**VIDEO Below the Fold**

Apparently the newest big-deal-ad that everyone is supposed to get all upset over is an advertisement by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) that came out this week. Unfortunately for them, I can’t see how anyone would get too exercised over it. In fact, to my mind the message and its treatment are perfectly well handled. So, it all is a humbug instead of a controversy.Yes, this is quite a first for PETA. An ad we DON’T have to get upset over.

I guess some people are wondering if the ad is based on a moral equivalence of spaying and neutering animals and teen pregnancy. Apparently, we are supposed to get all up in arms that the ad features parents telling their young teenaged daughter to go have all the sex and pump out all the kids she wants because they can just abandon the unwanted kids in the streets or in shelters. This, of course, is a satiric way to comment on the fact that pet owners don’t spay and neuter their pets and, therefore, their pets have unwanted pregnancies that get dumped in the street or left at shelters.

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Tags: Publius Forum, Warner Todd Huston, PETA, Animals

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The San Diego Union-Tribune published a story last week that typifies the lack of perspective and a refusal to give a more full account of the facts in the illegal immigration debate common from too many media outlets. The Union-Trib was all worried that “22 migrants have died in S.D. sector” but didn’t seem too interested in all relevant information, leaving only a vague feeling that sympathy is due these “migrants,” as they repeatedly call them, instead of illegal aliens.

First of all, the very title itself of the story by staff writer Norma de la Vega calls these illegal invaders a much more benign “migrants.” It’s as if they are legal entrants, honest “migrants,” instead of those sneaking into the country through the desert back country of San Diego.

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It’s amazing to see how a Democrat so warps the word “right” these days. Last week California Democrat Rep. Brad Sherman was only the latest Democrat to take the word “right” and misuse it for his disgusting, partisan ends when he decided that it was a “right” to unionize, but NOT a “right” to eschew a union.

Sherman proposed last week that Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley act of 1947 be repealed. This section deals with a real right, that of being guaranteed that you can keep your job WITHOUT being forced by the state to join a union. With a warped sense of “rights,” Sherman wants that section repealed so that states can force employees to join unions.

Sherman wants to repeal a true right and substitute state coercion in its place. Sherman gives us a typical Democrat lie to explain himself saying, “It is time that we let unions organize and time that we allow workers who want to have a union, to enjoy that right.”

Time we “let” union organize? Is Sherman living in 1898? No, what it is really time for is for Americans to know that they have a democratic choice. Join a union if you feel so disposed, but don’t have the iron boot heel of Brad Sherman forcing you to join one just so you might have the privilege of earning a paycheck.

Rep. Brad Sherman is an oppressor of rights, not an advocate of them and unions are his storm troopers.

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Tags: Publius Forum, Warner Todd Huston, Union Corruption

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An article published in the Chronicle of Higher Education reflects the notion that academic freedom means being allowed to advocate a personal point of view in the classroom.

Outspoken scholars fared much better than one would have expected in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Richard Berthold, at the University of New Mexico, incurred only a reprimand for telling his freshman history class that “anyone who bombs the Pentagon gets an A in my book.” At Columbia University, Nicholas DeGenova got essentially a pass when he called for “a million Mogadishus.” Arthur Butz remained a professor in good standing at Northwestern University after he lauded Iran’s president for Holocaust denial. The moderate and deliberative response to such incidents and others suggests that academic freedom is in excellent health.

Others would define the above examples of academic freedom as proselytizing in the classroom or using the classroom as a “Bully Pulpit.”

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Tags: Publius Forum, Nancy Salvato

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Yesterday was finally the end of the days this year when you were working to pay the government its exorbitant fees. That’s right, July 16 was Cost of Government Day for the average American. Grover Norquist , author of the recent book “Leave Us Alone,” has once again crunched the numbers and determined how long it takes most of us to finally pay off our own personal bloated government debt and begin, at last, to make money for ourselves.

This year Americans have worked until today, July 16, to pay for the total costs of federal, state and local government. This is 197 days of the year consuming 53.9 percent of national income. Over the past 22 years, in only four years (1982, 1983, 1991 and 1992) did Cost of Government Day fall later in the year.

Its simply outrageous that it takes 197 days of a year to finally pay off our government obligations and utterly criminal that more than half our income is consumed by bloated, needless bureaucracy.

Federal spending will consume 83.7 days. State and local spending will consume 50.5 days effort. Federal regulations cost 4l.7 days and State regulations cost 20.9 days. The spending data is precise, the regulatory burdens are understated.

And it is a singular failing of the Bush administration that we have added three more days of slaving to pay the government to this burden since he took office. But it is even worse that six days have been added by our own state and local governments.

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Larry Hunter claims he is a “lifelong conservative.” Yet, in his recent New York Daily News article, he also says he is voting for Barack Obama for president. The two simply cannot coexist. One has to be obliterated in favor of the other. And, regardless of the facile reasoning Hunter gives for his apostasy, this article does nothing to support any supposed conservative cause. It does, however, give the media something to crow about.

Larry Hunter begins by assuring us of his conservative credentials. A supply sider from the Reagan White House, Hunter had a 5-year-long stint as chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was a member of Bob Dole’s economic team for the 1996 presidential race and was chief economist for Jack Kemp’s Empower America. All of this does confirm his economic conservatism. But none of it says anything to his ideology otherwise. Still, regardless, we can take at face value his credentials and mark him as generally on the right side of the issues.

Yet, even after telling us his resume, Hunter says, “This November, I’m voting for Barack Obama.” Naturally, he says his “colleagues were shocked.” So should be anyone who thinks conservatism the best direction for this country.

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