If It’s Not Legit You Must Acquit
November 16, 2009
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This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
Joe Lieberman’s Preexisting Condition
November 16, 2009
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This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
It’s Not The Islamic Backlash
November 16, 2009
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This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
ACORN Goes For Broke
November 16, 2009
As its financial resources dwindle, radical advocacy group and organized crime syndicate ACORN may have to file for bankruptcy protection before Christmas, ACORN insiders say.
“They may have to file for bankruptcy if they don’t have several big pending grants approved or get emergency loans,” a highly placed ACORN source told me over the weekend. This information bolsters Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) claim last week that ACORN is in turmoil amidst internal power struggles and on the verge of bankruptcy.
Given that ACORN is a network of hundreds of affiliated nonprofits, it’s not exactly clear how a bankruptcy filing would work, but the idea is under serious consideration by ACORN’s leadership. It was discussed at length at the group’s most recent national board meeting, which took place in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., during the Oct. 14-15 weekend, ACORN sources told me.
But even if ACORN were to go bankrupt, that doesn’t mean it would disappear.
ACORN may dissolve and then re-emerge as a new organization, the group’s lawyer Arthur Z. Schwartz says. Such a re-organization may involve “the creation of new nonprofit entities in each state where ACORN functions, as ACORN considers moving from a centralized corporate structure, to a decentralized federated structure,” Schwartz said. “ACORN will need help from people who have handled rebranding.”
As of Nov. 11, ACORN and its affiliates owed at least $2,328,596 in long overdue back taxes to all levels of government. Many of the tax liens, which are only issued by creditor tax agencies after a tax debt has become seriously delinquent, do not appear in the Nexis database, so the actual total may be much higher. ACORN has been negotiating with tax collectors to have interest on its tax debts waived and to have some of the debts partially forgiven.
The new tax lien data throw new light on why ACORN can’t sell its former headquarters at 1024 Elysian Fields Ave. in New Orleans. French Quarter Realty is asking $835,000 for the property, which is now weighed down by a whopping $1,278,862 in tax liens.
Of that nearly $1.3 million, $619,271 is owed to the IRS. It’s unclear why the Obama administration’s tax enforcers haven’t seized the property yet. Perhaps the president is extending a courtesy to his former employer.
Most of the taxes ACORN and its affiliates failed to pay may be payroll taxes. Directors of ACORN and its affiliates may find themselves in for a rude shock because even in bankruptcy directors can find themselves personally liable for payroll deductions for taxes that were not remitted to the government…
Palin Finger Pointing
November 16, 2009
Understanding High School Budgets
November 16, 2009
Our Reassuring President
November 15, 2009
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Blinded By The Lie
November 14, 2009
Disaster!
November 14, 2009
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This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
‘Can I Have A Lifeline?’
November 13, 2009
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This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
Righteous Logic
November 13, 2009
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Inside the home of the Fort Hood gunman Major Nidal Hasan
November 13, 2009
Pictures inside the home of the gunman who shot dead 13 US soldiers at Fort Hood show an austere and empty apartment with his few possessions left in disarray.
The paraphernalia of Major Nidal Hasan’s Muslim faith are scattered among other jumble on the kitchen table in the Casa Del Norte apartment complex in Killeen, Texas.
A black and white, crocheted skull cap lies beside the sink; another is thrown next to a handful of foreign coins, some of them from Israel.
A special alarm clock is set to sound a Muslim invocation at the hours of prayer, while the gunman’s prayer mat is lying crumpled against a wall.
The killer shouted the words Allahu akbar (God is greatest) before he opened fire with two handguns on unarmed troops queuing for medical attention in a stress counselling centre on the Texan military base.
10 Seconds
November 13, 2009
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Congress Extends A Helping Hand
November 13, 2009
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Several years ago a group of Arab intellectuals came together to study the economic malaise—fueled by high unemployment, massive illiteracy, and anemic GDPs—that grips much of the Muslim and Arab world. Their 2002 study, “The Arab Human Development Report: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations,” remains one of the most sober self-assessments of what has gone wrong with Arab economies and why. The report’s authors lament the “bridled minds” and “shackled potential” of nations which deny their citizens basic civil liberties.
Their candor, however, cannot disguise a fundamental evasion: There is no admission of the cultural hostility toward religious freedom and pluralism that infects Arab societies. This mental state of denial prevents Muslim leaders from recognizing the strong relationship between economic prosperity and religious liberty.
Christian reformers of the seventeenth century, in fact, were among the first to grasp the importance of freedom of conscience to the stability and economic well-being of the state. Thomas Helwys (1550-1616), an early leader of the English Baptists, produced the most principled defense of religious liberty in his day. His Short Declaration of the Mistery of Iniquity (1612) insisted that a man’s religion was no business of the king, and that people of all faiths—“let them be heretiks, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever”—should be left alone. If every sect were granted freedom of worship, he reasoned, there would be far less strife and contention. “Behold the Nations where freedome of Religion is permitted,” he wrote, “and you may see there are not more florishinge and prosperous Nations under the heavens then they are.”
Some of the most provocative pro-toleration statements came from lay people whose vocations exposed them to the benefits of pluralism. Henry Robinson (1605-1664), a merchant and son of a wealthy London tradesman, traveled widely on the Continent. In works such as Liberty of Conscience (1643), Robinson regarded the right of private judgment in matters of faith as essential to human flourishing, akin to the right to private property or private enterprise. These rights were connected, and the repression of religious freedom produced blowback in the economic realm. A persecuting state, he wrote, forced Puritans to leave England and “carry with them their gifts, arts, and manufacturers into other countries, to the greatest detreiment of this commonwealth.” Economic ruin, he predicted, would be the fate of nations that seized their citizens’ property or drove them into exile over religion.
These were radical ideas in Europe in the seventeenth century. The Treaty of Westphalia had ended the religious wars on the Continent, but only by creating a system of national church establishments, which were free to harass and penalize religious minorities within their borders. Catholics were the first to develop both the theory and machinery of religious persecution; Protestants, though not as brutally systematic, followed the same dreary pattern. Both traditions predicated political and social stability on religious conformity: dissent was viewed as an incubator of sedition…
Really Scary
November 12, 2009
Business As Usual
November 12, 2009
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A Heartfelt Thank You
November 12, 2009
Don’t panic, says NASA, as 2012 theories spread
November 12, 2009
NASA has brought its considerable resources to bear against the widely held belief that the Earth will be destroyed by a collision with a mysterious planet on December 21, 2012. Nasa scientists have assured mankind that “nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012″ in an article posted on its website.
The US space agency seems to have been goaded into publishing the ‘2012 FAQ‘ because of the volume of questions it has received regarding the various outlandish theories of destruction being touted by websites in the run-up to this much-prophesied ‘Doomsday’.
But the fact that it was published in the week before the global release of the film 2012, won’t have done director Roland Emmerich’s spectacular end-of-days blockbuster any harm.
Nasa points out that the belief that the world will end in 2012 started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the ancient Sumerians, is on a collision course with Earth. “This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012,” says Nasa.
The reasoning for the date change came from another (slightly less ancient) civilisation, the Mayans, whose ancient ‘long count’ calendar, which began in 3114BC, ends at the winter solstice of 2012 – the ‘warning’ we are supposed to have ignored in Emmerich’s film.
But don’t worry, says Nasa: “Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then… another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.” (Of course, some would say the world ended for the Mayans in the 9th century AD, when their civilisation mysteriously collapsed.)
Having crushed the central conceit of 2012, Nasa moves on to quash other doomsday scenarios, before turning to the one depicted in the movie. Emmerich’s film latches onto the mainstream.
