Liberal, libertarian Camille Paglia has a superb piece on Sarah Palin. Here are a few enticements to read her long article.
When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist.
....Frontier women were far bolder and hardier than today's pampered, petulant bourgeois feminists, always looking to blame their complaints about life on someone else.
....Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion.
....But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.
5 comments:
Joe Biden Defended -
The article at this link
http://chisagogop.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_archive.html
has vanished elsewhere on the net as far as I can tell.
If you are interested in this area, please explore the non-partisan experts at
http://protect.org/
This advocacy group supports S1738 sponsored by Joe Biden in the
Senate,
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=95538&view=findpost&p=869592
matching the House bill which passed almost unanimously last fall.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll1091.xml
Please note that the Senate Republicans are blocking the Biden bill and that McCain's alternative proposal is weak.
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=95538&view=findpost&p=888552
Do you agree with the WSJ and other 'fiscal conservatives' that this bill is 'pork'?
Anonymous,
Please explain your previous post in more detail so we know what you are saying. Then our readers can examine it.
I was directed to your fine site by a google search for an article associated with a recently broken link.
Contrary to popular perception and as reported April 24, 2008 in USA Today (below), funding to FBI and law enforcement at current levels to combat child exploitation is grossly inadequate.
McCain is sponsoring legislation to fund the law enforcement task forces at $25 million per year, a very modest increase over 2007 spending. Obama is a co-sponsor of the PROTECT-backed bill sponsored by Biden to increase funding to the task forces to $60 million in year one, with $635 million in funding over eight years.
(see entry July 2, 2008 entry
http://www.protect.org/newswireArchive.shtml)
The links cited in the previous post provide easy access to hard to find documentation available online(Congressional testimony, including by AK, and floor speeches) about this important, underreported, nonpartisan issue and especially merit the attention of self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives. Would the informed public agree S. 1738 is 'pork' or that tough talk without action is acceptable?
Thank you for examining this important nonpartisan matter.
PRO-SPENDING VIEW
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-04-15-childporn-main_N.htm
TITLE - Limited funds hinder child porn fight
By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY
Updated 4/16/2008
More than 624,000 computers in the USA have traded child pornography, much of it showing the sexual abuse of very young children, in the past 2½ years, a leading police authority planned to tell Congress at a hearing Wednesday.
Yet federal authorities with limited resources pursue fewer than 1% of the leads, according to a USA TODAY analysis of government data.
Flint Waters, chief of the Wyoming Internet Crimes Against Children task force, has been tracking child porn to specific computers, by serial number, since October 2005. He says that last year, he identified nearly half the computers, 267,120, on just one online network.
U.S. attorneys prosecuted 1,705 cases last year and won 1,409 convictions, according to court records obtained by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. The Justice Department says the numbers are higher — 2,118 prosecutions and 1,715 convictions — but it includes other online crimes against children. The cases result from all kinds of tips, not just those from Waters.
As child pornography becomes increasingly pervasive, spreading from the Internet to cellphones and iPods, police have new tools, such as the software Waters developed, to identify traffickers. A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today will probe whether law enforcement, given those tools, is doing enough.
TECHNOLOGY: Software tracks child
porn traffickers online
The Justice Department, particularly under former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, has called enforcement a top priority. Prosecutions more than doubled in the past five years, the department says, and the number of federal-state Internet Crimes Against Children task forces increased from 46 to 59 last year. In 2006, the department launched a program, Project Safe Childhood, to coordinate federal efforts.
"We're trying to use every available resource," says Drew Oosterbaan, chief of the department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. He says there is "unparalleled" federal-state cooperation. "We're supremely more effective than we were."
A boom in funding, though, hasn't followed. "Everyone says great things, but … it hasn't happened," says Arnold Bell, chief of the FBI's Innocent Images Unit, a program to fight child pornography. He says his program's funds have barely budged. It got $33.1 million in 2006, $34.8 million in 2007.
The number of child porn cases hasn't changed much. Innocent Images opened 2,440 cases last year, compared with 2,430 in 2003 and 2,370 in '02.
"This problem is growing by leaps and bounds," says Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del. He says the Justice Department hasn't committed enough resources to fight it and that department leadership on the issue is "non-existent." He is sponsoring a bill, passed by the House of Representatives in November, to spend $1.05 billion over eight years on fighting child porn. That would more than triple funding for the task forces, he says.
"You could easily apply another 1,000 agents" to fight online child exploitation, says Shawn Bray of the Cyber Crimes Center at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which investigates child sex tourism, trafficking and porn.
"We're not even scratching the surface," says Waters, who has helped train 1,800 investigators to use his software. "We have to tell folks we're hurting."
END ARTICLE
ANTI-SPENDING VIEW
A GOP Choice: Tom Coburn or Ted Stevens, August 2, 2008; Page A11 The Wall Street Journal
The grassroots must unite on this issue.
If GOP women support S.1738, as urged by Ed Smart (video below), it will pass in the Senate.
Politics 'as usual' was appropriately suspended on 9/11/08. On Monday, 9/15/08, please consider suspending the Oprah boycott FOR ONE DAY ONLY, in order to work on this urgent legislative matter. FBI Agent Waters is a scheduled guest.
9/15/08 PROGRAM
http://www.oprah.com/dated/
oprahshow/oprahshow_20080911_predators
---------------
9/10/08 PROGRAM
http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/
oprahshow/20080826_tows_smart/7
http://www.oprah.com/article/
oprahshow/20080826_tows_resources
Bill S.1738: Combating Child Exploitation Act - Ed Smart encourages everyone who would like to help combat child exploitation on the Internet to call or write their US senator and request they pass this bill.
http://www.senate.gov/general/
contact_information/
senators_cfm.cfm
(apologies that the links only reproduce if divided into multiple lines)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/
news/releases/2008/10/200
81013-5.html
Statement by Press Secretary Dana Perino (excerpt)
On Monday, October 13, 2008, the President signed the following bills into law:
S. 1738, the "PROTECT Our Children Act of 2008," which requires the Department of Justice to create and implement a National Strategy for Child Exploitation, Prevention, and Interdiction; statutorily establishes the existing Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force Program; and makes other amendments to Federal child pornography laws.
Sponsor: Sen Biden, Joseph R., Jr. [DE] (introduced 6/28/2007)
COSPONSORS(60), BY DATE [order is left to right]:
Sen Boxer, Barbara [CA] - 6/28/2007 Sen Durbin, Richard [IL] - 7/23/2007
Sen Bayh, Evan [IN] - 7/25/2007 Sen Lincoln, Blanche L. [AR] - 9/5/2007
Sen Hatch, Orrin G. [UT] - 2/7/2008 Sen Mikulski, Barbara A. [MD] - 2/7/2008
Sen Obama, Barack [IL] - 2/7/2008 Sen Schumer, Charles E. [NY] - 2/7/2008
Sen Clinton, Hillary Rodham [NY] - 2/12/2008 Sen Dorgan, Byron L. [ND] - 2/25/2008
Sen Murkowski, Lisa [AK] - 2/25/2008 Sen Johnson, Tim [SD] - 2/26/2008
Sen Stevens, Ted [AK] - 3/13/2008 Sen Lautenberg, Frank R. [NJ] - 4/7/2008
Sen Brown, Sherrod [OH] - 4/16/2008 Sen Hutchison, Kay Bailey [TX] - 4/22/2008
Sen Casey, Robert P., Jr. [PA] - 7/14/2008 Sen Coleman, Norm [MN] - 7/14/2008
Sen Klobuchar, Amy [MN] - 7/28/2008 Sen Leahy, Patrick J. [VT] - 9/12/2008
Sen Inouye, Daniel K. [HI] - 9/15/2008 Sen Barrasso, John [WY] - 9/15/2008
Sen Rockefeller, John D., IV [WV] - 9/15/2008 Sen Harkin, Tom [IA] - 9/15/2008
Sen Murray, Patty [WA] - 9/15/2008 Sen Cantwell, Maria [WA] - 9/15/2008
Sen Baucus, Max [MT] - 9/15/2008 Sen Salazar, Ken [CO] - 9/15/2008
Sen Roberts, Pat [KS] - 9/15/2008 Sen Wyden, Ron [OR] - 9/15/2008
Sen Kerry, John F. [MA] - 9/15/2008 Sen Dole, Elizabeth [NC] - 9/15/2008
Sen Stabenow, Debbie [MI] - 9/16/2008 Sen Kohl, Herb [WI] - 9/16/2008
Sen Carper, Thomas R. [DE] - 9/16/2008 Sen Hagel, Chuck [NE] - 9/16/2008
Sen Reed, Jack [RI] - 9/16/2008 Sen Martinez, Mel [FL] - 9/17/2008
Sen Lugar, Richard G. [IN] - 9/17/2008 Sen Feinstein, Dianne [CA] - 9/17/2008
Sen Dodd, Christopher J. [CT] - 9/17/2008 Sen Levin, Carl [MI] - 9/17/2008
Sen Tester, Jon [MT] - 9/18/2008 Sen Pryor, Mark L. [AR] - 9/18/2008
Sen Lieberman, Joseph I. [CT] - 9/18/2008 Sen Alexander, Lamar [TN] - 9/18/2008
Sen Smith, Gordon H. [OR] - 9/22/2008 Sen Isakson, Johnny [GA] - 9/22/2008
Sen Webb, Jim [VA] - 9/22/2008 Sen Landrieu, Mary L. [LA] - 9/22/2008
Sen Whitehouse, Sheldon [RI] - 9/23/2008 Sen Corker, Bob [TN] - 9/23/2008
Sen Chambliss, Saxby [GA] - 9/23/2008 Sen Menendez, Robert [NJ] - 9/23/2008
Sen Nelson, Bill [FL] - 9/23/2008 Sen Nelson, E. Benjamin [NE] - 9/23/2008
Sen Conrad, Kent [ND] - 9/24/2008 Sen Vitter, David [LA] - 9/25/2008
Sen Collins, Susan M. [ME] - 9/25/2008 Sen Reid, Harry [NV] - 9/25/2008
Companion House bill passed with 2 nays - Broun (GA) and Flake
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll1091.xml
H R 3845 14-Nov-2007 1:24 PM
TOTALS YEAS-415
NAYS-2
NV-15
Post a Comment