Progressive Free Speech

Here’s an example of Progressive free speech.  Todd Starnes, of Fox News, reported last week that two public school teachers are being investigated for posting messages critical of President Barack Obama on social networking sites.

A Rock Hill, SC, junior high math teacher is now on forced-leave because she disparaged, on her personal Facebook page, Obama and his food stamps:

Congrats Obama.  As one of my students sang down the hallway, “We get to keep our food stamps….”  [W]hich I pay for because they can’t budget their money…and really, neither can you.

School officials said that some folks had had their feelings hurt by this personal speech, so the school forced her onto leave and to apologize.  Though, with her having done nothing wrong, I’m at a loss to understand why she apologized.  I also am mystified by the teacher’s union’s silence on the matter.

The school’s spokeswoman said,

Sometimes you just can’t speak out publicly about what you’d personally like to say, about anything….

And she said that with a straight face, too.

A Columbus, OH, high school teacher is in similar hot water.  His evil message:

Congrats to those dependent on government, homosexuals, potheads, JAY-Z fans, non-Christians, non-taxpayers, illegals, communists, Muslims, planned murder clinics, enemies of America, Satan You WON….

Stupid, to be sure, but free speech, in some circles, means being free from having one’s thin skin pricked.

Hmm….

According to Matthew Payne in The Wall Street Journal, Democratic Party Presidential Candidate Barack Obama held a rally on the University of Wisconsin campus last Thursday.  But there were conditions attached for the students’ to gain permissiontickets to attend.

In order to get a ticket for the speech, students were forced to go to Mr. Obama’s campaign website and pledge their support for the president—in the process giving the Obama campaign a gold mine of contact information in a key swing state.

Worse, the University was complicit in this:

The university even provided direct links to the website—free advertising to 40,000 students in one of Mr. Obama’s most important demographics.

Can we afford four years of a more “flexible” President, even less accountable than he recognizes himself to be today?

So Now Our Government

…is apologizing for the uniquely American value of free speech?  And we tax payers are paying for this shameful behavior with our own dollars!?

This from Fox News:

The American Embassy in Islamabad, in a bid to tamp down public rage over the anti-Islam film produced in the US, is spending $70,000 to air an ad on Pakistani television that features President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton denouncing the video.

And beyond this appalling obsequiousness, there’s this blatant duck and cover [emphasis added]:

In the ad, Obama is seen talking about America’s tradition of religious tolerance and Clinton is seen saying that the US government had nothing to do with the video….

It’s not us—we in government didn’t do it.

It gets…better:

[State’s spokeswoman Victoria] Nuland said it was common practice to pay to air public service announcements in Pakistan and noted that the embassy there had done it at least one other time, in the aftermath of a deadly 2005 earthquake that hit the country.

So, here’s our government putting its apology for American values on a par with expressing sympathy for a tragedy.

Can we afford four more years of retreat and timidity concerning American rights and culture?

State Department Competence

On Sunday, our Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, made the rounds of the NLMSM’s Talk TV shows reciting State’s official understanding of the violent protests and murders around the Middle East, northern Africa, and now spreading to Indonesia.

What sparked the violence was a very hateful video on the Internet.  It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States.

Rice also said that “extremists” arrived with heavy weapons, yet

We don’t see any signs this was a pre-meditated, pre-planned attack.

Hmm….

Meanwhile, CNN has this on “premeditation:”

According to one of the Libyan security guards who was stationed at one of the gates armed with only a radio, the assault began simultaneously from three directions.

Heavy machine guns and rocket -propelled grenades were used, according to the guard. He said masked men threatened to kill him at gunpoint for ‘protecting the infidels. He declined to appear on camera for fear of repercussions.

Yeah, that’s not premeditated.

The Obama administration also has been insisting that it had no specific, actionable intelligence with which to do anything.  Never mind a series of attacks and attempted attacks in Libya and Tunisia earlier this summer: an IED thrown at the perimeter of our Benghazi consulate (site of last week’s murders) early June, an RPG attack on the British ambassador’s motorcade in mid-June (injuring two security personnel), an attack the our Tunisian consulate, including burning our flag in late June, and .  And on Aug. 5, five weeks before the assault on the U.S. Consulate, and RPG attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Benghazi building in early August.  No.  No reason to act here.  No reason to instruct our embassies and consulates to increase their security.  No reason to increase their assets so they could increase their security state.

CNN had this, too, at the above link:

Three days before the deadly assault on the United States consulate in Libya, a local security official says he met with American diplomats in the city and warned them about deteriorating security.

Jamal Mabrouk, a member of the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he and a battalion commander had a meeting about the economy and security.

He said they told the diplomats that the security situation wasn’t good for international business.

“The situation is frightening, it scares us,” Mabrouk said they told the US officials.

No actionable intel there.  Move along, now.

Then there’s the position of the Libyan government.  Also speaking Sunday, Libyan National Congress President Mohammed el-Megarif had this to say:

The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous.  We firmly believe that this was a pre-calculated, pre-planned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the US Consulate.

He also noted that the attacks were carried out by foreigners and that the attacks had all the indicators of an al-Qaeda attack.

And Senator John McCain (R, AZ), the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Armed Services, and Congressman Mike Rogers (R, MI), House Intelligence Committee chairman (albeit Evil Republicans), said Sunday the administration’s foreign policy of “disengagement” in the Middle East had created a vacuum which made this type of attack inevitable.

The Middle East believes there is a disengagement policy with the US.

There’s more information here, at Power Line; follow the links.

Still Equivocating

Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama continues to soft pedal our government’s reaction to the atrocious attacks on our embassies and our personnel.

Fox News reports that in a call Tuesday to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, Obama had this to say:

…he rejects efforts to denigrate Islam…there is never any justification for violence against innocents.

Still caveating, still being squishy.  Still more concerned with the hurt feelings of thugs than with the safety, the honor of Americans and America.

And this, in a who-cares statement (indeed, throughout his entire prepared statement, Obama merely recited his lines, consulting his note cards more than the faces of his audience, with no emotion other than evident boredom, no outrage fueling his statement):

While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.

No.  No conditioned statement is necessary.  No caveats.  How do you “balance” the murders of innocents against anything?

There is never any justification for violence against innocents.

Period.

Addendum:  “We tragically learned that [Ambassador Stevens] had died.”  Tragically learned.  Not learned that [Ambassador Stevens] had tragically died.  Oh, no.  It’s Obama’s tragedy, not Stevens’ and his family’s.

Think I’m being too hard on Obama for a misspeak?  Watch the video.  He was reading from his prepared script.  He knew what he was saying.

Update: from Fox News this morning:

Secretary of State Clinton issued a statement strongly denouncing the anti-Islam video that is purportedly the cause of the violence as the administration sought to pre-empt further turmoil at its embassies and consulates.

“The United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video,” Clinton said before a meeting with the foreign minister of Morocco at the State Department. “We absolutely reject its content and message.”

Duck and cover.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  Apologize for having interrupted their fists with our face.  Don’t even think of denouncing the riots, the desecrations of our flag, the murders of our citizens, unequivocally.  In an actual statement of condemnation (hopefully accompanied by concrete action) that pulls no punches and that contains no other comments at all.  No, just point the finger at someone else.  Anyone else.  Especially at those evil Americans exercising their right of free speech.