose, is an outspoken critic of both sides of the stem-cell debate, because he claims that neither side cares about treating patients who need to be treated now), has posts that describe how adult stem-cell research has made progress in fighting over 40 diseases and conditions, including many real success stories involving real people. That list includes most of those AFP identified and seemed to imply as being the sole province of embryonic stem-cell research. Now that many types of adult stem cells have been demonstrated to have pluripotency, the justification for the existence of embryonic stem-cell research seems awfully thin — especially because even its fans typically acknowledge that progress is “years away” (eighth paragraph at link is just one example).

Yet pretend-Catholic Pelosi and Barack “It’s above my pay grade (to say when human rights begin)” Obama appear to be bound and determined to waste federal dollars pursuing the life-taking long-shot.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

IBDeditorials.com, outstanding as usual:

Since World War I — the start of the modern financial era — we’ve suffered four major downturns. In three of them, the government cut tax rates. And each time an economic boom ensued. In only one did the government respond by raising taxes, erecting trade barriers and enacting massive new spending programs to get out of the slump. Today, we call that time the Great Depression.

Of course, the Obama administration is using the strategy that didn’t work, and claiming that the ones that did work didn’t.

___________________________________________________

Michael Malone at Pajamas Media (“Turnaround Time“) thinks that Silicon Valley may be poised to lead a recovery –

All of my reporter’s instincts right now are telling me that Silicon Valley, and much of the rest of the high tech industry, is already starting to come out of this downturn. …. I have never so many entrepreneurial teams at work as I have in the last few months. And they are the tip of the iceberg: each one of these teams represents perhaps a dozen more hidden away in rented meeting rooms and home kitchens.

I may be dreaming, but what I think I’m seeing is the birth of the largest entrepreneurial boom in Silicon Valley history. …. My hunch is that by July enough of these new companies will have emerged that …. it will be obvious to everyone that high tech is booming again.

But, Obama’s stimulus might ruin it all:

If the Stimulus, as many predict, has the effect of attenuating rather than shortening the Crunch, these new companies will quickly hit a wall and many will die. The same thing will happen if Sarbanes-Oxley and other economically suicidal regulations remain in place. And it goes without saying that if Washington decides to outlaw risk and reward, supply and demand, and entrepreneurship most of all, not only will this boom, but all that should follow, will never occur.

The horses of high tech are already in their gates, waiting for doors to fly open. If the track is too muddy or if there is a wall across the first turn, don’t blame them for not finishing the race.

I wish ‘em luck. They’ll need it.

___________________________________________________

Recent NewsBusters items I did not cross-post at BizzyBlog are here “Chicago Alderman Sentenced to 4 Years; Sun-Times, AP Fail to Note Dem Party Affiliation”) and here (“Press Calls Plouffe ‘Former Campaign Manager’ As His E-Mails With That Title Continue to Fill Inboxes Across America”).

The former is about a Democratic Chicago Alderman who insisted on taking bribes before she would help developers get inner-city housing projects going. The Chicago Sun-Times ran six stories on her over almost two years and mentioned her party once. AP’s story yesterday didn’t mention it at all.

The latter is about Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, who is still having e-mails sent out in his name from Obama for America but is supposedly not Obama’s Campaign Manager any more. Funny — his e-mails are still signed “David Plouffe, Campaign Manager, Obama for America.”

___________________________________________________

In over his head: “(Sherrod) Brown has been named head of the Senate Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on Economic Policy. The subcommittee oversees economic growth, employment and price stability, and reviews monetary policy.”

There is nothing in his biography that would indicate that Brown is qualified for this position after barely two years in the Senate.

In fact, his hostility to free trade would indicate that his presence is dangerous. Free trade hasn’t hurt Ohio (five letters, Senator: H-O-N-D-A); wrong-headed state leadership for about 23 of the last 26 years has.

With the exception of roughly the first three years of George Voinovich (1991-1994), Ohio’s governors and compliant legislatures have done mostly the wrong high-tax, high-spending things since 1983 (Celeste 1983-1991, Voinovich 1994-1999, Taft 1999-2007, Strickland 2007-present). This is why I said here last year that the Buckeye State “went from pseudo-red to blue” in 2007, and in my concurrent New York Post column that Ohio has (economically, of course, since that was the topic under discussion) “mostly acted blue since the mid-1990s.”

Those assertions are both self-evidently true. Ohio has been economically governed like a blue state for most of the past quarter of a century, regardless of the party putatively in power.

Now we have a Celeste Administration refugee overseeing banking and economic policy bringing the worst aspects of the Ohio political mentality to an important position in Washington. Yikes.

___________________________________________________

GM’s and Chrysler’s march towards $100 billion of taxpayer money, predicted by some last year when all of this began, continues:

GENERAL MOTORS CORP.

- Asks for an additional $16.6 billion in loans and credit lines on top of $13.4 billion already granted, for a total of $30 billion. Previously GM said it only needed $18.4 billion to weather the auto sales downturn.

CHRYSLER LLC

- Asks for an additional $5 billion in government loans, on top of $4 billion already received. Previously, Chrysler said it would need just an additional $3 billion.

Roughly 60 days after President Bush, with president-elect Obama’s enthusiastic agreement, released TARP money to the two companies, they’re already over one-third of the way towards sucking out $100 billion if the government opens up the cash spigots again. What’s more, if I’m correct, Congressional approval isn’t required for any additional “loans.” It will all come from Treasury Secretary Tax Cheat Tim Geithner’s TARP II.

And I’m pretty sure this doesn’t include the money provided to prop up GMAC and Chrysler credit to the tune of roughly $7 billion.

Combined, the companies say they needs over 60% more than they thought they needed only two months ago. After January’s disastrous sales result, this was completely predictable.

Tim Geithner needs to do something smart for a change and stop it now. Let the two companies file for bankruptcy before we all have to.

From The Hague, Netherlands:

16/02/2009

Gies helped hide the Frank family for two years in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam and guarded Anne’s diary after she was arrested.

Miep Gies, who helped hide Anne Frank and her family for two years in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam in the 1940s, turned 100 on Sunday.

Gies has declined interviews and plans to celebrate her birthday quietly with family and friends, the Anne Frank museum announced in a statement last week.

“Miep is in reasonably good health and remains deeply involved with the remembrance of Anne Frank and spreading the message of her story,” it said.

Anne Frank chronicled the details of her teenage life hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam from 1942 to 1944, when she was arrested and taken to a concentration camp where she died.

Her diary, guarded by Gies after the child’s arrest, later became an international best seller and has been translated into 70 languages.

Austrian-born Gies moved to the Netherlands at the age of 11. From 1933, she worked as a secretary for Anne’s father, Otto.

“When Otto approached her in the spring of 1942 to help him and his family go into hiding, Miep did not hesitate,” said the statement. “For two years, together with the other helpers, she made sure that the people in hiding were supplied with food and other essentials … putting their own lives at risk.”

Otto Frank, his wife Edith and daughters Margot and Anne hid for nearly two years with four other people in an empty section of the building owned by Otto Frank’s company. The Amsterdam annex is now a museum. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

UPDATE, Feb. 20 — Thanks to the Anchoress for the link. The BizzyBlog backroom comment reviewer (i.e., me) inadvertently hit the delete button (twice! the help these days). That’s probably just as well, in that her posts have been on fire during the past week, and deserve special notice for that.
__________________________________________

Michelle’s benchmarking of the stock market as of Election Day to monitor the performance of Barack Obama and his party is fine as far as it goes.

Bit it ignores the destructive impact of Nancy Pelosi, Obama and Harry Reid that commenced in earnest in June of last year.

As faithful readers know, sometime in June 2008 is when The POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy (now officially “The POR Recession” as normal people define “recession” since the 4th quarter GDP report came out a few weeks ago) kicked in.

The real benchmarks for accountability as of today’s close, comparing June 1, 2008 to today, are as follows:

• Unemployment — was 5.5% as of the May 2008 BLS report); now at 7.6%.
• Dow Jones Industrial Average — was at 12638, closed today at 7553, down 40.2%.
• S&P 500 — was at 1400, closed today at 789, down 43.6%.
• NASDAQ — was at 2523, closed today at 1471, down 39.3%.
• GDP Growth — was 2.06% in the 12 months preceding July 1, 2008; has been an annualized -2.15% since (-0.5% in the third quarter, -3.8% advance estimate for the fourth).
• Inflation — was 4.2% in the 12 months ended May 31, 2008; prices have dropped 3.0% in the seven reported months since then (through December), and are up 0.8% in those seven months excluding food and energy.
• Prime rate — was 5.0%, is now 3.25%.

Throwing a bunch of whoppers at the problem doesn’t seem to be helping.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorialists noted something last week (“Obama’s Press List”; HT to Warner Todd Huston at NewsBusters) about the extemporaneous speech-impaired President Obama’s February press briefing:

About half-way through President Obama’s press conference Monday night, he had an unscripted question of his own. “All, Chuck Todd,” the President said, referring to NBC’s White House correspondent. “Where’s Chuck?” He had the same strange question about Fox News’s Major Garrett: “Where’s Major?”

The problem wasn’t the lighting in the East Room. The President was running down a list of reporters preselected to ask questions.

In other words, the preselection by the President’s team of who would be allowed to submit a question to His Excellency was obvious to anyone paying reasonably close attention, and his unfocused answers rambled on and on and on.

Now the American Spectator’s Prowler reports that the White House’s communications crew is trying to do something about that. Not the preselection, no-no-no. They’re trying to use high tech to hide that element of the briefings as much as possible, and further, to assist the supposed “greatest orator of his generation” in handling the questions he receives (bolds are mine):

SCREENING OBAMA

One wouldn’t know it from reading the Washington Post or New York Times, but some inside the White House don’t think that President Barack Obama hit a home run with his first national press conference last week.

“It looked scripted beyond the scripted part, the speech,” says one former communications adviser, who has been feeding notes and suggestions to the White House team and worked with them on the inauguration. …..

To that end, he says, the White House is looking to install a small video or computer screen into the podium used by the president for press conferences and events in the White House. “It would make it easier for the comms guys to pass along information without being obvious about it,” says the adviser.

The screen would indicate whom to call on, seat placement for journalists, pass along notes or points to hit, and so forth, says the adviser.

Wait a minute, I thought that George W. Bush was the dummy who couldn’t construct a sentence without outside help.

How can it be that such a “brilliant” guy needs “notes on points to hit” and other high-tech help, when the supposedly dim-witted Bush somehow survived without them?

What would the press be saying if Bush had employed these crutches? And what are the chances that the White House press corps will notice and report on this development at Obama’s next briefing?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It’s here.

I’m grateful to the folks at PJM for getting it through the process in under 24 hours. I think that means they like it.

Associated Press reporterette Jennifer Loven had the honor of asking His Excellency the first question at his press briefing on February 9. Read the column to learn the probably reason why she’s so “lucky.”

In the column, I quickly noted in a few words something that otherwise had to be left on the cutting-room floor. Most of Old Media is giving this revolting development the la-la-la treatment, with these exceptions that I’m aware of: Carol Marin of the Chicago Sun-Times (HT Warner Todd Huston), the Washington Times, and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers. There may be others, but they are very few.

Marin explained what that something is on January 4 (bold is mine):

The Obama news conferences ….. mak(e) one yearn for the return of the always-irritating Sam Donaldson to awaken the slumbering press to the notion that decorum isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The press corps, most of us, don’t even bother raising our hands any more to ask questions because Obama always has before him a list of correspondents who’ve been advised they will be called upon that day.

Has any previous president done this? Where’s the outrage from the supposed defenders of journalistic integrity?

Last week, the WSJ’s Editorial Board weighed in:

The White House had decided in advance who would be allowed to question the President and who was left out.

….. the decision to preselect questioners is an odd one, especially for a White House famously pledged to openness. We doubt that President Bush, who was notorious for being parsimonious with follow-ups, would have gotten away with prescreening his interlocutors. Mr. Obama can more than handle his own, so our guess is that this is an attempt to discipline reporters who aren’t White House favorites.

Few accounts of Monday night’s event even mentioned the curious fact that the White House had picked its speakers in advance. We hope that omission wasn’t out of fear of being left off the list the next time.

This handling of the press is consistent with the type of “democratic totalitarian” Michael Ledeen described in his must-must read posts last week:

• We’re All Facists Now
• We’re All Fascists Now, Part II: American Tyranny

Look in the mirror, far-lefties. He’s describing you, and the stealth radical you snuck past the electorate.

If Bush had decided who he would call on in advance during his presidency, you can virtually count on this: Former Bush-basher transformed into sickening Obama sycophant Jennifer Loven would have been the first in line screaming about it, with her higher-ups at the AP likely right behind her.

….. But I Don’t Have Any Time For:

• Well, this news should shake up those who routinely overwithhold federal and state taxes from their paychecks so they can get a “windfall” refund when they file their returns — “Kansas suspends income tax refunds, may miss payroll.” Even without the problem cited, workers who overwithhold are providing an interest-free loan to Uncle Sam and their state government. Bad idea.
• Demonstrating that those who engage in what might as well be legalized theft from the ignorant can be very clever (but not moral or ethical), the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that payday lending is, in essence, back in Ohio.
• Debbie Schlussel tells us that WorldNetDaily, particularly Aaron Klein, is up to their old tricks — “WND/ Aaron Klein Rip Me Off . . . AGAIN.” I have seen the article at WND (“Obama didn’t OK Palestinian migration to U.S.”); I won’t link it. Yours truly had a similar experience in March 2008 (BlumerNetDaily: Part 1; Part 2), with what I believe was brazen lifting of material, link hogging, and credit grabbing. As stated previously, it’s a shame, because WND once had so much potential.
• The New York Post reports entirely predictable behavior by people who believe they are our betters, this time in New York State Government — “Gov’s Hy-Pay-Crisy: Staffers Get Secret Raises Amid ‘Freeze.’”
• Yeah, I’ve noticed this too — Lots of stimulus-related spam (HT Instapundit).
• Great moments in liberal fascism — A student “read from the dictionary definition of marriage” in a public speaking class at LA Community College. The prof, according to the Alliance Defense Fund, “stopped the class, called him a ‘fascist b_____d,’ ….. (and) told the class that anyone who wanted to could leave if they were offended…. when no one got up to leave, the instructor simply dismissed the class, effectively ending Lopez’s speech.” The student has sued. Maybe the whole class should demand a partial-day tuition refund.
• At first, based on this, I thought Ray Burris had done something serious. It turns out that it’s “only” possible perjury involving false or misleading testimony. Given that we don’t expel Democratic presidents from office who “lied repeatedly under oath, suborned perjury, and hid evidence,” Burris is surely safe …. right?
• Gee, “somebody” saw this coming, based on reported January vehicle sales results — “General Motors Corp., nearing a federally imposed deadline to present a restructuring plan, will offer the government two costly alternatives: commit billions more in bailout money to fund the company’s operations, or provide financial backing as part of a bankruptcy filing, said people familiar with GM’s thinking.” Please-please-please, Congress, take the bankruptcy option, and cut the taxpayers’ losses — as long as direct government involvement in GM’s management and ownership totally ends.

From Scotland:

Published Date: 15 February 2009

MANY climbers and walkers plucked to safety from Scotland’s treacherous, ice-bound moors and mountains are condemned by their rescuers as ill-equipped, crazy and even suicidal.
Yesterday, Malcolm Murray became possibly the first survivor of a major search and rescue operation to be branded “a genius”.

The 23-year-old amazed and impressed his rescuers by using a camera flash to penetrate the thick mist that had caused him to become hopelessly lost, and catch the attention of a helicopter pilot.

The resourceful student faced a slow and lingering death from cold after losing his way on Barvas Moor, Lewis, as melting ice and snow left him thigh-deep in freezing water and thick mist left him hopelessly disorientated.

Murray set out on Friday afternoon for a quick walk with his Jack Russell Buttons on Barvas Moor, one of the most bleak and beautiful stretches of landscape in the British Isles.

Despite being a local, and an experienced walker, the combination of mist and melting water left Murray lost and in danger. During his 14-hour ordeal he stumbled an estimated seven miles into the deepest and most desolate part of the moor.

Murray told Scotland on Sunday: “I was gearing myself up to spend the night, but it really is hard to say whether I would have got through the night or not. By the time I was rescued, I was very, very cold and wet through.”

The only useful equipment Murray had with him was a mobile phone, which he kept working as long as possible by rubbing it in his hands to keep it warm, and a compact camera. These two gadgets effectively saved his life.

He said: “I had only nipped up to take the dog for a quick walk. I was only planning to be there for a couple of hours.

“When I went up the hill, there were patches of snow and ice. The moor and some parts were quite hard with frost when I left. There was a bit of a thaw so there was quite a lot of water.

“There had been a bit of fog when I left. But when I got to the top it just came right down and I realised I had no idea where I was. I was basically lost. All my normal orientation was wrong. I didn’t know where north or south or east or west was.”

Murray walked towards what he thought was the Pentland Road, the single track that crosses the moor, connecting the Lewis capital of Stornoway with the island’s west coast.

In fact, he was heading ever deeper in to the moor. Realising how serious the situation was becoming, he phoned his father, Murdo Murray, a recently retired senior council official who used to be responsible for helping to co-ordinate emergency operations in the Western Isles.

Murray senior came up with a plan to find his son: driving up and down the Pentland Road, beeping the car horn every mile or so from Stornoway in the east to Carloway in the west. But his son didn’t hear a thing and by late afternoon the pair decided they had to call in professional rescuers.

Murray said: “I was getting worried but I was trying to stay calm and stay where I was. I knew there were guys there and I was just hoping they would come across where I was. It was pretty cold. That was the worst thing. I was soaked through so it felt a lot colder than it probably was. Buttons was even more tired, just exhausted.”

Four rescue teams, each numbering five men, set off to find Murray on foot. The Coastguard also scrambled its helicopter. However, the teams couldn’t get a fix on Murray’s mobile because Lewis doesn’t have enough masts to provide triangulation.

Finally, Murray got a lucky break and made use of it. He said: “I could see the helicopter lights coming and going.”

So, when the chopper got close, he pressed his camera flash over and over again, lighting up the misty, pitch-black sky, both to the naked eye and the helicopter’s sophisticated infrared systems.

“It was the only source of light I could think of,” he said.

Murray’s flash was spotted by Captain Richard “Tricky” Dane on board Stornoway Coastguard’s new state-of-the-art Sikorsky S92 helicopter. “It really was very clever use of the equipment he had with him,” Dane said.” …..

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