SO YOU GET MY POINT
I certainly wasn't defending Michael Savage, who showed himself to be quite the idiot, just illustrating that it is no violation of the First Amendment for MSNBC to kick Savage off its airwaves or for Cumulus Broadcasting to kick the Dixie Chicks off theirs. John McCain and the other self-righteous meatheads we call "Senators" have no understanding of this, only of the raw exercise of power to bully people into sacrificing their own First Amendment rights.

Free Speech Not At Issue
Savage's sacking is no free speech issue. Just as liberals who opposed the war learned that they have to be accountable for their statements (remember Mr. Robbins and Ms. Sarandon?), so shall Mr. Savage be taught - whether he gets it or not is up to him. Learn to take the heat or get out of the kitchen. Savage can go spout his homophobic (and violent) rants where he pleases, just not on MSNBC. MSNBC would not fire him if they thought they'd profit by keeping him.

UNC BOOK SECRECY
Now the University of North Carolina is refusing to release the list of books it considered for the summer reading program, when it picked the leftist tome Nickel and Dimed by socialist scholar Barbara Ehrenreich. Well, not exactly refusing anymore, but still having trouble "dig[ging]" it up. Madeleine Grumet, chairman of the committee that selected the book, "consciously chose" to keep the list secret. I'm sure she doesn't want to reveal the ideologically diverse range of books they considered covering topics from the extreme left to the middle left.

Oh, and Madeleine Grumet is also a Democrat. Still haven't found a Republican over on the UNC Faculty. Maybe Professor Muller at the law school knows of one (he's a Democrat too).

WHAT ABOUT SAVAGE'S FREE SPEECH?
Sen. Rick Santorum is keen on defending the institution of heterosexual marriage, and it was therefore no surprise to hear his statement on the firing of Michael Savage for some very unfortunate comments on gays and AIDS. From a news report:

Santorum said that the firing of Savage was "an incredible, incredible act. I was . . . as offended as anyone by the statement of Mr. Savage. But to restrain his trade because he exercised his right of free speech to me is remarkable."

It is shocking that there is no outcry from the left, who would complain fiercely if a broadcaster banned some liberal speaker from the airwaves for her political speech.

(Just to be clear -- Rick Santorum has said nothing to support or defend Michael Savage. The quote is made up, but parallels a statement by John McCain about someone else.)

IT'S GETTING CROWDED IN HERE
And I was just getting to enjoy the peace and quiet of having all of Federal Review to myself, then, suddenly, whammo, here comes the left. Sheesh, John, we are awfully prolific tonight.

Good thing too. Blogging without challenge causes your skills to deteriorate and leads you to be less clear than you should. Sure, others respond to challenge from other blog sites, but seldom on their own site ... from so far on the other side of the spectrum, and that's what we like here at Federal Review. You can't ignore the challenge when it sits on the page above your own rant.

Anyway, John, you must agree that the UNC faculty's complete lack of understanding of the implicit bias of year after year choosing a book from the far socialist left demonstrates a severe out-of-touch-with-the-world issue. These people are teaching our children and have no idea what the world is like outside the confines of their nice little utopian college town where everyone is supported by the government and only the athletic department has to worry about making money -- and they try to prevent that.

Should there be quotas to add conservatives to the faculty? Well, John, you put that question to me as though I should rightfully be opposed since I oppose quotas and preferences based on race. But that's the difference. You can't, under the law, discriminate between people because of skin color, but there's no constitutional problem at all when you discriminate among people based on political ideology. That's why neo-nazi skinheads aren't usually working at the local CBS affiliate. So, the residents of the ivory tower only want to recognize skin-deep diversity and shut out any actual diversity of thought beyond the inherent diversity in a room divided between old fashioned Marxists and identity-theory socialists. I don't think it unreasonable to insist on a little actual intellectual diversity at the university that my tax dollars support. After all, a judge in Louisiana just ruled that the government cannot issue license plates with government approved messages, I think perhaps we shouldn't have our tax dollars paying for the propogagation of only one ideology in Chapel Hill -- or wherever. Duke can do whatever it wants (but the alumni should be pissed).

Gotta Know
Despite Scalia's arguments and Judge Clarence "whatever-Scalia-says" Thomas' automatic vote-along, the court continues to disappoint the purist conservative doctrinairre crowd, as cultural changes remind them that all they hold fair and fine will not be nationally recognized as sacred. Santorum and televangelists can decry the tolerance of gays and lesbians' unions, only to highlight the hypocrisy of their calls for government recognition and support of "valid" relationships. When will republicans realize that gay-bashing's benefits are fine with their base, but increasingly lethal with the undecided center? Isolated to this issue, the republican posturing in the post 9/11 world was like wathching the Cincinatti Bengals trying yet again to win at least 5 games.....

Propaganda
There is no denying the importance of propaganda in war and politics. The Bush adminsitration used it well and now will have to balance out the utility of propaganda in war with the use of their own propaganda agianst them afterward - particularly the WMD issue. Though the future of Iraq and our role therein is more important to the long-run geo-political situation, the WMD screw-up (or perception thereof) is getting more political traction. Without a big find of WMD, Tony Blair goes down next election - though more likely to a fellow Labour candidate as the Tories are still floundering in dysfunction-junction - the European public cares less about the potential horrors of Saddam's continued rule than the notion of a less-than-honest pretext for war and many Some undecided voterrs will use this as a justification to vote against Bush, even if it really has more to do with millions of jobs lost on his watch or days of Army/Marine deaths stretched out over the next 17-18 months.

Bon Apetit, Tucker
Need I say more?

A Call for Quotas?
Shall we legislate the political make-up of the UNC faculty? Could that also apply to corporate boards? Sir Winston decries the lack of diversity at UNC in a factually-based illustration of the reverse discimination at work there. But in so doing, is he willing to accept the logical extension of that argument to less comfortable quarters? Does he validate the quota system he deplores in other circumstances?

Stay tuned for the always well-honed response.........

UNIVERSITY INDOCTRINATION
Because students will be encouraged to critique the book assigned for summer reading, written by a board member of Democratic Socialists of America, then the book is not an attempt at indoctrination and the assignment is fair and balanced. So argues "Chair of the Faculty" at the University of North Carolina, Judith Wegner, in her letter to the editor. But why the leftist starting point year after year? Surely it is not so that her faculty can tear down the liberal arguments in their 2 hour study groups. It just goes to show you that being on the faculty at a major University says nothing about your ability to reason.

It's also interesting to note that the Chair of the Faculty at UNC is a registered Democrat. So is the Chancellor, James Moeser. So is the Provost Robert Shelton. Oh my, is their no diversity in the Faculty? Let's look a little further. Deputy Faculty Chair is a Democrat. Secretary of the Faculty is a Democrat. Deputy Secretary of the Faculty is a Democrat. And those are just the leaders of the faculty, I don't have time to check them all out at the State Board of Elections.

FREEDOM OF CHOICE, BUT ONLY ONE CHOICE IS CORRECT
A Federal Judge has decided that Louisana cannot issue license plates containing the message "Choose Life." Many argue that this represents only one side, the anti-abortion rights side, of the debate. However, it seems to me to acknowledge and accept the basic holding of Roe v. Wade -- that there is a choice. It just suggests which choice should be made. And didn't Hillary Clinton once suggest that this is the right choice by saying our goal should be that abortions are rare? Regardless, Judge Duval has decided that all Louisiana license plates are unconstitutional because, like this one, they allow only government OK'd speech to occur, shutting out opposing views.

STILL LITTLE DIVERSITY ON CAMPUS
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is demonstrating, once again, that it lacks any real intellectual diversity in its faculty ranks, otherwise it's summer reading assignment wouldn't continue to be taken from the recommended reading lists of The Nation or The American Prospect (not exactly leading journals of conservative thought). This year's choice, to follow up on last year's strange selection of a study of a religious text (the Qur'an -- formerly, the Koran -- of course), is Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich, an activist with the Democratic Socialists of America and "a well-known leftist social critic". That characterization of her is backed up by her interviews that are linked on UNC's website. A sampling of her quotes

I was a strong opponent of the Gulf War. I'm an opponent of war in general. The Gulf war was unnecessarily brutal. We still don't know how many tens or hundreds of thousands or Iraqi's died in the war or because of it. So I was drawing a kind of comparison. What made Colin Powell so famous was that war. What made OJ megafamous as opposed to merely famous, was the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, regardless of who committed those murders. The reason I made this point is that we've forgetten the Gulf War. We look at Colin Powell., We see this nice cuddly fellow and I think we forget the thousands of men who died unnecessarily, I think, with sand in their nostrils in the desert, because of the unnecessary brutality of that war.

The Republicans' major economic concern has been to lower taxes for the rich.

For me, number one is undoing welfare reform or ending welfare reform as we know it.

I am increasingly dismayed by the nasty rhetoric deployed by some feminists against Ralph Nader and his supporters, of whom I am one.

It was not until some time in the 1970s that capitalism decided to take "The Communist Manifesto" as its personal self-improvement guide -- going global with a vengeance, treating the workers (including increasing numbers of doctors, teachers, scientists and writers as well as the old-fashioned heavy-lifting and lug-turning proles) like so many disposable "factors of production."

Who knows, her tome may be worth reading and have some interesting insights amid her lamentations about class and dreams for a more state mandated equality of result. But why can't the professors at UNC select something by someone on the right? A couple of suggestions concern the college experience itself and would certainly aid the school's goal of using the summer reading program to "stimlulate discussion and critical thinking around a current topic."

Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus by Dinesh D'Souza

Tilting the Playing Field: Schools, Sports, Sex, and Title IX by Jessica Gavora

Don't hold your breath, though. In 1985, UNC's summer reading program was only for students admitted to the honors program, where I had the joy of reading The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell. A lot has changed in Chapel Hill, but the indoctrination program has only expanded to all students.

Now, let's see if student group Committee for a Better Carolina has any luck influencing the debate.

BLOG FOR FREEDOM IN IRAN
Today has been set aside by the blogging community to support democracy and freedom in Iran. A massive demonstration was scheduled by Iranian students today, but has been cancelled "after receiving warnings that a Tiananmen-like response" would welcome their expression of opposition to the fundamentalist regime. Similar demontrations took place last month.

The June demonstrations, though dwarfed by official marches, went one step beyond previous pro-reform protests with chants breaking the taboo of insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and also condemning reformist leaders alike.

The United States strongly backed the demonstrations and was accused by Iran of blatant interference in its internal affairs.

There's much more over at Instapundit and Oxblog.

CORRECTIONS
Factual errors are now corrected over at the National Review article. Analysis remains suspect. Consider that National Review suggests business decisions should be made along these lines:

It could gain a few million more if the pieces of Shalala's plot came together. Never mind that Miami's relatively small gain would come at the price of enormous loss for eleven or so other universities.

Sounds like The Nation.

SLOPPY ANALYSIS, FACTS
That's not what we normally expect from National Review, but when Anthropology professor Peter Wood weighs in on college sports, he projects his reasonable distaste for Donna Shalala's politics and botches his column critical of her actions in leading the University of Miami to the Atlantic Coast Conference.

First, the facts. Wood writes alternatively about the ACC and the AAC. OK, that's a simple proofreading issue. He then recites the correct fact that 12 teams are necessary for a conference to hold a football championship game under NCAA rules, then incorrectly states that the Big East has 12 schools. It doesn't. It has 14 member schools, only 8 of which play Division I football. He clearly doesn't think Shalala was right for making this decision, talking of "skullduggery", "plot twists" and "betrayals", as though Shalala should have abondoned reason and kept Miami in a poorly structured athletic conference that wasn't even a complete conference, and which surely wouldn't last. And to call the Big East's last minute monetary offer to keep Miami by guaranteeing a certain payout over three years, Wood fails to consider the long term health of the Big East and the ACC, not mention failing to understand that Miami would receive more money for basketball in its new conference. Shalala should be given credit for abandoning the liberal's disdain for anything that results in economic advantage, rather than be attacked by a conservative website for betraying her liberal ideals.

Later, Wood addresses the efforts by Virginia's "Republican" Governor Mark Warner to influence ACC expansion by pushing for the inclusion of Virginia Tech. Sorry, Peter, Warner is a Democrat.

I still suspect that the ACC is the bad guy because sports journalism is most influenced by the northeast media who cover the Big East, and this Boston professor may not be any exception. They all overlook the failure of the structure of the Big East where only some of the members play Division I football and the positive aspects of ACC expansion, which works to the benefit of all of college football by pushing closer to a de facto playoff system, is beneficial to Virginia Tech and Miami by putting them in a more geographically natural conference and even helping to make the ACC a real conference for a number of women's sports. And the rest of the journalists just want to appear enlightened by railing against the "Almighty Dollar," and lamenting the destruction of college football, which requires business success to survive. Donna Shalala should be praise by the right for shunning the feel goodism of spouting platititudes about "loyalty" and actually making a decision that shows loyalty to Miami and its fans.

GOOD TO READ ON ANY DAY
The Declaration:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Read the whole thing here. Note the phrase "with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are . . . " The words among these are very much like saying including, but not limited to.