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YOUNG RADICALS: IN THE WAR FOR AMERICAN IDEALS By Jeremy McCarter Published by Random House, 400 pages, $30

Yesterday, I began my review of Jeremy McCarters new book Young Radicals and today I should like to conclude.

The lives of the young radicals are nothing if not fascinating. I kept wondering if there are young people today whose lives are so consumed with that rare combination of intellectual vigor and progressive optimism that the five protagonists display. Do people anymore start a theater troupe one summer, writing scripts and performing the plays, only to have one of their number show up one night with a friend, and the friend is a young Eugene O'Neill? But, that is what happened to Jack Reed one summer in Provincetown.

Reed and Walter Lippmann, friends at college, walk very different paths through the decade. Reed is flamboyant, the prince and the prankster of the Greenwich Village scene. When Reed takes up with a married woman, Freddy Lee (whose husband is a mutual friend of both Reed and Lippmann), Lippmann finds himself the recipient of a barrage of letters from Reeds last paramour, Mabel Dodge, pleading for his aid, as Reed had asked him to comfort Mabel when the news of his new love struck her. It is too much. McCarter writes: "Lippmann has plenty of affection for both of his friends, but the frivolity of Greenwich Village, and the people who play there, seem more and more ridiculous to him, more remote from his life. He has responsibilities; he has work to do; there is a war on. Like Prince Hal, he is ready to turn his back on Falstaff and all his pranks, and turn his gaze to the palace." This fine bit of prose is emblematic of the entire book which makes it such an easy read.

Randolph Bourne joins Lippmann at The New Republic as it starts in 1914 and the two become friends. He marvels at Lippmann's productivity and Lippmann is one of the first guests at Bournes summer home in Caldwell, New Jersey. But Bourne does not share his friends' ideas, especially about the nature of America society as dueling essays in 1916 demonstrate. As McCarter notes, "Watching Bourne and Lippmann address the same subject is a chance to trace the differences in their radicalism. In Lippmann's 'ideal of Americanism,' two concepts are pitted against each other. He wants America to be 'a union of people rather than a congeries of groups, provinces and racial stocks.' Bourne shares Lippmann's desire for a union of people, but the point of the trans-national ideal [that Bourne champions] is that people form that union while still belonging to different groups and feeling affinity with separate racial stocks." Bourne would complete his thesis by introducing Josiah Royce's concept of "Beloved Community."

Sunday marks the two-year anniversary of the publication of Laudato Si'. Explore Pope Francis' environmental encyclical with our complimentary readers' guide.

Alice Paul's life does not permit her the luxury of contemplating communities, beloved or otherwise. The suffragette is constantly looking for ways to force President Wilson to endorse a constitutional amendment extending the franchise to women nationwide. She disrupts a parade in Chicago. She and her colleagues protest outside the White House. When they are arrested and sent to jail, they start a hunger strike. Paul is unrelenting in her determination and, unlike the men in this story, she gets a large chunk of what she wants before it ends: Universal suffrage is enacted. Full equality for women, Paul's ultimate goal, like the socialistic or progressive goals of the other protagonists in this story, is something still beyond our societal grasp.

Max Eastman doesn't join The New Republic, he mocks it and "those mighty young bronze beasts who edit the New Republic." But like his less radical friends, Eastman must wrestle with how the war has forced a reexamination of basic assumptions and, curiously, like Lippmann, he does not surrender his ideals. "I do not believe a devastating war in Europe will stop the labor struggle," Eastman writes in The Masses. "I believe it will haste the day of its triumph. It will shake people together like dice in a box, and how they will fall out nobody knows. But they will fall out shaken; that everybody knows." I read those sentences and my mind went immediately to our own time in which President Donald Trump, not a "devastating war in Europe," will leave us all shaken although no one knows exactly how yet.

The most fascinating part of the book comes when the U.S. enters the World War in 1917. "The young radicals are about to face a whole new set of consequences from their decisions to pursue their ideals in the tumult of public life," writes McCarter. "They had made those choices against a backdrop of peace and relative stability. A world of abundant promise now seems a world of unknowable danger. The question is no longer Will you work to see your ideals realized? The new reality asks them How far will you go? How much risk can you handle? How much pain can you endure?"

Lippmann goes to work for President Wilson while Reed goes to St. Petersburg and gets swept up in the Russian Revolution. The old college chums find themselves both engaged in propaganda, McCarter notes. Eastman is charged under the Espionage laws, stands his ground at trial and is acquitted. Later in life, he will go on to write for Reader's Digest, that "squarest and least radical magazine in America." Bourne publicly breaks with his mentor, John Dewey, as well as the editorial stance of The New Republic. He writes some of the most powerful and trenchant critiques of war I have ever read. An example: After noting the claim that they are leaders made by the editors of The New Republic, and noting that those pushing for war all along had been the jingoists, the plutocrats and the conservatives, he writes: "Only in a world where irony is dead could an intellectual class enter war at the head of such illiberal cohorts in the avowed cause of world-liberalism."

I shall let the reader discover the rest of this fascinating tale, written both powerfully and carefully on every page, researched with exhaustion and written with panache. My only criticism would be directed not at the story itself but at McCarter's epilogue. The steady hand that wrote the book is lost as he contemplates the Women's March the day after the inauguration of President Trump. "American conditions feel so precarious as I'm writing this in early February 2017 that any prediction might seem foolish by the time you read it. It might seem foolish by the time I finish typing it. But the scale and the zeal of the Women's March suggests that we've entered a new phase in the history of American idealism." He should have listened to his caveats: It is so far quite foolish to think our country has entered a new phase of idealism. Where is the evidence?

All is forgiven, however, even in the epilogue, by McCarter's ability to craft beautiful sentences that contain poignant ideas. He concludes the book: "Whatever happens, we ought to be braced by the example of the young radicals; how they discovered their ideals, made a decision to fight for them, and went on fighting even when the battle turned against them. Their defeats were painful, but not final. Battles for ideals never are. Ruins stop being ruins when you build with them."

Now that this review is published, I shall call McCarter and pose him a particular question: There seems to be a complete absence of any religious tone or content in these five young radicals. Did that not hinder them in a culture where religious language and imagery is still so redolent? And, in our own day, is it still necessary to find at least some of the resources for cultural renewal and progressivism in religious idioms? McCarter does not address this question in his book, and I am glad he didn't: He sticks to the narrative and lets the protagonists tell their own story, which is why it is such an engaging read. (Letting the protagonists tell their own story without the author getting in the way is also a lot harder to do than it looks!) But, if he truly discerns in the Women's March a new progressivism, did the march organizers' decision to bar pro-life feminists from participating evidence a healthy or unhealthy strain in contemporary progressivism?

If this still young thinker and writer is wondering what to write next, I would propose he look at the nexus of religion and progressivism in the lives of other emblematic Americans. I would read that book too and I am confident I would delight in it as I did in this one. But that is all in the future. For now: Read this book! You wont be disappointed.

[Michael Sean Winters covers the nexus of religion and politics for NCR.]

Original post:
'Young Radicals' follows progressives' pursuit of ideals into World War I - National Catholic Reporter (blog)

Chokwe Antar Lumumba, a human-rights lawyer, won the mayoralty of Jackson, Mississippi, in June with 93 percent of the vote. (Illustration by Louisa Bertman)

With a clenched fist held high and the promise of amovement of the people, Chokwe Antar Lumumba asked the voters of Jackson, Mississippi, to elect him as their mayor in a race he pledged would lead to the transformation of a Deep South city in a deep-red state. Victory for his civil-rights-inspired, labor-backed campaign for economic and social justice would send shock waves around the world, said the 34-year-old human-rights lawyer as he vowed to make Jackson the most progressive city in the country.1

Too radical? Too bold? Not at all. Backed by a coalition that included veteran activists who fought segregation, along with newcomers who got their first taste of politics in Bernie Sanderss 2016 presidential campaign, Lumumba won 55 percent of the vote in a May Democratic primary that saw him oust the centrist incumbent mayor and sweep past several other senior political figures in Mississippis largest city. A month later, he secured a stunning 93 percent of the vote in a general election that drew one of the highest turnouts the city has seen in years.2

That victory renewed a radical experiment in community-guided governance and cooperative economics that his father, the veteran radical activist Chokwe Lumumba Sr., began during a brief mayoral term that ended with the senior Lumumbas untimely death just eight months after his own 2013 election as mayor. Governing magazine speculates that the younger Lumumbas tenure may offer striking evidence of a nationwide trend: strongly progressive policies being pushed in big cities, even in deep red states. Thats true. Unfortunately, Lumumbas June 6 win didnt get anything close to the media attention accorded a handful of special elections for US House seats in districts that are so solidly Republican that Donald Trump was comfortable plucking congressmen from them to fill out his cabinet.3

This is the frustrating part of Lumumbas shock waves around the world calculus: His election should have sent a shock wave. The same holds true for the election of progressives in local races from Cincinnati to St. Louis to South Fulton, Georgia, in a season of resistance that began with the Womens March on Washington and mass protests against President Trumps Muslim ban but has quickly moved to polling places across the country.4

The list of victories thus far on this years long calendar of contestsmayoral, City Council, state legislative, and even statewideis striking. Many of them are unprecedented, and most are linked by a growing recognition on the part of national progressive groups and local activists that the greatest resistance not just to Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan but to right-wing governors could well come from the cities and states where the day-to-day work of governing is done. Municipal resistance is crucial because these Republican governors often do the bidding of the Koch brothers and the corporate-sponsored American Legislative Exchange Council.5

Our nation will only change from the grassroots up. Dan Cantor, national director of the Working Families Party

Inspired not merely by their opposition to Trump but in many cases by the experience of the Sanders campaign, these next-generation progressive candidatesoften running with the backing of Our Revolution, the national group developed by Sanders backersshare a belief that effective opposition begins with saying no but never ends there. They recognize that an alternative vision can be proposed and put into practice in communities where taxes are levied, services are delivered, commitments to fight climate change are made, resolutions to establish sanctuary cities are adopted, and questions about poverty, privatization, and policing are addressed. Our nation will only change from the grassroots up, says Dan Cantor, national director of the Working Families Party, which backed Lumumba as well as the progressive winners of a hotly contested primary for Philadelphia district attorney, a statewide race for the top education post in Wisconsin, and a New York election that saw a Trump-backing GOP district pick a resistance-preaching union activist for an open legislative seat.6

Cantor is right to suggest that these victories make a powerful case that a new resistance-and-renewal politics is sending a signal to conservative Republicans and cautious Democrats alike about the ability of bold progressive populists to win in every part of the country. Thats why it is so worrisome that these electoral shock waves have been crashing against the wall of ignorance and indifference that surrounds a Trump-obsessed Washington media.7

Even before the 2016 elections, the national media were far too focused on Beltway intrigues. When the Trump-centric punditocracy hang on the 45th presidents every tweet, election results that cannot be tied directly to whats happening in Washington barely exist in their eyes. This is a damaging phenomenon: Even in an era of rapidly evolving social media, the validation that comes from traditional media coverage should not be underestimated. In the none-too-distant past, things changed because down-ballot races were closely monitored for evidence of the zeitgeist; the tangible signs of electoral progress for civil-rights campaigners in the late 1960s came initially in the form of election results for the mayoralties in places like Gary, Indiana, and Cleveland, and they inspired the next wave of campaigns in cities like Atlanta and New Orleans. City Council elections in Berkeley, Madison, and Ann Arbor in the early 1970s revealed the political potency of radical movements and lowered voting ages, just as Harvey Milks 1977 election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors told us that LGBTQ Americans were transforming urban politics. And a remarkable series of election results in 1983, beginning with Harold Washingtons election as mayor of Chicago, signaled the rise of a rainbow coalition that would inspire not just the Reverend Jesse Jackson but a young community organizer named Barack Obama.8

Lumumbas big win in Jackson and similar breakthrough victories across the country are powerful indications of todays emerging resistance. His overwhelming primary victory occurred on the same day that progressive Cincinnati Councilwoman Yvette Simpson shocked even herself when her power of we campaign finished first (ahead of a conservative incumbent) in that citys mayoral primary. Annie Weinberg, electoral director of Democracy for America, which has waded into dozens of down-ballot contests, said the message is clear: In 2017, voters are ready to make cities everywhere into bastions of resistance to the Trump regime by electing bold progressive leaders who run on, and are committed to fighting for, racial and economic justice.9

Weinbergs point was confirmed on May 16, when Philadelphia Democrats nominated veteran civil-rights lawyer Lawrence Krasner for district attorney. Krasner, who had defended Occupy Philadelphia and Black Lives Matter protesters, beat a crowded field of contenders with a campaign that promised to make the City of Brotherly Love a model for criminal-justice reform. Along with victories last year by Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx in Chicago and Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala in Orlando, Florida, Krasners win reflects the political appeal of new approaches to policingones first voiced by protesters on the streets of American cities, and that the Trump administration and too many politicians in both parties continue to callously dismiss. The headline of a Philadelphia Daily News column by Will Bunch announced: This wasnt just a primary victory. This was a revolution. The columnist saw in Krasners victory nothing less than the stirrings of a whole different kind of revolution from the city that gave America the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rightsa revolution aimed at finally undoing a draconian justice regime that had turned the Cradle of Liberty into a death-penalty capital and the poster child for mass incarceration.10

Many recent progressive victors were Bernie Sanders supporters or Sanders DNC delegates last year.

A similarly revolutionary result came in St. Louis on April 4, when Natalie Vowell won a citywide school-board seat with an intersectional campaign that focused not just on education policy but addressed the housing, employment, and criminal-justice issues that often determine whether students succeed. A Sanders delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Vowell promised to empower parents across the economic spectrum and stop equating poverty with apathy.11

Developing detailed platforms that recognize the links between local, state, and national issues has characterized these recent victories. Winning candidates have made opposing Trump a local issue, with commitments to defend immigrants and fill the void created by federal budget cuts; but they have also rejected the austerity, deregulation, privatization, and intolerance of statehouse Republicans. For example, Dylan Parker is a 28-year-old diesel mechanic and member of the Quad Cities chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. In 2016, Parker was a Sanders delegate; in early April of this year, he was elected to the City Council of Rock Island, Illinois, with a campaign that updated the sewer socialist municipal politics of the 1930s by focusing on providing universal high-speed Internet access and expanding Rock Islands publicly owned hydroelectric power plant. Two weeks later, another DSA member, khalid kamau (who lowercases his name in the Yoruba tradition that emphasizes community over the individual), was elected to the City Council of South Fulton, Georgia. A Black Lives Matter and Fight for $15 organizer and also a Sanders delegate, kamau campaigned on a bold economic and social-justice vision that seeks to make the newly incorporated community of South Fulton the largest progressive city in the South.12

In Scott Walkers Wisconsin, April voting saw Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers win a statewide nonpartisan race after being targeted by conservative backers of the school choice schemes favored by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. While his challenger embraced DeVos and called her selection a positive development for education, Evers challenged the Trump appointees promotion of taxpayer-subsidized parochial or private schools that are part of the choice program and said DeVos should be paying attention to public-school students. We need her to be an advocate for those kids, explained the teachers union ally, who calls for the increased funding of public education, especially for schools serving African-American, Latino, and rural students. Evers won 70 percent of the vote in a state that narrowly backed Trump last fall.13

While DC pundits have kept a reasonably close watch on congressional special elections in the districts won by Trumpand have seen signs of political movement some of the clearest signals are coming from special elections for seats in the state legislative chambers that will redraw congressional district lines after the 2020 Census. Progressive Democrats running in historically Republican districts in New Hampshire and New York won breakthrough victories in May. Republicans should absolutely be concerned: Two Republican canaries died in the coal mine yesterday, GOP political consultant William OReilly said after the results were announced. He explained that Trump voters and other Republicans simply didnt show up, and voters from the left did.14

THE STAKES ARE HIGHER NOW THAN EVER. GET THE NATION IN YOUR INBOX.

The New York special-election winner, elementary-school teacher and union activist Christine Pellegrino, described her victory as a thunderbolt of resistance. But it was also something else: Pellegrino, another 2016 Sanders delegate, wasnt the first choice of Democratic strategists and local party leaders. She gained the nomination with the help of the group Long Island Activists, which was born out of the Bernie Sanders movement, and she ran an edgy anticorruption campaign that recognized the mood among voters frustrated with both major parties. As observers hailed her victory in a district that gave Trump a 23-point edge last November, Pellegrino explained that her winning strategy wasnt all that complicated: A strong progressive agenda is the way forward.15

Pellegrino proved her point by taking 58 percent of the vote in one of the 710 legislative districts nationwide that have been identified by Ballotpedia as including all or part of the so-called Pivot Countiesthose that voted for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and then voted for Republican Donald Trump in 2016. As the website explains: 477 state house districts and 233 state senate districts intersected with these Pivot Counties. These [districts comprise] approximately 10 percent of all state legislative districts in the country.16

For progressives, figuring out where to win and how to winnot merely to resist, but to set the agendais about more than positioning. This is the essential first step in breaking the grip of a politics that imagines large parts of the country will always be red, and that says the only real fights are over an elusive middle ground where campaigns are fought with lots of money but little substance. The resistance-and-renewal politics thats now gathering momentum rejects such empty politics and embraces what Chokwe Antar Lumumba identifies as the struggle [that] does not cease: to give people the jobs and freedom they need to shape their own destinies. That makes every election in every community matter, because the point isnt merely to resist one bad president; as Lumumba reminds us, it is to change the order of the world.17

View original post here:
A Progressive Electoral Wave Is Sweeping the Country - The Nation.

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Posted: Jun 15, 2017 12:01 AM

After Republican Rep. Steve Scalise was shot yesterday, many liberals on twitter CELEBRATED and said things like,

The Only Good Fascist is a Dead One.

Thats a Shame but babies blown to bits at Sandy Hook was worse and Scalise takes money from the @NRA

If the shooter has a serious health condition then is taking potshots at the GOP leadership considered self defense?

If KKK support Steve Scalise dies, the shooter deserves a holiday, true leadership. Now the trumps, kush, & miller need to be transitioned.

Is it any wonder? The most prominent liberals in America regularly accuse conservatives of being racist, sexist, Nazis, fascists who want children to die and are killing the planet and ruining the environment all because of their hate of the poor and minorities. Liberals today aim a nastier stream of propaganda at Republicans than America did at the Nazis; so is it any wonder that some people take the next logical step and become violent?

Meanwhile, you have plays, rap videos and prominent liberals glorifying the murder of the President, liberals applauding unrepentant terrorists like Bill Ayers, all while cops at left-wing universities stand back and allow violent students to riot, threaten and disrupt conservative speakers. Were moving fast towards a point where clashes between armed gangs of thugs on both sides will leave people dead because liberals believe conservatives arent human beings and thus, dont deserve the same protection under the law.

Im not going to blame Bernie Sanders for the shooter who supported him or say that liberals and Democrats should be held personally responsible for it. The only person responsible for what the shooter did was the shooter. However, this sort of political violence is doomed to grow ever more common and bloodier unless liberal Democrats start changing the sort of rhetoric they engage in on a regular basis. Rhetoric like this

1) "Michele (Bachmann), slit your wrist. Go ahead... or, do us all a better thing [sic]. Move that knife up about two feet. Start right at the collarbone." -- Montel Williams

2) F*ck that dude. Ill smack that f*ckers comb-over right off his f*cking scalp. Like, for real, if I met Donald Trump, Id punch him in his f*cking face. And thats not a joke. Even if he did become president watch out, Donald Trump, because I will punch you in your f*cking face if I ever meet you. Secret Service had better just f*cking be on it. Dont let me anywhere within a block. Rapper Everlast on Donald Trump

3) I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldnt be dying needlessly tomorrow.Im just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. Thats a fact. Bill Maher

4) I know how the tea party people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their Obama Plan White Slavery signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads. The Washington Posts Courtland Milloy

5) F*** God D*mned Joe the God D*mned Motherf*cking plumber! I want Motherf*cking Joe the plumber dead. Liberal talk show host Charles Karel Bouley on the air.

6) Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Well, weve been watching intifada in Palestine, weve been watching an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How come we dont have an intifada in this country? Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are, watching CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and all these mainstream giving us a window to the world while the world is being managed from Washington, from New York, from every other place in here in San Francisco: Chevron, Bechtel, [Carlyle?] Group, Halliburton; every one of those lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving individuals are in our country and were sitting here and watching the world pass by, people being bombed, and its about time that we have an intifada in this country that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every Theyre gonna say some Palestinian being too radical well, you havent seen radicalism yet. U.C. Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian fires up the crowd at an anti-war rally by calling for an American intifada

7) "That Scott down there that's running for governor of Florida. Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him. He stole billions of dollars from the United States government and he's running for governor of Florida. He's a millionaire and a billionaire. He's no hero. He's a damn crook. It's just we don't prosecute big crooks." -- Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa

8) ..And then theres Rumsfeld who said of Iraq We have our good days and our bad days. We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say This is one of our bad days and pull the trigger. Do you want to salvage our country? Be a savior of our country? Then vote for John Kerry and get rid of the whole Bush Bunch. From a fund raising ad put out by the St. Petersburg Democratic Club

9) Republicans dont believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who dont give a hoot about human beings, either cant or wont. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm. The Village Voices Michael Feingold, in a theater review of all places

10) But the victim is also inaccurately being eulogized as a kind and loving religious man. Make no mistake, as disgusting and deservedly dead as the hate-filled fanatical Muslim killers were, Thalasinos was also a hate-filled bigot. Death cant change that. But in the U.S., we dont die for speaking our minds. Or were not supposed to anyway. Thalasinos was an anti-government, anti-Islam, pro-NRA, rabidly anti-Planned Parenthood kinda guy, who posted that it would be Freaking Awesome if hateful Ann Coulter was named head of Homeland Security. Linda Stasi, New York Daily News,on a victim murdered in the San Bernadino terrorist attack

11) Cheney deserves same final end he gave Saddam. Hope there are cell cams. Rep. Chuck Kruger (D-Thomaston)

12) If I had my way, I would see Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell strapped down to electric chairs and lit up like Christmas trees. The better to light the way for American Democracy and American Freedom! Democratic Talk Radios Stephen Crockett

13) May your children all die from debilitating, painful and incurable diseases. Allan Brauer, the communications chair of the Democratic Party of Sacramento County to Ted Cruz staffer Amanda Carpenter

14) Violence solves nothing. I want a rhino to f*ck @SpeakerRyan to death with its horn because it's FUNNY, not because he's a #GOPmurderbro. Jos Whedon

15) I hope Roger Ailes dies slow, painful, and soon. The evil that man has done to the American tapestry is unprecedented for an individual. Think Progress editorAlan Pyke

16) But, you know, the NRA members are the current incarnation of the brownshirts from Germany back in the early 30s, late 20s, early 30s. Now, of course, there came the Night of the Long Knives when the brownshirts were slaughtered and dumped in the nearest ditches when the power structure finally got tired of them. So I look forward to that day. Mike Malloy

17) "Or pick up a baseball bat and take out every f*cking republican and independent I see. #f*cktrump, #f*cktheGOP, #f*ckstraightwhiteamerica, #f*ckyourprivilege." -- Orange is the New Black star Lea DeLaria responding to a meme about using music to deal with violence

18) I wish they (Republicans) were all f*cking dead! Dan Savage

19) Sarah Palin needs to have her hair shaved off to a buzz cut, get headf*cked by a big veiny, ashy, black d*ck then be locked in a cupboard. Azealia Banks advocates raping Sarah Palin over a fake news story

20) Yes, Im angry. Yes, Im outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House, but I know that this wont change anything." -- Madonna

Disgrace: NYT Editors Recycle Debunked Palin-Giffords Lie to Give Leftists Cover (Update: Oops)

See the rest here:
20 Liberal Calls For Violence Against Conservatives in Quotes - Townhall

The Liberal government is ready to move forward with several reforms to the rules of the House of Commons, with proposed changes covering prorogation and omnibus legislation.

The changes won't include new rules to codify a prime minister's question period, but the Liberals are committing to continue the recent practice of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau taking all questions each Wednesday.

The Liberals backed away from other proposals in April, after the government's release of a discussion paper on reform prompted opposition outrage.

When the Liberals refused to agree that they would only proceed with the consensus of all parties, Conservatives and New Democrats filibustered a Liberal MP's attempt to have the government's proposals studied by a House of Commons committee.

The motion to implement the changes will be put forward after several days of negotiation between the Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats, but it is not yet clear whether there is all-party agreement to proceed.

The Conservatives had been threatening to trigger more than 200 votes to tie up the House of Commons unless the Liberals compromised.

The new Liberal motion could be debated by MPs next week.

Under the changes proposed by the Liberals, a government minister would be required to table an explanation after every use of prorogation to explain why the government prorogued Parliament. That explanation would then be referred to a House committee.

For omnibus legislation, the Speaker would also be empowered to allow for separate votes and studies for bills "where there is not a common element connecting the various provisions or where unrelated matters are linked." Budget bills that implement measures outlined in the federal budget would still be permitted.

In addition to prorogation and omnibus bills two issues that became points of controversy in recent years the Liberal motion would change the date on which the government's budgetary requests are tabled in Parliament and codify that parliamentary secretaries can be non-voting members of House committees.

The possibility of codifying a weekly prime minister's question period had raised concerns that a prime minister might use that as an excuse to only appear at one session of question period each week, though the Liberals said that was not Trudeau's intent.

"The prime minister's question period is here to stay under this government," said Mark Kennedy, director of communications for government House leader Bardish Chagger. "And just as it became the convention not something in the standing orders in the United Kingdom, we are confident it will become the convention here."

The rest is here:
Liberals ready to move to change House rules on omnibus bills, prorogation - CBC.ca

A little more than six years ago, after the horrific shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords and her constituents, many members of the media embarked on a viciously dishonest anti-conservative smear campaign.

The New York Times editorial board declared that, while it would be facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madmans act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members, it was nonetheless acceptable to blame them at least indirectly for the massacre. Seizing a good opportunity to make some money, Sen. Bernie Sanders fundraised off the tragedy by condemning right-wing reactionaries with their threats and acts of violence.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, meanwhile, who has almost literally gone insane, blamed the Giffords shooting in part on the eliminationist rhetoriccoming, overwhelmingly, from the right. At Media Matters, Eric Boehlert condemned the tide of hateful, insurrectionist rhetoric that too many conservatives refuse to condemn. And Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas simply tweeted: Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin.

Well. There was never any evidence that the Tucson shooting had anything to do in the slightest with anything Republicans had ever said. The shooter turned out to be an apolitical madman who was more obsessed with NASA hoaxes than with any real-world political goings-on. Liberals pounced on the event not to moderate our political rhetoric butnow heres a surpriseto cynically use a tragedy in order to bash conservatives.

If proof of such were needed, we need only examine the media reaction to yesterdays shoot-up of a GOP baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia. The shooter, as is now well-known, was an extremely liberal, anti-conservative Sanders supporter who apparently despised Republicans with every fiber of his being.

Now, unlike 2011, there really is hateful, insurrectionist rhetoric flying about. Note, for instance, Madonnas publicly stated desire to blow up the White House, or comedian Kathy Griffins violent fantasy photo shoot wherein she beheaded President Trump, or the Public Theater rendition of Shakespeares Julius Caesar in which a Trump stand-in is assassinated. This is literal eliminationist and insurrectionist rhetoric.

So, after the Alexandria shooting, did the same media that roundly condemned Republicans for allegedly inspiring the Tucson shooting condemn todays hysterical liberal climate that has allowed such toxic rhetoric to flourish?

Of course not. The New York Times, for one, half-heartedly compelled liberals to hold themselves to the same standard of decency that they ask of the right, without mentioning the violent and wild-eyed liberal rhetoric that has permeated Washington for the past eight months or so. As of this writing, Krugman has been radio silent. Boehlert blamed GOP policy for the shooting. Moulitsas implied that the GOPs chickens were coming home to roost. Sanders distanced himself from the shooter without bringing up the political hysteria to which he has ably contributed.

I wonder what the difference between the two shooters could be to inspire such divergent reactions. Do you wonder? Its a real head-scratcher, isnt it?

In reality, most of us know that the shooter, like virtually all mass shooters, was little more than a crazy, unbalanced lunatic whose politics were almost certainly irrelevant to the crime he eventually committed. Millions of Americans believe very much the same things as did the shooter but wont go shoot up unarmed conservative politicians. Politics, be they liberal or conservative, are generally irrelevant to craziness.

Conservatives tried to explain this in 2011. The Left wasnt hearing it. Now the shoe appears to be on the other foot. So The New York Times is right: liberals should hold themselves to the same standards they ask of the Right. With that in mind, they should accept responsibility for this terrible shooting. It is the Left, after all, that has perpetrated this tide of hateful, insurrectionist rhetoric for months now. They must own it.

The other option, of course, would be for liberals to apologize for their opportunistic seizure of the Giffords shooting six years ago and admit how transparently stupid it was. That would be the preferable choice. But somehow I doubt they will. Republicans are getting what they want, Moulitsas declared. With political instincts like that, who needs apologies?

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If Liberals Held Equal Standards For Shootings, They'd Blame Themselves For Alexandria - The Federalist