Hewitt Blog

This is the sort of line up of guests that listeners on AM 1260 in D.C. love on their drive home.

You can contribute to Ken Buck's Senate campaign here.  Buck leads appointed Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet by five points.

The Wall Street Journal piece I will be discussing with Karl Rove is here.

The New Republic's Jon Chait has posted on Charles Krauthammer's column on GZM, on the effort to stop an appeal of Prop 8, and on the Weekly Standard's "Refudiate Obama" campaign. We will discuss all three.

And Jonah Goldberg's piece on liberals and constitutional amendments is here.

I will ask Candy Crowley about the poll number that is most surprising to her --to me it is Ron Johnson's lead over Russ Feingold.

And with Brian Wesbury I will be focusing on the Democrats' decision to throw good money after bad and spend another $26 billion we don't have on state employee bailouts.

Another talk radio day of shout fests and unbalanced MSNBC-like rants.

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Judge Vaughn Walker's conduct of, and opinion in, the Prop 8 trial has already been widely criticized, including by proponents of same sex marriage like Jonathan Rauch.

Today Walker telegraphed his hope that the United States Court of Appeals of the 9th Circuit will refuse defenders of Proposition 8 their day in front of an appeals court, stating that "[a]s it appears at least doubtful that proponents will be able to proceed with their appeal without a state defendant, it remains unclear whether the Court of Appeals will be able to reach the merits of proponents' appeal."

"In light of those concerns," Walker continued, "proponents may have little choice but to attempt to convince either the governor or the attorney general to file an appeal to ensure jurisdiction."

This is a breathtaking bit of manipulation of the case by all concerned and especially given the court's dismissal of Imperial County's motion to intervene in the case which, had it been granted, would have resolved this question.  If the 9th Circuit refuses proponents of Prop 8 standing, then Jerry Brown will have to bring the appeal.  If he doesn't it will be a major issue in Brown's campaign for governor --and another reason to vote against left wing elites unwilling to allow for self-governance, or even full judicial review of court-suppression of self-governance.

For more on the standing controversy, and for an argument in favor of conceding standing to Prop 8's defenders from a same sex marriage proponent, see this post from Chris Greidner.

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I will be spending Thursday in Arizona, campaigning for Dr. Paul Gosar, candidate for Congress in Arizona's 1rst District, so blogging will be light until Friday.  Be sure to catch these three articles:

From The Atlantic: Jeffrey Goldberg's piece on the threat which Iran poses to Israel and the world --The Point of No Return.

From the New Republic:  Reuel Marc Gerecht's "What Is Moderate Islam?"

From The New Yorker:  Jon Lee Anderson's "After the Crackdown." 

And don't miss these pictures of troops returning home to Dallas-Fort Worth airport and finding an unusual welcoming party.  (HT: K-Lo via  Powerline.)

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The first hour of my Wednesday program was a conversation about the aftermath of the Prop 8 decision with three of the country's great intellectuals --Prison Fellowship's Chuck Colson, Princeton University's Robert George and Beeson Divinity School's Timothy George. 

All three are contributors to the drafting effort that brought forward the Manhattan Declaration a few months back, and today's discussion reviews Judge Walker's radical reasoning in the Prop 8 case and the appropriate response of Christians and other people of faith to a decision that, in short, is an assault on the Constitution and orthodox Judeo-Christian belief as well as marriage.

My broadcasts are available only via subscription after the program airs, but we have posted the audio of this hour here with a means of emailing the link to folks you think might be interested in hearing it.  Please pass the word on to your friends, pastors and fellow church members, and please visit ManahattanDeclaration.org as a first step to reversing the judge's massive overreach and radical rewrite of the laws of the United States.

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The New York Times has a moving slide show on the missionaries butchered by the Taliban.

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While eerily resembling a pundit version of Hollywood Squares, Hugh got in the line of the night.

Stephanie Miller, meet door.

 

Author and Brookings scholar Jonathan Rauch is a gay man in a same sex marriage authorized by the District of Columbia.

He is also a critic of the San Francisco decision on Prop 8, ashis column in the New York Daily News explains.

I will be hosting Manhattan Declaration co-authors Chuck Colson, Robert George and Timothy George in the first hour of today's show to discuss the decision and its aftermath.

If you haven't yet signed the Manhattan Declaration, please visit the site and consider doing so.

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Appointed Colorado Senator Tim Bennet survived a primary challenge last night, but he will not likely survive the November 2 show down with Ken Buck, the GOP Senate nominee.

I supported former Lt. Gov Jane Norton in the Buck-Norton primary race, but as Norton graciously noted in her concession speech last night, there is no doubt about who is the conservative in the race now and who is the Obama loyalist and reliable Harry Reid vote.  The Obama-Bennet tie was pulled very tight in the past two weeks as the president rode in to save the struggling Bennet campaign. 

The race starts as a dead heat, but it won't be long before Buck establishes and keeps a lead.  Bennet is a man of the left in a year when the west is pushing back against the Beltway in which Bennet became very comfortable very quickly. 

Buck is underfunded but that can be changed quickly as he is a genuine Tea Party candidate that the national grass roots of the movement will rally to. You can contribute to Buck's campaign via the online site here.

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The president and his spokesman have had it with the very un-Alinskyite refusal to march only when told to march.

This is what happens when your policies don't work and your approval ratings plummet.  imagine how it will be after November 2.

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Here's how the MSM played the story of an alleged confrontation between Sarah Palin and an alleged Alaskan school teacher yesterday, with this example coming from the $1 store newsweekly-formerly-known-as-Newsweek:

Well, Palin's dark side came out in full effect this weekend, and this time the victim was not President Obama but a schoolteacher in small-town Alaska. Palin was there to film a segment of a nature program on TLC, and she confronted Kathleen Gustafson who was holding up a sign reading "WORST GOVERNOR EVER." Palin clearly intended to disarm Gustafson with her charm, but instead got defensive.

Gustafson, said, "You swore on your precious Bible that you would uphold the interests of this state, and then when cash was waved in front of your face, you quit." To which Palin responded, her tone dripping with unamusing sarcasm, "Oh, you wanted me to be your governor! I’m honored! Thank you!" Palin went on to use the same tone of nasal condescension when saying she was "honored" that Gustafson considers her a celebrity (h/t The Atlantic Wire). Then, as New York's Dan Amira notes, "When Palin asks Gustafson what she does for a living, and Gustafson tells Palin she's a teacher, Palin and her daughter groan and exchange eye rolls as if to say, 'Of course, only a teacher would be such a liberal nut.' "

And it's true, schoolteachers are definitely not a Republican constituency, but anyone, even a Republican, running for president needs to make nice with them on a personal level, just asDemocrats do with the military or police officers. This latest incident won't help Palin's negative favorability ratings.

Wow, pretty bad news for the governor, right?

Except the "school teacher" was much more than a school teacher, as Gateway Pundit and MacRanger make clear.

Go back and read the entire Newsweek entry by Ben Adler, from beginning to end.  Adler's scorn of Palin is present in every paragraph, which matters only if Adler has a job other than commentary, one that would require him to make news judgments in a reasonable, objective fashion perhaps?  Adler's got quite a resume:

Shortly after Ben realized he would not grow up to play shortstop for the New York Yankees, he set his sights on something more realistic: becoming the first Jewish president. But early in his first, and only, campaign internship Ben discovered that asking people for money was not how he wanted to spend his days. So, following the maxim that those who can't, write about it, he began working in journalism.

Years of internships, temporary jobs, and low-paying freelance assignments later, Ben left his beloved native New York City to be a reporter-researcher at The New Republic in Washington, D.C. He went on to edit CampusProgress.org, a daily online magazine at the Center for American Progress, while contributing regularly to The American Prospect and its award-winning group blog, TAPPED. Starting in September 2007, he covered the 2008 election and Congress as a staff writer at Politico.

After the election he took a fellowship covering federal urban policy at Next American City, a quarterly journal of urban affairs, and freelanced for Columbia Journalism Review, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, The Nation and The Washington Monthly, among other publications. He also wrote the "Angry Rant from a New Yorker" column for the Internet Food Association, a D.C. food blog.

In the summer of 2009 Ben reported from Europe on urban policy in Berlin, Copenhagen and Strasbourg on a German Marshall Fund grant.

Ben has appeared on national radio and television programs and he has spoken at think tanks such as The American Enterprise Institute and The Century Foundation. His articles reprinted in books, including The Contemporary Reader and Clued in to Politics.

Since September 2009, he has been back in New York, editing Newsweek's online political and national affairs content as National Editor of Newsweek.com, and thanking God every time he has a slice of pizza

Adler is editing Newsweek's online content, and his obviously hard-left slant and indifference to the obvious issue of Gustafson's agenda and identity came through in the Palin piece, as it must in all of his work.

This doesn't surprise me, or probably most center-right journalists who have followed Newsweek's or the Washington Post's adaptation of the MSNBC branding strategy. 

But it will no doubt surprise many readers and (former) subscribers who may have thought that even as it tiled left Newsweek would retain something of the "old school" pretense of covering the news. 

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