Like all fans of tv featuring shameless loudmouths doing pointless things, I looked forward to today’s filibuster of Sam Alito with great anticipation. Maybe it’s just me, but can there be anything more entertaining than watching liberals destroy the miniscule shreds of credibility that they may have had, not to mention their electoral futures, with irrational, stream-of-consciousness brain dumps? I tuned in just in time to see Ted Kennedy in full outrage mode, waiving today’s New York Times in the air and literally screaming at the top of his lungs. What had the senator so exorcised? Did he read that he’d be forced to stay in the Senate chamber while John Kerry droned on later today? (Sure, these guys are against torturing terrorists, but then they subject innocent American C-SPAN viewers to that!) No, he read this:

“Last February, as rumors swirled about the failing health of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a team of conservative grass-roots organizers, public relations specialists and legal strategists met to prepare a battle plan to ensure any vacancies were filled by like-minded jurists.”

David Kirkpatrick’s article describes yet another shocking and disturbing plot by the vast right-wing conspiracy, to get originalist judges appointed to the federal bench. Of course, unlike many conspiracies, this one was not covert. It was not only out in the open. It was the promised result of electing George W. Bush. Why is this news?

“Conservatives had begun planning for a nomination fight as long ago as that February meeting, which was led by Leonard A. Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society and informal adviser to the White House, Mr. Meese and Mr. Gray.
They laid out a two-part strategy to roll out behind whomever the president picked, people present said. The plan: first, extol the nonpartisan legal credentials of the nominee, steering the debate away from the nominee’s possible influence over hot-button issues. Second, attack the liberal groups they expected to oppose any Bush nominee.”

Senator Kennedy could barely contain his disgust and rage over the contemptible interference in the Senate’s sacred “advise and consent” responsibilities. “How dare they?” he bellowed (or words to that effect). For reasons about which can all speculate, I think the senator’s memory is a little foggy. He seems to have forgotten another recent story from the Liberal Death Star. Buried deep in the story are the following very interesting paragraphs, describing an April 2001 retreat attended by Senate democrats:

“At the retreat, Democrats listened to a panel composed of Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, Cass R. Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School and Marcia D. Greenberger, the co-president of the National Women’s Law Center. The panelists told them that the court was at a historic juncture and that the Bush White House was prepared to fill the courts with conservatives who deserved particularly strong scrutiny, participants said.

The panel also advised them, participants said, that Democratic senators could oppose even nominees with strong credentials on the grounds that the White House was trying to push the courts in a conservative direction, a strategy that now seems to have failed the party.”

So it appears that the senator’s anger is less about sinister interference by outsiders in the judicial confirmation process and more about the fact that those who are attempting to prevent the federal courts from becoming an unaccountable, imperial super-legislature for the Left are finally fighting back. For years, the Senate democrats and their liberal activist paymasters took for granted that they could hijack the judicial confirmation process and unilaterally amend the Constitution to require 60 votes to confirm federal judges, something unheard of for over 200 years. Once the other side caught on and decided to stop being a punching bag, the liberals are furious. It’s no surprise. Everyone knows that they can’t win a fair fight on the merits, which is the very reason they are fighting like cornered rats preserve the ability for activist judges to impose their secularist, anti-family, anti-American agenda on the rest of us.

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Sunday morning when we learned that ABC’s Bob Woodruff had been seriously injured in an IED attack in Iraq, my first thought was to pray for him and his family. I had just seen a great story that he filed for World News Tonight last Friday about a popular Bagdhad ice cream shop, followed by a promo touting his willingness to get right in the middle of a story. I guess for once these promos were not, like the governor’s promises, “puffery.”

It then occurred to me that Bob Woodruff suffered much more serious injuries than John Kerry did in Vietnam. Oh, didn’t you know? Yes, he served in Vietnam.

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Forgive me for being cynical about Oprah. After she tried to screw my photographer friend out of the value of his work, and did so in a very arrogant, high-handed way, I have realized that the carefully-crafted image of the empathetic, all-knowing, all-caring spiritual leader is just that. Behind that preternatural façade is a narcissistic, materialistic creature who believes that anything she does is right simply because she does it.

Nothing in Oprah’s live caning of the whiny and contemptible James Frey changed my attitude toward her. All of a sudden, Oprah believes she was “duped.” Maybe it’s just me, but the woman who called Larry King to defend the simp and his fraudulent book, telling the couple of hundred people who watch the rat-faced, suspender-wearing fossil how the book “reasonated” with her didn’t sound angry that she had been lied to. If anything, she seemed perfectly happy to embrace Mr. Frey’s notion of “emotional truth,” which wasn’t at all surprising. After all, isn’t that what the Oprah show is all about? Rely on your emotions and ignore the nagging tug of that pesky brain telling you that something isn’t quite right.

Yesterday when an “angry” Oprah, to a rapt audience of her acolytes, both in studio and at home, took the man she had lifted up to her lofty heavenly status and smashed him back to earth, in the process pumping up her own saintly image in their eyes, once again my brain kept tugging at my sleeve saying “I’m not buying this. Are you?” When you consider that there were enough red flags in that stupid book to raise doubts in the mind of an astute 12 year-old, or even an Oprah producer, is it a stretch to imagine that they suspected the truth, but decided to risk it? I can easily imagine the following thought process: Maybe it isn’t true, but if not, and that comes out, and public opinion turns, we just do an angry Oprah smack down show. Imagine the ratings and publicity for that! It’s a win-win!

Once again, whether she’s jetting in from one of her palacial estates to wag her finger in middle America’s face over their need to feel guilty over Katrina, or slobbering all over Barack Obama, or recommending we all read some pointless, fictional screed peddled as fact, it’s all about Oprah.

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As you know, I watch C-SPAN so you don’t have to, and this morning’s no exception. I have been watching the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was supposed to be voting on the nomination of Sam Alito. Instead, I have been subjected to more speechifyin’ by demagogueing democrats, determined to pander to their Kool-Aid drinking moonbat base by characterizing this distinguished jurist as a machine-gun-toting, child-strip-searching, woman-hating, unrepentant bigot. I’ve got news for you, Pat, Herb, Russ, Joe, Teddy, Diane, Chuckie, and Dickie. Ralph Neas, Nan Aron and the rest of the goofballs you work for aren’t going to be happy no matter how much you tell lies about Judge Alito. Incidentally, you guys should call some of your Hollywood friends and get some acting lessons because it’s obvious that even you don’t believe this clap-trap. Why even have a vote? Certainly not so that we will find out how toadies for left-wing interest groups like Dick “Eddie Haskell” Durbin will vote on this nomination. There’s almost any drama there. What you mean he’s voting against him? There’s a shocker!

It’s not all torture, though. As usual, Ted Kennedy, the Norm Crosby of the Senate, is providing ample lots of yucks. Ostensibly quoting Judge Alito, he said “I believe strongly in the supremacy of the elected blanches of government.” BLANCHES of government?! Maybe Blanche was the name of his date last night. After several seconds of uncomfortable paper shuffling during which I thought he might do a Jeanine Pirro (the erstwhile New York GOP Senate candidate who lost a page in her speech a couple months ago), he regained his composure. After destroying so many brain cells, I guess it’s not easy for old Ted, but he finally got back to his anti-Alito rant, focusing on the judge’s supposed deference to the executive branch (no, not blanch this time) of government. He wanted to talk about the infamous strip search of the 10-year-old girl. “This was certainly true, as Senator Leahy pointed out in the Doe v. Groody case, defending the strip search of a 10-year-old warrant.” Say what? I thought those things expired a lot sooner than that, and I had no idea there would be a need to strip search a piece of paper! Undeterred, Ted just babbled on.

Other highlights: Joe Biden getting snarky about Orrin Hatch’s statement, Leahy telling a couple of major whoppers (there’s a stunner), and Chuckie the Schumer claiming that Judge Alito is “out of the mainstream.” (You knew that was coming.)

Speaking of this “out of the mainstream” garbage that the dems have been robotically reciting for years, Lindsay Graham, who is reviving the love many conservatives had for him, but had lost, injected some common sense. Citing Senate dem leaders urging their members to vote against Judge Alito to make him a campaign issue in the ’06 elections, he told them that we welcome that debate, adding “We’ll clean your clock. Judge Alito is closer to the mainstream than Citizens for the American Way.” You are so right, Senator Graham! Bring it on.

He also said, “After listening to Feingold, it’s amazing that he would even be considered for nomination. He should be under house arrest.” That line elicited some laughter, but I have a feeling that come November, the democrats won’t be laughing.

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It hasn’t escaped the attention of intelligent observers that the democrats here in the U.S. have a lot in common with our terrorist enemy. They share a breathtaking hostility toward the U.S. Constitution. (Witness their disgraceful attempt to unilaterally amend it with their filibuster of judicial nominees, and their mantra about the Senate representing more people even though they are in the minority). They both despise President Bush. Most of all, they are both losing.

If you have any doubt that the Islamofascists and the September 10 Party aka the Abortion is a Sacrament Party are singing from the same hymnal, consider the words of Osama bin Laden, hot off the presses today (1/19/06).

WHO DOES THIS SOUND LIKE? CAN YOU SAY “DURBIN?”
“The torturing of men has reached the point of using chemical acids and electric drills in their joints. If they become desperate with them, they put the drill on their heads until death.
If you like, read the humanitarian reports on the atrocities and crimes in the prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.”

Right. And our troops are as bad or worse than Nazis or Pol Pot.

THIS ONE SOUNDS LIKE FANCY NANCY, OR MAYBE JOHN MURTHA
“The wise ones know that Bush has no plan to achieve his alleged victory in Iraq.

If you compare the small number of the dead when Bush made that false and stupid show-like announcement from an aircraft carrier on the end of the major operations, to many times as much as this number of the killed and injured, who fell in the minor operations, you will know the truth in what I am saying, and that Bush and his administration do not have neither the desire nor the will to withdraw from Iraq for their own dubious reasons.”

SPARE ME YOUR 6TH GRADE MICHAEL MOORE LOGIC
“There is no defect in this solution other than preventing the flow of hundreds of billions to the influential people and war merchants in America, who supported Bush’s election campaign with billions of dollars.”
Can you say “Halliburton?” How about “No Blood for Oil?”

Today even tone deaf democrats like Howard Dean knew better today than to suggest that we negotiate with bin Laden. The only question now is how they will figure out a way to suggest that we need to consider his truce offer after all. Give peace a chance and all that BS will move to the forefront. That’s what I predict, and as I always say, never doubt me!

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As much as I enjoyed hearing MS-NBC’s hyperactive screamer Chris Matthews point out how pathetic and desperate the Senate democrats were during last week’s confirmation hearings for Sam Alito, I didn’t think for one minute that his disgust with them meant he’s coming over to our side. When he referred to the Concerned Alumni of Princeton as a “tired ass, yesterday’s moss back Princeton alumni group,” he wasn’t reveling in the hilariously pointless attempts by the Abortion Party to tar with Sam Alito with the Left’s favorite smear, racism. Unlike me, and many of you, he wasn’t enjoying this memory. Instead, his frame of mind was more like that of a devoted fan who has seen his team stink up the joint and depart the field humiliated, defeated and disgraced. Yes, I am a Chicago sports fan, and I completely understand this feeling all too well.

And defeated they are. Even their in-house newsletter, the New York Times, notes their frustration and displeasure. (“Glum Democrats Can’t See Halting Bush on Courts,” by Adam Nagourney, Richard Stevenson and Neil A. Lewis, 1/15/06)

If you’ve got a few minutes and need a few yucks, this article is worth checking out. Consider this brilliant insight:

“In interviews, Democrats said the lesson of the Alito hearings was that this White House could put on the bench almost any qualified candidate, even one whom Democrats consider to be ideologically out of step with the country.”

You’re kidding! You mean the losers don’t get to decide who gets appointed?

“That conclusion amounts to a repudiation of a central part of a strategy Senate Democrats settled on years ago in a private retreat where they discussed how to fight a Bush White House effort to recast the judiciary: to argue against otherwise qualified candidates by saying they would take the courts too far to the right.”

Once again, the Liberal Death Star reports on this April, 2001 retreat where 41 democrat senators received instruction from Laurence Tribe, Marcia Greenberger and Cass Sunstein and came up with their strategy to unilaterally amend the Constitution by filibustering qualified judicial nominees. Their May 1, 2001 article on this pow-wow is the first instance of any story in the New York Times being completely ignored by the other members of the mainstream media, who unfailingly referred to Republican insistence that we follow the straight up or down vote rules that had governed nominations for 200+ years, as the “Republicans efforts to change the rules.” Mr. Tribe is clearly willing to do or say just about anything to get what he perceives as his entitlement, a seat on the Supreme Court, and no doubt has his panties in a bundle as the chance of that happening seems to be slipping away. His bitterness was on display during last week’s hearings when he testified against the nomination of Sam Alito. He reminded me of one the girls who didn’t make cheerleader cattily sniping at those who did.

“At the retreat, Democrats listened to a panel composed of Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, Cass R. Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School and Marcia D. Greenberger, the co-president of the National Women’s Law Center. The panelists told them that the court was at a historic juncture and that the Bush White House was prepared to fill the courts with conservatives who deserved particularly strong scrutiny, participants said.
The panel also advised them, participants said, that Democratic senators could oppose even nominees with strong credentials on the grounds that the White House was trying to push the courts in a conservative direction, a strategy that now seems to have failed the party.”

As you might expect, the biggest laughs come courtesy of the Senate’s biggest buffoon (and that’s saying a lot!), Ted Kennedy.

“Mr. Kennedy said that the nomination process, and particularly the hearings, had “turned into a political campaign,” and that the White House had proved increasingly skilled in turning that to its advantage.”

Yeah, that’s why they win elections, Ted.

“These issues are so sophisticated - half the Senate didn’t know what the unitary presidency was, let alone the people of Boston,” he said, referring to one of the legal theories that was a focus of the hearings. “I’m sure we could have done better.”

Sure. Explain to the people of Boston, or Boise, or Birmingham why we should want to weaken the presidency while millions of fanatics are scheming to murder as many of us as possible. That’s got to be a winning strategy!

“But what has happened is that this has turned into a political campaign,” he said. “The whole process has become so politicized that I think the American people walk away more confused about the way these people stand.”

This confusion despite the valiant efforts of democrats like Ted Kennedy to illuminate and inform by talking about the afore-mentioned tired-ass, mossback alumni group that Sam Alito barely remembered.

The article concludes with an obvious and painful truth for democrats.

“George Bush won the election,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat. “If you don’t like it, you better win elections.”

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Local author Marsha Z. Nelson suggests that Oprah is the new Billy Graham, a spiritual leader, and there’s no denying that many people worship at her pulpit every day. Whether she’s sternly lecturing us about how we should feel guilty about Katrina, or slobbering all over Barack Obama, millions follow her lead. She’s the reason that a bald-headed buffoon like Dr. Phil has become a gazillionaire by shouting slogans at pathetic refugees from other daytime tv shows and repackaging trite advice into the same book three or four times over. Speaking of books, her ability to hawk them is unmatched. Witness the success of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, the irresistibly gripping account of one man’s addiction and recovery. Oprah featured Mr. Frey on her show for a full hour, during which she described how his compelling story kept her riveted and brought her to tears. Now we find out that this gripping story that over-stimulated so many tear ducts may be a work of fiction, its author a very clever and successful con artist who was able to inflate a frat boy arrest record consisting of very garden-variety drunken driving and parking in an illegal zone into serious Criminal behavior. As it turns out, the first non-fiction book that Oprah has featured in her book club may not be non-fiction after all. Check out this L.A.Times article.

I’ve been disillusioned with Oprah ever since I found out that she tried to steal the copyrighted work of a photographer friend of mine, Paul Natkin. You can check out the story at NewsMax.

So far, as you can see from the L.A. Times article, Oprah has refused any comment. Why should she? No matter what she does, apparently it’s right just because she does it. SL Robert from Portage wrote to to me that he thinks she’ll end up like Charles Foster Kane. I would love to hear from the Oprah worshippers out there. Does it matter to you if she, like Mr. Frey, is a con artist and a fraud, or does it just feel too good to consider that possibility? Apparently it doesn’t matter to the publisher. (See this story from the Liberal Death Star, otherwise known as The New York Times)

If the saps who bought it thought it was true, and now find out it’s not, what are they going to do? Ask for a refund? Good luck with that.

What a fine example for American youth! Frey teaches them that the secret to success is to be a con artist. Oprah teaches them that it’s more important to maintain one’s identity as the smartest person on earth than to admit you helped facilitate a fraud, and they both teach that the end justifies the means. Am I going out on a limb by suggesting that they must both be liberals?

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Nearly everyone agrees that one of the biggest events of 2005 was the Terri Schiavo case, which wasn’t surprising. How could the nation not be riveted by the case of a helpless, disabled woman? Her parents wanted to care for, but so many, including her husband, insisted must die, and die ASAP. That was the amazing thing. Many of those who took Michael Schiavo’s case seemed to take her fate very, very personally. Why? I have a theory I’d like to share.

In September 2005 Bill Bennett had an on-air statement about abortion taken out of context, but of course he wasn’t the first one to mention what we’ve come to know as the Roe effect, as in Roe v. Wade. Several authors, most notably James Taranto of Opinionjournal.com have speculated on the effect of the 40 million plus abortions has had on the electorate and the cuture since 1973.

I think that there is a Roe effect that no one talks about and it relates to the change in the type of society we live in. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that back in the day when most women, consciously or unconsciously, did take their evolutionary responsibilities a lot more seriously, we lived in a very different type of society. First, some of you may be wondering what I mean by “evolutionary responsibilities.” Regular listeners to my show know that I have a simple theory of male-female relationships; that is, nature made men to be our slaves and gave women the important responsibility of seeing whose DNA gets passed on to the next generation. It strikes me that in the last 25 years of so many women have forgotten that we were given that important charge. Back when everyone still remembered how things were supposed to work, we lived in a society where a drunk in a bar would hesitate before saying the “F” word, especially in mixed company, as contrasted with today when Hollywood luminaries use it to refer to the president and 15 year olds on crowded Metra trains pepper their conversations with it as casually as references to the latest rap star. Speaking of rap, there’s something the feminists could get busy on and do some good. Of course, they won’t because it wouldn’t be politically correct. Does anyone seriously think we are better off with tender love songs in which women are referred to as either the breeder’s name for a female dog or as “hos” than we were when Elvis sang “Love Me Tender?” I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this coarsening of our culture has taken place after decades of our being told that the worst crime a person can commit is to be “judgmental,” or that it happened in the years after Roe v. Wade.

You see, all of these things are all connected: the Liberal Elitist “civil rights for toads, not the disabled” crowd, the belligerence of the Birkenstock brigade issuing their demands about the Supreme Court, the air headed actor who confuses being famous with being smart and proves it every time he opens his mouth, and what they have in common is the very thing that explains the anger, and the relentless insistence by some that Terri Schiavo be exterminated.

Terri Schiavo stood for something for many of us, and that was this: the grownups finally putting their feet down. For thirty, going on 40 years, the arrested development cases have been building up a culture of narcissism. If it was going to continue to metasisize like the social cancer that it is, that couldn’t happen. When finally, after watching our kids being brainwashed by pc garbage, activist judges and the accomplices in the ACLU try to purge our country of every vestige of our Judeo-Christian heritage, and the resulting decline in our culture, the grownups stood up and said, “You know we’ve got a problem with an innocent, helpless human being murdered for no reason other than the convenience of her husband who has moved on,” that was a challenge to the culture of narcissism. That was very “judgmental.” And that’s why it seemed so personal to them. Because it was. Because it is.

Some may tell you that the culture of narcissism is winning. Sometimes you may even feel that way yourself, when you see some of the discouraging things that happen in our society, but be of good cheer because of all of you grown ups, I know that those who say that are wrong.

Thank you all for standing firm for the values that make our country strong. Thank you for your determination that the country your children and grandchildren inherit will be the same shining city on the hill that I was privileged to grow up in. And most of all, thank you for having the courage, commitment and common sense to be the grownups.

[This column is adapted from my keynote speech to Illinois Citizens for Life, 10/21/05]

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