From Yahoo! News:

April 30 (Bloomberg) -- Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the woman accused of running a Washington, D.C., prostitution ring over a 13-year span, is making good on her threat to expose what she claims is a high-powered client list to show that her escorts stayed within the law, one of her lawyers said.

Palfrey is scheduled to appear in federal court in Washington today for a hearing in her case. That follows the April 27 resignation of Randall Tobias, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, after ABC News asked him about his use of a so-called escort service known as Pamela Martin & Associates and operated by Palfrey.

Montgomery Blair Sibley, Palfrey's attorney in a civil case seeking the return of assets seized by authorities, said Palfrey is revealing clients to bolster her criminal defense by testifying they used her service for fantasy and role playing, not sex. ABC News has Palfrey's phone lists.

``This was adult sexual fantasy which stayed within legality, much like going to a strip club,'' Sibley said in a telephone interview. ``You can pay an escort to come to your home, get naked and get a massage and you haven't broken any laws, assuming you stay on your stomach.''

Tobias, 65, told ABC News he called the service ``to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage.'' He denied having sex with the escorts, according to the network's report.

Tobias's resignation, officially listed as ``for personal reasons,'' deprives Bush of an official who was leading overseas aid initiatives that were an administration priority.

Click here to read the rest.

Baldwin Not the Only Culprit in Custody Battle with Basinger
by Jeffrey Leving and Glenn Sacks

Alec Baldwin's angry, over-the-top voice-mail tirade at his daughter, Ireland, was clearly wrong. Unfortunately, while we've been wringing our hands over how bad Balwin is, we're ignoring the case's central truth – Kim Basinger's well-documented parental alienation campaign against Baldwin.

Parental alienation often arises after a divorce, as one angry, vengeful parent tries to turn the children against the other parent, destroying the loving bonds the children and the target parent once enjoyed. Baldwin claims that his outburst occurred in the context of Basinger alienating Ireland and trying to drive him out of his daughter's life.

This claim appears to have merit. In fact, Basinger's own mother has publicly condemned her behavior. Ann Basinger, Ireland's grandmother, calls Baldwin a “wonderful” parent, and says:

“My heart is sad for Ireland. She's the one that's suffering the most. All this is killing her. I think Kim has tried to alienate Ireland from her father. Alec loves his daughter with all his heart. He really is a family man . . . I hate what [Kim] is doing.”

Journalist Pat Lalama, who has covered the Baldwin-Basinger divorce and custody battle since their break-up seven years ago, recently told CNN:

“In all the years that I have covered celebrities . . . this was one of the meanest exchanges between two human beings . . . some of the things that Kim Basinger was demanding, in order to humiliate him, were outrageous . . . [Baldwin] was provoked by an angry ex, which I'm guessing is probably the case here, [and] he went over the edge.”

Click here to read the rest.

This excellent article by Linda Chavez shows that, instead of expecting racial preferences to lift them up, blacks need to buckle down, hit the books, and lift themselves up the same rigorous academic standards that whites, Asians, African and Caribbean immigrants meet - and surpass - every day.  The more blacks continue to demand racial preferences, whether it be in higher education, employment or any other venue, the more we will continue to look like a collectively weak and racially insecure people 40+ years after the civil rights movement.

Ending Racial Preferences: It's About Time
by Linda Chavez
Friday, April 27, 2007

This week marks the beginning of the end of the racial spoils system that has come to symbolize affirmative action in higher education, as well as state contracting and employment. Ward Connerly, chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute and the father of the California Civil Rights Initiative, which abolished state-sponsored racial preferences in California more than a decade ago, has launched a new effort to place similar initiatives on the ballot in 2008 in several states, including Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arizona.

I was proud to be by his side in Denver on Monday to announce the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative along with another Colorado native and familiar figure in the fight against racial and gender preferences, Valery Pech Orr, whose suit against federal minority set-asides led to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Adarand v. Pena. For me especially, this day has been a long time coming.

It has been nearly four decades since I became involved with affirmative action in Colorado. When I entered the University of Colorado as a freshman in the fall of 1965, there were few black or Hispanic students enrolled. During my five years as an undergraduate and graduate student at CU, first at the Denver campus and then in Boulder, I encountered only one other Hispanic in any of my classes and perhaps one or two blacks.

That didn't seem right to me. So, I joined with a group of other students to persuade the university to aggressively recruit more minority students and set up tutoring programs and summer sessions of remedial courses to assist those who lacked the skills to compete effectively. The Educational Opportunity Program started out with great promise -- it was exactly what was intended by affirmative action: to cast a wider net and provide the skills necessary to compete on an equal footing.

But it soon transmogrified into a program that lowered standards and radicalized students in the process. The university not only admitted students whose academic preparation made it nearly impossible for them to succeed, but it permitted many to remain in school despite failing grades. Worse, the program's organizers encouraged students to take largely segregated ethnic studies courses, whose primary purpose was to forge ethnic solidarity and reinforce students' feelings that they were victims of a racist society bent on their destruction.

By the time I left Boulder in 1970, I had become a critic of affirmative action, and my later experiences as an instructor in the affirmative action program at UCLA made me a downright opponent of such programs. It became clear to me that universities were applying racial double standards that helped no one, least of all the students who were the intended beneficiaries. The real problem blacks and Hispanics faced was a skills gap that affirmative action programs didn't even attempt to solve.

In the 40 years that affirmative action programs have operated, millions of deserving white and Asian students have been passed over at competitive schools across the country in order to admit black and Hispanic students with significantly lower standardized admission test scores (usually 200-350 points lower on a 1600-point scale) and lower high school grades (typically a half point lower on a 4-point scale). These affirmative action students often struggle to compete in the classroom, and huge numbers of them simply drop out. Instead of helping black and Hispanic students succeed, affirmative action programs mismatch students and institutions.

But an end to racial preferences won't mean a return to the days when blacks and Hispanics were simply missing from college classrooms, as in my youth. In California, which outlawed preferences in 1996, more black and Hispanic students are enrolled in college today than ever before -- and more importantly, a higher percentage of them are graduating. In 1995, only 26 percent of black and Hispanic students actually graduated from the UC system; now 51 percent graduate, roughly equal to the white and Asian rate.

Affirmative action programs were never meant to be permanent, something former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor reiterated in her majority opinion in the Supreme Court's 2003 University of Michigan law school case. Yet these programs are still available to the children -- and even grandchildren -- of the students I taught 40 years ago.

It's about time we ended racial double standards once and for all. In doing so, we will actually improve the chances that more black and Hispanic students will earn college degrees.

Linda Chavez is chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity and author of Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics .

Here we go again.  Kudos to the sentencing judge for laying down the law, though an appeal is still pending.

From the NY Post:

SCHOOL MISTRESS GIVEN 14 YEARS FOR STUDENT SEX

April 20, 2007 -- A boy-seducing East Side headmistress was sentenced yesterday to up to 14 years in prison after her Ivy League education, family wealth and dusky beauty failed to win her any favor with the judge.

"She's intelligent, she's educated, she's well raised, she's beautiful and she's a predator who lived a lie," Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Carol Berkman said of Lina Sinha before pro nouncing sentence.

Sinha, 40, worked for 17 years at her par ents' Montessori school on East 55th Street, and for half that time was having a secret affair on school property with a male student. It began with her giving the boy, then 13, oral sex as he sat on a classroom sink.

She must spend at least 42/3 years behind bars before she can be considered for parole. The sentence, which covers her conviction for repeated oral sodomies, fell just short of the six- to 18-year maximum that prosecutors requested.

"Lina Sinha is no different than any other sexual predator who abuses a child," Assistant District Attorney Florence Chapin said during the brief hearing, in urging the judge not to give credence to the "locker-room joke of 'Where was she when I was in school?' "

The bed-ucator's victim - now a Queens-based police officer - did not come to court or offer any remarks on the sentencing.

He had reluctantly taken the stand against Sinha last month, describing a twisted, nearly decade-long relationship that started when he was so young, he had yet to shave and stood only as high as Sinha's chest.

Then followed years of furtive trysts in the school van, on classroom furniture or in Sinha's bedroom above the school.

Sinha was unmasked after the victim finally broke off the relationship in December 2004, and Sinha embarked on a campaign of false criminal accusations and 911 calls designed to ruin his new NYPD career.

A second former student had also testified that Sinha took him to bed at age 12. In convicting Sinha last month, jurors hung on those more serious charges, which prosecutors said they will continue to pursue.

About 50 of Sinha's relatives and associates had written the court letters in her support, and at least that number filled the rows of seats behind Sinha as she sat at the defense table yesterday. Several of them broke into tears upon hearing the sentence.

Sinha herself maintained a steely composure and was allowed to remain free until at least Monday. Appellate judges are expected to rule by then on whether Sinha can remain free pending her appeal.

The judge yesterday knocked down her lawyer's plea for special consideration by referring to a passage from a Shakespeare sonnet.

"Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds," she told Sinha.

Here are links to additional articles on this story:

Sex Teach Out on $3.5 M Bail;

'Raped' Boy: It Was Cool;

Kiss & Tell On Teach;

Sex-Pred Prinipal Guilty.

Currently, the big celebrity news item that everyone is talking about is actor Alec Baldwin ripping into his 11-year-old daughter, Ireland, in a phone voicemail message recently.  According to news reports, Baldwin has since apologized, and as far as I'm concerned that settles it for me.  Although I disagree with his far-left political views, I admire and respect Alec Baldwin as a great and versatile actor. 

As a man tormented by his vindictive ex-wife, actress Kim Bassinger, who for the past six years has been using the court system (even violating court orders herself in the process) to alienate Baldwin from their daughter, I can only imagine what the guy must be going through.  Thus, in my view, his recent emotional outburst was understandable.  He's fed up that his ex is doing everything in her power to turn their daughter against her father, despite his best efforts to be in her life.  What parent wouldn't be emotionally at his/her wits' end?

Alec Baldwin is not the villain here.  Kim Bassinger is.

Glenn Sacks has been following the Baldwin-Bassinger family drama from the beginning, and he, too, sympathizes with Badlwin.  He makes some very good points in a recent blog:

1) Basinger’s Alienation campaign against Baldwin has been so bad and so hurtful both to Baldwin and Ireland that even Kim Basinger’s mother has publicly condemned her daughter (see above).

2) Baldwin’s frustration is understandable–he’s trying hard to retain a relationship with his daughter in the face of Basinger’s relentless attempts to drive him out of his child’s life. Baldwin said:

“Once again, I have made an a&% of myself trying to get to a phone…I’m tired of playing this game with you…you have insulted me for the last time. I don’t give a d%#@ that you’re 12-years-old or 11-years-old, or a child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the a%# who doesn’t care about what you do…you have humiliated me for the last time…This crap you pull on me with this godd**n phone situation that you would never dream of doing to your mother, and you do it to me constantly over and over again.”

He said some things he definitely shouldn’t have said, here and in the rest of the tape, but any parent in this situation would be angry.

3) There are times in any parent’s life when the parent blows up at his or her child. There is not one parent reading this–not one–who can honestly say that they’ve never lost their temper with their children and said things that they should not have said. Those in the media moralizing at Baldwin are either hypocrites, have a faulty memory, or are such marginal parents that they never interacted with their kids enough to reach a real level of frustration. I was a teacher for many years, and Baldwin’s tirade, while bad, is nowhere near as bad as some that I’ve heard. And sometimes the kids deserved it.

4) These tapes were leaked to the media by Basinger in violation of a court order. (Emphasis added.) Basinger’s purpose in leaking them was revenge against Baldwin and leverage in her court battle to drive Baldwin out of his daughter’s life. Does anybody really think that Ireland’s best interests are served by Basinger leaking this publicly?

Baldwin’s lawyer, Viki Roberts, said, “Whatever happened yesterday was sealed and confidential…The mother and her lawyer leaked this sealed material in violation of a court order. Although Alec acknowledges that he should have used different language in parenting his child, everyone who knows him privately knows what he has been put through for the past six years….In the best interest of the child, Alec will do what the mother is pathologically incapable of doing - keeping his mouth shut and obeying the court order.”

5) While Baldwin was over the top, sometimes kids need to be called to account for their behavior. Ireland had repeatedly defied her father and repeatedly broken commitments to him–any mother or father would and should be angry in that situation.

6) Baldwin tells Ireland he’s going to “straighten her out,” so the Basinger camp and its allies are calling this “threatening.” I doubt this was any real threat–he was cracking down on his daughter’s misbehavior, as any parent should. Physical abuse of daughters by their fathers is extremely rare, and there’s no history of it between Baldwin and Ireland.

7) One tactic frequently employed by alienating mothers–including Basinger–is to drive the father crazy by employing alienation tactics, violating visitation orders, forbidding the father to speak to the child on the phone, poisoning the child’s mind against the father, etc. This is done in an effort to provoke the father into blowing his top. And when he does, mom pretends to be a scared, quivering little lamb fearful of “his awful temper.”

Basinger played it very well here, and Baldwin was foolish to allow himself to fall into her trap. I’m sure Basinger will now be telling us how traumatized Ireland is, and how she is fearful and needs therapy and time away from her father to recover from what he did to her. What Ireland really needs is time away from Basinger and her malignant alienation. I doubt any conflict between Ireland and Baldwin would last 10 minutes if not for Basinger’s influence.

Sacks goes on to report in another blog that Kim Bassinger's actions are so deplorable that ever Bassinger's own mother has publicly condemned her from alienating her ex-husband from their daughter.

Regarding Basinger’s mother’s description of the alienation campaign, the Irish Examiner reported:

“Kim Basinger’s mother has blasted her own daughter for wrecking relations between her ex-husband Alec Baldwin and the couple’s daughter. Baldwin recently took Basinger to court in a bid to extend his custody terms after the actress allegedly violated a court imposed settlement, and now little Ireland’s grandmother is speaking out about the court battle…she calls [Baldwin] ‘wonderful,’ adding, ‘My heart is sad for Ireland. She’s the one that’s suffering the most. All this is killing her. I think Kim has tried to alienate Ireland from her father. Alec loves his daughter with all his heart. He really is a family man…I hate what [Kim] is doing.’”

Bassinger's leaking that Baldwin's voicemail to the media was cold-blooded to say the least.  To reiterate, she is the real villain, not Alec Baldwin.  What exactly does she expect to get out of preventing her ex-husband from having a relationship with his daughter - something he has every right to as a parent, by the way?  Given everthing she's put the man through, she's primarily to blame for Baldwin blowing his top at his daughter.

Like I said, Bassinger is the real villain in this drama.

Let me start off by offering my sincerest condolences and prayers to all of those affected by the horrible massacre that took place at Virginia Tech two days ago.  I pray that the Good Lord spreads his mercy, comfort and reassurance over the families and friends of those who lost their lives, the wounded survivors, and our entire nation.

At the risk of politicizing what has been described as the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, the Virginia Tech episode brings up a very important public policy issue: gun control. 

I recently read that last year the Virginia State Legislature considered a bill that would have overriden policies at public colleges and universities prohibiting students and faculty members with lawful concealed handgun permits from bringing their weapons onto campus.  To the applause of the anti-gun lobby, including Virginia Tech Associate Vice President Larry Hincker, the bill died in subcommittee.

Michelle Malkin and Jacob Sullum write today that, if that bill had passed and become law, lives might have been saved two days ago at Virginia Tech.  Research backs them up. 

Economist John R. Lott has written extensively on how allowing law-abiding citizens to lawfully carry concealed weapons is an effective crime deterrent.  Professor Lott has exhaustively compiled tons of social and economic data from census and other population surveys of individual United States counties in different years, which he fits into a very large multifactorial mathematical model of crime rates. His results show a very strong reduction in violent crime associated with the adoption of state laws allowing the general adult population to freely carry concealed weapons.

The author of More Guns Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns, Professor Lott argues that media coverage of defensive gun use is rare, and that only shootings ending in fatalities typically are discussed in news stories.

"While news stories sometimes chronicle the defensive uses of guns, such discussions are rare compared to those depicting violent crime committed with guns. Since in many defensive cases a handgun is simply brandished, and no one is harmed, many defensive uses are never even reported to the police. I believe that this underreporting of defensive gun use is large..."

Furthermore, Lott asserts that selective reporting by the mainstream media fails to report instances of people defending themselves (or others) via legal use of guns.

Sullum:

"'We can't have an armed guard in front of every classroom every day of the year,' Virginia Tech campus police chief Wendell Flinchum said after the shootings. Given the reality that police cannot be everywhere, it is unconscionable to disarm people who want to defend themselves."

Now, I've never held a firearm of any kind in my hands in my life.  At the same time, I wouldn't be against going through the legal process of learning how to use and ultimately owning a firearm (or two) to protect me and mine.  In fact, given what just happened at a premier public university of all places, a place that was supposed to be a sanctuary of piece, tranquility and, most of all, safety, the idea is starting to really appeal to me.

Congratulations to one of the finest actors of his generation.  It is well deserved.




From USAToday.com:

Despite his liberal leanings, I respect Geraldo Rivera as a fair-minded journalist.  However, after listening to call the Rev. Al Sharpton "a great man" and "one of the greatest civil rights leaders of our time," I have to wonder whether or not he dabbles in the recreational use of mind-altering narcotic substances.

As Michelle Malkin, who guest-hosted the O'Reilly Factor again last Friday, says on her blog,

"I think I was about to hurl when Geraldo called Al Sharpton a "great man" and one of the nation's top "civil rights" leaders. You can hear me mutter "whose civil rights?"

Check out Michelle, one of the most physically beautiful conservative women in America, on last Friday's Factor.

In terms of looks alone (let alone brains), she puts Susan Estrich to shame.

A great piece!

Why Feminists Fear Men
By Kevin McCullough
Sunday, April 15, 2007

For years the modern feminists have attempted to completely obliterate the need for men in society. They have argued in favor of, marched for, and protested on behalf of the ideas that women can provide everything that a woman needs.

Go into any women's studies program on the campus of any major university and you will learn that women don't need men for economic provision, physical protection, or to even achieve sexual orgasm. Our daughters are being taught that to believe men are necessary for anything is not only pure bunk, but actually a sign of intellectual weakness.

As a result women have shunned personal relationships and sky-rocketed to the top of the business world. Their incomes have increased as they have put off having children, not to mention the thought of getting married till far later in life.

They've gotten themselves into the gym and lifted weights and learned kick-boxing so that at least theoretically they could ward off an attacker. (Of course they haven't been encouraged to pack fire-arms or conceal handguns because for some reason its more "progressive" for a woman to take male hormones and resemble eastern European male wrestlers than it is for the most lady-like among us to blow someone away if their life depended on it.)

Women have been inundated with auto-eroticism methodologies and lesbian love making techniques not only in these women's studies courses but also through popular culture, women's magazines, and cable television. They are also told by that same culture, be it prime time media or TIME magazine, that men at best "are clumsy" in this area, and at worst "just plain don't know what they're doing."

In making all these “advances” there has still been one major stumbling block for the argument of a completely female universe. That has been the production of sperm, male DNA, the missing element to creating a child when paired with a woman's egg. Without this necessary ingredient the entirety of the female-only existence is impossible, women's studies departments are useless, and feminism is nothing more than mindless brainwashing.

Click here to read the rest.

I know I've been blogging like crazy on this Don Imus thing, but I just had to post this tough love, Bill Cosbyesque article by Kansas City Star writer Jason Whitlock.

Imus isn’t the real bad guy

Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.

JASON WHITLOCK

© 2007 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansascity.com

I have always liked and admired Michelle Malkin for being a staunch conservative pistol who sticks to her guns and uses her intellect, moral foundation, and common sense to expose liberals for what they are.  She's like Ann Coulter, but with the exotically beautiful Asian features that make a well-traveled heterosexual man like myself absolutely melt.  (Nothing against Ann - she's cute, too!).





Ms. Malkin proved last night as guest host on The O'Reilly Factor  discussing the Duke lacrosse players and Don Imus controversy that she's not gonna take any liberal spin or radical smack from anyone - neither from a gangsta rap "blame whitey" sympathizer (above) nor a radical, hate-spewing, unrepentantly racist black militant gas bag (below - who, by the way, called her a "media prostitute" on last night's show. How's that for class!)





Click here and check out how Michelle handles herself against both like the true conservative warrior she is.
 

Ms. Hagelin has an excellent point.  In our overly-PC culture, I feel sorry for white guys.

Imus, Males and the "PC" Discrimination
by Rebecca Hagelin
Friday, April 13, 2007

Don Imus could have saved himself a lot of trouble.

Instead of insulting the superstar black women's basketball players at Rutgers University, he should have told his listeners that white males are idiots who do nothing but drink beer, ogle women and scratch themselves. That way, rather than hearing himself rightly denounced for his rude, discriminatory remarks, he would have heard … nothing.

Seriously, is there any group you can attack with more impunity than males --particularly white males?

Here's how I put it during a recent appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor":

"Our boys are being abused by the media in a different way ... All you have to do is turn on the TV for 30 minutes and tell me how men and dads are portrayed -- as ignorant and stupid and lazy. The white, Anglo-Saxon male, the young teenage guy, is probably the most discriminated against kid on the face of the earth right now."

Although my comments on the subject were brief, this simple observation about how badly today's males are treated garnered a huge reaction. E-mail poured in. Viewer after viewer thanked me for defending just about the only group it's "PC" to diss. (Another frequent target: conservative Christians.)

A typical reaction from one father was this: "Thank you for your courage. It touches my heart to hear someone speak on our behalf."

I obviously touched a raw nerve. Viewers felt strongly enough to leave their TV sets, log on to their computers and search for my e-mail address to share their feelings.

A college student wrote: "You are absolutely right that men are being portrayed as idiots on TV. It's sad in my college (which is largely female-dominated) how poor of a rap men get. Granted, some men deserve what they get, and I have nothing against women, but for young men like me who are trying to uphold the values of chivalry, it can be very degrading."

Another viewer, a self-described "fed-up father of three boys," said he was "delighted to hear someone echo my longstanding observation that fathers these days are almost universally ridiculed by the media. It's been years since I've seen a humorous TV commercial where the joke is on the woman, for example."

Click the article's title to read the rest.

The Incomplete Anti-Imus Lobby
by L. Brent Bozell
Friday, April 13, 2007

The raging media controversy over the stupid racial insult Don Imus threw at the Rutgers women's basketball team -- "nappy-headed ho's" - has led the usual cast of professional victims, like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the NAACP, to deplore the racist underbelly of the broader American culture.

But where were these people when the subject was gangsta rap? Arrogant and profane multimillionaires routinely insult and deride people, especially black women, with language one hundredfold more offensive than anything that ever came out of the I-Man's mouth?

Have the NAACP and other prominent minority groups marched with pickets outside BET or MTV for running raunchy rap videos full of N-words and "ho" references? Did they protest when the song "Hard Out Here for a P*mp" won an Academy Award? Its derogatory lyrics included the N-word and the word "ho."

To be sure, there have been some leaders in the black community -- like the late C. Delores Tucker and, more recently, Bill Cosby and Richmond, Va., Mayor Douglas Wilder -- who have campaigned mightily against this cultural self-destruction, but their appeals have been met by sneers and jeers from Hollywood.

Lobbyists for the NAACP and other groups have been equally silent over the shocking volume of racial material disguised as "comedy" on advertiser-supported basic cable TV. In the last two years, the Parents Television Council has counted more than 140 uses of the N-word on cable. Where were the campaigns to get those performers or executives canned?

This count includes the March 7 edition of Comedy Central's "South Park," kicking off its 11th season with its usual shock-joke routine. The network would not risk mocking Mohammad for fear of violence, but the March 7 show used the N-word 42 times in a half-hour. One of the main character's parents guessed the N-word on a "Wheel of Fortune" puzzle, and so the whole town of South Park repeatedly mocks him as "the (N-word) Guy."

In between the constant N-words, Comedy Central showed an advertisement for a new comedy series called "Halfway Home," about ex-cons in a halfway house. A white man under assault from people throwing water balloons looks at a black woman with a balloon and yells about his wet sweater vest, "This is cashmere, you fat wh*re."

Clearly, those alleged equal-opportunity insulters at Viacom are not as afraid of the NAACP as they are of the Muslims -- because the NAACP doesn't care. Its last leader, Bruce Gordon, now a board member at CBS Corp., demanded Imus be gone: "We should have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to what I see as irresponsible, racist behavior." Try to find any news account of Mr. Zero Tolerance campaigning against harsh rap music while he headed the NAACP.

Those who demanded that Don Imus be fired should really try to explain how Comedy Central is merely using a humor context in its aggravated use of hurtful insults, and is thereby innocent and untouched.

For its part, "South Park" tried to have it both ways. After exploiting the controversy of using the N-word 42 times in the episode, the program concludes with one of the leading white children on the show stupidly suggesting he'll never understand how the N-word hurts when it's used.

Bizarrely, people who want the N-word abolished actually turned around and praised "South Park" for its 42-N-word episode. On CNN, Kovon and Jill Flowers, who co-founded the organization Abolish the "N" Word, proclaimed that in this case using the slur constantly was appropriate. "This show, in its own comedic way, is helping to educate people about the power of this word and how it feels to have hate language directed at you."

But the people who enjoy "South Park" and watched this episode weren't focusing on any grand moral lesson. They enjoyed the typical "South Park" plotline that the sensitivity police -- people who argue for civility and against coarse language -- should be the ones ridiculed. The central laugh for most was the cartoon Jesse Jackson demanding an apology that included kissing his bare buttocks, captured by a photographer. But try finding Jesse Jackson or his Rainbow-PUSH organization picketing Comedy Central for that episode.

If the NAACP and other groups don't want to look like very arbitrary and selective protesters of racial insensitivity, they could reconsider their support -- through their silence -- of the cable industry's status quo. If their goal is a culture that honors and inspires blacks, they have a lot more territory than Don Imus' show to condemn.

Lecturer, syndicated columnist, television commentator, debater, marketer, businessman, author, publisher and activist, L. Brent Bozell III, 51, is one of the most outspoken and effective national leaders in the conservative movement today.

In her new column analyzing the Duke rape case and Don Imus/Rutgers women's basketball team controversy, writer Kathleen Parker nails it beautifully. 

Two athletic teams -- one mostly white male, one mostly black female. Two examples of race and gender colliding. One rogue prosecutor; one rude shock jock.

Obviously, there's no comparison between the two cases in terms of consequences. While the Rutgers gals suffered hurt feelings, Imus lost his television gig and his radio show, the three Duke men potentially faced 30 years in prison and District Attorney Mike Nifong faces ethics charges.

But the two episodes do share the complicating and distorting factors of race, sex and politics.

And of course, they both share the opportunistic involvement of those two rogue race-baiting reverends, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Both not only came to the aid of the Rutgers basketball team, but grabbed the microphones before the accused Duke players had their day in court.

In Imus' case, neither was willing to accept the radio host's apology for his unfunny racist remark aimed at the basketball players and both worked, successfully, to get him off television airwaves.

In the Duke case, we will succumb to suffocation, I suspect, if we hold our breath waiting for Sharpton and Jackson to apologize for feeding the racist frenzy that condemned those three young men whose lives were nearly ruined by innuendo, lies, an out-of-control prosecutor and a complicit media...

Despite the obvious double standard among those who purport to work for racial harmony, the convergence of these two events may be the tipping point in our national debate about race, sex and speech. Let's do cut close to the bone, but, lest we become enamored of our virtue, we should acknowledge a couple of facts:

First, despite protestations to the contrary, it's hard to believe NBC and CBS dropped Imus only because of his remarks. The two networks fired him, at least in part, because the show's advertisers pulled out. Does anyone really doubt that Imus would be on air today if the cash were still flowing?

Second, Duke administrators and trustees, who are now demanding a complete investigation into Nifong's behavior, are a year late and a conscience short. With notable exceptions, administrators and faculty behaved abominably and should be considering an investigation into their own hearts. What a contrast to the support Rutgers University gave its students.

Those who have performed most honorably throughout this disgraceful season of sexual spin and racial one-upmanship are the athletes from both teams. Mature and dignified during their respective news conferences, they've put the grown-ups to shame and offer reason to hope that the rising generation of young Americans will put this corrupt house in order.

Meanwhile, as Attorney General Cooper said: ``A lot of people owe a lot of apologies to a lot of people.''

Very well said.

From FoxNews.com:




Crystal Gail Mangum: Profile of the Duke Rape Accuser

Some of the details of the Duke University rape case may never be solved, but one thing is startlingly clear: Crystal Gail Mangum, the woman who accused three college lacrosse players of locking her in a bathroom and raping her, has had a very troubled life.

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Not only is this woman a pathological liar, but she's also a nut case!  A troubled life is no excuse for falsely accusing three innocent young men of rape, thereby all but ruining their lives, maybe irreparably.