Last Wednesday, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis, in the wake of James O’Keefe’s and Hannah Giles’s embarrassing video barrage, went into damage control mode:

As a result of the indefensible action of a handful of our employees, I am, in consultation with ACORN’s Executive Committee, immediately ordering a halt to any new intakes into ACORN’s service programs until completion of an independent review. I have also communicated with ACORN’s independent Advisory Council, and they will assist ACORN in naming an independent auditor and investigator to conduct a thorough review of all of the organization’s relevant systems and processes.

The Politico entry from Ben Smith linked above reports that the (cough, cough) “Independent Advisory Council” consists of the following eight members:

• John Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress
• Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Board Member, RFK Foundation, former MD Lt. Governor
• Andrew Stern, International President, Service Employees International Union
• Henry Cisneros, Executive Chairman, Cityview
• John Banks, Vice President of Government Relations Con Ed
• Eric Eve, Senior VP of Global Consumer Group, Community Relations, Citigroup
• Harvey Hirschfeld, President, Lawcash
• Dave Beckwith, Executive Director, Needmor Fund

Concerning the first four, I’ll quote from Karl at Hot Air’s Green Room:

• “Podesta runs the (George) Soros-funded Center for American Progress, which has been coordinating the public defense of ACORN this summer.”
• “Townsend is so independent that she called the stories of ACORN’s frequent involvement in voter fraud a ‘desperate smokescreen maneuver’ masking an extensive coast-to-coast GOP push to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in 2008. “
• “Stern heads SEIU, which has a very cozy relationship with ACORN. How cozy? ACORN controls or significantly dominates several SEIU chapters.”
• “Cisneros, who worked regularly with ACORN as HUD Secretary, would later plead guilty to lying to the FBI to cover up a political embarrassment.”

Thus, half of the people on this board appear to be personally vested in a whitewash audit, and should have recused themselves from the selection of an outside auditor, but more than likely haven’t. The the other four gentlemen may be compromised because their entities have had dealings with ACORN. I’ll look at them later in the post.

In other words, not a single person on the “Independent Advisory Council” may be truly independent. Yet this motley crew is supposed to pick an independent auditor. If the selection is not a very large public accounting firm upon which ACORN has imposed no scope limitations, look out below.

SEIU’s Stern wasn’t even able to keep his mouth shut for the sake of appearances for 48 hours, issuing a scathing press release on Friday that began as follows:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union, issued the following statement today regarding recent attempts of right wing extremists to silence working families by attacking progressive individuals and community organizations:

“This is a moment of profound change for this country — from kitchen tables to town halls to the floor of the Senate, this nation is engaged in a vigorous and heated debate about how we rebuild our economy, solve our national healthcare crisis and restore the American Dream.

“As has always happened when progressive change is in the air, the backlash gets fierce, ugly and anti-American. This time is no different. Right now, there is an insidious and coordinated effort on the part of the extreme right to target individuals and grassroots community groups as a way to silence the voices of women and men who have suffered the most under 8 years of right wing policies.

“These extremists will attempt to shut down and shout down anyone with a different point of view.

“Let’s be clear who we are talking about — call them attack dogs, call them Teabaggers, call them Glenn Beck — these are the same folks who cheered the policies that crashed our economy. Who make up lies about death panels to try to kill healthcare reform. Who scream about democracy while denying workers a voice on the job. Who target anyone who poses a threat to a status quo that for too long has rewarded greedy CEOs while leaving people who work out in the cold.

“This is not the America we believe in.

“Their lies, their stunts and their smears will not silence us. ….

Media coverage of Stern’s press release as a news story demonstrating his likely unfitness to serve on the Board non-existent. A Google News search at 3 p.m. on “Andy Stern” (in quotes) from September 18-21, with duplicates included, came back with 32 items (the page header claiming over 700 is incorrect). 22 of those items  were unrelated to the press release. Seven of them were the press release itself. The three items that remain were commentaries by the Examiner’s Byron York, the Examiner’s Kimberly Morin, and the Chicago Daily Observer’s Pat Hickey, who deliciously described the Board as “the ACORN 8-Balls.”

Hickey, as far as I can tell uniquely, reveals the following about the Board’s four other members:

• John Banks – Up and Coming New York Government Relations fizer with MTA and Con Ed. Traffic and lights.
• Eric Eve another Clintonista who found a home with CITI Group who made out handsomely on bad loans and Federal Bailouts!
• Harvey Hirschfeld is Pay-to-Play Player in the Easy Loan Get Fed Money Finance World now with Litigation Lawyers CashLaw!
• Dave Beckwith is an AllStar Community Organizer Like Jesus Was! Like Jesus, Dave plays to win Dig it!”

Among other contributions to Democrats in 2008, Banks gave $1,000 to Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel and $3,300 to Obama campaign funds in 2008.

Eve gave $6,000 to Democratic candidates in the 2008 election cycle, including $2,500 to the Obama Victory Fund.

Hirschfeld’s contributions are more bi-partisan, with $4,737 of his $7,737 in contributions going to Democrats. But note that $2,000 went to New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler, who not only voted against defunding ACORN last week, but called the vote a “flatly unconstitutional” bill of attainder.

Beckwith’s Needmor Fund is actually a community organizing outfit based in Toledo, Ohio; it seems that Beckwith is considered a bit of a community organizing guru.

If a conservative lashed out as Stern did on Friday, or if a conservative group had shady insiders with a history of prior affiliations involved in the selection of an auditor in a scandal situation, I daresay you would see the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Washington Post covering it in negative terms.

But the establishment media’s ACORN protection game just goes on, and on, and on, and on.

(Image is from the December 30, 2008 New York Daily News).

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

to Andrew Breitbart’s column yesterday at the Washington Times has to do with the BigGovernment.com proprietor’s promise that “It ain’t over yet.”

Fair enough. But Breitbart asserted what I believe is a bigger point. It isn’t just that the establishment media would have ignored the story if James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles had attempted to put it out there on their own. Breitbart believes that Big Media would have actively worked to bury it and to discredit its authors. There’s little doubt that Andrew is absolutely correct.

Here are the passages from his Times column where Breitbart makes this point (bolds are mine):

In the past, Mr. O’Keefe created brilliant social satire that rocked his college campus and even made its way on to the talk-radio and cable-news shows, but the magnitude of his latest adventure had the potential to rock the political establishment.

I was awed by Mr. O’Keefe’s guts and amazed by the footage, but explained that the mainstream media would try to kill this important and illuminating expose about a corrupt and criminal political racket, and that the well-funded political left would go into “war room” mode, with 25-year-old Mr. O’Keefe and 20-year-old cohort Miss Giles in the cross hairs. I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media’s hand.

…. By dripping the videos out, we exposed to anyone paying attention that ACORN was lying through its teeth and that the media would look imbecilic continuing to trot out their hapless spokespeople.

…. If they invested in the story, I told Mr. O’Keefe, they would do ACORN’s defense work. I told him the focus needed to be on the message, not the messenger. Otherwise, the mainstream media would attempt to direct attention away from the damaging video evidence.

Exactly.

Though Breitbart gives props to Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart for ridiculing the establishment media’s failure to get the story in the first place, the systemic media failure is much worse than that. It isn’t that they are lazy, though they often are; it’s that they’re openly hostile to breaking news that discredit’s leftist causes or candidates.

It used to be that they could bury bad news on their own. As the American Spectator’s Jeffrey Lord recounted last week, there’s a history going back almost 50 years of establishment media cover-ups of news that would hurt Democratic presidents.

The New Media Age eventually changed that. Since legitimate competition in determining what the news really is arrived on the scene, the establishment media’s response has been to double-down on its support of Democrats and leftists and on its hostility towards Republicans and conservatives, while treating anyone outside their club who dares to break a story with ridicule and shoot-the-messenger tactics.

Breitbart’s strategy in rolling out the ACORN story has been as brilliant as O’Keefe’s and Giles’s original work. Thanks to the trio, the alleged leading journalists at the Big 3 networks, the Associated Press, and major newspapers have been exposed as leftist hacks and Democratic Party apparatchiks.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

This is a stick-up, via the U.K. Guardian — “Swine flu ‘could kill millions unless rich nations give £900m’ (about $1.8 bllion).”

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BOOHOO-OUCH redux, via Fox News’s Chris Wallace (video is at link) –

(This administration is) the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington.

…. They constantly are on the phone, or emailing me complaining, well, you had this guest.

…. Or you did this thing. I mean, they are working the umps all the time. I think it works for the others. It doesn’t work with me

For those relatively new to the blog, Obama’s long-form name during the election campaign was “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi“ Obama – Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters).

Note how well the acronym still fits Obama, and, according to Wallace, the President’s peeps.

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CNN’s Wolf Blitzer appeared on Jeopardy’s Million Dollar Celebrity Invitational, and left $4,600 in the hole. I think he overachieved.

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On Friday at the “Values Voters Summit,” NBC’s Brian Mooar and MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell showed the world what self-important, self-absorbed blowhards they are:

…. as Mooar was giving his report to MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell, he was making it difficult for people in the back of the hall to hear whoever was on stage at the time.

It’s probably fair to say that he didn’t realize the problem he was causing at first. But if you follow the vid’s progression, it becomes obvious that even after he clearly understood, he didn’t care, he didn’t stop, and he didn’t move.

The petty O’Donnell blamed the meeting’s organizers for putting the press so close to the audience. Even if true, Brian’s legs weren’t broken. He should have moved to a hallway or some other location outside of earshot.

To Mooar and anchor Norah O’Donnell, it was all about their his precious little news segment, and the h*ll with everyone else. This type of arrogance is one of a gazillion reasons why viewers are saying “The h*ll with you.”

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From the Washington Independent — “Romney Slams Bailouts That He Used to Support.”

That’s a very good catch, but it’s worse than that. In the case of his current criticism of the auto bailouts, we should never forget that when President Obama extra-constitutionally engineered the sacking of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner (i.e., “at Obama’s behest“), neutered GM’s board, and put his car-czar crew firmly in control of the company, Romney was fine with that, congratulating Obama on “expressing some backbone.”

Obama’s power grab set the stage for two state-managed bankruptcies, where first the contractual rights of the secured creditors of Chrysler and the then the unsecured creditors of GM were abrogated through intimidation, fear-mongering in the courts, and excessive haste. At crunch time, Romney gave Obama political cover, and went to CNN, an apparatchik media outlet, to do it.

Romney also indirectly received heaps of praise from Massachusetts Democratic Governor Deval Patrick in the Wall Street Journal on Friday for how “great” the statist health care in Massachusetts that Romney created would be for the rest of the nation.

This sad chronology noted here is bad enough, but these transgressions are actually minor in relation to the mountain of baggage Romney has already accumulated. Yet the “Values Voters Summit” — er, the Value$ Voter$ $ummit — just had Romney as an honored guest, Sean “Sanitize This” Hannity continues his softball Romney interviews on a weekly basis, and conservative pundits like Ann Coulter continue to give Romney a free pass while insulting those who chronicle his critical mistakes.

These people need to awaken from their trance, and quickly.

From Redondo Beach, California:

Sept. 21, 2009

“Today’s youth want to save unborn babies and end abortion,” said J.T. Finn today in announcing that three students in Los Angles-area Catholic high schools have won cash prizes in the LoveMatters.com “Abortion Is Deadly” pro-life essay contest.

“Abortions are truly deadly, physically, emotionally and spiritually,” said Finn, the editor of LoveMatters.com. “Abortion has taken the lives of one-third of their generation. But these students see through the deadly lies of the abortion industry. They each accurately and persuasively tell the truth: Abortions kill babies and devastate women, families and society.”

Finn added, “The students clearly love babies. They revere the sanctity of human life and express that very well.” LoveMatters.com publishes a 32-page, pro-life, pro-chastity print newspaper and web site whose mission is to educate, inspire, and encourage youth to save sex for marriage and choose life rather than abortion.

Fr. Sal Pilato, superintendent of Catholic high schools in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, last spring authorized the voluntary essay contest and asked the principals of 48 Catholic high schools to distribute copies of the publication to some 30,000 students to foster study and reflection. The distribution and essay contest were so successful, Finn says, that he is working to duplicate the effort and reach thousands more students in other dioceses.

“We’re calling pro-life leaders across America, and many are very interested,” he said. “Any diocese or anyone in the general public who wants to sponsor a LoveMatters.com distribution and pro-life essay contest can contact me.”

Go here for this and other pro-life stories at LifeNews.com.

It’s Sunday night. So let’s have a little fun, with a viral vid from a couple of months ago, and its follow-ups:

Related vids are here (statement by the musician, Dave Carroll) and here (United Breaks Guitars 2), and here (CBS interview).

Brilliant …

Following up on Rose’s Monday post on this weekend’s Values Voters Summit, former Massachusetts governor Objectively Unfit Mitt Romney was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at yesterday morning’s “Plenary Session.”

The day before Romney’s appearance, he received a ringing endorsement for the wonderful work he did “reforming” health care in the Bay State (bold is mine):

Our country now faces the best opportunity in decades to provide quality health care for all Americans while containing spiraling costs. My state, Massachusetts, can serve as a model for national reform.

…. When we in Massachusetts set out to change our system, some were afraid. People almost always fear change, and politicians sometimes seize on that fear to prevent it. But in an act of political courage, a Democratic senator, a Republican governor and a Democratic state legislature formed a broad coalition with health-care providers, medical experts, business and labor leaders and patient advocates to fundamentally reform our system. And we have maintained our coalition as we’ve moved forward.

…. Even in the midst of the current economic downturn, our state budget was balanced. (1)(2)

…. A special state commission has unanimously recommended moving away from the “fee for service” practice that drives up costs and fragments care, and replacing it with an alternative payment strategy designed to reward doctors and hospitals for providing coordinated care that achieves the best health outcomes for patients and lowers costs. (3)

…. At the national level, nothing will happen if we fear change. But innovation can work for everyone if we give President Barack Obama and congressional leaders a chance to do what we have done in Massachusetts.

Translating this writer’s insufferable spin into what has happened in the real world, RomneyCare has resulted in the following (footnoted above):

(1) Large tax increases to offset exploding spending.

(2) Despite the tax increases, steep budget cuts affecting quality of care.

(3) Large-scale rationing, with built-in incentives to providers to deny care. When HMOs tried this (while providing more loopholes and appeal rights than I predict the government will allow), they were decried as the epitome of all evil. Now the government wants to do it, it’s a great idea.

The op-ed writer “somehow forgot” to tell readers that RomneyCare, for the first time in the state’s history, provided for state-subsidized abortions with a $50 co-pay in an actually-enacted bill. (State court rulings going back a quarter-century had “declared” that the state must cover abortions through Medicaid for the poor, and the state did so, even though the state Legislature had never enacted an enabling law to truly allow them.)

So the author of this Wall Street Journal op-ed calls what Massachusetts is doing the model for ObamaCare.

Who is this person? Why, he’s Barack Obama’s Mini-Me, David Axelrod’s cult of personality test case, the one and only …. current Democratic Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.

“Values Voters” Summit organizers yesterday presented Mitt Romney, an abortion-imposing, care-rationing ObamaCare “pioneer,” as a politician worthy of attendees’ attention, while at the same time holding a session on the following:

OBAMACARE: RATIONING YOUR LIFE AWAY – PALLADIAN ROOM
Burke Balch, Director, Powell Center on Medical Ethics, National Right to Life Committee; Dr. David Prentice, Senior Fellow and Director for Life Sciences, Center for Human Life and Bioethics, FRC; Grace-Marie Turner, President, Galen Institute

Long lines, refusal of care, months waiting for needed surgeries, rationing of treatments, mandates in support of abortion. These are all results of the health care plan currently being debated and placed in the United States, affecting all aspects of your life from your family decisions, to your paycheck to your tax bill. Is it the role of the federal government to provide womb to tomb healthcare? What about personal choice?

The endless $ellout to Mitt Romney has long since become intolerable. I really wonder whether there’s a limit to the depths of hypocrisy to which Tony Perkins and way too many others in the social conservative community’s alleged leadership ranks will $ink.

Sarah Palin was invited but did not attend because she was welcoming her son back from a tour of duty in Iraq. Mitt Romney told the press in 2007 that his sons, who have not served in the military, were supporting their country by “helping me get elected.” Comment unnecessary.

A Mitt Romney 2012 GOP presidential nomination would virtually guarantee Barack Obama’s reelection. The press can’t wait to get Romney nominated.

From Chicago:

Chicago, Ill., Sep 19, 2009 / 07:19 am (CNA).- A young woman has completed a Chicago half-marathon in a fundraising campaign to help eliminate her personal debt so she can enter religious life.

Alicia Torres, a 2007 graduate of Loyola University Chicago, began “The Nun Run” campaign with the support of friends. She and five companions ran the 13.1-mile Chicago Half Marathon on September 13 to raise funds to help pay down her debt.

In a Thursday e-mail interview with CNA, Torres said she plans to be a part of a new Franciscan community at the Mission of Our Lady of the Angles in Chicago’s West Humboldt Park neighborhood. The community is under obedience to Archbishop of Chicago Cardinal Francis George and will be under the oversight of Fr. Bob Lombardo, CFR.

“It is a great joy and honor for me to be part of this beautiful work for God,” she said.

Torres said the Chicago Half Marathon went “tremendously well” despite an ankle injury two weeks prior to the race.

“This was my first distance run since freshman year of high school when I ran cross country. I was able to finish 13.1 miles on Sunday in 2:40:03 (Thanks be to God!).”

Though “extremely exhausted,” Torres said it was motivating for her to offer a specific intention for each mile.

She reported that she has raised at least $28,000, not including donations sent to the Laboure Society within the past two weeks. The Laboure Society, an organization dedicated to eliminating debt for prospective entrants to religious life or the priesthood, is helping the young woman.

According to Torres, her initial debt of $94,000 was due to some “very bad interest rates,” adding that she works full time and has paid down over $12,000 of her debt with her own money. Torres presently works for the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Respect Life Office.

Her “very positive” interactions with the media have assisted her cause. The Chicago Tribune’s Manya Brashear was “such a delight” and spent nearly six hours with her and her community, Torres told CNA. The Catholic New World, where her friend Joyce Duriga is an editor, has also been helpful as has radio host Drew Mariani.

Torres reported that the first day she was on Mariani’s show she received about $4,500 in donations.

She said she was “absolutely shocked” to be interviewed for the National Public Radio show “All Things Considered.”

“I had wanted to pursue a career in journalism before I became serious about God’s call and will for me, and so all of this just proves God is not outdone in generosity,” said Torres.

Go here for the rest of the story.

The rogue group and its related organizations will hold power as long as they can manipulate the electoral process.

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Note: This went up at Pajamas Media and was teased at BizzyBlog on Thursday.

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James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles have rocked our world like no two twenty-somethings I can recall.

As of when this column was finished on Wednesday afternoon, as chronicled at Andrew Breitbart’s breakout BigGovernment.com site since September 10, multiple ACORN offices had been caught on tape providing guidance to O’Keefe and Giles, who are 25 and 20, respectively(!), on how to obtain home financing for a prostitution business that would include Giles and 13 illegal-immigrant girls, with the ultimate purpose of generating funds for a future congressional run by O’Keefe. Helpful instruction from ACORN employees, many of whom are now ex-employees, included how to maximize tax benefits by claiming dependent exemptions and child tax credits for a few of the underage girls (not too many, so as not to raise red flags), how to hide the money (in a tin can, in the back yard, covered with grass), and how to keep the business covert (i.e., never talk about business, because “loose lips sink ships”).

Meanwhile, the establishment media, with the exception of Fox News, has only very belatedly been dragged kicking and screaming into recognizing the story’s existence. On Tuesday morning, ABC’s Charles Gibson, asked why “no one’s covering the story,” stunned a Chicago morning show’s co-hosts when he nervously laughed and said that “I didn’t even know about it” (full audio is accessible here). It seems that even Comedy Central’s left-leaning fake journalist Jon Stewart felt that he had to deal with the story or risk losing his credibility with his youngish audience — and he is still ahead of most of the media elite.

Lo and behold, on September 11, the Census Bureau ended ACORN’s involvement with the 2010 census. On Monday, despite the establishment media’s near-blackout of O’Keefe’s and Giles’s relentless barrage, and a mere four days after the persistent pair’s first video debuted, the United States Senate, which usually moves at a pace that would make snails laugh, rushed through a bill to block ACORN from Housing and Urban Development funding by a shocking 83-7 margin. As of Wednesday afternoon, a serious move was afoot in the House to totally deny all federal funding to the organization, and ACORN itself, according to the Washington Times, had “suspended advising new clients.”

Keeping taxpayers’ and unwilling workers’ money entirely away from this monster and its hundreds of related tentacles will be a monumental task — one I believe that the leftists who dominate Congress and this administration have no intention of permitting to succeed. In addition to the estimated $53 million it has received from the federal government since 1994 (an estimate that I believe is woefully low, because there are so many hard to track entities), ACORN has obtained significant funding from state governments, from local governments, from labor unions (probably illegally, based on the Supreme Court’s 1988 Beck ruling), and from shaken-down financial institutions.

But ACORN and its offshoots are about much more than money; they are all about power, and wielding it ruthlessly. Consider this about the organization’s “Muscle for Money” efforts:

Muscle for Money includes multiple techniques for creating highly aggressive, organized efforts both to pressure businesses and officials to support the activists’ agenda or to discredit and intimidate opponents of their agenda, according to present and former ACORN members.

…. Some of the more prominent Muscle for Money targets to date have included the Carlyle Group, Sherwin-Williams, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, Liberty Tax and Money Mart ….

…. “The idea is to go to private homes where wives and children are present and stand outside so the family members of a company official could be harassed and subjected to intimidation …. Protestors would also go to company functions like banquets where they would be as disruptive as possible.”

The ultimate source of ACORN’s power is the manipulated ballot box. Decades of weakened controls over the voting process throughout the country have given it the ability to steal elections, and it has done so. Among others, ACORN-inspired vote fraud and political contributions to those who decide on ballot-counting procedures almost definitely explain why Minnesota’s junior Senator is Al Franken, and likely explain why Christine Gregoire was elected governor of Washington in 2004.

Though they will inconvenience legitimate voters and voter-registration collectors, the following four reforms are absolutely required to maintain the integrity of the elections system against the onslaught of ACORN and any potential successors:

1. End fraud-susceptible “early voting,” and replace it with limited-excuse absentee balloting. The absentee system functioned quite effectively for two centuries until leftists won over the unwitting with bogus and irresponsible arguments of “convenience.” Unless you have a valid, approved in advance excuse permitting you to vote absentee, you must find a way to vote in person on Election Day, period.
2. Permit only the voter wishing to register to turn in a voter-registration card, and only to an employee or designated agent of the board of elections. No intermediaries are allowed, period. I know that the political parties won’t like this, but too bad, so sad, I’m sick and tired of being had. Election boards concerned about the ability of immobile, elderly, or heavily-traveling voters to register should expand their outreach efforts at places like retirement homes and personal visits, and should periodically expand their hours of operation into evenings and weekends.
3. Systematically clean up the voter rolls at least every four years.
4. Limit provisional balloting to disputes over whether or not a person is validly registered. It’s not too much to insist that a voter show up at the proper polling location on Election Day.

Separately, states like Washington and Oregon that are handling their elections largely or completely by mail must stop doing so.

If the growing Tea Party movement is looking for an outlet for its remarkable energy, I can think of none better than fixing our elections system one sovereign state at a time. ACORN’s web must be fully investigated, prosecuted, and permanently stopped. For that to happen, and to prevent additional imitators, electoral reform initiatives — or, if necessary, state constitutional amendments — that include provisions similar to those described above need to get onto the November 2010 ballot in as many states as humanly possible.

Here’s the House’s ACORN defunding roll call vote.

Yes, Dennis Kuncinich really is a member of the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee. You really can’t make this stuff up.

(Originally posted earlier this morning, and carried to the top).

Here’s the reaction from House Republican Leader John Boehner:

“Today, America has lost one of its finest thinkers and greatest patriots. Irving Kristol added intellectual rigor and heft to the conservative movement by redefining how we apply the values and principles our nation was founded on to the challenges of the modern era. My thoughts and prayers are with his family at this difficult time.”

Here’s the best excerpt at the Wall Street Journal’s compendium (bolds are mine):

Income Inequality Without Class Conflict, Dec. 18, 1997

It is often said that capitalism—that is, a market economy—is morally obnoxious because its “trickle-down economics” inevitably creates inequality of income and wealth. Now it is certainly true that “trickle-down economics” has that effect. It is also true, however, that if you want economic growth and greater affluence for all, there is simply no alternative to “trickle-down economics,” which is just another name for growth economics.

The world has yet to see a successful version of “trickle-up economics,” an egalitarian society in which the state ensures that the fruits of economic growth are universally and equally shared. The trouble with this idea—it is, of course, the socialist ideal—is that it does not produce those fruits in the first place. Economic growth is promoted by entrepreneurs and innovators, whose ambitions, when realized, create inequality. No one with any knowledge of human nature can expect such people not to want to be relatively rich, and if they are too long frustrated they will cease to be productive. Nor can the state substitute for them, because the state simply cannot engage in the “creative destruction” that is an essential aspect of innovation. The state cannot and should not be a risk-taking institution, since it is politically impossible for any state to cope with the inevitable bankruptcies associated with economic risk taking.

Related: The Associated Press’s Kristol obituary is here (saved here at host) It uses the term “neoconservative” or equivalent nine twelve times, including three times hyphenated, in about 1,400 words, accompanied by eight uses of forms of “conservative.” AP Writer Hillel Italie referred to Kristol as a “radical” before he moved to conservatism twice.

Ted Kennedy’s AP obituary (saved here at host) used the term “liberal” three times in about 2,000 words. The word “radical” does not appear.

I expanded my reaction to the AP’s obit at a NewsBusters post this morning.

From Pensacola, Florida:

Sep 19, 2009 / 05:47 pm

A judge ruled on Thursday that a rural Florida panhandle high school principal and athletic director did not violate a federal court order barring prayer at school events.

Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and Athletic Director Robert Freeman could have faced up to six months in jail and $5,000 in fines if convicted of violating a 2008 settlement the Santa Rosa County District had reached in the lawsuit.

During a luncheon to honor those who contributed toward the public school’s athletic Field House, Principal Lay reportedly asked Freeman to offer a blessing for the meal. Students were not present at the time of the blessing. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.