Charles Bloch’s article about Human Events distancing itself from Pat Buchanan’s recent column “Did Hitler Really Want War?” picks away at the sore that blights the American Right: the modern “conservative” establishment–what has been called “Conservatism, Inc.”.

The growing menace of political correctness, and increasing political persecution from the intolerant radical Left, such as the $PLC, reveals the spinelessness of Conservatism, Inc. in defending historically core positions of the political Right.

The fact that all too many conservative careerists require backbone replacement surgery has allowed the political adversaries of the Right to gain the moral high ground in terms of what is acceptable and off-limits from civil discourse.

As a fixture on the Washington political scene, Human Events and other editors and owners of “conservative” publications (including “conservative” pundits and columnists, such as the late Robert Novak) tread carefully around “controversies” that can run afoul of the “PC” police. They crave political access — accessibility to political insiders on Capital Hill and various executive department offices — and accessibility requires acceptance. Anything that jeopardizes this fragile arrangement must go. Principled viewpoints are all too easily smeared as politically incorrect. Hosting parties for congressional candidates, politicians, committee chairmen, and key staff members and journalists from the MSM are more important than speaking candidly about politically inconvenient truths.

Pat Buchanan is one of the few remaining exceptions to this trend. He believes in speaking freely in a “free” society and letting the chips fall where they may.

The real irony is that Buchanan’s recent column would have fit right in with the pro-isolationist views of the founding editors of Human Events (Felix Morley and Frank Chodorov). The America

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Ted Kennedy’s death on Wednesday–in essence the passing of a senator–produced a never-ending tsunami of retrospectives. Newscasts, from CNN to PBS’ News Hour with Jim Lehrer, devoted entire programs to Ted Kennedy’s passing. The funeral on Saturday is likely to trigger another wave of retrospectives by the MSM.

The enshrinement of the deceased exposes the unfiltered liberal biases of the Mainstream Media elite. On CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360°, the gestures of John King and Gloria Borger–tilting the head, raising the eyebrows, batting the eyelashes–reflected a typical display of awestruck sentiment. Historian Douglas Brinkley summarized Kennedy’s legacy as if his political contributions ranked with the Founding Fathers.

Thursday’s Washington Post contains three front-page articles, four columns on the op/ed page (with six mini-retrospectives), a timeline with photographs that stretch across the span of two pages, five pages in the national section, and a “Style section” piece by Lois Romano. Friday’s Post contains two front page articles, multiple pages of coverage in the national section, and another column on the op/ed page.

The coverage is what one would expect from the death of a former president. Why all the attention over the death of this U.S. senator?

Part of the explanation is the Kennedy mystique–the death of the last prince of “Camelot”. Post columnist Eugene Robinson noted that Kennedy was “a prince fated never to be king”.

Another major factor is that Kennedy epitomized everything the MSM embraces: unrestricted mass immigration; “civil rights” also known as quotas, preferential treatment, and set-asides; public school desegregation via forced busing; the Equal Rights Amendment; socialized medicine (or “universal health care” widely touted as the “public option”); and Barack Obama.

MSM journalists, editors, reporters, and commentators identify with Kennedy’s political and social outlook–one defined by a rabid egalitarian liberal ideology.

Commentators on the airwaves talked in generic terms about how Kennedy “changed America” and left his “impact” on the nation without explaining the ramifications of his impact. Will the America of the future look like the America of the past? Will it resemble more and more the turmoil and ethnic strife of a Third World nation? How much public debt, how much more government, how much more federal regulation, how many more quotas, how many more egalitarian social policies are we willing to finance, support and shoulder as a nation? These questions will remain unanswered because the MSM will avoid any substantive critique or sustained discussion of Kennedy’s real legacy.

It should be noted that Editor & Publisher magazine combed though the obituaries of Sen. Kennedy to see how long it took for them to bring up the Chappaquiddick incident.

Here are the top results:

• Boston Herald — 10th paragraph

• Boston Globe — 5th paragraph

• New York Times —14th paragraph

• New York Post — 14th paragraph

• New York Daily News —13th paragraph

• Washington Post — 9th paragraph

• Wall Street Journal — 6th paragraph

• Los Angeles Times — 12th paragraph

• Chicago Tribune — 12th paragraph

• Miami Herald — 10th paragraph

• Reuters —18th paragraph

• USA Today —19th paragraph

• Politico–24th paragraph

• The Hill — NO MENTION

• Roll Call — 25th paragraph

• National Journal — 11th paragraph

• Times of London — 8th paragraph

Syndicated columnist, author, and political commentator Robert D. Novak, 78, died earlier today from complications of a brain tumor.

Journalists are sentimental about themselves (remember the Tim Russert grief fest?) and the major news networks, such as CNN, are running lengthy reminiscent retrospectives of Novak.

The author of several books including his 2007 memoir The Prince of Darkness,, Novak cultivated an image as the quintessential “conservative” maverick. By reputation, he was one who challenged the GOP, broke ranks with neoconservatives over Israel and the war in Iraq, expressed skepticism over the official storyline of the  savage attack on the USS Liberty by Israeli jets and torpedo ships, eventually became entwined in the Valerie Plame-CIA leak scandal, and out-scooped other reporters on numerous occasions.

In reviewing Novak’s memoir, I argued that this view was significantly at odds with reality.

Novak was first and foremost a Washington insider’s insider. He ranked third in most appearances on “Meet the Press” and worked as a CNN commentator for 25 years. He was a master at leeching onto divisive figures inside various administrations (Karl Rove is one example) who ultimately would serve his own ends, secure his reputation and advance his own career. He was skilled at the art of dodging career-ending encounters that would put him at odds with the media elite.

As an assistant editor for the Evans-Novak Political Report, I served as a liaison between my employer (Eagle Publishing) and Novak’s staffer writers Tim Carney and David Freddoso. Although at the time I was involved in editing three separate and distinctly unique publications, my editorship of The Occidental Quarterly with Sam Francis ran afoul of the politically correct mothership, Eagle Publishing, after the $PLC’s Heidi Beirich called Novak’s office to inquire as to my employment status.

Despite my nearly three years of diligent work, it was Novak’s nervousness at having to answer to a far-left ideological, obese hack that began the process that caused Eagle to force me to resign as managing editor of Human Events. Jeff Carneal, Eagle’s president and fairy godmother of political correctness there, ordered that I leave the office immediately. At least I had driven to the office that fateful day and was able to grab my mementos on the way out.

Novak talked tough about freedom and liberty. But he didn’t defend mine. Nor, in his politic avoidance of emerging National Question issues, was he defending America’s at the end of his life.

A new report to be released on April 14 will document rampant abuse in the collection of fraudulent income tax refunds from the IRS, especially by illegal immigrants.
The 51-page report, The Earned Income Tax Credit and Illegal Immigration: A Study in Fraud, Abuse, and Liberal Activism, by financial analyst and VDARE.COM contributor Edwin Rubenstein, will be released at a News Conference at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, April 14, 2009 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
The study documents the “perverse childbearing incentives” which “are more acute among immigrant households” and details the overall role that the EITC contributes to population growth.
Speaking at the news conference (during the release of the report) will be:
Ed Rubenstein, James R. Edwards, Jr., a principal at the MITA Group, a Washington-based government affairs firm, and a consultant and public policy expert, author, and former Lincoln Fellow of the Claremont Institute, and Wayne Lutton, editor of the Social Contract and co-author of The Immigration Time Bomb.
“The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the largest anti-poverty program in the United States — and the most illegal-immigrant friendly,” explains Edwin Rubenstein, author of the new report. “In 2007, more than 23 million households received more than $47 billion in the EITC payments.”
But “between one-quarter to one-third of all EITC claims are ‘improperly paid’ according to the General Accounting Office. The EITC — like most of the tax code — operates on the honor system. This is very different from welfare and food stamps where applicants are interviewed and required to present proof of eligibility,” Mr. Rubenstein said.
For more information on the news conference and to download a copy of the report [PDF]visit the Social Contract website: www.thesocialcontract.com

The news coverage of violent crimes and sociopathic conduct (soaring AIDS rates) in the greater Washington, D.C.-area routinely contains the not so mysterious guess-the-race-of-the-perpetrator missing feature. As Nicholas Stix has pointed out, the “Mainstream Media” (MSM) deliberately avoid any mention of the race of a violent suspect in crime coverage.

Three articles in yesterday’s WP focus on the run-of-the-mill homicide and fatality — events that seem to dominate local minority areas, reflecting an uninterrupted business-as-usual string of events uncommon in largely white suburban and exurban communities.

“Police Kill Man Who Had Gun At Restaurant in Temple Hills”is one two-column article next to the three column story “2 Mothers, 2 Daughters Dead; Pr. George’s Police Seek Link” (as if there is some mystery as to the nature of the perpetrator in these double-homicides) on the front page of yesterday’s Metro section.

Below the fold at the bottom of the front page is clueless Courtland Milloy’s column on the AIDS crisis in the District of Columbia (rates are now higher than in West Africa) as if the epidemic is the result of an insufficient “public awareness campaign” (“focus groups”, “data”, and “money”) to combat “unprotected” sex.

Not to mention yesterday’s prize-winner for obfuscation: “‘Scary Drug’ Makes Comeback” on the rebound increase in use of PCP among D.C.’s violent suspects. (A more accurate headline would be: “Scary Drug Makes Comeback Among Scary People”.)

What did Damon D. Taylor, Charlese J. Hall, and Derek J. Green have in common before shooting his mom in bed (Taylor), stabbing her 7-year-old daughter to death (Hall), and driving his car on a sidewalk at 60-mph and paralyzing a pedestrian after pinning her against another car (Green): they were high on PCP.

Night after night on the local evening newscasts violent crimes are reported in Baltimore and the District of Columbia as if the race of the suspect was an irrelevant coincidence not worth disclosing.

Yesterday’s Associated Press account describing the NAACP’s class action lawsuit filed against two major banks [NAACP Says Bank Giants Steered Blacks To Bad Loans, by Jesse Washington, Associated Press, March 13, 2009] in Los Angeles raises the idea that blacks were (yet again) victims of “racism” because a disproportionate number of blacks were more likely to receive sub-prime loans. The lawsuit claims that Wells Fargo and HSBC were “forcing” blacks to buy “sub-prime mortgages while whites with identical qualifications got lower rates.”

The irony of the sub-prime problem seems lost on Melissa Murray, vice president of corporate communications for Wells Fargo & Co.: “We have never tolerated, and will never tolerate, discrimination in any way, shape or form in any of our business practices, products, or services,” Murray said.

Perhaps if banks had discriminated, i.e. maintained strict standards in scrutinizing the credit ratings of some of these borrowers then the banking industry may have avoided the brunt of the sub-prime meltdown.

What’s next a class-action lawsuit against furniture retailers claiming blacks were “forced” to buy furniture on time?

In covering the latest developments in the Chandra Levy case (illegal alien felon Ingmar Guandique has emerged as Levy’s suspected killer), the Washington Times reported yesterday that news organizations were “debating whether the words ‘illegal’ and ‘immigrant’ are too loaded to use in an already emotionally charged story. And maybe even racist.” [Levy suspect's illegal status stirs media debate, Jennifer Harper, March 6, 2009 ]

Last February, an internal memo sent by Patrick Tuohy indicated that the WT has planned to drop “illegal alien” and use “illegal immigrant”. Here’s the email memo:

From: Patrick Tuohy
Date: February 25, 2008 4:43:13 PM EST
To: twtnews@washingtontimes.com
Cc: Patrick Tuohy
Subject: Style changes

All:

Here are some recent updates to TWT style.

1) Clinton will be the headline word for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

2) Gay is approved for copy and preferred over homosexual, except in clinical references or references to sexual activity.

3) The quotation marks will come off gay marriage (preferred over homosexual marriage).

4) Moderate is approved, but centrist is still allowed.

5) We will use illegal immigrants, not illegal aliens.

Thanks.

A search of Nexis shows that the newspaper has a long history of using “illegal alien” in their reportage: 2561 hits from March 2004 to March 2009.

Some suspect the explicit change of editorial tone, one month after John Solomon took over as editor, reflects the new editor’s liberal tilt.

Consider the following excerpts (emphasis added) from the text of a recent speech, “A New Era Begins.” The speaker is an ardent admirer of Barack Obama:

I was standing on the Washington Mall on Inauguration Day, alongside nearly two million other people, and proudly watched the first African American take the oath of office in our nation’s history. That alone made the day deeply memorable, joyful, and historic. But I couldn’t help but think — and I’m sure that millions of others had the same thought — that the transfer of power from Bush to President Obama not only tore down a barrier that once was thought near impenetrable, but also signified the fading away of one era and the beginning of another.

It was hard not to think on that cold day in our nation’s capital that the worst of the past 30 years of right-wing extremist rule is behind us and that an era of progressive change is within reach, no longer an idle dream.

Just look at the new lay of the land: a friend of labor and its allies sits in the White House. Larger Democratic majorities control Congress. A feeling of renewal and hope is in the air. Public opinion polls show a high favorability rating for our new President. And the labor and people’s movement that was so instrumental to the election’s outcome, after a short holiday pause, is off and running.
First, we have to support the passage of the President’s stimulus bill in the Senate.

Second, we have to block any Republican efforts to derail the nomination of Hilda Solis, the nominee for the Secretary of Labor. This is the first round in the battle to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which will dramatically expand the right to join a union in this country. Some may think this is a struggle of only the labor movement. But nothing could be further from the truth. A bigger labor movement in this country would strengthen the struggle on every front. No one expressed this point better than Martin Luther King toward the end of his life.

Third, we have to join others in resisting evictions and foreclosures—not to mention cutbacks and layoffs at the state and city level.

Fourth, the wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan have to be brought to a close. As former President Lyndon Johnson realized too late, wars of occupation (in his case, Vietnam) can quickly ruin a presidency that has great promise.

In any case, we have our work cut out for us. But I think we can confidently say that change is coming. And we will build a more perfect union.
Yes, we can.

The speaker: Sam Webb, National Chair, Communist Party, USA.

A week before our nation’s capitol braces for what public officials fear could be overcrowded throngs of attendees at Barack Obama’s inauguration (some Metro stops on Washington, D.C.’s subway are reported to be designated “exit only” stops to accommodate overflow crowds), the Social Contract released a timely 83-page report by researcher and VDARE.com contributor Edwin Rubenstein on immigration and infrastructure at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on January 13, 2009.

The well-attended event–which featured Rubenstein, moderator Dr. Wayne Lutton, editor of the Social Contract, and Eugene Delgaudio, Sterling District representative of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors–included members of the press, concerned citizens, activists and leaders in the immigration-reform community, and at least two Marxist radicals intent on disrupting the event.

Midway through the press conference an attendee on the front row stood up and passed out flyers smearing the Social Contract, its editor Dr. Lutton, publisher John Tanton, and Rubenstein, author of The Twin Crises study.

During the question and answer session, a man wearing a stretch-over knitted cap with a Chicago Cubs insignia barged into the back of the room carrying heart-shaped red balloons (with the source listed on the balloons as the fringe open-borders group Imagine2050) with a white-icing sheet cake that read: “Congratulations Social Contract Press on another racist report! Your white nationalist friends must be very proud!” The red balloons contained white lettering, “Social Contract Press loves bigotry… www.youtube.com/IMAG2050”.

Both were promptly escorted from the press conference. The “delivery man” who entered the conference room refused to say, when pressed, which delivery company he was employed with but noted that he was “just doing what he was paid to do” Security cameras captured the individual as security officials at the National Press Club ushered him from the building.

Maoist and Trotskite activists associated with militant groups, such as the Progressive Labor Party, have a well-established history of disrupting civic meetings they oppose and this was clearly no exception.

Fortunately a few alert attendees at the back of the room promptly showed these intolerant militants the door. Their presence was a minor distraction of an otherwise highly successful press conference on a most timely topic: the impact of immigration and population growth on nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

On Tuesday, October 7, the Social Contract Press sponsored the release of a new report on non-citizen voting by David Simcox at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Simcox, a former director of the Center for Immigration Studies and a retired foreign service officer of the State Department, produced a compelling study that shows how non-citizens (illegal alien voters) could impact election outcomes, especially in key districts in California, Texas, Florida, and New York where the foreign-born population is considerably large.[Download the study in PDF]

The standing-room only event was well attended by members of the press, including CNN, Univision, several newspaper reporters, a local NPR-affiliate reporter, members of the immigration reform community, and a few bloggers from the radical Left.

Two questions from two bloggers in attendance seemed scripted right from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC’s) scandal-mongering playbook. One blogger raised spurious “guilt by association” allegations of The Social Contract’s editor and managing editor. Another radical blogger, identified as representing “New World Revolution,” raised the recent muckraking accusations lodged against John Tanton, the publisher of The Social Contract, and which were recently posted on the SPLC’s “Hate Watch” site.

For years Leftists complained about the excessive “guilt-by-association” abuses of the “McCarthy era,” especially the “blacklisting” period when many government bureaucrats and Hollywood screenwriters lost their careers after being suspected of promoting a Marxist-Leninist ideology with ties to Communist organizations. The irony is that the SPLC and other radical groups traffic in these very smear tactics as a way of trying to silence their opponents.

Wayne Lutton effectively countered these accusations last Tuesday and directly rebutted these muckraking accusations when they were raised. Others should do likewise.