Calvin Freiburger
Hailing from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Calvin Freiburger is a political science major at Hillsdale College. He also writes for the Hillsdale Forum and his personal website, Calvin Freiburger Online.
At FrumForum, Tim Mak has an interview with Michael Medved that hails the prolific commentator as “the bravest man on radio.” It’s hard to disagree—Medved is one of the fiercest, most unapologetic advocates of conservatism around, and his show features dissenting callers more than most, regularly devoting entire “Disagreement Days” to letting disgruntled callers take potshots at him on whatever they like.
However, that’s not what Medved’s receiving a hero’s welcome for. No, in Mak’s eyes, Medved’s courage comes from taking on—you guessed it—other conservatives. He says a right-wing version of political correctness is setting in, he accuses Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck of saying “stuff that almost everyone knows not to be true, but nonetheless proves provocative and entertaining,” warns that the Republican Party, while not racist, is pursuing a losing strategy of “chasing more white votes”; and he believes the Tea Party needs to learn the lessons of the 1970s anti-war movement—“demonstrations accomplish nothing”: read more…
Ask a leftist or a Paulestinian why Usama bin Laden orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, and you’re likely to get a lecture involving imperialism, cultural insensitivity, blowback, or all of the above, while a conservative would be more likely to blame radical Islamic ideology. Tonight’s “Hannity” explores a far simpler factor—he thought he could get away with it:
HANNITY: A former Usama bin Laden associate has come forward with shocking allegations about the 9/11 terror attacks. Now, the man’s name is Noman Benotman, and he claims that he was with bin Laden in the months just prior to the attacks.
And now, in an interview with a WTOP reporter, the man says bin Laden was stunned at the way the U.S. responded to the attacks. Now he says the Al Qaeda leader did not expect President George W. Bush to retaliate the way he did [...]
NOMAN BENOTMAN, FORMER BIN LADEN ASSOCIATE: What happened after the 11th of September, it’s beyond the imagination. I am 100 percent sure they haven’t a clue about what is going to happen. They said, “This time, maybe they’re going to launch 200 cruise missiles.” read more…
Anakin Skywalker had to become Darth Vader. Charlie Crist was always Charlie Crist.
Florida Governor and Senate candidate Charlie Crist is a Republican conservatives love to hate for his flirtations with liberalism and lack of any core value beyond self-preservation. So it should come as little surprise that, in the face of a primary challenge from rising conservative star Marco Rubio, Crist reportedly plans to run as an independent. At the Daily Beast, Reihan Salam says good riddance to bad rubbish, noting that Crist hasn’t turned to the dark side—he was already there:
Many observers see Charlie Crist as a patron saint of Republican moderation, a sensible pragmatist who has been driven out of his party by frenzied Tea Partiers on a jihad against common sense. Some even suggested that Crist should join the Democrats. This is, in my view, a baseless smear against Democrats, who deserve better than to be associated with the likes of Charlie Crist. read more…
Did you know that Sarah Palin can discuss policy competently? If you’re a NewsReal regular, the answer is probably “yes,” but seeing the governor as substantive still seems to surprise folks like Frances Martel at Mediaite (who was on the same beat last week). Today’s example: Palin’s appearance on last night’s “Hannity” to discuss immigration and media bias:
PALIN: There is no ability or opportunity in there for the racial profiling. And shame on the lame stream media again for turning this into something that it is not. Governor Jan Brewer did what she had to do as the CEO of that state. To help protect the citizens of her state she had to do what the federal government has refused to do, and that is help secure the borders [...] this is quite the illustration of President Obama not understanding the 10th Amendment to our Constitution. Here he ignores the 10th Amendment when it comes to something like Obamacare where he is mandating, he is forcing the state and the state citizens to take action in the case of Obamacare to purchase health care that may be some people aren’t desiring to purchase. He’s making them do that anyway in violation of the 10th Amendment. And yet not respecting our Constitution when it comes to the rights, the responsibilities, too, of the federal government and making a state takeover a national security issue like protecting our borders. He has no concept, it seems, of that 10th Amendment.
At the Daily Beast, Matthew Yglesias has a bad feeling about the way Senate Democrats are going about passing financial “reform” legislation—rushing it through in much the same way they rammed though health care “reform”:
It means we’re looking at a bill that punts on many of the biggest issues. It means that neither the broad public nor the narrower circle of policy elites and experts and semi-experts have a firm grasp of the relevant questions. And this in turn means that we’ve got a bill whose main premise is that we need to trust the same institutions and many of the same people who were arguably responsible for the crisis in the first place.
So far, so good. However, he then turns around and suggests that America’s recent adventure with ObamaCare offers three points in the “fairly strong” case for speed: read more…
It looks like we need another refresher on what to look for in a potential Supreme Court justice. At the Daily Beast, Peter Beinart has stumbled upon the idea that what Barack Obama really needs to do is nominate a mother:
First, because female justices, on average, will be more sensitive to the problems women face. Since they will have likely encountered gender bias themselves, they will be more likely to support government action to remedy it. And that firsthand experience of injustice may also sensitize them to the plight of other groups that have historically experienced discrimination. These are crude generalizations, of course, but they have a basis in fact. Just look at the women in Congress, who are far more likely to be pro-choice—and to lean left more broadly—than are the men.
As we’ve discussed before, this reason is bogus—such identity-politics thinking feeds into faction and runs counter to the reality that if a judgment is right, it is right regardless of who’s doing the judging, and men and women alike should adopt it. Indeed, in order to do their jobs properly, judges, even more so than all other public servants, must bring as little of themselves — experience, emotion, interest, politics — to the table, and rule based solely on what the law says.
So Beinart is, unsurprisingly, all wet when it comes to sound constitutionalism. The second reason, however, is a little more interesting: read more…
The Kentucky Right to Life Association is sounding the alarm on Rand Paul lying about his pro-life credentials (hat tip to Richard McEnroe):
It has come to our attention that Rand Paul has supplied the Kentucky Enquirer with a “copy” of his Kentucky Right to LIfe PAC Questionnaire “proving” that he did score 100% on the KRLA PAC Survey. As has been our policy, KRLA PAC will let the evidence speak for itself.
Attached please find a PDF unedited scan of the questionnaire Rand Paul faxed (and also sent original hard copy to us) on February 11th. read more…
At the Daily Beast, John Avlon has a strong round-up of reactions to Comedy Central’s decision to censor images and references to Muhammad in the latest episode of South Park, including Islam-reform advocates Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji, and South Park Conservatives author Brian Anderson. They reinforce the same messages that NewsReal has been discussing all week—the un-American nature of censorship, the barbarism of radical Islam, and the futility of appeasing thugs.
In particular, Avlon highlights Manji’s petition against death threats, which you should all sign:
“It’s ridiculous enough that extremist thugs put Islam’s human prophet on some pedestal, engaging in idolatry of their own,” she told me. “But the fact these arrogant fools operate from New York City reminds us that open societies need to be defended—for everyone’s freedom to believe as they choose. When I and fellow writers got a similar death threat from ummah.com, a site run out of Britain, we created a petition promoting human rights and secular values for all. To date, it’s got thousands of signatures from both Muslims and non-Muslims. Readers can still sign their names and cities. It’s a fast way of telegraphing to radical Islamists that their death threats won’t chill our consciences. There’s strength in numbers.”
The main substance of the controversy has already been skillfully explored by others here at NewsReal, but there are two further observations I think are worth making. read more…
It’s time for another installment of Shameless Media Hypocrisy! This time, Mark McKinnon at the Daily Beast gives us a tale of two presidents who like to golf:
President Obama hasn’t held a formal press conference in almost a year (274 days and counting) yet has golfed 32 times since he was elected—eight more times than President George W. Bush did during his entire presidency.
[...]
On Memorial Day last year, the press reverently reported that Obama placed a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns in the morning, and then observed a moment of silence that afternoon—on the golf course before teeing off. (I can only imagine how this would have been reported if Bush’s moment of “silent remembrance and solemn prayer” was on the green.) read more…
Phillip Klein at the American Spectator has the scoop on Rand Paul’s latest foreign policy pronouncements, which are far more friendly to Israel than his father’s:
Israel and the United States have a special relationship. With our shared history and common values, the American and Israeli people have formed a bond that unites us across the many thousands of miles between our countries and calls us to work together towards peace and prosperity for our countries.
[...]
I strongly object to the arrogant approach of Obama administration, itself a continuation of the failures of past U.S. administrations, as they push Israel to make security concessions behind thinly veiled threats.
Only Israel can decide what is in her security interest, not America and certainly not the United Nations. Friends do not coerce friends to trade land for peace, or to give up the vital security interests of their people.
As a United States Senator, I would never vote to condemn Israel for defending herself.
Whether it is fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, combating Hamas-linked terrorists in Gaza or dealing with potential nuclear threats in the Persian Gulf, Israeli military actions are completely up to the leaders and military of Israel, and Israel alone.
Laudable sentiments. I wonder if he really means ‘em.
Last night, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) joined Sean Hannity to talk about the hypocrisy of Tea Party demonization, the Democrats’ love affair with government intervention, and the Obama Administration’s support for net neutrality. The segment was solid, but in my opinion didn’t offer anything out of the ordinary. Mediaite’s Frances Martel, however, uses the interview as a springboard to ponder Bachmann’s role on the Right:
When she talks issues, Bachmann proves a formidable force within the Republican party– and that’s what makes it so difficult to understand precisely what her role is in the grand conservative revival mostly lead by amazingly talented orators and tamed agenda-spewing robots. What does the organized American right do with a more accomplished, more intelligent, more beautiful but insanely unreliable version of Sarah Palin? Bachmann is calm, collected, and convincing enough of the time to keep her House seat safe, but for every respectable performance on Fox News, there’s a call to armed rebellion or paranoid shouting about how some Democrat or another wants her dead. For now it seems that they are keeping her marginalized, limiting her to preaching to the choir on Hannity or being let out in public closely leashed to Sarah Palin. And there’s no telling whether she has it in her to polish up her act enough to convince the mainstream she’s not a nutcase. read more…
We recently learned that a Texas high-school teacher was giving her kids biased handouts on the differences between liberals and conservatives, one of the biggest whoppers being that liberals have “a great deal of optimism” about human nature and trust people as basically good, while conservatives think people “must often be controlled for their own best interests.”
As anybody who’s followed politics for, oh, a week can tell you, this grotesque caricature has little basis in reality. Last night, Sean Hannity and Chris Horner, author of the new book Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America, explored how it’s really the Left, not the Right, that has a problem with individual liberty by “moving decisions from individuals, producers, and consumers to the state”:
There’s not a universal motivator, but if you follow the money, you’ll see a lot of the motivation, but you’ll also see it comes down to power, and I make that case in “Power Grab.” For example, we know, we can begin on a point of agreement, we know the global warming agenda is not about the climate. And we know this because nothing ever proposed would detectably impact the climate. Ask every elected representative you see, what would the temperature be after cap-and-tax?
[…] read more…
