Michael van der Galien
Michael van der Galien was born in the Dutch city of Leeuwarden in 1984. For as long as he can remember, he has been obsessed with the United States. When he was 17 years old, he started blogging - of course about America. His articles have been published at Big Hollywood, Pajamas Media, Hot Air (the GreenRoom) and Right Across The Atlantic. He's also an editor for the Dutch conservative blog, De Dagelijkse Standaard.
by Mike Adams
Dutch politician Geert Wilders is being tried in Amsterdam over some controversial remarks he made about terrorism and Islam. I’m glad I live in the United States of America, where such a trial would be prohibited by the First Amendment. I’m also glad I don’t teach at Temple University in Philadelphia, where students now have to pay an unconstitutional after-the-fact security fee levied by the university. This fee was for hosting none other than Geert Wilders.
The notion that it is permissible to charge a student group extra fees for security simply because a speaker’s views are controversial (read: not approved of by university administrators) might be acceptable at the University of Havana or the University of Beijing. But it should never happen in America.
by Lori Ziganto
I told y’all that tingle up his leg was moving into his brain – or what passes for one. Watch the video. All I have to say, really, is: Dude. As your good buddy and frequent guest contributor on MSNBC, Janeane Garofalo would say: Your racism is totally showing. Straight up:
“…I was trying to think about who he was tonight. And, it’s interesting he is post-racial, by all appearances. You know I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know he’s gone a long way to become a leader of this country, and passed so much history in just a year a year or two. It’s something we don’t even think about. I was watching, I say, wait a minute, he’s an African-American guy in front of a bunch of other white people. And here he is President of the United States, and we’ve completely forgotten that tonight.”
by Bernard Chapin
How shallow is your average leftist? From time immemorial the question has tormented conservatives. Conformist pap like “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” and “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” are mottos so empty and devoid of substance that they could only have originated from the port side of the spectrum. Our opponents’ unsavory lightness of thinking makes them little more than attention magnets who compete with one another to see who can come up with the most superficial way of analyzing policy issues. Depth is irrelevant to the faithful. Their minds are fixed upon a utopia that can never arrive. The notion of half a loaf is unacceptable. Why should it be when one anticipates heaven on earth?
Given their sanctimoniousness, it’s not surprising that the health care bill failed to titillate some devout leftists. One would presuppose that the eminent peril to our liberty contained in its language would have produced euphoria in control freaks everywhere.
by Stephen Schwartz
Most Americans, even many of those concerned with the problems of academic Middle East Studies, have probably never heard of the Model Arab League (MAL), an American exercise similar to the better-known Model United Nations. The stated aim of such efforts is to expand awareness of world affairs among high school and college students. Participants compete in regional role-playing sessions as representatives of constituent countries in the corresponding world bodies and receive awards for their performance. They are then sent to contend at “nationals” held in Washington, D.C. and similar to matches sponsored by many other student societies and sports associations.
But the Model Arab League could be described better as a propaganda network for Arab nationalism, including promotion of the Arab states’ hostile postures toward Israel, than as a contributor to excellence in international studies or debate.
by Donald Douglas
I don’t see it, but there’s a link to my blog posted somewhere at Think Progress (the entry’s on CBS’ decision for a pro-life Super Bowl ad featuring college football star Tim Tebow). Reading it, I genuinely can’t remember seeing so much hatred in one blog post, for example:
Religion is to the human spirit as fecal matter is to the body. From time to time it must voided and it’s traces thoroughly wiped away ….
by Steve Chapman
For the past year, Republicans have been criticizing Barack Obama for out of control spending. So they must be pleased that they have forced him, in his State of the Union address, to concede the point by proposing a freeze on outlays of the kind Republicans generally don’t like.
Well, not exactly. After the administration floated a plan to cap non-defense, non-security discretionary spending for the next three years, the opposition party erupted in jeers.
by Ed Morrissey
If you need a reason to appreciate a more libertarian approach to public policy in the Age of Obama and rampant nanny-statism, look no farther than Reason’s Nick Gillespie. John Stossel moderates a heated debate between Nick and MeMe Roth over the nature of personal choice over hyperbole. It will come as no surprise to see Gillespie get the better of this argument, mainly because his opponent insists on using overblown terms like “epidemic” to describe obesity, a condition that is not contagious. Or is it? Roth says that obesity is “socially contagious” (via The Right Scoop):
Hey, you know what is also “socially contagious?” Teenage pregnancy! Unlike obesity, a girl has to catch that from someone else. Perhaps we can also have government intervene by forcefully segregating boys and girls until they reach the age of 20?
by AllahPundit
Thus prompting the question: How uncool did he used to be?
He’s changed, he’s changed. You know, he’s actually — before he was an outsider coming in and he was, you know, kind of, you know, stiff. But he’s actually, like, funny, he’s like — when he was at my events he was cracking jokes, when we were on the bus — I was like, who is this guy? He’s really kind of, I think, settled into his role kind of being the elder statesman of the party and everything he went through as president. It’s kind of, and once again it’s my opinion but he’s really a different guy than I knew when he was here, and I certainly appreciate everything he did for me. And it wasn’t a lot, he was just there as the initial — you know, ‘here’s a check, go get em!’ And that says a lot, you know, when I signed my contract with the team, you know — I worried about, how am I gonna pay for this? And he was one of the first guys that helped me towards that obligation. And I remember those people who took a chance.
by Eric Ostermeier
Unlike the criticisms hurled at his predecessor, however, few have ever charged that the President, a former senior lecturer in Constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, has written or spoken too simplistically or catered his words to the lowest common denominator.
However, a Smart Politics analysis of nearly 70 oral State of the Union Addresses since the mid-1930s finds the text of Obama’s speech on Wednesday evening to have one of the lowest scores on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test ever recorded by a U.S. President.
by Tim Graham
The leftist U.K. Guardian newspaper is celebrating an economics lecture from mockumentary filmmaker Michael Moore. The headline:
“Capitalism is evil…you have to eliminate it”
Moore told the Guardian’s Chris McGreal for their Saturday editions that America needs a radical new economic order…
by John L. Hanlon
One would think that after seven years on the air, audiences would know who Jack Bauer is. Yet, as the new season of “24” began last week, we saw Bauer in a different light. He was not fighting terrorism; he was spending time with his granddaughter at the zoo. And Bauer was not the only character who has changed since last season. It turns out that one of the best things about the new season of “24” is how many of the characters on the show have been reinvented.
As with many seasons before, Bauer’s day began with him trying to stay as far away from anti-terrorism work as possible. This season, he started his television day (each season captures a different day in the life of Bauer) as a family man before inevitably being called back by an informer with inside information about a terrorist plot. It took a lot of convincing for Bauer to leave his family life. Both his daughter Kim and his former coworker Chloe had to convince him to return to the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) to assist in taking on a terrorist plot.
by The Daily Caller
Despite some recent figures from Public Policy Polling suggesting that Democratic primary hopeful Alexi Giannoulias now leads Republican primary front-runner Mark Kirk by an eight point margin in a hypothetical general election showdown, it hasn’t exactly been a great couple of weeks for Democrats hoping to retain control of President Obama’s former Senate seat in Illinois.
Kirk, whose pro-choice beliefs and U.S. House vote for the cap-and-trade bill have raised some concerns among conservative voters, is benefiting from recent controversy surrounding Giannoulias, the popular state treasurer who was endorsed by President Obama for the post. The family-owned Broadway Bank, which brought Giannoulias the wealth and expertise vital to his political career, has now become a serious political liability for the candidate after what the New York Times calls the “precipitous implosion of the bank’s finances.”
